If there is no competition in broadband internet in an area, it is not because of a government-granted monopoly, it is because there is not sufficient economic incentive for anyone to compete. I.e., not enough customers for multiple companies to succeed.
Creating a non-profit, taxpayer-backed government ISP to drive what few competitors there are out of business is not the answer.
They were given a monopoly by local governments who got into the regulation game to keep telephone poles from becoming too cluttered with wires,
And all such monopolies are now illegal. Not even the telephone company has a monopoly on telephone service. Modern distribution of internet is not dependent upon "telephone poles" anymore, and there are plenty of opportunities for competition that does not use them, in addition to the competition that does.
but somehow it morphed into a scheme where in exchange for a monopoly the local government got kickbacks or other guarantees from the sole ISP.
ISPs have NEVER been granted a monopoly. Ever. The cable companies started out that way, but federal law now prohibits exclusive franchises. The telco still has theirs, as far as I know, but only for wired telephone service. But ISPs as ISPs have never been granted such protections from the government.
But even today, without monopoly protection, cable and telephone companies pay your "kickbacks", which are more correctly called "franchise fees" and are there to pay for the access to the public rights-of-way. They don't go into politician's pockets.
This is why net neutrality isn't as big an issue in other parts of the world - most non-Americans have a choice of multiple ISPs,
I deal on a daily basis with four or five, and there are a handful of others I don't but could. "Americans" have choices, but they self-limit because they say it costs too much or it isn't fast enough for them. This is like saying that Chevy is a government-granted monopoly because they're the only car company that builds a car with the horsepower and features I want. Ignore all the other cars on the road that don't say "Chevy" -- they are a monopoly because I say so.
The problems net neutrality tries to solve are only possible because of these government-granted monopolies.
I'll end this response with my standard challenge. Name one. Nobody has yet been able to provide the name of an actual, government-granted monopoly holder.
The one thing it does however, is stop your local ISP from tracking you
And hands that ability right over to your local government, including law enforcement. It also does not prevent the government ISP from shaping traffic or violating net neutrality. If there are no rules to stop a commercial provider who needs customers to keep making a profit from violating net neutrality, then there is even less incentive for a government broadband service with a taxpayer-backed, non-profit status and plenty of captive customers to keep from doing it.
We saw a signpost up ahead for the problems of government ISPs with the upstate New York municipality that banned the use of the electricity they sell for crypto-mining. I don't know if this is the first government monopoly service that has implemented rules to restrict what the public can do with the services they buy from the city, but it will not be the last. Do you want your city ISP telling you what you can and cannot do with your broadband internet, with the ability not only to make it a violation of the TOS but a violation of the law? Do you want your city to monitor your internet use to make sure it does not violate any local, state, or federal laws in the first place?
So what you're saying is that embassies don't understand what a Faraday cage is. Or that cell jamming technology doesn't exist. I'm not talking about Star Trek level technologies here.
I don't know who you are replying to with this, but of course embassies know what Faraday cages and cell phone jammers are.
Both technologies are simple to implement, but have significant downsides. Yes, the embassy could try putting the entire building inside a Faraday cage, but opening a window or standing in an outside courtyard would be trivial ways to bypass that. They can install cell phone jammers, but then nobody's cell phones would work and that would be a significant inconvenience to staff and visitors.
They almost certainly have secured areas that are shielded against RF, but they almost certainly aren't letting Assange into any of them.
So, now they either have to protest Assange being deprived of this right without due process or admit, that it is not any more of a right, than the ability to buy cheese.
And I will say this once again: something being an alleged "human right" does not mean that the government of Ecuador must provide it to you. They are quite within their rights to deny anyone access to the internet service they have within their embassy whether you think "internet" is a human right or not. Or whether this "Progressive Humanity" thing thinks it is a human right.
I think there is less question about "food" being a human right, and I've been in a lot of US (and other) government facilities where they were neither required nor expected to provide "food" upon demand.
Given the ubiquitous nature of cell phones, it is almost certain that the Embassy does not block cellular signals. They may try to block WiFi and provide their own to employees and staff, but it is unlikely they do the same with cellular services.
No such agreement is even necessary, if Internet access really were a human right. Is it?..
