jSnively

tallest skil said:

[...]

Correct; the classification difference between Title I and Title II (requiring broadcast licenses). Equality of bits is fully capable of being enforced without BL regulation over ISPs.

The Verizon lawsuit empirically proved that it's not -- at least not via the FCC. I posted this in another thread, but the easiest fix to the problem as a whole is to regulate under title II so the FCC has all the power it needs to do everything it needs.That absolutely comes with some baggage, yes. And while Title II isn't the technically correct answer, the "technically correct" fix is rife with enough additional problems and complexities it makes it not only a worse overall solution, but also almost completely politically unfeasible.

The FTC does what it can where it can, but it doesn't have the power to address all of the concerns. The way that it defines and enforces 'unfairness', for example, would still allow telecommunication companies to create fast and slow lanes, as well as selectively block services so long as they are counter-balanced with other 'benefits'. That is not equality of bits. The FTC is not equipped to govern a 'fair' internet. They are more than happy to tell you that they are, because that means more potential funding and expanded powers for them, but it's not the truth. It's a mess. Governing everything under Title II by far makes the most sense.

tallest skil said:

[...]

The problem, unfortunately, is that “legal pressure” is the equivalent of the honor system these days. Honored, of course, for everyone but “you and yours” (meaning a given government/governmental body and its current band of financial supporters/lobbyists). It’s ironic, but what we really need is civilian authoritarianism over government operation. 

It's hard to disagree. The Internet was like the one thing that actually worked for decades on the honor system. We're past that point now, the genie is out of the bottle. Unfortunately civilian authoritarianism doesn't work here, the internet is too large, too global, and has too many vested interests. The FCC had to step in because it became clear that the FTC was ill-equipped to handle the task at hand, and most importantly, the people demanded it.

lowededwookie said:

Forgive me for asking but I live in New Zealand so I don’t understand how America works but isn’t the FTC higher than the FCC? If so wouldn’t that be the best place to settle the issue because it has higher coverage?

In New Zealand we had similar issue with Telecom who controlled the infrastructure and set prices too high for competitors. In the end the government stepped in and forced Telecom to open up to competitors properly. As a result we’ve got fibre to the door for free in available areas, unlimited text messages, high amount of voice calling time, although our data plans on cellular suck but on fibre and ADSL they’re pretty good.

Sometimes the government DOES need to get involved but America just seems so unwilling to allow it despite it being in their best interests. I just don’t understand that mentality to be honest.

I know the FCC made the worst decision for everyone but to me it seems the FTC is the better place to sort the issue out. But once again I’m looking from the outside in.

That's a good question, and at the heart of argument between the majority parties we have here.

The Democrats will tell you that the FTC doesn't have enough power to address all the problems that can arise from a lack of net neutrality, and the Republicans will tell you that they have more than they need. The reality is that the Democrats are more correct on this issue. The "technically correct" answer ends up being the messiest and most expensive to implement -- It involves both agencies with overlapping jurisdiction and/or expanded powers.

Right now the FCC enjoys all the power it needs, so long as ISPs fall under Title II, so that's a much cleaner and easier fix for the problem as a whole. It does come with some extra overhead, but still far less than would exist if the 'technically correct' fix were to be implemented.

sumergo said:

tallest skil said:

StrangeDays said:

...it's about treating all bits equally and not being able to charge more for bits from targeted websites/publishers.

It’s not about that at all. The FCC held ISPs accountable under the Open Internet Rules (no throttling, no blocking, no paid-prioritization) long before your “net neutrality” push. “Net neutrality” came about as a result of the government refusing to let the FCC do that UNLESS they also forced ISPs to get broadcast licenses (revocable by the government at any time for any reason). “Net neutrality” is totally unnecessary in the enforcement of “treating all bits equally.”

Now I'm really confused.  The Brookings institute seems to use "Open Internet rule" as a synonym for "net neutrality".
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/unpacked/2017/09/15/what-is-the-open-internet-rule/

I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Open Internet Order, the legal failings of which caused the 2015 net neutrality rules that got passed. The FCC lost a very big case vs Verizon on the basis that ISPs were "information services" and not "communication services" (which have different governing bodies). Therefore, the FCC sought to reclassify the ISPs (as is their job) under title II so that they could then actually enforce the rules proposed in the Open Internet Order. That's how this all started.

So what is being claimed is patently false. The Open Internet Order only functioned via the honor system, and when that honor system was betrayed, enforcement failed when put under legal pressure. That's why Net Neutrality is even something we're even talking about.

wizard69 said:

tzeshan said:

[...]

You have reading problem. I do not use Netflix. I am paying the same heavy fee to the ISP as you that watch movie through internet for your own enjoyment.  Is that fair? 

Net neutrality isnt fair.   It is all about greedy people trying to grt others to pay for the services they use.  

What needs to happen is to have users pay for the bits transmitted.  Effectively it is equivalent to paying for phone calls by the minute.    This way heavy users would be paying their fair share and rightfully suffering for excessive use.  

You're both talking about something that isn't really net neutrality. Net neutrality is about ensuring that the pathway of (legal) information from wherever you choose go on the internet gets treated in roughly the same manner as all the other information. It doesn't really have anything to do with bandwidth caps you may or may not have on your connection, or how much data you consume in any given time period. That's just conflating the issue. What it absolutely does do, is stop providers from creating 'fast' and 'slow' pathways for information through their networks. That means Comcast can't strike a deal with Microsoft to prioritize Skype video traffic while throttling FaceTime traffic to make it appear a less reliable service.

