Obama's Plan to Regulate the Internet is 332 Pages. The Public Can't Read It!

[The Human Q-Tip]

But if Progressive pays that "huge" premium, they aren't going to eat that cost. It will directly get passed down to the consumer.

Presumably, Progressive is willing to pay for premium service because it makes their operations more efficient, so the net cost to Progressive customers should be zero. Or even savings. That's the whole point of permitting markets to become as efficient as possible.

There is also no guarantee that they would actually improve the lines. They could have simply downthrottled everyone else, and thus the standard speed now would suddenly become the "fast lane."

Of course there's no guarantee, but it's more likely. And if they screw over other customers, then you'll likely see them switch to other providers.

There is also the way bigger problem of what happens if some startup insurance company comes along and provides better service than Progressive but don't have the money to pay "huge" premiums, thus making it harder or less desirable for consumers to use that service?

Well, that's a great argument in favor of a less-efficient system that is more expensive for consumers.

 

[spydy13]

Presumably, Progressive is willing to pay for premium service because it makes their operations more efficient, so the net cost to Progressive customers should be zero. Or even savings. That's the whole point of permitting markets to become as efficient as possible.

How does it make them any more efficient? All it means is that the information they transfer over the internet would get to a consumer faster than a company that doesn't pay for that premium.

Of course there's no guarantee, but it's more likely. And if they screw over other customers, then you'll likely see them switch to other providers.

But when ISPs intentionally don't compete in eachother's markets it pretty much leaves zero recourse for consumers. It's basically put up with bad service or don't have internet.

Well, that's a great argument in favor of a less-efficient system that is more expensive for consumers.

You don't think that small, startup companies can provide more efficient or better services than large companies? Redbox wiped Blockbuster off the face of the earth because they came up with a model that was cheaper and better for consumers.

 

[gourimoko]

Yeah, that's part of why it is so bad.

Care to explain this? How is throttling and prioritization a good thing?

 

[gourimoko]

Because I thought that argument has been hashed out elsewhere and I didn't have anything to really add. But okay.

Because I don't understand why they shouldn't be able to charge more for a higher level of service. In most cases, you're talking about businesses that are willing to pay a premium. That ability to charge more make it easier to generate more revenue from a given network, making investment in additional service/improvements more likely. Those who are willing to pay a premium often are what enable (financially) investments that benefit all of us.

Because the bandwidth is the same, that's the point.

We're not talking about a company paying for a better connection; we're talking about ISPs downthrottling already existing connections, blocking consumer connections, and partitioning the internet into proprietary networks.

If a company wants a 1gbe they can pay for that today; net neutrality doesn't change that. What net neutrality prohibits is the scanning of packets to determine which go faster than others on the same pipeline.

It does not prevent "premium" services.

 

[OptimusPrime]

 

[FiveThous]

I already avoid Google for the most part. I was just answering your question about if they are a private company. No.

@gourimoko how do you get around this?

As a guy who has been a Google fanboy for many years, the more I read about em, the more I'd like to avoid them.

 

[OptimusPrime]

The owners of Google aren't stupid. They are going to tailor their search results to the liking of the government, and then lobby for regulations against "unscrupulous" search engines that allow "untruthful" content to rank highly and an extensive permit process and large registration fee for anyone that wants to start a new search engine. Just wine and dine some Congressman, donate generously to the president's campaign, line some pockets, etc.

To protect the integrity of the information of course. Eliminating competition would only be a minor side effect.

This how government regulations throughout history have worked and will always work.

 

[Man Called X]

Not really relevant, but I found everyone's favorite picture as a meme. And I thought. why not.

 

[gourimoko]

@gourimoko how do you get around this?

As a guy who has been a Google fanboy for many years, the more I read about em, the more I'd like to avoid them.

You have to mask your presence.

Google tracks you using several indicators. These indicators propagate what search engines call "signals."

Some signals are louder than others, but in general there is an algorithm that attempts to identify each and every user, down to exactly who they are (name, dob, age, address, everything).

The indicators include your hostname (in Windows this is equivalent to the name of your PC); your IP address (this is a weaker indicator); cookies resident on your computer (biggest indicator there is); Google Chrome's internal cookie; MAC addresses (particularly for mobiles).

Signals include what pages you browse to directly versus those you search for. The time you spend on particular pages, duration, etc. Common search terms, etc.. For example, I might have a uniquely identifying signal like so:

1) Has RealCavsFans.com open (think of how this narrows down a search of 6B people).
2) Opens newscientist.com
3) Searches stackoverflow.com
4) Periodically browses to DailyKos.com

These 4 signals (just as an honest example), can uniquely identify me, the unlogged in user that has no identifying cookies and I've masked my IP or used a VPN with end-to-end encryption. Doesn't matter, Google knows, this is probably "Gourimoko," but at the most this is probably 1 of 3 people on RCF, including me. Add one more signal and the probability is that you've narrowed it down to the individual.

