So back in November, Obama in a video broadcast, proclaimed his support of "Net Neutrality". As reported by the BBC:
BBC News - Obama backs net neutrality plan
There is so much here that bugs the snot out of me, it's hard to know where to start.
First, internet is not a basic 'right'. You have the right to life, liberty, and property. It might be popular to just declare everything you ever want in life, as a 'right', but that does not make it so. This country was not built on spoiled brats declaring everything they want a right, and refusing to pay for it. No, this country was built on people working really hard to get what they want, and earning it.
Second, reclassifying ISP (internet service providers), as Title Two telecommunications, and thus basically a public utility, or in fact any communication method a public utility, is ridiculous. The concept was created because people went from wood and coal burning stoves, to gas and electric heating, which meant that if the gas or electric company started screwing around, people could die in the winter. So how many have died from being disconnected from broadband? How many bodies in a morgue have a toe tag "lack of net access"? None. This is idiotic and stupid.
Nevertheless the vast majority of people support net neutrality laws according to a recent poll.
New poll Republicans and Democrats both overwhelmingly support net neutrality - The Washington Post
Which goes to show you, never underestimate the power of ignorant people in large numbers. This right here, is exactly why we should not have people who have no idea how technology works, making policy decisions on the technology market. And by the way, people take this as an insult on the general public, but it's not. It's simply a fact of how a pure democracy works. Even if you collected the 10 smartest, most intelligent people in the top fields, and had them vote on every policy, the vote would still be ruled by the ignorant. Take minimum wage policy. What does the top climatologist know about the economics of the minimum wage? Nothing. Top criminologist? Nothing. Top ecology major? Nothing. Top military expert? Nothing. Top energy industry leader? Nothing.
Thus every single vote, by even the most brilliant people in the country, would still be a vote ruled by the ignorant. But when you expand that vote to 300 million people, most of whom are not informed of the pro and cons, or both sides of any issue at all..... beware the power of ignorant people in large numbers.
This is why we were never supposed to be a democracy. We're supposed to be a representative republic.
Moreover, increasing regulation, inherently, by it's very nature, benefits the big corporation. It's amazing how many times people claim to support stuff, supposedly for the good of the public, when in reality, it benefits the corporations the most.
So, before I dive into the current debate, let's back up and see the history.
New poll Republicans and Democrats both overwhelmingly support net neutrality - The Washington Post
So this dude, Strowger, in 1898 designed this stepping switch, called the Strowger switch. Strowger was an undertaker in a town that apparently had 2 undertakers. When phone service was brought into the town, he of course paid to have it, believing it would increase his business. Instead, his business began to dwindle. When a friend of the family died, and he was not called, Strowger discovered that the other undertaker's wife, worked as a telephone operator. During that time, if you want to call someone, you had to ask the operator to connect your call. Strowger believed that this other dudes wife, was directing undertaker calls to her husband.
The entire story is not verifyable, and is a long standing legend. Regardless, Strowger created the switch, to eliminate the need for an operator directing calls. This is the fundamental start of the communication neutrality. Regulation designed for telephone service, is being promoted to govern a high tech internet environment. So when John Thune is saying they want to apply 80 year old rules for telephone service, to the internet, he's dead on right.
So do we want all data transmitted over the internet treated exactly the same? Do we really want all information traveling at the exact same speed?
Of course not. The concept sounds great to the general public. Why should my information take second place to anyone else?
But in reality, that would be terrible. Imagine a world in which youtube video, moved at the same speed as a face book post? Or an E-mail? Twitter?
If your Twitter post is delayed 30 seconds, would you, or anyone else notice or care? If your video cut out for 30 seconds, you would notice instantly, and as I'm sure all of us have experienced this at some point, we all care. Yet the claim is that no one should have a fast lane. Man, I want my video to have a fast lane. Sitting there in the middle of a movie, staring at "buffering", is infuriating.
So we don't want all data treated the same. Not at all. But this is fundamental to "neutrality". If net neutrality was actually implemented, exactly as stated, the it would be horrendous for Skype, Voice Over IP (VoIP), Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, and any time-sensitive service. Of course your Facebook and Twitter posts may come up a bit faster.
However, there are many other arguments too. I do not normally cite wiki, but in this case, it serves as a simple outline of those arguments.
Net neutrality - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
What is interesting to me, is that none of the arguments seem to apply to the debate at hand. For example, "controlling the data". This one goes "ISPs will control and monitor the data flowing over the network."
I have yet to see that actually happen, or anyone proposing it. The only one monitoring data over the internet, is clearly the NSA.
