FCC Unveils Plan To Repeal Net Neutrality Rules

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, Clanscorpia said:

Just remember that while they are the same size the population density in each is extremely different. Its quite dense in Australia, and quite spread out in the states. Areas that are built up, like in Australia have really good internet service, areas that are more spread out, which doesnt happen much in Australia, have pretty crap internet. Its like that here in Canada too.

Australia actually have horrible internet, NZ burn .

 

Australia only really inhabit the coastlines too since everything in the middle is a waste land desert or a mine/mining town. If you want to drive from say Melbourne to Canberra it is a 7 hour drive, Melbourne to Adelaide 8 hours and those are close major cities to each other.

[DutchTexan]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

I will point out size wise USA isn't actually that big //Only Canada and Russia are larger

Sweden = 172,756 mi²

US = 3,797,000 mi²

 

That was what I meant to highlight. Someone on the last page talked about Sweden and how good their internet infrastructure is. Also it was nice of her/him to remind us not to bring up anything tragic that may or may not be happening in Sweden so that this thread doesn't get locked

 

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

Seems to me the issues have little to do with both land size and population size, neither is it really that fair to say European countries are tiny when not a single US state has been able to provide even half of what most of those countries have with similar land size and population size as an average US state.

 

It appears that individual states are unable govern themselves in such a way to allow proper internet infrastructure competition, something is preventing that from happening.

 

I agree with you, being big isn't an excuse for having shitty internet speeds and coverage. It's pathetic, really. Even though some states have relatively good internet, by themselves, it's still no good. You make a great point here.

 

~647 people/mi² in Massachusetts

~11,000ish people/mi² in Washington D.C.

~481 people/mi² in Delaware

~1,313 people/mi² South Korea

~35 people/mi² Norway

~57 people/mi² in Sweden

 

4 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

 

 

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, DutchTexan said:

 

Wow I didn't actually expect Wash DC to top that list, mind you Massachusetts is even more surprising to me. In fact I was expecting the West coast to generally be higher than the East since that is where most of the undersea cables that are important to me go, great example of selective memory lol. There are plenty of undersea cables on the East coast that I never really think about.

[DutchTexan]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

Wow I didn't actually expect Wash DC to top that list, mind you Massachusetts is even more surprising to me. In fact I was expecting the West coast to generally be higher than the East since that is where most of the undersea cables that are important to me go, great example of selective memory lol. There are plenty of undersea cables on the East coast that I never really think about.

I think our capital being at the top, average speed wise, just solidifies what has been true for decades. Our swollen government is perfectly capable, but selectively willing.

 

Again, I choose Xfinity by Comcast or go with one of these competitive options from AT&T...

 

Something has to change, because government created and still protects an internet oligopoly.  

 

Keep observes will notice that 2 companies have grown to own over 81% of the market. Sounds legit. It's not like Charter (Time Warner Cable) and Xfinity (Comcast) both have some of the lowest grades given by the American Customer Satisfaction Index... with a 62 and 60 out of 100.

 

 

 

"Are the companies more defined by their infrastructure, qualifying them as telecommunications services, or by what is transmitted over it?" Something to think about when you consider digital information flowing vs strategically carving up territory via regulations or straight up greed.

 

National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services (2005)

 

Late 2004, the (infamous) ninth circuit court of appeals tried to argue that the Communications Act of 1934[and the later 1996 version] should have extended to include broadband cable companies as a telecommunications service; they held that internet is a Title II (common carrier) to be regulated by the FCC. They basically argued that internet shouldn't be considered an information service, but a more serious, regulated and taxed telecommunications service.

 

The supreme court overturned that position (6-3 vote) and ruled the FCC did follow the Communications Act of 1934 by deciding that broadband cable companies would not be considered telecommunications services. Internet would not be subject to excessive regulation in the name of 'consumer protection'.

 

So, 545 US 967 from 2005 is the Supreme Court agreeing with the FCC, back then and currently, that the internet is not a telecommunications service. AKA the Supreme Court already agreed with what people are now calling the killing off of net neutrality in a month or so. The FCC would flip flop 10 years later under the Obama administration and not only argue it is a telecommunication service, but that the FCC has even more authority to regulate and tax internet.

