from the so-long,-interwebs,-it-was-nice-knowing-you dept.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission next month is planning a vote to kill Obama-era rules demanding fair treatment of web traffic and may decide to vacate the regulations altogether, according to people familiar with the plans.
The move would reignite a years-long debate that has seen Republicans and broadband providers seeking to eliminate the rules, while Democrats and technology companies support them. The regulations passed in 2015 bar broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from interfering with web traffic sent by Google, Facebook Inc. and others.
[...] Pai plans to seek a vote in December, said two people who asked not to be identified because the matter hasn't been made public. As the head of a Republican majority, he is likely to win a vote on whatever he proposes.
[...] The agency declined to comment on the timing of a vote. "We don't have anything to report at this point," said Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for the commission.
Related Stories
[Ed note: Some important context for this submission appears in this c|net article: Internet sites to protest Trump Admin's net neutrality plan
A group of activists and websites including Imgur, Mozilla, Pinterest, Reddit, GitHub, Etsy, BitTorrent and Pornhub are planning a campaign Tuesday to draw attention to an upcoming FCC vote that could radically reshape the way the internet works.
[...] Tuesday's campaign is the latest effort by activists to dissuade the FCC from repealing Obama-era rules that effectively classified internet service providers as utilities. The classification, known as Title II, forced companies like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast to treat all internet traffic equally. Last week, protesters marched outside Verizon stores around the US.
Earlier, a handful of tech trailblazers -- including Vint Cerf, a founding figure of the internet Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; and Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web -- posted an open letter on Tumblr criticizing the proposed repeal of net neutrality.
"The FCC's rushed and technically incorrect proposed order to abolish net neutrality protections without any replacement is an imminent threat to the Internet we worked so hard to create," the letter said. "It should be stopped."
Imagine if all sites defaulted to, say, dial-up or ISDN speeds unless they paid extra for full-speed internet. The large, incumbent sites on the net could easily absorb such costs. Smaller, new, or niche sites (such as SoylentNews) could not afford to pay for faster access. If this is not what you want, then contact the FCC and/or your elected representatives and let your view be heard.]
takyon writes:
Ajit Pai jokes with Verizon exec about him being a "puppet" FCC chair
On Thursday night in Washington, DC, net neutrality advocates gathered outside the annual Federal Communications Commission Chairman's Dinner to protest Chairman Ajit Pai's impending rollback of net neutrality rules.
Inside the dinner (also known as the "telecom prom") at the Washington Hilton, Pai entertained the audience with jokes about him being a puppet installed by Verizon to lead the FCC.
Pai was a Verizon associate general counsel from 2001 to 2003, and next week he will lead an FCC vote to eliminate net neutrality rules—just as Verizon and other ISPs have asked him to.
At the dinner, Pai played a satirical video that showed him planning his ascension to the FCC chairmanship with a Verizon executive in 2003. The Verizon executive was apparently Kathleen Grillo, a senior VP and deputy general counsel in the company's public policy and government affairs division.
The speech was apparently not supposed to be public, but Gizmodo obtained footage of Pai's remarks and the skit. You can watch it here.
The vote is currently scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 14. The FCC and Federal Trade Commission announced that they will work together to punish ISPs that don't keep their promises (assuming they make any).
Previously: Washington DC Braces for Net Neutrality Protests Later This Month
FCC Plans December Vote to Kill Net Neutrality Rules
FCC Will Reveal Vote to Repeal Net Neutrality This Week
Comcast Hints at Plans for Paid Fast Lanes after Net Neutrality Repeal
More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday November 16 2017, @07:36PM (4 children)
FCC rolls back media regulations in move that critics say benefits Sinclair [thehill.com]
Seems to have happened in the last hour. Follow-up to this [soylentnews.org].
Maybe you can guess how the net neutrality vote will go based on this?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:33PM (1 child)
Interesting but mostly relevant to broadcast stations and newspapers - ie. the old mediums.
They're still players but their impact is shrinking, particularly newspapers.
