Net neutrality non-neutrality
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
There is no "going to" here. This is stuff that has been happening, and has been well-documented as an ongoing problem, for well over a decade now.
OK, my turn:
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The NN related screeching seems to ignore the extent to which mobile data has grown.
Mobile internet usage surpasses desktop usage for the first time in history
For the first time in history, more users last month accessed the web from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets than they did from desktops …
How much cellular and Wi-Fi data are smartphone users consuming, and with which apps? The Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint Q4 2016 breakdown
It’s clear that, thanks to unlimited data offers and the falling cost of the GB, wireless customers can now access more content on their phones at faster speeds than ever before. | It’s clear that, thanks to unlimited data offers and the falling cost of the GB, wireless customers can now access...
And I would expect it to continue to grow. Which pretty much destroys any argument about there being no competition among ISPs.
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
The point being that NN doesn't "help" small businesses. That's not really a valid point.
Yes, it does, for reasons explained above.
What it does is prevent me from having to pay my ISP to access incoming content.
...huh?
The people hurt by not having NN have almost uniformly been other large businesses.
Except for the millions of ordinary customers who had their Netflix streams degraded by Comcast, or their torrents throttled by Comcast, or their VOIP calls blocked outright by Madison River, or their HBO Go service blocked outright by Comcast, or their Facetime service blocked outright by AT&T, or their video streams throttled by Verizon, or.... well, you get the point.
You think Comcast is going to keep a list of every streamer that pops up on the internet? You think Comcast is going to know about every VPN?
What makes you think they'll need to? They just need to look for the distinctive characteristics of streaming video and throttle anyone who isn't paying them for
protectionaccess to consumers.This is a battle between large businesses, and they're using small business as a pawn in the debate.
What this mostly is is a preemptive strike against streaming 4K video, which everyone knows is right around the corner, by companies who have a conflict of interest by owning both data transmission services (Comcast, AT&T) and content companies (NBC, DirecTV) and want to prevent the one from being able to cut into the revenue from the other, with the entire Internet getting caught in the crossfire.
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@kian said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
a sales tax is a fixed percentage of the revenue, before you know if you'll even have profits, and a profit tax is a variable percentage of your revenue, depending on what your costs are. This is a very important difference you don't seem to grasp
You say this like all companies are brand-new startups that don't even know if they're going to make a profit or not, or how much. Real companies estimate what their sales and profits are going to be in advance, so they can pretty easily estimate just how much the tax will affect their bottom line, regardless of whether you call it a sales tax or a profit tax. There's room for a certain amount of error when they're estimating these numbers, but in many cases, failing badly means bankruptcy.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Except for the millions of ordinary customers who had their Netflix streams degraded by Comcast, or their torrents throttled by Comcast, or their VOIP calls blocked outright by Madison River, or their HBO Go service blocked outright by Comcast, or their Facetime service blocked outright by AT&T, or their video streams throttled by Verizon, or.... well, you get the point.
Shorter:
FREE STUFF! FREE STUFF! FREE STUFF! WE WANT MORE FREE STUFF!
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Oh, yeah! You can tell it's on target by the downvote!
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Shorter:
FREE STUFF! FREE STUFF! FREE STUFF! WE WANT MORE FREE STUFF!
TDEMSYR. No one is asking for "free stuff" here. No one has ever been asking for "free stuff" in the context of net neutrality. What they are asking for is an end to the fraud: they are entitled to what they paid for, and the telcos are doing everything they can to not have to give it to them.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Shorter:
FREE STUFF! FREE STUFF! FREE STUFF! WE WANT MORE FREE STUFF!
TDEMSYR. No one is asking for "free stuff" here. No one has ever been asking for "free stuff" in the context of net neutrality. What they are asking for is an end to the fraud: they are entitled to what they paid for, and the telcos are doing everything they can to not have to give it to them.
"Fraud." I don't think that means what you think it means. You are the prime example of what I talked about above where people want to cover their eyes and ears and ignore all of the complexities and just shout about how they're good enough, they're smart enough, and gosh, darnit, they deserve it.
And then they want to go stomping around to Make It So by fiat no matter what.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Except for the millions of ordinary customers who had their Netflix streams degraded by Comcast, or their torrents throttled by Comcast, or their VOIP calls blocked outright by Madison River, or their HBO Go service blocked outright by Comcast, or their Facetime service blocked outright by AT&T, or their video streams throttled by Verizon, or.... well, you get the point.
