There is absolutely nothing in the net neutrality proposals that affects how much an ISP can charge its customers.
That is exactly what net neutrality is all about, regulating what an ISP can charge its customers. In this case customers like Netflix and Apple that use large quantities of bandwidth.
If you don't have net neutrality, every web site in existence is going to be held hostage by the ISPs. I can see it now: getting an email from each of the major ISPs telling me if I want my web sites to be in the "fast lane", I have to pay so much per year, otherwise the sites from the big companies will have priority.
What is wrong with that? When you place an ad in a phone book do you pay for an entire page or a little box ad? I know phone books are a thing of the past but the fact remains the big boys have the cash to pay for more.
The web was created out of ARPANET which was created with our tax dollars. The ISPs didn't create the internet on their own.
Which has nothing to do with this discussion.
And I'm not worried about the profits of the big ISPs. Verizon had revenues of $31.4 billion in the 3rd quarter. AT&T had U.S. revenues of almost $129 billion in 2013. Time-Warner cable had revenue of $22 billion. Comcast has 26.9 million cable customers and in the 3rd quarter, high speed internet revenue grew by 9.6%. Have you seen what current phone plans cost these days? It's absurd. But there's nothing in the proposals to change that.
Net neurptrakity will only make things worst. In fact if instituted it will mean that the end user would have to pay a lot more for his connection. Why.? Pretty simply really, somebody has to pick up the tab. If the ISPs can't charge the upstream customers then the only other option is to charge the down stream customers.
I really have to wonder how much of these objections to net-neutrality are based on the fact that the latest proposal came from Obama and not from Republicans. I agree 100% with what's in that Obama proposal. IMO, it's the only thing that's fair.
What is fair about these bulk users of the Internet riding on the backs of all the other users of the Internet. Right now a small handful of users account for the vast majority of all internet traffic. That means that you and I are subsidizing their usage at our expense. Anybody with a small time Internet site should be estates that these bulk users are currently being forced to pay their fair share.
What is fair here is making these massive users of bandwidth pay a fair price for that bandwidth instead of having the little guy underwrite the costs. If 80-90% of the bandwidth in use is attributed to an handful of parties shouldn't they be paying for the bulk of the expense of the Internet? Or to put it another way why should I, a person that doesn't use Netflix, have to support Netflixs use of the net.
In effect net neutrality is anything but fair. If you look at it objectively you really can't come to another conclusion.
Now having said that, I do agree that there's an issue with sites like Netflix and YouTube generating the need for so much bandwidth. But rather than cutting special deals, I'd rather see a fee for any commercial sites that generate traffic higher than "X" that gets split among the ISPs for the sole purpose of expanding infrastructure.
Isn't that sort of what paying extra is all about? By the way a fee is the same thing as cutting a deal to pay for the infrastructure usage. In fact it boggles the mind that you sit here professing a desire for net neutrality but hen demand that heavy users pay a fee!! If you don't see how hilarious that is to the rest of us then you have problems.
But that shouldn't put those sites in the "fast lane". It should improve speed for everyone.
I hope you are done clowning around. The speed as you call it is all about managing a network for high priority traffic. As for speed that has been steadily increasing over the years for everybody. There was a time when dial up was the only way to the net for most of us. Beyond that if you want guaranteed speed you should be forced to pay for that speed.
Look at if from another perspective data centers are often built around the same basic hardware that you might have in a home PC. Corporations will spend big bucks on guaranteed up time contracts for that hardware. They do that because the performance is worth it to them. This is no different than paying over the market rate for Internet access with a given performance metric.
So are Netflix, Google, Apple and the others that acces the net. Corporations have to pay big bucks for some of those high shooed connections they have to the net. They are as much a customer of the ISP as you and me.
This is about the ISPs wanting to be able to charge both the consumer and the content providers and squeezing revenue out of both ends.
Baloney. It is about placing a fair burden on the heaviest users of the Internet.
There are reasons most countries have a largely public road transportation infrastructure and why heavy users are not penalised because it is for the greater good of society not to.
More bull crap! In the US anyways the companies that make heavy usage of the public infrastructure pay significantly for that infrastructure. This is due to the wear and tear trucking for example causes on that infrastructure. It is most reasonable to make the people causing the most damage to pay their fair share instead of burdening grandma when she drives to church each Sunday.
If you allow the charging of the content providers they will increase their prices to cover costs and the consumer will ultimately be the one who pays - and they already are.
Exactly the users of those services will pay not me! I don't use Netflix and frankly have no desire to pay a tax to support them or the people that use Netflix. That being said the amount Netflix is being charged is trivial in the overall scope of things.
Another way to look at this is that enacting that reduces the expense to the end user is to be appreciated. There is nothing more frustrating then going to a site that burns up my bandwidth with an excess of ads. That would be a lot more tolerable if the cost of my bandwidth wasn't so high. It has gotten even worst of late as I'm seeing 30 and 60 second video ads that I can't even skip past now. Since I don't want to waste my bandwidth Im not making use of those sites like I use too. Net neutrality will only make things worst in this respect as it will have the impact of raising rates in end users of the net.
In the end net neutrality will end being a disaster for the end users. It will force the development and maintenance costs across all users no matter how modest your bandwidth usage is.
It is worth repeating here you are simply wrong here!. Netflix is as much a customer of AT& T as I am. Honestly I'm not sure how you can see this any other way.
Private property doesn't exist without the laws, judicial system, and enforcement of the government, so keep that in mind. It's not intended to be out of reach of government regulation or legal power. Many on the right like to talk about private property as if it's somehow independent of the government or the will of the people, but it's obviously not.
How can anybody state this and not get hammered as this being bogus. Of course private property exists without laws and enforcement of the government. All one needs is a gun, or a sword, or an army. Heck, I am trained in hand-to-hand combat. People can defend their own private property all day long if they want.