No sane consumer should be against this. There are arguments to be made that are more nuanced about what was passed in 2015 -- someone could say some of the extra rules on top of that core principle overreach, etc. But the core of what net neutrality is and what it means, is a system that we've basically had in place and enjoyed since the dawn of the Internet. it's just always been an honor system that people have done an okay job of sticking to.

So why regulate then, if everything was running smoothly? The "official" republican line on this is that "there was nothing wrong with the internet before", but, frankly, that is some really dumb revisionist history. These rules were codified because teclos started to act in bad faith, not because of some politically motivated over-reach (despite what they will say to the contrary (do your research)). The board has forever changed due to their actions, and large telecommunication companies spend millions of dollars rearranging everything in their favor. The honor system will no longer work, because the conditions by which it previously flourished are no longer the conditions of the law or the market. That ship has sailed.

it's only a matter of time until we start seeing major companies like AT&T and Comcast and Spectrum start to weasel their way further into consumer's pocket books. They will frame it as a boon for the user -- probably start by selling packages will offer 'BEST' speeds to popular services or bundling services they own with all kind of 'enhancements' (not counting against your data caps, or at a higher bitrate) and the public will eat it up, because your average Joe is going to think they're getting a deal. That 'deal' comes with a terrible cost though.

This approach gives the telecommunication companies the power to pick the future winners and losers of the internet, especially when it comes to high bandwidth activities. Not only can they demand extra money from services that use a lot of bandwidth (which I'm actually not wholly against within reason -- if a Netflix sub goes up a couple bucks a month because that pass that charge on to you, fine), but more insidiously it gives them the power to engage in anti-competitive throttling and even outright blocking of information. Why would you use a video chat service if it was always dropping calls, or a messaging service if your messages kept getting lost in the ether? It creates an environment where lesser used services and protocols can be completely excluded and moved to higher-priced tiers (eventually we could see 'developer' tiers for stuff like SSH and SFTP and RDP), and an environment that is far more rife for privacy and security issues (deep packet inspection, reflection, analysis, and logging is much easier when you don't have to worry about about keeping up appearances). This gives commercial interests that power -- and more. Most critically, it demotivates entrepreneurs to work in the space because their ideas can be ostracized from huge swaths of users, or worse, cloned and stolen by large corporations with many more resources than them.

It's a fundamental rethinking of what the Internet is, and how it has been treated from a developer perspective up until this point. When a packet is no longer basically a packet, things get a whole lot more complicated. This is bad for everybody except for the telecommunication companies.

This is not a partisan issue. This is a very straightforward issue made partisan by a government that appears to perpetually, and idiotically, govern by declaring whatever the other side of the aisle does as bad. The only silver lining here is that this repeal can, in time, also be repealed when things go south. However, the longer it is in effect, and the longer it generates revenue for these large corporations, the more politically difficult it will become to undo.

tjwolf said:

I was more or less with you until the last paragraph when you tried - and failed miserably - to tie the latest tech - AR and self driving car - to Apple's supposed reason for wanting to keep net neutrality.  Why the he11 would an AR headset be any more dependent on 4G/cellular than the existing iPhone?  You gave the pitiful 'Siri' and 'navigation' answer - both of which already exist in the iPhone.  For your self-driving car reason, you made up some far-fetched sh1t about self-driving cars needing to tie into Apple's cloud services and generating totally made-up 'terrabytes of data per day'.  No explanation as to what the he11 for, but hey - let's throw in a few terabytes???

Because that's where the data is, and that's where the data goes. When you're talking extremely small form factor devices (like say AR glasses) you need a place to store all the data that you can't store on the device. Things like up-to-the-minute traffic conditions, specific labeling of objects and persons in the world around you etc. In order to train these neural nets on what any of this stuff is, you need to provide them with lots of input. The easiest way to get that input is to send (as anonymously as possible) data from millions of consumer's devices. All this stuff is going to be pretty network intensive for a while.

Take for instance the simple idea of picking up a box of lucky charms in the grocery store aisle:

Your devices needs to recognize that OK this is lucky charms -- that alone requires a lot of computer vision work (which cloud processing would probably speed up). OK now let's pull up all the nutrition information (lets pull it from an official data-store somewhere online so we know it's up to date), OK, let's maybe give the user some data about alternatives (poll online profile and retailer purchase history (GPS + online 3rd party integration layer) to identify other foods they may like.) Maybe then recommend some milk as a compliment, but almond milk because you're lactose intolerant (querying a health profile online). What if the user then asks a context-based question to Siri based off the object they're holding like "Hey Siri, when was the last time I bought some junk food?" -- again you've gotta go back to some sort of store to look that information up.

OK, now imagine a good chunk of that is done in real-time for every object you see as you walk down the aisle (gotta pre-buffer after all). What about overlaying enticing animations with mascot cartoon characters over the boxes, or changing the boxes themselves so that when you pick them up you're given a dopamine hit of a good sound and a fun animation plays on the box cover. All this stuff will start taking up very large amounts of data.

Remember there was a time when even someone as tech-involved as Bill Gates said 640K of RAM ought to be enough for anyone