New White House Petition For Net Neutrality 248
Bob9113 (14996) writes "On the heels of yesterday's FCC bombshell, there is a new petition on the White House petition site titled, 'Maintain true net neutrality to protect the freedom of information in the United States.' The body reads: 'True net neutrality means the free exchange of information between people and organizations. Information is key to a society's well being. One of the most effective tactics of an invading military is to inhibit the flow of information in a population; this includes which information is shared and by who. Today we see this war being waged on American citizens. Recently the FCC has moved to redefine "net neutrality" to mean that corporations and organizations can pay to have their information heard, or worse, the message of their competitors silenced. We as a nation must settle for nothing less than complete neutrality in our communication channels. This is not a request, but a demand by the citizens of this nation. No bandwidth modifications of information based on content or its source.'"
No source-based bandwidth modifications. (Score:5, Insightful)
So say we all.
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Cool, now you can't stop my DOS attack.
The joke is on you, I'm running OS/2 Warp.
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We stop DOS attacks via filtering and black hole routing. Paying a provider to filter your traffic has nothing to do with neutrality nor does asking them to route all traffic to a specific destination to null.
If were going to make regulations how about regulating that BCP38 be mandatory.
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Nope, if you insist on chess terms, that would be a stalemate.
FTFY
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, yes! (Score:5, Funny)
Because this time, the Government will listen to a petition of the people posted on a website.
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Yes, this time!
http://change.gov/agenda/ethic... [change.gov]
"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists â" and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."
-- Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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the Government will listen to a petition of the people posted on a website.
It will.
And then they will ask the head of FCC to explain why his decision is obviously a good thing (just like they have with ban-TSA White House petition).
WTF is this going to accomplish?! (Score:2)
Obama ran on a policy of net neutrality support and staffed the FCC board with members with the intent of establishing net neutrality.
Now the FCC (which the Obama administration controls) is doing a 180.
Is this being done because Obama and the DNC doesn't want it or because Comcast is throwing money around?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/re... [forbes.com]
http://thehill.com/blogs/hilli... [thehill.com]
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Is this being done because Obama and the DNC doesn't want it or because Comcast is throwing money around?
I suspect that the latter directly impacts the former.
Why do you feel these petitions are relevant? (Score:5, Interesting)
Serious question. These petitions are clearly not only completely absent any actual legal or procedural relevance; they are routinely ignored by the white house, often complete with redicule and mocking, that is if any attention is paid to them whatsoever.
These things are at best a token 'feel good' nod toward public relations and more realistically, these things are just flat out time wasters for all involved.
So why is so much attention paid to them?
Isn't it better to use your time and money towards things that could result in some real policy or legislative changes in government, such as supporting or working to defeat politicians, supporitng lobbying efforts, or other more traditional methods of interacting with the state?
Oh and by the way, president Obama has made his 'transparency' campaign lie completely 'transparent' by now, you all should know that he will follow through on no promise that he doesn't already want to act on (which is most of them) and in the end is happy to lie right to the face of the voter and then go off into a back room and do exactly the opposite of what he states he will do, towards whatever end he pleases. So given that (Gitmo? allowing bills to be reviewed before signing them? eliminating lobbyists from the white house etc.) why would you guys spend any effort at all in trying to influence his decicions or actions? You *know* they could not possibly care less what you proles think.
Real question; what are you guys thinking here? No one cares!
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Real question; what are you guys thinking here? No one cares!
Because it forces them to explicitly state that they don't give a fuck. We don't expect them to change. We expect them to give us ammo.
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Serious question. These petitions are clearly not only completely absent any actual legal or procedural relevance; they are routinely ignored by the white house, ... So why is so much attention paid to them?
Because if they do work, great. If they do not, they are a way of documenting the fact that the government is not listening. The first step on the road to real reform is documenting the betrayal of will of the people.
Isn't it better to use your time and money towards things that could result in some real
When they own the information... (Score:5, Insightful)
...they can bend it all they want.
Tom Wheeler is a crotchety old sleazebag who has been bought and paid for by Big Telecom. Unfortunately he's probably also foolish enough to think he's doing right by the American public. That's the most dangerous kind.