Something being an alleged "human right" doesn't mean that the government of Ecuador is required to provide it to you, any more than it means the US government has to provide it to anyone.
Do you believe that the US government is required to provide internet service to everyone in the US?
Of course, the Internet being a human right is not a fact that has been proven.
There are many real-world situations where you DO need the power of a full Win 10/Core i7 PC to accomplish something, and DO need to look stuff up on the internet all the time while you are doing this
You think editing a patent application requires a "full Win 10/Core I7 PC"? Or is your internet browsing SOC supposed to be the i7 power?
Having a 2nd mini-PC inside the main computer that can go online but cannot expose the rest of the computer to any would-be hackers seemed like a great solution for this.
What advantage is this? You're looking stuff up on one, writing a document on another. You can't cut and paste anything you find so where's the advantage? Run two desktops side by side. Problem solved.
You keep arguing with people who are trying to answer your question. Did you come here to learn or to have an argument?
What makes you think the market for this is SMALL?
The fact that you are here asking why nobody is building it. "Millions of customers" plus "business solution (paid for)" would be a great market. It's not happening. That means one of the two assumptions is false. I pick "millions of customers".
The solution already exists, is cheaper for the company, and is actually more convenient. It's called a smart phone.
These are people whose EMPLOYERS pay for their hardware. Wouldn't those employers cough up an extra 100 to 200 Dollars to keep stuff safe that could do Millions of Dollars in damage if stolen?
Why should they pay for your convenience? Why would they? They have rules about how you use your business laptop to protect their data. That's the solution they chose.
Get a $50 smart phone. Smaller, easier, cheaper, faster. Shares NO hardware with your laptop. There's your solution.
Or are you not interested in the solution, just here trying to defend your silly idea?
Not all illegal immigrants entered the country illegally. Visa overstay is not a criminal offense.
By definition, illegal immigrants are here illegally. Yes, VISA overstay is a criminal offense. I provided a link to the section of the law. You should ready it before leaping to the defense of illegal aliens. (Hint: "obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact".)
There's nothing wrong with deporting illegals, but blaming this nations problem on them
I don't see where I ascribed blame for problems to anyone. I pointed out that the claim that it was a civil offense was patent stupidity.
Let's not forget that Reagan gave amnesty to illegal immigrants
More to the point, though, using Facebook for "round ups" is something we could probably debate.
If they had actually used Facebook, we should. They didn't, any more than they used "social media". They got logs from a computer service, which could have been the web, or twitter, or ftp, SMTP, IMAP, or anything else. The fact that it was Facebook is irrelevant to the discussion.
"Used social media" means they actually did something ON Facebook, like looked at friend's lists or timeline postings or such stuff. "Using twitter" means they look at the content and get information from that. They didn't do that. This isn't "using social media" at all.
I know what the subject says. "Tell me again" means tell me again. And in colloquial use it means "are you serious?" Kinda like, tell me again because I must not have heard you right the first time, your statement was so silly.
I'm sure the MPAA is all about buying legislation that deals with sex trafficking websites. Really. They're losing so much money to unregulated sex trafficking websites that they have to get the practice stopped. For sure. Right.
It's obvious you don't think so,
And if you read the actual legislation, it doesn't do that, either.
Uh, yeah. Tell me who is pretending this won't have any adverse reaction and isn't being bought by big-money that wants the Internet safe harbors broken
So now you're accusing me of being paid to have this opinion. You're a condom wrapper.
Does it really? I don't think that transportation is necessarily involved in that.
Trafficking doesn't mean you have to transport, it means exchange. As in, pimping. You are moving product.
He didn't day SEX trafficking, though. Just trafficking.
He didn't, but the legislation being discussed does. He's also implying that this legislation is bad for using the word "trafficking" because "trafficking" gets expanded to mean so many things -- which this legislation explicitly excludes by limiting itself to sex trafficking.
My bad for assuming that his comment was somehow related to the legislation.
You haven't read that expression about "slippery slope", have you?
Of course I have. I also realize that laws have been changed before, so that slope is well above and behind us. This bill does nothing to change it.
It doesn't specify any exact topic whatsoever, but it applies to everything where policy is influenced by money.
