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Burger King Makes the Case For Net Neutrality (variety.com)
An anonymous reader writes: By now you've probably seen Burger King's spoof ad on the decision by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to repeal net neutrality. In the ad, Burger King customers are informed that there are now three "lanes" for ordering Whoppers -- each with substantially different prices and waiting times. The ad has already generated over a million views on Youtube and is lighting up Twitter. One thing I missed the first time is that while the Burger King "counter service" is clearly in on the act, the customers are apparently real; they learn of the cockamamie scheme at the counter in the style of the old TV show Candid Camera. Variety notes that the video "ends with an apparent dig at FCC Chairman Ajit Pai [...] as the Burger King character is shown drinking from an oversized Reese's coffee mug. That is the type of coffee mug that Pai uses at FCC meetings."
Not exactly, but they do confuse the issue. If you notice, only the Wopper is being delayed, and it's being delayed despite being able to be served faster. Other sandwiches like Chicken (as pointed out in the ad) do not require waiting in the slow line.
If we assume Woppers are a substitute for torrents then the net neutrality parallel is obvious - unfortunately the target audience for the commercial won't make the connection.
Yeah, I agree it's a bad analogy. I think a better one would be a grocery store where each checkout line is a different speed and price, faster lines charging more, and the brand of the item you choose depends on which line you are allowed to queue up in. If you have a non-preferred brand of cereal, Kellogs and Post for example, you must join the slower lane. Oh, but you can pay extra to take the non-preferred brand into the express lane, which already includes preferred brands of General Mills who payed extra to be included in that lane by default.
I agree the analogy isn't perfect but, well, it's an analogy do it "can't" be perfect.
Personally, I found the video both funny and entertaining. And, more importantly, it reached a lot of ordinary people and tell them that killing net neutrality is a bad thing. And that worth more than the best analogy we could come with.
Elok
seems more like you don't understand how an analogy works. the set of all hamburger restaurants isn't "the internet" in this case. this single BK restaurant is "the internet", or monopoly gateway to is. in the context of the ad, the whopper is like netflix or something. you can get the chicken sandwich, which is the ISP video, with no delays. but you may have to wait (or get your whopper throughput throttled) if you don't pay for a premium line. the analogy totally works, if you don't attempt to over-analyze it with "that's not really how..." irrelevant reasoning.
Totally agree with you. They need a 15 second after shot where it pans out to people trying to shop elsewhere and the assistant on thier phone tells them that this is the only place they are legally allowed to buy fast food from. If they don't like it they are free to sell thier house and move.
Despite the ridiculous amount of capital it takes, a lot. The number one place that there are issues is utility poles. Right now, most municipalities have regulations that you must wait for the incumbent player to move their cables to make room for yours. Typically, there is no required turnaround time, or it's a ridiculously long time like 90 days per pole and they can charge you whatever they want for the "service." Some municipalities passed what a are called "one touch make ready" regulations but, the incumbents have sued every time, with varied results but, if nothing else, you had to wait for the lawsuit to conclude before you could proceed. One touch make ready is a regulation that allows a new players to move aside existing cables to make room for their own on the condition that they do not harm existing cables or interfere with the competitor's service. Google fiber required that one touch make ready laws were passed before they would consider your city for their service.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Did it? I mean, I've heard about the video, but I haven't bothered watching it, because it's a Burger King commercial and I don't care.
You're on Slashdot so I'm pretty sure you're aware about the importance of Net Neutrality. So it doesn't matter if "you" saw the video or not
As for the video, it was released 2 days ago and it already have +2.5 M views so I think we can agree it reached a "lot" of ordinary people that doesn't have a clue about what Net Neutrality mean : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Plus, even if it did, so what? Had they released this before the FCC vote, it might have mattered. Granted it still wouldn't have, but it might have. But the FCC vote is over. Net neutrality is dead. It's never coming back.
Is it? I live in Canada and, as far as I know, it's pretty much alive here. USA Rest of the World
And I wouldn't be so sure that democrat won't cancel this. I got the feeling that the next democrat president will take a linking to destroy everything that Trump made.
So what's the point to doing the video now?
Well, to sell shitty hamburgers, of course, under the guise of "informing the public." Who aren't informed and largely don't care about the boring details of net neutrality.
Unless you want the Net Neutrality to stay dead, why would you bother that Burger King spend its own money to teach people about it? Of course it's a publicity stunt, but they could have instead created 4 different flavor of Whopper : https://www.gq.com/story/new-d...
Elok
It's a subtle dig at the FCC/Ajit Pai. 6.33 = "FCC", based on where the characters appear in the English alphabet.
But only Burger King has the whopper, which is their point.
ISPs could throttle your access to Netflix, Hulu and YouTube for example.
#DeleteFacebook
... to be able to choose more to get faster service at a restaurant.
Would it be awesome to have to pay more to get functional service at a restaurant? Because that's the actual scenario.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If BK actually had such a policy, their customers would shop elsewhere starting tomorrow -- obviously.
There is no 'elsewhere' for 1 in 3 households in America. There are plenty of small towns with only one or two restaurants in them. The situation becomes worse if you actually expand the metaphor to multiple restaurants, because municipalities create protectionist artificial scarcity there, too. You can only purchase food from a business with a license to sell you food. Municipalities control the distribution of these licenses on specious bases. For example, lots of places don't permit food trucks, or they make it prohibitively expensive to operate one — you have to apply for permits over and over again for each county you want to operate in. This isn't so bad in states with few counties, but California has something like 56 of them and just operating in half of the state means that you've got dozens to deal with. And California is where the people live.
At both ends of the loop road I live on, people can get cable or DSL. But in the middle where I live, all I can get is access from a WISP which charges me $99/mo for 250GB at 6Mbps. What year is it? We paid the telcos to build out the last mile, and they pocketed over $450M and in fact paid the money out to executives in the form of bonuses. What if Taco Bell wins the fast food wars, and all restaurants are Taco Bell?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you're paying for non-functional service, wouldn't that be a matter for the FTC? If you're not getting what you paid for, isn't that fraud?
Not now they've explicitly made it legal by abolishing NN. The ISP gets to decide what is functional, and if you don't like it, you can pay more — maybe. An ISP owned by a major news outlet might well just go ahead and make all other major news outlets load slower, and not give you the option to pay more to get them at the same speed, and it would be completely legal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're wrong. Burger King's analogy is that they'll let you pay more for faster priority access to their product. To accomplish this, they will artificially slow down access to those that are unwilling to pay the ridiculous premium. Those customers that were waiting forever for their burgers weren't waiting because there were many customers that pay the premium, they were waiting just because the premium option existed and they didn't pony up. That's the entire point of their analogy and is perfectly valid.
Imagine if you couldn't call Pizza Hut without paying an additional $15 to Verizon, because Pizza Hut refused to pay Verizon for "access" to their customers. But if you call Papa John's, you get a 20% discount on your order because Papa John's *did* pay Verizon for access to the customers.
Now extend that to every phone call you make. Imagine if the only calls you could make for "free" (as part of your plan) were to individuals and businesses that are paying for the privilege of having Verizon customers call them without additional charges.
THAT is why not having net neutrality is bad. The entire internet will rapidly become pay-per-view, and only the BIGGEST companies will be able to afford to pay-off the bandwidth providers/ISPs to make their content "free".
But that's the point; utility poles aren't on the property of the ISP. They are on municipal property (or private property with municipal easements) and the municipality has every right to regulate how they are maintained and who can use them. In many places, the poles were originally installed by the electrical utility and telcos and cable companies are just free-riders.
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