Equal Internet for Everyone!

Posted by $ Radio_Randy 9 years, 11 months ago to Technology
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Sounds suspiciously similar to Directive 10-281 and our illustrious President is backing it through what is known as "Net Neutrality".
Do phrases like "All the traffic has to be treated equally" and "The Internet has to stay open for everybody" sound at all familiar? They're basically saying that everyone should get the same Internet speeds, regardless of what they pay...businesses and commercial users be damned!
Lastly, the phrase "Access to the Internet has to be one of those basic rights" just irritates the Hell out of me.
SOURCE URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/24/uk-eu-internet-ansip-idUKKCN0J81TK20141124


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  • Posted by $ allosaur 9 years, 11 months ago
    Comrade citizens, let us spread the speed around.
    Each human resource unit of the collective is born entitled to have the same speed as, say, capitalist high lord Bankster McBacon Big Britches III.
    In fact, Big Britches should be helping entitled welfare crack moms get their fair share so their warped kids may gain access to quality supervision with state approved games and videos.
    Of course, this final solution does not apply to our more than equal elite betters, who are allotted double hits of speed to enable improved navigation to access the euphoria of a finally fully functional thus successful Socialist Utopia that only good ole' Yankee ingenuity can provide.
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  • Posted by JanelleFila 9 years, 11 months ago
    I agree. Since when is Internet and a smart phone a "basic right" that people can't live without? My ex-husband needs government assistance for his heating bills but he owns two Xboxes and a Wii. (And god only knows how many big screen TVs).
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  • Posted by DMB 9 years, 11 months ago
    Great observation! It seems more & more that we are living in the Atlas Shrugged movie. Our Mayor Minor in Syracuse NY wants 84 million to build the Internet structure for the city & get this for "The Common Good". Yikes!! She doesn't want grant money to be picking winners & losers.
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  • Posted by $ Terraformer_One 9 years, 11 months ago
    Mr Obama is a 'community leader' that surrounds himself with people who caused the current mess in America.
    Some of these looters are affiliated with people who hold humanity in contempt(greens who want an environment untouched by Man's presence).

    to expect any useful pro capitalist thoughts to escape his lips is wishful thinking.
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  • Posted by wiggys 9 years, 11 months ago
    There are people who work in the shadows coming up with ideas that will limit freedom. one way which is the worst is to limit freedom of speech. is it any wonder why 0 thinks if he does that this is a good idea. one should ask 0 who told him this is what the government should do so we can find out who is dreaming up these things.
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  • Posted by frodo_b 9 years, 11 months ago
    Yes, OP! It infuriates me, and they're getting away with their argument because the general public doesn't understand how the internet actually works.

    The true root of the problem is that the internet service providers have oversold their infrastructure. They've promised Gb connections to everyone when they can only support Mb's of data. That is why Netflix, et al are straining the capacities of isp's.

    The whole net neutrality debate began when isp's wanted to charge customers to not throttle their bandwidth and make the connection slower. The bandwidth-hungry services like Netflix already pay more to the isp's so they can provide their services, so what the isp's were attempting to do was essentially blackmail.

    However, those who wish to control (the controllers) have twisted the discussion around to government regulation of access to the internet.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 11 months ago
      " They've promised Gb connections to everyone when they can only support Mb's of data. That is why Netflix, et al are straining the capacities of isp's. "
      If that's the whole problem, why don't the providers just charge people based on their usage similar to how mobile data providers do? I thought their complaint was having to forward packets, mostly coming from two companies, destined for people who are not their customers.
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      • Posted by frodo_b 9 years, 11 months ago
        >why don't the providers just charge people based on their usage

        That would be the most elegant solution, wouldn't it?

        Their complaint about having to forward packets is specious. If they don't want to forward packets to non-customers then they should step down as tier 1 internet providers. Part of the terms of agreement for being part of the tier 1 backbone is to pass traffic regardless of the destination.
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        • Posted by dbhalling 9 years, 11 months ago
          I think the whole thing is irrelevant and made up, but assuming the worst cases technology will quickly outgrow any of the supposed problems. Remember the millions of miles of dark fiber in the 1990s.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 11 months ago
          "That would be the most elegant solution, wouldn't it? "
          I guess they think they can get more money as gatekeepers to who can transmit data than they can selling the service to the data recipients. This one view makes Net Neutrality look good.
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      • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 11 months ago
        The US is the only country not to follow this model. Some ISP's did it way back in the BB era (I used to play bullletin board games back when my dad had an original Compuserve membership) and we had to pay per minute for access even though the local phone service was free.

        Then many ISP's became regionalized or nationalized - like AOL. Their hook was a low monthly fee for as much time online as you wanted - because the phone service was independent of website use. You dialed in with your modem (I started with a 3600 baud modem and moved up) to a local call-in number that trunked your connection through the phone company to the ISP - their way of granting people national service without forcing them to use expensive long distance minutes for connectivity. Gradually, service increased as modem speeds increased, and then the phone companies themselves got into the ISP business since they were effectively being used for it anyway. ISDN (the gateway between dial-up and broadband DSL) was really where the telephone companies finally jumped into the fray, because they recognized that businesses wanted - and were willing to pay a premium - for high speed internet. And ISDN was all about pay-for-play. The company I worked for at the time restricted ISDN use to a few execs and the IT department because we got charged for everything over a basic amount - and because they didn't want the sales staff wasting time or downloading the latest viruses.

        Then the ISP's bounced back and competed with the telephone companies - with the help of enabling legislation that prevented the phone companies from gouging ISP's just to put them out of business. This forced them away from the pay-for-use model out of sheer competition. And the US market has been very resistant to going back to pay-for-use ever since.

