That would basically mean that any government internal IT project would have to be able to work usable on dialup. Government IT contracting is already enough of a disaster.
No, it means they would have to actually care about broadband competition in US and about abuses from the local monopolies, in order to get faster Internet.
>No, it means they would have to actually care about broadband competition in US and about abuses from the local monopolies, in order to get faster Internet
No, it means they'll care even less because they'll be relegated to satellite only rural bullshit internet that has insanity latency, etc.
They will not experience anything relating to Comcast/cable/DSL/telcos in any significant way because the truly out there rural places in the country have far worse connections than a comcast monopoly.
Yep. My parents live a half hour outside Wilmington, NC, and they can't even get Hughes (satellite Internet). They currently pay $90/mo for 2gb of Verizon wireless data. Their only other choice is DirecTV's offering, which is priced similarly and also metered.
On the other hand, my brother in Wilmington has Time Warner, and I can't even SSH out, at least with whatever default setup they hooked him up with.
That'll show those government workers who work for SNAP (food stamps), National Institutes of Health, NASA, and National Science Foundation. Serves 'em right for daring to work for the government. Since the workers in those offices are clearly to blame for the speed at which ISPs deliver internet service. /s
Your argument supposes the affected people will be those who have nothing to do with the problem.
a) The most obvious villains, i.e. the decision makers at the top of the chain of command will be affected directly and indirectly.
b) Even those who aren't directly or indirectly responsible have much more power to influence things than your regular citizen and should be shown how bad this can get.
b) If the company I work for goes belly up I do feel partially responsible for it. If it gets involved in some corruption scheme, I feel ashamed. FCC's empoyees should feel responsible for the doings of the organization they work for and contribute to. They are partly their doing.
c) Immediate effects aside it is a nice form of protesting.
Come on, if Target can predict when a teenager is going to get pregnant, then we can easily keep track of politician's financial lives in however much detail we want. If you want to make a law that says no politician can exceed the median American salary per year, for their entire lives; we can do that. It's just that it won't happen as long as money=power=speech.
And the trackers answer to who, ultimately? Either the politicians themselves, in which case the whole thing is hopelessly corrupt and useless, or some other unelected group, who then become de facto dictators of the country.
> take bribes as well as ensuring only the independently wealthy can be politicians
Those are other, unrelated problems that need to be addressed in their own right, but cannot be used as justification for high pay scale of politicians.
I suspect most high ranking government officials in the US could make significantly more in the private sector so it's hard to claim there's a high scale of pay for politicians -- at least in the US.
Generally they don't unless their doing something illegal. Most politicians are reasonably to very wealthy going into office, and being a high ranking politician basically secures them a high paying position in the private sector afterwards. Many people from the FCC/FDA will go into the telecom/pharmaceutical industries for example. Others will charge huge fees for speaking engagements and appearances. I remember reading Bill Clinton charges in the 10k-50k range for speaches but not sure on the specifics.
So basically no one expects to make money from their paycheck, but rather go into politics for the fame, connections, and other intangibles.
The problem with this is that it limits elected officials to only be already wealthy, because then they can go without a good paycheck. High salaries are important to letting the common person into office (although there are plenty of OTHER factors that stop that from happening).
It doesn't matter, performance is not the only concern. Connections and domain knowledge are even more valuable. Let's say you're Amazon and you pay your CTO a respectable $250k/year. Along comes Microsoft or Google and offers him ten times as much. He's rational so he accepts and take with him all of Amazon's technical secrets to success. Even if there were national regulation capping executive pay in the US, other countries would hire away all of the top players with all their knowledge and connections. It would be a disaster. Is executive pay crazy? Yes, often. But the market supposedly is efficient and the pay is that high for rational reasons in many cases (not all!)
I think this is showing a lack of a link between executive pay and stock performance. It could be the case (though I don't know how you'd measure it) that executive performance improved with pay but just had no discernible impact on stock performance.
All you need to do is break it into two jobs. The first job is a paid actor that collects and enters all business-relevant data into a computer system, then follows exactly the script that the system provides in response. This actor is replaced immediately if he ever tries to deviate from the script. Internally, the system automatically translates the recognizable business symbols into abstract values. The second job is an engineer that optimizes the system for the highest obfuscated profit number.
