How is making a law about something remotely analogous to “jailing someone preemptively”?
Next week, aliens from the planet Omicron Perseii 8 could land on our planet and start eating people. Would you argue that we need to build a global defense laser network to head off this horrible event?
This analogy makes even less sense, if that’s possible. There is no evidence that aliens from Omicron Perseii 8 even exist, and therefor zero reason to speculate on what they might or might not do. Internet service providers, on the other hand, definitely exist.
If a powerful and warlike alien race did exist and we knew about them, then yes, I would argue that we should probably build some sort of defenses against them. And yes, before they invade would be the ideal time to do that.
Aren’t you stifling innovation at this point, however? VOIP is a new technology that seeks to provide a reasonable and effective alternative to conventional phone service, but requires a certain guarantee to ensure quality of service. We run our own system where I work now and it is a continuing hassle, and we DO effectively throttle other traffic to let the voice get through if it comes to that. At the point that you say that “You shouldn’t use VOIP as your only phone service” (which I agree with in practical terms), aren’t you labeling some technology as being less valuable as another and effectively choosing one of a number of competing alternatives? Doesn’t that create the exact same effect as non-neutral bandwidth shaping, but for technology instead of creative content?
No, it’s not really. Home phone service over a digital network link, such as many cable companies now sell bundled with cable internet, is a big business and only getting bigger. Customers should be able to rely on that and regulations should not prevent providers from provisioning their network in a way that gives precedence to that sort of traffic.
The bottom line is that not all traffic types or traffic destinations are of equal priority. The internet isn’t just a playground anymore. Some very important types of traffic, such as hypothetical emergency services calls, travel across TCP/IP links. Treating all traffic and all destinations the same just isn’t practical, and any sensible set of regulations to prevent anticompetitive network practices must takes this into account.
I typically don’t hear much in the way of acknowledgement of this reality from the network neutrality crowd so I find it difficult to take them too seriously.
The problem is that “Internet Service Providers” is not sufficient to the requirements of the argument for legislated net neutrality. In order for that argument to even merit consideration, you have to believe that internet service providers who will maliciously shape bandwidth to steer traffic to their own commercial advantage exist in the current legal environment. I have seen just as much evidence of those businesses as I have of frightening aliens who want to eat me. The only difference between the Evil ISPs and the Evil Alien Overlords is that it’s less of a cognitive jump to imagine the existence of Evil ISPs, which is kind of my point.
If Comcast and AT&T start furiously trying to run one another out of business and begin maliciously manipulating the internet, I don’t argue that we shouldn’t consider additional legal action at that point, but we’re not at that point yet, and we don’t have any substantial reason to believe we ever will be. We don’t need these laws yet for the same reason why we don’t need laws prohibiting airline companies from refusing individuals with extra legs food on flights longer than four hours.
Uh, that’s what started this whole thing. Comcast throttled people who were actually using their unlimited internet access so they could continue to oversell their bandwidth.
You want everyone else to be throttled anytime anyone makes a VOIP call because it could potentially be an emergency? You’re why net neutrality is the only way the internet makes sense.
That’s a false advertising problem, and one that I think Comcast needs to be brought up on, which I say as a very annoyed customer who has to carefully examine how many podcasts he downloads every month to ensure he doesn’t trip over the invisible ceiling. Of course, if I ever did trip over that limit I would just switch to OpLink, which has no such problem, which is probably part of why I have such a hard time understanding the issue. And if OpLink wanted to be dicks in the future I would be able to hop over to Verizon. It may be that I’m just not in the position that everybody who thinks this is some sort of looming danger, but I don’t see what they see.
It’s worth noting that we’re confusing a couple of kinds of violations of the general ethos of “net neutrality.” The first is the idea that ISPs will attempt to lever their service against other businesses by directing traffic away from them. That, I think, is flatly impossible, as every person who visits Google from China these days can well establish. The second is the idea that ISPs will favor one kind of technology over another, or attempt to demolish a technology with beneficial effects because they don’t like it for some reason through bandwidth shaping. That’s a more reasonable issue, but I don’t think that it’s one you can solve through legislation because it is inherently tied up in technical concerns.
Limited Unlimited plans, however, can go directly to hell. Fuck that shit. But I consider that to be false advertising, which it apparently isn’t because they meet the fine print of some legal documents, which is kind of what I want to avoid with the net neutrality issue.
They do, particularly when your podcatcher can fail halfway through and try to redownload the whole thing. I also catch about half of Revision 3, some shows from the video arm of Mevio, and occasionally download games from Steam, which can get pretty big.
If things continue along the lines of the Court ruling above without any pushback, by the time there is a problem there will be legal precedents established that would make if difficult if not impossible to go back.
I don’t care about throttling bittorent. But today’s bittorrent user is tomorrow’s normal household as bandwith demands increase with increased streaming of media. Then Comcast et.al WILL start turning down access to competitors’ content. Sure, you can then hop to Verizon or AT&T or whoever, which is my point about a segmented internet. We’ll not only be paying the content providers (which is fine by me - you pay for what you want), we’ll have to separately pay different delivery companies.
I view it as analgous to electricity…we pay one transmission charge, even though the electricity can travel across lines managed by different transmission companies - - one charge, equal access, uniform performance. And it doesn’t matter if the end user wants the electricity to power video games (trivial) or medical equipment (important).
No, it really doesn’t work that way. A new piece of legislation can change the rules however congress wants, barring constitutional issues. Precedents be damned, the new law is the law.
Absolutely agreed, and the only reason I brought up bittorrent and voip technologies specifically was to draw the distinction between entertainment traffic and more critical traffic.
