"Restoring Internet Freedom"

[seemslikeadream]

About libraries. Most of them I've spent time in offer free Internet access. I've yet to visit one that let users sit and watch Netflix or YouTube videos all day long.

really the libraries you visit spy on your internet usage?

and the libraries do pay for internet



the library I go to would let me sit and use the internet all day long if I wanted to and they don't spy on me

[Karmamatterz]

SLAD, I wasn't referring to spying. They aren't spying if the library puts a cap on your streaming usage. It's simple logic they build into the firewall our router that limits how much one can download. Considering yourself lucky they allow you to sit all day and watch whatever. I think it's more like our local library has a courtesy rule not to allow the limited amount of computers to be hogged up for too long a period.

[seemslikeadream]

It is just I have never been told I was using too much internet ..by spying I was referring to how do they tell what you are streaming? Would they let you watch CSPAN all day but not Netflix?

I just have never heard of limiting internet usage but that's just my library, my experience

[Karmamatterz]

No, it's a cap on video streaming. No care as to what so they're being agnostic to what you watch. They could easily create a firewall rule that could block specific streaming sites though.

The company I work for recently blocked YouTube and a host of other websites that require a ton of bandwidth as it was killing the connection for business work. I used my white male privilege to get unblocked. lol. I actually had a business reason as I've been working with YouTube a lot lately and couldn't test new players and code without being able to view it on my computers.

I can tell in my neighborhood when others nearby are hogging bandwidth. The connection gets slow in my house. There is a finite amount of bandwidth and even with a new fiber infrastructure things slow down. It's like that anywhere you go. Go to a large concert/music festival, sporting event etc. When a ton of people are all using their smarties things crawl. The cell towers become overloaded. More cell towers cost.......money.

Please don't take me to be a supporter of big telcos. But there are some cost realities that come into play with streaming. Streaming requires enormous bandwidth and capacity to support it.

[DrEvil]

keep up the good work people are rooting for you even here at RI strangely enough

Funny how some people project their thoughts into the comments of others. One does not need to root for a bureaucrat to state the obvious. That is a pretty loose use of logic.

@Dr. Evil
It's an assumption that there are caps on data usage. Again, there is no free lunch. What is stupid is to think there is a free lunch. But socialism and communism has made many to believe some stuff just out to be free...just cuz.

Wut? Right below this paragraph you yourself explain how you often exceed your data cap. It's not an assumption.

My local broadband provider has a cap on my cable modem subscription. What's the diff? I have to pay for both. Both my cell and broadband service providers warn me when I'm nearing my cap. I can choose to pay for more, or not. Why is this a problem? It's like complaining about using electricity in your home. You know, for every kilowatt you burn your monthly bill does go up. I don't have a cap on my utility usage for gas/electric and don't even get a warning. How dare those bastard utilities! Plenty of times my kids would sop up Netflix and other crap and bust my cap. I either paid or would shut down the router. So don't watch so darn much streaming video that you use up all your bandwidth. It only takes a little self-control.

Come on, this is really simple. You pay for a specific bandwidth each month. What you use that for is none of the ISPs business. I can sorta-kinda understand it with mobile broadband to combat congestion (but then, why are they selling a product they know they can't deliver without imposing artificial limits on their customers?), since all the users in an area share the same tower, although with the bandwidths available today, and the falling cost of equipment that argument is getting really thin. They could just as easily do some traffic management and slow down everyone if there's congestion, but then they couldn't charge you extra.

For wired broadband it comes down to one simple thing: greed. The companies saw that they could cap mobile broadband without too much protest, so they started doing it to wired broadband too. Not because it's necessary, but because they can. The cost of increasing bandwidth in the network is dropping faster than the increase in bandwidth demand. You do the math.

If I pay for a certain bandwidth I should be able to download at that speed 24/7. If the ISP can't deliver that service then maybe they should invest in their infrastructure to the point where they can deliver what they're selling.

Oh, and nothing personal, but piss off with that "no free lunch" and "communist/socialist" bullshit. Paying for a product isn't fucking communism. You're letting the greedy bastards get away with this shit and that allows them to do it in the first place. It's greed, pure and simple, and you're apologizing for it.