Yes, because Netflix, HBO, and Facetime are all small businesses.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
"Fraud." I don't think that means what you think it means.
What I think it means (among other things) is "selling something you know you are not able to deliver."
You are the prime example of what I talked about above where people want to cover their eyes and ears and ignore all of the complexities and just shout about how they're good enough, they're smart enough, and gosh, darnit, they deserve it.
If I buy something, I absolutely do deserve what was advertised for the price I paid for it. Anything less is fraud. If there are "complexities" involved in delivering on it... they should have thought of that before they advertised it. Caveat vendor.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
If there are "complexities" involved in delivering on it... they should have thought of that before they advertised it. Caveat vendor.
You mean, if there's a brown out, the ISP should be held responsible, right?
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Yes, because Netflix, HBO, and Facetime are all small businesses.
The point I was making is that the customers who were affected were (mostly) not businesses at all; they were millions of ordinary people, far outnumbering the businesses (large or small) involved in the matter.
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
You mean, if there's a brown out, the ISP should be held responsible, right?
Who said anything whatsoever about power outages?
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
You mean, if there's a brown out, the ISP should be held responsible, right?
Who said anything whatsoever about power outages?
The term applies to internet.
You know, those.... "complexities" you keep ignoring.
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@xaade A brownout means a power shortage. If it has some other meaning in the context of ISPs, it's something I've never heard. If I were to guess, I'd say that, by analogy, it refers to too much demand for the bandwidth that the ISPs sold to customers slowing down the network for everyone because they fraudulently promised something they knew they can't deliver?
Yes, that is absolutely their fault and they should be held responsible for it.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Yes, because Netflix, HBO, and Facetime are all small businesses.
The point I was making is that the customers who were affected were (mostly) not businesses at all; they were millions of ordinary people, far outnumbering the businesses (large or small) involved in the matter.
You don't get how this is going.
Ok, consider this.
An ISP hosts up Netflix. I'm watching Netflix with my ISP. Netflix booms and takes up most of the internet traffic.
In between there is a middleman that is connecting our ISPs, however their network wasn't set up to handle the new Netflix traffic.
Netflix's ISP promised a certain speed, but I'm getting a slow down. Why, because the middle-man ISP, they've packet sniffed Netflix and throttled the speed so every other service has a chance at getting through, rather than just Netflix.
Netflix bitches about it, and the middle-man says, "We don't have the infrastructure to support you, so you need to pay us to upgrade the infrastructure."
Netflix presents this as a Net Neutrality issue, rather than helping to solve the problem they created.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
What I think it means (among other things) is "selling something you know you are not able to deliver."
Ah, so you're just lying about it being fraud then?
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
If I buy something, I absolutely do deserve what was advertised for the price I paid for it. Anything less is fraud. If there are "complexities" involved in delivering on it... they should have thought of that before they advertised it. Caveat vendor.
Yes. But you seem to not understand what you were buying. And also, those complexities don't mean that they didn't deliver on what they promised.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@xaade A brownout means a power shortage. If it has some other meaning in the context of ISPs, it's something I've never heard. If I were to guess, I'd say that, by analogy, it refers to too much demand for the bandwidth that the ISPs sold to customers slowing down the network for everyone because they fraudulently promised something they knew they can't deliver?
Yes, that is absolutely their fault and they should be held responsible for it.
Ok,
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A brown out is a temporary shortage. So it's not fraud. If you lent your house and a tornado comes through, it's not fraud.
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Ok, now who's actually responsible for it, there's hundreds of choke points, with several providers. Who's going to pay for fixing it? What if the brown out isn't in your ISP's infrastructure, but it's someone in the middle?
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Ok, now who's actually responsible for it, there's hundreds of choke points, with several providers. Who's going to pay for fixing it? What if the brown out isn't in your ISP's infrastructure, but it's someone in the middle?
Look, he doesn't give a shit. HE JUST WANTS HIS STUFF. The details are unimportant except that he's OWED some fuckin' data! THEY'RE RIPPING HIM OFF!
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Ok, now who's actually responsible for it, there's hundreds of choke points, with several providers. Who's going to pay for fixing it? What if the brown out isn't in your ISP's infrastructure, but it's someone in the middle?
