The Consequences of Losing #NetNeutrality

It's incredible to me how much people can't seem to understand or care about this. It came up yesterday and I explained the issue in what I thought were pretty simple terms to some friends and family. I just get blank stares every time. One guy said "whats the big deal doesn't Google already decide what we see online?" Umm, first of all no they don't, and secondly do you not realize that "Google" and the internet aren't the same thing? I give up. Facebook and Netflix will still work fine so nobody cares anyway.
 
wow... what a bunch of clumsy examples that really seem to miss the point, or logic of how this can be done!

it seems that neither of these actually understand how ISPs work, OR their kind of tiers of ISP that would even be able to setup this stuff.

both talk about small content creators whilst ignoring the fact that they are not service providers. net neutrality does not affect the small content creators, they are not small service providers or startups. - content creators aren't paying for the service! there is no difference between your you tube channel and pewdiepies, or whoever else,


it's actually kind of painful to hear both these guys misrepresent what net neutrality actually is, and what it means, what the possible affects are, and how it could affect different people.

for what it is worth, their argument that everyone is equal at the moment is clearly flawed, as a small business I may run from home, (with a super slow 10mbps upload.) I may get a business connection to my premise, (much more expensive, but still relatively poor upload, (say 100 - 300mbps up), I may go for datacenter hosting and get a 1000mbps upload, (where I either need to pay for a peering agreement with an ISP directly, or host with a company that already has that...) - but I'm still a lot of money, and hence a lot of speed away from what Netflix has, - probably 10 - 40G stright into tier 1 providers at multiple locations throughout the world. (wahhh, why can't I can that? - no seriously, please can I have 40G straight into GTT or something) the small content provider is already disadvantaged by being unable to afford a "fast" connection.
sure after that initial connection both mine and netflix traffic are "equal", (and that MAY change without net neutrality depending on the service provider) but I've got a long way to spend before I'm actually equal, if I wanted to start a new streaming service today... these guys either willfully misrepresent that, or just don't understand it.

and that is half the actual problem.
understanding net neutrality is not a trivial issue, you need to understand how the internet works, how ISPs work, and how people are connected to each other with service providers and peering agreements. - these guys clearly don't understand the technical meat of the matter, and so cannot actually explain it, therefore instead seem to misrepresent it as though people are not going to be able to get to their you tube channel.


the last guys really annoys me, mostly because he's SO US centric, he seems to believe that the US established the world wide web, that they own all the equipment and that they are clearly best placed to create a constitution to control it.
he ignores the fact that there is literally no part of the US constitution applies inside private service.

I was going to say he's a fuck wit and leave it there, but the more I heard him talk, the more frustrated I got!

it's like he doesn't understand how private property works. - like here, the servers are private, nobody denies your right to free speech, BUT by the same token, nobody can force the server owners to host your speech. just like if I walked into his house and started preaching at him, his asking me to leave, or calling the police to stop my trespass is not a denial of my free speech, it's just him saying "go somewhere else to say that shit"
he CLEARLY doesn't understand how service providers work, and rolls this into some sort of rant about how he's personally butt hurt because he can't get all the alt-right shit he wants on youtube. (yes, Sargon of Akadd can be funny, but mostly he's a man baby who makes bad arguments, he's been responsible, [or rather his videos have been responsible for sowing a seed] for people harassing and doxing people, [harassing both online and offline] even the man from Swindon cannot possibly believe that a lot of his videos "deserve" to stay online.) - anyway, getting all of whatever youtube content you want has bugger all to do with net neutrality, that has to do with youtube NOT being forced to host your content. frankly it's their service, their servers and they can put whatever AUP they like on it, they can remove - either hiding or deleting individual videos, or whole accounts as they see fit, because it is their server and their service! (just like with the me going into your house and telling you stuff you don't want to hear.)