Another is a loss of digital rights and freedom. Until illegally downloading programs, music and movies, is a fundamental right... I'm not sure what digital rights and freedoms he thinks we'll lose by having a faster connection to Netflix.
Failure to "Preserve the internet standard", which is true, but good. Again, the standard is all data is treated equally. But we don't want that. If your video is given the exact same priority as a twitter post, get ready for the "buffering" message to be on your screen constantly.
Last, there is the claim that companies would lose out to faster sites, because people have less tolerance for slower sites, once they are uses to faster ones. By that logic, we should make everything run at the slowest possible speed.
All of those arguments are garbage. However that brings us to the last one, which is the primary cause of the debate.
Preventing pseudo-services: This is the "Mafia Protection Money" argument. The two most cited examples of this is Bittorent, and Netflix.
Now unfortunately, there is a grain of truth to the argument. ComCast created fake data streams over the same ports that Bit Torrent uses. These fake data streams, slowed down Bit Torrent download speeds over the network. Interestingly, nearly all networks were doing this, not just ComCast, but of course the bigger the company, the more you draw flack.
This of course brought out massive heat on Comcast, and they settled out of court.
Comcast Settles BitTorrent Throttling Lawsuit Consumerist
Now the key for me is, there was no need of regulation. No laws were required. The existing system functioned fine, and the problem was resolved.
In the case of Netflix though, the argument falls apart. There is no evidence that Comcast or Verizon, or any other ISP was throttling Netflix.
Netflix slow on Verizon or Comcast A VPN might speed up that video Ars Technica
When an ISP throttles, or creates fake traffic, to slow down data streams, it's easily detectible. After all, everyone that is on the network, can see the network traffic. In this case, no one has been able to show that network traffic was slowed. As with the Bit Torrent case, it was easily detectible.
There is no evidence whatsoever, that suggest that Comcast is throttling Netflix, and certainly Netflix has never implied anything of the sort. Which if it was going on, and Netflix knew about it, they would file suit just like Bit Torrent did.
The problem with Netflix, is that streaming high quality video requires tons of bandwidth. Massive amounts of bandwidth.
Netflix Remains King of Bandwidth Usage While YouTube Declines Variety
In the US market, Netflix right now, consumes 1/3rd of all network traffic during prime time hours. 34%, is all just one single company.
This is hard to grasp for some... add up all the Twitter, all the web sites, all the porn, all the Facebook, all the video games, all the banking sites, all the corporations, all the News sites, all the Youtube, Flickr, Pentrist, everything, including illegally downloaded music, and videos, including the afore mentioned Bit Torrent.... all of it, all combined, is just 2/3rd of the internet traffic, and 1/3rd, is one single company, Netflix.
Watching one movie, is 1 Gigabyte of data per hour. An HD movie, is 3 Gigabytes of data an hour. You see the issue?
Tell me, if you buy a movie theater ticket, do you get to take up 1/3rd of all the seats? If you buy a ticket on a plane, do you get 1/3rd of all the seats?
If a company moved in, next to where you live, and increased traffic on your roads by 1/3rd, requiring you to pay for the addition of lanes on your roads, would you want to pay for it yourself, or would you want that company to?
Why should Comcast, be required to pay for Netflix using 1/3rd of their networks bandwidth? Why shouldn't Netflix pay for the bandwidth they are using?
This isn't a "Mafia Protection Money" case. Comcast was not holding Netflix data for ransom. There was a real hardware bottleneck created by one company using up 1/3rd of all the bandwidth on the networks.
Why Verizon won t solve its Netflix problem as soon as Comcast Ars Technica
As proof of that, notice the example of the Netflix deal with Verizon, verse the deal with Comcast. When Comcast signed the deal with Netflix, the download speeds drastically increased. When Verizon signed on, they did not.
Why? Because Comcast and Netflix, knew they would sign a deal at some point, and their people on both sides, had been working for months, setting up new hardware, new network bandwidth, specifically for this deal. Verizon and Netflix, had not.
Thus, when Comcast and Netflix, signed up, they turned on the hardware, and speeds increased. When Verizon and Netflix signed up, there was no hardware in place to turn on, and thus speeds have not increased as dramatically.
Of course, if the Net Neutrality advocates had there way, there would have been no deal, and no solution to the slow downs.
The thing that drive me crazy the most, is that the left-wing portrays this as "Companies verse the Public". It's all of us little people against the big mega corps!
But in reality, as it has been nearly every single time in the past... it's the big companies, rounding up the sheep to make themselves wealthy.
