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Vid.me has announced that they are shutting down on December 15th 2017, saying that they could not find a path to sustainability.
This news should be of concern as content creators have been getting increasingly frustrated with Youtube's algorithms that demonetize their videos and this means they have one less alternative to turn towards.
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Vid.me to Shut Down on Dec 15th 2017
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday December 05 2017, @03:37PM (17 children)
ISPs fraudulently sell oversubscribed bandwidth, throttle upload speeds and require abusive TOS that restrict running servers on residential connections, these third-party services will continue to decide who can profit from just about any scheme to monetize content on the Internet.
As long as centralized middlemen/gatekeepers are necessary (due to the anti-competitive and anti-consumer services and policies above) to reach content consumers, they will have an outsize effect on how and who can profit.
Which is just another reason that getting rid of net neutrality will only make this worse. ISPs *already* break the spirit of net neutrality by preferring *downloaded* content to uploaded content on their networks.
It's about liberty. If ISPs can restrict your liberty by treating packets differently, these middlemen will continue to thrive and be able to further restrict our liberty, and (as our favorite anarcho-capitalist [wikipedia.org] AC keeps telling us) limits how we can engage in "well-defined contracts" with advertisers, content consumers and others. No government necessary.
If ISP connections were really just dumb pipes with synchronous upload/download bandwidth, and end-users could send/receive whatever packets they wish, it would be impossible for third-party middlemen/content hosts to "demonetize" or restrict access to content.
And while I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears than watch ads, the current situation makes us all vulnerable to censorship ny both ISPs and these centralized gatekeepers. That will only get worse with the roll-back of net neutrality.
The centralized nature of Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. is (as we're seeing) a threat to freedom of expression.
That said, I don't blame Coca Cola and others for not wanting their product advertised with speech and other content they find objectionable. But until we can bypass the centralized gatekeepers for more distributed models, that's how it's going to be.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday December 05 2017, @04:36PM (10 children)
Assuming that by "synchronous" you mean "symmetric":
The world's population is twice as big as the IPv4 address space. This means there must be fewer connections than human beings. Though a few rich countries may have as many IPv4 addresses as residents, the Internet as a whole doesn't, and a lot of users end up stuck behind a carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) layer operated by their ISP.
Even if we were to assume a flag day sunset of IPv4 on the public Internet, the physical layer has for decades been asymmetric, especially over a wireless last mile such as satellite or cellular. Please specify what private entity will foot the bill for the transition to a symmetric layer 1.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:38PM (5 children)
Because of FCC limitations on EMF output between residential and commercial connection points.
Originally 33.6+ modems and later ADSL connections, where due to the copper and the electrical transmission characteristics, a higher frequency/power signal could be transmitted from the Branch Exchange (since it was in a commercial/industrial zone and less concerned/more insulated with regards to RF interference) than within a residential zone, allowing the exchange to provide more data over the same line as the residential link could. This is why residential modem connections to each other capped out at 33.6+bis rather than at the 52-56k like most modems advertised as their speed rating. ADSL, being based on similiar technology but at frequencies outside of the normal voice band had similiar issues, which is why SDSL connections were always at lower rated speeds than an ADSL connection.
As a result of this ISPs started providing primarily asymmetric connections and using it as marketing that only business connections or ultra-high end expensive residential plans could be symmetric, when in reality it was a technical restriction with some technologies which got coopted as a marketing restriction to better monetize the sheeple who were now clamoring for internet connections en-masse and not paying attention to the fine print of their telephone/cable/ISP contracts.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday December 05 2017, @09:48PM (4 children)
The FCC-imposed 33.6 kbps uplink limit on v.90 dial-up explains ratios of downstream rate to upstream rate on the order of 2:1. But what explains acceptance of ADSL ratios greater than 2:1?
(Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Tuesday December 05 2017, @11:58PM (3 children)
Time Divsion Duplexing (TDD) [wikipedia.org]
Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) [wikipedia.org]
Consumer demand for Download vs Upload data (dictating the division for the two above)
and physics [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday December 06 2017, @03:51AM (2 children)
Again, what causes a demand ratio in excess of 2:1?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2017, @01:45PM (1 child)
Most people don't run servers at home.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday December 19 2017, @01:14AM
Why is this, other than that home ISPs ban it? And if you claim that home ISPs banning it is reason enough, you have begged the question.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Tuesday December 05 2017, @08:40PM (3 children)
A very good point. NAT has helped significantly with that, but it reached he point a number of years ago where public IPv4 addresses have all been assigned. CIDR has helped with allocation issues, although there's still significant waste in the Class A and Class B spaces.
