Net Neutrality rules are good or bad?

[Sean Kyle]

What do you guys think about this? Do you think that the FCC's Chairman is right in what he's doing or the previous government was right to keep these rules?

 

[khon]

The answer to that should be fairly obvious to everyone who doesn't work for an ISP.

With net neutrality all websites are treated the same, so the internet is open and fair.

Without net neutrality the ISP can set different speeds for data from different websites, which effectively allows them to censor content they don't like, or give companies that pay them extra preferential treatment over everyone else.

Unfortunately for all of us the current FCC chairman used to be a lobbyist for the ISPs, and I'm sure he will go back to working for them after he leaves the FCC, so it's pretty clear where his loyalty lies.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

The whole idea that Google, Netflix, etc., are perps doing bad things when it is the ISPs' customers generating the traffic just shows how evil the ISPs are at spinning stuff around for the ignorant and paid-off politicians.

 

[Fenixgoon]

considering that ISPs are absolute assholes and would charge you for every little thing if they could, yes. the internet needs to be a level playing field - ISPs should just be moving bits from A to B, and it doesn't matter whose they are or what those bits make up.

want to watch netflix? oh sorry, that's $10/mo, but as comcast we'll give you our on-demand services at no charge!

innovation for days /s

 

[Red Squirrel]

Removing net neutrality is a bad thing for everyone, and even if you don't live in the states. For example if you host your site in the states, but even if you don't host in the states, any American that tries to access your site will get dialup speeds if they don't pay their ISP to be in the fast lane. If you do host in the states then everyone gets dialup speeds unless you pay your hosting provider's ISP to be in the fast lane. Though I'm speculating, as I don't think there's actual plans on what ISPs want to do, just speculation on what they COULD do. And probably will.

 

[snoopy7548]

Anyone who is against net neutrality (I wish we didn't even need it, but that's another discussion) either works top-level for or is paid by an ISP. We already have speed tiers. We don't need website tiers.

I have to wonder what throttling certain websites would do in regards to the legal-speak of the service. Right now you subscribe to a speed tier (ex. 25 down/15 up) and that speed is "guaranteed." When ISPs start throttling certain websites and services, how is that speed even remotely "guaranteed" anymore? Almost seems like you need to either have different speed tiers and keep everything wide open, or get everybody onto a single speed tier and throttle whatever you want. Having it both ways just won't work.

edit: Nevermind. Had a brain fart. The speeds are "up to..." The ISPs are all good to throttle away.

 

[Pulsar]

Yep - net neutrality is a must. We're gonna get screwed. We have a few anti-net-neutrality folks here, and they universally work in the ISP business.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

That is an interesting this, if you ask me. It is one thing to adopt an employer's attitude, but if you can't think off the job like Joe SixPack and use your wallet wisely then why bother?

 

[Red Squirrel]

On sorta similar subject they were proposing an internet tax here, Trudeau officially decided against it. Glad he made the right move... We recently had to fight net neutrality too but won. So far so good...

I just hate that this crap comes up all the time though, it's a never ending battle and eventually the corporations will get their way.

 

[ImpulsE69]

It should be illegal that the head of the FCC has that much conflict of interest. As if anyone in those positions has the moral fortitude to do the 'right thing'.

 

[MrDudeMan]

It should be illegal that the head of the FCC has that much conflict of interest. As if anyone in those positions has the moral fortitude to do the 'right thing'.

The bigger issue is how hard it is to replace people even when we collectively know they're doing the wrong things.

 

[CA19100]

Net neutrality is very important to keep, and we're going down a path that will stifle innovation. I think a lot of the opposition to the concept comes from lack of understanding.

I use a telephone analogy: Let's say you want to order a pizza. Dominos and a new local Italian place are in the same neighborhood, and each has a phone line to take orders. You try to call the local joint, and you get an "all circuits are busy" message over and over again, and it takes you ten minutes to get through. (Or, more likely, you give up.) A call to Dominos gets through immediately.