Private property has existed despite governments rising and falling. Where neighbors are nice and polite, private property can exist all day long, even without being defended by a gun or weapon. It is only because some people are evil and covet that we have to create laws about private property. Many of the biggest offenders of private property rights in history are in fact bad governments.
Our government was set up by the people to enforce principles that are (suppose to be) self evident. Our government doesn't create private property; they only enforce the already existing concept that certain things are private property. When our government ceases protecting these rights, we are suppose to have the right to free ourselves from this bad government, and recreate one that is good. That is what the US founding fathers did. This is what the whole Declaration of Independence was about.
That all being said, the fact is big companies many times do abuse their monopoly positions. So to does government, which by definition is a monopoly too. If these two monopolies get together and collude against the average joe, then we are in trouble. I don't trust anything big - big companies, big governments, big armies. It is hard to defend my personal property against anything big. That is one reason why I like small government and small companies.
The internet should be like roads. They are public and owned by the government - which by extension should mean they are owned by all the people equally. I have no trouble with the concept of government taking over ownership of the net. Let the federal government own the big highways, the state governments own the medium highways, and the county and city governments own the local roads. Not to say the government always handles the road perfectly but I do think what we have in the US is not bad. The private companies should be properly compensated for the government takeover of the internet.
Then people can decide at the government level how they want their internet. They want higher speeds or higher costs - let this be played out in politics. Each political level handles the appropriate issues. Our roads today are mostly free but governments do tax usage through gas prices. Why should the net be handled any differently?
If somebody wants to download huge movies all the time, charge them accordingly. If they use little bandwidth, then charge them little. If they want a big pipe to their house, then they have to handle the cost of all this infrastructure. If governments want to offer deals to stimulate business in their area, then let them do it - just like they currently do.
So I really do not see this issue much different from that of our roads. I do not like the fact that I do not have a vote with the private companies who currently control the internet wires. They can make deals happen without us knowing what all is going on. The issue is really a public verse private thing. I say make it all public and let us deal with it like our physical roads.
So yes, I did say I am in favor of small government and then just went ahead and said we should make government bigger. There are legitimate reasons for government and I think this is one of them.
I also think people should pass laws restricting the sizes of companies. Again it goes back to the dangers caused by things big. What exactly these laws are should be determined by the people. Keep government as local as possible and so too ownership of companies. One proposal could be to require companies have local ownership, just like we demand our politicians be local.
I don't know if this is the best solution, but laws something like this would go a long way toward solving monopoly problems. I think we need to look at all the options going forward and let people debate it all out thoroughly.
This point of view is so stupid as to cause one to wonder if you even realize how highly regulated the industry is already.
The ISP are not controlling your service hey are rather making sure that the heavy users of their facility pay their fair share. It is not unlike the trucking industry and the high taxes they pay for access to the roads. T
Heavy users are already paying their fair share. That's why a 50mbps connection costs more than a 25mpbs connection. What do the extra fees go toward if not to finance the extra burden placed on the ISP by the increased bandwidth?
You could say that about what I ate yesterday or who I spoke with this morning. These days I’m basically just a shell of what used to be a person. " src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
I wonder about another scenario, in which the government is responsible for the buildout and replacement of copper with optical cable nationwide, but simply turns over access and use thereof to companies in the respective industries that would use it, leaving them to compete on an equal footing, infrastructure-wise. This would require a government significantly different than the one of today (one which follows its own laws), so perhaps that’s a pipe dream for when we can again trust the idiots who govern, or at least give them fear of the accountability we would hold...
@wizard69 you are all over the place. I brought up food regulation as an example everybody would agree with and you are not certain that you agree with it or not. You say merely that word of mouth will close down restaurants. In fact that's not certain, a restaurant with a passing trade in tourists can be crap and the new customers, continually churning, will never know. However the reason for regulation is to stop serious health problems. A restaurant may close down after killing somebody but that somebody is still dead.
The point I was trying to get across is that health regulations do not guarantee that you won't get sick from food. In the end you still need for people to follow good practices.
Net neutrality doesn't stop the providers charging more for fibre ( thus why would it stop a buildout?) nor does it stop limitations on bandwidth to consumers if they exceed a certain amour of use per month, or day,or hour.
That is exactly what people are expecting out of net neutrality. They are expecting that everybody should pay a flat rate for Internet access no matter the burden they place on the net. Really read the comments you and other have posted. Everybody is up in arms over Netflix working a deal with ISPs to make sure they have the bandwidth they need. Net neutrality implies that that shouldn't be possible.
Beyond all of that the various connection methods one can pay for all impose bandwidth limitations based on the tech used. By definition high performance connections cost more money so there is no way to provide net neutrality unless you forced everyone to use the same sort of connection to the net.
Honestly I don't think you have a clue here as to the damage that net neutrality can cause if taken to the extent some want.
The neutrality bit is for content providers. Those providers take their own costs to build their own data centres but the providers shouldn't charge them to not slow down the transfer. User/Receiver pays. The opposite of snail mail.
I really don't know what to think of somebody that posts such non sense. Content providers are by definition customers of the ISP, they impact the net dramatically in some cases and as such it is their responsibility to pay their fair share. Net neutrality is the opposite of fair play in my mind as it allows big operations like Netflix and Apple to coop the net while paying the same rates as some smal time web operator.
That system allows Apple to spend money on data centres without worrying that the service will be hobbled unless they pay the providers their fee.
Why would you want Apple to use up so much of the world Internet caoacity and not pay a fair price for that usage? Apple can certainly afford it as can Netflix and the ten or so other major users of the net. In the end the alternative is excessive rates burdening the small time user.
It allows Apple TV provide content. Icloud to store data quickly. . Beats music to work without stutter. All of these could otherwise be stymied by the providers, replaced by their own service or that of the company that pays the most. Not good for consumers.
Actually you are completely wrong here! Net neutrality would mean no guarantees of performance. Apple would be prohibited from contracting for preferred service. It is a really disgusting concept if you think about it. It is like going to the butcher and trying to pay extra for a nice cut of beef and being told you can't have that because you are required to pay the same as everybody else.
