cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/31761131
Cliff’s notes: Team GOP prevailed, the people lost on netneutrality. The only thing you can do now is cancel your broadband… something very few people have the will power to do.
I suppose the reason they did not take it to the supreme court is Trump managed to stack that court in favor of the right-wing nutjobs. So if the case goes there, it will do the GOP’s bidding to favor big business over the people and enter an oppressive decision that is even harder to correct in the future.
(note this story was originally on Ars Technica but that site is enshitified so I found a less enshitified source to link – something more fedi posters should do)
The analog service is capped by physics, not business. If you have a 56k modem, it doesn’t matter that netneutrality capped domestic service 1Mbit b/c dial-up service can’t reach that anyway. The netneutrality changed the business in a way that harms residential broadband customers who will get service that is artificially reduced by business practices (not by physics). Netneutrality is not going to cause dial-up customers to lose even more performance. If anything, they might even fair better because the ISP will be able to bring in more profits which could increase the effect of subsidy from higher payers. It certainly will not be detrimental to dial-up customers.
Actually that very thing is happening where I am, because the injection rates are so much lower than consumption rates that it’s very interesting for someone to sell their excess solar power to their neighbor than to the grid. The neighbor who buys that excess is not buying from the grid.
Likewise, my folks have broadband as well as their neighbor. Both homes use very little of their allowance. So if one cancels and shares with the other, the revenue from the two homes to the ISP will cut in half, but both households will experience no performance loss.
The reason they won’t do it because they erroneously think it is somehow morally wrong. But in fact I was surprised to find that it’s not against the ToS.
What taxes? Are you assuming I have a job and pay income tax?
It will not. Just like with my folks, the library already has more than enough broadband for the few people who use it. It can take a big hit… it can even lose 75% of its current speed and I will be fine.
Even if a notable portion of the neighborhood did the same thing, and the library was forced to upgrade, that upgrade would cost less than the aggregate total of all the households who cancel their service because more of the underutilised but compensated bandwidth would go to use.
For the past several months, the ISP has received zero from me. I have noticed no change in the library’s Internet service since I became a more regular user. So there was no shift in funding AFAICT.
It matters because the service provider can dictate costs at both ends of the connection independent of the amount of data. AT&T can force Proton mail to pay them more to pass the data along and not charge Gmail for the same data.
Buying solar from a neighbor is not paying a neighbor to use their power company provided power. The library isn’t an independent network. They are using the same Internet that is hurt by a lack of net neutrality.
There are other taxes than income tax like sales tax. Besides not paying doesn’t change anything when you are still using it, “I don’t pay for electricity to save the environment. I use my neighbors who pay the electric company. They let me connect for free.”
You doing it alone doesn’t hurt the library like you throwing trash on the ground in public isn’t an environmental disaster. The article is about EVERYONE doing it. If everyone used the public library internet, they’d have to increase their service. ISP’s already oversell bandwidth. A neighborhood of 100 homes each with 1Gbs service doesn’t have a 100Gbs connection. When I ran and ISP, it was 20 to 1. We’d monitor bandwidth and everyone got “full bandwidth” because statistically everyone wasn’t simultaneously using the full bandwidth. It’s the same bandwidth for the provider whether there are separate under-utilized lines at homes or a giant pipe at the library.
Which doesn’t matter because a lack of Net Neutrality still hurts everyone whether they use the library or use it at home.
“I throw my trash on the sidewalk and it’s gone the next day. It’s not a problem.”
This is to the benefit of narrowband users, who are at the bottom of the spectrum and would pay the least of all tiers. Recall that you originally said it’s a problem for everyone, not just broadband users.
The point was that the local energy supplier has lower revenue. They don’t recuperate the loss of neighbors colluding to buy less of their supply. e> There are other taxes than income tax like sales tax. Besides not paying doesn’t change anything when you are still using it, “I don’t pay for electricity to save the environment. I use my neighbors who pay the electric company. They let me connect for free.”
I’m not sure how you’re not grasping this. If Bob sells excess solar power to Alice for less than the grid power, that’s strictly a loss for the energy company. It’s not a zero-sum scenario. The energy company does not recover that lost business.