 

February of 2015 is when the FCC flip flopped for the first time and suddenly went in favor of what everyone is now calling net neutrality, internet being a regulated, 'protected' and taxable service.

 

Who decided this in 2015? Technically, The FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order that demanded net neutrality regulation was a decision made by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, 2 to 1 vote. (That speedy D.C. internet)

 

"Without an open Internet, there would be less broadband investment and deployment." Depending on how you interpret free and open it doesn't matter to me. It all sounds like bullshit, because I have observed the exact opposite. 

[LAwLz]

21 hours ago, TheCherryKing said:

Thank you.

You do realize that he does not agree with you, right? In fact, a lot of the things he says goes straight against what seems to be your beliefs.

 

 

21 hours ago, TheCherryKing said:

The only government regulation when it comes to internet should be making sure that there aren't any hidden fees or data collection without the user agreeing to it when the sign a contract with their ISP.

OK, how do you suggest we prevent companies fucking customers over like they have historically been and will continue to do without net neutrality laws?

I asked you before why it wouldn't work (neither you nor DutchTexan has come up with any argument for why it wouldn't) and what solution you would recommend instead (you haven't come with any suggestion).

 

I am genuinely starting to suspect that you are a shill for some major ISP, because your posts follows the same pattern as paid shills do.

 

 

20 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

Just remember that while they are the same size the population density in each is extremely different. Its quite dense in Australia, and quite spread out in the states. Areas that are built up, like in Australia have really good internet service, areas that are more spread out, which doesnt happen much in Australia, have pretty crap internet. Its like that here in Canada too.

I don't understand what messed up logic people use when they point to the US having high/low population density as an excuse for shitty Internet infrastructure.

There are plenty of places in Sweden with very low population density which has far better infrastructure that extremely high density places in the US. Yes if you look at the country as a whole then it has very low population density. Good thing nobody in their right mind is suggesting the fiber network in the US should be built everything at the same time. How about doing it in major cities first? You do realize that the US has some of the most densely populated areas in the entire world right? And the Internet infrastructure is still garbage in a lot of them.

 

Both the size and population density arguments for why things that works in other parts of the world wouldn't work in the US makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever as soon as you stop talking about the US as one single land mass which needs to be upgraded, and instead start talking about individual states or cities.

 

Saying that you can't implement the same practice Sweden uses in the US because "it's bigger and the population is more spread out" is like saying roads in New York city can't be repaired because then they'd need to repair the I-70 road in Utah.

"Sorry but we can't repair this road in New York because the state of Utah doesn't feel like repairing the I-70. Guess you'll have to just get used to driving on a broken road".

 

There are major challenges which might prevent the same system we use in Sweden from working in the US, but it sure as hell isn't size and population density.

 

 

 

16 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

That was what I meant to highlight. Someone on the last page talked about Sweden and how good their internet infrastructure is. Also it was nice of her/him to remind us not to bring up anything tragic that may or may not be happening in Sweden so that this thread doesn't get locked

I didn't ask to not bring up "anything tragic that may or may not be happening in Sweden" just so that the thread won't get locked. I asked to not have it brought up because it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand, and any attempt to bring that up would be a really pathetic attempt at a red herring or ad hominem attack.

[DutchTexan]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I asked you before why it wouldn't work (neither you nor DutchTexan has come up with any argument for why it wouldn't) and what solution you would recommend instead (you haven't come with any suggestion).

 

I am genuinely starting to suspect that you are a shill for some major ISP, because your posts follows the same pattern as paid shills do.

You haven't either. All you've said is that Sweden has good internet. Kudos.

 

You're calling us a paid shills for not agreeing with you which is fucking hilarious. 

 

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Both the size and population density arguments for why things that works in other parts of the world wouldn't work in the US makes absolutely no logical sense

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

from working. . . sure as hell isn't size and population density.

I think population density and size have at least something to do with good internet. Maybe not 100% determined by those metrics, but they play a role. The most dense areas of a nation or city usually have the faster/better connected internet. Wouldn't you agree?

 

Alls I'm arguing is that the current rules and regulation allowed two ISP's to grow, acquire and control over 81% of the market since 2015. That's a problem.

