Net neutrality: What it is, and why you should care

The more regulation, the bigger the companies and the poorer the economy will be. It’s the lack of competition that makes companies humungous. And it’s precisely regulation that creates barriers to competition. Should Government Regulate Monopolies? Regulating Monopolies

Trusting a monopoly to prevent monopolies. It’s a product of propaganda and lack of historic and economic knowledge.

Trusting a monopoly to prevent monopolies. It’s a product of propaganda and lack of historic and economic knowledge.

So, I’m brainwashed and ignorant of history and economics. Ok, dude.

The fact that you think government is nothing more than another business monopoly is rather over-simplistic and even delusional. You’re embracing a cartoonish, infantile, neo-libertarian “reality” and not much more.

Also, as far as propaganda goes, that’s a laughable projection on your part. There’s a vast amount of libertarian, propagandistic, deregulation drivel throughout the media, within search engine results, etc. via libertarian “think tanks”, industry sockpuppet organizations and the like.

Libertarian “think tanks” are the right wing radio of the Internet. Just like right wing radio, corporatists run those shit hole organizations at a loss because the indoctrination of the populace with corporatist half-truths and lies is profitable in the long run. Looks like they got to you.

For example, stalling on global climate change initiatives was profitable for the fossil fuel industry who’ve wanted to milk their current infrastructure down to the last drop. Therefore, they’ve funded libertarian “think tanks” that’ve ignored science and spewed propagandistic bullshit to clutter up discussions on the topic and derail actions. It’s worked quite well for the scumbags.

Let me guess. You used to be climate change denier, but you came around on that topic once some of the libertarian “think tanks” told you to change your mind and now you’re a climate change impact denier? Or, have you not advanced that far yet?

What have the “think tanks” told you to think lately?

The more regulation, the bigger the companies and the poorer the economy will be.

Sounds like the drivel of the banker lobby and/or libertarians either duped by them or in cahoots with them.

Sounds great in theory, doesn’t always work that way in practice. Not all regulations are the same and not all regulations have the same impact unless one is to embrace an over-simplistic, black and white, neo-libertarian, corporatist, narrowband view on reality.

Life is more complex than that. Regulations are more complex than that.

Meanwhile, I suggest you educate yourself on the “asshole effect”:

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Of course, in your world, Comcast isn’t an oligopoly, Comcast isn’t responsible in any way for any slowdowns…

I think I have demonstrated that with the facts.

and the FCC is out to get corporations despite the fact the corporations were able to stick one of their own inside the FCC as chairman.

No. The FCC, when it exerts any influence at all, is a tool of big corporations. Didn’t the cartoon argue that as well?

Oh, and government failures are failures whilst market failures are features.

What I said was that the problem with government programs is that they are immune from failure. If at any time a government program has by some miracle perfectly served the public in every way, it will be the same in 6 months, 4 years, 20 years when the public needs have changed. What are the odds that any one service will ideally serve the public at any time? Pretty low. The feature of the private market is that the entities are constantly destroyed and created. Out of 100 created, one is what the public really wants. The defect of public choice is that the entities are created one at a time with one vision and each are immune to the problems and changes of society. That’s why they are INefficient at all times, and are an increasing burden over time.

For example, stalling on global climate change initiatives was profitable for the fossil fuel industry who’ve wanted to milk their current infrastructure down to the last drop.

It’s also better for the poor and middle class who are trying to have capital left over to invest in their children and their future. Carbon dioxide alarmism tends to be a transfer of wealth from poor and middle class to the well-to-do. Even the concern over rising sea levels at beach front property over the next 100 years is a top 1% problem.

Of course, in your world, Comcast isn’t an oligopoly, Comcast isn’t responsible in any way for any slowdowns…

I think I have demonstrated that with the facts.

No, not facts, just your wayward, delusional opinion that contradicts facts.