RIP Internet
The customer always pays (Score:5, Insightful)
We pay for our bandwidth and now the greedy ISPs are wanting to get paid by the content providers (Netflix, Hulu, etc). Do you really think they are going to absorb the additional costs if this continues? Of course not, they will raise their prices.
ISPs rarely deliver what you pay for so them crying that its the content providers fault is BS. The problem is lack of real competition in the ISP market. Most folks have a choice between cable and DSL. Two isn't enough to be very competitive.
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Most people don't even have that choice. As sad as it is, Google Fiber is practically our last light of hope illuminating the shadow cast by ATT, Verizon, and Comcast.
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I think your information may be out of date. As long as you're not doing so commercially [slashdot.org], you can in fact run a web server on Google Fiber without violating their TOS.
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If I follow what you say , Customers pay more, Cable companies become more profitable and internet companies pass on the cost and remain about the same in terms of profitability.
The situation will probably be worse. All the larger companies (established ones) will be able to pay (And probably not take a serious hit). Any new entrants will find it a barrier. So will any non-US website. So, other than Netflix,Hu
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The amount you pay your ISP is based on traditional usage patterns. Someone has to pay for the extra equipment.
Either the ISP raises their prices or the content providers do, and why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix pay extra in order to subsidize those that do?
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If they can't provide the bandwidth they advertise then they need to upgrade or change their business/billing model.
The electric company doesn't charge me more for having inefficient appliances or for using them too much.
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Huh? Yes, the electric company charges you more if you use more electricity. Or, at least, that's how it works in most of the world.
As for the ISPs changing their billing model, well, what's your suggestion? Data caps/charges might work (ala electric company) but I assure you they're a pain in the backside. If the content providers and the ISPs can reach a deal which avoids that, I don't think you should be complaining about it.
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Yes the electric company bills by usage.
My suggestion to the ISPs is don't false advertise unattainable speeds and "unlimited" service. Advertise/promise what you can deliver without the BS fine print.
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Well ... the advertised speeds aren't unattainable - they're just not guaranteed in every situation. Unlimited service just means no data caps, so no false advertising there (at least not as concerns this story).
I'm not sure why you're picking on ISPs in particular, very few industries go into that level of detail outside of the fine print when advertising. Confusing your customers isn't good business ... perhaps the FCC or whoever could mandate something. Perhaps it's possible to come up with a vaguely
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Whitehouse petitions. Pfft. (Score:2)
Sorry, but just about every one of these I've seen have been coming back from the office of Mr. "YES! YOU CAN!" has been "NO! YOU CAN'T!"
Online petitions are worth exactly the amount of energy it takes to ignore them completely.
A better petition... (Score:5, Insightful)
would ask that ISPs be classified as common carriers. Then there could be nothing they can do.
The Oligarchy won't let it happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me put this out there: if they don't want net neutrality, mark my words, all the petitions in the world won't make a whit of difference.
Let's review this topic in two years and see whether I'm right.
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Let me put this out there: if they don't want net neutrality, mark my words, all the petitions in the world won't make a whit of difference.
The purpose of such efforts is a double edged sword: If it works, great. If it does not, it is one more bit of documentation that our government has betrayed the will of The People, and must be reformed.
Sure. (Score:2)
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.
Comcast should have been fined for extortion. (Score:3)
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Oh, for heaven's sake - haven't we gone over this enough times by now? Comcast *wasn't* throttling the bandwidth. They simply declined to pay for additional equipment that would only be of benefit to Netflix customers.
Why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix subsidize those that do?
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Reports of performance improvements came in only a few days ago, IIRC, and Netflix paid what, a month back? That's plenty of time. This is commodity equipment, remember, the manufacturers have a more than adequate supply sitting in the warehouses.
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What *are* you talking about? It was never a question of "Netflix [...] causing congestion" it was a question of "Netflix users complaining because streaming wasn't working well enough". Netflix asked Comcast for extra bandwidth. Hulu and the rest didn't.
How do you expect adding extra peering points between Netflix and Comcast is going to increase bandwidth for "the guy streaming from another source"? I'm sorry, but that just doesn't make sense.
