Net neutrality at risk again

[mtdoc]

Ajit Pai announces plan to eliminate Title II net neutrality rules.

As Ars Technica says, it was "nice while it lasted".

 

[rdl]

As Ars Technica says, it was "nice while it lasted".

 

Doesn't sound all that good to me either.

[TimFox]

To paraphrase Amborse Bierce, all political decisions result from a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.  Or, in Latin, "cui bono?"

[David Hess]

Since we never had net neutrality and the rules were never applied, so what?  Nothing has changed.

[joseph nicholas]

The head of the US FCC did a interview on the PBS New Hour yesterday.  This the Trump appointee and is wet behind the ears and  a complete tool.  He wants to give all US carriers a free pass to limit download speeds of certain less favorable providers.  He will roll back all Obamas.

[metrologist]

Since we never had net neutrality and the rules were never applied, so what?  Nothing has changed.

So, now it's official?

[james_s]

It really seems to me there are many people entirely focused on undoing anything Obama did regardless of what it is simply for the fact that he was involved in doing it. It's a bit weird to me, I mean I'm no fan of Trump but if he does accomplish something worthwhile I'm not going to rush out to undo it simply because I personally find him vile, bitter narcissistic and incompetent. In the case of net neutrality I've noticed that while everyone has an opinion, most of the people against it are unable to explain what it is and does. Fortunately quite a few states are working to draft comparable rules so perhaps it will work out ok in the end. If certain states don't want to have these protections in place I'm not sure how much I care about trying to force them. Time will tell.

[cdev]

The real motivator behind this is the sales of information about people. We're headed towards something like China's system of "social credit" which basically rewards the big spenders and penalizes the rest.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-age-of-social-credit

This is because the future is going to be one of very big winners and very big losers, and the losers will be pushed out towards the margins because having any involvement wih them is likely to not be profitable because they will have nothing.

But what to do about the shrinking pool of people in the middle? That's where social credit will come in. Everything from insurance policies to travel permits, to zoning, deciding what neighborhoods to redevelop, and which ones to keep, will all be based largely on spending.

Money will determine everything. It already does quite a bit but really, we are just at the beginning of this process.

[IanMacdonald]

Net neutrality will go anyway when all websites have to use HTTPS, because nobody will be able to publish a website without permission from the certificate issuers. I could see that situation being exploited by Orwellian governments.

[rdl]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/state-attorneys-general-line-up-to-sue-fcc-over-net-neutrality-repeal/

[cdev]

No, they want to know everything people do and control peoples (and countries) ability to transact if they fall into debt. When an arrangement requires he seizing of assets they want it to have teeth.

Also, is valuable for them to see all sorts of things related to lifestyle and particularly health. How else would they determine how to price health insurance and who to insure and who not to?

 The profitability of the entire system is based on avoiding covering the sick and those likely to become sick, or if that's not possible, dumping them before they incur major costs. To do that they need lots of information.

Suppose big chunks of the planet are seriously polluted, or radioactive, any company is likely to want to know who has been there or spends a lot of time there so they can avoid insuring them. Gutting net neutrality shows they are thinking ahead.

I works both ways. they want to reward people for being rich and healthy, with lower pricing.

Suppose somebody lives in a really safe, clean neighborhood, and plays tennis two or three hours a day, even though they are fifty five. Chances are much higher they are healthy and wealthy and so desirable customers.

Health insurance is a game of statistics, so they are willing to pay for information so they can decide who to insure and who should get a higher or lower price.  Likewise, they can jack up the price and put all sorts of obstacles in the way of people who they don't want to cover. Because the chances are higher they would lose money.   Same thing with loans who should get the best loan rates.

Think ahead twenty or thirty years when sea level rise has caused coastal areas to be inundated and a lot of pollutants released into the environment. 

That's going to mean people live shorter lives and many illnesses are likely to be very costly, which means big profits for some, but not health insurance companies.

Also, why should insurance companies in one country have preferential access to that info, leaving companies in developing countries with the risky patients and no way to prevent them from getting insurance they don't deserve.

[cdev]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/state-attorneys-general-line-up-to-sue-fcc-over-net-neutrality-repeal/

This was all actually decided in the WTO some time ago.

Lots of things are like that.

[jonovid]

got this pop-up on the amp-hr   

[Rick Law]

The head of the US FCC did a interview on the PBS New Hour yesterday.  This the Trump appointee and is wet behind the ears and  a complete tool.  He wants to give all US carriers a free pass to limit download speeds of certain less favorable providers.  He will roll back all Obamas.

Dollar for bandwidth has always been the way ISP sold their service.  For as long as I have broadband, I was always charged base on what speed I wanted.