Actually, oligopoly (oligopolist) is being generous for Comcast, because in many parts of the country, it’s really a duopoly. Here’s the facts:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1008888645236530160

It’s official: The supreme court is pro-cable oligopoly

Cable Companies: A Story of Oligopolies
http://www.moneyeconomics.com/commentaries/comcast-and-time-warner-deal-an-explanation-of-monopolies/

The broadband business: A duopoly in action

http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious-graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/

''Comcast won’t have any easy time making its case on either count. It’s fended off antitrust concerns by claiming the two companies don’t actually compete in the same markets. While this is technically true, it’s hardly comforting. As most anyone with a cable or broadband subscription knows, the two giants have been operating as a duopoly—your area is served by one or the other, and that’s the only option you have." – http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/if-comcasts-merger-happens-itll-be-thanks-to-a-mountain-of-lobbyist-cash

http://blogs.reuters.com/nicholas-wapshott/2014/02/18/comcast-how-to-win-at-monopoly/


When sympathetic sources like the Wall Street Journal and Forbes even have to admit that Comcast is an oligopoly, you really need to check yourself.

and the FCC is out to get corporations despite the fact the corporations were able to stick one of their own inside the FCC as chairman.

No.

Yes.

Ex-cable and wireless lobbyist confirmed as FCC chairman

Oh, and government failures are failures whilst market failures are features.

What I said was that the problem with government programs is that they are immune from failure.

So, you go from one ridiculous extreme to yet another delusional extreme in another vein. Your black and white corporatist appeasement knows no bounds.

The feature of the private market is that the entities are constantly destroyed and created.

That’s delusional. Only small business is inherently subject to that “constant” cycle and it’s often because large corporations consolidate via a lack of proper regulation and they squash competition and harm small business with their consolidated, monopolistic powers.

Then again, to you, every failure of the private market is a feature… even if that “feature” means more harm to society at large. Then again, you’re a neo-libertarian… so “free markets” are your Gawd or whatever. And your Gawd is infallible in your eyes.

And, pretending that government doesn’t change over the years at all is, again, delusional.

The defect of public choice

Oh joy… yet another delusional neo-libertarian that prefers corporatist fascism to a representative democracy within our republic.

Carbon dioxide alarmism

Oh joy… yet another delusional neo-libertarian that thinks he knows better than the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists. I see you got the updated memo from the neo-libertarian reason.com to switch up from outright climate change denial to climate change impact denial.

One good thing to come out of this conversation is we see that you’re the kind of person that supports Comcast and is against Net Neutrality. I thank you for that.

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It’s also better for the poor and middle class who are trying to have capital left over to invest in their children and their future.

Get your story straight. Don’t go feigning concern over the poor now that you’ve shown that your only goal is for unrestrained corporatism.

Carbon dioxide alarmism tends to be a transfer of wealth from poor and middle class to the well-to-do.

Are you anti-science in general, or do you just go with the worldwide conspiracy of climate science talking point?

Even the concern over rising sea levels at beach front property over the next 100 years is a top 1% problem.

Another anti-science talking point. Go visit Bangladesh and the Maldives and get back to us on how rich they are.

It seems you’re too dug in to your position in this thread to listen to reason. I do hope you privately take my challenge from earlier and figure out what your goals lead to. To make it more palatable, consider it to be looking for ways to strengthen your argument. You’ll likely find the opposite, but you don’t need to admit that here.

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Hold it, are you saying there are people outside the US? I’m not sure that’s accurate. When you hear stories of other countries, you hear about things like successful market regulation and socialized health care, and we know those aren’t possible. Better to ignore the legends and stick to libertarian axioms.

Seriously, though, we just finished arguing with wynn_james about global warming on another thread, starting from here. You can see his position and its defenses spelled out there, since it’s probably not on topic here, except for what it says about his ideology and standards for evidence.

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Libertarians by and large talk a lot, but have no real way to process logic.
They also generally suffer from arrested development.
Which is why they are libertarians in the first place.

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The sad thing is libertarians used to be far more interesting back in the day…

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Cute cartoon, but it’s totally inaccurate. Rather than go point-by-point on the misrepresentations, let’s just consider BoingBoing’s hypocrisy: this site is hosted on a CDN, Cloudfront. Thus, this cute denunciation of Internet “fast lanes” comes to us over an Internet fast lane.

Do the BoingBoingers even understand why this is funny.?

CDNs are more of a passive prioritization methodology while an ISP like Comcast uses active prioritization for their part of the network. CDNs are relatively competitive, cheap, etc. and accessible to small businesses that need them. As the small business grows, they can scale up as needed. CDNs are not an Internet “fast lane” as you suggest that slow other traffic down. Also, as I mentioned, CDNs are currently competitive and unlike the ISP duopoloies and oligopolies throughout the United States, there’s more competition within the CDN sphere coming down the road in the short, middle and long term as well.