Also, build in a safeguard to the obfuscator/de-obfuscator program so that the engineer cannot fire himself.
As long as all actions are logged and reviewed by an independent ethics committee (with anonymized data if needed), I like it. It couldn't possibly be worse than the way we do things now.
Sure why not, all they did is take money from willing people called customers. While we're at it let's add...
Basketball, baseball, football, hockey, and soccer players, golfers, Hollywood stars, and successful book authors like Steven King.
These people are so greedy because they make millions a year! All while their viewers/readers/hot dog venders/editors make so much less. It's not fair.
Seriously, I don't understand why people complain about executive pay when the folks I just listed make more for adding less value to the world.
The people who do/did the actual work to get those customers aren't the corporate executives, though: they're the engineers, janitors, sales team, etc. The executives in corporations are generally there because they have connections and/or a generational history of networking to serve as a very high ground from which to "bootstrap" or raise themselves. Not all; in fact some very wealthy owners and executives came from humble, next-to-nothing backgrounds (e.g. Whatsapp); but most--enough to make the generalization not fallacious.
There's absolutely no empirically or rationally supportable argument that executives in general ought to earn even 50 times the lowest-paid employee's wage, much less the 100s of times they currently are. This isn't to say there are no arguments for such a condition, or that there are no specific cases where empirically or rationally supportable arguments exist.
Whether and how others might complain about sports or celebrity personalities is entirely irrelevant to that issue.
A statistical model can't justify high salaries for executives, so it's not rational...so what?
The market has decided what an executive is worth and that's good enough for me. There is no better system. Markets can act irrational because it is the result of human behavior, which is often irrational.
Take all the irrationality out of humans and nothing of great achievement happens. No Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, no Bugatti Veyron, no guys in squirrel suits flying down mountains....
Thanks, but I'll keep my free market with the penalty that some irrationality makes a few people here and there a little more wealthy than they deserve.
Lots of executives around the world make huge profits for their companies and employees, without collecting multimillion dollar salaries for themselves. Since being a millionaire is empirically not required for CEOs, their multimillion dollar salaries could be better used elsewhere.
Because people who're in a position to control company buying are falling over themselves to ensure justice in wages and make sure that people who're in a position to control company buying aren't being overpaid?
Minimum wage for elected officials sounds good on paper. Michael Bloomberg would not mind. However, how does this work for corporate executives? When you say pay does this include stock grants and options or just salary?
Also it arguably opens the doors for corruption. Bloomberg ran on a campaign of "I'm so rich, no one can bribe me." If a non-billionaire politician receives the minimum wage, they could be more susceptible to financial incentives.
No, it does not. The minimum wage is set by elected officials. What do you think will happen when they set the minimum wage to whatever it is they want to be paid?
How about instead, you set their pay to a percentile marker for the income of their constituents, entirely disregarding income received from any government, including those without wage or salary income. For households with spouses and dependants and such, each member has income equal to the total income of the household divided by the number of members.
So if 20% of households have no one working at all (as it is now), elected officials could significantly increase their own pay just by finding a job for just one person in each of those households. Increasing the income of the top 1% would not produce any additional pay.
If 51% of households are broke or on the dole, elected officials paid at 50th %ile would get $0. They get to rely on welfare too, just like everyone else. And really, if that's the case, they're lucky enough to not be paid with bullets to the head for their "service".
I'm actually against this idea, for the simple reason that if that page ends up being delivered via cache somewhere, I don't want them thinking "Well, it says I was throttled, but it actually wasn't that bad. I don't see what all the fuss is about."
The pictures comment lead me to Tom's list of speeches, the latest of which directly contradicts the claims being made here. Are we sure the FCC is the bad guy?
"Let me be clear. If someone acts to divide the Internet between “haves” and “have-nots,” we will use
every power at our disposal to stop it."
"Prioritizing some traffic by forcing
the rest of the traffic into a congested lane won’t be permitted under any proposed Open Internet rule. We
will not allow some companies to force Internet users into a slow lane so that others with special
privileges can have superior service."
