Break The Internet Tomorrow
Tomorrow, I am going to take AVC offline to show the FCC what the Internet will look like if they repeal the Net Neutrality rules.
It is part of a collective action called Break The Internet.
If you want to join me in this protest, you can get what you need here.
Hopefully, the Verizon shill who runs the FCC will get the message.
Comments (Archived):
A lot of people are going to feel really silly when the FCC moves forward with their plans and the internet functions as it normally does.
It *might* for a while. Probably will. But I don’t think “the market” will fix this if it *does* break because there isn’t enough competition.
This is a distinct possibility.I am not sure that the mobile phone marker is suffering from tiered data service……yet.
I kind of like the idea of toll free mobile data. If Amazon or Google put out a device with free video on their sites, who cares?
i will never feel silly for standing up for what i believe in
Nor should you, but I think the doom and gloom predictions coming from many are a bit over the top. There are a lot of mechanisms in place besides regulations that get actors to behave.There is a lot the carriers could do today, with existing regulations, to mediate their issues. For example they could move to strictly metered plans. Pay by the gig. And then they could put a little $ counter in the corner that ticked up as you watched a Stranger Things episode. Or they could just give a detailed bill showing you which websites cost you more $.
.Before the advent of “net neutrality” at the hands of former lobbyist Tom Wheeler, the Internet prospered.Why did we change it? Why did we stuff it under Title II?We are going back to the regulatory scheme whereunder the Internet prospered.Trust the market.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
That’s kind of how I look at it. Might some companies do messed up things? Sure, but they can do them now. They would just need to use price as a lever instead of speed.Either way there is room for reasonable arguments on either side. Claiming the internet is going to break or that all of the websites we love are going to be axed just sounds silly.
.It is the same hyperbolic alarmism which brought us Y2K and Krugman’s prediction that electing Pres Trump would “break the markets.”It is just wishful thinking.Trust the market, competition, the crowd. Trust capitalism.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
more needs to be done to make it a market. I don’t think the answer is more regulation on the telco/internet side.
I see a lot of comments on Y2K and krugman’s on this page. They are no ways related to Net Neutrality. All the comments looks more like a trolling to be honest.
.They are what are called “analogies.” Analogies allow a writer/commentator to explain or clarify two seemingly different things by comparing them.On the other hand, they could also be “trollings.”Whenever anyone doesn’t agree with you, they are, absolutely, trolling.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Ok. I think you have so much time at your disposal. I couldnt never compete with you on that. One last observation. Making same analogy again and again is perfectly fine. But people who point out means they dont agree with you. Fine!
alarmism which brought us Y2KAnd so much money was made off of that Y2K.
Y2K was an intelligence community lead operation to distract the global masses. Christ was a revolutionary, and that message was a scary prospect for many western nation state elites as the 2000th anniversary of his birth rapidly approached. they needed to neutralise its potential to influence thinking and behaviour with an alternative narrative.In the UK the government created the Millennium Dome distraction. there was not a single reference to the significance of ‘2000’ in the governmental media during the contrived Dome event on the evening of the 31st December 1999. in plain sight we witnessed state propaganda, and few people could see it for what it was. it’s quite disturbing how well the people have been programmed by the ‘govamedia’.
So Tom Wheeler coined the term “net neutrality?”Before you spout off on a subject you know very little about go back and study the history of networks and network competition (or lack thereof) and the importance of universal service in a democratic society.
.Read more carefully, Mike. Didn’t say Tommy coined the term NN. Not that it makes any difference.I think the Internet is working just fine.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
I knew precisely what you meant:Advent:definition: the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.synonyms: arrival, appearance, emergence, materialization, occurrence, dawn, birth, rise, development; approach, comingNN existed long before Mr. Wheeler; someone who has always stood up for the little guy (be it corporate or consumer). This is contrary to your aspersions and incorrect understanding of the man and term, its origins and how it has been applied.Note, I view NN as a contrivance and farce; much like TA96. So I’ve stayed out of this fracas; or at least repeated what I feel are the two most important issues: interconnect and settlements. But the stuff you’ve written here is just plain wrong.
.Thanks, Mike. Great stuff. Widen your interests.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
.Just for the record, Tom Wheeler is the guy who had two “secret” meetings at the White House.When he finally admitted that in fact he had gone to the WH twice, he said he had never spoken to them about Net Neutrality. Not once.The Chairman of the FCC goes to the WH in the midst of the NN debate. He doesn’t speak about NN?WTF do they talk about?The guy is a punk who jammed NN into the regulatory scheme as he exited.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Start with when and how it was coined and first implemented Mr. Know It All. Then follow it through several FCC chairs and 2 administrations and multiple court proceedings. Wheeler was handed the NN issue. Your commentary and even your responses suggest otherwise and that you know very little. Hint start back in the 1890s. Pause around 1913, 1934, 1984 and the disaster of 1996. Then you arrive at its coinage just 6 short years later. Once you appreciate all the cause and effect then let’s have a conversation about net neutrality and what it really means (or doesn’t) and its implications for the internet.
.Ahh, Mike, the Internet wasn’t invented until 1983 and, no, it wasn’t invented by Al Gore.Stop with this nonsense. Wheeler is the guy who stuck the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.Move on.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
The nonsense is what you write. It was a Republican FCC Chairman who implemented NN in response to his predecessor, another Republican FCC Chairman, who killed off equal access in 2004. Equal access, incidentally, is what gave the internet its commercial foundation. Killing off equal access led to a massive consolidation and remonopolization of the edge.Said Republican FCC Chairman who killed off equal access then proceeded directly to running the cable trade group earning some of the highest fees of anyone in DC. There’s the shill label. Maybe you should write about all that.Mr. Wheeler represented said lobby groups (cable and wireless) when they were upstarts against entrenched corporate behemoths. In fact, according to Plato, he was the ideal candidate for FCC Chairman decades later. Unlike the current leader of our country he actually divested ALL of his holdings in the industry, which were substantial. All told over 70 investments.
.Can you identify a single interest Pres Trump has in the Internet or affiliates? He owns a bit of GOOGL, AAPL, MSFT, GE — less than $500K of each.See, people are having a discussion — not agreeing, but having a discussion and then the small minded people have to try to get a dig in against Donald J Trump.I’ll tell you who owns the most bandwidth in America — Donald J Trump. For a certain slice of America, they cannot function without a big dose of “Trump bad” in their message.He owns real estate. The real estate between your and the liberals’ ears.So, what does he own which bears on this industry? The same stuff that you and I plus a billion 401Ks and IRAs own.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
When you are wrong you are wrong. I won’t start a discussion over conflicts of interest which you raised and I was making a point that it was wrong in the case of Mr. Wheeler. But for what it is worth, you are wrong there too. When do you just leave the battlefield gracefully? You don’t know the history. You don’t know the men involved (Pai or Wheeler; I do). As for America’s leader; facts speak for themselves.
.OK, so I’ll take that as your being unable to cite a single reason why your comment about Pres Trump is germane to the discussion. Typical.As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Funny. You jumped in to discuss “the people”, taking exception to the shill appellation instead of leaving it be! Your facts about the idea of NN are mostly wrong, so no ability to discuss cogently with you.
Well put.I just don’t get the issue here.You’re ant the state to regulate big businesses because you think big business will use its powers to exercise censorship.Except censorship is typically a government misdeed.The much more likely outcome is that the loss of net neutrality will spur competition, as it willl allow provides to focus on attributes their customers want.Top of my head list::- porn free- politics free- video only- text & photo only- all of it pleaseChoice is good.
If it does go through it will be really interesting to see if they take on the most natural target Netflix. Throttle that and you will have people up in arms. (I think they already do). Part of me says Verizon is not that stupid, part of me says they are that arrogant.
