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net neutrality

Started by rollntider, May 15, 2014, 11:55:58 PM

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rollntider




Sakura

Bit of a long one, and it's just my 2 cents, but...

I agree on the one hand that net neutrality is important, but on the other hand, this exemplifies the problem with modern standards.  Instead of taking to the street and being heard as a collective people (ala "Million Man March"), we'll sign a petition on the internet.  We'll put our name on a congenial letter, and hope that like the Grinch the politicians will have their hearts grow two sizes too big.

But that's where it all ends.  Whether this influences the president, or the senate doesn't matter.  The lobbyist doesn't fear a petition; he doesn't work for the government, he tries to influence it.  He'll keep pushing in one thing after another, and when everyone focuses on something, they'll push through something else.  SOPA and PIPA for example were stopped; but at the same time lobbyists used the smoke screen of everyone getting loud about that to push through the Enemy Expatriation Act with not a single person aware that it was happening.  Because "muh internets."

And for the ISPs, they're laughing about this, because even if this fails, there's no consequences.  People go "I have no options," but that's not true.  If everyone made the same decision and cancelled their internet, and went 6 months without the internet, that'd drive home a point and hit the ISPs where it matters: their wallet.  But instead of doing that, everyone thinks "I'll sign your petition, and you guys go ahead and do whatever needs to be done.  But I'll keep paying my internet bill, and change nothing that I do."

Sign 10 petitions, sign 20 petitions, sign every petition.  While you're at it, start a petition that the distance between Point A and Point B should be shortened by 50%.  It's just a petition, no matter how many people sign it, it's still words on a paper.  It's not a solution, and especially not a lasting solution.  If the lobbyist fails, he'll just try again.  If he succeeds, he'll push the issue further to see how far he can get.  And people become more and more complacent, and care less and less about the problem; we'll sign a petition and think that'll solve it.

If the petition fails, they'll just go "aw man..." and accept it and keep using the internet as often as ever.  They'll still vote for the same political parties (because of course, voting for the better candidate is not an option, we must vote for the party we've always voted for, even if we hate their policies).  There's no consequence for anyone involved, except the poor deluded downtrodden sop who signed a petition thinking that was the solution.

cflnut

I agree with Sakura petitions don't do anything.

Here's a couple of examples.

A couple of years ago it was announced that the Edmonton municipal airport will be closed, and torn down to make way for inner city housing. Now it had already been closed to commercial traffic, and for the past two decades (I believe) was only used for private and charter flights. Upon hearing that it was going to be closed and torn down people took to protesting and gathering petitions. This went on for about a year. Now I'm not sure of the exact number, but close to 500,000 signatures (Supposedly) were gathered and presented to city council, as well as the provincial government. However in November 2013 the airport was closed permanently, and will be torn down in the next few years.

A second one is that the City of Edmonton is building a new Hockey arena for the Oilers. This is being built in the downtown core. Once again petitions were signed NOT to build it downtown, but in an area that is more accessible, and has better access to parking. Well to make a long story short it IS being build downtown.

As far as the whole net neutrality thing goes. I only heard of it the other day, and where as I do agree that there should be more competition and that the price can be a bit on the high end of things. I am also of the opinion that you get what you pay for. If you want to have unlimited access to be able to play games online, stream music/videos or download as much as you want on a 24/7 basis then you should be paying more then the guy who only uses the net to check his bank or facebook a couple times a day.
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.
Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't.
And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would.

Sakura

Quote from: cflnut on May 16, 2014, 08:10:27 PM
I am also of the opinion that you get what you pay for. If you want to have unlimited access to be able to play games online, stream music/videos or download as much as you want on a 24/7 basis then you should be paying more then the guy who only uses the net to check his bank or facebook a couple times a day.

That's not really what the issue is, the issue is that ISPs have been known to attack services themselves.  For example, at one point in time an ISP whom I will not name decided that it was in their best interest to block access to all of its customers the website 4chan.org.  They had no reason to do so, but they decided against good faith and without informing, consulting, or asking their customers their opinion on the matter.  As a result, Anonymous (or a group that calls itself that; there's like 50 or more such groups) took it upon themselves to DDOS the ISP.  This cost the ISP quite a bit of money.  Now the thing is, deciding to block a website that they didn't like is not exactly legal (as it defies net neutrality laws) and in the end, they had broken the law but there was no penalty for them aside from the response of Anonymous.

Now the thing is, if net neutrality laws are abolished, and ISPs can do whatever the hell they want...  It's not just going to be services paying money to get faster access times, it's also going to be ISPs wantonly blocking access to whatever sites they decide are no longer appropriate for their customers.  Essentially, this is enabling ISPs to become the great (as in size) Chinese firewall and blocking access to any content they decide/determine to be unwanted.  Wikileaks, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google, 4chan, Something Awful, eBaumsworld, Newgrounds -- anything could be blacked out by anyone deciding to pay the ISPs enough to get rid of it.  Governments would jump on killing off Wikileaks pretty damn fast.  Google has become the most competitive and best ISP in North America (if not the world) with their fiber services, offering far more bandwidth and service for far less; ISPs could choose to black Google out to eliminate the competition or bilk them for huge sums of money.

Without net neutrality, not only do the ISPs hold monopoly, they can hold you for ransom.  Essentially this was already done to Netflix even with neutrality laws in place, but if they no longer have to play by the rules, who knows where they will stop.  One day, small internet communities like Sports Talk Stop or Blindsideblitz might be asked to pay special monthly fees to ensure that "nothing goes wrong," which is as insidious as it sounds.  So the real focus at hand, and why this is a problem, is that net neutrality laws aren't just there to protect you from being charged out the ass for services you find essential or desirable, it's also to protect the services that you actually use on a daily basis right now.  Imagine the internet as it was back in 1999, when there was no Youtube, no Wikipedia, no Google.  Without neutrality laws, it could happen again.

rollntider

Agreed Sakura. The video I posted explains it pretty good. But if you dont want to watch the 11 minute video.

Its like UPS telling amazon they mail to many packages, so they will restrict how much packages they get and what type of packages. Also Amazon will have to pay more because they mail more packages.



Bret

Good thread.

Forgive me for sounding like a shill, but...Partially in preparation for the worst, and partially because I am sick to death of Comcast throttling my bandwidth because of my torrent use and blocking some sites, I subscribed to Private Internet Access, a VPN. It costs me $40 a year. Comcast has no idea what I'm doing when I am logged in via the VPN, and can't block me from shit. Also, PIA has several "out" servers, so if something is blocked to users of my particular geographic region, I can use of the European "out" servers (or perhaps the one in Hong Kong) and get around said block.

Yeah, it is kind of paying twice for internet access. However, $40 a year isn't going to bankrupt me. And, regardless of whether or not net neutrality goes away this is useful.

As to the other bad things that come with a lack net neutrality...I've been expecting them for some time. When I first found the internet, it was the only part of life where you were truly free. It was all virutal, ones and zeroes, and it was kept in its proper perspective. But, unfortunately, that went away. It now has just as much governmental and corporate interference into our lives as the rest of the world does. So, having a way to play favorites just seems like the next backward step to completely ruin the internet for all of us. :(

rollntider





rollntider