The specific merger may give them access to 72% of the broadcast market, but that's hardly 72% of all viewers nowadays.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:07PM
And when we eliminate net neutrality, the other shoe drops. We can start to close that Internet up. And get the Fake News under control. Very much under control.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:44PM (1 child)
I think we have the votes. We have three guys on the commission, all controlled by lobbyists and special interests -- and donors, people like me from previous months -- total control. Believe me, Ajit is no dummy. He wouldn't hold a vote he was going to lose.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:53PM
Trump! Trump! Trump!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @07:44PM (59 children)
... is not to impose Net Neutrality.
Rather, the right way is to pass a federal law (based on the Commerce Clause) to forbid localities (e.g., cities) from creating government-sponsored monopolies; that is, the right way is to restrict government from infringing the right of the people to compete in the market to provide services, including Internet service.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday November 16 2017, @07:55PM (9 children)
Where's the "-1 clueless" mod ?
"0 disagree" doesn't convey the "your fantasy world does not intersect our reality" message.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:01PM (8 children)
You're saying that by default, the OP's comment shouldn't even appear as part of the discussion.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:29PM (7 children)
Yes, that is what we are saying. And thank goodness, net neutrality has been neutralized, so now there are no obstacles to us just denying free-market-fanbois libertariantards access to the discussion. Unless they want to pay, and pay lots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:02PM (2 children)
So, I guess it will all work out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:46PM (1 child)
You do realize the greatest percentage of US GDP comes from California right? We'll just adjust prices accordingly! Just keep deluding yourself that conservatives / libertarians are the backbone of the US, it makes you easy to manipulate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:50PM
Most big wig entrepreneurs in California didn't come from California.
(Score: 4, Touché) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:35PM
Oh come on: Libertardians! That's just too easy.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:36PM (2 children)
Do you actually realize what that poster is saying at all? I personally might not agree with them, but their argument isn't invalidated simply because you don't like it.
His argument is that if the government didn't restrict and regulate the ISP market so much, there wouldn't be much of a problem with net neutrality being removed de facto. The reason being would be because, due to competition and much greater variety of service providers being available to consumers, it would be in ISPs interests to provide as much service as possible, with little restriction, for as cheap as possible.
A good argument for why it wouldn't work would be that due to the current size of telecom companies, they would easily continue to dominate and restrict the market, resulting in nothing changing.
I think the most well balanced approach (probably extreme to others) is to keep the net neutrality rules in place, remove the current restrictions preventing market competition, and breaking up the current major US telecom companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:14AM
I want a plant that gives me 3 Mb/s for general Internet, but 40 Mb/s for Netflix (as long as it's less than I'd have to pay for general 40 Mb/s).
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday November 20 2017, @03:14PM
Of course it wouldn't work "due to the current size of telecom companies". But you're deluding yourself if you think that a removal of government regulations would make the companies smaller. As it stands, the FCC (or is it the FTC? why is jurisdiction so hard) is the only one standing in the way of the big players getting even bigger. Comcast + Time Warner and Sprint + T-Mobile were successfully blocked, and AT&T + Time Warner is in the fire right now.
What would naturally happen if there were no regulation is that one company would come to own all the infrastructure and operate as a de facto totalitarian government in control of telecommunications access. This is not just my imagination; Bell used to be exactly this. The result was artificially inflated prices, decades of stagnant innovation, and laughable security holes throughout the entire telephone network.
Of course, it's possible that when you talk about "remov[ing] the current restrictions preventing market competition", you're referring to the way that the federal government spends more time getting cozy with regulated businesses than enforcing the law, and not the very anti-trust regulations that are meant to prevent private corporations from growing larger than publicly-accountable government. In which case, great! But I've heard this "drain the swamp" rhetoric before, and it turns out I was right not to believe the speaker last time.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday November 16 2017, @07:58PM (27 children)
Net Neutrality is the way the net started out. It is how things should be. Rules to 'impose' it are simply to insure that everyone's network traffic is treated equally. Regardless or where it originates or terminates, or what kind of content it carries. Net neutrality is the reason that the Internet exploded into the worldwide network it is today.