If net neutrality is stymied or opposed by Cruz then Apple, Google, MS et al. Should go all guns blazing against him.
Do you really think that deep down Apple, Netflix or some of the others really want to support net neutrality. They might paint a public face that sorta supports it but deep down they know it would be very very bad for their businesses. These companies rely upon high quality of service to deliver their product.
Wall to wall advertising on why this is a bad idea. All these companies have deep pockets, better to stop this now.
Speaking of advertising, I'm seeing an explosion of such on the net lately. Heavy bandwidth consuming advertising too. This is very frustrating when you consider how much one pays for bandwidth these days. Net neutrality will just make this problem worst as every Tom, Dick and Harry tries to make a buck over their net neutrality connection.
In any event I really think you need to go out and enjoy a few beers and think hard about what you are supporting here. Net neutrality is a hideous concept. It makes about as much sense as me paying taxes to support the trucking industry because they shouldn't have to pay anything more for their heavy usage of the public roads than I do. It is asinine really.
If the content is legal, then it has to be delivered without any preference, irrespective of the origin or provider. It could be videos of cats on YouTube, movies on Netflix or access to sites like this.
If a consumer signs a contract with his or her ISP for a service, then the ISP has to honor the contract. ISPs already offer different tiers of service at different prices. Someone watching Netflix or playing online games usually pays more for higher download speeds. If the ISP has advertised as providing a service and a consumer signs a contract for that service, then it has to be honored. Someone mentioned something about roads and tolls. If a truck is using a stretch of road which has tolls, then the truck driver has to pay a higher toll than say someone in a car. But that doesn't mean that the trucks are given preferential treatment on the road because they are paying a higher toll. If there is a traffic jam, then everyone is stuck. Same thing with your internet service - you pay more to use more, but not to get a preference. How much the fee should be or if it fair has nothing to do with net neutrality.
A content provider cannot pay an ISP more money to give then preferential treatment.
How much one is paying for internet/cable service has nothing to do with net neutrality, but everything to do with monopolies. If ISPs are going to use net neutrality as an excuse to increase prices or provide lower levels of service, then fight that. See that we have regulations to prevent that from happening.
I am pretty sure others have already covered what I have said on this thread and some have been more detailed. But this is an important issue because so much of what we do today is dependent on the internet, either directly or indirectly. And it should be kept open and neutral and we should have regulations in place to guarantee that.
You're younger than I thought if you don't remember the telecom deregulation in the 1980s that screwed everything up.
I don't know about TS but I lived through all of that and in many ways deregulation was a fantastic success. Nothing is perfect of course but that deregulation freed up the market enough that we now have things like the iPhone that frankly I couldn't have imagined in the 80's. I was a big Star Trek fan back then too so I imagined al, sorts of things.
I won't say that that deregulation was perfect but it certainly usered in an era of rapid change for the communications industry.
So, all these "ifs" "maybes" "mights" and "could", is a reason to have the government step in with regulations to save us all from the evil corporations who sell us internet access??
Wow! Talk about somebody incapable of grasping reality here!
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoetmb
Of course they're incapable. How do you know whether raw chicken has been left out unrefrigerated or whether someone used a knife on raw poultry and then used that same knife to cut your sandwich resulting in salmonella poisoning?
You will know when you are rushed to the hospital or have to invest large quantities of Imodium, The thing here is inspections seldom catch such screw ups. Even if you have an inspector stationed at the restaurant mistakes will happen, it is human nature. Make enough mistakes and people will no longer return to a restaurant.
The fact is health departments do not close down that many restaurants. More close due to word of mouth than anything.
Quote:
How would you know whether the refrigerator where the meat is stored is at the right temperature or whether the frozen food has freezer burn or whether the kitchen is infested with mice or not? Or whether grease from the range hood isn't dripping back into your food?
Actually at one restaurant the waitress out and told me the freezer was on the blink thus no ice cream????????????. Ethical behavior isn't an impossibility and unethical behavior is often very hard to catch.
The other way to look at this is that returns take deliveries in bulk. Often critters come along for the ride, keeping a restaurant clear of such critter is an ongoing task. It becomes a problem when that task is neglected.
Quote:
While there may be many health rules for restaurants that are overkill and unnecessary and some inspectors apply the rules inconsistently and drive the owners crazy, restaurant health inspections have kept thousands of people from getting sick and it has also without a doubt, saved some lives. I won't eat in a restaurant that doesn't have an "A" rating.
An "A" rating from whom?
Your perspective here is confusing. I fully support food preparation standards and the like. Inspections by the health department are certainly important but all of that regulation does not assure safe food. It is the personal willingness of the workers in the restaurant to assure that good practices are followed. Without that commitment you have no guarantee of high quality food.
Quote:
I take it you've never watched "Restaurant Impossible" or "Bar Rescue" among other such shows. What's remarkable is that these bar and restaurant owners have seen these shows, requested help and frequently STILL haven't cleaned the place up before the show arrives. While some of the "drama" on these shows may be instigated by producers, I don't think they come in and make the kitchen disgusting before they arrive to shoot.
The appearance of a kitchen doesn't correlate to the quality of the food. When I was young and foolish one of the best places to eat locally (bar food) was a strip joint. Let's face it a strip joint isn't always associated with high quality food but here is the thing, if the person in the kitchen takes a personal interest in his job you will get good results. All the regulation in the world won't make up for the need for the process owners to do their job correctly.
I've also travels a bit and frankly the same thoughts apply. I've seen people get sick from food in highly regulated countries while nothing happens on the various Caribbean islands I've visited. In the end it is up to the people delivering to do a decent job with food prep.
How can anybody state this and not get hammered as this being bogus. Of course private property exists without laws and enforcement of the government. All one needs is a gun, or a sword, or an army. Heck, I am trained in hand-to-hand combat. People can defend their own private property all day long if they want.
