The Senate has forced a vote to restore net neutrality(theverge.com) |
The Senate has forced a vote to restore net neutrality(theverge.com) |
This is being seriously mismanaged, and that may actually cause long term harm to the chances of saving (or restoring) net neutrality.
The big mistake being made is not explaining where the Congressional Review Act (CRA) approach fits into the bigger picture. There are several places along the timeline of net neutrality repeal where it in theory could be saved. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) approach is just one of them.
The CRA approach has almost no chance of actually passing both houses (it has a pretty good chance in the Senate, but because of the way the House is structured it would take a miracle there).
When you consider it in the context of the bigger picture, that's not a problem. Its role in the overall effort is to get members of Congress on the record, which might be useful later in campaigns for office. The public is broadly in favor of net neutrality and this support is very high even among Republicans.
That's probably not enough to get Republican voters to vote Democrat, because it is not high on the list of important issues for them, but it could be enough to get them to vote for more moderate Republicans in the Republican primaries or caucuses.
In sports terms, this is not a play to score a goal. It is an attempt to get better position to set up a later scoring play. But the people running these campaigns treat everything like it is a scoring attempt...and then when it doesn't score the people who participated feel like they failed.
That can discourage them, making them less likely to respond to later calls to action. Then they might not be there when it is time to actually go for a goal (e.g., get out and vote).
Except maybe for a PR tidal wave so huge that anyone who opposes net neutrality is driven out of business, I don't see how you convince companies to go against their own interests.
That is to say, what you're saying is true, but typically (as long as the net is in sight) the best way to set yourself up to score a goal later is to try to score a goal now.
The approach is prone to local maxima, but I'm not convinced there can be another approach here. If you're not trying to win it all, then you're setting yourself up to lose.
They can't even score a goal now. The purpose of this within the US legal system is a pure intermediate play. And the when net neutrality doesn't get overturned as a result of this instance people will feel demoralized and hopeless.
"We don’t know how this is going to end...."
They know very well how it will end. This is an effort to get ammo for the primaries.
I get the feeling that these sites are just 'preaching to the choir' (i.e. their customers already support these things, and most likely have let their 'representative' know).
Is anyone doing anything to give the 50 senators who are against this a taste of what is to come? I recall cloudflare or someome along those lines threatenning to throttle traffic from government IPs, or maybe that just happened in my dream..
It's not about changing minds. It's a call to action - they're specifically trying to get their users to contact their representatives.
Not only is it unlikely to pass both chambers and be signed by the president, passing the bill doesn't change the broader status of net neutrality. Currently, the legality of the FCC enforcing net neutrality is unclear, with the matter destined to be decided in the courts either way.
A law explicitly giving the FCC control has been necessary for over a decade, but both parties have refused to pass one or even consider passing a future one.
Unfortunately, that's not a winning argument from a rhetorical perspective. Almost every single person in both the House and the Senate, of both parties, voted for FOSTA/SESTA.
FOSTA and SESTA are truly abominable bills. They're arguably the most anti-gay bills passed at the federal level since DOMA in 1996. But telling people "net neutrality isn't about controlling the Internet, because it's not as bad as these other bills that received near-unanimous, bipartisan support" isn't going to win over any allies who weren't already in your camp on both issues in the first place.
And I think it could convert those in the anti camp. Some are against Net Neutrality because they see it as government control of the internet (it is not). They need to recognize that FOSTA is directly what they perceive Net Neutrality to be (at least in terms of results).
Edit: Actually, we'd have even more freedom with an Internet version of the FERC rule for open access to electrical transmission lines.[0]
> The legal and policy cornerstone of these rules is to remedy undue discrimination in access to the monopoly owned transmission wires that control whether and to whom electricity can be transported in interstate commerce.
0) https://www.ferc.gov/legal/maj-ord-reg/land-docs/rm95-8-00w....
We may actually have the opposite problem; Trump may not veto anything that comes across his desk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-2017-10-28_MEO...
If you believe some other law already prohibits this, please tell me.
Still not great though, since it just increases the moat for existing companies. Also companies in the states have tried exactly the same thing before with their video streaming service not counting towards you data cap.
Then again I find it troubling how easy politicians are getting bought these days while in essence it's not that hard to govern with all the people in mind instead of them self. But I may be very naive in this regards.
No, because I am fine with the way things are, ie unregulated.
The competition in the U.S. isn’t as great as it can be in here in the U.K. where many will only have a single choice for their ISP (or have restricted cell/sat isp or have a service that we wouldn’t even consider as broadband as it’s speed is so low).
It’s strange how people from different parts from the world may require different rules that govern them.
So? Most of that is empty space nobody is trying to serve. The key metric is population density, which is comparable between urban areas in Europe and the US. The size of the US has nothing to do with lack of ISP choice, as evidenced by the fact that the same problem doesn't occur in countries with lower population densities than the US (33.8 people per km²) such as Sweden (21.5), Finland (16.2), Norway (13.4) or Australia (3.1).
All I see about NN is a lot of manipulation from both sides. And what's especially frustrating is that some people insist that NN is anti-customer. No thanks, I'll keep my zero-rating.
What people are worried about is when the ISP's get to play kingmaker about which services will get deals and which will not. The cable TV providers are among the most hated companies in the US for a reason, and those are the only broadband ISP's available to most Americans.
Zero-rating as we fear it is just another way to let them impose arbitrary and capricious costs on their customers.
In the sense of 'government regulation'. They are the ones who can arbitrarily enforce rules, pick and choose winners, and complicate the barrier to entry so much to discourage competition ...all within the law mind you.
> ...ISPs, who are driven by profits and literally nothing else
They live by the profits, and die by them too. That's how free market works.
