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I dont necessarily agree with the following but its a devils advocate argument I rarely see shared, and it has a lot of merit. Like everything, this issue is sh

by Jedi72 9y ago

I dont necessarily agree with the following but its a devils advocate argument I rarely see shared, and it has a lot of merit. Like everything, this issue is shades of grey. Bandwidth is a limited amd expensive resource. When government mandated price controls are in effect ("Net neutrality" is a marketing meme) this expense is effectively socialised across the entire country. It is illegal for a telco to go to a hospital and offer a dedicated nine 9s reliable robot surgery link (technically its just illegal to charge a fair economic price for it but same/same). So the cost gets divided up, averaged out, and smalltime users end up paying a big chunk of the cost while people above the magic median point get massive benefits. YOU subsidise the cost of the BigCorp. video conference call between Sydney and Tokyo every day. You subsidise the cost of your neighbour streaming The Bachelor every night, and make it illegal for me to pay a higher price for the quality of service I need to work. Its a total mismanagement of resources. If the consumer was forced to bear the true economic cost of their internet usage then of course heavy users (like Netflix subscribers...) would end up paying more. Not directly to Netflix but the true cost of their product still goes up. This is obviously bad for Netflix/Youtube/the top 1%, who are the ones extracting wealth from this thing we call the internet. These whales love having their infrastructure costs socialised. You dont even have to be a Google customer for you to be giving them money, no wonder they're so rich! Blocking freedom of people to publish on the web doesn't have much to do with net neutrality. This is big company lobbying and public propaganda from the tech industry. Tech companies are the new oil barons, in 80 years when the bio lobby is pushing for access to proprietary databases and end "Data detention" (you heard it here first) we'll look at tech giants the way we look at oil companies lobbying for clean coal now.

