Obama ruins the internet

[Spindrift]

[qimg]http://demotivators.despair.com/demotivational/governmentdemotivator.jpg[/qimg]

When government creates the problem, why do you trust them to fix it?

When governments create problems at the behest of corporations why do you trust those corporations to fix it?

 

[Meed]

Suppose an ISP blocks your website. What do you do? Complain on social media. People love that crap. Post it on Facebook, and off it goes. Nobody can block Facebook. Nobody can afford to block Facebook. And a lot of people get news from Facebook. The problem is not the technical feasibility of blocking content from a given IP address, the problem is that this isn't sufficient to actually block content on the internet, because there are simply too many alternative ways to spread information. And even trying to do so is generally counter-productive. Again, Streisand effect.

There is already an endless flood of complaints about Comcast on facebook. Drumming up outrage is easy enough, and the Streisand effect is a factor, but whether or not the outrage accomplishes anything is another question, especially against a company that has so much domination over the market.

 

[ponderingturtle]

[qimg]http://demotivators.despair.com/demotivational/governmentdemotivator.jpg[/qimg]

When government creates the problem, why do you trust them to fix it?

Yea, it is like with the FDA, no one had a serious problem with the totally legally selling of poison in medicine, and the company was doing a nice quite recall anyway.

But now the Elixer Sulfadimide so called scandal was supposed to matter because a few hundred people give or take died, at least they didn't do anything actually illegal. Boo hoo. Next people will try to make it wrong to dump toxic coal cleaning chemicals in the drinking water.

 

[Ziggurat]

When governments create problems at the behest of corporations why do you trust those corporations to fix it?

Not at all. But the critical difference is implicit in the hilighted word. Corporations have to compete against each other. Government has a monopoly. A monopoly is more dangerous than competition, regardless of whether the players are moral actors. I don't need to rely on trust alone when I can choose between competitors, but I've got nothing to fall back on with government if that trust is misplaced.

 

[Spindrift]

Not at all. But the critical difference is implicit in the hilighted word. Corporations have to compete against each other. Government has a monopoly. A monopoly is more dangerous than competition, regardless of whether the players are moral actors. I don't need to rely on trust alone when I can choose between competitors, but I've got nothing to fall back on with government if that trust is misplaced.

But in many places the company is a monopoly.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not at all. But the critical difference is implicit in the hilighted word. Corporations have to compete against each other. Government has a monopoly. A monopoly is more dangerous than competition, regardless of whether the players are moral actors. I don't need to rely on trust alone when I can choose between competitors, but I've got nothing to fall back on with government if that trust is misplaced.

What about collusion between corporations?

 

[Unabogie]

Suppose an ISP blocks your website. What do you do? Complain on social media. People love that crap. Post it on Facebook, and off it goes. Nobody can block Facebook. Nobody can afford to block Facebook. And a lot of people get news from Facebook. The problem is not the technical feasibility of blocking content from a given IP address, the problem is that this isn't sufficient to actually block content on the internet, because there are simply too many alternative ways to spread information. And even trying to do so is generally counter-productive. Again, Streisand effect.

But your website is paying huge server fees and depending on ad revenue. Sharing your content on Facebook makes Facebook revenue, not you. And if someone clicks on the Facebook link but your ISP is blocking your site? They get nothing, and you get nothing. Then you go out of business.

I love that you try to lecture me about how the internet works, but you completely mess up the technical details of the entire Netflix dispute. Comcast didn't do any of the things you mention in your first paragraph in regards to Netflix. Upchurch's first link (which I quoted) gives a decent summary, and it in no way resembles what you're suggesting, nor does it actually have anything to do with net neutrality. I've already pointed this out, how did you miss it?

I wasn't lecturing you, I was trying to educate you. You said people could scrape GoogleCache or proxy servers. So I explained how website content is actually served to you. As for Netflix's specific situation, this is about all companies and all websites. The question is whether or not ISPs can unfairly damage actual free market competition because they have other interests at stake. The Netflix example is an easy one since Comcast is a direct competitor to Netflix. The important thing is that Comcast be denied the power to discriminate based on content or provider. Those are the only terms we should accept.