Lucky for us, there's this brand spanking new thing [ietf.org] that might help. Once they work out the kinks [ietf.org], perhaps it might be useful someday. Who knows, maybe it might even be a standard [internetsociety.org] someday.
The issues with asymmetric upload/download were, at one time, issues with the physical infrastructure, as borne out by the DOCSIS 1 and 2 specs, as well as ADSL. However, with DOCSIS 3.0 (another brand new thing -- it's specs were released only 12 years ago -- a blink of an eye compared to that other thing I referenced above) and the rapidly falling costs of fiber deployments, really the only thing keeping us from having high-speed symmetrical internet links is the unwillingness of the ISPs to spend that US$400 Billion [soylentnews.org] we gave them on actually building out infrastructure. Apparently, they'd rather spend it buying politicians to block any competition.
As for who should pay? The same people who pay for sewers and roads and police and fire departments. Internet connectivity is part of our critical infrastructure at this point, and will only become more critical moving forward.
Personally (and I've posted about this many, many times), I believe that the most cost effective and efficient way (as do the ISPs, or they wouldn't be buying state and local legislators trying to stop it) to provide "last mile" services is to have a utility build and maintain last-mile connections, and contract with ISPs to compete for their customers on price, reliability and features.
For new deployments, that infrastructure, like sewers and other public services should be owned and managed by non-profit, quasi-public (somtimes referred to as public-benefit), or private corporations that focus specifically on providing last-mile services.
For existing deployments, the Telecommuinications Act of 1996 [wikipedia.org] is quite clear, incumbents (LECs [wikipedia.org], specifically, but this should be expanded to include cable providers as well, since they're in exactly the same position) are required to provide access to rights-of-way, reciprocal compensation and interconnection for competitive offerings.
This mechanism is currently used in many places for the electricity, with competing energy providers selling power over the local monopoly's infrastructure.
This isn't as hard as you make it out to be, nor would it be so unprofitable as to drive any of these guys out of business.
Is it a slam dunk? No. Would it increase individual liberty? Definitely. And if our state and local governments weren't drowning in a river of filthy lucre from the incumbent network providers, we might get it.
In places where the greedy fucks have been thwarted, municipalities have successfully implemented this model and provide their residents with inexpensive, high-speed, symmetrical connections.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday December 05 2017, @09:52PM (2 children)
So how would you recommend go about ending that without risking that the legislation or regulation violate the U.S. constitutional guarantee of freedom to hire someone to speak on your behalf?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday December 05 2017, @10:23PM (1 child)
I'm not sure which constitutional guarantee you're talking about. Please. Do elucidate!
As far as I'm aware, elected officials have already been hired to speak for their constituents. Hiring one to serve the agenda of an individual, group or corporation is popularly referred to as bribery [wikipedia.org].
Is that the 1.5th Amendment? "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of corporations and the monied classes to buy elected officials."
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Tuesday December 05 2017, @10:37PM
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Lobbying simply means hiring someone "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" on your behalf. Campaign contributions are the same thing as hiring the mainstream media to speak in favor of a particular candidate, because ad spending forms a major part of a campaign budget. This isn't illegal, nor is forming an independent expenditures only committee [wikipedia.org] for the purpose of speaking in favor of a candidate.
You linked this word to a Wikipedia article stating that campaign contributions are not considered illegal bribery in my and SN's home country:
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 05 2017, @06:44PM (2 children)
It's amusing to me that the majority of people who complain about YouTube censorship are supporting the elimination of net neutrality.
Guess who has all the cash to pay for those fast-lanes, now? Definitely not your competing "free speech" platform...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:59PM
I'm just gonna say it, anyone who is anti NN is a fucking moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @02:02AM
The majority? Is that the case?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jdccdevel on Tuesday December 05 2017, @11:51PM (2 children)
I'm going to assume you mean symmetric instead of synchronous, because your statements makes no sense otherwise.