Look, he doesn't give a shit. HE JUST WANTS HIS STUFF. The details are unimportant except that he's OWED some fuckin' data! THEY'RE RIPPING HIM OFF!
The internet is just a big amorphous slime ball that everyone connects to with one cable. If something's not working, it's your own ISP's fault, not the slime, and it's always always always malicious.
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
If something's not working, it's your own ISP's fault, not the slime.
Time to threaten some kids!
https://twitter.com/CounterMoonbat/status/935247942683828224
What are the odds that NN proponents are associated with the worst of them like gamers sometimes are?
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
You don't get how this is going.
Sure I do.
Ok, consider this.
An ISP hosts up Netflix. I'm watching Netflix with my ISP. Netflix booms and takes up most of the internet traffic.
In between there is a middleman that is connecting our ISPs, however their network wasn't set up to handle the new Netflix traffic.
Then why did they promise the capacity to do so? Again, this is known as fraud. Why are you trying to make it out to be some sort of acceptable thing?
Netflix's ISP promised a certain speed, but I'm getting a slow down. Why, because the middle-man ISP, they've packet sniffed Netflix and throttled the speed so every other service has a chance at getting through, rather than just Netflix.
Because that's cheaper than simply upgrading their infrastructure to pay for the service their customers are being charged for.
Netflix bitches about it, and the middle-man says, "We don't have the infrastructure to support you, so you need to pay us to upgrade the infrastructure."
"We created this problem by knowing promising more than we were capable of delivering and now we don't want to dip into our fat profit margins to fix it, so let's hold someone who is not our customer hostage and get them to pay for it! Brillant!"
Netflix presents this as a Net Neutrality issue, rather than helping to solve the problem they created.
Netflix places the blame where it rightfully belongs. What is the problem here?
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Ok,
- A brown out is a temporary shortage. So it's not fraud. If you lent your house and a tornado comes through, it's not fraud.
Did you miss the part where I said "knowingly"? Tornadoes are unpredictable events. Basic mathematics is not. Neither is Moore's Law growth.
- Ok, now who's actually responsible for it, there's hundreds of choke points, with several providers. Who's going to pay for fixing it? What if the brown out isn't in your ISP's infrastructure, but it's someone in the middle?
Then they're the ones responsible for fixing it, and Netflix is still not. Why are you trying to make this look like something complicated?
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Look, he doesn't give a shit. HE JUST WANTS HIS STUFF. The details are unimportant except that he's OWED some fuckin' data! THEY'RE RIPPING HIM OFF!
Are you saying that if I signed a contract saying I will pay $X for Y bandwidth, I am not entitled to Y bandwidth?
Oh, wait. I forgot who I'm talking to. You're the one who's always saying "rules are for losers." That's exactly what you mean, isn't it?
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Then they're the ones responsible for fixing it, and Netflix is still not.
Fixing what?
Netflix slowed down because the middle-man's infrastructure is a chokepoint.
Why should they have to solve the problem for Netflix?
At best, Netflix's ISP could come back and say, "no, this is your limit". But Netflix wanted them to fix it for them, and the middle-man wanted Netflix to pay for the upgrade.
This was only an issue for Netflix. Everyone else was happy with their service to their customers.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
You don't get how this is going.
Sure I do.
Ok, consider this.
An ISP hosts up Netflix. I'm watching Netflix with my ISP. Netflix booms and takes up most of the internet traffic.
In between there is a middleman that is connecting our ISPs, however their network wasn't set up to handle the new Netflix traffic.
Then why did they abbr title="we know they did, because the downstream ISP promised a certain amount of bandwidth, and they wouldn't have promised more than they could get promised from their upstream partners">promise the capacity to do so? Again, this is known as fraud. Why are you trying to make it out to be some sort of acceptable thing?
What the everloving fuck? I mean? Seriously? When you sell internet service you're promising that other guys will deliver something at a certain rate?
Netflix's ISP promised a certain speed, but I'm getting a slow down. Why, because the middle-man ISP, they've packet sniffed Netflix and throttled the speed so every other service has a chance at getting through, rather than just Netflix.
Because that's cheaper than simply upgrading their infrastructure to pay for the service their customers are being charged for.
I see. It's an alternate history thread.