Uh, yeah. Tell me who is buying this legislation again? It takes someone with deep pockets to buy legislation that allows easier prosecution of operators of websites that have an "intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person"?
It's a lot tougher when the advertisements go underground to invite-only sites.
And if the feds start prosecuting Backpage users, whether or not Backpage turns over all ads with the right "keywords", don't you think the traffic will move to that anyway?
There's nothing illegal about that,
I didn't say there was. I said it was a common/. meme -- awful company violates user privacy by handing data to feds without warrant.
Transmit some child porn through your Gmail account.
Like I said, awful company scans every piece of email you send and receive...
Think of the difference between sharing files on, say, Usenet vs. sharing files on invite-only bulletin boards or torrent trackers.
I understand the difference. The point is that they will start doing that anyway when prosecutions start ramping up, if ever, so this is an almost inevitable change.
This is about US representatives paid off by the MPAA to remove CDA Sec 230 protections so that they can go after people who share content, require ISPs to censor or block postings, and enforce permanent takedown
You haven't read the bill, have you? It's pretty specific in what it says about 230. It's also pretty specific in what it deals with. "Share content" isn't mentioned even once, not even sideways, unless by "content" you mean "sexual organs" and "share" you mean "sell or operate in the business of selling."
If your rant is because this law shows that laws can be changed and protections provided to ISPs could be removed, well, good morning. You've woken up to the fact that laws can be changed. This law isn't such a change, however.
... making it much more difficult for investigators to go undercover as buyers and find the victims.
As if the undercovers couldn't adapt their tactics based on changing criminal behavior.
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
First, you have the issue of a private company providing data to the feds without a warrant. That's the common/. meme when a company hands data to the government voluntarily.
Second, when the criminals determine that Backpage is sending every ad with the word "fresh" in it to the feds, they'll choose a different code word and you'll be back at the poor undercovers not being able to figure out that the code word has changed.
"trafficking" covers such diverse situations as:
Teenage girls being coerced into sex work
Yes.
People who make it easier for Chinese women to come to the USA on tourist visas to give birth.
The coyotes who guide people central America across the US border
The gangs in Libya who either help Africans cross the sea to Europe, or rip them off as they attempt to get to Europe.
None of those are sex trafficking. None of those are included in this bill.
People being brought illegally from abroad as domestic workers (or brought legally but exploited).
Nor is that, unless they are then forced into sex.
and use it as an excuse to crack down on the form of ``trafficking'' that is their real target.
The only target of the bill is sex trafficking. They're doing a really bad job of targeting immigration issues, if that's what you want to claim they are actually after.
(1) If the content is outside the US, they can place liability on US ISPs that don't censor it.
If you actually read the bill your outrage will likely lessen quite a bit. The bill has nothing to do with ISPs. It repeatedly talks about websites, and it also talks about deliberate intent to facilitate sex trafficking.
But what's wrong with approving the sex trade among consenting adults?
You're debating a different legal issue.
(3) How is prostitution different from many traditional marriages,
Sorry, now you're well out in left field.
It's cute, fun, and traditional when people spend a lot of money on a wedding and the state stamps its approval, but when it's done by the poor without the state's sanction, it's automatically a terrible thing.
Equating sex trafficking with marriage is about as silly as you can get.
The berries hide behind leaves in unpredictable places.
I used to pick strawberries when I was a kid. Those sneaky bastards would hide everywhere. The craftiest ones would sneak over and hide in the raspberry bushes because raspberries weren't being picked yet. Dumb ones would find a pea vine to attach to. It's pretty obvious when a red thing is hanging where a pea pod usually is. I'm pretty sure that strawberries are red-green color blind based on that.
The worst racists are those that justify it by saying it is "for their own good".
Even worse are the racists who justify pittance wages and poor working conditions because the "jobs are superior" to what they'd get in their own country.
Slashdot Mirror
prohibit the government-granted monopolies
If there is no competition in broadband internet in an area, it is not because of a government-granted monopoly, it is because there is not sufficient economic incentive for anyone to compete. I.e., not enough customers for multiple companies to succeed.
Creating a non-profit, taxpayer-backed government ISP to drive what few competitors there are out of business is not the answer.
