AT&T fights back against California’s net neutrality law

[maskmcgee]

On 3/18/2021 at 10:43 PM, Jet_ski said:

But that’s not really the point here. AT&T structured their offering to unfairly incentivize people to subscribe to [HBO Max], a subsidiary of their parent company, instead of other services.

Great. Has nothing to do with net neutrality at all. Deals like that offered all the time here in Australia. Nothing to do with fast lanes. Just more evidence of Californians being Californians.

[Jet_ski]

6 hours ago, Wash said:

 

Also formerly had AT&T in the realm of about a decade ago. We had a plan that only allowed 3GB of data monthly, which sounds a bit reasonable at first. But apparently something happened and it ended up showing one of my sisters going over, and they slapped a big overuse charge on us. This was during a trip to Southern California, so they also bottle-necked speeds tremendously. We ditched the service once they announced this "pay by the gigabyte" plan.

 

While service sucked where we live even now with a different carrier, it was certainly worse back then- the only good one in the area seemed to be Verizon, but they in turn seemed to be even more expensive an option, so we didn't go that route.

For me the last straw with AT&T was a few years back when I paid $20 for 2 extra gigs of data in addition to the monthly plan. I ended up using only 1/3 of it that month and on the billing date they reset it to 0 because the data purchases were valid only in the billing cycle they were made!

[Jet_ski]

42 minutes ago, maskmcgee said:

Great. Has nothing to do with net neutrality at all. Deals like that offered all the time here in Australia. Nothing to do with fast lanes. Just more evidence of Californians being Californians.

The media companies, mobile carriers, and cable internet companies in the US are all mixed up together in a crazy oligopoly involving Comcast, AT&T, and a few other companies. If AT&T had gotten away with this, there would be nothing stopping them and their rivals from implementing the same policy on cable internet. Before you know it, it wouldn't make sense to subscribe to Netflix if your internet provider was AT&T's subsidiary TW because their home plans have data caps and long story short, the benefit of streaming services would disappear and we'd be back to the old days of having to put up with cable companies who jerk us around for every penny.

[Donut417]

10 hours ago, maskmcgee said:

Great. Has nothing to do with net neutrality at all. Deals like that offered all the time here in Australia. Nothing to do with fast lanes. Just more evidence of Californians being Californians.

It has everything to do with Net Neutrality. AT&T owns HBO. Which means they give HBO an upper hand vs the other streaming platforms. Not only is this a Net Neutrality issue but it could constitute a Anti Trust issue as well. 

[maskmcgee]

On 3/22/2021 at 1:31 AM, Donut417 said:

It has everything to do with Net Neutrality. AT&T owns HBO. Which means they give HBO an upper hand vs the other streaming platforms. Not only is this a Net Neutrality issue but it could constitute a Anti Trust issue as well. 

 

In Australia, the biggest internet provider is Tesltra. They own the only pay-tv service, Foxtel. Tesltra customers get to stream Foxtel over the internet without it counting towards their data limit. It has literally never been brought up as any sort of point of concern ever. It is a non-issue. It has nothing to do with net neutrality. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

On 3/18/2021 at 4:30 AM, Jet_ski said:

Mobile data.

AT&T puts data caps on their home internet too unless you subscribe to their cable TV service.

[SteveGrabowski0]

On 3/18/2021 at 7:24 AM, Tieox said:

Why the US tolerates data caps is beyond me.  

Do you think we have a choice? ISPs have monopolies in a lot of places. I guess I'm lucky since I get two choices: Spectrum and AT&T. AT&T can go fuck off since last I checked they had a 250GB monthly cap unless you subscribe to their TV service. Spectrum only has no cap because Obama's FCC wouldn't let Charter and Time Warner merge to form Spectrum unless they guaranteed no data caps until 2023. The data caps are there because Americans have minimal choices for home internet and since ISPs also usually sell cable TV service, and they don't want you just buying youtubeTV or slingTV or another streaming service instead of buying their shitty cable TV. So they make you pay extra to remove caps if you don't buy their TV service as a disincentive to choose streaming services over their cable TV. These companies also bribe Republican controlled state legislatures to make it illegal for cities and towns to offer public internet service because apparently it's unfair for anyone compete with the cable monopolies. 

[Sarra]

10 hours ago, maskmcgee said:

 

In Australia, the biggest internet provider is Tesltra. They own the only pay-tv service, Foxtel. Tesltra customers get to stream Foxtel over the internet without it counting towards their data limit. It has literally never been brought up as any sort of point of concern ever. It is a non-issue. It has nothing to do with net neutrality. 

In Australia, they also believe that having international search engines pay to link to Australia's largest news network is just fine.

 

Not sure Australia is the world's best place to use as a benchmark for Net-anything.

[Leviathan-]

On 3/18/2021 at 6:21 AM, BigDamn said:

I'm going to frame this quote and hang it on my wall

You beat me to it.

[maskmcgee]

On 3/25/2021 at 2:55 AM, Sarra said:

Not sure Australia is the world's best place to use as a benchmark for Net-anything.

Did America's ISP's launch counter suits and block attempted action by film devlopers to obtain the details of users who pirated their movies?

 

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, maskmcgee said:

Did America's ISP's launch counter suits and block attempted action by film devlopers to obtain the details of users who pirated their movies?