        It's only been since the advent of cell phones that there has been any serious talk about making it stick, and that's mainly because people are already comfortable with paying for use on them because that's how the model has always been. Now, nearly all cellular companies are eliminating their unlimited data plans in favor of pay-for-use. Verizon just recently forced us to renegotiate our grandfathered plan (unlimited data) in favor of unlimited talk and text and limited data.

        What I object to in the whole "net neutrality" war is the preface that dictates that the government suddenly needs to be in charge of the Internet. Part of net neutrality is being fronted by the UN, who wants to gain control of the DNS system, which right now is maintained by private companies in the US. (If you don't understand the significance of the DNS system, it's like a sorting center for the post office called the Internet. Without them, the Internet doesn't work. AT ALL.)

        The other issue is that in the change to IPv6. In the based transmission protocol we currently use (IPv4), routers HAVE to treat all packets the same - there simply isn't anything supported by the protocol to promote what in IPv6 is called "Quality of Service". Basically, it's just a simple little flag meant to help the routers know how important any particular packet is. It's main use - until this came up - was for Voice-Over-IP to try to ensure that the packets maintained a fairly homogeneous rate so the communication wasn't all distorted and choppy. Same for video. The phone companies just want to be able to piggy-back on this and set up their own system (based on pay-for-QoS) to prioritize.
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  • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 11 months ago
    "Obama made a rare intervention on the issue two weeks ago when he said that no company should be stuck in the "slow lane" because it could not pay for faster access."

    ... And to each according to their WANTS....

    We're surrounded by morons, O is the Moron In Chief!
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    • Posted by ewv 9 years, 11 months ago
      No illegal alien or backwards nation anywhere on the planet should be stuck in the slow lane. Welfare international.
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      • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 11 months ago
        Agreed, depending on who or what 'sticks them in the slow lane."
        I don't like the idea of being 'stuck in the slow lane,' but if there's a freeway toll road with a higher speed limit and less traffic, what's the REAL reason I'm 'stuck in the slow lane'?
        No... the reason BEHIND that 'explanation.'
        That's what I'm talking about.

        If that isn't addressed, the 'internet speed limit' devolves into 'as fast as I WANT mine to be,' with no relationship at all to how that infrastructure will be provided, or by whom, or at what cost (and cost to WHOM).

        So long as Obama believes "you didn't build that"... factory, product, internet... I'll be asking those kinds of questions.

        Cheers!
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 9 years, 11 months ago
    This Net Neutrality is Socialism at its' finest. All citizens must be equal. Talk about competition and free market being squeezed out of existence. The same thing happened here in the Verde Valley in north central Az. There was a group of people from the local computer club came up with a start-up company to provide Wifi in the area. The Internet providers here put up a hugh and cry about unfair competition. They went to the Democratic controlled Legislature and had the venture stopped. They wanted the Internet providers at that time to be on some what equal footing. Most of those have either went out of business or have been swallowed up by the larger and fewer providers. These companies are now carving up Arizona between Cable, Satellite and DSL providers. So far, satellite has the rural market and DSL has increased their presence with lower rates. If the FCC try's to push Net Neutrality the consumer is going to end up paying alot more for the services.
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    • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 11 months ago
      Agreed! And about a million times, now, I've repeated.... "It's 'guaranteed' equal OPPORTUNITY that's required, not guaranteed equal RESULTS."

      Sort of why the statue in NY harbor isn't the "Statue of Results," y' know? :)
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 9 years, 11 months ago
    Certainly will benefit Chinese hackers' access, or better yet the Chinese Government pretending to be hackers. Excellent.

    I guess it makes sense that the government should regulate the internet service providers since the government designed, built and maintains the internet.
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  • Posted by $ Terraformer_One 9 years, 11 months ago
    A great article that explains 'Net Neutrality' is available from
    www.theobjectivestandard.com
    In pdf format for only $3.95

    Otherwise, an annual subscription to the journal is only $29.

    Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet
    Raymond C. Niles | Economics, Individual Rights & Law
    From The Objective Standard, Vol. 3, No. 4.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 11 months ago
    "They're basically saying that everyone should get the same Internet speeds"
    They're not saying that. They're saying all packets have to be passed with equal priority, even though Netflix and Youtube account for about half of traffic. I don't know enough about this, but I think there must be a market-based solution. I'm not even sure there is a problem. People are afraid the old system of gate keepers and "blockbuster" products only will come back; I don't think that will happen.
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 11 months ago
      Okay, they may not have specifically mentioned Internet speeds, but they did talk about "slow lanes" and "faster access". My terminology was just off, but it sounded the same to me.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 11 months ago
        Yes. I didn't mean to nitpick. I was saying it won't affect the bottleneck at users' end of the pipe but how much of the pipe is allocated to which traffic. It's great that anyone can put her own products/ideas on the Internet, even ones way down the long tail. The price is transmitting other packets, half of which are video from two companies. I want to preserve the long tail. I'm not knowledgeable about this, but I think it can be preserved without Net Neutrality.
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    • Posted by plusaf 9 years, 11 months ago
      Thanks, CG... you prompted my brain to examine this 'issue' from a perspective I hadn't before, and haven't heard from anyone else...

      If a company like Netflix and YouTube respond to a market (all us chillun') who WANT those big pictures and ultra hi-res things on our screens ASAP, who should be addressing (or paying for) the possible solutions to those problems?!

      The "supply" side becomes bandwidth or throughput, the "demand" side is the user community, isn't it?

      In a good "AS World" the users would pay for whatever infrastructure is needed for them to get the speeds and feeds they want.

      Or some Galt-like innovator would appear and invent a way to compress the streams so that the same infrastructure can deliver the speeds desired by the users.

      I'm just posing the question in terms of 'ok, how would a marketplace solve this kind of problem without asking the government to provide the solution (and take control)'
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