 

A few years ago I had 4 ISP choices. Now, I have a choice between one plan with AT&T with 'up to' 25mbps down -or- Xfinity by Comcast. That's a problem.

[Indus Monk]

If net neutrality is voted out, how will that affect services like Proxies and VPN? 

 

Has net neutrality got anything to do with online anonymity?

 

My two Cents on net neutrality:

 

Caution (this spoiler contains my PERSONAL opinion, I don't expect everyone to agree.)

Spoiler

 

I think that voting net neutrality out is quite counter intuitive. One purpose that a government has is to ensure fair and just circumstances as far as possible. And that if net neutrality was removed, it could prove detrimental to technology growth (think of machine learning). It could greatly hamper communication and would definitely render many potential positive changes null and void. For example: I watch LTT on YouTube because it is free and highly accessible. And that is the charm of many websites on the internet. YouTube gave many people employment. Whether it be good or bad, you can't ignore the fact that many YouTubers depend solely on YouTube revenue for survival. There are also a bunch of other people who rely on internet as a source of income. Voting out net neutrality could destroy income as well...

 

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Net neutrality is so broad that it can affect basically everything that uses the internet, at the whims of service providers. If an ISP decides they want to block all VPN traffic, they can, or maybe they'll make you pay for it, or the VPN provider pay for it, or give them decryption keys or whatever. 

 

They could potentially charge you to not sell your data to third parties if they wanted to. Like a service when you sign up to your ISP, you pay an extra $10 to not have your data sold off for advertising. 

 

Voting net neutrality benefits no one other than the large corporations. It's bad for the consumer, it's bad for smaller businesses (they'll just get priced out by big companies) and everything else other than the massive corporations that can afford to pay to have their content prioritised. As far as I can see, the only reason that the vote on net neutrality has came back up is because of how much influence ISPs have now. No ordinary people want it, it's just the big companies. 

[Streetguru]

10 minutes ago, AmbarChakrabarti said:

 

If ISPs can roam free then there's nothing they can't block if they wanted.

[mr moose]

I know I came in late to the discussion, but what has population density have to do with internet regulation?  stopping ISP's from being arse holes isn't geographically bound becasue it's a binary issue.  The only thing that population density effects is the roll out of infrastructure and the cost to the end user.

[DutchTexan]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I know I came in late to the discussion, but what has population density have to do with internet regulation?  stopping ISP's from being arse holes isn't geographically bound becasue it's a binary issue.  The only thing that population density effects is the roll out of infrastructure and the cost to the end user.

The legality is of zero importance. I was just pointing out that, for whatever reason, highly dense areas of decent societies tend to have better internet connection and higher speeds.

 

I guess the real debate we should be having is what role does capitalism or government have within ISP's or internet in general.

[Eaglerino]

22 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

My opinion will change. But right now, I assume net neutrality is a band-aid solution to a much bigger problem, the problem that many people only have one ISP to choose from period.

It's for this reason I wish they would instead outlaw data caps, and crack down on monopolies a lot harder than they currently are. A dial up company along with Time Warner isn't competition

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

You haven't either. All you've said is that Sweden has good internet. Kudos.

I have actually suggested several things.

• Government owned fiber which other companies can rent.
• Infrastructure that's owned by a private company but not consumer facing. So for example Verizon and Comcast could both rent fiber from the same fiber-company at the same prices.
• Strong regulations which forces ISPs to treat their customers well even if they have a monopoly.

2 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

You're calling us a paid shills for not agreeing with you which is fucking hilarious. 

I did not mean to say you were a paid shill and I am sorry if that's the way you interpreted it. The only reason why I mentioned you in that reply was because otherwise the person I was responding to would just point to your post and go "read that one, he explained it" even though your post didn't actually contain any arguments for why it wouldn't work.

I only mentioned you in order to dismantle that incorrect statement before it was even made.

 

 

2 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

I think population density and size have at least something to do with good internet. Maybe not 100% determined by those metrics, but they play a role. The most dense areas of a nation or city usually have the faster/better connected internet. Wouldn't you agree?

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Blaming bad Internet in the US on the country's overall poor population density is not a valid argument because there are still zones which has shit Internet infrastructure despite having really high population density.