 

[Upchurch]

So... no comment on the fact that the Netflix issue actually has nothing to do with net neutrality?

Oh, wow. You were serious.

Okay, here's the parts you quoted:

"Much like Netflix’s ongoing standoff with Verizon FiOS, the drop in speeds wasn’t an issue of the ISP throttling or blocking service to Netflix. Rather, the ISPs were allowing for Netflix traffic to bottleneck at what’s known as “peering ports,” the connection between Netflix’s bandwidth provider and the ISPs.
...
As we’ve pointed out before, the issue of peering was not covered by the recently gutted net neutrality rules."

The two key points you were ignoring is that Comcast allowed the traffic to bottleneck and they were allowed to do this by the recently gutted network neutrality rules. Comcast caused Netflix's service to decline as a negotiating tactic and were able to do so because Verizon had sued the FCC in the courts to so. (I'll freely admit I don't quite understand the issues in that case.)

In other words, this exactly why we need stronger network neutrality rules.

 

[Ziggurat]

Yea, it is like with the FDA, no one had a serious problem with the totally legally selling of poison in medicine, and the company was doing a nice quite recall anyway.

But now the Elixer Sulfadimide so called scandal was supposed to matter because a few hundred people give or take died, at least they didn't do anything actually illegal. Boo hoo. Next people will try to make it wrong to dump toxic coal cleaning chemicals in the drinking water.

You screwed up the name, is Elixir sulfanilamide.

More importantly, though, you seem to be arguing against a straw man. I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, and this really isn't an equivalent scenario at all. First, unlike the government-enforced Comcast monopoly, that wasn't a problem government created. Second (and you'll have to go further up-thread to find my comments on this), this was indeed a demonstrated and severe problem. People actually died. But the problems that net neutrality are supposed to solve are not demonstrated to be severe. The worst people have come up with (Netflix issues) are pretty minor (oh noes! I can't streaming Real Housewives of Atlanta in HD!), and even more damningly, it is not in fact even a problem that net neutrality actually addresses.

 

[foophil]

I think it should be dealt with by fraud laws. For example, telling me I have unrestricted Internet access at X speed, but you slow down Netflix unless Netflix kicks back to you a portion of what I pay Netflix, is fraud.

As soon as this kind of utility-like regulation starts, then the dynamic shifts from satisfying customers to whining and pleading backroom deals between the companies and Congress and regulators, just as with water or electricity. Drag ass on upgrades and regulation of prices can't be far behind.

Let's clarify something here. Net Neutrality isn't talking about throttling speeds in general. It helps protect against throttling of one particular service or website. You, and a few others posting after you, seem to be a little confused over that. There is nothing wrong with a company saying you are allowed only 4GB of data a month, and anything after that gets throttled down. What we are saying is that it is wrong for a company to block a competitor's website or service simply because the ISP wants to sell you an alternative.

With that out of the way, I agree that I'd prefer for this stuff to be settled aas fraud if there was one thing in place. There would need to be competition that people could pick from. That way people could leave the losers that try this and give other companies their business. As it stands, in MANY areas of the country, there are at best 2 ISP's to pick from. One is satellite which frankly sucks for most people with its high ping times. The extremely high costs to start up a major ISP prevents further competition from opening up. Look back at history and you'll see that not one of the major ISP's got there without major public support along the way.

As it stands, since there is no competition, an ISP could simply state in their EULA that they have the right to throttle content as they see fit. You don't have a choice because there isn't anywhere else you can go.

Are you worried that the costs could be passed on to Netflix subscribers? It's true, they might be. But the alternative is that the cost might be passed on to ISP subscribers.

I'm personally not worried about the costs. Those will get passed along either way like you say via the ISP and/or the content providers as this is how it is currently done. I'm worried about the censorship power that the ISP's would potentially have if they are given free will to throttle certain websites or services belonging to their competitors. I remember the days of AOL and being behind their wall. That sucked. I don't want to go back to those days again.