I do have some concerns with behemoths like Comcast now getting into providing a CDN on their own network, however. I think Comcast would love to massively undercut the smaller competition (cheaper to put a CDN on your own network), destroy said competition and then raise prices after their competition is destroyed and price gouge small business. That very situation is yet another reason we need to properly regulate these ISP duopolies and oligopolies before they end up using their monopolistic powers to create CDNs that shut out competition and affordable access to cheap CDNs down the road (although I do admit it’s debatable that Comcast could do this, but if anyone could figure out a way to jack with CDNs in the long term, it’s Comcast) . So, yeah, I’m a little nervous about CDNs in that regard, but that’s only tangently connected to Network Neutrality.

There’s no hypocrisy on Boing Boing’s part by utilizing a third party CDN. Boing Boing can’t utilize their CDN to slow down my anti-ukulele videos because they don’t like them. And, if my anti-ukulele videos get popular and require it, I can use growing revenue to utilize a scalable CDN structure as needed to maintain speeds as I go/grow. That is, as long as Comcast doesn’t barge in and ruin that situation down the road.

I will, sir, one day destroy Boing Boing with my provocative anti-ukulele videos and there’s not a damn thing those poor bastards can do about it. And, the hilarious thing is that Boing Boing is shooting themselves in the foot by not helping ISPs to shut me out. Those poor bastards have ethics. HAHAHA! My anti-ukulele rebellion is coming.

Soon.

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Prioritization is prioritization, there’s no such distinction as “active” and “passive” in this sphere any more than there is such a thing as “active time” and “passive time”. According to the cartoon (I love the respect Boingboing shows its readers by expressing important policy debates in cartoon form, BTW), a fast lane inherently sabotages the traffic in the slow lane (“the rest of the infrastructure”). So Boingboing, by choosing use put their packets in a fast lane, is sabotaging the rest of the infrastructure, the very thing they accuse the ISPs and the FCC of wanting to do.

As I said, I doubt that they understand how hilarious this is because they don’t actually understand the implications of managing application traffic by priority, they’re simply fronting.

[quote=“iPolicy, post:43, topic:36467”]
As I said, I doubt that they understand how hilarious this is because they don’t actually understand the implications of managing application traffic by priority, they’re simply fronting.[/quote]

I think you’re referring to Net Neutrality extremists who don’t have a nuanced, realistic approach to Network Neutrality. AFAIK, Boing Boing hasn’t expressed extremist views, nor has the cartoon.

The thing is, while there is some potential downsides down the road via ISPs and CDNs, most CDNs in their current, third party form don’t sabotage the rest of the infrastructure and actually benefit it overall.

You mentioned the FCC.

While you and I certainly don’t agree with everything every individual at the FCC says, the FCC as a whole has said that CDNs improve the end-user experience by reducing overall Internet traffic (which benefits everyone). Also, the FCC has said that CDNs reduces the overall costs of delivering traffic (good for small businesses, in my opinion) and doesn’t violate their interpretation of Net Neutrality.

A video on my little, low-traffic website is going to be delivered just as fast as any video on a high-traffic website like Boing Boing via its CDN. If my little website gets extremely popular, I can monetize that popularity and purchase scalable CDN services to meet demand as it increases. That doesn’t slow down other websites in the process.

I don’t have a problem with purchasing a CDN to help deliver content if my website gets a huge amount of traffic, because it’s not at the expense of other, less popular websites. If anything, sensible Network Neutrality regulations can protect against CDN abuse by ISPs.

You mentioned Cloudfare…

Like most CDNs, it’s scaleable: Our Plans | Pricing
(It starts at free, then 20 bucks a month and so on)

Unless someone already has a super popular website with video streaming, they don’t need any of the Business and Enterprise plans.

I appreciate your expertise on this subject, but where I think you may be mistaken is that Boing Boing has some sort of extremist, unrealistic position on Net Neutrality.

If you can show me some quantifiable examples of where Boing Boing’s usage of a CDN slows down other less popular websites, then I would certainly adjust my opinion.

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I said CloudFront, not CloudFlare. BoingBoing’s CDN promises “low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments”. CDNs are effectively paid prioritization services that allow users to pay CDN and transit networks for high capacity, low latency paths through ISPs by reliieving ISPs of some bandwidth costs that hot-potato routing would otherwise impose on them. I think CDNs are good, but they don’t work for all applications. The cartoon says they’re sabotage, which is an extremist position that BoingBoing endorses.