Isn0gud 9y ago
You are right, but if you ever been to a country without net neutrality then you will notice that the "free" volume goes down and the facebook/youtube does not count towards the volume. Do it's basically doing exactly what everybody fears. However, if you would charge facebook/google for using the infrastructure it would be another case... But let's be honest, they never let that happen.
JohnStrange 9y ago
net neutrality != government mandated price controls, so the argument goes nowhere. Companies can charge whatever they want. The other problems you describe could be solved by making false advertising illegal. Don't offer unlimited bandwidth, unlimited transfers or any of this mumbo-jumbo if you can't technically fulfill the promise. It's not your neighbors fault if he uses the Internet for whatever he wants to use it, whether that includes high or low bandwidth use, and if that interferes with your streaming, it's your ISPs problem to fix the issue or sell plans with proper bandwidth limits.
- Jedi72 9y ago
  Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating most of the Internet must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.[1] For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content. Wikipedia
  - JohnStrange 9y ago
    Exactly. It has nothing to do with price regulation.
    - Jedi72 9y ago
      It clearly has price regulation bundled up in it. Oldest lobbying trick in the book, attach your agenda to something nobody can disagree with. Censorship and control over who sees what is a totally seperate issue to what it costs.
  - noncoml 9y ago
    So basically you just debunked your original argument.
thinkloop 9y ago
Where did you source that?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
throwawayReply 9y ago
There are current laws that are trying to be repealed. These laws don't make it illegal to build dedicated lines and charge fair prices for that so I don't understand your argument or why this means those current laws should be repealed.
noncoml 9y ago
These “whales” have built mega cities and hughe highways to interconnect. The ISPs on the other hand have built the small roads that connect the highways to your home. You pay the ISP a monthly fee for limited usage of the road so you can get to the highway. Not having net neutrality is allowing the ISP to control your access to the highway depending on your final destination or the kind of cargo in your car.
harg 9y ago
That's not how I understand net neutrality. If we go with the electricity analogy it's like saying the energy company charges a different rate depending on whether you use your electricity for your refrigerator or your coffee machine. That's completely different from charging based on the "quantity" of electricity used, which is what currently happens. Why should the internet be any different? If your neighbor watches hours and hours of netflix every day then they'll likely be paying for a high-bandwidth/large data allowance plan. It's got nothing to do the net neutrality.
Steeeve 9y ago
Boy... I guess I'll go one piece at a time here: > Bandwidth is a limited amd expensive resource No, it's not. Bandwidth has been and still is throttled so that it can be perceived that way. Where it gets expensive is in rural america where you have few customers per mile, but those customers have long been subsidized by everybody else and mostly are STILL underserviced. Despite the subsidy, and despite repeated large public investment handed over to providers. > When government mandated price controls are in effect There are no mandated price controls. What is mandated is a lack of interference. > this expense is effectively socialised across the entire country Infrastructure has, in large part, been laid at public expense on public land. Communication providers always cry poor when they are forced to invest in less profitable areas, but they have repeatedly and consistently charged exorbitant amounts to the public to provide communication services. They have done so to such a degree that stopping these practices has required repeated congressional attention and sanctions. > It is illegal for a telco to go to a hospital and offer a dedicated nine 9s reliable robot surgery link It is not illegal to provide high availability service to anyone. It is not illegal to charge a fair economic price. There are highly available connectivity solutions all over the marketplace. > So the cost gets divided up, averaged out, and smalltime users end up paying a big chunk of the cost while people above the magic median point get massive benefits. Low bandwidth users are given lower cost service today. High bandwidth users are given higher cost service today. > YOU subsidise the cost of the BigCorp. video conference call between Sydney and Tokyo every day. You subsidise the cost of your neighbour streaming The Bachelor every night, and make it illegal for me to pay a higher price for the quality of service I need to work. False. BigCorp pays significantly more for high quality service, support, and reliability. If I don't watch streaming video, I have a lower cost service plan than my neighbor that does. > Its a total mismanagement of resources. It's a completely fabricated and misinformed argument. > If the consumer was forced to bear the true economic cost of their internet usage then of course heavy users (like Netflix subscribers...) would end up paying more. ISPs would love for customers to pay more, especially considering the popularity of Netflix. They would love to make Netflix pay as well. The fact is that Netflix has found a price point that works for them. Changing the dynamic changes the business model. Their profitability and popularity are not unlimited. The model that ISPs are demanding is that they be inserted as legally required middlemen into an existing marketplace, with the ability to skim profit from every popular online business model. Of course they want it. Of course they lobby for it. > Not directly to Netflix but the true cost of their product still goes up. This is obviously bad for Netflix/Youtube/the top 1%, who are the ones extracting wealth from this thing we call the internet. The top 1% of businesses are profitable entities that will suffer a loss of revenue which in the end will be passed onto the consumer, but they will also be provided with the protection of decreased competition and increased cost of market entry. Today, anyone with the gumption can walk into lionsgate and come up with a "Netflix for ..." business. Tomorrow, it will require significant venture capital simply to deal with the connectivity issues. Today that business can prove itself and then seek out investment. Tomorrow, that business needs investment in order to prove itself. That's a huge dynamic shift that knocks out MANY would be innovators of the kind that formed the world wide web into what it is today. > These whales love having their infrastructure costs socialised. You dont even have to be a Google customer for you to be giving them money, no wonder they're so rich! Google has paid and will continue to pay plenty of money for bandwidth. Just like consumers already pay plenty of money for bandwidth. The cost that we pay has NOTHING to do with infrastructure or maintenance costs. It has nothing to do with the cost of running that infrastructure. Comcast for example has had significant revenue and profit increases for the last 5 years. While internet usage has steadily increased and the usage of high bandwidth content has steadily increased. There is no resource limit they are running into. There is no financial constraint preventing them from doing anything. They aren't struggling to pay their workers who are frantically trying to squeeze more network out of the network at no cost. > Blocking freedom of people to publish on the web doesn't have much to do with net neutrality It has everything to do with net neutrality. So Netflix pays a big chunk to Comcast. Does pornhub? Do they pay more because they are porn? What about SnapChat and other user-to-user video sharing services? What about all the youtubers, camgirls, streaming game players, twitch streamers? How does that all change? What segment of them is going to be cut off because the cost model doesn't make sense or because Comcast has arbitrarily decided that they either must pay a different price or that their content should not be allowed? > This is big company lobbying and public propaganda from the tech industry. There is certainly a lot of lobbying going on. And plenty of propoganda. Oddly, though... the lies, misinformation, and nonsensical arguments seem to be all coming from the telecoms and ISPs. Like there's some sort of concerted effort to do what the internet community has repeatedly and loudly expressed that it does not want. > Tech companies are the new oil barons, in 80 years when the bio lobby is pushing for access to proprietary databases and end "Data detention" (you heard it here first) we'll look at tech giants the way we look at oil companies lobbying for clean coal now. We _should_ be a long way off from that. If we stagnate today, maybe that will be so. Maybe we have a 75 year future of pop-up ads and click-farms while communication is relegated to single sentence slang laden snippets that are designed to be provocative. I see a stronger, better future for the web, technology, and communication networks. There is innovation happening all around the world. There are fantastic ideas that are being nurtured and others that have yet to be discovered. Don't advocate for stagnation. We can do so much better than this. (I can't believe I spent an hour on this. I've been trolled and it totally worked. This was the top comment when I hit reply.)