There is no good reason for them to put a cap on your wired connection (well, there is: most of the major ISPs are owned by companies that also own cable providers. They really don't want you to cut the cord), so why the hell do you let them get away with it? Let me guess, you can't, because there aren't any other providers in your area?

The Internet was not designed and does not function with the purpose of being a free or subsidized utility. In case some don't know it was designed by the Defense Dept. as a hardened communication network for disasters such as war. You can freeze to death if you don't pay your utility bills. You aren't going to die without the Internet. My 85-year-old mother has never been on the Internet and is still alive. She got a hug from my kids on Thanksgiving also, but that's another thread.

Again, bullshit. The internet is a necessity for anyone wanting to participate in society today. Whether it was originally designed to be free and subsidized or not is completely irrelevant, because the use-case today is radically different than it was then. And really, so what if it's subsidized for some users? Should the people who need it the most just be kicked off?

If you don't pay your utility bills you can always keep warm with a fireplace or an oil heater, but that's not very practical is it? Same goes for the internet: you can technically survive without it, but it's a big fucking pain in the ass.

Funny how even this topic is really all about class warfare. It also makes me roll my eyes when folks believe all information should be "free." There is a never ending whine about ads on websites. Just how are those companies supposed to pay their staff, purchase insurance for them, and pay for their broadband Internet service so they can publish if they don't generate revenue? Oh, that's right! The tooth fairy!

Contrary to popular belief, most people don't have a problem with ads, they have a problem with auto-playing videos and sound clips, pop-ups, redirects and giant animated banners that take up half the page and melt your CPU. Not to mention that online ads are one of the biggest attack vectors for malicious software today. That's why ad-blockers exist, not because of some universal hatred of ads or a desire to get stuff for free.

About libraries. Most of them I've spent time in offer free Internet access. I've yet to visit one that let users sit and watch Netflix or YouTube videos all day long.

With an edit I'll add that a good example is using the wifi on airplanes. It's not free. If you do pony up for it they block streaming video and music services. Evil airlines! Why do they block that? It's an obvious answer: because streaming uses a ton of bandwidth and costs money. Not to mention the limited amount of bandwidth available on an airplane would mean a few users watching Netflix would sop up so much that it would leave others with little or none. Does anybody understand how routers, switches and computing devices have a finite amount of capacity? To increase bandwidth and get "bigger pipes" you have to invest in more capacity, which costs money. You don't just flip a switch and more bandwidth suddenly becomes available for all.

That's a silly example. Airplanes actually have limited bandwidth. One hi-def Netflix stream would hog most of it.

Honestly, I really don't get why you put up with all the crap your ISPs pull. Most other countries manage wired connections with no caps just fine. US internet service is notoriously bad for a developed country, and Ajit "let them eat" Pai is getting ready to make it even worse.

/rant. Sorry for the harsh tone, but this shit just really pisses me off.

[Karmamatterz]

Not sure where you live but here it's normal to have data usage caps for cell phones and broadband cable. So it's safe to say people know these things and assume they have caps when signing up for cell service.

Yeah, I've got a wood burner in my living room that can heat the entire house. I wouldn't assume that everybody knows how to fell a tree or split firewood. I suggest felling a tree with care, or it could result in death or injury. Life would go on without the Internet. But not so well for some who need to watch videos on how to use an axe when the power goes out.

[Elvis]

We collectively build roads for commerce and the common good (even in the U.S.); there should similarly be a public Internet, if that's the right way to say it. Remember "the information highway"? You never hear that anymore. We thought it was gonna be about information.

P.S. When I'm not working a regular job (at a business that earns almost all its revenue from Internet sales), my income depends on the Internet. I want as many people using the Internet as possible, so they can buy my stuff.

[Karmamatterz]

That's a silly example. Airplanes actually have limited bandwidth. One hi-def Netflix stream would hog most of it.

Exactly! Now you get it. It's called supply and demand. Basic market economics.

There is no free lunch.

There is a finite amount of bandwidth no matter what unicorn you think powers the Internetz.

We thought it was gonna be about information.

Sometimes these assumptions based on a incomplete or false look at reality create unhappiness. We thought, we wished, we dreamed, we hoped....doesn't mean that is what reality is.