As to your last point, we're not talking about an upgrade o
source-based not the problem (Score:2)
As I see it, an ISP should first of all do QoS on their traffic based on *subscriber*...what their plan is, whether they have any SLAs in place, etc. At this stage the *type* of traffic should not be considered.
As a second optional stage, *if a subscriber asks them to do so* then they could do type/source/whatever-based QoS, but that would *only affect packets belonging to that subscriber*.
That way, your traffic can't affect mine, and mine can't affect yours. If I want, I can do my own QoS, or I can let t
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This isn't about QoS. This is about who pays for the extra equipment necessary to support streaming video.
Just wish folks would chill out (Score:2)
As a veteran of the early days of the Internet, I wish people would just chill out from trying to get the Federal government to put more regulations on the Internet. The lack of regulation is what enabled the Internet to be what it is today.
Someone has to pay to put bits into a network, someone has to pay to move bits in a network, and someone needs to pay to move bits out of a network.
Leave it to the content providers and ISPs to figure out how to slice up the pie.
If you want more competition in local ISP
Won't win this fight with philosophical arguments (Score:2)
As bad-taste as it is to post another submitted story in a front-page story, here is another whitehouse.gov petition story that addresses net neutrality from an angle that is actually winnable:
http://slashdot.org/submission/3512823/whitehousegov-net-neutrality-petition [slashdot.org]
That links to this: http://wh.gov/lfOKl [wh.gov]
In order to win this fight, we need to make people understand that net neutrality is a services-paid-for issue. They paid for something, but they are being robbed out of getting what they purchased. To
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No, the problem is that people don't understand what they've paid for. If you'd really paid for both ends of the traffic, with unlimited bandwidth, the prices would have been much higher than they are.
Why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix subsidize those that do?
Petitions need to be more specific (Score:2)
sign this petition if you agree: http://wh.gov/lwhr8 [wh.gov]
yes, the usefulness of these petitions are questionnable. but if enough *voters* make a fuss, people notice. cynicism and total inaction never changes anything.
This is nonsense (Score:2)
"[...] to mean that corporations and organizations can pay to have [...] the message of their competitors silenced."
The new rules, as described in the previous article, allow a content provider to pay an ISP to install extra equipment to increase the bandwidth they have to their customers. They do not allow a content provider to pay to have an ISP block or degrade access to another content provider.
The new rules are just common sense. ISPs should not be permitted to sell content providers exclusive access
Does the E.U. do it better? (Score:2)
After a 5-year long campaign by European and U.S. digital rights NGOs, today the European Parliament turned a dubious Commission proposal on its head to safeguard the principle of net neutrality. It’s a historic win, and all over the news. It also shows how digital rights advocacy is maturing.
How do you write a law that allows blocking spam? (Score:2)
I'm all for network neutrality as a CONCEPT. As someone who has been running servers for decades I don't see how Washington can make a LAW requiring network neutrality that doesn't blow up in our faces.
An ISP gets hundreds of thousands of connection attempts from known email spammers every day. The volume of other attacks can be measured in how many hit you per minute. You absolutely MUST block and prioritize traffic based on its origin in order to have any hope of running a usable network. If Washingto
A (Maybe) Pragmatic Alternative (Score:2)
Just a thought, but it seems that many of the objections here seem to be premised on the assumption that ISPs (and Comcast in particular) is taking too big of a profit margin. (Some people seem to think that running an ISP costs almost nothing and that Comcast are clearly pocketing almost all of their income.)
So, perhaps rather than asking for regulatory changes that would break the internet, it would be more sensible to ask that ISPs - at least those with monopoly positions - be required to publicly relea
wtf (Score:2)
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QoS if fascist. Didn't you read the OP?
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Butthurt that your ISP disconnected 'your' zombies? You realize they weren't yours anymore?
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It COULD be done fairly, but they don't want that. By fairly, I mean they set up fair queueing with a reasonable commit for each customer, then allow the customer to apply QOS tags to decide how to prioritize their own traffic within the commit. Naturally, they should allow borrowing between customers and make sure the commit is enough to support VOIP.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically true when he's at the mercy of the republicans to adopt the stuff that needs to be changed in order to fulfill the job he was elected to do .