.I think the model is Fed Express. If you want your package delivered tom’w, there is a different fee than if you want it delivered in two weeks.This, in great measure, is already priced in with the overall Internet speed rate. I want and pay for 1gig service.Competition makes the cost differences less.Do you know any industry in which better service does not cost more?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
You keep bringing up your 1gig service. First, you can’t get that on the poor side of town. Yes, it is expensive to be poor, but that’s life.Yes I pay more for a faster speed. No issue. None. You want to charge different for 1Mbs, 10Mbs, 100Mbs, 1 Gig? No issue.Sure my wife’s Denali XL uses a shit ton more gas than a Prius.BUT……I don’t want to pay more per gallon for that gas when I fill up based on the fact that the gas station knows I need a ton more because I have made the choice to have that vehicle.That is what we are talking about here. Not about what the price of gas is or how much it costs per gallon.But letting somebody charge more based on the fact you need it. And actually what they are really doing is saying hey GMC, if you don’t pay me a tithe, I am going to make that gas really slow when you are filling up that 36 gallon tank, your customers are going to hate that.
BUT……I don’t want to pay more per gallon for that gas when I fill up based on the fact that the gas station knows I need a ton more because I have made the choice to have that vehicle.The insurance company will charge you more based on the type of car you drive and not solely based on the cost to repair that car. Plus they will ding you depending on age of driver even if that driver has not been in any accidents. The list of legacy cases where business make a buck is endless.In the case of large SUV’s that women drive I think the reason for that is (and I know you actually use yours to haul things from the lumber yard) typically because they are schlepping kids around to after school events (soccer games and what not). That is for sure not essential. No way and not even close. Never had that when I was growing up didn’t exist. Everyone thinks it is the key to raising good kids but honestly it’s more of an artifact of lemming suburban mom and dad behavior where they get to socialize and enjoy watching their special kids participate in a game. I have a SUV also btw. Not that big but say mid sized.Oh almost forgot my point. You say:But letting somebody charge more based on the fact you need it. ‘. So I would argue that nobody needs Netflix or actually many things they get over the internet. Do they? Why is Netflix any different than HBO (which you do pay for)? And do you (or I) really ‘need’ an SUV? Is it essential to your life that you do gardening and haul your own things with the SUV? Electricity is ‘essential’. Water is ‘essential’. Is fast internet for entertainment ‘essential’?
.One can shop for insurance and get a quote from USAA. Every time I shop around, they are the cheapest.They have the best imaginable service.Trust competition.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
It is a status symbol. Plain and simple. My 2001 beater pickup truck is just that another symbol of who I am.
.You make my point.Lust for the revenue — which we call competition in capitalism — decides how the resources are allocated.The market picks the winners and losers, not the government.When you go to fill up your hog or your Prius, you can shop around. I get the lowest gas price in Austin every day via a website called Daily Drive. That is competition.[Since the hurricanes, BTW gas went from $1.75/gal to $2.20/gal and is now back to $1.94/gal).]The reason I get access to seven different 1gig servers is because of the lust for revenue — competition.Trust the marketplace. Trust competition. Trust the crowd. Trust capitalism.I love my country. I served my country. I do not trust my government to do anything right.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
It actually makes a lot of sense for gas stations to price tier based on gas mileage of car.
Nice model for analogies.As a Fedex customer I can pay for express delivery or receive express delivery as a bonus from the supplier, but, can Fedex give a default priority to packages coming from store A because they have a special contract with store A?My main problem with net neutrality is that I think that lawyers’ interpretation of it is not exactly the engineer’s interpretation of it that is again not exactly the citizen’s interpretation of it. There is confusion.For me, at the lowest level net neutrality is: deliver the packets without discriminating by the content of the packets or by its source or destination.This definition provides a leveled field where fair competition can take place. Fair competition is a good thing.
.They do that in their pickup and delivery policies. If you are Amazon, today, they come to your warehouse and pick up all of your packages.Others may have to drop them off.There is no confusion about net neutrality which net neutrality did not create itself.Fair competition does not mandate identical treatment. If I want to pay for faster delivery, I can. If you want to save a bit of $$$ and wait for delivery because you are going fishing for a week, you can.Nobody has been able to identify an EXISTING problem which NN is fixing. Everything is like Y2K — theoretical, like a ghost.Governments are not good at picking winners. The market is.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
I love free markets. But free markets can get corrupted by foul players. An important quality of the freedom in free markets is to be or aim to be distortion free in my opinion. Preserving this quality of systems should be the purpose of regulations.Regulations that promote the freedom of flows in the system are good, equal access is good, leveled playing fields are good, more so if we consider that the network is open and public.I don’t mind a client obtaining privileged access or prime service, what I do mind is a provider or producer introducing a distortion in the distribution system with the intention of crushing the competition.
Well said. This is what the original proposed rules by then-chair Tom Wheeler in early 2014 would have done: Prohibit those sorts of intentional distortions (I’d call them abuses) and punish bad actors when they are found to have committed them. This is the FTC’s approach (and that of many state agencies) in many areas of business regulation that prohibit unfair, anti-competitive or anti-consumer practices.Wheeler later yielded to WH pressure to reclassify Internet under Title II, which many commentators at the time thought was a mistake. Confusion has reigned ever since as (1) the imperfect term “net neutrality” has stuck, and (2) people now equate it with a specific, restrictive mechanism (Title II) — leading to today’s hysteria where many well-intentioned people think repealing Title II classification is tantamount to repealing or abolishing NN.
.There will always be scoundrels. Witness the birth of Bitcoin in the midst of the Silk Road. It is still being used for criminal purposes.Competition is, often, a winner take all fight. In the course of that fight, there are benefits to the consumer.While Amazon and Walmart crush their competition the consumer benefits.The question is is there a level of competition which should not be exceeded?The true free market capitalist says, “No. Play on until death of one of y’all.”JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
This is a key observation. A breakthrough for me in studying the issue was recognizing the differences and similarities between importance and urgency. Watching a streaming HD movie or on a Skype call, the data is relatively unimportant but urgent (to avoid interruptions). On a nightly backup to cloud storage, data integrity is paramount but timing is far from urgent. Telemedicine involving heart surgery is an example of data transmission that is both urgent and important.It’s naive for consumers to expect consistent performance across all applications and services given a certain “width pipe.” Where is the content coming from? It’s a network of networks. I pay AT&T for a certain grade service, and Netflix for streaming movies. Neither one is in a position to guarantee the other’s performance. Quality of service is the Holy Grail here—which varies by application, not raw bandwidth. Assuming AT&T doesn’t drop the ball such that my connection is lousy across the board, Netflix is responsible for delivering the service I’m paying for. It does this in practice by paying transit providers or CDNs to “push” the content closer to me (even to servers collocated within AT&T data centers in my area).
There is history here, and the most important piece lost on those who haven’t dug in is that there are more than two parties involved (e.g., Netflix and your ISP). The transit, peering, collocation & caching issues related to stuffing an enormous amount of data into that pipe into your home can involve several other players. Streaming video guru Dan Rayburn did an excellent series about this in 2014; highly recommended.https://www.google.com/url?…
Actually Netflix already has the sweetest interconnection deals; probably now below 20 cents per mbs (megabit second). Last time I looked in 2013 they were $0.35-$0.40. This compares with other major players around 50 cents and what the little guy (small carriers and large enterprises) would pay of $1. At the margin this is a huge differential.No problem you say? Well yes, because in reality Netflix has the volumes to move interconnection from NYC and Boston to say New Haven and Hartford and Springfield, and from there into the more rural areas where urban folks bring their video demand on weekends. So in a world of better competition, Netflix is the video engine that could pull a freight train of competition farther out to the edge instead of bottlenecking it in 30 or so major urban areas with the ISPs.This gets to be an even more important issue when we talk about video consumption over mobile networks.This is well known network economics; what I call the trade off between layers 1 to 3 over volumes and distance. As early as 1913 the monopoly made sure interconnection zones were at least 50 miles or just beyond the range of radio to stifle long distance (and hence local) competition.
Can you leave the comment section up? We really would appreciate it. K. Thanks. Bai.
Chuckle. Funny.
for a fee. you may need to buy a Zetacoin first.
I also wonder for how much longer I will want to make comment using Disqus now that it belongs to a web conglomerate. the end is nigh?