I'm looking at this simply as supply and demand in a free (semi) market economy. The Internet has thrived and grown by leaps and bounds with innovation and shattering past communication models. That did not happen because of socialist management. It happened because people were allowed to innovate and compete.

[0_0]

Pretty sure the real innovations and infrastructure (so not superficial "innovations" like facebook or twitter) powering the internet were all paid for with tax money, outside of a free market environment. I state this without having actual information on the subject but intuitively i'm still p sure.

[PufPuf93]

That's a silly example. Airplanes actually have limited bandwidth. One hi-def Netflix stream would hog most of it.

Exactly! Now you get it. It's called supply and demand. Basic market economics.

There is no free lunch.

There is a finite amount of bandwidth no matter what unicorn you think powers the Internetz.

We thought it was gonna be about information.

Sometimes these assumptions based on a incomplete or false look at reality create unhappiness. We thought, we wished, we dreamed, we hoped....doesn't mean that is what reality is.

I'm looking at this simply as supply and demand in a free (semi) market economy. The Internet has thrived and grown by leaps and bounds with innovation and shattering past communication models. That did not happen because of socialist management. It happened because people were allowed to innovate and compete.

Agree there is no free lunch but there are public goods and private goods. Much telecommunication innovation has been and is subsidized by university and government.

There is this thing about supply and demand in a capitalist economy; that the capitalists set supply equal to demand to maximize profit (and minimize risk) not to maximize utility to society as a whole. The capitalists go farther in that the market is segmented into consumer groups that face different prices based upon willingness to pay to further maximize capitalist profit. Willingness to pay is not the same as ability to pay so those less able to pay often end up paying more for a given service or receiving less service for what they pay.

Our economy is a mixed economy, not a laissez faire libertarian paradise. So we have subsidized internet for rural areas and schools and so on. But we also have low speed low download allowance basic internet for the poor that ends up being more expensive on a unit basis. So we have this "internet highway" that some enjoy and have the utility more than others. Some folks get left behind. I am not suggesting socialist system but I am suggesting that the choice is about how to best trade off human utility with capitalist profit. Personally I favor a level playing field as to access and utility, more like a public highway than an airline. Even with a public highway, the capitalists and "have more" receive more proportionate income and utility than the "have less", such is a fact of life. There is a level of internet access necessary where the "have less" have the access and utility to fully partake in society and have the opportunity to add value and improve personal and social lot.

[DrEvil]

Not sure where you live but here it's normal to have data usage caps for cell phones and broadband cable. So it's safe to say people know these things and assume they have caps when signing up for cell service.

Yeah, I've got a wood burner in my living room that can heat the entire house. I wouldn't assume that everybody knows how to fell a tree or split firewood. I suggest felling a tree with care, or it could result in death or injury. Life would go on without the Internet. But not so well for some who need to watch videos on how to use an axe when the power goes out.

I live in Norway, and that's definitely not normal here (or most other places). There's caps on mobile, but not on fixed line. Not that the large companies don't want to impose caps and traffic prioritizing, but regulations and public sentiment prevent them.

That's a silly example. Airplanes actually have limited bandwidth. One hi-def Netflix stream would hog most of it.

Exactly! Now you get it. It's called supply and demand. Basic market economics.

There is no free lunch.

There is a finite amount of bandwidth no matter what unicorn you think powers the Internetz.

My point was, airplanes have very limited bandwidth for technical reasons (they have to track and switch between base-stations and satellites while moving at 800 km/h), so some restrictions are necessary to give everyone decent service. That does not apply for landlines.

When you exceed your cap it's not because you used up the internet or clogged the lines. Notice how your ISP never tells your that, "sorry, you can't get any more data this month because the lines are full"? The bandwidth is there, they just want to squeeze you a little extra for it. You already paid the toll to drive on the information highway. Now they want you to pay extra per mile.
There is no reason except greed for data caps on wired broadband.


This graph illustrates perfectly how the large ISPs operate:



Guess when Netflix gave in to Comcast's extortion and started paying for privileged access? This is what's about to happen to the entire internet in the US.

[DrEvil]

Pretty sure the real innovations and infrastructure (so not superficial "innovations" like facebook or twitter) powering the internet were all paid for with tax money, outside of a free market environment. I state this without having actual information on the subject but intuitively i'm still p sure.