Sucks but it's fundamentally true.
Republicans are obstructing every step of the way. The institutions are totally fucked when a President can't do the job he's elected for.
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Thank dog for obstruction. Vote gridlock, it's the best we can do.
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Are you suggesting that ether party would be a better choice then gridlock?
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Possibly true - but not on this issue, which is a change in FCC rules, which is part of the Executive branch. Congress might dictate rules to the FCC, but it hasn't on this issue so the change in stance is something Obama can do something about on his own.
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Please explain how Republicans, Congress, your local dogcatcher, or anyone else outside of the Executive Branch is behind this.
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OK, so not my local dogcatcher, but clearly the dogcatcher general has taken the 1st dog hostage and then sent one of those magazine cutout ransom notes: "End net neutrality or the pooch gets it".
:-)
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Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
As a candidate, Pres. Obama said he would support net neutrality. He has not, and I am disappointed.
I'm disappointed too, but I was pretty sure that he was just saying things to get elected, both times, so I didn't vote for him. I suggest you get used to being disappointed in Obama because it's going to be a problem for a LONG time after he's gone..
Here comes the modding down and a wreaking of my karma, in three.... two..... One....
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People STILL believe what he says, even after it is proven that much of what comes out of his mouth is in fact complete untruths. From the beginning it was this way. He is nothing more than a slimy politician who couldn't give a shit about anyone, including his own family (golf or funeral of aunt? GOLF!)
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People STILL believe what he says, even after it is proven that much of what comes out of his mouth is in fact complete untruths. From the beginning it was this way. He is nothing more than a slimy politician who couldn't give a shit about anyone, including his own family (golf or funeral of aunt? GOLF!)
Are we still talking about Obama at this point, or just generalizing all politicians?
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No (Score:2)
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He just needs to find a libertarian buddy. Then they can both vote their consonance and know they aren't affecting the lessor of two evils contest.
Purpose being to get to the level where they have to include 3rd parties in debates and fund their campaigns (to the extent public money is available).
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Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
This attitude is exactly why we will persist in having such flagrant assholes and abusers of democracy in office. There is precisely one, and only one scenario that it's not good to vote for a third party (supposing that party more correctly aligns with your ideals than the others), even if they're going to lose; rather, especially if they're going to lose.
And that scenario is this:
When the lesser of two evils is on the brink of losing to the greater of two evils.
Whatever the lesser/greater means to you as an individual.
There. That's it. Pretty damn simple.
As you pointed out, if you know a major party candidate is going to lose by double digits, it's pointless to vote for that candidate. It's throwing your vote away. However, if you agree with their agenda even a little bit, voting for a third party in that situation sends a message. A message that says people are fed the fuck up with the other two options. It gives mind-share to the third party in general.
If enough people did that in races where it's going to be no contest, an interesting thing could happen: the two parties might take notice and actually fix something about their politicking (HA HA! Yeah, right), or maybe, just maybe...a third party could become viable enough to be included in debates and start taking a significant chunk of the vote.
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We're an oligarchy [slashdot.org]. Us poles voting doesn't matter anyway - if it's going to be symbolic, he might as well be symbolic for what he believes.
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it seems like whenever someone says "Here comes the modding down and a wreaking of my karma, in three.... two..... One...." they get modded *up*.
Anyone else notice that? Maybe it's just confirmation bias on my part, but I don't think so. Well, just in case, I'm prepared to be modded down in three, two, one....
Meh, he's working with what he's got (Score:2, Insightful)
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Since you are now modded +4 Insightful, I don't put a lot of faith in your predictive abilities - including the "LONG time after he's gone" one.
Sorry to disappoint and confuse you with a sideways joke... But we all make mistakes from time to time.
Experience tells me that, like Carter's, Obama's legacy will affect us for generations, and not in a good way. But, I HOPE I'm wrong about that, even if the glimmer of hope is fading as fast as the bomb casing during a nuclear detonation.... ;)
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That might be more of a valid analogy and less of an obvious shill if the "recipient" of overnight delivery was already paying for it.