What’s the issue?
autonomy. self sovereign custody. you know, the usual decentralisation promise that swirls all around, but has yet to be kept by most crypto projects. we’re in that bridging phase between the past and the future.
I was thinking the same when Fred announced the deal. On the other hand, I think it is a bit naive to think today that we are not feeding someone’s primitive AI already, when we express our ideas in public.Suddenly we are just data.
.Yes, but you Lawrence are delicious, tasty, powerful data.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Very gourmet of you. Thanks Jeff.To be or not to be edible. That is the question. 🙂
All I ask is that you don’t call us “just” Data. He has feelings, you know. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Sorry.. 🙂 You are right, I forgot about his “emotion chip”. I recall that he wept and laughed and even fell in love in the episodes following the chip activation.
Yup, exactly.
Is this only affects USA or the rest world as well? If only affects USA, is this means than everyone have to start to do Internet outside from USA?
I’m not breaking anything tomorrow. I’m showing 50 13-14 year olds how to make AI apps (vision recognition and speech recognition) at Science Museum London. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
they might be. the breaking point is the learning point.
Haha. Kids love to learn. I’ll break them in gently to the fact that WE control the AI, not vice versa.We’re the ones who code it, not vice versa.
have you read Albert Wenger’s post today?
I’ve commented. Albert’s thinking is different from mine and what other leading AI researchers are looking into.
‘Web War’ – a modern proxy for centuries of gross social and economic inequality that seem to be getting ever more gross. like I’ve said before, ‘Net Neutrality’ just does not work for me as a rallying cry. it has no psychological impact. it doesn’t convey the significance to interweb users of the FCC’s policy and its implications for the future.
At the risk of asking a taboo question,are there any long-term consumer arguments in FAVOR of repealing Net Neutrality? *asking for a friend*
Threre are a lot actually.Think of any broad consumer service that has tiers. Like, um, medicine.
.Let’s be clear here. There is nothing “neutral” about net neutrality.Net neutrality is stuffing the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 which makes it the equivalent of a telecom utility, an electric utility.Who benefits when industries are regulated harshly? The big companies because they can absorb the cost of regulation.Look at your utility bill and tell me what you see? Fees.Who suffers when industries are regulated harshly? Little, innovative companies who the big companies use regulation to suffocate in the cradle.You can either trust competition and the crowd; or, you can be regulated like a utility.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
.OK, so Ajit Pai is a “Verizon shill?”The guy worked for Verizon in its M&A/regulatory shop for two years, less than 10% of his adult life. He was a low level lawyer which is slightly more elevated than a lab rat.As you may know, lawyers proliferate because there are some things a lab rat will not do.He is the American immigrant success story writ large. The son of two immigrant doctors from India, he went to Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School where he was the Editor of the Chicago Law Review. His career is highlighted with numerous honors including being named a Marshall Memorial Fellow.Full disclosure, as a VMI grad (where Geo Catlett Marshall, the guy who ran WWII for the USA graduated), the MM Fellowships are a big, big, big thing.He is really a gov’t attorney:1. clerked for a Federal Ct Judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana (creole v cajun food);2.worked as a DOJ Antitrust Division lawyer;3. worked as Dep Chief Counsel to the Senate Judicial Committee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts;4. worked at DOJ as Senior Counsel in the Office of Legal policy;5. worked again for the Senate as Chief Counsel to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights;6. worked at the FCC Office of General Counsel as Deputy General Counsel;7. worked in private practice for Jenner & Block where he was made a partner.None of these jobs were really tech/Internet-centric. The FCC job was as a lawyer reviewing mergers in the telecom space where he supervised a platoon of lawyers.In 2012, President Obama nominated him for appointment to the FCC and he was confirmed by the Senate unanimously (remember he’d worked over there).The FCC rules require that appointments cannot be more than three from a single political party. The others can be anything: Republicans, Independent, green, unaffiliated.Pai was an “other” though Mitch McConnell, who knew him personally, got him to register as a Republican.His term was up in June of 2016, which is important because the Obama admin could have replaced him if he were a pain in the ass. In fact, they did nothing.Pres Trump appointed him to a second term and designated him as the chairman of the FCC. He was, again, confirmed by the Senate.When he was first appointed by Pres Obama, he laid out three priorities:1. “The FCC should be as nimble as the industry it oversees.”2. “The FCC should prioritize the removal of regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment;” and,3. “The FCC should accelerate its efforts to allocate additional spectrum for mobile broadband.”His predecessor at Chair of the FCC was a chap named Tom Wheeler, a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable television and wireless industries. He spent a career in the industries the FCC is supposed to be regulating. He had more than 40 years of experience running “trade groups” hence the natural connection to lobbying.Ajit Pai is not a Verizon shill.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Normally I agree with less regulation. Unless you have industries that require so much capital and use of right of ways that they naturally are dominated by only a few players. Not that little players can’t cherry pick like you have on your side of Austin.Look at that video. I shows an incredible amount of arrogance and bad judgement at the very, very least. Joking with a Verizon exec that you are a shill?You know as well as I do as a leader there are jokes that are off limits and this isn’t some comment made at a bar, this is a rehearsed skit in front of tons of people.Can you imagine if I joked “Yea, I’m going to sell passwords to the highest bidder”. That was painful to type and I want to make doubly clear I am making an analogy not saying it.You just don’t say that shit.Tom Wheeler was and is hack, that has nothing to do with Ajit.
.Shall we take the measure of a man by the humor he projects? Attempts? Stupid jokes?Policy is different than stupid jokes.This is one of the reasons I liked Pres Trump not going to the WH Correspondents Ball.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
So let’s say you are with a woman and she is heavy. (Or if a woman is with a man who is short, bald or both).You don’t joke about that the other party is ‘fat, short, or bald’. But you might joke about something that you believe is far from the truth.So an example might be how I verbally abuse my stepkids (with mom’s approval since she has seen that I am right so many times and I can say that arrogantly). When they are lazy I will say something like ‘you are going to end up in community college’. Often I might add ‘loser’ for good measure. They then reply that they are not going there they are going to a good college the best. (And one got a 1330/1600 on SAT’s in 8th grade first try w/o studying at all and is top one in school at math). My point is I can joke because it’s clear I am joking. Like the family roast perhaps. Now if my inlaws heard me say this they would be aghast. I think they did and they said something to my wife who told them to stfu. On the other hand I would not comment to the stepkids or my kids anything that was even close to the truth. Important concept. Like I would never make any jokes or comments to my stepkids about their dad (who is a failed lawyer) lives with his parents ever since he got divorced (9 years ago).
What if you got up in front of a room when you where at Littlefield and said:”Yeah we inject paint in certain balls and only give the tickets with numbers whose balls were not weighted to our pals?””Ha, ha, just a bad joke, a stupid joke, didn’t really mean it”If the BOD didn’t fire you on the spot that is negligent.And I have no issue with Trump not going to a ball.
As clear as you can (and since you do not shy from stating your mind as others often do) can you tell us why you think Fred (and many other tech people) are so against this evil and are fighting it tooth and nail to the point where they are throwing in the kitchen sink in the way that they are?Honestly I think saying what Fred says about Ajit lessens any point that he might have that is valid. The reason is I don’t know under what universe a guy in that position would really care about who he worked for in the past or what their interests are. I just don’t get that.The examples I saw on the nightly news last night were clearly ridiculous. They actually had graphics displaying which stated that you couldn’t even get to a website at all. That is so absurd in the extreme it’s scary that the news producers (must have been the B weekend team of 20 year old; sorry) would even go with that. It’s the news equivalent of ‘do you want his hand on the button’ as if he carries around a button like a garage door opener.