I have the lowest cost plan my ISP offers (1mb upload, 10mb download assured).   I would rather not pay more so everyone can have unlimited speed.  I don't need it any higher.  And I sure as hack don't want to subsidize Netflix/Hulu/GooglePlay etc just so they can have better uplink speed.  They should bare the cost of the service they want to sell.

It may be beneficial to think of "Net Neutrality" rule as a "Shipping Neutrality" rule, should all packages regardless of size or weight be charged exactly the same?  A 100lb box and 10oz box both at the same price to ship?  Except for Amazon and eBay, it will hardly benefit any average Joe if such a "Shipping Neutrality rule" is enacted.

Sameness is not always the best outcome...

[ruairi]

It may be beneficial to think of "Net Neutrality" rule as a "Shipping Neutrality" rule, should all packages regardless of size or weight be charged exactly the same?  A 100lb box and 10oz box both at the same price to ship?  Except for Amazon and eBay, it will hardly benefit any average Joe if such a "Shipping Neutrality rule" is enacted.
[/quote]

Your analogy breaks down immediately.  In the new "Post Net Neutrality" world a 1lb parcel from one seller can be charged much higher than a 1lb parcel from another.  Or worse, can be "throttled" where it sits on a shelf for days on end before arriving to the client.  Imagine a world where Fedex could make or break businesses by arbitrarily delaying shipments.

[Rick Law]

It may be beneficial to think of "Net Neutrality" rule as a "Shipping Neutrality" rule, should all packages regardless of size or weight be charged exactly the same?  A 100lb box and 10oz box both at the same price to ship?  Except for Amazon and eBay, it will hardly benefit any average Joe if such a "Shipping Neutrality rule" is enacted.

Your analogy breaks down immediately.  In the new "Post Net Neutrality" world a 1lb parcel from one seller can be charged much higher than a 1lb parcel from another.  Or worse, can be "throttled" where it sits on a shelf for days on end before arriving to the client.  Imagine a world where Fedex could make or break businesses by arbitrarily delaying shipments.

Not a break down at all but exactly how free market should work.  Every package you send via FedEx or USPS are delayed or accelerated based on what you want to pay and where it goes.

Try tracking a package from USPS, you will see depending on how much you paid, it gets handled different.  If you pay for 3 days delivery, you wont get it overnight just because it happened to arrived at your local office overnight.  It will sit in the post office waiting - it will wait until it is convenient for them, or when the paid-for scheduled delivery date arrive.  You want it overnight, pay for it and it will get there overnight.  That is why they have these different levels of service: next-business-day-morning, next-business-day, second-business-day...  Want it there very very fast, there is even courier service, stuff will go out on the next flight! (or next bike, since NYC messenger service are mostly bicycles).

How they route it also changes.  Cheap package get routed different (presumably using their scheduled truck routes).  I have non-premium shipment packages that went from a 50 miles away (JFK airport) to Texas to Chicago then back up North, bounced around some more before it get here.

How you get it to the carrier (UPS office or your ISP) also make a big different.  Pre-sorted shipment is cheaper to send.  Stuff that they pick up will cost more to send... etc. etc. etc.

This is how free market should work.  If I don't like the service UPS offers, I can go to their competition.  Even if you modify the rule to be X per mile (between ship from/to), but we don't know the road condition.  Some country roads are just awful to travel on.  So what seem fair (same x per mile) could end up being very unfair.

Let the free market work.  Every purchasing guy knows service level is one thing you negotiate.  I am sure companies such as Google, Hulu, Facebook or Netflix (etc. etc.) can negotiate good deals even without government favoritism.  I for one fear Google/Facebook (etc.) a heck of a lot more than I fear Verizon or AT&T.

[David Hess]

UPS and Fedex do not allow large customers to pay to delay the packages from smaller competing customers.  They also do not compete with their own customers creating an incentive to provide poor service to them in favor of their own products.

What is going to happen is exactly what happened with AT&T and me a couple years ago.  They started blocking IPv6 tunnels immediately after adding IPv6 as a service to pay extra for.  When I say tunnels, I mean exactly that; they blocked protocol 41 tunnels to other companies which provided free or pay for IPv6 tunnel endpoints in favor of their own pay for "upgrades" to provide the same service.  They had all kinds of excuses including:

1. Blocking IPv6 tunnels was required by law enforcement.  I sort of believe this one in connection with CALEA.
2. Otherwise customers can use IPv6 tunnels to get static IP addresses without paying.
3. We block IPv6 tunnels to prevent hacking of our network.
4. Nobody provides IPv6 tunnel services.
5. IPv6 tunnel services are obsolete.

I complained to the FCC and they went back and forth with AT&T a few times and then said it was fine.

[ruairi]

Let the free market work.  Every purchasing guy knows service level is one thing you negotiate.  I am sure companies such as Google, Hulu, Facebook or Netflix (etc. etc.) can negotiate good deals even without government favoritism.  I for one fear Google/Facebook (etc.) a heck of a lot more than I fear Verizon or AT&T.