ISPs don't give a damn about content. They only care about two things, traffic and money.
Respectfully, it's quite obvious you have no clue about how the technology that gets the Internet into your house works. The vast majority of Internet in North America (and most of the rest of the world afaik) is delivered in one of three ways, ADSL, Cable Modem, or Wireless. All of these (except for some licensed wireless using multiple frequencies) use a shared medium for upload and download, and use Frequency devision duplex (FDD) or Time division duplex (TDD) to separate the transmit from the receive. The "Division" part of these means the hardware has to strike a balance between upload (Frequency or Time dedicated to listening) and download (the rest can be used to broadcast) Only the lucky few that have Fiber, Ethernet, or similar connections that don't have to deal with that trade-off.
What that means is that better upload speeds almost always come at the expense of download speeds. (i.e. you have 10Mbit/s available, do you want 5Mbit/s download, and 5 Mbit/s upload, or 8Mbit/s down, 2Mbit/s up?) The VAST majority of users barely touch their upload speeds at all. If you want a connection that has better upload, buy a business class connection, that's what they're for!
As for servers and whatnot, these are shared medium connections. The restrictions on servers are usually there to allow the ISP to disconnect abusive customers. How would you feel your Internet stopped working because some ass using the same shared last-mile medium as you had a cat video on their home-based server go viral? Those restrictions are there to allow the ISP to disconnect someone like that so everyone else's Internet keeps working.
You're ranting against (at least in part) physics, and that has nothing to do with net neutrality, liberty, or even economics. As more and more people get Fiber connections, upload speeds will become less of an issue, and home based servers and true peer to peer will be more practical.
Until then, you can rant against physics all you want, but there's still only so much bandwidth to go around. TDD and FDD are how it's divided up, and demand dictates closer to an 80/20 split than a 50/50 one.
As for net neutrality, it's about money and control more than censorship. The ISPs don't give a damn about you and me exchanging whatever packets we want. They want money from Youtube, Netflix, and other video streaming services... because they can. Freedom of expression is just a unfortunate casualty. Explicitly censoring the Internet won't make them any money, and that's all they care about. Ditching Net Neutrality is a money grab plain and simple.
Net neutrality is completely separate from the "ad-pocalypse" on youtube. That's all about Google having no fscking clue about how to vet videos for advertisers, and advertisers being far, far to paranoid about the videos their ads are shown with.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday December 06 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
"We're sorry; business class Internet connections aren't available to subscribers to residential TV."
"We're sorry; business class Internet connections aren't available at residentially zoned service addresses."
"We're sorry; business class Internet connections require the tax ID of a corporation, LLC, or partnership."
Besides, why does a 5 up/5 down connection cost so much more per month than a 2 up/8 down connection?
If that's the goal, the acceptable use policy (AUP) ought to phrase it as a restriction on household server traffic volume, not as a blanket restriction on even low-traffic household servers. A better technical solution would involve renegotiating the FDD or TDD for each subscriber over time to open up more upstream at the expense of downstream when needed.
Citation needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2017, @02:05PM
Probably because, unlike with home connections, with business connections there is no, or at least less, overcommitment.
Imagine a provider selling a hundred 16Mbps connections. Now the typical home user will rarely max out their 16 Mbps, and especially, rarely will all of them at the same time. So instead of providing 1.6 Gbps in total on the uplink, the provider will provide maybe 800 Mbps, relying on the fact that most of the time, less than half of the users will max out their connection, so most of the time they won't notice a difference. When traffic goes beyond, people will get slowdowns, but if you prioritize real-time stuff (video streaming, Skype, etc.) and de-prioritize things like BitTorrent, most people will still not notice. So the provider gets away with it most of the time, and if there's an occasional slowdown, most people are likely to accept it.
On the other hand, if you are a business ordering 16Mbps, chances are high that you'll actually be using that most of the time, at least during business hours. And you'll most probably less accepting about occasional slowdowns than the typical home user. Also, businesses are more likely to have good lawyers. So if a business orders 16Mbps, it's probably a good idea to really have the full 16Mbps available all the time. Which means that for a hundred 16Mbps business connections, the provider will need to provide the full 1.6Gbps in the uplink.