.Can you explain why liberals worship at the foot of Paul Krugman who said the markets would crash if DJT were elected?The guy is a Nobel Laureate.I predicted that the stock market would hit 24,000 in predictions I made in January 2017. [I won a meaningful amount of money on that bet. There are still a half dozen people who have not yet paid.]http://themusingsofthebigre…I was right.Fred/liberals, et al, have a tendency to wrap themselves in their liberal shibboleths even in matters of business.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Interesting Krugman’s house in Princeton (I have removed the address) if you dig in he bought it from a private party for $794,000 but then there is another transaction for $3,750,000 where the grantor is Princeton University. I’ve looked at thousands of these property records and have never seen that. The tax he pays is in line with a 1.6m dollar house in the state that he lives in (not a 3m house which by the Princeton trans it should be). That’s right $35k in property taxes. The state is out of control. This is all public info btw.No question Krugman checks literally every single one of the halo boxes I don’t think there are any that are missing. Universities, job, title, NYT it’s an endless list. Would like to see a TV show where guys like that do a ‘dad swap’ with the opposite to see what it’s like to be a normal everyday person… https://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
.I bet that Princeton transaction is a low/no interest loan as part of his comp. The University of Texas Law School got exposed for doing something very similar a few years ago. Nothing illegal.I listened to him speak in a very small group at a LBJ Foundation function. He is an arrogant little shit, but he gave a very interesting talk.He reminded me of an airedale puppy, the way he leaned forward and spoke. I would go see him speak in a similar forum again.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
could also be something like an endowment. Just a wild-ass guess
The guy is a Nobel Laureate. How could that be?Well, each year the Nobel committee (maybe a special committee for the economics prize) picks a winner. Maybe they pick the best candidate they can.Likely generally the committee wants to honor work that makes economics a better science. As is common in honoring science, they may tend to prefer mathematical economics.So, maybe some decades ago Krugman did some piece of economics research, maybe some math, and then the committee concluded that his work was the best they had to pick from.I’m focusing on math to get the guy the benefit of the doubt since the rest is usually, well, social science?Well, history shows clearly enough that some surprisingly weak work in math can get honors from the Nobel committee!Actually, there’s been a list athttp://nobelprize.org/econo…Some of the people who won for work in math include (just from my rough memory as I type this)Eugene F. FamaRobert C. MertonMyron S. ScholesJohn F. Nash Jr.Harry M. MarkowitzMerton H. MillerWilliam F. SharpeRobert M. SolowGerard DebreuLeonid Vitaliyevich KantorovichWassily LeontiefKenneth J. ArrowPaul A. SamuelsonLeonid HurwiczLet’s see: On this list Arrow and Hurwicz both won. Well at one time they, with a guy Uzawa, published a paper on optimization. At one point, they stated a problem but didn’t solve it. Later I published a paper on optimization which, I later discovered, also solved the problem in their paper.I did the work for my paper just as a little two week project in grad school.Lesson: It doesn’t take too much to best some of these guys in applied math.Well, maybe Krugman did some such work.Then, from some of his NYT columns it looks to me like he has bought into wack-o politics.Ah, that’s an advantage of work in math: A guy can be wack-o, but, if his definitions, theorems, and proofs are all solid, and that is usually relatively easy to check, then you know at least there he was correct!To be able to get sometimes non-obvious and valuable information and fairly easily know that it’s correct is one of the advantages of the methodology of math.I’ve seen some cases of wack-o. Some of those cases were really destructive. I don’t like things that are wack-o. I’ve had to learn the hard way, “paid full tuition,” that there is a shockingly large amount of serious wack-o going around, and a lot of it is not easy to see at first.See too much wack-o and can want to see more of solid math.
I’m not JLM, but will just say it: Clash of titans, popular vs. unpopular among this crowd—with one side enlisting a cadre of prestigious, influential opinion leaders. They tend to be true believers, which makes their authentic passion contagious.In this corner: Content. Google (YouTube), NFLX, Amazon, Hulu, Hollywood studios & networks, news mediaIn the other corner: Distribution. Unpopular (telcos, cable co’s), boring, unsexy or obscure B2B intermediaries like CDNs and transit providers. But really only the ISPs, because nobody cares about or wants to regulate the Cogents or Level 3s of the world like they do the Comcasts & Verizons.Google & Netflix are the big ones. One is quiet and ubiquitous; the other smaller but vocal & popular. This really deserves a flowchart.NFLX succeeded in misleadingly claiming “victim” status, winning public sympathy as it mushroomed to gobble 1/3 all of US Internet bandwidth. (Streaming HD video is so voracious that it pretty much dwarfs everything else. Hence GoogTube’s similarly keen interest.) Google is quieter but far more influential: It came to be the dominant force influencing tech policy in the Obama WH, with the largest lobbying presence of any tech company in DC. That’s no secret, but here’s the kicker: It also underwrites virtually every think tank, institute or university center in the industry with serious money—because it can. (Gorillas don’t come much bigger than $700bn market cap.)Today’s freakout is a rerun of the 2014 episode in which then-chair Wheeler, after proposing a set of sensible rules (May 2014 NPRM), which *would have* protected consumers against abuses, did an about-face under WH pressure and came to declare that only Title II could “save” the Internet (which was doing just fine). This made it a partisan issue, with Dems lining up behind O, academics and the ACLU/EFF complex transmuting it into a life-or-death civil liberties struggle, and so on. SV is overwhelmingly Democratic, so it quickly became an “everyone knows” narrative in the confirmation-bias echo chamber in this hyper-partisan era. Now that the WH has flipped and the FCC is 3-2 in the other direction, repealing the change also become yet another thing to oppose under monumentally unpopular Trump. Many are foolishly demonizing Pai as a kind of Trump surrogate — to the point of doxxing, making death threats about him and his children — even though he was first appointed by Obama in 2012 and seems to be the typical relatively pro-business wonky Republican, not an outlier by any means. There will be court challenges regardless, as there have been for decades, unless and until Congress gives clear guidance. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
.Do y’all remember when the entire American utility grid shut down on the toes of Y2K? Remember when the calendar changed and nobody anticipated “2000”?Me neither.This is such a non-event as to be less than meaningless.It is right up there with Paul Krugman’s prediction that the election of Donald J Trump would crash the stock markets.The choice here is to follow the hijacking of the Internet by the former FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, which plopped it down under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This sneak attack, passed along party lines on the FCC by a 3-2 vote, put the future of the Internet into the loving arms of those who regulate electric utilities.This is what is called “net neutrality.” This name is very misleading.Stop: Look at your utility bill and see how many freaking fees are attached to it. This is what happens to industries regulated under Title II. The gov’t taxes the crap out of them.Who wins in highly regulated utility businesses? BIG COMPANIES who then stifle innovation.Wheeler’s stated purpose — which came from a speech given by Pres Obama — was to ensure there was “no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization.”On the surface, those seem to be worthy aims, until one considers they are really limitations on competition.With a bit of competition in good old Austin By God Texas (where I am blessed to reside), I have seven alternatives to provide 1gig internet service at increasingly lowering rates. [Yes, I know ATX is “special.” It’s going to be 75F here today and I am going to meet someone for BBQ.]I pay less for 1gig service today than I paid for 100k service ten years ago. [It is bundled with cable, phone, free car washes, limited oil changes, and a weekly deep tissue massage.]This is nothing. Well, other than a power grab, an attempt to stifle competition, and a run at creating a fee rich target environment.Trust competition. Trust the crowd. Let the games begin.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Faster Than Light TravelIt appears from your post that your neighborhood or at least your house has found at least six ways to circumvent what apparently for 99+% of US houses is a natural monopoly with its obvious monopolistic economic consequences.I’m not saying that such circumvention is impossible, but, as for claims of faster than light travel, I’m eager for more, hopefully full, details.I’m Really InterestedI’m really highly interested in the Internet, its present, yes, but especially its future, for both me as a consumer and especially for the business I’m working to start, so am eager to learn.