G&M: What the U.S. net-neutrality repeal means for Americans and Canadians (2017-Dec-15)

why should someone who browses a few websites and sends some e-mail pay the same for their internet as someone who streams high definition videos 24/7 ? why should a website/company who provides low bandwidth service pay the same as a provider like netflix who hogs the whole network? at least they were trying to charge netflix directly instead of passing it on to every consumer

Net Neutrality is supported by 80% or more of Americans in polls. The simplest way to undertand what it means…think of duckduckgo.com - that is the search engine I prefer to use because they don’t retain any information or track you or put cookies on your browser.

Without net neutrality, smaller search engines will be marginalized because they don’t pay the ISPs (telecom companies) very much. Eventually duckduckgo will be extremely slow to use and Google will be flying. Losing net neutrality means there will never be any competition or alternative to the behemoths like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc, etc.

I absolutely love EFF, they are unsung heroes, a great organization worthy of our support IMO.

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Exactly. Different issues. So what does a proposed “free speech” law have to do with it.

They don’t. I’m pretty sure @oranje covered this in on of his previous posts. High bandwidth content providers already pay for the bandwidth that they use just like high bandwidth end users.

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wow they have bandwidth caps in the states? lol i really don’t know what i’m talking about. in canada everyone gets unlimited bandwidth and pays for transfer speeds (i.e. 150mb/s, 1gb/s etc).

and they are not separate issues, they are maybe 2 issues that are inseparably entwined


removal of net neutrality rules will allow ISPs to censor certain traffic based on it’s content, this legislation will prevent it. it seems like every other state is already implementing legislation which will accomplish the same things as net neutrality. which IMO is better than giving full control to the fcc.

So getting rid of net neutrality is good why exactly???

Let me rephrase a major argument used against net neutrality. Instead of “net neutrality” I’m going to use a random term. The random term is going to be “murder”

  1. “Murder” is illegal.
  2. Someone got “murdered” once… therefore the law against “murder” is ineffective.
    4 “Murder” should be made legal.

I will back up @oranje here that those companies “netflix, google, facebook” don’t necessarily hog the “whole network” per say, but its what most people use their internet for now a days and is also the reason why we have the bandwidth and options available now compared to the past. Do you remember 56k modem days, imagine this site now on those speeds, it would just be txt only with the odd picture that would take a couple minutes to load. Or how about streaming music which i use everyday, i remember when napster first came out and you could download a song in 15-30min if you were lucky. Our use of the services have caused isp’s to increase and update their infrastructure in order for us to get the services we want, and in doing so retain us as customers and they have profited greatly from this.

All this net neutrality removal does is just allows US based isp to put more money in their pocket in the end. They already have the money and have routinely increased and updated their infrastructure consistently to allow them to retain us as customers. Think of it this way from their perspective it is now considerably cheaper to run fiberoptic infrastructure straight to a person’s home and or business than it is to run or maintain older copper base infrastructure on just the going price of copper alone. So a lot of companies are replacing all there old infrastructure because it’s actually cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain, takes less energy to run like for like, is less susceptible to outside influences, and it provides almost infinitely more bandwidth over old copper based solutions. So ISP’s saying that oh they have to build all this infrastructure to support what we want is true, but they are doing it solely because it makes them more profit. I will say though there is a lot higher risk of loss of service though due to how much traffic can go over even a single fiber, but there are redundancies in place for that reason.

Also as stated these companies do “frequently” co locate equipment in ISP locations specifically for caching purposes to reduce big trunk traffic between points so the whole isp’s claiming they take up so much bandwidth is kinda in misnomer in those regards, also those companies lease space and pay for the ability to do so, so the ISP is also profiting off of that, apart from freeing up bandwidth as well, its really a two birds with one stone situation. You actually might be surprised of how much is actually in place already, example if i’m watching netflix’s at home i know im accessing a cache server that’s only about 3km away, and it occasionally gets updated for new content out of a major US node such as seattle for example, and the same goes for google and facebook in my case for any content that it regularly viewed by users, as thats what gets pushed to those cache points.

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:thinking:

It’s too hard for me to wrap my head around this hypocrisy. Net Neutrality is GOVERNMENT OVERREACH because of all that burdensome regulation like “you cannot block content.” However, it’s PROTECTING FREEDOM if the government steps in to prevent private companies from managing the content they host on their services. The government must step in and force these companies to be the platform for reprehensible views and toxic ideas. Sure, the company will lose users and revenue… but at least every public platform will a steaming pool of sewage because Freedom of Speech.

Through the power of hyperbole: please welcome Overgrow’s newest troll, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He and his troll army are here to spread the gospel about the dangers of marijuana. Please enjoy his freedom of speech with maximum intensity.

Love it. Let’s hold hands and go towards this future together.

Then again, a future without the internet sounds pretty appealing in a lot of ways. It’s fun to trade pictures of marijuana plants with you fine chaps, but before the internet, I’d rarely get in arguments with Canadians about US regulations that arguably have no impact on their lives :grin:

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