If a city creates a municipal WiFi network, it does not have to be a monopoly. It doesn't have to preclude other parties. But . . . If people could provide better and cheaper WiFi service, then they already would be providing it -- oh, except that they don't actually want to provide reasonably priced service that treats all packets equally. Therefore, cities ought to be able to build their own. Especially when it is what the majority of people in that local area want, in their own best interest.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:05PM (24 children)
The Internet should be kept in a Free Market, not pigeon-holed into a particular form by some bureaucrat's misguided attempt at imposing good intentions.
Not every byte is equal; the market should be able to account for that fact.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:19PM (21 children)
Erm... proper network management reasons were loopholed from the beginning. Your argument is invalid.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:31PM (20 children)
The form that is "proper" must be found through the mechanisms of the market.
It's the classic mistake of the central planner: Defining what is proper at one point in time, rather than finding it continuously.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:37PM (3 children)
You're missing some detail about how voluntary contracts and multiple enforcement agencies would work here.
I'm coining a new word for people like you, "evolutiotard": people who have a narrow understanding of evolution, generalizing with "survival of the fittest", and apply such concepts to every aspect of life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:47PM (2 children)
It is YOUR implication that there must be an Intelligent Designer—you know, at least to get things started with a single cell or something.
That is what sounds like the conclusion of someone who has a narrow understanding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:54PM (1 child)
Just when you think I couldn't "WTF??" any harder you chime in and prove me wrong. My point had nothing to do with religious beliefs or any other kind of "intelligent design".
I'll be kind enough to explain: some people view evolution as "survival of the fittest" and take only the competition / meritocracy aspect as a result. This is a narrow view that makes people think there is some Universal Law that means greed is good and people should be able to do whatever they want, thus creating an "optimal" society through this process of "evolution". It is narrow minded and we even have a term for it, Social Darwinists. For more info see: Survival of the fittest [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:54AM
I'm sorry that you don't understand what the other poster is saying.
Survival of the Fittest does not imply an inhuman process; after all, humans are part of that process.
Evolution just means variation and selection, which are 2 aspects of the process provided by a free market.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:40PM (15 children)
No. There is zero justification for legalizing extortion. Ever.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:52PM (14 children)
When is something extortion?
It doesn't matter whether the legislature limits the price of bread to $5/loaf. If there ain't enough flour, you're going to have to pay a lot more for it—and it might be better that you starve to death so that the community's medical doctor might live instead.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:12PM (6 children)
When you say "Nice content you got there. Be a shame if nobody could consume it." it is extortion. When both consumer and site have already paid their ISPs for the bandwidth they require and peering agreements have covered inter-network communication costs nobody has a legitimate excuse to throttle content.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:43PM (5 children)
Coming into someone else's grocery store and demanding "protection money" is different.
Your analogy doesn't apply.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:54PM (3 children)
You failed to even attempt to refute my explanation before claiming it refuted. Try again if you like.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:27PM
Now, try again.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:44AM
Now, try again.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @07:03PM
Now, try again.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:06PM
Ok that's it, the intertubes need to become a public infrastructure that gets leased by ISPs. We gotta shut up these morons who think it is OK to extort as much money as people will suffer to give. Also, we need single payer healthcare but it should be tied to a database. Anyone who doesn't want to pay the taxes will be charged 30X the actual hospital rates because I'm sure their life is worth it to them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:32PM (2 children)
Except that in this case, the supermarket set the price of bread at $5/loaf, the legislature paid the supermarket billions for infrastructure buildout to ensure there would be enough flour for everybody. Demand for bread rose, but the supermarket doesn't want to use the government's money to actually build out their infrastructure like they were supposed to, so instead they want to charge the baker a carrying fee for the privilege of putting their bread on the shelf [qz.com].
Meanwhile, bread is now $5/loaf, plus $1/loaf in "regulatory recovery" fees, $1/loaf in "infrstructure buildout" fees, and $1/loaf in "we assume you're not paying attention to the line items on your bill" fees.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:47PM
It looks like the problem in this scenario is your government; stupid things happen when an organization ("government") gets to demand income by decree, and thereby spend other people's hard-earned resources.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @07:07PM
It looks like the problem in this scenario is your government; stupid things happen when an organization ("government") gets to demand income by decree, and thereby spend other people's hard-earned resources.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tibman on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:34PM (3 children)
This isn't about price. This is about you buying flour. The clerk is too far away to hand you the bag so he has to hand it to someone else who then hands it to you. You find your flour now has coupons mixed in and some kind of tracking device. The clerk says "weird, when i measured out the flour it didn't have anything mixed in?" He tries again to give you exactly what you ordered. The middle-person takes the flour and throws it on the ground and tells you that you shouldn't be using this flour distributor and hands you a completely different bag with something that looks like flour.