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again ad hominem
It's not ad hominem if there's no "hominem" -- sign in to an account if you want someone to argue the merits of your argument. When you post as an AC, you're just one of many anonymous voices shouting from the back of the auditorium.
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So 1600213 is an identifier and 46836941 is not.
They are both identifiers, one identifies a person, one identifies a post.
Why does anything besides the content of a post matter in the merit of an argument?
Because it's impossible to conduct any reasonable discussion with an AC since that "one" AC may be many different people with differing arguments.
TBH I would sign in but I've been effectively banned for arguing on a side that the mobs disagreed with. Not sure why I would log in anymore.
And now I have to wait how long - who knows? - to post again. Some open community!
I didn't even know Slashdot banned anyone except outright trolls and spammers. You can always sign in again if are going to complain about Ad Hominen attacks when you aren't even a Hominem, it's not like it's hard to use create Slashdot accounts. Quoting the point you're arguing against woul
Re:Pro Net Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you against overnight delivery options? This is propaganda against the same thing, except for bandwidth.
Companies offer expedited delivery because it increases the amount of business they can do. If it cost them customers to offer tiered services, they wouldn't do it. The internet will be larger and offer more options, not fewer, if Net Neutrality is kept out of the ISP industry.
The righteous indignation against internet freedom in this case is surprising for the community that wants so much choice in software.
Fedex doesn't pay more money to use the roads to deliver an overnight package than to deliver a 5 day ground package.
A more apt analogy to express delivery is that Netflix could opt for a slower service where you choose the movie you want to watch the day before, and they download it to you overnight, reducing their need for peak bandwidth. But that is not the same as paying the carriers more money to get the bits to you.
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Fewer people use high priority mailing. The costs don't scale as much. More empty space is on the planes that carry more of the priority packages. It costs more to deliver things faster.
Fewer people need fiber bandwidth at peak hours. It costs more per mile of cable to serve those people.
There's a scarce amount of things, and the price will have to go up in order for demand to shrink down.
I'm already paying taxes that cover the roads that Fedex uses to deliver my packages, why does Fedex have to pay more money to drive a priority package to my house when they've already flown the package (at their own cost) to within 20 miles of my house?
I've already paid Comcast for 20mbit of bandwidth, why does Netflix have to pay them money to send me data over a pipe that I've already paid for when Netflix is willing to drop that data off at Comcast's front door? If Comcast can't provide 20mbit of band
Re:Pro Net Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
There are costs besides roads. Trucks have costs associated with them, mostly by mileage. There are gas, oil, repairs to pay for. Drivers to pay.
They have to pay more for a truck that's less full. Fewer people will use priority mail, so the vehicles that have priority packages are more likely to be less full. Being less full is less efficient, and has higher costs associated with it.
Sure, and that's all borne by the carrier that's driving on the roads to deliver the package to my door -- I pay that carrier just like I pay Netflix, but I don't expect my city to charge Fedex Priority truck a surchage when they let Fedex Ground trucks drive for free.
The problem with analogies is that they don't always translate well to the real world problem.
You didn't pay for bandwidth, you paid for 'up to' that amount - unless you have an ISP that wants to be sued for fraud (and more power to you if they did). I don't know of anyone that actually buys data transfer, except on their phone. And that's on top of a flat connection bill
Let's see what Comcast says on their High Speed internet page:
Get download speeds up to 25 Mbps – Share photos, book travel, and watch the latest viral video craze – at super-fast speeds.
Get download speeds up to 50 Mbps – so you can game in real-time, download HD movies, and connect all the devices in your home simultaneously – at incredible speeds.
Connect your devices and do more of what you love online with reliable Internet speeds for your home.
Gee, I don't see anything there or their terms of use that says "Note: High speed internet applies only to providers that pay us to deliver their data to you".
.
An ISP that owns cables is paying off the cost of building them. An ISP that borrows cables is paying off the bulk cost of renting. When a cable is made to serve customers that use it less efficiently, such as mostly at peak hours, or otherwise concentrated in large transfers, then it costs more to accommodate them.