<factious> Uh, sometimes, uh, without really good information sources, I suspect, just suspect, that some of the information and claims readily available are sometimes a little less than fully detailed, correct, and objective, just suspect mind you! <factious>Your Seven Undeadly AlternativesSo, I’m highly interested in yourWith a bit of competition in good old Austin By God Texas (where I am blessed to reside), I have seven alternatives to provide 1gig internet service at increasingly lowering rates. [Yes, I know ATX is “special.” It’s going to be 75F here today and I am going to meet someone for BBQ.] How could that be the case?Just One ConnectionFor an example, the one I know best, at my house, I have just two physical connections for electronic signals — (1) the old copper twisted pair originally installed for voice telephone service and (2) coaxial cable originally installed for cable TV. That’s it, all there is.As we will see below from some data at Wikipedia, only one of these connections has any real chance of data rate over 50 million bits per second (Mpbs).Also of InterestAlso of interest, and likely relevant, I also have an electric power connection currently providing 100 A at 230 V.Maybe also of interest, once as a grad student I heard a lecture on the theories of regulation of natural monopolies. A conclusion of the lecture was that it’s important to have good regulation of natural monopolies.Seven Alternatives DetailsFor the first mile from your house to an Internet access provider, how many physical connections do you have?Okay, I would guess you have one coaxial cable originally installed for TV.And I would guess you have one copper twisted pair originally installed for voice telephone.For such copper twisted pairs, and for this discussion to get some information at the level of Wikipedia, athttps://en.wikipedia.org/wi…we see with asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), a special box at the customer’s end, (from other common sources) a lot of signal power, and some tricky signal processing (maybe with the fast Fourier transform) one can hope to get data rate in millions of bits per second (Mbit/s) and distances (km) to the service provider of24.0 Mbit/s at 0.3 km…1.5 Mbit/s at 5.2 kmSo, that’s a long way short of your “1gig internet service”.Sure, with optical fiber, data rates can be some hundreds of Gbps, but installing optical fiber to individual houses is expensive and likely involves lots of legal considerations.Has any company dug ditches in the streets and grounds to install optical fiber to your house? How many?Natural MonopolyIt certainly appears that for data rates over 50 Mbps only a tiny fraction of US houses have more than one physical connection.So, with just one physical connection, the company that owns that connection has a natural monopoly.So, business history is awash in examples of how a company can exploit a natural monopoly. A standard result is more profit for the company but less total service provided.So, commonly we regulate natural monopolies. The electric power connection I mentioned above is a leading example — my electric utility is highly and strongly regulated.Generally with a natural monopoly, without regulation, there will be essentially no competition.So, if our society wants lots of service, then regulation is needed.Network NeutralityFor consumer Internet access at 50 Mpbs and above, part of that needed regulation is called “network neutrality”.Since the monopoly is really over just the “last mile” to a consumer’s residence, maybe a better name would be last mile neutrality.Without regulation, the company that owns the last mile of the suitable physical connections can act like a monopolist.A Wireless AlternativeSo, sure, maybe there’s a way to use wireless electronic signals to circumvent the natural monopoly of the last mile. So, just outside of a window, have a box that sends/receives wireless signals to a box somewhere in the neighborhood, maybe on a pole.So, with six such boxes and poles, that would be six ways to circumvent the natural monopoly of the company that owns the last mile physical connection to your house.SummaryAs for faster than light travel, I’m eager for the details of the six ways you or your neighborhood have circumvented the natural monopoly.Maybe the last mile regulation really belongs in the FTC and not the FCC. Then maybe the FTC will do something about the regulation. Maybe Congress will get involved.The history of monopolies shows that our democracy ends those fairly quickly.Fred’s Comment<maybe factious> For Fred’s comment, well, Fred is in NYC; with the NYT as their leader, NYC strains to move to the right maybe as far as two inches from old Eastern European Bolshevik Communism; and when in NYC it can be important to behave as NYC people do.E.g., NYS and NYC people, especially Chucky “Tears” Schumer, just love to have “lotteries” to increase “diversity” of NYC by “chain migration” to bring in people from random places, just to pick one at random, Bangladesh, dream land of South Asia, right? So, the US needs more highly qualified green card holders such as Akayed (a.k.a., “little boom”) Ullah.Then as an early result, right along the local NYC media get lots and lots of exciting headlines. Apparently Chucky and NYC really like that. Maybe it takes away the boredom of life in an $80 million Upper East Side townhouse and no more 2008 or 2000 market crashes and no more really exciting days like 9/11.Apparently from 9/11 Chucky learned (A) 9/11 was REALLY exciting, (B) that day gave some strong hints on how to have more really exciting days like that, and (C) to have a Bolshevik revolution need some reliable revolutionaries, and if are short then need to import some, from some “chains” from some “random, diverse” seeds. See, Chucky learns fast!No worries, Chucky. Keep it up. There is no shortage of your random diversity — wide swaths from the eastern Mediterranean east all the way to the western Pacific — eager for another really exciting NYC day like 9/11. Gee, you could get some weeks of more TV camera time!But, that’s NYC. <maybe factious>
Hey buddy, the post was about net neutrality and now your slamming New Yorkers and its senators for being communists. I love how seemingly intelligent people can present an argument that is fairly cogent, and then end with slandering and self-serving political bullshit. So don’t come to New York, please, we don’t want you. We are doing just fine with our liberalism, diversity, culture and overall dynamism. Oh, there is also the fact that without New York’s contribution y’all would be fucked: https://files.taxfoundation…
I’m in NYS, 70 miles north of Wall Street. There’s a lot of good in NYC. There are also a lot of people with at least one foot in Eastern European politics of about 1920. There’s Chucky Schumer, and he’s so far left he should have circumnavigated the globe and returned from the right. Most of the stuff he says is just total liberal talking points, brain-dead, absurd. He’s a bright guy, but what he says is demented stupid. E.g., he’s for “diversity”, even random “lottery diversity” and the “Dreamers”. Of course, nearly no one for that can vote. No matter to him — the DNCe and GOPe have both been bought off to go along with that catechism. I want to see a cogent argument in favor of “diversity” — it looks to me like really bad stuff. We HAD a good immigration system. Now we have a train wreck. Chucky is the leading conductor of the train wreck. He WANTS losers in the country.
Umm, nyc lost most of its communists to old age…why do you think chassidim moved upstate? They moved onto land that used to be summer bungalow colonies for Bundists who wanted to escape nyc heat…Also, a LOT of the upper east side is Republican. They have huge gatherings for fundraising purposes in places like David Koch’s apartment…which is in 740 Park, the most expensive building on the east side…That’s before Staten island. Or the fact that Nassau County (nyc metro suburbs) used to be this country’s largest,wealthiest, and longest lasting Republican Machine, and still at times has huge Republican swings. (True Story, what caused the Republican Machine in Nassau County to break down was they adopted fiscal policies like the current Republican Congress while having finacial scandals along the white house, until S&p basically said that they were going to say that the county’s bonds were junk status…)
I have a Jewish friend who some years ago explained to me some of the details and history of NYC politics, etc. Clearly you know much more. I don’t know very much. But from my location 70 miles north of Wall Street, NYC looks like a lot of it is still Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, … town. I’ve never been any big buddy of Goldwater, Nixon, that talk show guy from Yale, the Bush family, McCain, The National Review crowd, the let the poor people starve in the streets stuff, but they and the NYC people both seem to deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise Trump, both of them like Obozo and Crooked Hildabeast more than Trump. Gotta be that each of those persons has some clique or tribe or interest group they are dependent on and loyal to and see Trump’s rationality toward MAGA as some loose cannon on the deck of an unstable ship in bad weather. The old cliques, etc. are addicted to political crack or heroin and don’t want to go cold turkey. They know it’s killing them and the US, but they don’t have another clique, etc. they want to join. But Trump has the voters and votes, right, in the fly-over states, and is winning. I have a current or recent long post on this at JLM’s site.
every time i read one of your comments i take great solace that less than 5% of AVC readers bother with the comments. but they all read my posts.
.You sound like a 8 year old, petulant girl, Freddie.Not everybody in the entire world agrees with anyone. When they do, that’s called an echo chamber. Is that what you want?I come for your posts. They’re fabulous. I love the thought provoking discussions they spark.This seems a little petty, not worthy of a first class mind.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
As we know, Liberalism cannot stand up to rational debate. Just call names and squash all debate. I am just amazed that it trickles up to the level of FW and many other tech elites. God help us all…
I wish you knew 1/10 of what you think you know. You’re basically just a preacher with no ideas, just dogma at your side.
