Author Topic: Court ruling overturns Net Neutrality, threatens online access, experts warn  (Read 16521 times)

p12

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Maybe the APS collective can explain what this ruling will mean for the future of the internet.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/14/court-strikes-down-fccs-net-neutrality-rule/


AJ Dual

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Meh.

Pro Net Neutrality is going to be screaming that ISP's will selectively throttle bandwith to screw up video streaming and other high-bandwidth activities to prevent competition and an oligarchy of the biggest content providers, backbones, and ISP's will selectively price and throttle any competition out of the market.

Anti Net Neutrality is going to be exultant that people who own the fiber and the gear will actually be able to charge more for people who use more, or conversely throttle when they charge everyone the same. And that actually getting paid instead of being used for free by content providers will actually create market incentives and competition to provide more avenues to reach consumers with bandwidth and new kinds of services we haven't even considered yet, since they know they can price it at market levels.

The actual truth and rubber hitting the road is probably somewhere in between. Me personally, I would say a compromise where regional monopoly ISP's have to be net-neutral, but where there's multiple competing ISP's in a region consumers can choose from they can throttle or charge as they see fit might be the right answer. However, that gets complicated when you're talking about backbones, NOC's, head-ends, etc. and not just the individual town or "last mile" to the consumer.

Barring that, forced to choose either/or, I'd default to the free(er)-market decision which is anti-net-neutrality.
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Firethorn

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I like net neutrality from the perspective of 'I'm leasing a line that is supposed to be X Mbit'  Whether I use that to go to youtube, netflix, play games, or even run servers shouldn't be any of the company that is leasing me the line's business.  

On the other hand, from a free market perspective I see the attraction of ISPs and businesses working together, possibly with money changing hands, to improve my experience - things like Netflix having a server in the ISP's data closet.

However, I'll say that I don't think that ISP service is 'free market' enough for this to be more positive than negative.  If running lines to people's homes was cheap enough that we could realistically have 10+ ISPs in any given area it'd work well enough.

RevDisk

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Telcos are essentially public utilities aside from cell phones, natural monopolies. Competition is often not economically viable outside of urban areas.


I'm fine with telcos giving up net neutrality. However, they legally should lose their safe harbor status as they would no longer quality. Fedex is not responsible for someone shipping a kilo of Columbian cocaine through their service. They don't open packages or know the contents in the normal course of their business. They are granted safe harbor from prosecution because of that. If they DID open every package and still shipped illicit drugs, they would be liable.

Telcos want to open up every package, inspect the contents and make changes to or because of said contents. So every time one nabs a pedo that downloaded child porn, you could (and if they are not content neutral, SHOULD) convict the telco provider as an accessory. Except it'd never happen as telcos are regularly granted immunity for illegal conduct, such as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

That would be the free market solution. And technically is already the law.
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DustinD

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I doubt that theory would work when you consider that the routers can't tell child porn from lolcats. A .jpg is a .jpg.
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Firethorn

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I doubt that theory would work when you consider that the routers can't tell child porn from lolcats. A .jpg is a .jpg.

There have been attempts, but it basically amounted to judging a picture on the basis of amount of skin tone in it.  Guessed skin tones at that - it'd let through hardcore black porn while blocking normal family photos, for example.

AZRedhawk44

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This woman makes a compelling argument.  [Link Potentially NSFW]

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e7/6a/36/e76a364d60e0bbfdb008cf08bb439632.jpg

I'm mostly with AJ on this... I pay an ISP for layers 1, 2 and 3 of the OSI model.  I buy 50mbit/sec of download and 8mbit/sec upload of IP connectivity.  I want the whole TCP/IP stack available at 50/8.  If I'm running a server farm, that's my business.  If I'm running Litecoin or Bitcoin miners, that is my business.  If I'm watching lolcat youtube vids, that is my business.  If I'm watching xhamster, that's my business.  And if I'm getting Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/Usenet entertainment media rather than subscribing to cable and DVR services, that's also my business.