Of course Google/Megacorp can negotiate a good rate but what about my Mom & Pop internet start-up?  Especially if I am offering something that could undermine, undercut or disrupt a product or service sold by my ISP…

[Rick Law]

UPS and Fedex do not allow large customers to pay to delay the packages from smaller competing customers.  They also do not compete with their own customers creating an incentive to provide poor service to them in favor of their own products.

What is going to happen is exactly what happened with AT&T and me a couple years ago.  They started blocking IPv6 tunnels immediately after adding IPv6 as a service to pay extra for.  When I say tunnels, I mean exactly that; they blocked protocol 41 tunnels to other companies which provided free or pay for IPv6 tunnel endpoints in favor of their own pay for "upgrades" to provide the same service.  They had all kinds of excuses including:

1. Blocking IPv6 tunnels was required by law enforcement.  I sort of believe this one in connection with CALEA.
2. Otherwise customers can use IPv6 tunnels to get static IP addresses without paying.
3. We block IPv6 tunnels to prevent hacking of our network.
4. Nobody provides IPv6 tunnel services.
5. IPv6 tunnel services are obsolete.

I complained to the FCC and they went back and forth with AT&T a few times and then said it was fine.

I think here you are keying in on why Google and the likes (giant app companies) support "Net Neutrality" while ATT and their likes (giant ISP companies) fought it.  Why should giant ISPs be constrained as "common carrier" and giant app companies are not?  In my view, that is why the giant app companies are paying politicians big bucks to support "Net Neutrality" so they put their potential competitor under maximum constrain - So they remain the sole master capable of such manipulation.

Google using its monopoly power to suppress or at least depreciate competing entities is a well discussed issue.  To quote Jonathan P. Allen's book (Technology and Inequality: Concentrated Wealth in a Digital World): "Many of Google's battles with regulators have focused on whether Google misused their 'monopoly power' to highlight their own services in search results."  News today are filled with articles on how Facebook uses its power to influence policies and politics by highlighting some while un-highlighting others.

To fix the issue of these guys "creating an incentive to provide poor service to them in favor of their own products", we have to fix it via the Sherman Act and break up these giant monopolies - both giant app companies and giant ISPs.

Re: "UPS and Fedex do not allow large customers to pay to delay the packages from smaller competing customers" - If that happens, that would be anti-competitive behavior that is against FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rules.  How companies deal with customers (or each other) is a trade issue falling under FTC jurisdiction and not a communication issue under FCC.  Such anti competitive behavior will be big fine and possibly big house (jail).

Your point about tunneling is a more difficult issue.  AT&T (and other mobile ISPs) also prevent customer in using a cell phone as a hot spot readily.  They would like to see each device having their own paid line under a main account.  I too would like to see it being "free to use the pipe to send whatever I see fit."  But from a free market stand point, this is what they are selling, and if I don't like it, I should not buy from them.

This may seem unrelated, but it is related.  I was considering a trip to Washington DC to attend some kid related multi-day event thing.  I cannot rent a hotel room for a single adult male and have my wife and kid packed in the room - even while we don't mind being cramp.  I paid for the room and I should be able to use it for what I want as long as what I am doing is legal, right?  Instead, I have to pay for a double (me & my-wife) plus another room for my almost adult kit.  Their house, their rule!  So, seller controlling how their asset can be used is not really unusual.

If ISP's are legally restricted from controlling want you can send through their pipe, should Google/Facebook/Tweeter also be legal restricted from controlling what you put there?  I have no good answer for that.  Imagining what good things can happen when we are free from such restriction is joyful.  But imagining the bad that could happen is mind numbing.

[Rick Law]

Let the free market work.  Every purchasing guy knows service level is one thing you negotiate.  I am sure companies such as Google, Hulu, Facebook or Netflix (etc. etc.) can negotiate good deals even without government favoritism.  I for one fear Google/Facebook (etc.) a heck of a lot more than I fear Verizon or AT&T.

Of course Google/Megacorp can negotiate a good rate but what about my Mom & Pop internet start-up?  Especially if I am offering something that could undermine, undercut or disrupt a product or service sold by my ISP…

How is that different than they can negotiate better car rental deals and better hotel rates (for their company events) vs mom&pop.

Volume discount is a fact of business life today.  Would you prefer rules that eliminate volume discount of all sorts?  Frequent buyer discounts?  etc.   After that, how about they have more money for better negotiators verses mom&pop?  Do we then control how much you can spend on negotiators?

Either way, those are business/trade issues and not communication issues.  Again, FTC (Federal Trade Commission) should address it and not FCC.