Does this middle-person's actions sound illegal to you? It should! That's why net neutrality exists. Your packets should arrive unaltered. Even if you can shop around for a different ISP that doesn't mean you can control all the middle-people between your ISP and your web destination.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by mobydisk on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:05PM (2 children)
FYI: There's actually laws preventing someone from doing what you describe in your analogy. The Common Carrier laws forbid, for example, the shipping company from modifying or substituting the product.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:15PM
And part of what this vote is doing, along with some previous regulatory changes, is removing any kind of common carrier obligations from ISPs. They've already been working towards getting rid of those obligations [federalregister.gov].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday November 17 2017, @01:28AM
https://ting.com/blog/getting-straight-about-common-carriers-and-title-ii/ [ting.com]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:40PM (1 child)
Net Neutrality was how the net started out. Net Neutrality is something to be defended. Like clean air and clean water. The whole subject of Net Neutrality would never have come up if ISPs weren't 'polluting' the internet with packet discrimination and even alteration.
Like with air and water pollution, the players must be regulated because they cannot behave. They brought it on themselves.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:54AM
Soylentils, you're intellectual garbage.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:25PM (1 child)
Aye Caramba !
The net neutrality has nothing to with the fact that there are no competition...
It is the fact that depending on what website you go to do you may be served better or worse.
E.g some companies on LTE gives you free bandwith for watching netflix but not if you watch acorn.tv or something like that...
Further despite you paying for your connection and bandwidth they want the site you visit to pay (which will come back to you) depending on the amount of data you suck in. ..so companies that pay them more will be served better ...smaller companies and websites will be served poorly. Thus starting the oligarchy of the internet...So far the beauty of the internet is any individual with a good idea can get a small company to do very well ...remember how hotmail or google started in the 90's....that system will be killed with destruction of net neutrality
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:58AM
That's part of the picture.
What cable TV companies who also do internet want is a paradigm very much like cable TV packages.
This is my favorite infographic on the topic:
The Internet Without Net Neutrality [imgur.com]
These guys have more graphics:
What The Internet Looks Like Without Net Neutrality [techdirt.com]
...and USAians paid $200B to get 50Mb/sec up and down by 2000.[1] [archive.li]
We got screwed and the ISPs walked away with the cash because there were no actual strings|mileposts attached to the giveaway.
[1] The original is 404.
"Intellectual property" sucks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:20PM (18 children)
Fiber runs over land which must be seized by the government using eminent domain. Without seizing property, at least partially (easements), it is not realistic to run fiber. Somebody would refuse to sell, or would demand a silly price. Spending a $billion to get property from 100,000 people is going to fail if enough of them demand a $million.
It's likewise with spectrum. We sure don't want companies competing for spectrum by cranking power to drown each other out. We let the FCC allocate things and even take things back.
So, having taken government control, why should we then hand control over to a corporation for their private benefit? Simple: we shouldn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:42PM (6 children)
If your solution is "Get the men with guns to say what's what!", then I submit your solution is probably a very bad one; if you have a good solution, then it should be anti-fragile enough to work around obstinate property owners, if not convince them to participate willingly.
On a similar note, the FCC is a government-sponsored monopoly; we know that it's wise to be wary of monopolies, especially ones that arise from imposition (men with guns) rather than market success (this is especially true when such a monopoly's behavior is tied to subjective politics, rather than objective resources).