NFLX Annual Income Statement - Netflix Inc. Annual Financials
Netflix raked in $4.4 BILLION dollars last year.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings 8217 Salary To Get 50 Bump To 3M In 2014 TechCrunch
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix made, a tiny $3 Million in salary last year.
And you think you are fighting against the big corporations? You are fight in favor of a multi-billion dollar company, not having to pay for their own internet usage. What, does Hastings not have enough super yachts for your taste?
It is hilarious to me, to see people screaming about the mega corporations and their super rich CEOs who don't pay for what they have, and then the moment a super rich CEO of a mega corporation that complains he shouldn't have to pay for something, those very same people come out of their holes in the ground to support the rich man's cause.
And in conclusion, as I said at the start, regulations benefit the large corporations. They always do.
Regulation by it's nature, benefits the big corporations. If you have two car companies, General ChryFord Company, and Darren's Auto Company, and you levy a ton of expensive regulations on the auto companies.... which company, the Mega Billions General ChryFord Company, or the small Independent Darren's Auto Company.... Which of those two is going to have the money to meet those regulations? Obviously the large Mega Billions Corp, is going to have the money to meet those regulations. Darren goes out of business, or sells out to another company.
In the 1950 to 1960, there were dozens of independent car companies. By the 1980s, after all the regulations of the 1970s kicked in, there were 3.
Even when you look at the CAFE standards that Obama signed into law. Who was present at the signing? All the CEOs of the Mega companies!
When R-12 was banned... why did DuPont lobby to ban their own product? The patent had expired on R-12. Dozens of companies were producing R-12. The price for a can of R-12 was under $9. They banned R-12, and regulations pushed R-134a... which strangely, had a bran new shiny patent to Dupont, and the price of a can went to $20 (and higher at times).
Or even Broadcast TV. The FCC created 48 'white spaces', in the spectrum, set aside exclusively for Broadcast TV. From the 1940s to 1990s, how many channels were there? Three. In fact the UPN network, that popped up in the 90s, was originally supposed to start in the 1950s. But regulations by the FCC, forced the Network out of business, protecting the tri-opoly of NBC, CBS, and ABC.
It's just amazing that these people scream about the companies shutting out business, and monopolizing the market... while at the same time, supporting the very policies and regulations that help them do it.
Let's get back to a Free-market. Let the companies offer what products and services they can, in an open, non-regulated market. It works almost every single time it's tried.
BBC News - Obama backs net neutrality plan
There is so much here that bugs the snot out of me, it's hard to know where to start.
First, internet is not a basic 'right'. You have the right to life, liberty, and property. It might be popular to just declare everything you ever want in life, as a 'right', but that does not make it so. This country was not built on spoiled brats declaring everything they want a right, and refusing to pay for it. No, this country was built on people working really hard to get what they want, and earning it.
Second, reclassifying ISP (internet service providers), as Title Two telecommunications, and thus basically a public utility, or in fact any communication method a public utility, is ridiculous. The concept was created because people went from wood and coal burning stoves, to gas and electric heating, which meant that if the gas or electric company started screwing around, people could die in the winter. So how many have died from being disconnected from broadband? How many bodies in a morgue have a toe tag "lack of net access"? None. This is idiotic and stupid.
Nevertheless the vast majority of people support net neutrality laws according to a recent poll.
New poll Republicans and Democrats both overwhelmingly support net neutrality - The Washington Post
Which goes to show you, never underestimate the power of ignorant people in large numbers. This right here, is exactly why we should not have people who have no idea how technology works, making policy decisions on the technology market. And by the way, people take this as an insult on the general public, but it's not. It's simply a fact of how a pure democracy works. Even if you collected the 10 smartest, most intelligent people in the top fields, and had them vote on every policy, the vote would still be ruled by the ignorant. Take minimum wage policy. What does the top climatologist know about the economics of the minimum wage? Nothing. Top criminologist? Nothing. Top ecology major? Nothing. Top military expert? Nothing. Top energy industry leader? Nothing.
Thus every single vote, by even the most brilliant people in the country, would still be a vote ruled by the ignorant. But when you expand that vote to 300 million people, most of whom are not informed of the pro and cons, or both sides of any issue at all..... beware the power of ignorant people in large numbers.
This is why we were never supposed to be a democracy. We're supposed to be a representative republic.
Moreover, increasing regulation, inherently, by it's very nature, benefits the big corporation. It's amazing how many times people claim to support stuff, supposedly for the good of the public, when in reality, it benefits the corporations the most.
So, before I dive into the current debate, let's back up and see the history.