Yup. The original internet was developed by ARPA as ARPANET. The various protocols were developed by government employed or funded researchers. HTML was developed by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN (which is government funded), and then given away for free.

Also, the majority of websites run on Apache server software that's open source and free. Pretty much every supercomputer in existence runs on open source and free software. Android, the largest mobile OS is open source and free. Linux is open source and free. This forum runs off an open source and free forum solution (phpBB).

There's actually tons of free lunches out there.

[chump]

Now, we need digital receivers to get propaganda; but with the world wide web we can weave where we want - and weigh in on the world we wish to indwell. Are corporate pirates and politicians pushing to repeal net neutrality to manage the message and make more money?

https://youtu.be/sKrVIwUpKLU

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview ... eutrality/

https://fee.org/articles/goodbye-net-ne ... mpetition/

Goodbye Net Neutrality; Hello Competition
We should take our deregulation where we can get it.

by Jeffrey A. Tucker

At long last, with the end of “net neutrality,” competition could soon come to the industry that delivers Internet services to you. You might be able to pick among a range of packages, some minimalist and some maximalist, depending on how you use the service. Or you could choose a package that charges based only on what you consume, rather than sharing fees with everyone else.

Internet socialism is dead; long live market forces.

With market-based pricing finally permitted, we could see new entrants to the industry because it might make economic sense for the first time to innovate. The growing competition will lead, over the long run, to innovation and falling prices. Consumers will find themselves in the driver’s seat rather than crawling and begging for service and paying whatever the provider demands.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, is exactly right. “Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet. Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

A Fed for Communication

The old rules pushed by the Obama administration had locked down the industry with regulation that only helped incumbent service providers and major content delivery services. They called it a triumph of “free expression and democratic principles.” It was anything but. It was actually a power grab. It created an Internet communication cartel not unlike the way the banking system works under the Federal Reserve.

Net Neutrality had the backing of all the top names in content delivery, from Google to Yahoo to Netflix to Amazon. It’s had the quiet support of the leading Internet service providers Comcast and Verizon. Both companies are on record in support of the principle, repeatedly and consistently, while opposing only Title II which makes them a public utility – a classic "have your cake and eat it" position.

The opposition, in contrast, had been represented by small players in the industry, hardware providers like Cisco, free-market think tanks and disinterested professors, and a small group of writers and pundits who know something about freedom and free-market economics.

The public at large should have been rising up in opposition, but people were largely ignorant of what was going on with net neutrality. Consumers imagined that they would get censorship-free access and low prices. That’s not what happened.

Here’s what’s was really going on with net neutrality. The incumbent rulers of the world’s most exciting technology decided to lock down the prevailing market conditions to protect themselves against rising upstarts in a fast-changing market. The imposition of a rule against throttling content or using the market price system to allocate bandwidth resources protects against innovations that would disrupt the status quo.

Industrial Giants

What was sold as economic fairness and a wonderful favor to consumers was actually a sop to industrial giants who were seeking untrammeled access to your wallet and an end to competitive threats to market power.

Let’s grasp the position of the large content providers. Here we see the obvious special interests at work. Netflix, Amazon, and the rest don’t want ISPs to charge either them or their consumers for their high-bandwidth content. They would rather the ISPs themselves absorb the higher costs of such provision. It’s very clear how getting the government to make price discrimination illegal is in their interest. It means no threats to their business model.

By analogy, let’s imagine that a retailer furniture company were in a position to offload all their shipping costs to the trucking industry. By government decree, the truckers were not permitted to charge any more or less whether they were shipping one chair or a whole houseful of furniture. Would the furniture sellers favor such a deal? Absolutely. They could call this “furniture neutrality” and fob it off on the public as preventing control of furniture by the shipping industry.

But that leaves the question about why the opposition from the ISPs themselves (the truckers by analogy) would either be silent or quietly in favor of such a rule change. Here is where matters get complicated. After many years of experimentation in the provision of Internet services — times when we went from telephone dial-up to landlines to T1 connections to 4G and 5G data coverage — the winner in the market (for now) has been the cable companies. Consumers prefer the speed and bandwidth over all existing options.