Netflix bitches about it, and the middle-man says, "We don't have the infrastructure to support you, so you need to pay us to upgrade the infrastructure."
"We created this problem by abbr title="fraud" knowing promising more than we were capable of delivering and now we don't want to dip into our fat profit margins to fix it, so let's hold someone who is not our customer hostage and get them to pay for it! Brillant!"
Wow. The F word, again. You are shameless.
Netflix presents this as a Net Neutrality issue, rather than helping to solve the problem they created.
Netflix places the blame where it rightfully belongs. What is the problem here?
Historical revisionism?
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@anotherusername said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Real companies estimate what their sales and profits are going to be in advance, so they can pretty easily estimate just how much the tax will affect their bottom line, regardless of whether you call it a sales tax or a profit tax.
Yes, it can be estimated. And in either case, their profits will be lower than if there were no tax. But with a sales tax the rational response is to raise your sale price, and take a hit on revenue but make up for part of the tax thanks to a higher margin on each sale, while with a profit tax the rational response is to keep the same sales price which maximizes revenue, and continues to maximize profits. Different tax structures have different effects and "raise prices" isn't always the reaction that maximizes profits.
But don't take my word for it, take five minutes to actually run the numbers and see for yourself.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Look, he doesn't give a shit. HE JUST WANTS HIS STUFF. The details are unimportant except that he's OWED some fuckin' data! THEY'RE RIPPING HIM OFF!
Are you saying that if I signed a contract saying I will pay $X for Y bandwidth, I am not entitled to Y bandwidth?
Are you saying that you have 3 eyes? Seriously, lay off the shoulder aliens. I never said anything like that.
Oh, wait. I forgot who I'm talking to. You're the one who's always saying "rules are for losers." That's exactly what you mean, isn't it?
No, I'm the one saying Who? Whom? But yes, you fit this very well, since you aren't bothering to keep to facts or use words according to their meaning.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
What the everloving fuck? I mean? Seriously? When you sell internet service you're promising that other guys will deliver something at a certain rate?
There goes your
-grade reading comprehension again. You literally just took what I said and turned it inside out.Wow. The F word, again. You are
shamelesshonest.FTFY
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Are you saying that you have 3 eyes? Seriously, lay off the shoulder aliens. I never said anything like that.
No, you're simply mocking me for saying that I am. Which amounts to essentially the same thing.
No, I'm the one saying Who? Whom? But yes, you fit this very well, since you aren't bothering to keep to facts or use words according to their meaning.
Are you saying that selling something you know you can't deliver on is not fraud?
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
You're the one who's always saying "rules are for losers."
Actually, I'm the one who's always saying "rules are for losers." And I agree with the article @lolwhat posted. Neither side has clean hands in this debate. Also, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, if we did a better job of enforcing anti-trust laws, NN would probably be a moot point.
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@kian said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
with a sales tax the rational response is to raise your sale price, and take a hit on revenue but make up for part of the tax thanks to a higher margin on each sale, while with a profit tax the rational response is to keep the same sales price which maximizes revenue, and continues to maximize profits
You can't have that both ways.
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@antiquarian said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Also, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, if we did a better job of enforcing anti-trust laws, NN would probably be a moot point.
I agree, to a certain degree, but that would require a massive reworking of the entire system. Residential and commercial data transmission, like transmission of other services (ie. water, power, gas, etc), is the realm of natural monopolies. Even when AT&T was broken up for antitrust violations, they weren't split up into multiple competing entities; they were split up into multiple regional natural monopolies because the other way just wouldn't have worked well.
What would likely work well, based on experience in places that have actually tried this, would be to segregate the infrastructure from the ISPs. The actual last-mile lines would be owned by one entity, and any ISP that wanted to could rent access to the lines and step in to provide services on that infrastructure. But as long as AT&T or Comcast is allowed to own the lines and the information services that run on the lines, you're going to have an inherently anticompetitive situation.
Until we do that, net neutrality is the best option we have.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
What the everloving fuck? I mean? Seriously? When you sell internet service you're promising that other guys will deliver something at a certain rate?
There goes your
-grade reading comprehension again. You literally just took what I said and turned it inside out.It's fun when you project this much.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Are you saying that you have 3 eyes? Seriously, lay off the shoulder aliens. I never said anything like that.