Suppose an ISP blocks your website. What do you do? Complain on social media. People love that crap. Post it on Facebook, and off it goes.

Drumming up support on Facebook because companies like Comcast give you issues isn't really a good option based upon the lack of local competition. Comcast is already has one of the worst company satisfaction records:

In 2004 and 2007, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey found that Comcast had the worst customer satisfaction rating of any company or government agency in the country, including the Internal Revenue Service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Comcast

People simply don't have the option to switch to a competitor many times. That is why Net Neutrality needs to be in place.

 

[Upchurch]

People simply don't have the option to switch to a competitor many times. That is why Net Neutrality needs to be in place.

Pretty much this.

Out of curiosity, does anyone object to the internet being classified as a utility and, if so, why?

 

[ponderingturtle]

You screwed up the name, is Elixir sulfanilamide.

More importantly, though, you seem to be arguing against a straw man. I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, and this really isn't an equivalent scenario at all. First, unlike the government-enforced Comcast monopoly, that wasn't a problem government created. Second (and you'll have to go further up-thread to find my comments on this), this was indeed a demonstrated and severe problem. People actually died. But the problems that net neutrality are supposed to solve are not demonstrated to be severe. The worst people have come up with (Netflix issues) are pretty minor (oh noes! I can't streaming Real Housewives of Atlanta in HD!), and even more damningly, it is not in fact even a problem that net neutrality actually addresses.

So we need to wait for them to happen before we can prevent them. How bad do they need to be before we can do that?

And how do you think we can break the local monopolies? I guess moving it into a government owned utility would make a lot of sense but I suspect that isn't what you are thinking about.

So now we have multiple companies and sets of telephone poles in every neighborhood? That seems impractical for anywhere but urban areas.

How do you get real competition on the local level? Where people actually have a real choice of high speed internet? Much of the country doesn't.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Pretty much this.

Out of curiosity, does anyone object to the internet being classified as a utility and, if so, why?

Because clearly it is solving a problem with regulation when it needs to be solved by massively replication of services though government tax incentives to get effective competition at a local level in ISP's. That is the conservative way or something.

 

[Ziggurat]

Oh, wow. You were serious.

Okay, here's the parts you quoted:

​

The two key points you were ignoring is that Comcast allowed the traffic to bottleneck and they were allowed to do this by the recently gutted network neutrality rules. Comcast caused Netflix's service to decline as a negotiating tactic and were able to do so because Verizon had sued the FCC in the courts to so. (I'll freely admit I don't quite understand the issues in that case.)

In other words, this exactly why we need stronger network neutrality rules.

No, Upchurch. You still don't get it. Comcast didn't do anything. Let that sink in: they didn't do anything. They took NO measures AT ALL to slow down Netflix. None. And the rules would have done nothing to stop that even before they were gutted.

The only thing you said that is correct is what I highlighted.

 

[Upchurch]

No, Upchurch. You still don't get it.

 

[ponderingturtle]

No, Upchurch. You still don't get it. Comcast didn't do anything. Let that sink in: they didn't do anything. They took NO measures AT ALL to slow down Netflix. None. And the rules would have done nothing to stop that even before they were gutted.

The only thing you said that is correct is what I highlighted.

Yes, it is that they know they have a captive customer base who has to take what they give them, so they don't need to do anything about increased demand.

 

[Upchurch]

Because clearly it is solving a problem with regulation when it needs to be solved by [...]

IMHO, a market only works well when it has the proper balance of freedom and structure. Sometimes regulations are there for a purpose. I like that there is a maximum level of rat feces in my food and that children can't have a 40 hour work week.

 

[Donal]

Finally the pictures that show rubbish on the same (un-widened) driveway, implying that unless regulated by NN, providers voluntarily waste capacity, is intriguing. Interested if anyone has evidence of that.

Comcast and Verizon have both been caught red handed throttling connections to Netflix.

 

[Francesca R]

Doesn't really address what I asked if there was evidence for (as far as I can tell).

 

[Ziggurat]

Comcast and Verizon have both been caught red handed throttling connections to Netflix.

What, exactly, do you think Comcast did?