How could that happen? Because the new President killed "Phone Neutrality," which treated all phone calls the same. Despite the fact that you paid your phone bill, and the local joint paid its phone bill, Dominos used its deep pockets to pay for priority access to the phone network, which the startup restaurant couldn't afford. It used those deep pockets to drive the local joint out of business, preventing new competition from ever getting off the ground.

This hypothetical scenario doesn't happen in the telephone world because of the Communications Act of 1934, which was later expanded to include the internet. But it will be possible now that the new administration is reversing that. An innovation like Netflix could never get off the ground today, because your one-and-only high-speed internet provider would throttle its traffic in favor of their $6-per-movie On Demand service.

Think it can't happen? It did happen, in 2014: https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/

Netflix had to pay off Comcast to make its service usable again, which it could only afford because the company had grown large enough. Nevermind that the end-users had already paid for that bandwidth in their monthly internet bill -- now Comcast gets to beat the same money out of the other end of the connection, too, increasing its profits at your expense. Netflix now costs 25% more than it did in 2014, while inflation over the same period was 3.4%.

This is the future without net neutrality in place. Popular web sites will be extorted by every large ISP, and you'll end up paying for it.

 

[Elixer]

...
Netflix had to pay off Comcast to make its service usable again...

Netflix could care less now, when the shoe is on the other foot.

The big problem here is, there is no competition to fix this, and FCC is acting like there is.
Usually, you only got 1 choice for "high speed" (cable), and 1 for "meh" (DSL).

The other problem is, there needs to be laws in place, and the FCC can't do that. It is up to congress to do it, and they are all chickens, afraid of the media empires.

 

[zCypher]

Anyone who is against net neutrality (I wish we didn't even need it, but that's another discussion) either works top-level for or is paid by an ISP. We already have speed tiers. We don't need website tiers.

I have to wonder what throttling certain websites would do in regards to the legal-speak of the service. Right now you subscribe to a speed tier (ex. 25 down/15 up) and that speed is "guaranteed." When ISPs start throttling certain websites and services, how is that speed even remotely "guaranteed" anymore? Almost seems like you need to either have different speed tiers and keep everything wide open, or get everybody onto a single speed tier and throttle whatever you want. Having it both ways just won't work.

edit: Nevermind. Had a brain fart. The speeds are "up to..." The ISPs are all good to throttle away.

Yeah, it is "up to", but that's actually totally fine. Unless there is a problem with your service, you will get the right speed. If there is a problem, you can troubleshoot it, and you can be reimbursed by the provider's care or retention teams. Where people are misunderstanding is that your provider is giving you access to the internet, and they cannot guarantee your speeds beyond their network, they have no control over the websites you visit or the servers hosting the content you download.

As for the net neutrality, yes, we need rules to limit abuse, but to a point, people have to understand how stuff works too. It's just not going to happen that all sites and services operate at the same speeds and performance to the end user. They aren't going to stop a company who decides to spend more on their peering arrangements to offer better service to their sites. So on and on. But yeah, the ISP should not be in any position to artificially degrade traffic to particular sites in favor of leaving higher performance to the highest bidder.

At least where I work, I have yet to see anything like that happening. Virtually all examples of customers having issues with performance or accessing a particular site, the issue has been completely outside of our network whatsoever. Very rarely, there is an issue with a route on our end that can be fixed, but it's not common, and certainly not nefarious in nature. I can just imagine the support nightmare it would be if they were deliberately messing around with performance to specific sites or peering links.

 

[CA19100]

Netflix could care less now, when the shoe is on the other foot.

That's my point. A new video startup would be damn near impossible now, because Netflix will pay off the big ISPs to ensure the newcomer can't compete.

It's not competition for ISPs that I'm talking about (although I'd like to see that, too). It's that very monopoly that makes net neutrality essential, so that services that use the internet (video on demand, telephony, whatever) can naturally compete with each other without the ISP manipulating their connectivity in favor of the biggest bribe.

The FCC can make policy, but it's very much at the whim of the President and who he appoints, as we're seeing. I'd love to see Congress act on this, but the telecoms are huge political contributors, and you know what that means. I hate our system sometimes.