I think the FCC's repeated adoption of pro-neutrality regulations are very clear actions. The people who keep knocking them down are the federal courts, and then the FCC keeps setting up new ones framed slightly differently but aimed at achieving the same ends. So, yeah, actions speak louder than words -- and the FCC's actions on net neutrality are pretty consistently in favor of it (just as the words of the majority of commissioners, including the current chair, are.)
The whole "fast lane" idea is based on a couple news outlets reporting of claims of anonymous sources with unspecified qualifications about their interpretation of the content of an unreleased proposal (note also that the original articles weren't actually consistent on their claims, either, as one claimed that the proposal would include a provision allowing for "fast lanes", and one suggesting that the proposal would allow it implicitly because it didn't address the practice at all), claims which have been emphatically denied on the record by Wheeler, whose proposal it is.
Once they've actually published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for public comment, there will be a chance for informed discussion.
Maybe. But this isn't just a question of using the right label. Classifying ISPs as common carriers also subjects them to a pile of other regulations and statutory requirements that were designed for other segments of the telecom industry. I don't think it's obvious that this cure would be better than the disease. It may, indeed, be better for the FCC to go as far as they can without designating ISPs as common carriers, but no farther. This seems to be what the FCC plans to do.
Can anyone shed some light on what the goal here is. I am all for messing with people for no good reason in subtle ways they do not understand but the author clearly has a purpose here? Is this to teach the FCC about net neutrality?
That's the general idea. Show them what life will be like if you're on the internet slow lane in the hopes they'll wake up and realize what it really means. Especially since the branding has become that they really want to create a "fast lane" which actually doesn't sound like such a bad idea until you realize the reality is the exact opposite.
Show them what life will be like if you're on the internet slow lane in the hopes they'll wake up and realize what it really means.
How do we get from "the kind of deal Netflix struck with Comcast will continue to be legal in the future" to "Comcast will start serving web sites to customers paying $50/month at dial-up speeds"?
It's nonsense. Why have so many ostensibly smart people bought into it?
Because Netflix only struck a deal with Comcast because too little Netflix traffic could pass through Comcast. That doesn't hurt Comcast at all, because they have monopoly. It does hurt Netflix, because now they have a bunch of subscribers who can't effectively use their service. People who can't effectively use a service tend to stop paying for it.
So, given that these kinds of deals only happen when service is slow: What's the best way for Comcast to continue to be able to pull these fees in from large services? You're a smart person; I'm sure you can figure it out. Hint: Comcast has not exactly shown reluctance to participate in "traffic shaping" in the past.
Comcast has not exactly shown reluctance to participate in "traffic shaping" in the past.
The only references to Comcast traffic shaping I can find are related to BitTorrent. Did you have something else in mind? And again, what does that have to do with a supposed future of browsing websites at dialup speeds?
But if you target someone that doesn't understand the technology, their response is going to be exactly the opposite: "Look what they did, they should not be able to do that => let's carve out a separate part on the internet for essential services". And now you accomplished exactly the opposite.
I like this concept but think about how the user at the FCC will perceive this. When your internet is slow who do you blame?
1 - The site, i.e. "Yahoo must be getting a lot of traffic today."
2 - Your ISP. ie. "Comcast must be overloaded in my area right now."
3 - Your equipment. i.e. "Maybe I need to restart my wifi / PC"
And then, somewhere way down that list you maybe, just maybe think - "I wonder if there is an organized effort by a small group of developers to set up their sites in such a way that my particular IP here at the FCC is having its speed throttled."
I agree that we need to spread the word about what is at stake with Net Neutrality but I'm not sure if this is the best way.
I could see this backfiring. If this gains any momentum at all, the media response from the ISPs will be obvious: "We appreciate that web developers are embracing their right to throttle certain customers. We're very happy that the FCC has decided to grant ISPs those same privileges."
This doesn't seem like the best outlet to protest the FCC's stance on net neutrality. The people that are going to be affected most by this (if it does work) are going to be the rank and file at the FCC who have no decision making power and only hold a job there. The FCC has 2k employees and most of them don't even work in the relevant bureau that deals with net neutrality.