by Jedi72 9y ago

Isn0gud 9y ago

You are right, but if you ever been to a country without net neutrality then you will notice that the "free" volume goes down and the facebook/youtube does not count towards the volume. Do it's basically doing exactly what everybody fears. However, if you would charge facebook/google for using the infrastructure it would be another case... But let's be honest, they never let that happen.

JohnStrange 9y ago

net neutrality != government mandated price controls, so the argument goes nowhere. Companies can charge whatever they want. The other problems you describe could be solved by making false advertising illegal. Don't offer unlimited bandwidth, unlimited transfers or any of this mumbo-jumbo if you can't technically fulfill the promise. It's not your neighbors fault if he uses the Internet for whatever he wants to use it, whether that includes high or low bandwidth use, and if that interferes with your streaming, it's your ISPs problem to fix the issue or sell plans with proper bandwidth limits.

Jedi72 9y ago
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating most of the Internet must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.[1] For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content. Wikipedia
- JohnStrange 9y ago
  Exactly. It has nothing to do with price regulation.
  - Jedi72 9y ago
    It clearly has price regulation bundled up in it. Oldest lobbying trick in the book, attach your agenda to something nobody can disagree with. Censorship and control over who sees what is a totally seperate issue to what it costs.
- noncoml 9y ago
  So basically you just debunked your original argument.

thinkloop 9y ago

Where did you source that?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

throwawayReply 9y ago

There are current laws that are trying to be repealed. These laws don't make it illegal to build dedicated lines and charge fair prices for that so I don't understand your argument or why this means those current laws should be repealed.

noncoml 9y ago

These “whales” have built mega cities and hughe highways to interconnect. The ISPs on the other hand have built the small roads that connect the highways to your home. You pay the ISP a monthly fee for limited usage of the road so you can get to the highway. Not having net neutrality is allowing the ISP to control your access to the highway depending on your final destination or the kind of cargo in your car.

harg 9y ago

That's not how I understand net neutrality. If we go with the electricity analogy it's like saying the energy company charges a different rate depending on whether you use your electricity for your refrigerator or your coffee machine. That's completely different from charging based on the "quantity" of electricity used, which is what currently happens. Why should the internet be any different? If your neighbor watches hours and hours of netflix every day then they'll likely be paying for a high-bandwidth/large data allowance plan. It's got nothing to do the net neutrality.

