FCC rescinds claim that AT&T and Verizon violated net neutrality
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Isn't that the anti definition of net neutrality?
https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Trumps-New-FCC-Boss-Halt...
https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/fcc-mignon-clyburn-ajit-pa...
so... problem solved? s/
Yes, zero-rating is a direct affront to net neutrality: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/zero-rating-what-it-is...
But I don't think that we're going to see many successes in net neutrality at the federal level anytime soon - the fight really has to be carried out at the state level.
Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint uses 0 rating.
That's the entirety of the American wireless infrastructure.
It is literally impossible to use 4g wireless communication in America without patronizing directly or indirectly a 0 rating neutrality violator.
Price is part of the market competition.
Yes, different modes of transportation cost more. The problem is charging different services a different rate on that mode of transportation.
Sure, a wireless network can cost more, and people can pay more. What net neutrality is about protection from being charged more for bits coming from a competitor. This protection is both good for the customer and the market competition. Without it in fact you can't have market competition. All you will end up with his monopolies. I personally think it is high time that internet access be regulated as a utility and decoped from any secondary media businesses.
A wireless customer is paying for wireless access and should not have any bill charge difference for the bandwidth they paid for regardless of the backend source.
The best analogy I can come up with is this. There are 2 major stores in your town that sale widgets.
Company A owns a single widget store. Company B owns a single widget store and a toll road.
This toll road is the ONLY way to get to company A's and company B's widget store. This is mostly due to lobbying and unfair protracted company B takes part in to ensure that there are no other roads. The problem is that company B stops and ask each driver where they are going when they enter the toll road. They charge one price to cars who are going to company B's widget store and a higher price to cars going to company A's widget store. Both drivers will be on the toll road for the same time as its only a small strip of road, but still the only road.
You do see the problem right?
As long as traffic coming in and out at same rate for every provider, FCC should relax and watch.
Moreover, I know information theory, so I see no problem at all for hacker like me. I will just use uuencode/uudecode.
No because it's their own service. The definition would be for someone else's service.
Let's pretend this is comcast and they are sending cable TV over the same wire as internet data. (Which they do.) Does that violate Net Neutrality?
If not (and I think most people would say not), what's the difference?
The bare fact that you can argue if there is or isn't a difference already tells you this isn't a clear Net Neutrality case.
The phrase I quoted says that the big companies allow you to use their service free of any caps, but if you want to use a 3rd parites same service you are going to be capped. Therefore it's not neutral. The 3rd parties can pay to have cap removed, which puts it into the non-neutral territory.
He was general counsel for Verizon, which is typical for regulatory capture stooges as far as career choices go, but worked for Jenner & Block, who's primary public record is heavily left-leaning. He's an Obama appointee, but on the recommendation of McConnell.
My guess is that Jenner & Block probably fronts a lot of left-leaning legal cases outside of their bread & butter, which is telco, giving them a good face across the board with Congress. Meanwhile, his prior appointment to the FCC was almost certainly a horse trade between McConnell and Obama.
Pai has been more or less a telco puppet for the last 15 years in one role or another.
The interesting thing about this is that regulatory capture is generally in support of further regulation rather than against. This implies that net neutrality is actually either a grass-roots regulation (highly unlikely), or there is an inversion of concern over the general case. My guess is that the monopoly positions that telcos hold has inverted the normal regulatory capture process at the FCC, and that the primary consumers of the content (Amazon, Netflix, etc) are very shrewd operators who can see through regulatory rhetoric.
By law the FCC can have no more than three of the five Commissioners from the same political party, so it is quite normal for a President to appoint two Commissioners from the major party that the President is not a member of. It is not required, but I believe most or all Presidents (so far...) have picked their "not my party" appointees by asking the other party's Senate leadership who to nominate.
What is needed is a bunch of these people to move to swing states where the vote really matters. Places like OH, FL, etc.
But, the blue states people have built their own little comfortable enclaves in their respective states and there's little chance they'll be moving to places like AK, TN, or MS.
Now, why does this matter? Well, because it's clear the republicans are pro big business and in the case of net neutrality, pro locking up the internet for the few (the few being, big media/telecom companies). There will never be a pro-citizen net neutrality policy as long as the republicans/big-business types are running the show.
So, living in CA, for instance, doesn't matter much in this case. Having a progressive, pro-net mentality will make much more difference in swing states.
We're very aware of how much Hollywood and the RIAA/MPAA want their claws in as much of the internet as they can to "protect the entertainment industry." They were drooling over SOPA/PIPA/COICA/etc.