There is profit in agreement, so I dispute that it's not possible for individuals (and their organizations) to produce order without there being a government-mandated agency to control everything. After all, a distributed systems as complex as the World Wide Web works, despite the fact that there has never been a government agency designing how it should work.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:08PM
Your delusion is cute. Oh wait, I meant ugly. Like "you'd be better off walking upside down and backwards" ugly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:50PM (3 children)
Then abolish property laws while you're at it. Policing is a government-sponsored monopoly. The market will correct itself towards rich people with lots of property paying more to field private police to guard it while everyone else will pay for the nice kids standing on the street corner to watch over their houses. It's also an auto-correcting market solution to unemployment and crime: If there's too little to do people will commit crimes until they'll be paid not to. If there's enough jobs, they'll prefer them over the dangerous business of stepping over some-other person's land and risking getting shot in the face.
Of course, this face-value logical argument (that I actually heard anarchists make) is idiotic. Right after having their own houses protected, the rich will extend their protection contracts to cover their employees. Soon enough, you'll have a couple of big security firms fighting over the market until one ends up as the natural monopoly we call government.
In the same way, what you're proposing for net-neutrality is equally silly: Letting content providers "compete" over better packet prioritization will end up with a monopoly of a single ISP as the wealthiest of the content providers will join hands only giving money to one provider and letting everyone know they should move to them. And it's not some academic argument. This is precisely what happened in most countries when communication infrastructure first entered the market. Telegraphs, phones, radio, television... Hell, utilities too. It's why we have those laws there in the first place.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:50AM (2 children)
Got it.
By the way, a government that arises from free market enterprise is going to be a lot different than a government that arises from coercion at the very start.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday November 17 2017, @12:43PM (1 child)
But coercion is unavoidable when the resources are limited. Even if not right from the start, humans reproduction will out pace available resource. At that point, you're being coerced into joining one trade group or the next or risk getting killed. The Greek city-states have a fairly well documented stretch of about 500 years of this pattern repeating until Rome took over by force. And Rome wasn't a free market by any means. Quite the opposite, they had a very rigid property class system with a very rigid tax code cementing it. The most important of which was their equestrian aristocracy were allowed to hold so many lands and represent so many people in the assemblies and government only based on how many horses they fielded during war. It made a huge difference compared to the typical city-state since it gave huge benefits to growing military might even internally. If you look at Athens by comparison, their ruling class didn't really compete over military might internally. One representative could filed a dozen or so commanders. Another, a bit more or less. But they were all equals to the law. Ironically, that fairness and freedom ended up stagnating their military growth since it was more profitable for the families to focus on trade and political marriages then warfare.
Anyhow, similar pattern happened in China and India. So, you can sum it up with that even if you happen to have an ideal democracy and free market, your neighbors might not have one and there's a real possibility they'll focus on warfare like the Spartans did to the point they'll run you over.
In the end, it's all about balancing internal and external competition to match your neighbors military might first, and then allow the best possible growth second. And that act of balancing is the very definition of a non-free-market.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @07:40PM
It's impossible to have a conversation; we disagree vehemently on the meanings of the words "fair", "free market", "freedom", "property", "profit" and probably many others such as "law", "order", "self-interest", and so on.
I'll simply note that monarchists scoffed merrily at the ridiculous, patently absurd notion of a representative democracy of The People, and yet here we are today.
You are scoffing at libertarianism in the same way, because you cannot see past your own authoritarian paradigm; you refuse to envisage improvements in both culture and technology that would enable a shift in the organization of society. The monarchists were myopic, and so are you.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:56PM
You don't like the solution of men with guns. OK, so if my company bulldozes a path across your property for trucks and then digs a trench to lay fiber, you won't expect the government to help you? Good to know!
We'll be glad to do this without guns. Or, if you were going to bring your own non-government guns, my company can do likewise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:48PM (6 children)
Or we could just allow any ISP to make use of the existing lines instead of allowing towns and cities to grant monopolies to specific ISPs. And allow municipal ISPs, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:58PM (4 children)
At the very least, a municipal ISP would be a company that receives income by decree, rather than by agreement with customers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:40PM (3 children)
Yes, a good monopoly. Meaning, that the monopoly *could* be run by the state in a non-profit fashion. That can be muddied up a bit with providing private companies contracts to provide these monopoly services, but that is a different problem.