Oh, another Liberal bomb thrower! What a surprise. Yawn.You seem new here and know nothing about me. So please keep a lid on it. (And I was responding to JLM – and really do not give a flip about what you think of me.)
LOL. “New here”.
Scott is the brother-in-law of fred…..he’s been here since before disqus was here and was kidmercury before kidmercury was….Life suggestion, don’t insult the bar keeps relatives.
It’s too late for all that, Shana. I have been called nasty names by the bar keep himself. And I’ve been called “dumb” and everything else on this blog just because I am conservative. Not everyone is as polite as you.I really do try to stick to the issues. But if someone insults me – I will respond. Do I not have the right to do that? Especially when it is same tired and shallow “you suck because you don’t agree with me”.(BTW – I know he has been around forever, but it was the first time he responded to me personally, so I thought I would have some fun. But I did not know he was sibling of Gotham Gal. It all makes sense now…)
I can’t believe you’d say that about people you know
Fred.
That’s funny. When they “de-regulated” my gas service in Atlanta my bill doubled overnight. So much for the market solving everything, I guess.
I will agree with you that Ajit believed all this before Trump.The problem is Ajit doesn’t believe in deregulation of telecom when that deregulation will cause more competition to the incumbent ISPs and MVPDs.When OTT players wanted an even playing field in negotiating content deals with local network affiliates Ajit was vehemently against it. See FCC NPRM 14-261.
My jaw is agape that he could make a joke with a VP of Verizon about being a shill in front of hundreds of people. Seriously that is insane.
Have you ever seen the movie or read the book “The Smartest Guys in the Room?”It’s about Enron. There’s a whole section on what Enron did as both a utility and as a big derivatives trading desk when a market was unregulated and where the utility side had market power.It was called “Rolling Blackouts” in California. It caused Jerry Brown to be recalled. People died for a buck because power prices were manipulated during a heat wave.Laugh all you want, but a ton of municipal 911 services are now internet based as opposed to old school phone lines, and that’s before the fact that VOIP is now not the exception. If I recall correctly, it’s within the realm of possibilities that an isp can and would block a 911 call.After all at least one ISP, Madison River Communications, blocked Vonage.—-I would also like to add that the lack of net neutrality killed small ISPs as broadband was being normalized. The reason I know this is because I know the founder/ceo of what was this country’s small isp couldn’t compete. That isp shut down. The owner went to law school and became involved in Marijuana legalization in the northeast.(Full disclosure, it’s my uncle we’re talking about)While I don’t think full title 2 would have solved all of its problems, moving to title 1 was a disaster. Small ISPs in large part are competitive resellers, and title 1 make the idea of resellers completely uncompetive.
“Net Neutrality” is about as “neutral” as “Affordable Care Act” is “affordable”.
I don’t know about that Act, but I tend to agree that all participants in the net web space have their own particular agenda, both enlightened (Wiki) and other (the money monster collective).it’s the architecture of the delivery infrastructure that’s got to change. from one to many to peer to peer is the way forward. mesh networks and similar will spread. it will be an organic process. what must not happen is that regulators act to stifle this evolution.
…and like saying “cryptocurrency” is “currency.”The use of the word “shill” in this post reminded me that just yesterday I posted the following on this blog,”The topic at hand here is the cryptocurrency sham that Fred Wilson is profiting from and shilling for…”Who is worse, a cryptocurrency shill or an anti-net neutrality shill? I do not know. Fred Wilson is like the Pied Piper leading many folks astray with his cryptocurrency “advice.” Yesterday Fred Wilson seemed to imply he had closed his cryptocurrency position (cashed in his cryptocurrency chips) and seemed to urge his readers to do likewise. But what about all of the poor suckers out there who are buying cryptocurrency?AVC seems to be an ancronym for “A Veritable Conman”
This is the digital equivalent of running around in black masks and throwing rocks at buildings.Net Neutrality (like many Liberal ideas) has been sold with fear-mongering and mis-information. You know as well as I do that sites like AVC are not gong to be shut down or censored if we keep things the same. (In fact, the origins of net “neutrality” were to try to silence conservative voices online.) If net neutrality was presented on its true merits – it would stand no chance. As we can see from other government programs – they can all be corrupted.
I am probably in the top quintile of “conservatives on this board. You are wrong.
.Is there something specific DJL is wrong about?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Yes. If you say I can censor packets, I can shut you down.
Nobody has ever proposed that (for lawful content) under US laws and regulations. From carriers’ business perspective, it would be commercial suicide to block anything customers want. The X% who have good alternatives would jump ship. How many for-profit public companies want to cannibalize their existing, profitable, recurring-revenue businesses?
You said it well……the X% would. The Y%???? F’d.
No, they aren’t. Sounds like you missed my point.“Censoring packets” from, say, AVC would anger both the X% who have alternatives and the (1-X)% who don’t. To the extent X’s switched providers as a result, the carrier would lose money and profit, shooting itself in the foot. So unless they’re idiots (OK, not a foregone conclusion), ISPs won’t (and historically haven’t) done such things. The Y% (or 1-X%) benefit from the choices that X’s *do* have, coupled with the ISP’s self-interest in not wanting to lose the X customers.
Right. And in a neighborhood ruled by the mob you can survive without giving protection money.
99% CANNOT “switch providers” because their provider owns the only last mile connection to their residence and has a monopoly. That’s why we need to regulate the providers; that’s “network neutrality”.
Correct. As a small business owner, I am currently paying an arm and a leg for the internet access without an alternative
Do you understand how networking works? No serious question, not insulting. People have used the word censor because if I say “dropping packets” do you know what that means? Data is put into packets. They are sent over the network, packets do get dropped, then a message gets sent, and they get resent. If I start dropping packets (I can do) I can slow you way down. I also can give certain packets priority, that makes them faster, but there is no magic, that slows others down. Do you log into the advanced screen of your router? If you do you can see how you can “shape” your network traffic.
Wrong: http://www.chegg.com/homewo…
This works when people understand what is happening and can make choices. Nobody is going to know what’s happening at all, and almost nobody has any choice.
Problem is, Y is about 99.
That’s just not true. It’s why NN was enacted in the first place by a Republican FCC Chairman.
The owner of the last mile has a monopoly. They could say to Google, pay me more or I’ll clobber your packets to your end users who are my customers.The last mile issue is why we regulated the owners of the last mile physical connections for telephone, electric power, natural gas, water, sewer, etc. Maybe there has been something similar for cable TV.Without regulation of the last mile monopoly for Internet access, the end user customers of the owner of the last mile physical connection would suffer, and those customer could do nothing at all practical about it.And the monopolist could charge their users extra for accessing Google, Facebook, etc. And the monopolist could use some packet inspection to keep their users from using proxies to get around the monopolist’s extra charges.
We are totally on the same page. I just don’t understand how people can’t understand this.You don’t need to even drop packets, just give priority. But you are right, given that they can they will because salespeople and finance people will ask for it.I would say 99.999% of people don’t even know what a proxy server is, I think what causes the hyperbole is that people can’t believe anybody is for this.
This. All you have to do is shave fractions of response time off of every packet, and service suffers exponentially and especially when multiplied by large customer bases.
> just don’t understand how people can’t understand this.“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair
I worked in web technology for a monopolist telco. All you say is true. We were doing everything we could to prepare for a future in which we could apply QoS to *every* packet that traversed any of our networks. Why? to prioritize our services over others (we were going to start offering IPTV (flop)). We knew we weren’t legally allowed to do it, but we also knew we were spending millions in lobbying to get the right to do it and we definitely planned to do it. We spent $1,000,000,000 overhauling the entire network over several years so it was all ready to go. I haven’t worked there in well over a decade, but I’m guessing it’s much improved and still ready to go.
I too worked in telecom. Supplying the monopolist telco’s and cable companies. I watch Ed Whitacre roar at a conference “Why should Google make a dime on our network” and the crowded roared back.I’m not convinced some is not being used.It is sad you have to say censor the internet but if you give my arguments I laid out here people don’t listen or understand.