Of course. And hurting the library is not the goal or idea anyway. So no problem there.
The problem is with this claim:
First of all, libraries have fixed budgets. They cannot simply upgrade on a whim. Even if they do upgrade, there is still less /fat/ (oversold bandwidth). Library management is more clever than you think. When demand and supply curves start to cross, the library brings in quotas. PC users have a 2 hour timer, or more, depending on supply and demand. People who get cut off for the day have generally accomplished everything necessary by then anyway… they are just watching videos for amusement or doom scrolling, in which case no real compromise with sending them home.
You seem to have a chance at understanding considering you’re aware of this much. That oversell shrinks as people share (which is effectively the same as using the library). IOW, the fat that lines their pockets shrinks.
If you’re willing to acknowledge that netneutrality is harmful, then you should be boycotting. The boycott action is using your consumer power to push back. If you do not boycott, then you are the one supporting it. You are then part of the problem.
For this analogy to work, it would be a case where I am the only one on my block littering, and I stop, so the street cleaner no longer needs to traverse my street. The street cleaner would lose revenue due to being paid by traversal distance. I would then be putting my litter on another block, by this analogy. And that other block would be routinely littered anyway, so the street cleaner would still get paid for the other block but not for mine. And since he is not paid by weight, but by distance, his net revenue is less. He can try to increase his prices per kilometer if he wants, but that has consequences. His competitors may not allow it. And governments have budgets.
Also realise that I have been offline for several days now, since libraries were closed the past few days and I did not have access. So my consumption is less as a consequence of this lifestyle of boycotting. Even if the library were open 24/7, I’m not going to stream Netflix or something in the library like I would at home. So my consumption drops inherently in the change.
No because their ability to charge is no longer based on usage but on how much they feel like they want to extort. A tier 1 can cut off Proton or whomever in favor of Google/Microsoft. You could lose free email because the hosting company can’t pay the tier 1 rates. That you paid for bandwidth to your local ISP doesn’t matter. Anyone in-between (which is all the tier 1’s) are now free to collude, degrade or even block packets. Even a degrade would hurt you more. 20% degrade of a 56k connection is huge. 20% of a gigabit connection is unnoticed because 800mbs is more than anyone needs. It’s similar to flat taxes. A billionaire can pay millions because they have hundreds of millions more that won’t impact their lifestyle.
I specifically referenced not using solar. Using your neighbor’s power means the neighbor pays more. You using the public library increases the library costs. It’s tiny but it is there. If everyone did it it would be significant.
They are paid by taxes to keep the streets clean. It’s not distance or weight. If there is more littering, more street cleaners would be needed.
That’s a fair point.
That’s not how capitalism works. The market does not simply tolerate whatever price they “feel like they want”.
Of course. It would be the same as discontinuing the service. There is no business case for downgrading a 56k connection. They either leave the business and give their market share to the competition, or the 56k goes at the speed physics will allow. There is no amount of bandwidth loss dial-up patrons will accept, and also no amount that can be re-allocated to a broadband VIP customer that would be noticed. Makes no sense.
It does not. The neighbor also uses their own supply. Using the neighbor yields less revenue to the company. The injection is a cash cow for the energy company, who resells it for 10× what they pay. Paying the neighbor for their solar is a total loss for the energy company. They lose the cheap power they would get at a cheap injection rate, and they also lose the sale of power to you. The energy company gets less money than they do if neighbors do not collude.
It does not. It’s a flat rate. Unless you are talking about energy. Indeed I use library a/c power, which (unlike Internet) is charged at a measured rate.
Internet is not a measured rate service. It’s a flat fee and budget-capped.
To be significant would be to encroach on budgets. As I said, libraries in my area are clever enough not to blow budgets. Some libraries have timers and quotas to control consumption – control that is not in play on domestic subscriptions.
Not at all. The guy pulls along an industrial vacuum. He does not have to pull that machine down my street if I am the only one who was littering, and I divert my litter to a street that is already littered. Moving my litter from an otherwise unlittered block to an already littered block has the opposite effect that you claim. Less road coverage requires fewer workers. If everyone in the city puts all their litter on one block instead of scattering it, many street cleaners can be sent home.