They were given a monopoly by local governments who got into the regulation game to keep telephone poles from becoming too cluttered with wires,
And all such monopolies are now illegal. Not even the telephone company has a monopoly on telephone service. Modern distribution of internet is not dependent upon "telephone poles" anymore, and there are plenty of opportunities for competition that does not use them, in addition to the competition that does.
but somehow it morphed into a scheme where in exchange for a monopoly the local government got kickbacks or other guarantees from the sole ISP.
ISPs have NEVER been granted a monopoly. Ever. The cable companies started out that way, but federal law now prohibits exclusive franchises. The telco still has theirs, as far as I know, but only for wired telephone service. But ISPs as ISPs have never been granted such protections from the government.
But even today, without monopoly protection, cable and telephone companies pay your "kickbacks", which are more correctly called "franchise fees" and are there to pay for the access to the public rights-of-way. They don't go into politician's pockets.
This is why net neutrality isn't as big an issue in other parts of the world - most non-Americans have a choice of multiple ISPs,
I deal on a daily basis with four or five, and there are a handful of others I don't but could. "Americans" have choices, but they self-limit because they say it costs too much or it isn't fast enough for them. This is like saying that Chevy is a government-granted monopoly because they're the only car company that builds a car with the horsepower and features I want. Ignore all the other cars on the road that don't say "Chevy" -- they are a monopoly because I say so.
The problems net neutrality tries to solve are only possible because of these government-granted monopolies.
I'll end this response with my standard challenge. Name one. Nobody has yet been able to provide the name of an actual, government-granted monopoly holder.
The one thing it does however, is stop your local ISP from tracking you
And hands that ability right over to your local government, including law enforcement. It also does not prevent the government ISP from shaping traffic or violating net neutrality. If there are no rules to stop a commercial provider who needs customers to keep making a profit from violating net neutrality, then there is even less incentive for a government broadband service with a taxpayer-backed, non-profit status and plenty of captive customers to keep from doing it.
We saw a signpost up ahead for the problems of government ISPs with the upstate New York municipality that banned the use of the electricity they sell for crypto-mining. I don't know if this is the first government monopoly service that has implemented rules to restrict what the public can do with the services they buy from the city, but it will not be the last. Do you want your city ISP telling you what you can and cannot do with your broadband internet, with the ability not only to make it a violation of the TOS but a violation of the law? Do you want your city to monitor your internet use to make sure it does not violate any local, state, or federal laws in the first place?
So what you're saying is that embassies don't understand what a Faraday cage is. Or that cell jamming technology doesn't exist. I'm not talking about Star Trek level technologies here.
I don't know who you are replying to with this, but of course embassies know what Faraday cages and cell phone jammers are.
Both technologies are simple to implement, but have significant downsides. Yes, the embassy could try putting the entire building inside a Faraday cage, but opening a window or standing in an outside courtyard would be trivial ways to bypass that. They can install cell phone jammers, but then nobody's cell phones would work and that would be a significant inconvenience to staff and visitors.
They almost certainly have secured areas that are shielded against RF, but they almost certainly aren't letting Assange into any of them.
So, now they either have to protest Assange being deprived of this right without due process or admit, that it is not any more of a right, than the ability to buy cheese.
And I will say this once again: something being an alleged "human right" does not mean that the government of Ecuador must provide it to you. They are quite within their rights to deny anyone access to the internet service they have within their embassy whether you think "internet" is a human right or not. Or whether this "Progressive Humanity" thing thinks it is a human right.
I think there is less question about "food" being a human right, and I've been in a lot of US (and other) government facilities where they were neither required nor expected to provide "food" upon demand.
Given the ubiquitous nature of cell phones, it is almost certain that the Embassy does not block cellular signals. They may try to block WiFi and provide their own to employees and staff, but it is unlikely they do the same with cellular services.
No such agreement is even necessary, if Internet access really were a human right. Is it?..
Something being an alleged "human right" doesn't mean that the government of Ecuador is required to provide it to you, any more than it means the US government has to provide it to anyone.
Do you believe that the US government is required to provide internet service to everyone in the US?
Of course, the Internet being a human right is not a fact that has been proven.