Private property has existed despite governments rising and falling. Where neighbors are nice and polite, private property can exist all day long, even without being defended by a gun or weapon. It is only because some people are evil and covet that we have to create laws about private property. Many of the biggest offenders of private property rights in history are in fact bad governments.
Our government was set up by the people to enforce principles that are (suppose to be) self evident. Our government doesn't create private property; they only enforce the already existing concept that certain things are private property. When our government ceases protecting these rights, we are suppose to have the right to free ourselves from this bad government, and recreate one that is good. That is what the US founding fathers did. This is what the whole Declaration of Independence was about.
Well a lot of people here aren't Americans so that might be part of the problem. Then there is a contingent of people that are so far left they think they should be free to walk into anybodies house, at any time and take whatever they want. Many of these people are obviously participants in the welfare state and as such offer no value to humanity.
That all being said, the fact is big companies many times do abuse their monopoly positions. So to does government, which by definition is a monopoly too. If these two monopolies get together and collude against the average joe, then we are in trouble. I don't trust anything big - big companies, big governments, big armies. It is hard to defend my personal property against anything big. That is one reason why I like small government and small companies.
The internet should be like roads. They are public and owned by the government - which by extension should mean they are owned by all the people equally. I have no trouble with the concept of government taking over ownership of the net. Let the federal government own the big highways, the state governments own the medium highways, and the county and city governments own the local roads. Not to say the government always handles the road perfectly but I do think what we have in the US is not bad. <span style="line-height:1.4em;">The private companies should be properly compensated for the government takeover of the internet.</span>
This is perhaps the biggest problem I see with Obamas proposal, it amounts to public theft of private property. A government run utility like the roads isn't impossible but we as a community need to be willing to pay for it.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">Then people can decide at the government level how they want their internet. They want higher speeds or higher costs - let this be played out in politics. Each political level handles the appropriate issues. Our roads today are mostly free but governments do tax usage through gas prices. </span>
Why<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> should the net be handled any differently?</span>
If somebody wants to download huge movies all the time, charge them accordingly. If they use little bandwidth, then charge them little. If they want a big pipe to their house, then they have to handle the cost of all this infrastructure. If governments want to offer deals to stimulate business in their area, then let them do it - just like they currently do.
The only problem I see here is that companies like Netflix need to pay for the burden they put on the network.
So I really do not see this issue much different from that of our roads. I do not like the fact that I do not have a vote with the private companies who currently control the internet wires. They can make deals happen without us knowing what all is going on. The issue is really a public verse private thing. I say make it all public and let us deal with it like our physical roads.
There is some sense that this might be a better path than the one Obama is proposing. The big problem I have with this is that I see the decay in our infrastructure and how some states neglect that infra structure. Sadly I live in New York right now and see how far our infrastructure has decayed under the current leadership in Albany. What is telling is driving out of the state be it Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont or whatever and see the differences in the roads when crossing the border. In fact I've taken recent auto trips all the way to Florida and can say with confidence that we have the worst roads I've seen. So the idea of NY being involved in supporting the Internet here is not all that appealing. In other states where the government actually works for the people it might work out well.
So yes, I did say I am in favor of small government and then just went ahead and said we should make government bigger. There are legitimate reasons for government and I think this is one of them.
I also think people should pass laws restricting the sizes of companies. Again it goes back to the dangers caused by things big. What exactly these laws are should be determined by the people. Keep government as local as possible and so too ownership of companies. One proposal could be to require companies have local ownership, just like we demand our politicians be local.
Yeah well that flies in the face of reality. These days we need massive companies just so they will hold their own against what is out there in the rest of the world. Beyond that ownership in most corporations is via the stock holders. There is no good reason to demand that a stock holder live near a companies head quarters.
Beyond that I don't believe in the evil corporation matra. Corporations are as good or evil as the people leading them. Unfortunately the bad ones make for the juicy news stories.
I don't know if this is the best solution, but laws something like this would go a long way toward solving monopoly problems. I think we need to look at all the options going forward and let people debate it all out thoroughly.
Everybody loved AT&T when it was a monopoly. I'm not even sure you could reasonably classify AT&T as evil. Beyond that monoplies seldom last forever. ITunes for example has been claimed to be a monopoly but iTunes is already in decline. Sometimes patients takes care of a lot of these so called monploies.
I don't think the argument from the right is that the free market would do a better job. The argument is that having a fast Internet connection is nice, but it's not as important as upholding indvidual rights. In this case the private property rights of the people who own the cables.
So basically, the more you "own" the more "property rights" you lay claim to. Then I have nothing because as a cable subscriber I "own" no "property." Am I reading you correctly? I have to own a cable property to have any say in this democracy, right?
Well a lot of people here aren't Americans so that might be part of the problem. Then there is a contingent of people that are so far left they think they should be free to walk into anybodies house, at any time and take whatever they want. Many of these people are obviously participants in the welfare state and as such offer no value to humanity.
This is perhaps the biggest problem I see with Obamas proposal, it amounts to public theft of private property. A government run utility like the roads isn't impossible but we as a community need to be willing to pay for it.
The only problem I see here is that companies like Netflix need to pay for the burden they put on the network.
There is some sense that this might be a better path than the one Obama is proposing. The big problem I have with this is that I see the decay in our infrastructure and how some states neglect that infra structure. Sadly I live in New York right now and see how far our infrastructure has decayed under the current leadership in Albany. What is telling is driving out of the state be it Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont or whatever and see the differences in the roads when crossing the border. In fact I've taken recent auto trips all the way to Florida and can say with confidence that we have the worst roads I've seen. So the idea of NY being involved in supporting the Internet here is not all that appealing. In other states where the government actually works for the people it might work out well.
Yeah well that flies in the face of reality. These days we need massive companies just so they will hold their own against what is out there in the rest of the world. Beyond that ownership in most corporations is via the stock holders. There is no good reason to demand that a stock holder live near a companies head quarters.
Beyond that I don't believe in the evil corporation matra. Corporations are as good or evil as the people leading them. Unfortunately the bad ones make for the juicy news stories.