The democrats will happily lock up the internet in favor of their own big media/telecom interests too. That's something I think people often forget. Remember, one of the first things Obama did was hire five former RIAA lawyers to the DOJ.
Alas, I don't think there are enough of these types to actually effectively hack elections like that.
I really think that the American left (and I say this as a pretty far left guy myself) is still caught in a hangover from the civil rights era, where we're fighting for the rights of increasingly smaller groups of people so we can still be seen as the liberal / progressive party, while ignoring economic issues that are so hard to fight for in our version of democractic government.
I'm not disagreeing with you about Net Neutrality, but to assume your opinion is enlightened or progressive for a people you've never met is very narcissistic.
I'm talking about for the people in general. Net Neutrality within the U.S. has absolutely no bearing on me personally as I'm neither a U.S. citizen, nor a resident. I'm merely opining because I am interested in the well-being of my fellow humans... in this instance, Americans and residents affected by internet service providers looking to dishonestly gouge their customers.
I care about you guys and your struggles, I care when I see people being taken advantage of, I care about the erosion of your constitutional rights, I care when I see you having to struggle to have your voices heard by a system that doesn't give a fuck about you except for how quickly they can part you from your money. I care because I see your struggles every day, I listen to your complaints, I follow your news, I read and I watch. I speak from a place of wanting to fight your causes. I live on the internet and it's hard to stand by and watch your internet gradually being taken away and used to exploit you.
So to assume I'm narcissistic without knowing anything about my background or my motives for comment is slightly er... I don't even have a word to finish that sentence.
Wrong, you mean swing states.
> If you're a liberal, progressive, futurist, etc, and you're living in states like CA or NY or OR, then statistically speaking, those states are pretty much gonna go democrat regardless. So your vote counts 'less' there.
Just as it counts less if you're a Republican in one of those states. Or a Democrat in Mississippi.
> But, the blue states people have built their own little comfortable enclaves in their respective states and there's little chance they'll be moving to places like AK, TN, or MS.
But when they want to escape the tax climate they'll move to Colorado or Wyoming or Austin, TX.
Now if only we had a president in office who lamented what a travesty the electoral college was, and how it should be done away with ...
Current first-past-the-post states are incentivized under the current regime to stay that way because it makes for more opportunity to be treated as a "ballroom belle" ("swing state") each election cycle, which brings money and attention to the state it might not ever see otherwise.
It's possible, though sadly unlikely, you could fix the current regime by fixing things from the bottom up at the state legislature level, one state at a time if need be.
It shows you the nearest districts and what margin they were won by so you can sign up and get involved between now and the midterms of 2018.
At this point it isn't even really so much blue-state versus red-state: it's a lot closer to city versus rural/country.
It's actually a decent place for technology workers: the jobs and schools are good and it offers a decent standard of living at a low cost.
If we publicize telco infrastructure and rent it out to various companies, that would solve much of the probl..."OH!! BUT then it's not free market! Each carrier should have to buy their own infrastructure otherwise it's not fair!! Blah blah" Right, even though much of the infrastructure was built with public funds. Ok, so back to net neutrality? "No! Government regulations are evil! The free market can solve this!"
How, exactly? Can someone tell me how the free market can deliver net neutrality with federal, state, and local governments in the pocket of the large telcos? I'm actually asking.
Nothing at all I'm sure. I doubt that demographic knows or cares about net neutrality.
In general Congress has to pass a law declaring the ISPs utilities. Then net neutrality is a good thing. The problem is that none of the congress (obviously a generalization) really care about the topic. It appears to be too much for them to understand that AT&T made the claim that bandwidth over the wireless is limited. They went so far as to say that caps were needed. Now AT&T has changed it argument, "Our bandwidth is too limited for our users to use services from providers that we haven't made a peering deal with." Congress can't understand that peering or not, wireless spectrum is limited. Too complex.
If you write your representatives, you might need to use really basic language. Think Alan Shore explaining the pharmaceutical case to Denny.
edit: grammar.
They could create a industry standard for testing mobile internet speed against CDNs of all major video providers, and then use their respective video services to ingrain it into customers minds that they have to use this when shopping for a mobile internet provider.
This might just create enough pressure on the cell providers for one of them to break the ranks and start treating all such traffic with respect.
communication from washington is that they want this to be fought at the state and local level
Hopefully this will promote self-organizing mesh providers. There is (or will be) money to be made in cheap, fast, unfiltered internet.