Steeeve 9y ago

Boy... I guess I'll go one piece at a time here: > Bandwidth is a limited amd expensive resource No, it's not. Bandwidth has been and still is throttled so that it can be perceived that way. Where it gets expensive is in rural america where you have few customers per mile, but those customers have long been subsidized by everybody else and mostly are STILL underserviced. Despite the subsidy, and despite repeated large public investment handed over to providers. > When government mandated price controls are in effect There are no mandated price controls. What is mandated is a lack of interference. > this expense is effectively socialised across the entire country Infrastructure has, in large part, been laid at public expense on public land. Communication providers always cry poor when they are forced to invest in less profitable areas, but they have repeatedly and consistently charged exorbitant amounts to the public to provide communication services. They have done so to such a degree that stopping these practices has required repeated congressional attention and sanctions. > It is illegal for a telco to go to a hospital and offer a dedicated nine 9s reliable robot surgery link It is not illegal to provide high availability service to anyone. It is not illegal to charge a fair economic price. There are highly available connectivity solutions all over the marketplace. > So the cost gets divided up, averaged out, and smalltime users end up paying a big chunk of the cost while people above the magic median point get massive benefits. Low bandwidth users are given lower cost service today. High bandwidth users are given higher cost service today. > YOU subsidise the cost of the BigCorp. video conference call between Sydney and Tokyo every day. You subsidise the cost of your neighbour streaming The Bachelor every night, and make it illegal for me to pay a higher price for the quality of service I need to work. False. BigCorp pays significantly more for high quality service, support, and reliability. If I don't watch streaming video, I have a lower cost service plan than my neighbor that does. > Its a total mismanagement of resources. It's a completely fabricated and misinformed argument. > If the consumer was forced to bear the true economic cost of their internet usage then of course heavy users (like Netflix subscribers...) would end up paying more. ISPs would love for customers to pay more, especially considering the popularity of Netflix. They would love to make Netflix pay as well. The fact is that Netflix has found a price point that works for them. Changing the dynamic changes the business model. Their profitability and popularity are not unlimited. The model that ISPs are demanding is that they be inserted as legally required middlemen into an existing marketplace, with the ability to skim profit from every popular online business model. Of course they want it. Of course they lobby for it. > Not directly to Netflix but the true cost of their product still goes up. This is obviously bad for Netflix/Youtube/the top 1%, who are the ones extracting wealth from this thing we call the internet. The top 1% of businesses are profitable entities that will suffer a loss of revenue which in the end will be passed onto the consumer, but they will also be provided with the protection of decreased competition and increased cost of market entry. Today, anyone with the gumption can walk into lionsgate and come up with a "Netflix for ..." business. Tomorrow, it will require significant venture capital simply to deal with the connectivity issues. Today that business can prove itself and then seek out investment. Tomorrow, that business needs investment in order to prove itself. That's a huge dynamic shift that knocks out MANY would be innovators of the kind that formed the world wide web into what it is today. > These whales love having their infrastructure costs socialised. You dont even have to be a Google customer for you to be giving them money, no wonder they're so rich! Google has paid and will continue to pay plenty of money for bandwidth. Just like consumers already pay plenty of money for bandwidth. The cost that we pay has NOTHING to do with infrastructure or maintenance costs. It has nothing to do with the cost of running that infrastructure. Comcast for example has had significant revenue and profit increases for the last 5 years. While internet usage has steadily increased and the usage of high bandwidth content has steadily increased. There is no resource limit they are running into. There is no financial constraint preventing them from doing anything. They aren't struggling to pay their workers who are frantically trying to squeeze more network out of the network at no cost. > Blocking freedom of people to publish on the web doesn't have much to do with net neutrality It has everything to do with net neutrality. So Netflix pays a big chunk to Comcast. Does pornhub? Do they pay more because they are porn? What about SnapChat and other user-to-user video sharing services? What about all the youtubers, camgirls, streaming game players, twitch streamers? How does that all change? What segment of them is going to be cut off because the cost model doesn't make sense or because Comcast has arbitrarily decided that they either must pay a different price or that their content should not be allowed? > This is big company lobbying and public propaganda from the tech industry. There is certainly a lot of lobbying going on. And plenty of propoganda. Oddly, though... the lies, misinformation, and nonsensical arguments seem to be all coming from the telecoms and ISPs. Like there's some sort of concerted effort to do what the internet community has repeatedly and loudly expressed that it does not want. > Tech companies are the new oil barons, in 80 years when the bio lobby is pushing for access to proprietary databases and end "Data detention" (you heard it here first) we'll look at tech giants the way we look at oil companies lobbying for clean coal now. We _should_ be a long way off from that. If we stagnate today, maybe that will be so. Maybe we have a 75 year future of pop-up ads and click-farms while communication is relegated to single sentence slang laden snippets that are designed to be provocative. I see a stronger, better future for the web, technology, and communication networks. There is innovation happening all around the world. There are fantastic ideas that are being nurtured and others that have yet to be discovered. Don't advocate for stagnation. We can do so much better than this. (I can't believe I spent an hour on this. I've been trolled and it totally worked. This was the top comment when I hit reply.)