No, you're simply mocking me for saying that I am. Which amounts to essentially the same thing.
Never go full
.No, I'm the one saying Who? Whom? But yes, you fit this very well, since you aren't bothering to keep to facts or use words according to their meaning.
Are you saying that selling something you know you can't deliver on is not fraud?
Back to the shoulder aliens, eh? No, I have never said that.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Are you saying that selling something you know you can't deliver on is not fraud?
But you seem to think that unforeseen complications is fraud too.
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Are you saying that selling something you know you can't deliver on is not fraud?
But you seem to think that unforeseen complications is fraud too.
He thinks that writing software with the purpose of enforcing a license agreement is law enforcement. But then he thinks that physically preventing people from speeding is not, so who can say with this guy?
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Back to the shoulder aliens, eh? No, I have never said that.
Then what are you saying?
I say that if an ISP promises X bandwidth to its paying customers and knows that it can't deliver X bandwidth to all of them, and then the demand grows high enough that they need to and they don't make good on their promise, that is fraud. You mocked me for this. I then asked if you believe that selling something you know you can't deliver on is not fraud, and you say no, you never said that.
What is your position, then? Or are you gaslighting me or something?
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@xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
But you seem to think that unforeseen complications is fraud too.
I think there's no good reason to call them "unforeseen," and even less to call them "unforeseeable." They had to have known it was coming. (Maybe not from Netflix specifically, but if it hadn't been them it would inevitably have been someone else. There's no good reason to have assumed it wouldn't happen one way or another.)
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
I say that if an ISP promises X bandwidth to its paying customers and knows that it can't deliver X bandwidth to all of them, and then the demand grows high enough that they need to and they don't make good on their promise, that is fraud. You mocked me for this
OK, fair enough. I thought you were talking about net neutrality stuff, so I apparently added context that wasn't there.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
I thought you were talking about net neutrality stuff
I thought I was too! Just off on a bit of a tangent about stuff that's a step or two away on the causal chain.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
I thought you were talking about net neutrality stuff
I thought I was too! Just off on a bit of a tangent about stuff that's a step or two away on the causal chain.
Well, don't look now, but your chain is broken.
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The problem with getting rid of net neutrality is that without neutrality, ISPs can just try to make the Internet like cable: you can visit the sites ISPs allow and nothing else. Kinda like the North Korean internet that only has like 20 sites. What made the Internet great was that anyone could just buy a server and host a website or a forum. But it's all gone thanks to ISPs wanting to make Internet like cable.
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@magnusmaster ...which is actually happening in Portugal, where there are no net neutrality laws on the books.
Portugal Shows The Internet Why Net Neutrality Is Important
So if you’ve followed the debate over net neutrality for much of the last decade, you probably remember images like these, purporting to show what the internet might look like if we let broad…
Once again, these are not hypothetical problems. Net neutrality violations are real issues today that are affecting real people.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Until we do that, net neutrality is the best option we have.
Is it? What are the other options?
Even if it is the best option, you know how politics works here. There's a problem, then the politicians offer a "solution" based on the following syllogism:
- We must do something.
- This is something.
- Therefore, we must do this.
It also bears mention that in many cases it was a prior implementation of this syllogism that caused or exacerbated the problem in the first place. After the "solution" is implemented, everyone thinks the problem is fixed and moves on to the next issue, and the problem never gets fixed the right way.
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@antiquarian Yes, I'm quite familiar with the "politician's syllogism." This is not the case here.
Before the concept of "net neutrality" existed as a thing to be affirmatively protected, it existed as the natural, normal, obvious way in which networks were run. When certain ISPs began to see ways to extract wealth from the Internet by abusing their customers, people started saying, "Hey, that's not how it works!" and the debate over net neutrality began.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Before the concept of "net neutrality" existed as a thing to be affirmatively protected, it existed as the natural, normal, obvious way in which networks were run. When certain ISPs began to see ways to extract wealth from the Internet by abusing their customers, people started saying, "Hey, that's not how it works!" and the debate over net neutrality began.
Do you remember earlier in the thread where I was saying that there is oversimplification going on on both sides?
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@antiquarian Do you remember earlier in this thread where you talked about common fallacies?
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@masonwheeler Also, how about answering my question? In order to say that net neutrality is the best option, we need to know what the other options are.