he goes on a rant against domain name registras saying that there are too few! - he's such an idiot, there are so few top level domain controlling authorities since SOMEONE has to control the TLD name space. I mean you literally can't have two independent people granting .com names, serving out two different databases, - what if two people try to register the same name with two providers? there is ICANN controlling .com, nominet control .uk names etc) - but ICANN, has never taken a domain off of a person because it was too edgy, they only have arbitration for trade mark, (though look up the history of atunes, btunes and itunes and you;ll see that is sometimes "missused")

but you know what, just like how ANYONE can buy a server and host content, anyone can register as a registra. - in fact I AM a registra, I can register domain names on other people behalf using a 3rd party reseller service, (it's the cheapest way to register domain names.) if I grew my registra service substantially enough, I'd just go straight to ICAN or Nominet, and get an even better deal on site registration.

you *could* register a domain name with me, but you know what, if I wanted to be a commercial registra as soon as I started getting people boycotting my service, affecting my bottom line, taking up my time with correspondence about the shitty stuff that you publish on a site that I registered, and MY details are attached to on a whois search. I'm dropping your arse rather than putting up with the headache!

and that's where his argument falls down, if he wants "nazis4tehwin.com" he can have that, but don't expect domain monster to register it for you, because they are listed as the registration contact, they get shit for it, and they have no legal obligation to let you use their service, especially in the razor thin registra market where you are operating on a few cents per domain profit over a year.
when you get to register the domain for $10 a year, how many emails to tech support should they have to open before to complain about nazis4tehwin.com before you're satisfied that they should cancel your friends service? you know before they go under, can everyones service and go bust. as they have to employ more people to open an increasing about of mail!

you want edgy sites, near hate speech or whatever, go register with the proper domain authority, be a registra, register and host your own websites. list your own details as registration contact etc. do what your like and spend your own time opening and responding to hate mail.

(I registered as a registra, (despite the hassle of doing so.) via a reseller account to save money, because I've a handful of domains registered, and at a difference of £8 a year each, or £7 a year each, there is an appreciable amount of beer token saved.

he suggests that blogs are owned by wordpress, completely ignoring the fact that wordpress is blog hosting (site and software) word press don't run blogs (they don;t write them), blogs are run on wordpress.
same for google. - I have a blogger blog, that's hosted using google, not run by or controlled, or content filled by them!


the internet was NOT built by freaks and weirdos posting creepy shit.
the internet was built by the military for communication purposes
the world wide web was built by scientists, for research purposes.


I don't understand why his argument keeps coming back to what is criminal, criminal according to who? he touched on it half way through about how, why is the internet not censored in accordance with strict religious regime laws, but by the end says that the internet should be policed to US laws. - but why US laws? - why not a place with more lapse laws?
in fact why not no laws on content, except the local "hosting" laws. (i.e if you want to host Nazi shit don't do it in Germany where that is illegal.)

lets just end by saying the guy is a dick of the highest order, he clearly doesn't understand in a technical sense what he talks about, his moral argument is full of holes, his analogies make no sense and are factually inaccurate and he must rely on audience ignorance to look like he has a good point.
 
Yeah, basically things stay the same. at least until the ISPs think that everything has died down, then they'll try taking things away, one at a time. Like boiling a frog, just turn up the heat a little at a time and they'll never notice it killing them...

The funniest thing i've seen today, was someone asking why people cared so much, and that the internet in 2015 was just fine. I guess they weren't a comcast customer back in 2015. I was, and i remember how they used to throttle netflix until it looked like a pixelated piece of crap...

Edit: also, i was a customer of at&t when they blocked skype in 2009, and unfortunately still with them (because only at&t had the iphone) when they blocked Facetime in 2011-2012.
 
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Where was i during all this??? asleep at the switch i was....

---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:52 PM ----------

I guess as long as america online don't try and make a comeback by charging you for internet service we will survive
 
The WWW (World Wide Web) link countries together. The countries each have their laws. What's legal there is not legal here and vice versa.

If Net Neutrality is about legal aspects then we cannot keep it.
 
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