Everybody loved AT&T when it was a monopoly. I'm not even sure you could reasonably classify AT&T as evil. Beyond that monoplies seldom last forever. ITunes for example has been claimed to be a monopoly but iTunes is already in decline. Sometimes patients takes care of a lot of these so called monploies.
AT&T was broken up by the Government it did not dissolve on it's own.
The American people have been subsidizing these companies for years. They made certain promises for these huge subsidies that they have not kept. A lot of people here keep screaming about a free market. There is no such thing, at least not in the purest sense of the concept. Tax dollars go to build a new McDonalds in your neighborhood, Sports stadiums, oil companies. If you believe in a truly FREE market all of this corporate welfare would go away. They would have to operate on their own bottom line. Tax loopholes would be closed. Capitalism is not a form of government. We already know the damage corporate interests left unchecked can do to this nation. All we have to do is look at history. This idea that somehow an entity whose sole objective is to make money will do the right thing without being regulated is naive. Some regulations are outdated or unnecessary, get rid of those but business totally unregulated is nonsense. We had this already in our country & about 4 guys ran just about everything. People worked ridiculous hours with no care for their safety or well being.
Well a lot of people here aren't Americans so that might be part of the problem. Then there is a contingent of people that are so far left they think they should be free to walk into anybodies house, at any time and take whatever they want. Many of these people are obviously participants in the welfare state and as such offer no value to humanity.
This is perhaps the biggest problem I see with Obamas proposal, it amounts to public theft of private property. A government run utility like the roads isn't impossible but we as a community need to be willing to pay for it.
The only problem I see here is that companies like Netflix need to pay for the burden they put on the network.
There is some sense that this might be a better path than the one Obama is proposing. The big problem I have with this is that I see the decay in our infrastructure and how some states neglect that infra structure. Sadly I live in New York right now and see how far our infrastructure has decayed under the current leadership in Albany. What is telling is driving out of the state be it Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont or whatever and see the differences in the roads when crossing the border. In fact I've taken recent auto trips all the way to Florida and can say with confidence that we have the worst roads I've seen. So the idea of NY being involved in supporting the Internet here is not all that appealing. In other states where the government actually works for the people it might work out well.
Yeah well that flies in the face of reality. These days we need massive companies just so they will hold their own against what is out there in the rest of the world. Beyond that ownership in most corporations is via the stock holders. There is no good reason to demand that a stock holder live near a companies head quarters.
Beyond that I don't believe in the evil corporation matra. Corporations are as good or evil as the people leading them. Unfortunately the bad ones make for the juicy news stories.
Everybody loved AT&T when it was a monopoly. I'm not even sure you could reasonably classify AT&T as evil. Beyond that monoplies seldom last forever. ITunes for example has been claimed to be a monopoly but iTunes is already in decline. Sometimes patients takes care of a lot of these so called monploies.
1. Nobody is talking about walking into peoples houses and helping themselves to anything the want. And the welfare system has nothing whatsoever to do with net neutrality.
2. How is net neutrality taking away property rights? Nobody is advocating taking away anyones property. The ISP is providing a service and are being paid by the consumers for that service.
3. Netflix already pays for infrastructure costs. If there is more traffic originating from Netflix it's because there are more consumers of their content. And consumers are already paying for this. Netflix is not just sending out movies onto the internet. If I want to watch something in high-def, then I pay for higher download speeds. Netflix shouldn't have to pay more to the ISP so that their content is given preference or is on par with other content. These charges will eventually be passed onto the consumer and the consumer ends up paying twice for the same content.
4. Yes, corporations are only as evil as people running them and only the evil things that the do make for "juicy" news stories. It's because when these big corporations behave unethically or engage in illegal activities, it can have devastating effects on the lives of others. Look at the recent financial crisis.
It is worth repeating here you are simply wrong here!. Netflix is as much a customer of AT& T as I am. Honestly I'm not sure how you can see this any other way.
They are customers in the sense that I am a customer of the snail mail providers when I receive a post; however I am not charged. That wasn't always the case but charging the receiver didn't work as he didn't necessarily ask for the post.
The modern Internet, which is largely net neutral, isn't going to survive your dystopian right wing fantasies about freedom for monopolised rentiers of the pipe to your house, and the lack of freedom to the end user to access the content he wants.
How can anybody state this and not get hammered as this being bogus. Of course private property exists without laws and enforcement of the government. All one needs is a gun, or a sword, or an army. Heck, I am trained in hand-to-hand combat. People can defend their own private property all day long if they want.
Private property has existed despite governments rising and falling. Where neighbors are nice and polite, private property can exist all day long, even without being defended by a gun or weapon. It is only because some people are evil and covet that we have to create laws about private property. Many of the biggest offenders of private property rights in history are in fact bad governments.
Our government was set up by the people to enforce principles that are (suppose to be) self evident. Our government doesn't create private property; they only enforce the already existing concept that certain things are private property. When our government ceases protecting these rights, we are suppose to have the right to free ourselves from this bad government, and recreate one that is good. That is what the US founding fathers did. This is what the whole Declaration of Independence was about.
Yet the government can forcefully purchase private property using eminent domain.
We may have to come up with an entirely new model based on how different this situation is from the telegraph and telephone buildout.
Those were simpler times, with only those thin copper wires carrying a few volts from the house to the central office where the switching was done.
Simpler times yes. Those thin copper wires were inside of cables thicker than your arm, and covered in a sheath made of lead. That build out was exponentially more difficult than laying fiber optic cable as thin as a finger. Btw those central offices still do the switching.
Trucks pay more at toll booths, so why is it unreasonable to ask the trucks of the internet to pay a higher toll.
Comments
What is fair here is making these massive users of bandwidth pay a fair price for that bandwidth instead of having the little guy underwrite the costs. If 80-90% of the bandwidth in use is attributed to an handful of parties shouldn't they be paying for the bulk of the expense of the Internet? Or to put it another way why should I, a person that doesn't use Netflix, have to support Netflixs use of the net.