If a business is not allowed to find the efficient means of paying these costs, then that business will fail. Everyone will lose, especially the customer, who will have fewer and worse options.
I don't know why you think I don't want Comcast to be able to recover their costs of providing service -- they already have an efficient means to pay those costs -- they send me a bill each month, and if that bill isn't paying their costs, they can increase the rates I pay. That way I can fairly compare prices among different ISP's (luckily I'm in an area where I can choose from a few). When Netflix subsidizes Comcast, that makes the true cost of my internet service hidden since part of the cost is hidden in my Netflix bill (and eventually Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc will all have to pay). The largest ISP's shouldn't be allowed to use their near monopoly market penetration to extract fees from content providers when they are already charging customers for internet access.
Re:Pro Net Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
Charging very different users the same is obviously not as efficient as tiered services - otherwise there would no such thing as tiered service, anywhere. By forcing them not to use a legitimate business model you are telling them that they may not recover costs as efficiently.
They already charge different users differently -- I pay more money for a faster connection since I use Netflix heavily. If I didn't watch streaming video, instead of a 25mbit connection, I'd buy their cheap 6mbit connection (or would use an ADSL provider). If they find charging for bandwidth alone to be unsustainable, then they can charge for data too -- charge $20 for each 100GB, or whatever covers their costs. They have lots of flexibility in their pricing structure. They can add peak surcharges or whatever else they need to do to pay for their network.
The type of business that will be more likely to fail in this situation is the start-up or the small scale business.
How can a startup expect to charge money to large users like Netflix, Amazon, etc? If Joe's House of Internet tried to force Netflix to pay up, Netflix would tell them to shove off and wouldn't worry about losing a few customers. But when Comcast (with over 15 million internet customers) tells them to pay up, they have little choice, since they can't afford to lose millions of customers.
Sure, allow more competition. I'm all for a freer market.
But don't reduce competition by telling Comcast that they can't incur costs on Netflix, when Netflix is incurring costs on Comcast.
Netflix isn't incurring costs on Comcast, I (as a Comcast customer) am incurring the cost by requesting the data from Netflix, so I should be paying for that -- Netflix isn't forcing me to accept their data, I am requesting it.
Why is it worse to have hidden costs in your monopoly bill than your more competitive Netflix bill?
Because, it's a hidden cost and I can't see the true cost of my Comcast connection. If I pay $50/month to Comcast, and have a hidden $5 for Netflix, $3 for Amazon, $5 for Youtube, $1 for Facebook, etc, the true cost of my bill might really be over $100, and if I knew that, I might find another ISP more cost effective. And more importantly, if Comcast charged their true cost of delivering service and that ended up being $100/month, that might be a level that makes it profitable for another provider to come in, while if the content provider subsidies kept Comcast rates artificially low, then there would be less incentive for a competitor to enter the market since he wouldn't get the same subsidies yet he'd be competing against Comcast's subsidized rates.
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Nice shill post but your assumptions aren't correct. ISPs can and do support massive streaming to large portions of their customers. They simply want to avoid paying for infrastructure upgrades while at the same time milking both ends of the wire for all the money they can.
Would you give up Netflix to protect Comcast's bottom line? How about innovators like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google? Without Net Neutrality, they wouldn't exist. Go back to using AOL and Compuserve, see how much you like networks
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I still want the internet to be as fast as possible when I *am* using it. It's the average bandwidth used, not the maximum, that is relevant here.
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Now, we have data caps, and that solves the problem. Sort of. Of course it's more than a little inconvenient, so should really be considered a last resort if ISPs and content providers can't sort th
Re:bandiwth hogging is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
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Netflix is not paying for the bandwidth the customers are already paying for. Netflix is paying for *extra* bandwidth.
Data caps would solve the problem, but US consumers have been very reluctant (to say the least) to accept them. I don't think that's Comcast's fault. In any case, does it really matter whether Netflix customers are paying the extra costs to Netflix or to Comcast? I mean, enough to make it worth putting up with the hassles of a data cap?
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Go shill for Netflix somewhere else!