There are many real-world situations where you DO need the power of a full Win 10/Core i7 PC to accomplish something, and DO need to look stuff up on the internet all the time while you are doing this
You think editing a patent application requires a "full Win 10/Core I7 PC"? Or is your internet browsing SOC supposed to be the i7 power?
Having a 2nd mini-PC inside the main computer that can go online but cannot expose the rest of the computer to any would-be hackers seemed like a great solution for this.
What advantage is this? You're looking stuff up on one, writing a document on another. You can't cut and paste anything you find so where's the advantage? Run two desktops side by side. Problem solved.
You keep arguing with people who are trying to answer your question. Did you come here to learn or to have an argument?
Your use case is simply too narrow to justify development.
No, his "use case" is already covered by use of a second device -- a smart phone. He's just not listening and can't accept that it already exists.
What makes you think the market for this is SMALL?
The fact that you are here asking why nobody is building it. "Millions of customers" plus "business solution (paid for)" would be a great market. It's not happening. That means one of the two assumptions is false. I pick "millions of customers".
The solution already exists, is cheaper for the company, and is actually more convenient. It's called a smart phone.
These are people whose EMPLOYERS pay for their hardware. Wouldn't those employers cough up an extra 100 to 200 Dollars to keep stuff safe that could do Millions of Dollars in damage if stolen?
Why should they pay for your convenience? Why would they? They have rules about how you use your business laptop to protect their data. That's the solution they chose.
Get a $50 smart phone. Smaller, easier, cheaper, faster. Shares NO hardware with your laptop. There's your solution.
Or are you not interested in the solution, just here trying to defend your silly idea?
Not all illegal immigrants entered the country illegally. Visa overstay is not a criminal offense.
By definition, illegal immigrants are here illegally. Yes, VISA overstay is a criminal offense. I provided a link to the section of the law. You should ready it before leaping to the defense of illegal aliens. (Hint: "obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact".)
There's nothing wrong with deporting illegals, but blaming this nations problem on them
I don't see where I ascribed blame for problems to anyone. I pointed out that the claim that it was a civil offense was patent stupidity.
Let's not forget that Reagan gave amnesty to illegal immigrants
Yeah, he wasn't perfect. Not my fault.
Immigration violations are mostly civil offenses.
You are wrong. 8 U.S. Code Section 1325 "Improper entry by alien" makes it a criminal offense. Where did you get the idea that it wasn't a crime?
More to the point, though, using Facebook for "round ups" is something we could probably debate.
If they had actually used Facebook, we should. They didn't, any more than they used "social media". They got logs from a computer service, which could have been the web, or twitter, or ftp, SMTP, IMAP, or anything else. The fact that it was Facebook is irrelevant to the discussion.
"Used social media" means they actually did something ON Facebook, like looked at friend's lists or timeline postings or such stuff. "Using twitter" means they look at the content and get information from that. They didn't do that. This isn't "using social media" at all.
Dude, it's all over the subject line and the OP.
I know what the subject says. "Tell me again" means tell me again. And in colloquial use it means "are you serious?" Kinda like, tell me again because I must not have heard you right the first time, your statement was so silly.
I'm sure the MPAA is all about buying legislation that deals with sex trafficking websites. Really. They're losing so much money to unregulated sex trafficking websites that they have to get the practice stopped. For sure. Right.
It's obvious you don't think so,
And if you read the actual legislation, it doesn't do that, either.
Uh, yeah. Tell me who is pretending this won't have any adverse reaction and isn't being bought by big-money that wants the Internet safe harbors broken
So now you're accusing me of being paid to have this opinion. You're a condom wrapper.
Does it really? I don't think that transportation is necessarily involved in that.
Trafficking doesn't mean you have to transport, it means exchange. As in, pimping. You are moving product.
He didn't day SEX trafficking, though. Just trafficking.
He didn't, but the legislation being discussed does. He's also implying that this legislation is bad for using the word "trafficking" because "trafficking" gets expanded to mean so many things -- which this legislation explicitly excludes by limiting itself to sex trafficking.
My bad for assuming that his comment was somehow related to the legislation.
You haven't read that expression about "slippery slope", have you?
Of course I have. I also realize that laws have been changed before, so that slope is well above and behind us. This bill does nothing to change it.