That’s arguably illegal under current legislation forbidding various anticompetitive practices. If it’s not, I would heartily agree it ought to be, but I would also reiterate that net neutrality is a heavy handed overkill response to the problem at hand.
You talk about archaic dumb electric grid performance as if it was some model of virtue that the internet should emulate. Trust me, the power companies really want to make that smarter going forward. They want to be able to keep the flow of juice at full strength to the hospital during a shortage, even if it means the Chuck E Cheeses next door goes dark.
With respect to the original poster, the appeals court did not rule on net neutrality. They ruled on the powers of the FCC, and stated that the FCC does not have the authority to set the kind of regulatory policies that the FCC believes its primary mission requires.
Whilst the effect of the decision prevents the FCC from demanding net neutrality today, it does not prevent the FCC from seeking net neutrality requirements in the future, should the U.S. congress grant them the extra regulatory powers the court says the FCC requires.
This isn’t a very good analogy as in both cases it’s the content that’s important not the port they use or how they pack their data that determines which is more or less critical.
That’s arguably illegal under current legislation forbidding various anticompetitive practices. If it’s not, I would heartily agree it ought to be, but I would also reiterate that net neutrality is a heavy handed overkill response to the problem at hand.
Pretty sure it’s only illegal if Comcast were deemed to have a monopoly. Otherwise it’s simply the way the company chooses to operate.
You talk about archaic dumb electric grid performance as if it was some model of virtue that the internet should emulate. Trust me, the power companies really want to make that smarter going forward. They want to be able to keep the flow of juice at full strength to the hospital during a shortage, even if it means the Chuck E Cheeses next door goes dark.
Sure, however, I’m doubtful they’ll necessarily keep the morally correct client powered over the one which pays more per unit of electricity or for preferential treatment, unless otherwise forced to do so by the state. They exist to make money after all, the profit motive at work!
I’m not quite sure I follow you here. It wasn’t an analogy, it was an example. Bittorrent doesn’t service critical stuff. VOIP does. I’m not seeing how the technical details of how one differentiates the two traffic types as really relevant at all. Regardless of the details or ports or protocols I think it’s uncontroversial to say that an ISP can differentiate traffic into logical categories via observation.
I never said I wanted to trust utilities to blindly do the right thing. Regulation is necessary and I don’t object to regulation. I object to restrictive overkill regulation that stifles improvement.
You made an assumption on the content of the data based on the means to transfer it. Just because VoIP data is intended to be real time voice data doesn’t mean its content is somehow more important than whatever files are being transferred via Bittorrent, which can literally be any type of digital data. I’m pretty sure most isps throttle Bittorrent traffic and slap caps on users anyway, with those dials I don’t see any reason they should be permitted to block it.
I think we may be talking past each other here, because I’m really not sure what your response has to do with what I was talking about
I wasn’t suggesting that ISPs be allowed to arbitrarily block certain categories
of traffic, I was suggesting that they be allowed to categorize for the sake of prioritization. Which I think you were suggesting as well when you mentioned throttling and capping?
I don’t approve of anticompetitive practices such as ISPs blocking bittorrent so that users have no choice but to use the ISPs premium on-demand entertainment services. I was suggesting that ISPs in particular and society in general may have an interesting in deprioritizing entertainment traffic (however it is categorized) if that means bandwidth can be guaranteed for more critical traffic such as communications with emergency services.
That…is arguably the most baffling thing I have ever heard in my life. You segregate and elevate priority on voice data to ensure quality of service because the latency tolerances on VoIP phone systems aren’t particularly high. These systems are designed to discard packets that show up even more than just a little late. In any - ANY - private network I would promote those packets coming from the voice system to a higher priority channel to ensure that they would continue to work properly when, for example, somebody in the New York office decides to start copying a large file at the same time as they attempt to carry on a conversation with a client over the phone. I imagine that’s the same at literally any other company. In this case in particular, you can quite easily determine that VoIP traffic deserves higher priority than torrents because slowing down the torrents won’t cause them to break - it will just slow them down a touch.
Any legislation or regulation that would make rational controls like that illegal would unquestionably stifle innovation and competition. Regardless of how you feel on the broader subject of net neutrality, NO rules or laws should EVER be so strict as to prohibit that kind of intelligent bandwidth shaping.
I’m not sure what is more amusing, that people actually trust Comcast fully and completely, or that they believe most areas of the USA actually have options in high speed internet providers.
And people wonder why our broadband speed is so much worse than so many other countries…
Fair enough. If Congress jumps on the ball and gives FCC that authority, we’re all set. I do think they ruled on who has authority over “net neutrality”, however, and if not the FCC…then there is no one right now. I am not at all optimistic about Congress doing anything before we’re too deep to dig out.
Try getting a law passed after 10 years once giant companies have established businesses based on years of favorable court decisions, at lease without their support. Possession is 9/10th of the law, and all of that. It can happen and has happened, but less than it used to. I think in the future it’ll be even more difficult.
Indeed. And the thing is, even when you technically have options (e.g., in my area I could go with Qwest, which I currently am and hate, or Comcast, which I plan to) that’s not to say that your options won’t all have the same practices. For example, I’m not a big fan of bandwidth caps/quotas, especially when unadvertised. Let’s check my options here…I can go with Qwest, which has unadvertised caps, or I can go with Comcast, which has unadvertised caps! Yay! Fortunately, right now they’re in the multi-hundred gig range and my current usage patterns only hit a fraction of that. But I’m not convinced that they won’t go down, and the size of internet content is only going up.