ISP has no business blocking port 80 on my home network (which is why my home web server runs on port 8001 rather than 80 or 443... ISP blocks both of the dominant HTTP/HTTPS ports).  ISP has no business attempting to deconstruct secure traffic.

If they're going to participate in traffic shaping activities, it needs to be done in a way that enhances traffic flow rather than restricting it and creating impediments to competition.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2014, 09:14:37 AM by scout26 »
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RevDisk

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I doubt that theory would work when you consider that the routers can't tell child porn from lolcats. A .jpg is a .jpg.

Deep packet inspection is deep packet inspection.
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Azrael256

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Your ISP is unlikely to throttle you, and that 50Mb you bought is guaranteed to the ISP or maybe to the peering point, not to youtube/netflix/hulu/etc.  You're not even a small potato.  You're not even a grain of soil stuck to the small potato.  You're a single bacterium stuck to the soil stuck to a shriveled, misshapen small potato.  Identifying you and sending you a bigger bill is very, very difficult.  Not from a technical perspective (although that's not simple either) but because it will require billing agreements between your ISP and Netflix's ISP that will wind up in the supreme court someday due to their shocking complexity.

They ARE likely to send a bill to Netflix's ISP(s), who will send a bill to Netflix.  It's easy for your ISP to see a volume of X traffic hitting their peering points from Netflix.  Netflix itself is the most likely point for throttling, either by creating service tiers (higher fee for HD streaming, maybe?) or limiting the volume you can consume in a day, or something like that.

Bandwidth to your door IS an issue for your ISP, but net neutrality is on a different level.

Firethorn

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Bandwidth to your door IS an issue for your ISP, but net neutrality is on a different level.

Unlimited bandwidth from my door to my ISP's COLOC is of extremely limited value to me.  Now, I understand that the ISP isn't going to have bandwidth leaving the COLOC equaling all the pipes they sell(unless it's a very specialized ISP for businesses), so the concern is without 'Net Neutrality' is that they'll oversell their upstream bandwidth so much more that I won't be able to get decent service from any website that doesn't pay the ISP for a more or less dedicated chunk of 'extra' pipe.

IE will I be forced to go to Netflix OR google because one has paid the fee(so I get screaming fast streaming) and one hasn't(so I get a slideshow)?

MillCreek

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So will this also impact the major cloud storage services, like Amazon and Google?  They keep building these massive server farms right next to the hydroelectric dams in eastern Washington.
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Firethorn

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Yes, it'd probably affect the cloud services.

It gets scummy because you pay your ISP for your connection, and the cloud service provider for their services, then YOUR ISP also hits up the cloud provider for money, which logically they'll have to get from you, in order to actually provide you decent service.

It makes a smidge of sense for a company like youtube that doesn't charge it's viewers, but for subscription services?

AJ Dual

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Yes, it'd probably affect the cloud services.

It gets scummy because you pay your ISP for your connection, and the cloud service provider for their services, then YOUR ISP also hits up the cloud provider for money, which logically they'll have to get from you, in order to actually provide you decent service.

It makes a smidge of sense for a company like youtube that doesn't charge it's viewers, but for subscription services?

The corollary to this is that the costs of transport or delivery are figured into the price of any other good or service you buy. Why should the Internet be different?

The analogy would be that when you buy gas, you're complaining you've already paid your ISP (the gas pump) and the Cloud service or content streamer (the gas), so no money at a negotiated market rate should change hands for the tanker trucks or pipeline service that got the gas to your gas station? And that the gas station should be able to get immediate on-demand delivery of said gas so they're always full, at no cost, or at a very low flat-rate cost.

The flip-side to those bemoaning the loss of net-neutrality is what kind of new services and innovations will chargeable and differentiated bandwidth bring?  Granted, there are some monopolistic bottlenecks in the system, but I don't think anyone in living memory has seen as volatile and ever improving free-market anarchy like the Internet before.