At this point, sending a packet is an important as a telephone call (they're nearly indistinguishable now), as important as electricity and water. It's become fundamental infrastructure no different than an interstate highway, and in the same way, has tremendous consequences with the economy. The interstate highways are what allowed our growth in the first place and fueled our economy, and the ability to send packets nearly instantaneously created the economy surrounding the Internet.
I'm absolutely for ALL municipalities being able to roll out fiber, wireless, whatever, to provide infrastructure for citizens to send packets to each other. Internet will be free to use for all who can connect up wirelessly, but rate limited. Enough to check email, use government websites, banking, etc., but not enough for HD video. Wired connections to residences and buildings will be paid for by taxes. All connections are rate limited, unless you want to pay extra to the city for more bandwidth. If you actually pay for Internet, you're really just paying for more Internet faster.
Since this is at a municipality level, there will be tremendous bargaining power with corporations. Netflix already behaves pretty well, and pioneered their own CDN to assist small ISPs with Netflix traffic. Most likely a slam dunk that Netflix would cooperate with the municipality and install enough CDNs to prevent costly traffic that transits out of the municipalities network. Same can go with other major service providers. The municipality will provide the connections and rack space, but the corporations provide their own equipment and maintenance.
At this point AT&T can kiss our fucking asses. We can eliminate their easements, and basically, kick them out of the municipality. If they want revenue, they can negotiate a city at a time to provide either local networks, or transit capability to other networks. We can negotiate with the big boys to provide transit for our packets outside of the municipal network. Nothing says we shouldn't have more than one either, or be multi-homed.
I would think Net Neutrality would exist at that point. Any ISP attempting to get their grubby hands on the packets and play favorites will find that they can't service the last mile anymore, and dealing with a city at a time and its bargaining power precludes them from traffic shaping, or price gouging for decent service. They literally have no power over the packets anymore.
Anywhere two adjacent cities can decide to create fiber between them, allows them to create cheaper peering and transit agreements.
I would love it if cities took over delivering packets.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:53PM (2 children)
There's no reason to suspect that a monopoly (especially one founded on income-by-decree and political whim) will perform well in the long run.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:11PM (1 child)
Lol, cause I sure LOVE all the innovation my current choice of ISPs give me. Ancient DSL or ancient cable, wheeee. Oh, and what about the billions we gave telecoms to put down fiber? Riiiiight, long live the private corps! *cough* I mean HAIL HYDRA!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:30PM
By making a municipal ISP, you're removing even the fantasy of some kind of responsibility to the market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @11:01PM
In a normal town, most poles are owned by the electric power company. The phone company and cable company both get to run lines below that.
You want to "allow any ISP to make use of the existing lines instead of allowing towns and cities to grant monopolies to specific ISPs", but there are no lines without the ISPs. The town owns nothing. The ISPs own the lines.
You'd have to seize the lines, but then who would maintain them? The former owners will be uninterested in doing so!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:57PM (3 children)
Yes, how terrible it would be if someone actually wanted to make money. Only the rich should have that privilege.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:30PM (2 children)
Or one joker demands an exorbitant price, the government says, "Well, that exceeds our budget so I guess the whole project is dead."
Then they should post the name and address of said joker at town hall or something and gently encourage people to take it up with him. Perhaps recommend a good local hardware store where they sell agricultural paraphernalia that could be repurposed by an angry mob?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)
Could you really blame them? Not everyone wants to slave away for corporations until they are of old age, so the chance of suddenly making a lot of money could free them from that if they use it wisely enough.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 17 2017, @04:41PM
Typical "fuck you got mine" Republican attitude.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Funny) by meustrus on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:22PM
This is so perfectly antithetical to this site's typical response to such things I can only think AC is taking this xkcd [xkcd.com] to heart.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:30PM
Even better would be a law that requires ISPs to not be limited to transmission, and forbidden from creating or profiting from content.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday November 17 2017, @01:22AM
Illegal or not, it's time to start building out mesh networks. Cheap transmitters and mesh routers, like $5-$15 range. Wall socket outlets, light switches, solar match boxes, usb sticks. Fuck the wireless carriers stomp on their bands too. Distributed routing, distributed storage, fully encrypted, fully anonymous.