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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
Re:bandiwth hogging is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
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] .
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.
Re:Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Meh, he's working with what he's got (Score:2, Insightful)