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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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All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
-- Chou En Lai
(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: