[sparkscoffee] Re: [aranet] Re: The Internet Is About to Become Worse Than Television
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Sblumen123@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: aranet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 11:50:31 -0400 (EDT)
RG
Also I don't know where _dmarc-noreply@f_ (mailto:dmarc-noreply@f) ...
comes from???
CB
In a message dated 4/30/2014 6:36:45 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
xgeorge@xxxxxxx writes:
CB,
Send a test email to sparkscoffee as they were having problems for a few
days.
I felt this item on neutrality was of interest to the subscribers of
ARAnet which
has a larger number of subscribers than sparkscoffee which continues to
lose subscribers, now down to 16.
RG
On 4/30/2014 10:19 AM, (sender _Sblumen123@aol.com_
(mailto:Sblumen123@xxxxxxx) wrote:
RonG
Great detailed post but why on _aranet@freelists.org_
(mailto:aranet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) and not on _sparkscoffee@freelists.org_
(mailto:sparkscoffee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) ?
Also lately my replies on sparkscoffee doesn't get back to me as it used
to, making me think
my reply didn't get out at all?
Comrade B
In a message dated 4/30/2014 7:31:06 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
_xgeorge@cox.net_ (mailto:xgeorge@xxxxxxx) writes:
Last week, an obscure but potentially internet-transforming document was
leaked from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. It revealed that
government regulators are considering rules that would give big companies a
chance to make their online services run faster than smaller ones.
The proposed rules _were revealed in the New York Times_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html?_r=0)
, and
they would overturn the principle of "network neutrality" on the internet.
Put simply, network neutrality allows you to use services from rich
companies like Google and small startups with equal speed through your ISP.
You
can read a blog hosted on somebody's home server, and it loads just as
quickly as a blog on Tumblr.
Without network neutrality, Tumblr could cut a deal with your ISP — let's
say it's Comcast — and its blogs would load really quickly while that home
server blog might take minutes to load pictures. It might not even load at
all. You can see why people in the freedom-of-speech obsessed United States
might not be happy with chucking network neutrality. It privileges some
speech over others, based on financial resources.
At the same time, ISPs would love to end network neutrality because they
want to charge more to major players like Netflix in order to support their
streaming content. Now, it looks like the FCC is thinking seriously about
letting ISPs have what they want.
_Over at Slate_
(http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/24/fcc_s_new_net_neutrality_proposal_is_even_worse_than_you_think.html)
, lawyer
Marvin Ammori sums up:
The FCC is going to propose that cable and phone companies such as
Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable are allowed to discriminate against
them,
giving some websites better service and others worse service. Cable and phone
companies will be able to make preferred deals with the companies that can
afford to pay high fees for better service. They will even be allowed to
make exclusive deals, such as making MSNBC.com the only news site on Comcast
in the priority tier, and relegating competitors to a slow lane. The FCC
is authorizing cable and phone companies to start making different deals
with thousands or millions of websites, extracting money from sites that need
to load quickly and reliably. So users will notice that Netflix or Hulu
works better than Amazon Prime, which buffers repeatedly and is choppy. New
sites will come along and be unable to compete with established giants. If we
had had such discrimination a decade ago, we would still be using MySpace,
not Facebook, because Facebook would have been unable to compete.
The chairman believes he can help us in one way: He will make sure all
these highly discriminatory new tolls are "commercially reasonable." Will that
matter? No. Commercially reasonable deals won't be measured by the
market. If Amazon is paying twice what eBay is paying, the FCC will only make
sure each price is reasonable, not that the prices are nondiscriminatory.
He adds that this "reasonable" pricing will hardly be reasonable, unless
your company is insanely rich:
So, according to the FCC, when Verizon discriminates against a startup, we
shouldn't be alarmed, because (while being discriminated against), this
startup can hire a lot of expensive lawyers and expert witnesses and meet
Verizon (a company worth more than $100 billion) at the FCC and litigate this
issue out, with no certainty as to the rule. The startup will almost
certainly lose either at the FCC or on appeal to a higher court, after
bleeding
money on lawyers.
_Writing in the _
(http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/the-end-of-net-neutrality.html)
_New Yorker_
(http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/the-end-of-net-neutrality.html)
, law professor Tim
Wu explains:
The new rule gives broadband providers what they've wanted for about a
decade now: the right to speed up some traffic and degrade others. (With
broadband, there is no such thing as accelerating some traffic without
degrading other traffic.) We take it for granted that bloggers, start-ups, or
nonprofits on an open Internet reach their audiences roughly the same way as
everyone else. Now they won't. They'll be behind in the queue, watching as
companies that can pay tolls to the cable companies speed ahead. The
motivation is not complicated. The broadband carriers want to make more money
for
doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge
some of the world's highest prices, around sixty dollars or more per month
for broadband, a service that costs less than five dollars to provide. To
put it mildly, the cable and telephone companies don't need more money.
Wu has studied corporate controls of electronic communication for most of
his life, and is the author of a terrific book about telecom monopolies
called _The Master Switch_
(http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Switch-Information-Empires/dp/1455884391?tag=io9amzn-20&ascsubtag=[referrer|io9.com[type|link[
postId|1569504174[asin|1455884391[authorId|5717795175536518860) . He's
worked as an adviser for the FCC, and has personally talked to President Obama
about the need for net neutrality. So his disappointment is palpable when
he notes that the leaked rules, _confirmed as real by insiders at the
agency_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23/the-fcc-is-planning-new-net-neutrality-rules-and-they-could-enshrine-pay-for-play/)
,
would allow internet companies to pay ISPs payola to get their traffic
privileged above others.
This is the first step toward a world where corporate monopolies on
content start affecting not just what you can see and read online — but also
how
you gain access to it. The signal will be out there, but your ISP just
won't deliver it to you.
An internet without network neutrality will look a lot like television
does now. You'll depend entirely on your cable company to get broadcasts, and
they will only deliver their handpicked channels in their cable packages.
There will probably be a little room for the web equivalent of public
access television, but it will be so underfunded and slow to load that almost
nobody will see it.
It used to be that when a show couldn't make it on broadcast television,
we would watch it online. That's how amazing stuff like Dr. Horrible made
it into the world. But without net neutrality, we lose that option too. If a
company doesn't have the money or legal acumen to get its content
included in ISP packages, you will never see its programming. You'll never
have
those shows; you'll never have those apps; and you'll never know what you're
missing.
http://io9.com/the-internet-is-about-to-become-worse-than-television-1569504
174
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