New poll Republicans and Democrats both overwhelmingly support net neutrality - The Washington Post
So this dude, Strowger, in 1898 designed this stepping switch, called the Strowger switch. Strowger was an undertaker in a town that apparently had 2 undertakers. When phone service was brought into the town, he of course paid to have it, believing it would increase his business. Instead, his business began to dwindle. When a friend of the family died, and he was not called, Strowger discovered that the other undertaker's wife, worked as a telephone operator. During that time, if you want to call someone, you had to ask the operator to connect your call. Strowger believed that this other dudes wife, was directing undertaker calls to her husband.
The entire story is not verifyable, and is a long standing legend. Regardless, Strowger created the switch, to eliminate the need for an operator directing calls. This is the fundamental start of the communication neutrality. Regulation designed for telephone service, is being promoted to govern a high tech internet environment. So when John Thune is saying they want to apply 80 year old rules for telephone service, to the internet, he's dead on right.
So do we want all data transmitted over the internet treated exactly the same? Do we really want all information traveling at the exact same speed?
Of course not. The concept sounds great to the general public. Why should my information take second place to anyone else?
But in reality, that would be terrible. Imagine a world in which youtube video, moved at the same speed as a face book post? Or an E-mail? Twitter?
If your Twitter post is delayed 30 seconds, would you, or anyone else notice or care? If your video cut out for 30 seconds, you would notice instantly, and as I'm sure all of us have experienced this at some point, we all care. Yet the claim is that no one should have a fast lane. Man, I want my video to have a fast lane. Sitting there in the middle of a movie, staring at "buffering", is infuriating.
So we don't want all data treated the same. Not at all. But this is fundamental to "neutrality". If net neutrality was actually implemented, exactly as stated, the it would be horrendous for Skype, Voice Over IP (VoIP), Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, and any time-sensitive service. Of course your Facebook and Twitter posts may come up a bit faster.
However, there are many other arguments too. I do not normally cite wiki, but in this case, it serves as a simple outline of those arguments.
Net neutrality - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
What is interesting to me, is that none of the arguments seem to apply to the debate at hand. For example, "controlling the data". This one goes "ISPs will control and monitor the data flowing over the network."
I have yet to see that actually happen, or anyone proposing it. The only one monitoring data over the internet, is clearly the NSA.
Another is a loss of digital rights and freedom. Until illegally downloading programs, music and movies, is a fundamental right... I'm not sure what digital rights and freedoms he thinks we'll lose by having a faster connection to Netflix.
Failure to "Preserve the internet standard", which is true, but good. Again, the standard is all data is treated equally. But we don't want that. If your video is given the exact same priority as a twitter post, get ready for the "buffering" message to be on your screen constantly.
Last, there is the claim that companies would lose out to faster sites, because people have less tolerance for slower sites, once they are uses to faster ones. By that logic, we should make everything run at the slowest possible speed.
All of those arguments are garbage. However that brings us to the last one, which is the primary cause of the debate.
Preventing pseudo-services: This is the "Mafia Protection Money" argument. The two most cited examples of this is Bittorent, and Netflix.
Now unfortunately, there is a grain of truth to the argument. ComCast created fake data streams over the same ports that Bit Torrent uses. These fake data streams, slowed down Bit Torrent download speeds over the network. Interestingly, nearly all networks were doing this, not just ComCast, but of course the bigger the company, the more you draw flack.
This of course brought out massive heat on Comcast, and they settled out of court.
Comcast Settles BitTorrent Throttling Lawsuit Consumerist
Now the key for me is, there was no need of regulation. No laws were required. The existing system functioned fine, and the problem was resolved.
In the case of Netflix though, the argument falls apart. There is no evidence that Comcast or Verizon, or any other ISP was throttling Netflix.
Netflix slow on Verizon or Comcast A VPN might speed up that video Ars Technica
When an ISP throttles, or creates fake traffic, to slow down data streams, it's easily detectible. After all, everyone that is on the network, can see the network traffic. In this case, no one has been able to show that network traffic was slowed. As with the Bit Torrent case, it was easily detectible.
There is no evidence whatsoever, that suggest that Comcast is throttling Netflix, and certainly Netflix has never implied anything of the sort. Which if it was going on, and Netflix knew about it, they would file suit just like Bit Torrent did.
The problem with Netflix, is that streaming high quality video requires tons of bandwidth. Massive amounts of bandwidth.
Netflix Remains King of Bandwidth Usage While YouTube Declines Variety
In the US market, Netflix right now, consumes 1/3rd of all network traffic during prime time hours. 34%, is all just one single company.