When Netflix made their deal with Comcast, traffic from all of Cogent’s other customers to Comcast got faster. That’s not sabotage.

The cartoon doesn’t directly mention CDNs, much less the kind of third party CDN Boing Boing utilizes.

That’s one way to look at it, and here’s another:

http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious-graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/

Except when Boing Boing uses them? Earlier you said that Boing Boing is sabotaging the rest of the infrastructure by using a CDN. That sounded rather extremist to me.

Or, are CDNs only good when Comcast sets them up on its own infrastructure for some reason?

My mistake. Like CloudFlare, CloudFront is scalable as well.

Again, can you please show me some quantifiable examples of where Boing Boing’s usage of a CDN slows down other less popular websites or is “sabotaging the rest of the infrastructure”?

I also have to respectfully ask, since you’ve repeatedly assumed bad faith in Boing Boing. Are you willing to disclose any and all ties you may or may not have with Comcast?

For example, the Comcast Corporation does, indeed, donate resources to the Heritage Foundation which you are affiliated with, correct?

I, myself, will disclose that I have no conflicts of interest nor ties to any of the parties involved and I’m approaching this merely as a consumer and end-user. Are you?

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You seem to have a problem with facts, Mr. Cowicide. Read the cartoon again, taking note of the charge about sabotaging the infrastructure. That’s not my claim, it’s Boingboing’s. I’m simply applying the charge they make to the services they use, which are indistinguishable in effect from the ones they complain about. If you have a problem with the “sabotage” language, take it up with BB.

The “hilarious graph” you cite actually makes my case: not only does customized service not degrade the infrastructure, it improves it. But you have to understand what’s being measured.

The only connection I have with Comcast is the bills I pay them, and I have no connection with the Heritage Foundation at all; nor am I lkely to, since they’re pro-Tea Party and I’m not.

My interest in this topic comes from 30 years of network engineering, a general dissatisfaction with the over-simplified lawyer’s notion of net neutrality, and a desire to elevate the tone of policy debates.

Cartoons and cable network comedy doesn’t help.

http://www.itif.org/people/richard-bennett

I’m sure @doctorow will be glad you stopped in.

Let’s remind the little happy mutants of all the good work ITIF has done.

Ars: DC think tank tells Americans that their broadband is really great

‘Broadband is a natural duopoly,’ counters Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. Proposals to create a third competitor to take on the telecom and cable companies in most markets, he says, are ‘misguided.’

Huffpo: Keep the Sock Puppets Out of Your Stimulus

It’s hardd to tell from ITIF’s Web site or the group’s financial disclosures exactly who’s funding this operation. Whether Atkinson, Ph.D., is already on the industry payroll – or just auditioning for the gig – the beneficiaries of his efforts will undoubtedly be the biggest phone and cable companies."

TechDirt: SOPA Support!

Daniel Castro from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is the guy who has been highlighted for coming up with the idea of censoring the internet to deal with copyright infringement online. In 2009, he wrote a whitepaper suggesting just such a strategy, and since then has been a vocal champion of the approach that mimics China’s Great Firewall.

Techdirt: Oh, let’s not forget the TPP!

ITIF, the think tank that was often credited with coming up with the basic idea behind SOPA’s horrifying plan to censor websites and break key parts of the basic DNS system (and, which we recently discovered, gets funding from the MPAA) is back and pushing for support of IP maximalism in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. It has re-released a report about how the TPP must be “the gold standard” in trade agreements – with a key focus on stronger and more limiting IP rules.

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What part of the term “non-affilated” do you not understand, Mr. Funruly? I’m a visiting fellow at AEI and a former consultant to ITIF. Neither organization tells me what to say, and neither one has ever told me what to say.

On the subject of disclosure, I notice you hide your real name. Why is that?

I’m guessing Mr. Funruly understands every part of the term “non-affiliated”. Say it isn’t so.

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So what relevance do the views of an organization with which I am not affiliated have to me? Everyone who has ever spoken at an ITIF event is listed in their web site as “non-affiliated,” including members of Congress, FCC officials, and a number of academics.

The more one expresses that they’re not affiliated, the more it erodes their non-affiliation. I have nothing to do with this argument.

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