If using a mobile phone; forget anonymity in most cases. To hide from Google, you'd need to root the phone, install a cronjob to generate a fake MAC address for the LTE radio and mask the real MAC with the fake one (and this would need to rotate often). This is generally outside most users time/effort constraints, although it's not terribly difficult.

From a home device, you can get pretty secure. Using a VPN is a good way to start. But the moment you log into gmail, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, your bank, anything from that IP, you've then married that IP to your personal identity. Sure, not every site reveals your identity to Google, but almost all of them do; like literally, more than 90% of commercial sites share data with Google to track users.

If you need temporary security, and do not need a fast connection, downloading the Tor Browser (Aurora) is a way to obtain quick/fast anonymity. Logging in to gmail this way is safe, just don't immediate do something illegal (it's best not to do anything personally identifying the same day you do something less than legal on the Tor network).

Hope this helps.

 

[gourimoko]

Just wanted to say that I support Net Neutrality over any other proposed solution.

No counterargument here has really been persuasive to me, and I'm someone who obviously would prefer less oversight of the internet for multiple reasons. But in this instance, this is simply the only viable solution given the position of the courts and the ISPs.

I don't consider this a partisan issue, remotely.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

How does it make them any more efficient? All it means is that the information they transfer over the internet would get to a consumer faster than a company that doesn't pay for that premium.

This is kind of why I didn't want to get into this -- I didn't want to argue what I consider to be a fairly basic business principle. I suppose the direct answer is that I'm sure Progressive uses the internet for more than just sending emails to customers. But the real answer is that I just pulled that example out of a hat, and that a business isn't generally going to pay for a higher level of service unless it makes it more efficient. So you can invent your own hypothetical if you want.

But when ISPs intentionally don't compete in eachother's markets it pretty much leaves zero recourse for consumers. It's basically put up with bad service or don't have internet.

Again, I don't think that reflects how markets generally work, but it's not a topic I care to debate.

You don't think that small, startup companies can provide more efficient or better services than large companies? Redbox wiped Blockbuster off the face of the earth because they came up with a model that was cheaper and better for consumers.

Sure they can. It's just that your hypothetical assumed they were less efficient.

The bottom line is that I don't believe the primary motive for these regulations had anything to do with a concern that competition might be stifled. Throttling a competitor would likely be considered an antitrust violation even without these regs. I think the real concern was more of a populist thing that evil big business shouldn't be able to get higher speeds than some guy who wants to stream movies from Netflix, or online game.

 

[spydy13]

I think the real concern was more of a populist thing that evil big business shouldn't be able to get higher speeds than some guy who wants to stream movies from Netflix, or online game.

I think you might be confused about what Net Neutrality actually is. Consumers, including businesses, can still pay for higher bandwidth plans (faster down speed and up speed) after this regulation was put in place.

 

[gourimoko]

I think you might be confused about what Net Neutrality actually is. Consumers, including businesses, can still pay for higher bandwidth plans (faster down speed and up speed) after this regulation was put in place.

Agreed..

Businesses can still get faster connections. This only prevents throttling of packets on the same line (which would require sniffing those packets).

And no, it's not an antitrust violation, that's been established already.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

I think you might be confused about what Net Neutrality actually is. Consumers, including businesses, can still pay for higher bandwidth plans (faster down speed and up speed) after this regulation was put in place.

No, I get that. I really don't have a desire to get deep into this so I'm using shorthand examples that aren't technically applicable. I view favoring some IP addresses over others, or disfavoring certain protocols, as amounting to giving a preference to others, which may include businesses willing to pay a premium. I don't have a problem with that.

I see nothing wrong, at all, with what Comcast was doing with bittorrent, for example, or throttling things like Youtube.

 

[gourimoko]

No, I get that. I really don't have a desire to get deep into this so I'm using shorthand examples that aren't technically applicable. I view favoring some IP addresses over others, or disfavoring certain protocols, as amounting to giving a preference to others, which may include businesses willing to pay a premium. I don't have a problem with that.

I see nothing wrong, at all, with what Comcast was doing with bittorrent, for example, or throttling things like Youtube.

Couple things:

1) This hasn't anything really to do with IP addresses. But MAC addresses do allow tiered service under FCC regulations that have applied for years already. CDMA/GPRS and DOCSIS are almost identical protocols. What this means is that, again, as @spydy13 has stated, Net Neutrality has nothing to do with tiered services - at all.

2) If UPS or FedEx opened all of your packages to determine what you were shipping, because they wanted to favor some packages over others, would you have a problem with that? I think generally the answer is yes.

There is no business need for Internet Service Providers to sniff packets. You see nothing wrong with them throttling particular protocols because you aren't thinking about HOW they are achieving this form of traffic shaping. It is only possibly by throttling ports, and when traffic is encrypted over common ports like 8080, then the ISP is simply throttling ALL traffic that it cannot sniff.

This is what Comcast and others have been doing, and it's clearly a violation of the privacy and consumer rights of the customer.

As @spydy13 and @NasstyNate have stated, it doesn't seem as though you understand what Net Neutrality actually is. Are you confident in your understanding of the topic?