When news outlets say the "FCC's plan for net neutrality", what they really mean is the plan that Tom Wheeler and his office put together. You're going to hurt the wrong people if you do this and it succeeds. Why not write to your Congressperson instead or think of something that doesn't adversely affect a ton of people who don't have anything to do with the net neutrality debate?
The other way is that we treat the FCC as an entity. We make it tough for that entity to do everything in order to put pressure on the top. It's not like the employees have zero power there. And while it may indeed be near-zero power, I still feel that they have more power as an employee of the FCC than I do as a member of the faceless public. Maybe this will empower a scared employee to come forward and speak out. Or maybe you're right and they do have zero power there, but maybe they'll understand what's at stake and call their representative.
Also, it's not like we're throttling these employee's home connections. We're not slowing down their daughter's access to Wikipedia at home, we're slowing down their connection to Facebook while at work.
> This doesn't seem like the best outlet to protest the FCC's stance on net neutrality
Its not a protest of the FCC's stance on net neutrality, its a protest of a media rumor of the stance of the FCC chair in a proposal under discussion at the FCC that has been denied by the FCC chair. Literally no one at the FCC (well, except maybe the minority on the commission that were overtly opposed to net neutrality before the recent Open Internet Order was struck down) has publicly endorsed anything like the rumored position.
> When news outlets say the "FCC's plan for net neutrality", what they really mean is the plan that Tom Wheeler and his office put together.
But when they say it would "allow a fast lane", they mean that a couple of news outlets had anonymous sources that claimed something like that (which other outlets have grabbed and reported the fact that other outlets have reported it), and Wheeler himself has rather forcefully denied it.
Now we've got some news outlets claiming, based on the original leaks, and not paying attention to later information, that the "fast lane" is part of the FCC proposal, and others, based on assuming the original leaks were completely accurate, but trying to reconcile the later denial into a coherent narrative, that the FCC "reversed course" on the "fast lane" proposal.
Well, yes and no. The FCC is considering a proposed rulemaking that would require ISPs to disclose their policies to consumers, ban blocking of legal content, and prohibit "commercially unreasonable" traffic discrimination. http://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/openinternet.pdf
The specific regulations, of course, have not been drafted, but if these are the only three policies the FCC has in mind, it seems reasonable to infer that the ban on "commercially unreasonable" discrimination, implies that "commercially reasonable" discrimination is permissible. The devil, of course, is in the definition of ""commercially unreasonable." But it seems like there is good reason to worry that this would permit something like a fast lane and, thus, it seems like a good idea for those of us who think this is a bad idea to begin mobilizing.
That all said, I do think that throttling the entire FCC to dialup speeds is a stupid idea. As others have pointed out, this will harm many more people than are actually involved in the regulatory decision in any way, and is unlikely to make a difference in the thinking of the actual regulators in the face of the reams of actually well-thought-out comments they will be receiving from lawyers and internet policy experts.
It also ignores the fact that the "slow-lane," if it does come to exist, is very unlikely to be at anything like dialup speeds. Given the FCC's overall commitment to increased broadband penetration (which has been amply demonstrated, I think) I doubt that anyone at the FCC would be inclined to find such discrimination "commercially reasonable."
If you really want to have an impact, maybe you should band together and write a comment letter.
> But it seems like there is good reason to worry that this would permit something like a fast lane
There might be reason to worry that it could, but to assume that it will and react as if that were an established fact rather than a possibility of concern is not reasonable. Before there is a rule in effect there will be a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which will say exactly what the rules would be and how the FCC intends to apply them, just as there was with the old Open Internet Order.
Sure. I agree with this, of course. But I suppose I don't see the harm in taking action now, even if these are early days, to make our views known. (Though, as I said, I don't like this particular strategy.)
Lobbying in Washington does not begin after an NPR has been issued. Why should we behave differently? The NPR is an important regulatory document because it typically indicates the Commission's favored outcome and plays an important role in framing the debate.
> But I suppose I don't see the harm in taking action now, even if these are early days, to make our views known.
I agree with that -- I just think that the action should be focussed on what regulation should or should not contain, not on treating the regulatory agency involved as an enemy.