It doesn't specify any exact topic whatsoever, but it applies to everything where policy is influenced by money.
Uh, yeah. Tell me who is buying this legislation again? It takes someone with deep pockets to buy legislation that allows easier prosecution of operators of websites that have an "intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person"?
It's a lot tougher when the advertisements go underground to invite-only sites.
And if the feds start prosecuting Backpage users, whether or not Backpage turns over all ads with the right "keywords", don't you think the traffic will move to that anyway?
There's nothing illegal about that,
I didn't say there was. I said it was a common /. meme -- awful company violates user privacy by handing data to feds without warrant.
Transmit some child porn through your Gmail account.
Like I said, awful company scans every piece of email you send and receive ...
Think of the difference between sharing files on, say, Usenet vs. sharing files on invite-only bulletin boards or torrent trackers.
I understand the difference. The point is that they will start doing that anyway when prosecutions start ramping up, if ever, so this is an almost inevitable change.
The question is, can intentionally setting up an unmoderated forum be seen as deliberately facilitating crimes that may be discussed there?
Read the bill. I would say "no". "intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person".
This is about US representatives paid off by the MPAA to remove CDA Sec 230 protections so that they can go after people who share content, require ISPs to censor or block postings, and enforce permanent takedown
You haven't read the bill, have you? It's pretty specific in what it says about 230. It's also pretty specific in what it deals with. "Share content" isn't mentioned even once, not even sideways, unless by "content" you mean "sexual organs" and "share" you mean "sell or operate in the business of selling."
If your rant is because this law shows that laws can be changed and protections provided to ISPs could be removed, well, good morning. You've woken up to the fact that laws can be changed. This law isn't such a change, however.
Where do you draw the line between art and pornography?
If a nerd spends less than 1% of his day looking at it, it's art. If he spends more than 10%, it's porn.
As if the undercovers couldn't adapt their tactics based on changing criminal behavior.
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
First, you have the issue of a private company providing data to the feds without a warrant. That's the common /. meme when a company hands data to the government voluntarily.
Second, when the criminals determine that Backpage is sending every ad with the word "fresh" in it to the feds, they'll choose a different code word and you'll be back at the poor undercovers not being able to figure out that the code word has changed.
"trafficking" covers such diverse situations as: Teenage girls being coerced into sex work
Yes.
People who make it easier for Chinese women to come to the USA on tourist visas to give birth. The coyotes who guide people central America across the US border The gangs in Libya who either help Africans cross the sea to Europe, or rip them off as they attempt to get to Europe.
None of those are sex trafficking. None of those are included in this bill.
People being brought illegally from abroad as domestic workers (or brought legally but exploited).
Nor is that, unless they are then forced into sex.
and use it as an excuse to crack down on the form of ``trafficking'' that is their real target.
The only target of the bill is sex trafficking. They're doing a really bad job of targeting immigration issues, if that's what you want to claim they are actually after.
(1) If the content is outside the US, they can place liability on US ISPs that don't censor it.
If you actually read the bill your outrage will likely lessen quite a bit. The bill has nothing to do with ISPs. It repeatedly talks about websites, and it also talks about deliberate intent to facilitate sex trafficking.
But what's wrong with approving the sex trade among consenting adults?
You're debating a different legal issue.
(3) How is prostitution different from many traditional marriages,
Sorry, now you're well out in left field.
It's cute, fun, and traditional when people spend a lot of money on a wedding and the state stamps its approval, but when it's done by the poor without the state's sanction, it's automatically a terrible thing.
Equating sex trafficking with marriage is about as silly as you can get.
The berries hide behind leaves in unpredictable places.
I used to pick strawberries when I was a kid. Those sneaky bastards would hide everywhere. The craftiest ones would sneak over and hide in the raspberry bushes because raspberries weren't being picked yet. Dumb ones would find a pea vine to attach to. It's pretty obvious when a red thing is hanging where a pea pod usually is. I'm pretty sure that strawberries are red-green color blind based on that.
When the minimum wage is well above that, why should anyone do it for that little?
The worst racists are those that justify it by saying it is "for their own good".
Even worse are the racists who justify pittance wages and poor working conditions because the "jobs are superior" to what they'd get in their own country.