Net neutrality discussion

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CanHasPants wrote:

To that end, I ask: is information fundamental to the pursuit of life and liberty, and if so, is there a clear path for those that seek it to be able to obtain it?

I'd say access to accurate information is fundamental to making good decisions in general, especially in a democracy where all are part of some very important decisions. However, even then, getting reliable information takes human effort; therefore, while one might have a right to the pursuit of truth, one cannot have a right to truth itself. Information isn't free; someone pays.

Usually, the person who pays is the learner. Most information, both true and false, is propaganda — that is, information spread to somehow benefit those spreading it. For the most part, information encountered in the wild is of two kinds: truths that sell something, and lies that sell something. Thankfully, of these two the former has the advantage.

You might think this idea, that the vast majority of information is essentially advertising, is anti-capitalist. I see it in exactly the opposite way: wherever possible, we want businesses to be viable to capitalize on any opportunity to spread the truth, which will beat false advertising upon closer inspection. The great fear is not a wide array of contradictory narratives and alternative facts, but a monopoly of lifestyle that creates a single unquestioned monolith of unified belief. Competition in terms of production naturally leads to competition in terms of ideas, and vice versa.

So overall, I think this idea of guaranteeing access to a particular set of voices, albeit incredibly diverse, is not just unnecessary but dangerous. We don't benefit by getting everyone on the same page by officializing any source of information, nor by expecting everyone to use certain information systems. What we need instead is a tolerance for ideological diversity that matches our commitment to occupational diversity. Forcing everyone to read a particular text or watch a particular video, or even just ensuring everyone had ready access to a copy, fosters indoctrination, not critical thinking.

Net Neutrality act (FCC 15 24) was put forth within a 400 page document. It's full of legalese, political manipulation, and government bloat. It's dead now, Amen.

With that said, I support the concept of "Net Neutrality" on its own. The exchange of information over the Internet should not be regulated, manipulated, blocked, or throttled by Internet Service Providers and Network companies. However, I also recognize that there is a small fraction of Internet users who take an inordinately larger lion's share of Internet bandwidth. Specifically, those abusing torrents. No, I'm not talking about torrent users, I'm talking about the zombie-net, malware, and media pirating practices, etc. Because while the subject of pirating and malware is illegal, moving that content along the pipes is not (ie: an encrypted chunk of data that only the sender and receiver can decipher), and the Net Neutrality act doesn't protect service providers from identifying and addressing that traffic.

In the current scope of Net Neutrality, the FCC tied the hands of service providers, ultimately preventing them from addressing, blocking, or throttling abusive torrents. Those torrents drove up prices for regular users. Now that it's dead, the service providers will begin targeting those torrents. This will greatly free up a lot of bandwidth for regular use of the Internet including all of the things we do everyday. Look at it from a service provider's perspective: "now I can deal with those torrent whales so that I don't have to hike up my subscription prices to keep providing service to the other 99% of my customers".

So yes, I'm glad it's dead. But no, I'd like to see a better version of Net Neutrality be put in its place to protect regular users while allowing providers to address the abusers. I don't know what the solution to that would be, but we need a replacement bill that works for everyone this time.

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cipher_nemo wrote:

So yes, I'm glad it's dead.

You know who else is dead? A bunch of the people who were going around writing anti-neutrality rants in comment sections of news websites, and they were dead when the comments were made. Would love to know who was responsible for that.

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MonstaMunch wrote:

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cipher_nemo wrote:

So yes, I'm glad it's dead.

You know who else is dead? A bunch of the people who were going around writing anti-neutrality rants in comment sections of news websites, and they were dead when the comments were made. Would love to know who was responsible for that.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/dead-people-among-millions-impersonated-in-fake-net-neutrality-comments/

More have been discovered since that article was published. I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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MonstaMunch wrote:

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cipher_nemo wrote:

So yes, I'm glad it's dead.

You know who else is dead? A bunch of the people who were going around writing anti-neutrality rants in comment sections of news websites, and they were dead when the comments were made. Would love to know who was responsible for that.

Spoiler

The "person" you are talking to

Spoiler

is

Spoiler

Hahaha, indeed, dead as a skeleton. :-)

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Know who really wanted to get rid of it?

Apples and...

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People who want to control the media.

Oranges

another random thought:
VPN's. don't they scramble the data before the ISP* receives it? Does the packet still contain something like "this is a packet to/from secretsite.com, it's video" and only the video (or image, text, etc) data itself gets scrambled, but not some header data?

if something isn't telling that the packet is part of a video, wouldn't that bypass their ability to detect videos and thus requiring a different package (if the ISP goes that route).

*I know there's ways they can still see the info if really needed, but lets say it's not important to them