> Why should we behave differently?
Attacking people who are decision-makers that have historically been (and overtly still are) supportive of the position you espouse based on media rumors of provisions that might be in a plan that they are preparing is behaving differently than the firms that lobby before a concrete proposal in the form of an NPRM is released. Compare that attacks on Wheeler and the FCC to the Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc. letter.
Writing your rep in Congress is a waste of time with as many form letters they receive pretty much demanding everything under the sun. You would be just easily ignored noise.
If this type of bandwidth throttling limit is to work it would have to target a much larger group than the FCC. The entire federal government might be a start. But management might like that as it would likely lead to increased productivity. One would have to focus on that list of people outside of work somehow.
Maybe a day of slow loading YouTube videos for all the customers of certain ISPs with a banner explaining what's going on.
All in all, I don't think anything like this could work unless you're willing to accidentally suck in a lot of people that are not involved.
>You aren't even sure that will target the right people
Indeed. The FCC tried to promulgate a rule requiring net neutrality, but a Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC lacked statutory authority to do so [1]. So the FCC is powerless unless and until Congress revises the Telecommunications Act of 1996 or otherwise grants the necessary legal authority to the FCC.
Oh I thought about that, but how are you going to target the lobbyists and bad telcos without harming actual customers on those providers who may very well be against this whole debacle.
Government branches likely have a block of IPs while lobbyists I doubt are registered like that :)
Call me a hawk, but I think it makes more sense for content provider who wont be buying their way into the fast lane to pre-emptively rate limit all customers of the major US ISPs.
Content providers that depend on the US may want to synchronize on specific day of the week to limit each ISP, for example Comcast Thursday, while foreign providers can conservatively cut off all of the US so they don't have to worry about missing any future pay networks..
Wouldn't it be awesome to have the major website/companies (like Facebook, Google, MS, Amazon, etc) have a landing page when accessing their site in a style like they did with SOPA but now the whole webpage is unavailable for ~1 minute "due to slowed down traffic" or something. I think that would get the attention of people. (Of course, this should run just for a limited time )
And a bunch of people who don't have time on their hands (staff and faculty) who will probably just go "Fuck you guys, now you're getting in the way of work."
Not if they can't particularly help effect change. "Random departmental secretary trying to book flights" isn't going to write their congressman over your clever code. All you've done is make their day worse.
Does it come with a message that says tongue in cheek that you're on the "slow lane", and they should upgrade to the fast lane? Otherwise they may just think that site is slow.
Think bigger. What if Google implemented something like this to prove a point? This is a genius idea, it goes beyond your standard Internet activism which is usually words and no action.
Would be funny if porn sites implemented this. If FCC employees are like other federal departments there's a good chance that's how they spend a lot of their time[1].
Kind of a specious leap to cite an article with a linkbait headline and lace it with words like "good chance" and "a lot of their time"
TFA cites a few isolated cases and sensationalizes it. The government is the biggest employer in the United States; a few dozen does not an epidemic make.
I'd be willing to bet Tom Wheeler and the "higher ups" of the FCC are not at the office a majority of the time.
It would be sweet if businesses in the service industry (like lets say Manny's) had pics of the top X guys at the FCC in their kitchen. See one of them walk in - just delay their service ;)
A friend of mine who interned at the FCC says the commissioners are almost always around in their offices.
It's not like the FCC pays amazingly well and these guys are sitting on beaches. The commissioners each earn $155,500 a year (they are level IV on the executive schedule).
This is a foolish, dangerous game to play. You know, there are probably just as many people in the government who are trying to win the fight for the people.
What you really want is to identify the browsers of actual users in decision making capability, and target them. Surely, with the level of user tracking going on these days, this is a feasible concept.
I don't think the entire FCC, and all of their employees are really out to get you and I. A few maybe but I think it's somewhat too broad an approach to punish the few by punishing everyone associated with the FCC.
Their IT staff probably doesn't deserve this either.
This doesn't seem very productive. As Gandhi once said, "Hate the sin not the sinner". This is not even punishing the sinner, who are not your everyday public workers but likely some lobbying corp.