Compare broadband and Wi-Fi to the earliest common consumer internet use with modems back in 1994-95... What would the state of the commercial internet be if all forms of technology attached to it were either forced to be free, or only charged at flat fixed rates? If certain content becomes charged at market rates, what new players will step in now that they think they can make a profit? What new competition will it engender? What new services or technology to "get around" the new costs in the system that will also drive technical efficiency or capacity, or new forms of delivering content, data, and bandwith be invented that we haven't even considered yet?
« Last Edit: January 17, 2014, 03:15:26 PM by AJ Dual »
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Firethorn

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The analogy would be that when you buy gas, you're complaining you've already paid your ISP (the gas pump) and the Cloud service or content streamer (the gas), so no money at a negotiated market rate should change hands for the tanker trucks or pipeline service that got the gas to your gas station? And that the gas station should be able to get immediate on-demand delivery of said gas so they're always full, at no cost, or at a very low flat-rate cost.

It's more like I pay company A to provide me phone service.  I do business with Company C, which gets it's phone service from Company B.  Now Company A(my phone company) wants to charge company C(who I want to call/call me) for the privilage of being able to have a clear phone call with me. 

Quote
Compare broadband and Wi-Fi to the earliest common consumer internet use with modems back in 1994-95... What would the state of the commercial internet be if all forms of technology attached to it were either forced to be free, or only charged at flat fixed rates? If certain content becomes charged at market rates, what new players will step in now that they think they can make a profit? What new competition will it engender? What new services or technology to "get around" the new costs in the system that will also drive technical efficiency or capacity, or new forms of delivering content, data, and bandwith be invented that we haven't even considered yet?

To be clear, I'm not demanding a flat fee model.  What I DON'T want is for the service I PAY FOR to be degraded unless the site I'm using also ponies up money.

Azrael256

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It's more like I pay company A to provide me phone service.  I do business with Company C, which gets it's phone service from Company B.  Now Company A(my phone company) wants to charge company C(who I want to call/call me) for the privilage of being able to have a clear phone call with me.  

To be clear, I'm not demanding a flat fee model.  What I DON'T want is for the service I PAY FOR to be degraded unless the site I'm using also ponies up money.

That's precisely how telephone calls work.  You don't get the bill, B does, but that's tolling.  It's also how mail service works internationally and sometimes domestically (smartpost).  Did you ever pay for a long-distance calling plan separately from your local service?  Same idea.  Different routes have different capacities and are tolled accordingly.

You may not have seen a real phone bill in a decade (I know I haven't) but this stuff is called out in detail on a phone bill.

Almost every other transport industry works on some variation of this. There's something about the lack of tangibility that makes people think the internet is free-as-in-beer.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2014, 03:05:36 PM by Azrael256 »

AJ Dual

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This.

And in no way am I calling you out Firethorn, your post just served as a good logical point to demonstrate why there's people deserving to get paid in the middle, and the potential good from all steps in the process becoming profitable.
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Firethorn

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This.

And in no way am I calling you out Firethorn, your post just served as a good logical point to demonstrate why there's people deserving to get paid in the middle, and the potential good from all steps in the process becoming profitable.
That's precisely how telephone calls work.  You don't get the bill, B does, but that's tolling.  It's also how mail service works internationally and sometimes domestically (smartpost).  Did you ever pay for a long-distance calling plan separately from your local service?  Same idea.  Different routes have different capacities and are tolled accordingly.

I'm not adverse to a 3rd party being paid to provide the transmission trunks.  I'm fully aware that you have parties D, E, F, and such involved in getting our packets between each other.  The current model is mostly that What I'm objecting to is the idea that the company I contract with to provide me internet service is going to hold my ability to connect to other services using said bandwidth I'm paying for hostage in order to get a payout from the company I'm connecting to.  I'M paying them, whether it be flat fee or by the gigabyte, to provide me that service.  In order to provide that service they contract with other countries to lease lines to get my packets to the next step.  I'm paying for it.  The distant end company is paying as well.  