 

Them providing users data is the only way they can have "Safe Harbor" protections. Otherwise the studios could sue them instead of normal users. Also keep in mind that the studios generally have to serve the ISP with a subpoena, so the courts are involved. 

[maskmcgee]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

Them providing users data is the only way they can have "Safe Harbor" protections. Otherwise the studios could sue them instead of normal users

Australia's ISP's blocked the lawsuit from Dallas Buyers Club, countersued, and won, not paying any film studios a cent and spending years protecting their users data. No Australain ever got issued a supoena.

 

So yes, Australia is the world's benchmark on net rights.

[Sarra]

28 minutes ago, maskmcgee said:

Did America's ISP's launch counter suits and block attempted action by film devlopers to obtain the details of users who pirated their movies?

 

Australia's internet is a joke. Well, it's a joke compared to internet everywhere else, except the US.

 

Get rid of Murdoch, and maybe we can talk.

[maskmcgee]

19 minutes ago, Sarra said:

Australia's internet is a joke. Well, it's a joke compared to internet everywhere else, except the US.

 

Get rid of Murdoch, and maybe we can talk.

 

Possibly the most desperaste attempt at avoiding the question i've ever seen. 

[Sarra]

2 minutes ago, maskmcgee said:

 

Possibly the most desperaste attempt at avoiding the question i've ever seen. 

Are you disagreeing with anything I said?

[Donut417]

10 hours ago, maskmcgee said:

Australia's ISP's blocked the lawsuit from Dallas Buyers Club, countersued, and won, not paying any film studios a cent and spending years protecting their users data. No Australain ever got issued a supoena.

 

So yes, Australia is the world's benchmark on net rights.

Copyright protections are written in the US constitution. Ever though about why certain movies or shows are not available in your country? Probably because you have SHIT copyright laws. The fact is the LAW is the LAW. Its illegal to steal copyrighted works. Yes, millions and millions of Americans do, because frankly they dont give a shit. Very seldom to people get caught and if your the downloader your probably going to get sued for a few thousand and thats it. If your the uploader/sharer, it can be a much stiffer penalty. But again its the LAW. 

 

Like I said, the courts are involved. subpoena are issued, its not like an ISP is just going to give user data without being pressured by court documents. Also, for the most part movie studios just issue cease and desist letters to the customers. All they do is provide the ISP with the offending IP address and have the ISP forward the letter. But like I said, if ISP's didnt forward the letters or provide customer info when asked by a court they WOULD be on the hook for the piracy for all their users. Which means they would be the one prosecuted for it.

 

So would you rather get a letter / potentially sued OR get you internet shut off being told you no longer wanted as a customer? Keep in mind most people have maybe 1 choice for ISP. 

[maskmcgee]

15 hours ago, Donut417 said:

But like I said, if ISP's didnt forward the letters

They didn't. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-14/iinet-dallas-buyers-club/6697314

 

15 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Keep in mind most people have maybe 1 choice for ISP. 

Welcome to Australia where everyone has about 30 choices. 

 

15 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Ever though about why certain movies or shows are not available in your country?

Nope because I pirate everything. Who would subscribe to video streaming where you'd have to pay hundreds of dollars a month just to watch everything from 20 different services?  

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, maskmcgee said:

They didn't. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-14/iinet-dallas-buyers-club/6697314

I’m talking about in the US. They are required to forward cease and desist letters. That’s how ISPs have safe harbor protections, so they can’t be held liable for their customers violations of the law. 
 

6 hours ago, maskmcgee said:

Nope because I pirate everything. Who would subscribe to video streaming where you'd have to pay hundreds of dollars a month just to watch everything from 20 different services?  

Point exactly. That’s why Hollywood might choose not to distribute is your country. Also you don’t sub to all streaming services at once. I sub to a couple, get tired of them and switch. 

[Wh0_Am_1]

On 3/18/2021 at 3:20 AM, Brooksie359 said:

Totally agree. Granted it would be great if they did in fact remove data caps as they don't seem super necessary to me. Idk why people should have to pay more for their internet if they are using it. Why have fast internet if you can't even use it properly without going over the cap fairly fast. Grsnted I find that for myself streaming is hardly an issue for my data cap but downloading games is much more concerning as I can easily go over with a couple of big games. Generally speaking if I don't download games in a month I won't go over the cap even when watching streaming services heavily. When I downloading more than a couple of games then I tend to go over fairly quickly especially if they are the 100+ gb in size. 

There is a simple reason why data caps exist, bandwidth. There are only so many frequencies in the air to transmit data, sure they can add more towers and reduce power to reduce range to prevent interference, but that is expensive. And due to the fact that the usable spectrum of frequencies has already been allotted by the communications agencies of each nations in their band plans. That's why 5G is such a big deal, it presents new higher frequency bands with shorter range and building penetration, but the potential to move more data faster to exponentially larger bandwidth of higher frequencies. With only one major problem, you need more tower again due to shorter range. In the end data caps are the ways that carriers choose to limit bandwidth usage, and prevent the frequencies and towers from being overwhelmed, of course they could just choose to offer slower plans with larger data caps, but people are impatient and expect things as soon as they try to download them. So in the end the strategy of data caps, and unlimited plans with fast and slow data are the strategies that have proven to work, and prevent people from using too much data, unless they are willing to pay the proper price for it. Is it the most efficient solution? No, but unlike other strategies, it sells.