[GRLUG] NOT LINUX - net neutrality

[Michael Mol]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 3:03 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 2:50 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > To constrain the conversation
>> > a little bit, I'd be talking about
>> > home service here.  Others might
>> > be talking about their place of work,
>> > where the cost picture can be yet
>> > different.
>>
>> Only in terms of how much money they have available to spend, and
>> sometimes not even there. If you want to divide the market into two
>> players*, "consumers" and "businesses", you need to recognize that
>> ISPs which cater to one group will offer different services than what
>> cater to the other group. Getting enterprise services for consumer
>> prices is not fiscally sustainable, and Net Neutrality has been all
>> about forcing enterprise ISP properties on consumer ISPs.
>>
>> * And this alone is a false dichotomy; they both have to deal with the
>> same thing upstream, the distinction is how they manage to pay for it
>> by charging downstream. Your real problem is that you see yourself as
>> somehow different from a business in terms of options.
>>
>
> Are you sure it's false?  If Comcast
> plays games with BitTorrent on my
> link to some remote server, does
> some company with a higher priced
> ISP, or its own wires,  suffer the
> same fate?

This is a vague scenario. What's the nature of the BT swarm? Whose is
the remote server? What company are we talking about?

Let's narrow it down to the best real-world case I can think of. Let's
say the BT swarm is a World of Warcraft update, the remote server is
another WoW player, and Some Company is Blizzard.

Are they harmed? Plausibly; they employed BT as a content distribution
mechanism. Comcast's interference reduces the efficiency of the BT
swarm, but it doesn't really defeat its utility. The data still gets
through. That's what BT is good at. Perhaps Blizzards central trackers
and seed servers are a little harder hit. Not really a substantive
problem.

A more straightforward example might be if Comcast were to interfere
with traffic coming from Youtube or Netflix. Truth be told, they'd be
shooting themselves in the head; people would flock over to AT&T's
ADSL or VDSL. Mobile data companies might leap onto the opportunity
and promote 'unlimited data' plans in those areas, and steal away
Comcast's customers. Comcast can't get away with cutting out traffic
people actually care about, period. The best they can do is provide an
alternative that's more compelling, so that people stop caring about
the filtered traffic.

> As for my problem, let's stick with the
> issues...  Technology and business
> rather than psychology and innuendo.

Honestly, I've discovered you can't spend much time in this without
getting into economics and politics. You can dance around it or ignore
it, but then you're just talking past each other, operating on
different core assumptions.

Otherwise, I'd be happy to call you out every time you engage in
rhetoric, psychology and innuendo. I prefer reasoned debate, with
discoverable, understandable positions.

-- 
:wq

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