74 Democrats sign a letter to end Net Neutrality

[Sargeras]

I haven't started a topic here in a while, so here's one to stir the pot for tomorrow's reading:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/node/30594

It's nice to know that Pelosi's and Obama's own party has their back... oh wait...

[Kluden]

My rep got my email and phone call last week. Won't help much with these assholes here in the DC area though. The lobby is strong for the comm giants.

[Bubba Grizz]

Could someone explain this in simple old man terms? I read the letter and it looks like they want to expand the broadband access to the entire country. Isn't that a good thing?

[Funkmasterr]

Could someone explain this in simple old man terms? I read the letter and it looks like they want to expand the broadband access to the entire country. Isn't that a good thing?

No. What they are stating, is that we shouldn't promote net neutrality or in any way change the regulations that Comcast and the other media companies operate under.

The reason they are giving is because of the supposed cost involved in them strengthening the pipeline and providing broadband to areas that don't currently have it.

This is of course completely bullshit, the "pipeline" these assholes speak of needs no upgrading. They are fully capable of meeting the current demand and any demand in the foreseeable future, and there is absolutely no reason they should be allowed to further fuck us.

I actually just got a letter from Comcast saying starting July 1st we're limited to 250GB/month. If we exceed this, we get a warning. Exceed it a second time and they cancel your service and you can't start it again for a year. Note that they don't even provide the option to pay more for more bandwidth. Time to switch to Qwest.

[masteen]

The legislation they're proposing also allows ISPs to selectively throttle access to certain sites (youtube, google, ect.), unless those sites pay YOUR provider to allow you unfettered access to them.

[Winnow]

Fucking democrats.

[Avestan]

See. . .hmm how to put this.

I am against net neutrality. The problem is that Comcast actually has a legitimate grudge. They did spend a ton of money building this network and some people and site use it far more than others. If they were able to charge on a usage basis, in theory, those of us who do not watch video and play mmo's all day should be able to get a far cheaper plan.

The problem is that I do not trust Comcast to offer the cheaper plan. . .only jack up the price on heavy users. Free market people like me would like to believe that eventually new entrants would come in and offer extremely cheap + fast internet that is bandwidth constrained. The issue is that because the capital costs are so high to run new fiber, there is a near monopoly and I am not sure the end consumer would actually be served.

It is, however, not as simple as them wanting to charge you more for your internet. Getting rid of net neutrality might actually be an extremely good thing for the expansion of the internet in the United States and the cost of getting broadband as long as you are not a heavy user.

[Keverian FireCry]

I have to say as someone who has a limited understanding about "net neutrality" the letter that was linked in the OP sounded like it was a good thing... However I do understand politics and I know that the language used by any group or politician is often incredibly misleading.

That said, can someone post the actual legislation that is being discussed here? So we can discuss it on it's own merits, rather than the spin from either side of the argument?

Also, can someone give an objective description of Net Neutrality?

I've heard about net neutrality a lot, but often from more of a censorship/content regulation point of view. Not sure how bandwidth, etc. comes into it.

[Aabidano]

Reasonably balanced article on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Neutrality

For me it depends on how the legislation is written really, though doing nothing is also a reasonable route.

Allowing providers to throttle traffic that impacts the other customers and the network "excessively" doesn't seem unreasonable for instance. Someone running a P2P client during busy hours is a good example, they're a nasty hit on resources at best and really nasty of configured\designed badly. Settings that the best throughput on a congested connection also multiply the load on network resources. Every other sort of "network friendly" software client\app has been (re)designed to avoid this sort of hit.

On that same token forcing providers to implement some sort of QoS guarantee for residential users doesn't seem unreasonable. Similar to what the FCC already requires of voice networks. Nothing in depth, but it would force the providers, cable providers in particular to step back and look at their infrastructure.

Charging extra for popular sites\services does seem unreasonable if it's just a matter of traffic volume. That would suggest the provider needs to bump up his SLAs with his peer(s).

I haven't read the legislation but I'd assume it's there to make someone who's made campaign contributions money.

[Kluden]

This is how I have simplified my support for net neutrality...I'm not saying this is the whole of the argument, but this is my simple reason for supporting any and all offense against cable and comm giants.

Net neutrality is the only fight right now taking the opposing side of comm and cable giants. These companies may spend the money on R&D, they may spend the money on installing fiber, copper, etc etc, but they don't do it because they want to, they do it to make more money. This is a capitalist society we live in, and all companies are allowed to make more money any way they can that fits within the legislative laws of the land. The Net Neutrality movement is an attempt to keep one more money making scheme at bay. These companies make an extremely huge profit margin on broadband access. They are only attempting to get their legislative efforts moving forward to change the way the FCC restricts them now, so they can have another device to make more money, charge more money, in tiered services...making the consumer think they NEED a higher tier, by restricting the items we use the most on the internet.