Three offers Deezer and Apple Music but not Spotify zero-rated. This puts Deezer and Apple Music at an advantage, no matter if they're technically better or worse
Three also does this for social media and video services. (Part of why I'm leaving them when my contract is up)
I agree about the manipulation from both sides though. There's an acceptance that we have to be so shrill and lie for our cause, because marketing.
That threat is entirely without teeth for two reasons:
One: Disorganized militias fail against a well-regulated military force. Especially since this militia would be a minority group, composed of the subset of gun owners who are outright crazy/stupid enough to go up against their own government.
Two: It would destroy the NRA in the public sphere. They'd go from being a normal political group to truly being Yall-Qaeda, the armed paramilitary force of reactionary idiots no normal person can support. The NRA can put on a normal face right now, and get practically everything it wants through politics, but if it tries to force the issue through armed insurrection, it gets crushed like an insect. A small insect.
Plus, Trump is a master at walking stuff back and saving face with his party and base. Net neutrality comes back? Well it's Trump net neutrality now, way better than broken Obama net neutrality. Obama job numbers fake, Trump job numbers great. Trump economy(which has basically not deviated from the Obama economy trajectory) doing great, Obama economy was broken. Etc, etc. All that matters is if it floats, and he can brand it Trump.
As someone who's fairly active around both issues, trust me when I say that all this will do is solidify their opposition to net neutrality, and in the worst case, strengthen their support of FOSTA/SESTA.
No, it's not consistent. But it's also not a line of reasoning that will work with opponents of net neutrality. Politics isn't always cut and dry the way we might wish.
I've been doing some research on the prelude to Russian revolution and what I discovered is that Communist party of USSR did not start or create the concept of a brutal 'Secret Police'. The Tsar of Russia created the secret police and they had no concept of civil liberties to begin it.
When Communist party took over, they merely used this concept (and bolstered it), in addition to all the other terrible things they did.
Similarly, China didn't end up with a brutal communist party, they had a brutal Emperor, and Chinese communist party just step into that place (preceded briefly by Republic of China).
My point is, generally a tyrannical control of things begins with a more nobler or palpable reason, which eventually is taken over by bad people.
Take for instance, France has ban burqas in public places. You would think that the American right would consider this to be a noble thing and would wanna advocate it, but they won't because this gives the govt power, and eventually this power could and would be used against them.
Today you're claiming that net neutrality is govt controlling ISPs, not the Internet. But can a radical religious govt ban blasphemy on the internet by forcing the ISPs? FOSTA-SESTA were terrible things which passed, without any anti-NN side opposing them, and now nearly everyone in this thread is saying "Oh if you have a problem with NN how come you don't say anything to FOSTA-SESTA".
It’s controversial to say here but I don’t think it gets discussed enough: Net neutrality only really helps established players. That is not to say it hurts others, but it certainly helps established players.
That’s why they all love it. Facebook, Hulu, Netflix, GitHub, Tumblr, Microsoft. Unestablished unpopular players are not the ones getting throttled. It’s the ones already using tons of bandwidth getting throttled and odds are good most new players bandwidth usage is hardly even noticeable to the ISP. They wouldn’t be touting the joys of something that had the potential to displace them.
The one who would be getting throttled is primarily Netflix, who literally uses over half of the bandwidth of the Internet. Literally slows everything else on the Internet down. Netflix doesn’t want to be throttled, so of course they love net neutrality.
I’m not saying net neutrality is inherently bad, I just don’t think it’s as innately good as a lot of the cheerleaders attest.
Is freedom to build whatever you want without having to pay gatekeepers important or is freedom from rules important?
They point out it is freedom of ISPS vs natural people, and you are pointing out that considering ISP rights the same as people is bad.
I predict the ISP's selling a default throttled connection to everything, and then for $10 more you can unthrottle Netflix or YouTube. Competitors would need to convince ISPs to allow unthrottled access to even have a chance.
Of course it is, you have to constrain the powerful so they cannot take freedom away from the dispossessed.
You have to restrict the freedom of Southern plantation owners to own slaves to ensure the freedom of slaves. You have to restrict the freedom of corporations to merge into a giant conglomerate so you can protect the freedom of choice of consumers. You have to restrict the freedom of corporations to charge for the origin of internet traffic so you can protect the freedom of internet users to visit any site they wish.
Freedom in society is always an exchange and a compromise. Your freedom to swing your fist ends five centimetres away from my nose.
Net neutrality also helps users. Do I really need to explain how?
Firstly I would hardly call demanding the end of free services on moral grounds “helping users”. As far as the end user cares, forcing them to pay for all services equally when they could previously get one for free is a net harm.
The bigger problem however is that internet has been running largely at full bandwidth capacity since mid 2015, particularly the backbone. Bandwidth is being devoured faster than it is being added. Not being able to limit major hogs, namely streaming services, in favor of other smaller and potentially more important connections actually harms users with slower overall response time for the internet at large.
I personally think things like medical/government services and online banking traffic getting priority over entertainment is not that controversial - but not allowed under net neutrality.
It’s not as clear cut as people think.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/616210/average-internet-...
That's arguing that opposition to putting a dam in a river to alter its natural course is a constraint, because it constrains the placement of dams.
> Net neutrality only really helps established players.
Good for them. For once they're on the right side of an argument.
> Unestablished unpopular players are not the ones getting throttled.
How is that an argument in favour of anyone getting throttled at the whim of the ISPs?
> The one who would be getting throttled is primarily Netflix, who literally uses over half of the bandwidth of the Internet.
Once again: good for them. On the provider side: if bandwidth is a scarcity, data plan prices should reflect that. No need to give them the power to ghettoise the Internet.