In effect net neutrality is anything but fair. If you look at it objectively you really can't come to another conclusion. Isn't that sort of what paying extra is all about? By the way a fee is the same thing as cutting a deal to pay for the infrastructure usage. In fact it boggles the mind that you sit here professing a desire for net neutrality but hen demand that heavy users pay a fee!! If you don't see how hilarious that is to the rest of us then you have problems. I hope you are done clowning around. The speed as you call it is all about managing a network for high priority traffic. As for speed that has been steadily increasing over the years for everybody. There was a time when dial up was the only way to the net for most of us. Beyond that if you want guaranteed speed you should be forced to pay for that speed.
Look at if from another perspective data centers are often built around the same basic hardware that you might have in a home PC. Corporations will spend big bucks on guaranteed up time contracts for that hardware. They do that because the performance is worth it to them. This is no different than paying over the market rate for Internet access with a given performance metric.
Exactly the users of those services will pay not me! I don't use Netflix and frankly have no desire to pay a tax to support them or the people that use Netflix. That being said the amount Netflix is being charged is trivial in the overall scope of things.
Another way to look at this is that enacting that reduces the expense to the end user is to be appreciated. There is nothing more frustrating then going to a site that burns up my bandwidth with an excess of ads. That would be a lot more tolerable if the cost of my bandwidth wasn't so high. It has gotten even worst of late as I'm seeing 30 and 60 second video ads that I can't even skip past now. Since I don't want to waste my bandwidth Im not making use of those sites like I use too. Net neutrality will only make things worst in this respect as it will have the impact of raising rates in end users of the net.
In the end net neutrality will end being a disaster for the end users. It will force the development and maintenance costs across all users no matter how modest your bandwidth usage is.
Are you saying that people would be incapable of determining what restaurants are unsanitary on their own?
Does the average restaurant customer inspect the restaurant's kitchen to ensure that raw meats aren't being stored with fresh vegetables?
It is worth repeating here you are simply wrong here!. Netflix is as much a customer of AT& T as I am. Honestly I'm not sure how you can see this any other way.
How can anybody state this and not get hammered as this being bogus. Of course private property exists without laws and enforcement of the government. All one needs is a gun, or a sword, or an army. Heck, I am trained in hand-to-hand combat. People can defend their own private property all day long if they want.
Private property has existed despite governments rising and falling. Where neighbors are nice and polite, private property can exist all day long, even without being defended by a gun or weapon. It is only because some people are evil and covet that we have to create laws about private property. Many of the biggest offenders of private property rights in history are in fact bad governments.
Our government was set up by the people to enforce principles that are (suppose to be) self evident. Our government doesn't create private property; they only enforce the already existing concept that certain things are private property. When our government ceases protecting these rights, we are suppose to have the right to free ourselves from this bad government, and recreate one that is good. That is what the US founding fathers did. This is what the whole Declaration of Independence was about.
That all being said, the fact is big companies many times do abuse their monopoly positions. So to does government, which by definition is a monopoly too. If these two monopolies get together and collude against the average joe, then we are in trouble. I don't trust anything big - big companies, big governments, big armies. It is hard to defend my personal property against anything big. That is one reason why I like small government and small companies.
The internet should be like roads. They are public and owned by the government - which by extension should mean they are owned by all the people equally. I have no trouble with the concept of government taking over ownership of the net. Let the federal government own the big highways, the state governments own the medium highways, and the county and city governments own the local roads. Not to say the government always handles the road perfectly but I do think what we have in the US is not bad. The private companies should be properly compensated for the government takeover of the internet.
Then people can decide at the government level how they want their internet. They want higher speeds or higher costs - let this be played out in politics. Each political level handles the appropriate issues. Our roads today are mostly free but governments do tax usage through gas prices. Why should the net be handled any differently?
If somebody wants to download huge movies all the time, charge them accordingly. If they use little bandwidth, then charge them little. If they want a big pipe to their house, then they have to handle the cost of all this infrastructure. If governments want to offer deals to stimulate business in their area, then let them do it - just like they currently do.
So I really do not see this issue much different from that of our roads. I do not like the fact that I do not have a vote with the private companies who currently control the internet wires. They can make deals happen without us knowing what all is going on. The issue is really a public verse private thing. I say make it all public and let us deal with it like our physical roads.
So yes, I did say I am in favor of small government and then just went ahead and said we should make government bigger. There are legitimate reasons for government and I think this is one of them.
I also think people should pass laws restricting the sizes of companies. Again it goes back to the dangers caused by things big. What exactly these laws are should be determined by the people. Keep government as local as possible and so too ownership of companies. One proposal could be to require companies have local ownership, just like we demand our politicians be local.
I don't know if this is the best solution, but laws something like this would go a long way toward solving monopoly problems. I think we need to look at all the options going forward and let people debate it all out thoroughly.
I’ve found that, in many cases, less control–not more–leads to greater success.
You're younger than I thought if you don't remember the telecom deregulation in the 1980s that screwed everything up.
This point of view is so stupid as to cause one to wonder if you even realize how highly regulated the industry is already.
The ISP are not controlling your service hey are rather making sure that the heavy users of their facility pay their fair share. It is not unlike the trucking industry and the high taxes they pay for access to the roads. T
Heavy users are already paying their fair share. That's why a 50mbps connection costs more than a 25mpbs connection. What do the extra fees go toward if not to finance the extra burden placed on the ISP by the increased bandwidth?
You could say that about what I ate yesterday or who I spoke with this morning. These days I’m basically just a shell of what used to be a person.
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I wonder about another scenario, in which the government is responsible for the buildout and replacement of copper with optical cable nationwide, but simply turns over access and use thereof to companies in the respective industries that would use it, leaving them to compete on an equal footing, infrastructure-wise. This would require a government significantly different than the one of today (one which follows its own laws), so perhaps that’s a pipe dream for when we can again trust the idiots who govern, or at least give them fear of the accountability we would hold...