All businesses deserve the ability to make money if they offer a service that people are willing to pay for...but removing the ability for competition...having a "free monopoly", etc, should be enough for these companies. Sadly, its not. Tiered services and other devices to charge consumers more is unfair at best. $50 a month for broadband is what I pay, and I consider that to be very high.

I have no other choice, the Comcast monopoly has me. DSL is not broadband in my opinion, and I have no FiOS option, so the Cable Monopoly has me. So I say yes to net neutrality, because isn't a free fucken monopoly enough for these god damn companies?

edit:
This also opens the door for your ISP to direct your traffic for you. For Example, you type in www .google.com in your internet browser, and your browser takes you to www .comcastapprovedsearchengine.com. Or you want to go to ESPN.com, and you end up at www. comcastsports.com. it absolutely opens the door for this shit, and is already done by comcast when you type in an address that doesn't lead anywhere, you amazingly find yourself on the comcast search page, instead of just getting a 404 or whatever other error you get with a misspelled address.

[masteen]

Here's my problem with Comcast: They advertise and sell their plans based on 6mpbs guaranteed speed, with some gimmick that allegedly speeds it up to 12mbps somehow. Nowhere do they sell it as 250GB/month. They sell their bandwidth per second, and then get pissy with customers who use every bit of that 6mbps every second of every day. It's fucking dishonest.

If you don't want people to expect a certain kind of service, it seems to me that you shouldn't advertise and sell your service as such.

[Funkmasterr]

Here's my problem with Comcast: They advertise and sell their plans based on 6mpbs guaranteed speed, with some gimmick that allegedly speeds it up to 12mbps somehow. Nowhere do they sell it as 250GB/month. They sell their bandwidth per second, and then get pissy with customers who use every bit of that 6mbps every second of every day. It's fucking dishonest.

If you don't want people to expect a certain kind of service, it seems to me that you shouldn't advertise and sell your service as such.

Yep. Also, I get like 1.5mbps absolutely best case scenario, so it's a complete crock of shit.

[Aabidano]

If you don't want people to expect a certain kind of service, it seems to me that you shouldn't advertise and sell your service as such.

Absolutely.

If they're advertising a given data rate that guarantee should extend all the way across their system. If they're selling me 6Mb\s and I'm only getting 1.5 on my local segment they owe me money.

[Kluden]

Well, with the Comcast supported items you will see an add on your door that will sell you 100Mbps download speeds for only $39.99 a month! Small print would only talk about existing cable customers etc etc...but wouldn't have to mention that you only get 100Mbps download with the sites that comcast "supports"...ie...is paid by to allow customers "supreme access speeds too"...where as the other sites will be 1mbps if you're lucky that you're allowed to even go there.

The ugly side of what comcast, verizon, at&t and the rest want to do to the internet is not really discussed anywhere. They just say "well, we wouldn't do that!" Who the fuck would trust those companies, seriously?

[Zaelath]

Would you be in favour of the government putting a toll booth in front of every Walmart because the roads enable their customers to get to them?

If no, then you should be in favour of net neutrality. End of discussion.

The rest of the bullshit about throttling users is at the opposite end of the scale, has existed here for years, and follows the "user pays" model. The idea that free-marketeers propose that the default should be unlimited downloads and unlimited speeds for $50/month, and "someone" will create a cheap limited account to compete, is missing the part where $50/month is already cheap. At the moment the 95% of users downloading a few Gb a month are subsidising Fair and Funk, to say that should continue sounds a bit socialist to me...

[Fairweather Pure]

I go through phases. I'm usually less than 100gigs a month. However, I was pushing my 250gig limit last month for sure. I usually get 17-20mps. I pay for 6mps. /shrug

This net neutrality sounds like some bullshit to me. Too much wiggle room to backdoor everyone later.

[Kluden]

I think the point is mainly, do you trust comcast to police itself, and be part of setting up policies that are mutually beneficial to users and company? if you say you trust them, then you're a share holder I think the current world economy is a fine sign of what happens when you let companies designate policy. Totally with everyone having issues with government being involved with businesses...but the government is bound to the internet policy making, so they have to be involved with this "business".

I want these companies to make money, I want them to continue "making things better" for internet users...I don't want them controlling what a customer can do with the internet though.

edit: stupid double post...anyways...$50 is not cheap or affordable for single parent families, less than mean earners...etc. I would be willing to guess that the majority of folks on this board are high mean and above mean earners...its a guess, but I think by most posts here you can see intelligent, money earning people. Either way, its affordable for us to pay $50 a month...but not for a lot of others. I'm guessing, but I would love to see what actuallly monthly operating costs of one internet connection is in a busy neighborhood. My guess is it costs verizon or comcast $8 to $15 per month, rest being profit. Add in TV services, phone service, and the other shit they do, then you are lowering the operating cost in that one household, increasing the profit.

