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Call to arms on net neutrailty

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nosh:
Sen. Ted Cruz equates "Net Neutrality" with Obamacare.


The Oatmeal's response: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality

Renegade:
Sen. Ted Cruz equates "Net Neutrality" with Obamacare. (see attachment in previous post)
The Oatmeal's response: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality
-nosh (November 11, 2014, 02:00 AM)
--- End quote ---

I'm no fan of Ted Cruz. I can't say what I think of him here because it's... uh... very very not nice. (I'm trying to be civil/kind here.)

But he's about right on this. (If Ted Bundy told you that 2+2=4, he'd still be right...)

And while I actually really do like The Oatmeal... he's full of baloney. (I have one of his posters on my wall to my left. I really do like The Oatmeal a lot.)

This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. The public will LOSE. The people will LOSE. Customers will LOSE.

There is little competition in the telco industry because it is heavily saddled with regulations that stifle innovation and strangle competition.

ASIDE: Telcos and mobile manufacturers have been colluding for years to extract as much money from you as possible. I've read their internal communications. We are nothing but cows to be milked, and you can thank regulators for creating the environment where they collude so easily.

Just look at the quality of telephony on your land line or mobile phone - it's the same crappy quality that it was 50 years ago. Nothing has changed. You can thank regulators for that. Remember how 56k was the fastest that modems could transmit data? There's a reason for that -- zero improvement over decades and decades and decades and decades.

Now, listen to the pristine quality of telephony that you get through VoIP applications like Skype. They're insanely clear. But the Internet has been largely unregulated and innovation and (some) competition (not telcos, but software, etc.) has flourished.

I refuse to talk on the phone for more than a few seconds. It's painful. But I can talk over the Internet with VoIP very easily and no discomfort. (I need a full dynamic range to make out what people are saying.)

The people in favour of "Net Neutrality" completely ignore the chains that saddle the telecommunications industry. And this is what The Oatmeal does. He doesn't address the problem - he addresses a symptom.

This isn't about "freedom" like The Oatmeal claims. This is about "freedom inside of a tiny box that we've decided is good for you". Get rid of the box and the entire "Net Neutrality" issue will disappear because there **WILL** be companies that arise to deliver services that people want with zero censorship and zero throttling.



Oh... And while I don't like seafood, you all go for all the crab tacos that you want! 8)

Or lobster tacos... or whatever...

nosh:
I'm not a fan of government control either - I was a bit confounded about which side I should pick on this issue. I'll be honest - my main concern is torrenting and under which scenario will I get screwed over less. Found a torrentfreak article from 2010 which was against NN wrt torrenting - they claimed things are worse with NN with new govt. guidelines imposed.
OTOH, uTorrent supports it and I've read recent pieces that claim NN is important to maintain the status quo.

My personal situation is somewhat ironic. The most efficient (relatively speaking) ISP here is a govt. company. Private companies here (internet, mobile, cable TV) have the most atrocious tech support. They also formulate the most confusing, diabolical plans and UI (in the real world sense). I'm certain atleast part of the confusion is intentional.

 I'm all for free market in 99% of the stuff - when it comes to say, cable tv - it's a relationship between the content provider and me, I don't care about who else is or isn't subscribed to it) but when it comes to the internet I really do want its all-inclusive nature to be preserved, for selfish reasons, because everyone is a potential content-provider. I'm paranoid about govt. control but I'm equally paranoid about corporate greed. Ok, my teeny little brain is tired. Nosh, out.

SeraphimLabs:
Cannot trust government or corporate with this stuff.

Though legislation to discourage the exploitation of natural monopolies by telco and internet providers does help to some extent, they will always find ways around it and perpetually play on the slippery slope in order to get what they want through feature creep if it isn't directly okay.

As a service provider, losing net neutrality could theoretically mean that a large provider could make my services unbearably slow since I can't afford to pay any of their 'easements' required to get moved into a higher traffic tier.

At the same time, I am all in favor of local cache installations for frequently accessed content, with associated colocation fees.

In effect, net neutrality needs to stay very carefully focused on forbidding ISPs from requiring consumers or providers to pay an extra fee to access certain types of content.

Letting providers pay to have mirror servers colocated on a particular network is extremely important for overall network capacity and strategy, and allows large providers to mitigate their impacts on the public network by reducing the total traffic generated by them through local and regional service hubs.

Thus, having to pay extra to leave the walled garden of facebook and fox news or to make my sites accessible to people is unacceptable by my book, but at the same time facebook should still be allowed to pay a fair colocation fee to put a local mirror close to a major city in order to improve performance in the region.

Deozaan:
I'm no fan of Ted Cruz. [...] But he's about right on this. [...]

And while I actually really do like The Oatmeal... he's full of baloney.-Renegade (November 11, 2014, 06:48 AM)
--- End quote ---

How is he right about it? And how is The Oatmeal wrong?

I think it's a very poor analogy to compare Net Neutrality to Obamacare. Net Neutrality isn't about government restricting the speed. It's about the government telling ISPs that they cannot selectively restrict the speed of traffic. It's basically a non-discrimination clause for internet traffic.

And sure, maybe The Oatmeal isn't mentioning some of the other problems that would/could arise (such as the possibility that if ISPs can't restrict some traffic, they'll just restrict all traffic unless you pay more), but that still doesn't invalidate the things The Oatmeal is saying.

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