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Net Neutrality Follow Up
28 Sep2009
I have to wonder what causes me to reenter the fray. A few persons were confused by my talking points, a few said my technical understanding of the problem was misguided and almost all of you managed to convey these ideas in a condescending way. I suppose I can’t blame you too much, but it’s a little frustrating at the same time. Just to let you know, this is a reasoned response. I promise I Will Not feed the trolls. (rule #1)
To clarify: I suppose what I wrote was more an indictment of the ’solvency’ behind the problem. I understand the US is behind in broadband technology, because of how many old machines the network was built on. It’s kinda like IE6, we have to have so much legacy support that we can’t make shocking leaps forward. Nations that developed these technologies later had fresher starting points. I also don’t trust the government to fix the problem. I don’t trust the FCC with the keys to the internet. They kill free speech on television and radio. I do not trust legislators to enact more regulation to ‘fix the issue.’
The FCC makes entities equal in a Harrison Bergeron-esque handicapping. It limits others until everyone is equal. To enforce net neutrality the FCC would have to actively monitor the internet. As soon as any problem arises, ISPs will be crying foul in Washington, causing the FCC to create more rules to ‘maintain the neutrality.’
I will also restate my analogy of FedEX vs UPS and eventually the Post Office, outlawing overnight shipping on the grounds that it will interfere with ground shipping and stifle innovation would’ve been 100% moronic. It comes down to good business. If Comcast turns down BT users or Skype quality, customers will go elsewhere. It’s never been beneficial for businesses to offer sub-par services in competitive industries. I’m saying that companies don’t stand to gain from inefficiency.
If the net neutrality laws go into effect, what good does it do that packets are all equal but are slowed down as a result? Also, it’s not like net neutrality will somehow increase consumer mobility. In fact, it’ll leave people wading in a more inefficient network.
People seem to have gotten hung up on my small technical examples, so I’ll say this instead:
We live in an age where people who are supposedly “radical,” interested in fighting some “power” and bettering the state of the human mind in this country, are simultaneously on this issue pro-State,(the entity that has a legal use of force and power to imprison.)
The FCC is the greatest enemy of free speech (i.e., the freedom of the mind, the foundation of a free society) this country has ever seen. The FCC was originally sold on the grounds of preserving the “collective ownership” of radio/television waves, i.e., preserving the quality and equal competition of the mid-20th century’s means of distributing information (sound familiar?) It soon morphed into the moral majority pushing for language censorship, and the systematic conglomeration of pro-state news outlets.
If you need more, this site can help as well
and lastly, a quick response to my webmaster: He supplied the real world example of where you’ve noticed Hulu is significantly slower on a Comcast Cable line as opposed to a simple DSL. Accepting this anecdotal evidence as fact, I fail to see what the problem is. Why not switch to DSL if it’s fast and better as you assert? Seems like a red herring. Also, I’m trying to break out of George Bush-esque partisan thinking because it seems destructive to real discourse. It’s not an issue of “us vs them,” it’s an issue of language obfuscating the issue. What I’m trying to convey is Who Watches the Watchmen? Why do we trust the government to regulate the issue?
(another quick point about language obfuscating the issue: I received 2 bashes on shoutwire because of an offhand comment in my article blurb. Not about the content at all, just cause they were flipping around and saw something that they didn’t realize was a joke. To answer your question fellas: the 18th and consequently the 21st amendment(s). Wastes of everyone’s time.)
What about the 20 years of purely government internet? Compare the innovations conducted in that time and when civilians finally got ahold of it. The governments’ systems were old and they were slow to upgrade, but in the retail sector, customers were allowed to pick relevant services which created large markets of competition and weeded out inferior companies and technologies (HTTP vs Gopher, IE vs Netscape, AOL vs maturity).
ps: I promised myself I wouldn’t feed the trolls no matter what, but I have a bit of a vendetta against “ M4×1mus ”
#1. You are a condescending jerk
#2. Your username is in leet which means a.) some other Hack already took that name or b.) you can’t let go of counterstrike
#3. Everyone’s seen Gladiator dude, that shit is 10 years old. It was also edited by someone that graduated from my university, which is neat.
#4. Thanks for submitting a single article to shoutwire to bolster the community!
There. Let’s move on to other topics for a while, shall we?
-Rob the Poet Blind- In: Cultural| Debate| Science/Tech
1 Response to Net Neutrality Follow Up
Josh
September 28th, 2009 at 15:53
“If the net neutrality laws go into effect, what good does it do that packets are all equal but are slowed down as a result?”
The fact that this wouldn’t slow down your network experience notwithstanding, the good this does is in the eventual forcing of ISPs to upgrade their infrastructure to something with more bandwidth. ‘Nuff said.
“Also, it’s not like net neutrality will somehow increase consumer mobility. In fact, it’ll leave people wading in a more inefficient network.”
Howso? Why would the network be more inefficient? Once again, I point out that I (and any other person who has experience with computer networking) do not want Comcast filtering, monitoring, enacting decisions upon, or just plain messing with any packet I send. I pay them for bandwidth to connect to whatever I desire. I do not pay them to decide that I should be able to access site A faster than site B when I’m told my connection is supposed to be a constant xxmbps. If I want to prioritize my packets I will do so on my own router. To try and give them this responsibility is just plain lazy and will “leave people wading in a more inefficient network.”
“Why not switch to DSL if it’s fast and better as you assert?”
Great solution… Rather than force Comcast to fix this with a net neutrality bill, force me, a paying consumer, to downgrade my entire experience? I didn’t say it was slower. I said that HULU seemed to be getting filtered at times/was slower. I’m not going to switch from Comcast to a much slower DSL connection because one of the things I like on the internet (of a multitude of things) is not working correctly, just to end up having a shittier overall experience. This actually illustrates my point PRECISELY on how Comcast (or other large ISPs) stand(s) to gain from offering subpar service. ie: As long as it’s better OVERALL than the other subpar services offered, we don’t need to upgrade our current infrastructure, because we won’t lose our subscribers anyway. It’s all about how much they can take away before people switch, which is quite a lot, in my opinion.
I understand your hate of the fcc. I’m not a fan, either, but maybe you could stop and realize that some of the things they do are both A) Necessary, and B) Beneficial. Case in point: Did you know that until October or November of 2007 it was legal for a landlord to require a tenant to purchase cable from whoever the landlord desired? The cable companies would give the landlords free service at home in exchange for contracts on their buildings. This monopolistic bullying was stopped by, you guessed it, the FCC. My point is simply that not all of their actions are ones that should be considered malicious or rights-infringing. “FCC bans exclusive TV deals.”
I will end by saying that I do not condemn your article’s poit of view on the FCC and actually have my own fears of them. If given the choice between a net neutrality bill being passed that is not handled by the FCC and one being passed handled by the FCC, I would always choose the non-FCC bill. Nevertheless, if the closest thing we’ll get to written protection from any sort of tiered internet implementation is an FCC-handled net neutrality bill, I’ll take it. It is my educated opinion that the six points you emphasized on the current Net Neutrality bill will result in a better internet experience for Americans in the years to come.