ComVeriCast: Internet Freedom

https://comvericast.com/

by orthecreedence • 12 years ago

79 12 12 years ago

comvericast.com

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

The best gallows humor has the hint of truth in it.

justizin2• 12 years ago

totes.

I really think this perfectly illustrates why I have issues with the coinage "Net Neutrality".

I currently pay Comcast an additional amount for an additional amount of bandwidth, over the minimum they offer. Before I go further, let's clarify that I am not defending Comcast, and that Net Neutrality is not the "Fuck Comcast" law. My old AT&T account that PG&E, oddly, sold me when I moved to Oakland was only 1.5mbit, and it was enough for Netflix, but you could expect Netflix to perform as it performs with 1.5mbit of bandwidth.

Certainly, I agree that on a lower-cost plan, services that may be hungry for bandwidth should not be allowed to be blocked, that's silly, and while noone has really ever substantially done anything like this, I agree that there is a very real risk of business interests being presented with such an opportunity.

What this humor kind of fails to address is the fact that, some people will use more internet, maybe a house with 5 roommates needs more internet than an individual - this is actually a way that tiered power billing hurts poorer folks, because 1 rich person gets the same alottment as ten poor people at one address, so using even 5 times as much power costs, oh, ten or twenty times as much. The law that forces power costs to be tiered is good, and it is motivated by the right reasons, but the way it is implemented puts no pressure on the actual people who waste the most power.

I think a more interesting argument would be to say, the free plan has facebook, and facebook subsidizes your internet (something AT&T is already doing with ads), and the median plan has twitter, and you can only use VPN to connect to your office on the highest plan, even if you use almost no bandwidth.

If we're going to have a conversation, let's talk about something of substance.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

Isn't that exactly the argument this site is making? Their fake packages have a low-end service that only includes social media, a middle tier that includes streaming video, and a top tier that allows "any site," and is presumably what you'd require for VPNs.

AlexandrB• 12 years ago

I think a more interesting argument would be to say, the free plan has facebook, and facebook subsidizes your internet (something AT&T is already doing with ads), and the median plan has twitter, and you can only use VPN to connect to your office on the highest plan, even if you use almost no bandwidth.

Here's the problem. Any such regime will be structured with incumbent use cases in mind. What if a new VPN-like protocol emerges that can be used to ensure more privacy (e.g. TOR). Now only those who can afford the highest tiers of service will be able to access it. Basically the internet rich get richer because they have access to technology that a family subscribing to mid-tier do not.

The other problem is that ISPs are not interested in the cutting edge of the internet. If this was 2005, your plan would have the mid-tier selling us MySpace access and Facebook would only be on whatever tier above that gives "neutral" web access - how does that not skew the market forces that pushed Facebook to the top of the heap and why should an ISP be allowed to skew them in this way?

aidenn0• 12 years ago

This isn't how it will happen. The basic package will give you access to these sites, but crappy access. Youtube, Netflix, et. al. will skip, webpages will load more slowly, etc. Meanwhile sites owned by the parent company of the ISP will be as smooth as butter.

That way it's not people calling up their ISPs saying "Why can't I access youtube?" instead it's people saying "I watch comvericastTube since it's so much faster than youtube"

justizin2• 12 years ago

ah you kind of said similar things to me while i was typing another comment.

I think it's dangerous to be too sweeping with things like, "sites owned by the parent company of the ISP will be as smooth as butter."

Let me explain by talking about a net neutrality problem my clients and I had when I operated a small business, supporting small businesses.

We installed VoIP systems, hosted at Rackspace, communicating over services like Time-Warner Cable. We were pretty sure that TWC had specially prioritized their packets, but we also could not get the most reliable performance without installing a router at our customer site, and dedicating a portion of bandwidth to communicating with a single IP address. QoS sounds great when you're talking about it, but not when you are talking VoIP over it, in my experience.

So, stick with me here for a sec, pls - I still oppose TWC prioritizing their own traffic, but only in a way that I can't do for mine. So here comes my disagreement with the word 'neutral'. I do not want a neutral network. I want a fair one. It's subtle, but a valuable distinction IMO.

So, people keep telling me that "A good neutrality implementation won't outlaw prioritization", but is that true? If I'm a voter, and I am not an engineer, does that make any fucking sense to me?

Confusion is extremely bad for democracy.

Anti-competetive capitalism certainly also is.

tga_d• 12 years ago

"Fair" reminds me far too much of the horror that is FRAND. It simply provides far too much leeway on the part of the company, who would almost certainly get the largest say in what is "fair." For example, they could easily market "Is it fair that a web site who pays more for quality service gets the same treatment as those who pay less?" as justification for charging sites for "fast lane" fees.

orthecreedence• 12 years ago

A good neutrality implementation won't outlaw prioritization

I think to have true net neutrality, the provider needs to make no distinction about the traffic that's going through it. People pay for access to 1s and 0s at a certain bandwidth and that is provided without prioritizing one type of traffic over another (save for upload/download speeds). At least, this is how I hope it works. If you want QoS, you'd do so on your own network with your own router.

Anti-competetive capitalism certainly also is.

Free market and democracy are two separate issues, although it would be my argument that they are in constant disagreement with each other...at least in the case of American Capitalism. In the US, you have large corporations lobbying for less and less regulation generally at the expense of the citizens (and thus the republic).

When something becomes so pervasive that society as it exists cannot live without it (like the internet), it's my belief that it's in the hands of government to regulate it ferociously so that it's not at the whim of a company which doesn't have your best interests in mind. This is especially true, in the case of internet, in places where only one ISP exists and the usual ridiculous argument of "Just switch providers!" doesn't work. Even if there are two providers, they are generally both terrible anyway.

There comes a point where people in the US need to realize that yes, free market is great, but it doesn't mean that the citizen's best interests (or customer's interests, even) are represented by <insert corporation here> and this is where regulation comes in.

There's a balance. Anti-competitive capitalism can, in moderation, be absolutely great for democracy. The free market is not the ultimate oracle of truth, it is yet another weight on the scale of a free, open, and intelligent society where common good is the ultimate goal.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

It's not even "will" at this point. That's exactly what's already happening. Various providers are already artificially restricting the capacity available to traffic from services like Netflix or YouTube. Meanwhile the company's own streaming video services are extremely fast, of course.

GhotiFish• 12 years ago

wow. A hammy over the top dystopian style website on a technology rights topic that ISN'T made by the EFF!

Amazing!

ComVeriCast: Internet Freedom

Related Stories