I’ll go read up on that deregulation.
The point I was trying to get across is that health regulations do not guarantee that you won't get sick from food. In the end you still need for people to follow good practices. That is exactly what people are expecting out of net neutrality. They are expecting that everybody should pay a flat rate for Internet access no matter the burden they place on the net. Really read the comments you and other have posted. Everybody is up in arms over Netflix working a deal with ISPs to make sure they have the bandwidth they need. Net neutrality implies that that shouldn't be possible.
Beyond all of that the various connection methods one can pay for all impose bandwidth limitations based on the tech used. By definition high performance connections cost more money so there is no way to provide net neutrality unless you forced everyone to use the same sort of connection to the net.
Honestly I don't think you have a clue here as to the damage that net neutrality can cause if taken to the extent some want. I really don't know what to think of somebody that posts such non sense. Content providers are by definition customers of the ISP, they impact the net dramatically in some cases and as such it is their responsibility to pay their fair share. Net neutrality is the opposite of fair play in my mind as it allows big operations like Netflix and Apple to coop the net while paying the same rates as some smal time web operator. Why would you want Apple to use up so much of the world Internet caoacity and not pay a fair price for that usage? Apple can certainly afford it as can Netflix and the ten or so other major users of the net. In the end the alternative is excessive rates burdening the small time user. Actually you are completely wrong here! Net neutrality would mean no guarantees of performance. Apple would be prohibited from contracting for preferred service. It is a really disgusting concept if you think about it. It is like going to the butcher and trying to pay extra for a nice cut of beef and being told you can't have that because you are required to pay the same as everybody else. Do you really think that deep down Apple, Netflix or some of the others really want to support net neutrality. They might paint a public face that sorta supports it but deep down they know it would be very very bad for their businesses. These companies rely upon high quality of service to deliver their product.
Speaking of advertising, I'm seeing an explosion of such on the net lately. Heavy bandwidth consuming advertising too. This is very frustrating when you consider how much one pays for bandwidth these days. Net neutrality will just make this problem worst as every Tom, Dick and Harry tries to make a buck over their net neutrality connection.
In any event I really think you need to go out and enjoy a few beers and think hard about what you are supporting here. Net neutrality is a hideous concept. It makes about as much sense as me paying taxes to support the trucking industry because they shouldn't have to pay anything more for their heavy usage of the public roads than I do. It is asinine really.
The way I see it, this is all very simple really
How much one is paying for internet/cable service has nothing to do with net neutrality, but everything to do with monopolies. If ISPs are going to use net neutrality as an excuse to increase prices or provide lower levels of service, then fight that. See that we have regulations to prevent that from happening.
I am pretty sure others have already covered what I have said on this thread and some have been more detailed. But this is an important issue because so much of what we do today is dependent on the internet, either directly or indirectly. And it should be kept open and neutral and we should have regulations in place to guarantee that.
I don't know about TS but I lived through all of that and in many ways deregulation was a fantastic success. Nothing is perfect of course but that deregulation freed up the market enough that we now have things like the iPhone that frankly I couldn't have imagined in the 80's. I was a big Star Trek fan back then too so I imagined al, sorts of things.
I won't say that that deregulation was perfect but it certainly usered in an era of rapid change for the communications industry.
Let the free market decide what happens...
Wow! Talk about somebody incapable of grasping reality here!
Of course they're incapable. How do you know whether raw chicken has been left out unrefrigerated or whether someone used a knife on raw poultry and then used that same knife to cut your sandwich resulting in salmonella poisoning?
You will know when you are rushed to the hospital or have to invest large quantities of Imodium, The thing here is inspections seldom catch such screw ups. Even if you have an inspector stationed at the restaurant mistakes will happen, it is human nature. Make enough mistakes and people will no longer return to a restaurant.
The fact is health departments do not close down that many restaurants. More close due to word of mouth than anything.
Actually at one restaurant the waitress out and told me the freezer was on the blink thus no ice cream????????????. Ethical behavior isn't an impossibility and unethical behavior is often very hard to catch.
The other way to look at this is that returns take deliveries in bulk. Often critters come along for the ride, keeping a restaurant clear of such critter is an ongoing task. It becomes a problem when that task is neglected.
While there may be many health rules for restaurants that are overkill and unnecessary and some inspectors apply the rules inconsistently and drive the owners crazy, restaurant health inspections have kept thousands of people from getting sick and it has also without a doubt, saved some lives. I won't eat in a restaurant that doesn't have an "A" rating.
An "A" rating from whom?
Your perspective here is confusing. I fully support food preparation standards and the like. Inspections by the health department are certainly important but all of that regulation does not assure safe food. It is the personal willingness of the workers in the restaurant to assure that good practices are followed. Without that commitment you have no guarantee of high quality food.
The appearance of a kitchen doesn't correlate to the quality of the food. When I was young and foolish one of the best places to eat locally (bar food) was a strip joint. Let's face it a strip joint isn't always associated with high quality food but here is the thing, if the person in the kitchen takes a personal interest in his job you will get good results. All the regulation in the world won't make up for the need for the process owners to do their job correctly.
I've also travels a bit and frankly the same thoughts apply. I've seen people get sick from food in highly regulated countries while nothing happens on the various Caribbean islands I've visited. In the end it is up to the people delivering to do a decent job with food prep.
9,999 posts.
Will you ever make 10,000?
Beyond that I don't believe in the evil corporation matra. Corporations are as good or evil as the people leading them. Unfortunately the bad ones make for the juicy news stories. Everybody loved AT&T when it was a monopoly. I'm not even sure you could reasonably classify AT&T as evil. Beyond that monoplies seldom last forever. ITunes for example has been claimed to be a monopoly but iTunes is already in decline. Sometimes patients takes care of a lot of these so called monploies.
So basically, the more you "own" the more "property rights" you lay claim to. Then I have nothing because as a cable subscriber I "own" no "property." Am I reading you correctly? I have to own a cable property to have any say in this democracy, right?