But what about the future? What kind of services are going to replace the cable services, which are by-and-large monopolies due to special privileges from states and localities? It’s hard to know for sure but there are some impressive ideas out there. Costs are falling for all kinds of wireless and even distributed systems.

Raising Costs

If you are a dominant player in the market — an incumbent firm like Comcast and Verizon — you really face two threats to your business model. You have to keep your existing consumer base onboard and you have to protect against upstarts seeking to poach consumers from you.

Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge.

For established firms, a rule like net neutrality can raise the costs of doing business, but there is a wonderful upside to this: your future potential competitors face the same costs. You are in a much better position to absorb higher costs than those barking at your heels. This means that you can slow down development, cool it on your investments in fiber optics, and generally rest on your laurels more.

But how can you sell such a nefarious plan? You get in good with the regulators. You support the idea in general, with some reservations, while tweaking the legislation in your favor. You know full well that this raises the costs to new competitors. When it passes, call it a vote for the “open internet” that will “preserve the right to communicate freely online.”

Neutrality was Deceptive

But when you look closely at the effects, the reality was exactly the opposite. Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge of deciding who can and cannot play in the market. It erected barriers to entry for upstart firms while hugely subsidizing the largest and most well-heeled content providers.

So what are the costs to the rest of us? It meant no price reductions in internet service. It could mean the opposite. Your bills went up and there was very little competition. It also meant a slowing down in the pace of technological development due to the reduction in competition that followed the imposition of this rule. In other words, it was like all government regulation: most of the costs were unseen, and the benefits were concentrated in the hands of the ruling class.

There was an additional threat: the FCC had reclassified the internet as a public utility. It meant a blank check for government control across the board. Think of the medical marketplace, which is now entirely owned by a non-competitive cartel of industry insiders. This was the future of the internet under net neutrality.

Good riddance, then. No more government-managed control of the industry. No more price fixing. No more of the largest players using government power to protect their monopoly structure.

In the short term, the shift by the FCC does not mean the immediate emergence of a free marketplace for Internet service. But it is a step. If we let this experiment in liberalization run a few years, we will see massive new entrants into the sector. As with every good or service provided by market forces, consumers will gain the benefit of innovation and falling prices.

The end of net neutrality is the best single deregulatory initiative yet taken by the Trump administration. The simultaneous, contradictory, and economically absurd attempt by the Justice Department to stop the merger of Time-/Warner and AT&T–which might only be a government attempt to punish CNN and therefore an abuse of presidential power–is another matter for another time.

We should take our deregulation where we can get it.

[seemslikeadream]

the free riders are the Koch brothers...the Mercers....and all the rest of the billionaires that pay NO taxes....not people making minimum wage or black mothers on food stamps (black mothers on food stamps is what I heard when the Free Riders excuse gets thrown around)

The FCC's plans to end net neutrality could be killed in court
Let's hope so
By Rob Thubron on Nov 27, 2017, 6:15 AM

Last week saw the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman, Ajit Pai, release a plan to eliminate net neutrality protections. An FCC vote is set for December 14 when the repeal is expected to pass on a 3-2 majority. This may sound depressing, but there may still be some hope: the fact Pai’s proposal is so extreme and lacks evidence supporting the change means it could be shot down in court.
The Supreme Court says a federal agency must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” But Pai’s reasoning for killing off net neutrality is far from satisfactory. He argues that since the 2015 Title II rule was brought in by the Obama administration in 2015, investment in the industry has fallen, though filings and investment calls show an increase in internet investment over the last two years.
As reported by the New York Times, Pai will also have to explain to a court why he wants to remove the bans on blocking and throttling that have been in place since 2005. “A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough," writes Tim Wu, the man who came up with the term “Network Neutrality.”
Additionally, as so many Americans are against the FCC’s plans—76 percent of citizens support net neutrality—the courts may be more likely to oppose Pai.
Following news that the FCC intends to tell state and local governments that they cannot impose local laws regulating broadband service, lawsuits challenging the net neutrality repeal order seem inevitable.
https://www.techspot.com/news/72039-fcc ... court.html

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Ah yes, "Restoring Internet Freedom!" How wonderful to see how our Glorious Leader Trump through his Marvelous Minion Pai will Make Internet Great Again!