Density plays a major role in how much it costs to lay out fiber to X number of customers, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the massive monopolies that are rampant in the US, nor is it an excuse for bad Internet infrastructure in places like big cities.

Like I said, you can't point to a broken road in Utah for an excuse to not fix the roads in New York.

 

2 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

Alls I'm arguing is that the current rules and regulation allowed two ISP's to grow, acquire and control over 81% of the market since 2015. That's a problem.

 

A few years ago I had 4 ISP choices. Now, I have a choice between one plan with AT&T with 'up to' 25mbps down -or- Xfinity by Comcast. That's a problem.

Yes that is a problem and it needs to be fixed.

Why do you not think any of my suggestions would work and what do you suggest instead?

 

 

3 minutes ago, DutchTexan said:

The legality is of zero importance. I was just pointing out that, for whatever reason, highly dense areas of decent societies tend to have better internet connection and higher speeds.

 

I guess the real debate we should be having is what role does capitalism or government have within ISP's or internet in general.

I don't think you can have a simplistic view as "government should always do X" or "government should never do Y". I don't think you can have that for neither Internet infrastructure nor anything else really.

I think the government should do whatever is best for the citizens, and that will vary from situation to situation.

[OpenTheBombBayDoorsHal]

No Net Neutrality on it's own is not evil, FCC TITLE II, makes it Evil. 

Why do you only have one cable, non satilite, network? instead of 5? regulations.

 

Internet Companies will lose more customers than they will gain in making money by charging for popular content.

Forget the word Net Neutrality (N.N.) that issue is a fear you won't be able to access LTT without paying more to the ISP, OR have LTT pay for priority.

you will still have access to everything independent of having NN or not, and nobody will be charged more unless you boost your download speed contract.  

 

that will not happen. It never happened between 1979 - 2015 before N.N. existed. NN is a lie. N.N. is like having a quad core 3.5 Ghz Intel cpu. if you overclock to boost video editing speed FCC by title II, they fine the ISP.

 

FCC Title I, you buy an Intel 3.5 Ghz intel CPU that boosts to 4.3Ghz when you edit videos. everything else is still moving at 3.5ghz because thats the, "download speed contract" you are paying for.

 

You will not get charged for the extra content, unless you have a subscription to a 3rd party content provider, nor will IPs charge 3rd party content providers.

 

The issue Netflix Whom encrypted their service to protect your privacy, had, was 30% of the IP's throughput to the internet Backbone was their content, which when a network becomes under full load, everyone suffers.

 

With NN you don't have car pool lanes.

Without it you do, and the ISP's don't get fined by the FCC under Title II. In both cases ISP's don't give a rats backside what roads you want to travel, as long as it's not illegal content. A bit is a bit, is a bit, is a bit, everything is a bit.... they do not care (as long as it is not illegal)

 

Also all those regulations in TITLE II that would stifle EVERYONE, and actually kill the internet, now they will say oh we dont need this or that part of FCC title II,

that doesn't mean congress can't come in to tell them now you will enforce those sensorships... that net neutrality "goes with" in title II, FCC's 50 dirty words for TV under NN title II can be enforced if that is where the internet is classified.

 

I did my research

I started here : note with net neutrality there are no "diamond carpool lanes".

 

 

 

I found this next:
Why don't we have 5 cable tv and 5 cable internet providers to choose from?

 

 

https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/

 

Then I looked into the history of the FCC looking at just the facts:

 

 

 

....  ....  ..........
extras:

..........
https://youtu.be/s1IzN9tst28

https://youtu.be/MqnnsFiiIwY

https://youtu.be/PX0Ituesovg

 

[Indus Monk]

2 hours ago, Eaglerino said:

outlaw data caps, and crack down on monopolies a lot harder than they currently are.

Now that's going too far...

[Indus Monk]

1 hour ago, OpenTheBombBayDoorsHal said:

-snip-

I really like how you simplified everything there.

