Tech community protests over court caving on Net Neutrality

[gcmartin]

There is a Call to Action from the Tech Community for Net Neutrality.

This isn't about government or private sector or anything. It appears to be a noble attempt to request correction of a court decision allowing business to interrogate and modify your traffic for their own purposes versus your intentions in your use.

FYI

[gcmartin]

We should NOT have expected Internet users to benefit. We all object to any country putting the clamps of individual internet use. Well, the corporations say they should be the ones deciding what they will allow you to use over the wire that you pay for.

Results of our future is now becoming apparent; This just the "tip of the iceberg".

You wont be able to appeal to FCC where they step in and fix things. It now requires laws to enforce good balanced behavior.

Time to start petitioning your lawmakers (known as Congressional Representatives...you know...the ones responsible for laws that benefit the people)

FYI

[Moose On The Loose]

We should NOT have expected Internet users to benefit. We all object to any country putting the clamps of individual internet use. Well, the corporations say they should be the ones deciding what they will allow you to use over the wire that you pay for.

Results of our future is now becoming apparent; This just the "tip of the iceberg".

You wont be able to appeal to FCC where they step in and fix things. It now requires laws to enforce good balanced behavior.

Time to start petitioning your lawmakers (known as Congressional Representatives...you know...the ones responsible for laws that benefit the people)

FYI

I have long held the view that the era of the nation state was coming to its end. Nations are based on control of an area with physical boundaries. Multinational corporations and the internet are things of no fixed location. The boundaries are around product lines etc for corporations and around communities of similar interests for the internet. I think we should not assume that the government of one nation will ultimately be able to control what happens. It is more likely that an organization that is not of a fixed location will be able to win out in the long run. Thus I suggest that not just the government of the US should be being asked to do what is right. Those in other nations should ask their governments to join in protecting the rights of everyone.

[gcmartin]

This is really a request. You'll understand at the end.

[gcmartin]

Net neutrality NOW involves your cell network phones. Here's why...

And if you think that's just it, review this where if you do something, it will count.

Hope this helps

[greengeek]

This is one of the unsatisfactory aspects of using the internet for communication - censorship and throttling are so easy for the providers to do - regardless of whether or not you have paid for premium service.

At least in the old days of using plain old telephone lines you knew you had the line to yourself. Internet lines are effectively "party lines" and your own data packets can be treated as second class citizens relative to other peoples data packets - depending on the whim of the connection provider.

It's pretty hard to run a business when you really have no control over the stability and quality of the internet link you are paying for. I'm really surprised that ISPs are getting away with this.

Would Toyota get away with selling a car that intermittently and unpredictably slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road whenever Toyota felt like it?

[bark_bark_bark]

Would Toyota get away with selling a car that intermittently and unpredictably slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road whenever Toyota felt like it?

Probably.

[gcmartin]

I think the Puppy community where distros are made freely available would find this article of interest. We are NOT media companies, but, we certainly are big internet users and use a type of OS that is free (as in beer) of corporate meddling.

Enjoy as you understand how this couple with citizen protests could move US Congress to set a public interest law into motion as they finally address this issue that has been ducked for past 20 years.

Current move by Telco and Cable companies is to provide throttled services at the today's present costs and fast-lane unthrottled services at a premium. Thus, if they dont like ISO, then they make decide to not allow or reduce its transfer to a crawl, while if you pay the blackmailers, you can have clear unencumbered service.

Let hope that fairness returns.

[greengeek]

There are some cases where I am in favour of variable throttling (ie not maintaining net neutrality) - particularly when faxing over a WAN. Faxing is a technology that requires a realtime conversation between two machines that 'pretend' to be talking or singing to each other.

Net neutrality would prevent that 'conversation' from occurring in realtime - the data packets would arrive at inconsistent times. Faxes just don't like this and generally fail when it occurs.

The problem is - I consider it to be fraud when a telco offers such a line without warning the customer that this problem exists. They pretend that a WAN (voip style) line is the equivalent to the previous PSTN (copper wire) line. This is just a fraudulent concept that needs to stop.

To make such a line behave with lower error rates the Telco has NO CHOICE but to prioritise fax data packets more highly than other data packets. Net neutarlity would destroy faxing.

However - why should the Telcos get away with masking this problem? Why should they get away with stealing from one customer to advance the service offered to another? More honesty is needed from Telcos in order to educate the user about the service they are potentially receiving.