[Freelander]

It's all the yanks' fault for electing an idiot.  
Not going to bother the EU at all - - also it will be changed back after the 'mid terms' for sure  . Smoke n Mirrors.
As for 'tracking' people for heath insurance and other foil hat theories, then simple, get rid of your so called 'smart phone' and don't use faecesbook etc. - or even better - move to country that has REAL health care... ie - practically ANYWHERE in the world apart from the us of 'hey ?'
Seriously, the states are sinking down a drain of their own making.  Fart head (trump) is only interested in one thing. Changing anything that obama did. - nothing more at all.

I suppose in the 'bible belt' of latter day money grabbers and TV con artists they would probably ignore  'for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap'.
 
Sheesh...

[cdev]

This issue is being presented as something totally different than what it really is. What is really happening is that corporations are now a defacto law unto themselves above countries, that have agreed to treat all countries the same but people's rights have been eliminated in favor of money's "rights" in all areas but censorship and control of information. There it is both corporations and countries that get to control things. The biggest losers are people, especially people who need to communicate.


There is no longer even a presumption of free speech for people. Just for corporations and their money. What we have now is money=rights in all things. And many people's incomes (95% of humanity's incomes) will be going away over the next few decades because their work will no longer be needed. So they wont have any rights to anything besides for their money to be treated equally, within their feudal fiefdom, the rights to them will be bought and sold, without being devalued by government interference (help). This may work fine for many while they still have money.

But it and that may change much sooner than they realize because right now the situation is much worse than people think and people are being misled in order to make these changes that all effect much more than people realize. I urge people to read that Wired article about "social credit" in China and realize its the same thing that's used to create a hereditary system of discrimination there and in a number of other countries.

Its used, for example, to tie people to the place they were born and prevent travel into cities by people who do not have a right to live there unless they either get a formal job there or can buy these permits.

In a least one country there is not even a right to travel between counties. People have to have a good reason to do so, and a third of the population is basically kept immobile. The same thing could happen to information and communication, easily, using the Internet.

This is the real danger with giving corporations free reign to carry or censor whatever someone else pays them to or they want.

That is going to be the order of the day, but in order to preserve the illusion in people's minds of a non-existent fairness and democracy they have these events.

There there really has been a big loss because humanity and its needs and problems are now invisible unless people are somehow able to gain some kind of standing in this supranational "economic governance" level, that currently we do not exist at.

The "network neutrality" (not a good frame for these issues at all) "vote" in the US was just for show, to rubber stamp the situation that already existed.

Just like so many other things, this has been the case for some time, but they are getting more and more overt about it.

[Freelander]

You obviously live in a completely different reality to me dear boy.
 

The us of hey is arguably the worlds most corrupt society and responsible for the vast majority of the world's troubles - by their own making ! 
The good thing is that it WILL implode - or,  BE 'imploded'

No worries, what goes around comes around.
When you have 40% of the us of 'hey' believing (or saying they do) that the world is only 6000 years old then you can begin to understand why corporations are allowed to run riot. When so many people are so far removed from reality and logic then chaos and fraud is allowed to run run riot.

[cdev]

I have been told by somebody who I have known for more than 30 years who I know (because our friendship pre-existed the current madness) is likely to be telling me the truth when he told me that a good chunk of the crazy people we see online (or at political gatherings, who make Americans look like idiots) are fake. Paid goons. Paid by big corporations. Shifting the "Overton window" was how he put it.

He also referred me to a 2008 article in Science magazine by Halloy, et.al about influencing the choices of cockroaches by the use of fake matchbook-sized robotic cockroaches daubed with pheromones so they "smelled right". 

The implication being that anybody with deep enough pockets could pay for armies of fake online influence-ers to manipulate (the herd instinct of) real people into courses of behavior that were clearly against their best interests.

They are not real. They are being used, however to steal real things from real people. Both of us.   The UK is becoming more like the US every day, so this should concern you. Neither of our countries are as full of idiots as one would think from reading the news. That's being done in order to make people stupid and less able to take back their nations from crooks.

Divide and conquer is clearly their motto. Confuse every important issue beneath a barrage of conflicting gibberish and divisive garbage.

You obviously live in a completely different reality to me dear boy.
 

The us of hey is arguably the worlds most corrupt society and responsible for the vast majority of the world's troubles - by their own making ! 
The good thing is that it WILL implode - or,  BE 'imploded'

No worries, what goes around comes around.
When you have 40% of the us of 'hey' believing (or saying they do) that the world is only 6000 years old then you can begin to understand why corporations are allowed to run riot. When so many people are so far removed from reality and logic then chaos and fraud is allowed to run run riot.

[Gribo]

In the US (Most other western countries have a much better situation) ISPs are local monopolies in most markets. From your analogy, the local Fedex branch is the only service in town, and they charge you whatever they want because they can. Your other 'choice' for parcel delivery is an Amish horse and buggy (dial-up, <1Mb DSL).

The only places where ISPs improved their service and behavior had a Google Fiber roll out.