Well a lot of people here aren't Americans so that might be part of the problem. Then there is a contingent of people that are so far left they think they should be free to walk into anybodies house, at any time and take whatever they want. Many of these people are obviously participants in the welfare state and as such offer no value to humanity.
This is perhaps the biggest problem I see with Obamas proposal, it amounts to public theft of private property. A government run utility like the roads isn't impossible but we as a community need to be willing to pay for it.
The only problem I see here is that companies like Netflix need to pay for the burden they put on the network.
There is some sense that this might be a better path than the one Obama is proposing. The big problem I have with this is that I see the decay in our infrastructure and how some states neglect that infra structure. Sadly I live in New York right now and see how far our infrastructure has decayed under the current leadership in Albany. What is telling is driving out of the state be it Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont or whatever and see the differences in the roads when crossing the border. In fact I've taken recent auto trips all the way to Florida and can say with confidence that we have the worst roads I've seen. So the idea of NY being involved in supporting the Internet here is not all that appealing. In other states where the government actually works for the people it might work out well.
Yeah well that flies in the face of reality. These days we need massive companies just so they will hold their own against what is out there in the rest of the world. Beyond that ownership in most corporations is via the stock holders. There is no good reason to demand that a stock holder live near a companies head quarters.
Beyond that I don't believe in the evil corporation matra. Corporations are as good or evil as the people leading them. Unfortunately the bad ones make for the juicy news stories.
Everybody loved AT&T when it was a monopoly. I'm not even sure you could reasonably classify AT&T as evil. Beyond that monoplies seldom last forever. ITunes for example has been claimed to be a monopoly but iTunes is already in decline. Sometimes patients takes care of a lot of these so called monploies.
AT&T was broken up by the Government it did not dissolve on it's own.
The American people have been subsidizing these companies for years. They made certain promises for these huge subsidies that they have not kept. A lot of people here keep screaming about a free market. There is no such thing, at least not in the purest sense of the concept. Tax dollars go to build a new McDonalds in your neighborhood, Sports stadiums, oil companies. If you believe in a truly FREE market all of this corporate welfare would go away. They would have to operate on their own bottom line. Tax loopholes would be closed. Capitalism is not a form of government. We already know the damage corporate interests left unchecked can do to this nation. All we have to do is look at history. This idea that somehow an entity whose sole objective is to make money will do the right thing without being regulated is naive. Some regulations are outdated or unnecessary, get rid of those but business totally unregulated is nonsense. We had this already in our country & about 4 guys ran just about everything. People worked ridiculous hours with no care for their safety or well being.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240.shtml?
http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
Well a lot of people here aren't Americans so that might be part of the problem. Then there is a contingent of people that are so far left they think they should be free to walk into anybodies house, at any time and take whatever they want. Many of these people are obviously participants in the welfare state and as such offer no value to humanity.
This is perhaps the biggest problem I see with Obamas proposal, it amounts to public theft of private property. A government run utility like the roads isn't impossible but we as a community need to be willing to pay for it.
The only problem I see here is that companies like Netflix need to pay for the burden they put on the network.
There is some sense that this might be a better path than the one Obama is proposing. The big problem I have with this is that I see the decay in our infrastructure and how some states neglect that infra structure. Sadly I live in New York right now and see how far our infrastructure has decayed under the current leadership in Albany. What is telling is driving out of the state be it Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont or whatever and see the differences in the roads when crossing the border. In fact I've taken recent auto trips all the way to Florida and can say with confidence that we have the worst roads I've seen. So the idea of NY being involved in supporting the Internet here is not all that appealing. In other states where the government actually works for the people it might work out well.
Yeah well that flies in the face of reality. These days we need massive companies just so they will hold their own against what is out there in the rest of the world. Beyond that ownership in most corporations is via the stock holders. There is no good reason to demand that a stock holder live near a companies head quarters.
Beyond that I don't believe in the evil corporation matra. Corporations are as good or evil as the people leading them. Unfortunately the bad ones make for the juicy news stories.
Everybody loved AT&T when it was a monopoly. I'm not even sure you could reasonably classify AT&T as evil. Beyond that monoplies seldom last forever. ITunes for example has been claimed to be a monopoly but iTunes is already in decline. Sometimes patients takes care of a lot of these so called monploies.
1. Nobody is talking about walking into peoples houses and helping themselves to anything the want. And the welfare system has nothing whatsoever to do with net neutrality.
2. How is net neutrality taking away property rights? Nobody is advocating taking away anyones property. The ISP is providing a service and are being paid by the consumers for that service.
3. Netflix already pays for infrastructure costs. If there is more traffic originating from Netflix it's because there are more consumers of their content. And consumers are already paying for this. Netflix is not just sending out movies onto the internet. If I want to watch something in high-def, then I pay for higher download speeds. Netflix shouldn't have to pay more to the ISP so that their content is given preference or is on par with other content. These charges will eventually be passed onto the consumer and the consumer ends up paying twice for the same content.
4. Yes, corporations are only as evil as people running them and only the evil things that the do make for "juicy" news stories. It's because when these big corporations behave unethically or engage in illegal activities, it can have devastating effects on the lives of others. Look at the recent financial crisis.
They are customers in the sense that I am a customer of the snail mail providers when I receive a post; however I am not charged. That wasn't always the case but charging the receiver didn't work as he didn't necessarily ask for the post.
The modern Internet, which is largely net neutral, isn't going to survive your dystopian right wing fantasies about freedom for monopolised rentiers of the pipe to your house, and the lack of freedom to the end user to access the content he wants.
Yet the government can forcefully purchase private property using eminent domain.
Simpler times yes. Those thin copper wires were inside of cables thicker than your arm, and covered in a sheath made of lead. That build out was exponentially more difficult than laying fiber optic cable as thin as a finger. Btw those central offices still do the switching.
Trucks pay more at toll booths, so why is it unreasonable to ask the trucks of the internet to pay a higher toll.