Federal court strikes down net neutrality, some guy presumably named Dave notices Verizon slowing down connections to Amazon AWS, Verizon's Baghdad Bob talking head says "what, us use that thing we fought hard to get? Well I never."

The battle for the future of the internet is on. In one corner, media giants who own the ISP, their content, and want to bundle with their cable. In the other corner, all independent web sites and content providers who want to compete for your attention on even footing.

My hope is that smaller ISP companies will break into markets and educate customers on why they should switch away from non-neutral internet providers. I can't believe the last Net Neutrality thread was from years ago, and that this thread title wasn't taken already.

THE WEB IS A TRAP.
OVERTHROW THE CONSCIOUSNESS INDUSTRY.
DO NOT LET THEM TRAP THE PEOPLE AND MAKE THEM INTO THEIR AUDIENCE COMMODITY.

THE END TO END PRINCIPLE WAS WHAT GAVE US HOPE THE INTERNET COULD BE A PLATFORM FOR FREEDOM.
A platform that would not only transform the way we communicate, but WOULD TRANSFORM SOCIETY ITSELF.
Information would route around censorship. Speech would be free and no voice could be silenced.
Privacy and anonymity would be inviolable.

DOWN WITH THE WEB. WE DEMAND DIRECT, UNMEDIATED, COMMUNICATIONS FOR ALL USERS!



“Will you log into my platform?” said the Spider to the Fly,
'Tis the prettiest little platform that ever you did spy;
The way into my platform is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there.”

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair
-can ne'er come down again.”

So Verizon's plan is to throttle video streaming on their premium fiber optic network service that has essentially no advantage compared to other high-speed internet except for video streaming to bolster their content business (which doesn't exist)? Brilliant! They would've gotten away with it too, if they'd remembered to not put a confession in their CSR scripts.

Saw this yesterday. I doubt Verizon is doing this, not because I think they're morally above it or anything but because it would be a really stupid business decision. Lol at the CSR screen shot as evidence.

Do you think posts like this do anything to help your argument? This is a place for conversation, not copy/pasted propaganda.

And yeah- there's valid reasons to be concerned, but one guy getting a min wage CSR to way something is hardly proof.

I would assume the concern should more lie with content providers, because Verizon et all can just extord them into agreements to preserve their speed. Knowing how customer focused Amazon is, I can't imagine they'd like this happen and not push back.

Yes, since there is no alternatives available, we need creativity!

THESE ARE INCREASINGLY RADICAL TIMES. WHISTLEBLOWERS AND LEAKS. HACKERS AND RIOTERS.
PUNDITS AND PROTESTERS. ALL CALL FOR SOMETHING TO BE DONE.

Wish I had the solution, I only know the FCC is not enough.

I agree that the probability a CSR would know about something like that is pretty slim. There should be an app somewhere that tests connection speeds to popular sites over different ISPs in different locations to see if they can spot a pattern of throttling. If it doesn't already exist, somebody should write one.

The real threat IMO is with smaller companies. They might not be able to destroy Netflix now, because they are too big and the uproar would be too loud. But you can bet that if the cable companies could have enforced a barrier of entry to netflix in the beginning, they would have squashed them before hitting critical mass. The great thing about common carrier status is that it lets the little guys compete on their merits. Hopefully that can continue.

Net neutrality would be predicted to have popular support and should be the law of the land, clearly. Activists organized effectively to block SOPA, but that was obviously proposed legislation as opposed to a court decision. The way this SCOTUS defines free speech as the right of the oligarchs to shout everyone else down, I'm not really hopeful for satisfaction coming from the courts. There is enough rent seeking going on here to make a case for anti-competitive practices maybe.

The good news (my layman understanding) is that the court ruled on a jurisdictional basis, not saying net neutrality was inherently bad just that the FCC had no business mandating it. Is there any clear obstacle toward properly legislating net neutrality (other than gridlock and a right wing congress?)? I'm trying to think of where citizens can be most effective. Boycotts are tough given the effective monopolies of service providers in many areas.

Seriously dude, if you care about this stuff, learn about it enough so that you can have a conversation like an adult. Copy/pasting bolded nonsense and yelling about change without a plan only serves to discredit your point of view and your side in the argument.

Yes, and I dont think the courts would necessarily have a problem with the FCC mandating net neutrailiy, its just directly contrary to current law.

