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Net neutrality advocates are planning two days of protest in Washington DC this month as they fight off plans to defang regulations meant to protect an open internet.
A coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission on 26 September in DC. The next day, the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet.
The FCC has received 22 million comments on "Restoring Internet Freedom", the regulator's proposal to dismantle net neutrality rules put in place in 2015. Opponents argue the rule changes, proposed by the FCC's Republican chairman Ajit Pai, will pave the way for a tiered internet where internet service providers (ISPs) will be free to pick and choose winners online by giving higher speeds to those they favor, or those willing or able to pay more.
The regulator has yet to process the comments, and is reviewing its proposals before a vote expected later this year.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:50PM (7 children)
Cogent-Comcast agreement. Where is it that Netflix was a party to that agreement?
I'd read the whole article if I were you, Comcast did exactly the same thing (ensured that their peering links were congested, degrading service to their competitors) with, almost exclusively, their competitors, in a (mostly successful) attempt to force them to pay (directly) for direct interconnects or (indirectly) via CDN access fees.
You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:18PM (6 children)
A valid point, but not germane to the topic as the Cogent customer unbalancing the traffic which violated the Cogent-Comcast agreement was... Netflix. Bringing this up is a mere distraction because what would happen is that Comcast would rightly end its peering agreement with Cogent, Netflix would drop Cogent and move to another backbone provider - just as Netflix did with L3 before moving from L3 to Cogent!
What happens when you dump a major ISP's portion of 35% of ALL North American Internet traffic onto a network? CONGESTION! Where was that traffic from? NETFLIX! So, once again, Netflix (and its nonpayment) is the problem. You keep ignoring my repeated concession for ISP oversubscription fraud, so I'll assume we're in agreement on that and that you're just a yuuge fan of Netflix getting free service for some strange reason. Perhaps you just hate hate HATE Comcast. Even a Nazi murderer should receive due process.
You seem to be intentionally blinding yourself, and I'm not sure why. You previously seemed like a reasonable fellow.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:28PM (1 child)
You seem to be willfully missing the point that Comcast engaged in artificial throttling of competition and uses the specious claim of congestion to try and legitimize their devious actions. If there is an issue with bandwidth than Comcast can update their agreement whenever the contract terms allow in order to account for the network traffic increase.
The big issue is that ISPs are greedy fucks trying to lock down the market so they can implement artificial scarcity controls. Why? Because people WILL pay extra to get what they want. I for one think microtransactions are a death knell for the free internet, apparently you are falling for the lame ISP arguments without paying enough attention to the details.
It sure would be nice if US citizens cared as much about individual freedoms as they do corporate profits. The capitalist "free market" tripe has really sunk in deep, speaking generally and not necessarily at you AC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @08:03PM
If the government locks out some players and showers other wish favor and money, that is not capitalism.
The USA is currently operating under a mix of mercantilism and corporatism, also often deemed "crony capitalism".
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:23PM (3 children)
It's impossible for a non-party to an agreement to violate the terms of said agreement,as they are not a party to same.
Not going to continue this discussion with you. I said all I had to say.
You might want to bone up on contract law [wikipedia.org] and how contracts *only* apply to those that are parties to such contracts. Funny that.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:07PM (2 children)
Strawman. Netflix generates ~35% of all US Internet traffic, and it was shopping around for backbone providers with no-fee peering agreements with Comcast. Netflix' traffic imbalanced the traffic, causing the backbones to be in violation of the peering agreement, and when Comcast threatened to yank the agreement from one backbone, Netflix went shopping around for another.
No matter which way you slice it, in this case, Comcast is the "good guy", and Netflix/Level 3/Cogent are the scumbags.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:29PM (1 child)
You are either woefully misinformed or shilling for Comcast.
I'm not sticking up for Netflix, Level 3 or Cogent. I have no dog in that fight.
That said, Comcast's douchebaggery in this case (and many, many others) is not at all in dispute.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:49PM
Your hatred for Comcast (deserving, I don't deny) is blinding you. No entity, including Comcast, is going to accept a situation where an outside party is dumping yuuge amounts of data into their network without compensation. Cheating by trying to abuse no-fee peering agreements is not compensation.