If a customer accepts the variable quality of a 'neutral' line, then that is their choice. If that cheap line stuffs up their faxing then that is what they have chosen. If they choose to pay extra to get a higher priority line in order to get reliable faxing - then they should get that line, but not at the expense of their neighbour who may be trying to upload Puppy isos

Telcos should be forced to offer 'net neutral' lines as a specific option - regardless of whatever other special lines they choose to offer.

[nubc]

Positive results of petitioning FCC:
USA Today, November 10, 2014: Obama pushes net neutrality, asserting that internet is a public utility
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014 ... /18797601/

Senator Ted Cruz, says

"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

The Guardian: cable companies 'stunned' by Obama's 'extreme' proposals
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... -fcc-fight

Opinion: Obama "picked a fight," but will he win?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -reactions

[gcmartin]

US Senators and Congressmen make the laws for corporate operations. They have had legislative proposals since 1994 about internet protection and neutrality for public interest such that corporations could not control this public supported facility. They have DONE NOTHING to help the American people...NOTHING!!!

Yet, when the US President does ANYTHING to address the problem since the lawmakers continue to fail to act, he is criticized.

This is one more reason why the tech community should be all other their legislative representatives to STOP IGNORING THIS and do their job for the public.

How many more years will they ignore the public interest??? How many more years will US technology citizens like the ones here in the forum fail to express their discontent with Congress for NOT acting to resolve this. Congress is a body of in excess of 500 elected representatives by the people. The people pay them in excess of $200000 each (on average not to mention the perks). $200K * 500+ * 20 years is a lots of billions of dollars for them to have done NOTHING about this!

You be the judge if you think they are acting in your best interest. Your President seems to be.

Dont be afraid to stand up. They are not doing their job and diverting attention as if they are doing their job. You must Stand UP! Its your public institution for your benefit that is at stake.

This is NOT political. Its about protecting the well-being of a public institution. This post does NOT have favoritism. Its about what we can do to protect and sure-up technology that we should be entitle to.

[gcmartin]

You may find this of interest as some of the peoples letters "may" have actually been read by US Congressional representatives. The FTC and FCC did the study and committee work for them as far back as 1992, but Congress NEVER followed thru to do their job. It took the Supreme Court to punch them in the eye before they decided to "maybe" see that public may begin to look at them not letting US representatives to introduce a bill to the floor of Congress. Fingers crossed, as this has worldwide reference as they look to how this will be handled, with a law, so that decisions in other countries might be based congressional action's model.

Anyone want to take odds on whether they behave like men or cry that someone is taking a step before they decide to act for the people??? If the FCC acts, first (again), in favor of the people, US Congress will be boxed in to introduce a law favorable to the people. This is the primary reason they did not act before.

One Senator representative speculates that Congress wants to take over the vision while they get it into their committee and then spend years doing nothing until it dies in committee. Thus allowing corporations to profits while they keep saying they are still studying the problems.

It you want to understand whats happening, compare the past track records by the FCC in favor for the citizens, with the current congressional plan (which really doesn't do anything as it does NOT provide any funding to make sure peoples needs are honored by neutrality. Without any enforcement, which is what they are proposing, there is NO teeth for corporations to abide by anything. No enforcement means no one to take corporations to court when they misbehave.).

Anyway, fingers crossed as the FCC is the only organization who thus far has looked out for the people, and "enterprising and growing" businesses insuring they have a level playing field with the protection from rape by the big traditional rapers/dicks.

We, as technology people, need to know the difference between what is good for us, especially as we are mostly favorable to open source to provides some fairness versus the removal of any enforcement to legally allow the rape of small business and citizens to begin.

I have NOT seen anything, that started today, that suggest they are going to put laws on the books that guarantees the prior fair use ability that the Supreme Court told them (congress) they have to do.

Fingers crossed though, but after 20 years of ignoring this, I cannot see how they, in 1 day, now understand what they are to do versus asking the tech community or FCC or citizens or even us here in Puppyland.

Something smells. If you are US citizen, write the congressional people on Capitol Hill demanding they put into law what existed before the Supreme Court's decision. "This is what the Supreme Court said!" That's all it takes! With a law, the Court then can rule favorably for the people. Everyone wins. .... except of course, the lions who await "salivating at the sight of us".

I wrote them from my country to let them know some of us, too, are observing how they have ignored peoples needs for 20 years, by not doing their job.

[gcmartin]

This, you may find of interest. ... No thanks to the US politicians: seems the US President's Administration, the FCC, has found approaches around the efforts of Verizon and others to institute a formal Neutrality approach that has been upheld in US Courts.

This strategy provides some citizenry protections over the greed of industry.

Court decision explained here.