See my post above. You are right censor is hyperbole, but people don’t seem to understand. And Sigma is right, many of us have no choice. If I want to waste time on Facebook, there is no reason to throttle. And Fred’s fear is right, how will this “priority access” get sold? By salespeople. What will they do? Do what any good salesperson does, give you a reason to buy now. What will that reason be? Treat you better and me worse, that’s fine but not in a monopoly situation.
What he is right about:a) sites like AVC are not gong to be shut down or censoredb) has been sold with fear-mongering and mis-informationIt’s trivial for Fred to shut down AVC for the day. AVC is great for him and he definitely gets benefit from it but this is not the same quite frankly as an operating business which would lose revenues or customers. [1]Imagine if coinbase decided to shut down for the day?Here is an example of fear mongering and misinformation for stupid people who believe stupid arguments.The average person goes to Coinbase to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin—the average on-ramp is an exchange, and those are easy to block. If Comcast is the monopoly provider in an area, the provider could decide there’s a preferred Bitcoin exchange.https://thenextweb.com/insi…[1] Reminds me of how I honestly paid my sales tax to the state for years. Of course I did I made money and I didn’t need to cheat to stay in business. Hard to say what I would do if push came to shove. Luckily that never happened but honestly nothing I say w/o being in that spot matters that much. It’s a ‘russian shirt off the back’ concept. [2][2] Russian says to another ‘If I had a million dollars I’d give you half!!!’. Friend says ‘oh wow thanks so can I have your shirt on your back?’. Russian says ‘no…’
Throwing rocks……five to ten. Burning stuff for Milos whatever? Five to ten. Being able to censor?? Five to ten.
Here is the problem with politics, you have to use hyperbole or people don’t listen.If I say look here is the deal:Verizon would have no Facebook traffic if their customers that pay $100 a month did not go to it. Facebook doesn’t use the bandwidth Verizon customers do.Facebook pays $5k a month per rack of servers and a large part of that is based on the quality of the internet connection so you can pay more for faster speed.Competition? For most of us that doesn’t exist. Why? Because it costs a ton of money to wire to houses and there is economy of scale, if you had ten connections each company would have to charge much more.Additional Investment? Ha! When is the last Verizon put in FiOS after they cherry picked? A decade.America First Jobs: Verizon and Comcast have done everything they can to break the strong skilled union jobs with contractors.What will happen?They will put on QoS to speed people up and slow people down.They will start dropping packets to make sure you pay upIt will further consolidate because the big companies like Verizon and Comcast will be able to exact a toll and the smaller ones like Atlantic Broadband will sell out. Less choice.Will they censor websites. No not really. But if you slow things down people will stop going, kind of censoring.Who has this plan? Who??? I’ll tell you who: Mainland China.I have a datacenter in Shanghai.But people can’t get through this.
I’m open. But without specifics its hard to respond. But so far reading the comments I am not ready to redact.Like most things on AVC, it is hard to take the time to present a complete case. We all have day jobs. i am at least comfortable saying that the real “issues” have not been presented to the public in a clear way. Pop-ups that say “donate or your favorite site will be shut down” are attempts to manipulate. That is not pure feat mongering. Like it or not, that is what most sites are doing. Conservatives are not afraid of honest dialog.
I have a hard time understanding how people don’t understand this. I agree there is a bit of hyperbole.JLM brags about his Gigabit speed in Austin. That’s great. But if that ISP decides to go to Zeta (Disqus Parent) and say pay up for fast speed, they can make this site crawl, same for Breitbart or Drudge. His Gigabit speed won’t mean shit.Now people say this will cause investment! If you believe that you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.Here is how this will go down:Best case: They give priority to people that pay. That will speed them up. I do this at the office. First priority is Voice over IP traffic, second is to the datacenters, last is surfing the web. Can I tell when tons of people are on the phone, we are doing an update, and people are checking email? Yup. Slows way down. This is the only logical reason ISPs want this. It is what I would do.Base case: I am a salesperson for Verizon: “Hey Phil you aren’t making numbers” Me: “well so and so site won’t pay can you slow them down”. Sure! Think that won’t happen? I guess you are a believer in Santa. The phone and cable companies added latency to screw up Voice over IP like Skype, they had to stop that. I am a Verizon exec: “Damn that story about me on CBS was bullshit, slow them the hell down Jim….Yes sir”Worst case: They shut down sites (that won’t happen because it will piss people off), but if you’ve ever been on a big companies network you know they can do it.Here is the thing, when you can get Sigma Algebra to agree, you have to start questioning your logic.I want to decide. Do I slow down my guest network at home? Yes. How hard is it? I can do it in 30 seconds.
Simple question: Do people who own pipes (and pay for their management) have the right to charge more for people using most of their pipes?
Certainly. That is why you pay more for higher speed internet, the higher the speed the more you pay.That in no way is what we are talking about.I’ll use your analogy. This is like the water company saying I will monitor what the water is being used for and if the manufacturer doesn’t pay me a tithe I will slow it down.Hey American Standard your toilet is going to fill one hell of a bunch slower than the Kohler who paid me.Yes, customer who pays for the water by the gallon and the size of the pipe (you know you pay more for a larger diameter pipe, right? or a higher amperage electric connect right?), F U! Yes I was granted rights to run those pipes in front of your house, and yes, I am a natural monopoly because it doesn’t make sense physically or economically to have a half dozen to your house.The people that are using the pipes are the consumers of water or in this case internet. American Standard toilets don’t “use” water, they only “use” it if I decide to flush one. If I have a big hot tub, the tub does not “use” the water, I do.Sure Netflix and Facebook consume bandwidth, they pay for it at their datacenters (you realize that don’t you?) My datacenter bills are quite large, but who is “using” them? Me, the consumer that pays for either a 10Mbs speed or much more for a 100Mbs speed.If you are conservative, arguing against Net Neutrality is a moronic argument. Like your Drudge or Breitbart? Well I’m a VP at Comcast and I don’t. So I am going to tell them to pony up some serious coin, or your page upload times are going to 10 seconds. After 500ms (a half a second) the abandonment rate goes up exponentially.
“If you are conservative, arguing against Net Neutrality is a moronic argument.” Name calling? Now you sound like a Liberal.You obviously have some skin in this game, so we both know it is not worth our time to try to convince the other. This is a complex topic and there are arguments to both sides. But let’s keep it civil. There is enough name calling from the left.
I said how I feel about the argument not the person and other than I don’t want my home internet throttled I really don’t have skin in the game. Too small. Seriously though do you understand how data goes from a server to your computer at home?How much does amazon web services pay where many but certainly not a majority of websites pay for access?? I’ll give you a hint the number ends with a B. Same as Google and FacebookSaying pay your “fair share” is as liberal of an argument as you can make.
I’m not even arguing against your premise! I am just saying there are two sides and its never a good idea to call the other side “moronic”. I have been in IT for 30 years. I pretty much understand how a network works. And I also understand how Liberalism works.Any time I use the words “fair share” you can assume I am making a joke.
Let me make this even simpler for you. If nobody went to Facebook via their ISP would Facebook use any of the ISPs pipes? No.So who is using the pipe? You, you the consumer, you are choosing where to go, the ultimate in the free market.And Facebook doesn’t somehow magically connect to the internet via fairy dust, no they pay their ISP a ton of money based on electric usage and speed of connection.Sure the ISP that YOU pay would like to be able to extort some money from Facebook.This is not how the internet was designed or what it does. Saying that an ISP has the right for charging people who use it’s pipes other than their customer, I.e. you, is so wrongheadedThe whole point of the internet is I connect to it and it is a transport layer, if you then decide to connect to my service then you are using your bandwidth to connect to me, and I am using my bandwidth to connect to you, but in no way am I using your bandwidth. You are using your bandwidth however you see fit.This is one time I am ashamed to be “conservative”, I mean who fed people this argument and how stupid could they be to believe it?