 

Off Topic (maybe):

Facebook was offering Free Basics in 2015 to India. Many people in the country saw the word FREE and jumped to support the service blindly. luckily for us TRAI (India's FCC equivalent) banned Free Basics and actually outlawed all such similar schemes for the future. Free Basics was against Net Neutrality, it would make access to a lot of services pointless since they planned to release schemes with Local Phone Companies that would limit access to certain websites and that delimiting would cost only $5 for one website WITH a DATA CAP. Only 1 year later, Reliance, a mobile company, came forward and created a brand called JIO (which means "to live" in hindi). For the next 12 months, we were charged NOTHING for unlimited Voice Calling 24x7 and 5 Gigs of LTE data per day.

[Hot_Swap_Fries]

So, here's where I stand on the internet. I want to pay for internet access, and use it to do whatever I want, including Steam, Twitch, LTT.com, and of course, PornHub. I don't want to be restricted to just a certain package of websites that I have to pay for, and have the rest be throttled or not even work at all. Does this mean I support net neutrality or oppose it?

 

[Dissitesuxba11s]

You support net neutrality. You want ISP's to treat all websites equally and not provide better bandwidth to sites that pay them more. 

[2FA]

Net neutrality is the regulation of internet infrastructure so that internet data doesn't get blocked/manipulated by companies.

 

You're stance would be supporting as you want to do what you want with your data without worrying about restrictions placed by ISPs.

[Sauron]

You support it.

 

But not having it implies more than just paying on a per-site basis - it also means that your ISP may prevent you from accessing certain websites altogether. In short, they would control what you can and cannot see on the internet and how fast your connection to each "allowed" site would be.

[minibois]

You seem to support it, but keep in mind there are two sides to net neutrality <removed>. They are the same, but the example I'm gonna paint is not something that crosses everyone's mind.

 

Net neutrality is treating all internet traffic the same, so not throttling some websites, because whatever. But it also means you can't let some websites' data go through faster or free. As in some (mainly mobile) ISPs have for example Spotify be free in their package. That is also no adhering to net neutrality. While free Spotify data may sound awesome, it also means making the market for their competitors more difficult.

Edited November 27, 2017 by SansVarnic

[Clanscorpia]

18 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Blaming bad Internet in the US on the country's overall poor population density is not a valid argument because there are still zones which has shit Internet infrastructure despite having really high population density.

Density plays a major role in how much it costs to lay out fiber to X number of customers, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the massive monopolies that are rampant in the US, nor is it an excuse for bad Internet infrastructure in places like big cities.

Like I said, you can't point to a broken road in Utah for an excuse to not fix the roads in New York.

From the stastics earlier in the thread, the states with the highest population density all had the best internet speeds. Im not saying its the only factor, but it sure is a big one. Same reason electric cars arent nearly as practical in the states as in Europe. And for your argument about swedens population density, the population is condensed into about half the country, which is fairly dense. Plus the US isnt that much more dense at 11 more people per square kilometer.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

From the stastics earlier in the thread, the states with the highest population density all had the best internet speeds. Im not saying its the only factor, but it sure is a big one. Same reason electric cars arent nearly as practical in the states as in Europe. And for your argument about swedens population density, the population is condensed into about half the country, which is fairly dense. Plus the US isnt that much more dense at 11 more people per square kilometer.

Again, you can't look at the country as a whole.

Nobody is saying the US has shit Internet because some random farm out in the middle of the desert doesn't have fiber. It's shit because not even big cities have all that great fiber infrastructure and having several ISPs to choose from seems almost unheard of.

 

So please, population density is not something you can point to as an explanation for why the Internet infrastructure (almost) everywhere in the country is bad.

It's a valid argument for a state like Alaska, but not any of the hundreds of cities where population density is really high (far higher than most cities in Sweden which has no problems having fiber laid out and 10+ ISPs all being offered).

Like I said before, pointing to the average population density is like pointing to a road in Utah as an argument for why a road in New York can't be fixed. It makes 0 sense.

 

6 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

Plus the US isnt that much more dense at 11 more people per square kilometer.

Wait, so the US is on average denser than Sweden? That just proves my point that average population density means nothing, so why do you keep bringing it up?

11 more people her square kilometer is a massive difference by the way. It means the US has 50% higher population density than Sweden.

[captain_to_fire]

I agree with Quinn Nelson

 

[Eduard the weeb]

So I believe there is like a 60-70 percent chance that net neutrality will be repelled sadly, but would this site be affected majorly like would user numbers drop or would we be flat blocked by some ISP do you know ?