"Netflix is perfectly willing to pay for its own bandwidth needs" ... yeah, right. That's why they chose the cheapest option, and when it proved inadequate, demanded that Comcast provide them with extra bandwidth free of charge.
"When I pay for 10 Mb/s I expect to get that to each and EVERY content provider I browse to or use on the internet." ... then you're an idiot. That's not how the internet works.
Go ahead and build your own congestion-free internet if you like. Do
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Yes, it may cause Disney or Netflix to raise prices to their customers to pay for the Fast Lane they're getting, but i
Re:Abusrd (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it may cause Disney or Netflix to raise prices to their customers to pay for the Fast Lane they're getting,
You can go ahead and change "may" to "already did [slashdot.org]."
but it does not block access to other sources of content and silences nothing. Car pool lanes don't keep other cars from using the normal lanes
You obviously don't live in any densely populated enough area (say, Southern California) where there in fact are any car-pool lanes, do you? Where do you think that extra lane came from? The meta-plane of elemental freeway lanes? No, they blocked a regular lane to turn it into a carpool lane and now, one-by-one, they're beginning to systematically charge you extra to use them [metroexpresslanes.net] .
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Where do you think that extra lane came from?
In some places they are built in the existing median, with controls to allow them to be used for "inbound" traffic in the morning and "outbound" traffic in the afternoon. I've apparently been to the big city enough times to have seen such wonders and marvels.
No, they blocked a regular lane to turn it into a carpool lane
Ok. So the analogy fails in that the Fast Lane is added bandwidth. But still, nobody is prevented from using the normal lanes and they are still there.
they're beginning to systematically charge you extra to use them .
And you can avoid that extra charge by not driving in the carpool lanes. I understand that you're u
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You obviously don't live in any densely populated enough area (say, Southern California) where there in fact are any car-pool lanes, do you? Where do you think that extra lane came from? The meta-plane of elemental freeway lanes? No, they blocked a regular lane to turn it into a carpool lane and now, one-by-one, they're beginning to systematically charge you extra to use them [metroexpresslanes.net] .
Actually, CalTrans is not allowed to convert an existing lane to an HOV lane, only "new" lanes can become HOV lanes:
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/paffa... [ca.gov]
Regular "mixed-flow" lanes are never converted to HOV lanes. Rather, HOV lanes are always added to existing facilities.
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There's little difference between converting an existing lane and deciding that the new lane you're adding is an HOV lane.
It seems that the difference is that it's *not* the same as "they blocked a regular lane to turn it into a carpool lane" as the grandparent poster was claiming.
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No, they didn't cut prices and they didn't pocket the money - they spent it. You know, on the extra equipment that was needed to improve performance for Netflix customers?
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Have you seen the receipts? I see no evidence that they did anything but change a configuration.
The ISPs make a big deal about how usage has gone up since the '90s, but I have seen how the cost of the hardware has plummeted since the '90s. Back then, a SMALL GigE switch cost over $1000/port. If you needed to switch a lot of connections, you would have to build a Clos network of switches and that would seriously push the price up.
These days, the same capability is going for about $10/port (or $50/port with g
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I think Netflix would have noticed if they didn't get the peering points they paid for.
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You mean the ports that had to be reconfigured with 'no shut'?
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Do you actually know that no new equipment was needed or are you just guessing?
It doesn't really matter, though - if it so happens that the Netflix peering could be accomplished using existing equipment, it is still taking up space on that equipment. One day, said equipment will run out of space and new equipment will need to be purchased. The Netflix peering means that will happen sooner than it otherwise would. In the long run, it all works out the same either way.
Would you demand that a retailer give
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I'm basing it on the typical conditions I see in an interchange or meet-me. Have you ever done any networking beyond the workgroup/office level?
It's fairly clear in the history that Comcast deliberately damaged throughput to force a 'peering' that wouldn't actually cost them anything.
The very concept of 'peering' with someone who doesn't own a network is odd. Especially so when Netflix already offers a cache box for any ISP that wants to reduce the upstream cost of serving Netflix to their customers.
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Agreed. I signed it, but I wished it had been written better.