All good points. (Except for the last one.)This really should not be a partisan topic – but it has become that BECAUSE of the tactics being used by the net neutral crowed (like the big red warning you got today here on AVC.)But I do know one thing – any time Liberals are 100% invested in any idea – (like this one) – and resort to calling people stupid who disagree (like this one) – it is flawed at some level. Bank on it every time.
An exception proves the rule. I know I am not popular here for many stances. You must read my posts from out here in the country and being from Texas born in Fort Worth in the sixties. My Lego league team lost to a team that was 7 places below them in scoring points by neutral judges this weekend They have to go home. How does that make me feel??? How do I explain to 4 out of 6 kids that don’t speak English at home that we are “privileged” and that we have advantages and so we don’t move on?? I go to the bathroom compose myself suck it up and say we go another league next year
I get it as much as I can without actually being you. That deal sucks.Strange how the only conservatives in the comment section seem to be from Texas.
6 hours a week for 12 weeks, plus prep time. I put into other kids,I help as much as I can.We help other teams.I wept in that bathroom I was so angry, oh I’m sure it made somebody feel good that they were “lifting” those kids up. Every other kid had bitterness in their heart. Does that solve the problem? Or just make it worse? I can tell you how my team felt.
Are you saying your kids were victims of affirmative action judges? (That’s what I got but may have missed the entire point.)
Yes. My “kids” only one is mine, are from a relatively affluent area. Their parents make sure they come on time, they make sure they study the material we give them, they make sure they pay attention. Of the twelve parents only four were born in the U.S. If you look at the team (I posted earlier) there are only two that are “White” Everybody else is easily identifiably not a native English Speaker or “White”Why have they gotten ahead? Strong family unit, parents that make them work, understanding nobody “gives” you something or you “deserve” something, or the worst “it is somebody else’s fault” That is where you have to look, that is where you have to say what is important, not just giving people something because you feel bad.That only does one thing: cause resentment. I have a guy that wears a shirt, it says get all of your shit, get all of your shit together, put it in a bag, and get your shit together. He and his wife have custody of three kids his wife’s daughter had out of wedlock and abandoned. One a two year old she put in the middle of a crowded road. She is from the inner city. He looks like me. He is doing God’s work.
Sounds like my neighborhood outside of Houston. In my kids elementary school less that 20% are “WASP” native-born citizens. But they are the wrong type of “non-white” to garner any special favor. And they don’t want it. Super hard workers because their parents immigrated from places that value family and hard work and appreciate the opportunities of the USA. If you tell them the USA is a bad place full of racists and bigots they just stare at you like you are crazy. They have been there.
Conservative and paleoconservative media outlets.Which is ironically funny. The ad tech stack they depend on for cash is dependent on net neutrality….
The stupidness on both sides dumbfounds me.
Not that simple. Telecom rights of way, use of public resources, regulation as a utility, and more make it way more complicated than that. I’m not saying your premise is wrong, but the people who “own the pipes” are already charging me to use those pipes. Should the sewer company be able to charge me more for making a deuce when I already pay them every month to flush my toilet?
Here is the piece people can’t seem to grasp. If no Verizon customer visited Facebook would Facebook use any bandwidth?No.Does Facebook connect to the internet for free?No.So when somebody at home uses Facebook via Verizon who is using Verizon’s bandwidth?The somebody at home that is using Facebook and paying Verizon to connect to the internet.If I don’t go to a website that website has no traffic on my ISP Verizon.Now once that website gets popular it could be a juicy target for Verizon who I the consumer pay to get to it because if they make the page loads slower than 500ms statistically I drop off, so they can’t control what I do and therefore extort money from the people that I choose to do it with.Sure IF Verizon said what they are doing AND if I had five or so competitors THEN maybe I could make a choice.BUT Verizon telling me they are slowing things down for a certain site is like believing in Santa Clause, so I won’t have a clue, I’ll just know it’s slow.AND Since like the majority of people I have exactly one provider I might as well count on the Easter Bunny for candy versus switchingSO right now I am not counting on the Tooth Fairy for money.
I think if California could find a way to tax you for a deuce they certainly would. Water is not a good model because you don’t have different providers dueling for the most throughput.Anyway, I’m ready to move on. As the Democrats said with Obamacare when it was being rammed up your arse – “it’s the law of the land”
Now that I think about it, you’re totally right about Cali 🙂
Really? “Conservatives are not afraid of honest dialog” is really a thing? Watched Fox lately?
It’s not really a liberal vs. conservative issue, as some of these comments show. More of a statist vs. libertarian issue—but tech culture that is usually overwhelmingly libertarian on related issues (“Hands off the Internet!”) did a 180º on this single issue. The giants being regulated—despite combined market caps less than Google’s, never mind GAFA + NFLX, Hulu et al—aren’t viewed as tech companies. Coincidence, no doubt. 😛
.I agree more with you than you do with yourself. It is a statist v libertarian issue.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Agree. I have no problem with Google and Facebook paying their “fair share”.
If net neutrality was presented on its true merits – it would stand no chance. Really?I’m having a tough time seeing that:Likely 99+% of US residences do NOT have more than one physical connection for Internet data rates over, say, 50 Mbps. That is, the 99+% have at most one such physical connection. Then the owner of that connection has a monopoly.Since generally we do want competitors but for each of electric power, voice telephone, cable TV, or, now, Internet access, we don’t want each house to have to have several separate and independent physical connections.That is, for each of these cases, we want to be able to have as much competition as we can but also want each residence to be able to get that competition with at most one physical connection.Yes, we are happy to have coax used for all of voice, TV, and Internet.So, we regard such physical connections as natural monopolies. Then, for each residence, for each of those cases, we encourage just one physical connection. Then the owner of that connection has a monopoly. So, since we encouraged just the single connection, we regulate the owner of that connection.Of course, these connections are commonly called “the last mile”.To me, then, that is the role of “network neutrality” — regulate the natural monopoly of the last mile physical connections to the Internet.Sounds good and important to me.So, why “no chance”?
I could have sworn the reasoning behind net neutrality was because Verizon was forbidding customers from tethering through the isp, not through the phones.I’m very confused about what case in history where net neutrality was about shutting down conservative voices.If anything, no net neutrality would make shutting down political voices of any type easier. All an isp has to do is decide you’re controversial and/or annoying and won’t carry your content , irrespective of if you hold liberal or conservative views.
“All an isp has to do is decide you’re controversial and/or annoying and won’t carry your content , irrespective of if you hold liberal or conservative views.” This is already done by Facebook and twitter every day. And by the major news networks (ABC, NBC, CNN, etc,) They only run the stories that fit their narrative. These platforms already censor. Is the government going to regulate them?Like Climate Change this is a long and complex issues that has good and bad arguments on both sides. In my opinion, the less government control the better – at every level. The internet was fine before Obama stuck his nose in there and it will be fine now. AVC is still running and so is Breitbart. Long live the free internet!
And just to let you know how the “pro-net” side is operating, the FCC chairman and his family are now receiving death threats. There are articles about how black voices will now be shut down.As I have said elsewhere here, it is not as much the argument as the way the tech-elite have tried to prosecute their case. Fear mongering and hate and division. It is sad.
I just found out that my next door neighbour, Graham, passed away in hospital yesterday morning. He’d been living with cancer for a couple of years. so sad. he was such a stoic. I’ll miss him.
I’m _down_ with this protest action 😀
There’s barely anything on the Internet that my kids, parents, wife, or I can’t wait three days to get. Medical device data should get priority over Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Give me a discount to download after midnight. Force my kids out of the house to get Facebook at McDonalds. Give Verizon some incentive to put 5G on the tower next to my house. Bad actors will only bring about a bazar or ideas, workarounds, plans, services, innovations, and change. I’m not afraid.
I’m actuallt quite surprised at how many people here are against net neutrality. Also, how many people are convinced nothing will change.
A telecoms shill? OK, and behind the scenes socially driven networking corruption in web tech never happens? From recent experience I know first hand that it does, and it’s closer to home than you might think or wish to acknowledge, or maybe not. One can just never fully buy the public rhetoric over the private reality…can one?
Any thoughts on I2P?https://geti2p.net/en/about…