This is hard to grasp for some... add up all the Twitter, all the web sites, all the porn, all the Facebook, all the video games, all the banking sites, all the corporations, all the News sites, all the Youtube, Flickr, Pentrist, everything, including illegally downloaded music, and videos, including the afore mentioned Bit Torrent.... all of it, all combined, is just 2/3rd of the internet traffic, and 1/3rd, is one single company, Netflix.
Watching one movie, is 1 Gigabyte of data per hour. An HD movie, is 3 Gigabytes of data an hour. You see the issue?
Tell me, if you buy a movie theater ticket, do you get to take up 1/3rd of all the seats? If you buy a ticket on a plane, do you get 1/3rd of all the seats?
If a company moved in, next to where you live, and increased traffic on your roads by 1/3rd, requiring you to pay for the addition of lanes on your roads, would you want to pay for it yourself, or would you want that company to?
Why should Comcast, be required to pay for Netflix using 1/3rd of their networks bandwidth? Why shouldn't Netflix pay for the bandwidth they are using?
This isn't a "Mafia Protection Money" case. Comcast was not holding Netflix data for ransom. There was a real hardware bottleneck created by one company using up 1/3rd of all the bandwidth on the networks.
Why Verizon won t solve its Netflix problem as soon as Comcast Ars Technica
As proof of that, notice the example of the Netflix deal with Verizon, verse the deal with Comcast. When Comcast signed the deal with Netflix, the download speeds drastically increased. When Verizon signed on, they did not.
Why? Because Comcast and Netflix, knew they would sign a deal at some point, and their people on both sides, had been working for months, setting up new hardware, new network bandwidth, specifically for this deal. Verizon and Netflix, had not.
Thus, when Comcast and Netflix, signed up, they turned on the hardware, and speeds increased. When Verizon and Netflix signed up, there was no hardware in place to turn on, and thus speeds have not increased as dramatically.
Of course, if the Net Neutrality advocates had there way, there would have been no deal, and no solution to the slow downs.
The thing that drive me crazy the most, is that the left-wing portrays this as "Companies verse the Public". It's all of us little people against the big mega corps!
But in reality, as it has been nearly every single time in the past... it's the big companies, rounding up the sheep to make themselves wealthy.
NFLX Annual Income Statement - Netflix Inc. Annual Financials
Netflix raked in $4.4 BILLION dollars last year.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings 8217 Salary To Get 50 Bump To 3M In 2014 TechCrunch
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix made, a tiny $3 Million in salary last year.
And you think you are fighting against the big corporations? You are fight in favor of a multi-billion dollar company, not having to pay for their own internet usage. What, does Hastings not have enough super yachts for your taste?
It is hilarious to me, to see people screaming about the mega corporations and their super rich CEOs who don't pay for what they have, and then the moment a super rich CEO of a mega corporation that complains he shouldn't have to pay for something, those very same people come out of their holes in the ground to support the rich man's cause.
And in conclusion, as I said at the start, regulations benefit the large corporations. They always do.
Regulation by it's nature, benefits the big corporations. If you have two car companies, General ChryFord Company, and Darren's Auto Company, and you levy a ton of expensive regulations on the auto companies.... which company, the Mega Billions General ChryFord Company, or the small Independent Darren's Auto Company.... Which of those two is going to have the money to meet those regulations? Obviously the large Mega Billions Corp, is going to have the money to meet those regulations. Darren goes out of business, or sells out to another company.
In the 1950 to 1960, there were dozens of independent car companies. By the 1980s, after all the regulations of the 1970s kicked in, there were 3.
Even when you look at the CAFE standards that Obama signed into law. Who was present at the signing? All the CEOs of the Mega companies!
When R-12 was banned... why did DuPont lobby to ban their own product? The patent had expired on R-12. Dozens of companies were producing R-12. The price for a can of R-12 was under $9. They banned R-12, and regulations pushed R-134a... which strangely, had a bran new shiny patent to Dupont, and the price of a can went to $20 (and higher at times).
Or even Broadcast TV. The FCC created 48 'white spaces', in the spectrum, set aside exclusively for Broadcast TV. From the 1940s to 1990s, how many channels were there? Three. In fact the UPN network, that popped up in the 90s, was originally supposed to start in the 1950s. But regulations by the FCC, forced the Network out of business, protecting the tri-opoly of NBC, CBS, and ABC.
It's just amazing that these people scream about the companies shutting out business, and monopolizing the market... while at the same time, supporting the very policies and regulations that help them do it.
Let's get back to a Free-market. Let the companies offer what products and services they can, in an open, non-regulated market. It works almost every single time it's tried.