This is in fact also necessary for your analogy to be accurate. If concentrating the same qty of litter in a smaller space were by some management’s incompetence lead to more cleaners, then the analogy does not accurately reflect the telecom service.
When you are a unregulated monopoly that’s exactly how it works. This is a regulation that was removed.
The 56k isn’t the target. Your connection to your ISP continues to be 56k. The tier 1 that your dial up ISP connects to can now play favorites. They can get paid by Reddit to degrade Lemmy traffic. Physics has nothing to do with it.
So it does affect everyone.
More trash on one street means that more service runs would be needed in a day. If the truck fills up and the street isn’t finished, another truck must come. If more trash didn’t require more clean up in an area, then no special service would be needed after large festivals- regular daily service would handle it.
No, it’s not. Consumers still have a choice in an unregulated “monopoly”. Also, “monopoly” is not the correct word, hence the quotes. You’re speaking emotionally because you don’t like the options. Even if there were a monopoly hypothetically, people still have the choice in the US to abstain from subscribing.
Consumers typically have a choice between cable, DSL, fiber, WISP, satellite, dial-up, freeloading (libraries, universities, hacker spaces, cafes, etc), or no service at all (which is the most important option of all).
Your distorted view that a capitalist market does not control pricing is based in part on your misperception of monopoly.
Doesn’t matter. No Lemmy throttling is falling below 56k. Hence why physics matters (it’s the only bottleneck of concern to dial-up users).
Of course. Boycotts are inherently sacrificial. Why would think otherwise?
It takes 2—4 people to clean up in under 2 hours precisely because automation and machines become economically viable.
Take that same litter and scatter it city-wide. 4 cleanup workers can’t even walk the whole city, or even jog the city, much less pick anything up. It does not make sense to use a shovel to pick up a cigarette butt. They use meter-long tongs. They aim the tip to straddle the cigarette butt, pinch. Sometimes I drops as they lift it, and they have to have another go. One item at a time. Then they walk ~2 meters for the next cigarette butt. A shovel for each piece of litter is too heavy and expends too much energy. So tongs makes sense for scattered litter.
When event trash is concentrated, one man’s shovel load does the work of 50 people scattered around the city. All those people need breaks too. It requires a staff of hundreds to cleanup a city-wide scattering of the same amount of litter, and still that’s over the course of multiple days. So you are off by at least 2 orders of magnitude.
Your dial up provider does not have an end to end connection. Tier 1 isps sit in-between all traffic. It doesn’t matter what dial up/cable/DSL provider you switch to because they all route through the same tier 1 providers.
Your suggestion to don’t use the Internet was refuted at the very start when I explained that some government services, in particular schools, require internet for communication.
Lemmy isn’t throttled because no one is paying them to do so. They can now legally throttle it below 56k. Physics has absolutely nothing to do with it.
If the electric company shuts off your electricity, the physics of your led light bulbs using less energy means nothing.
Because up until now you argued the opposite.
Irrelevant to your original argument that there was no effect. Which is besides the point because you already gave up arguing that your library use wouldn’t affect everyone of everyone did it. -Which doesn’t make it an option given that Internet is required by some government agencies such as schools.
Your attempt failed when you failed to realise the reduction in revenue. They lose my subscription fee but the library does not have to pay the difference in excess of their costs.
Then your claim was bogus to begin with. I addressed the /potential/ scenario that you suggested; I never claimed that your suggestion was reality, just that it was flawed.
It’s not the law the prevents the throttling. It’s the marketplace. The physical limit is low enough that it is the min tolerance the market will accept. Physical limits and marketplace limits are relevant, but legal rights to throttle are irrelevant when the dialup market won’t accept less than physical limits.
I never claimed a boycott is not sacrificial. I have advocated for boycotting, but that does not mean it’s not a sacrifice. Hence why I mentioned will power in the OP. Boycotts have consequences, which I accept.
Your analogy has failed you. Your litter analogy supports the reality contrary to your thesis. Revenue is reduced when people consolidate their consumption with fewer flat-rate subscriptions. Just as litter cleanup has reduced costs in concentrations that need less infrastructure.