Back in the telephone days only the caller paid the toll charges.  With the internet 'caller' becomes a bit fuzzier, but I still object to the idea of my ISP charging the site I go to for the privilege of sending me a packet on a timely basis.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2014, 11:52:55 AM by Firethorn »

Blakenzy

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So correct me if I am getting this wrong, but instead of being able to buy bulk 20lb sugar sacks, I will now have to buy, separately, at different prices, coffee sugar, cake sugar, brownie sugar, 'special' brownie sugar, hot cocoa sugar and tequila sunrise sugar?
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both"

Ned Hamford

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So correct me if I am getting this wrong, but instead of being able to buy bulk 20lb sugar sacks, I will now have to buy, separately, at different prices, coffee sugar, cake sugar, brownie sugar, 'special' brownie sugar, hot cocoa sugar and tequila sunrise sugar?

Yup, and there is nothing stopping them from making you buy splenda in equal measure with everything else or in even worse proportions... Oh, and they still get the polite lie of not having looking into your sugar shack as they charge you for each item in it.
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RevDisk

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Azrael256, client throttling is fairly common. I've done it to my own users since I started in IT. One of the biggest reasons that corporations pay a minimum of ten times the going rate of consumer broadband is that it is unmetered, unfiltered and theoretically has an SLA.


So correct me if I am getting this wrong, but instead of being able to buy bulk 20lb sugar sacks, I will now have to buy, separately, at different prices, coffee sugar, cake sugar, brownie sugar, 'special' brownie sugar, hot cocoa sugar and tequila sunrise sugar?

With the ISP keeping tabs on the amount of different sugars, forcing you to buy sugar you don't want so that you can buy the sugar you want (tying, which is theoretically illegal under Sherman Antitrust Act and Section 3 of the Clayton Act, but happens anyways), selling data on your sugar consumption to the government as well as other companies, etc.

To give an example. Netflix offers appliances to virtually any ISP or net operator that ones one. It acts like a local cache of the most popular content, and dramatically reduces peering data usage as well as improving end user performance. Google and Amazon would likely be happy to offer settlement free peering at most of the major exchanges, and probably CDN/caching appliances to dramatically reduce bandwidth.

https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/hardware

Some ISPs have and will prefer blatant extortion.
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lee n. field

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This woman makes a compelling argument.

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e7/6a/36/e76a364d60e0bbfdb008cf08bb439632.jpg

I thought Jennifer Love hewitt for a second, but no, too cute.

Quote
Azrael256, client throttling is fairly common.

I know our wireless division does.  They know exactly who's sucking down gigabytes of porn.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2014, 01:02:39 AM by Nick1911 »
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TommyGunn

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This woman makes a compelling argument.

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e7/6a/36/e76a364d60e0bbfdb008cf08bb439632.jpg


I thought Jennifer Love hewitt for a second, but no, too cute.

I know our wireless division does.  They know exactly who's sucking down gigabytes of porn.


Heeerrre's Jennifer:
« Last Edit: January 21, 2014, 01:02:53 AM by Nick1911 »
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fifth_column

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This woman makes a compelling argument.  [Link Potentially NSFW]

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e7/6a/36/e76a364d60e0bbfdb008cf08bb439632.jpg

I was on the fence on this issue . . .  I have now made up my mind . . .

 >:D
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AZRedhawk44

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http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/22/5335626/netflix-will-provoke-customer-action-if-isps-violate-net-neutrality

Netflix supports net neutrality, will poke the user base bear if ISP's start throttling content selectively.
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
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I reject your authoritah!

Blakenzy

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The more I think about this, the more I see the shadow of State-Corporate collaboration aimed towards regaining the power of censorship and control of the collective conscious.
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both"