[Xouqoa]

Net neutrality is imperative to the continued success of the Internet. Any attempt to close off an inherently open system like it should be met with the strongest rebuke.

[Zaelath]

edit: stupid double post...anyways...$50 is not cheap or affordable for single parent families, less than mean earners..

$20 is cheap for unlimited 1000/128 kbps internet though (looked up charter in St. Cloud, offers around the place vary I know..)

FYI, for a 4000/1000 kbps service with 65Gb download limit I pay over $100, and they don't give me a free modem...

I could get a 10Mbit symmetric link with unlimited downloads (though probably a play fair policy), but that would be $1000/month.

In any case, I don't think it's "unfair" to ask end users not to spend all day every day streaming internet from netflix when they're paying the same price as the average user that's using 100x less bandwidth. You get 50 users doing that and you bottleneck the cable in a neighbourhood... I think it's far more disturbing that they want to make you pay twice; if they make netflix pay for "network access", you can bet that flows down to the end users.

However, the other side of the coin is they *really* want to be able to throttle torrent traffic as well, otherwise streaming services would convert to DRM'd torrent seeders. Which works out much cheaper for them, so for the cost of waiting 10 mins to watch your show they could charge a lot less...

And didn't mean to pick on you Fair, but that 1500Gb month made me lol.

[Aabidano]

Locally you can get a 1.5Mb\128kb DSL connection for anywhere from $8-$14, with no monthly limits. About what my neighbor pays for dialup.

Cable on my side of the bay is ~$50 for a 6Mb+\2Mb connection with no limits (yet), thoroughly unreliable and absolutely infested with script kiddies. If you're on a segment with folks running torrents or <insert first person shooter\LAN game> you're basically screwed and might as well cancel the service.

Fiber is ~$39 for 10Mb\2Mb, with no limits (yet). I've never had a QoS issues at all even when streaming VoD. Pretty sure they offer up to a 50Mb\50Mb connection, but it's pricey @ $250 a month(?).

I think the point is mainly, do you trust comcast to police itself

Absolutely not. No more than all the other businesses who are perfectly happy to screw the public in any way they can.

On one hand there's a feeling of schadenfreude in watching the democrats' supporters squirm as the magnitude of their sellout becomes more and more apparent. They're still far behind the republicans though. Sadly we all get screwed as a result.

[Funkmasterr]

Sorry, I'm in no way convinced that with the profit margins they must have, they can't afford to meet the demands (high usage people included) and still have an absurd profit margin. You're right, people like me/fair/whoever should be paying more than people who just check their AOL and the American Idol results every day, but said people shouldn't be paying 50/mo for cable internet like they are - they should be paying about 15 or 20.

Also, high bandwidth usage isn't limited to people like us anymore. Tons of people stream Netflix, Hulu, etc all the time. Your average person is going to use more bandwidth in the coming years than the media folks would like them to believe.

The focal point here, though, should really be how many of the politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle are so ready to give it to an already upset American public up the ass. Wonder how far they think they can push things.

[Aabidano]

...Also, high bandwidth usage isn't limited to people like us anymore. Tons of people stream Netflix, Hulu, etc all the time. Your average person is going to use more bandwidth in the coming years than the media folks would like them to believe...

That's what they're banking on in buying this legislation now.

[Kluden]

Verizon is a very profitable company. They make double digit profit each and every quarter. Granted, their revenue numbers are ridiculous but the profit on that is still above 10%. Meaning, the R&D and all upkeep of those lines is easily afforded and absorbed as cost of business, and still allows the company to surpass double digit percentage in profit. Every company in the world would be happy with that kind of consistency.

Again, I'm not saying that verizon shouldn't be allowed to make money...they absolutely should be allowed to in this capitalistic society...but, when they are the only choice for broadband, or comcast is, or whomever, and they get a FREE MONOPOLY, some things just have to be given back to the public...as in defining the word unlimited to mean unlimited. Giving the comm giants a legislative excuse to say "we need to charge more because the internet is just so used"...is ridiculous.

The comm giants are giants...MCI was a fluke due to cooked books...the world wouldn't be lucky enough for one of these other giants to do stupid shit with their accounting.


Also, I need to move to florida, where you have COMPETITION for broadband, and their prices clearly reflect that! Grats to your free state! now, if asshole verizon would just get a fios backbone installed in my neighborhood I'd have a choice too...