The content providers initially licensed all their material to Netflix on sweetheart terms, helping make their streaming service popular.

No it does not. You are just wrong.

Atleast there is an discussion going now, there was no posts in this tread before
I bumped it. with propaganda lol

My position is clear FCC can't actually save net neutrality.

So changing the law, sure, how do you do that in us of a, probably need guillotines.

Give power to EFF and ACLU. Nationalize!


Why do you love Verizon, Rupert Murdoch and the super-rich, dids?

And that popularity leads to less people subscribing to Verizon's TV services hence their motivation for the ISP side to "prioritize" netflix traffic lower.

I posted this in LC yesterday. Clearly the CSR's word isn't the only evidence here, c'mon son. The CSR may have been lying/wrong but the speed tests and diagnostics clearly indicated that AWS was super slow while other traffic was operating normally.

Id bet five figures they aren't systematically throttling Netflix/AWS. It would make zero sense. There are things providers could do without net neutrality that consumers wouldnt like, this aint one of them

How big of a story is this? If it's getting any press and Verizon is getting negative PR as a result, it's very easy for them: you say "the guy misspoke, we're not throttling anything."

...unless that would be a lie, of course.

In a former life I was a network admin. I have dealt with probably a dozen or so different providers over the years over a hundred times and I could count on one hand the number of times a provider actually admitted fault for basically anything, until I cornered them and could actually show them that, "No, it's NOT our ****ing equipment, the problem is on YOUR END dumbass."

That's what makes this CSR so fascinating to me, it seems he was doing the exact opposite in that story and admitting fault where there was none if Verizon's PR machine is to be believed.

It will be interesting to see if AWS' "issues" suddenly clear up for these customers now that the story is out.

But there's a viable enough list of other reasons that could be happening that we don't just have to assume conspiracy in the fact of common sense.

I can't imagine the CSR is lying, because if Comcast had told their front line CSRs about this in any form, we'd know and it would be news. Make the most sense that the CSR saw the same numbers and made the same assumption.

Id be surprised if the front line chat CSR even understood the question he/she was being asked based on my history of dealing with frontline broadband CSR providers and the entirety of the transcript shown.

But then no one will subscribe to the premium fiber-optic ISP they invested billions in because nobody needs 75Mbps for checking emails.

All this net neutrality bull**** is annoying because people pull this ridiculous theories more or less directly out of their ass, and they make absolutely no economic sense. I went to the grocery store last week and bought a ready-made sub sandwich. They didn't make the sub on stale bread because they were concerned about their sub-sandwich business cannibalizing sales from their grocery business. They just sold me a reasonable quality sub because I was offering them a few dollars for it and they made money on the deal.

The one NN-related conspiracy theory that does make some sense is that it would be nice for Google/Amazon/Netflix if it was illegal for them to compete with each other on quality of service (especially for free services, which can't compete on price). Coincidentally, that's exactly what NN does, and those are exactly the people who support all this NN hysteria.

You forgot the hundreds of millions of consumers that NN also benefits.

So is this going to be another situation where we try to apply ancient legislation in the regulation of new technology? The trends there seems to favor deregulation and corporate control.

Verizon and by extension the ISP's seem to be trying to force this into congress where I assume they think they have an advantage either in a finished product or no movement. Or if they don't like the finished product they can go through the courts again and win big.

I would guess that if you want an ISP with the net neutrality sticker of approval you will have to pay a nice premium, like when you buy organic labeled produce.

This sounds like a typical "the free market will provide it if consumers have a demand" assumption, which is dubious enough in most markets but especially so in a market where providers have near monopolies.

This thread inspired me to look up what options I actually have. As best as I can tell, I can get
- Comcast
- AT&T
- Sonic.net (which might even be utilizing AT&T's network anyway? not sure)

Aaaand that's it. There may be other possible options in the future - this is a local ISP that does wireless broadband and has excellent reviews, but requires line of sight to their antenna and isn't available in my neighborhood - but currently I am beholden to whatever Big Internet wants to give me.

If they find out about it. And if they're consistent enough about it to be obvious. And if there aren't government granted monopolies. And if the competition doesn't have to eventually use Verizon's Tier 1 backbone. And if the market works the way you want it to. Got it. Enjoy that sandwich.

Or... we could pass a net neutrality law. Keep the Wild West wild.