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#27 Apr 05 2017 at 6:23 PM Rating: Good
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While I'm generally a strong proponent of privacy rights, I do think that this particular order was a huge over reach, which didn't really do much to improve privacy, but merely re-classified things into different buckets and heaped a ton more government regulations into the pot. I also found it very interesting that they lumped in a set of network layer aspects of a users activities as "CPNI" which is protected from sharing (but then makes inconsistent exceptions for, say IP addresses which kinda have to be shared to work). While not explicitly stated in the document (which, let's face it, I skimmed at best), my usual concern about absurd network neutrality rules being adopted becomes present here. If network layer stuff is "protected" (like say, the application type, packet type, source and destination info, etc), then it becomes much easier under this change to declare any sort of packet based sorting as illegal, because the ISP is barred from sharing that information with third parties.

I'll also point out another objection I've raised with this sort of thing in the past. While the rules prohibit the ISP from sharing this with third parties, it does not at all prohibit them from using that information internally, nor within the context of content that they provide. The net effect could easily be handing a huge content advantage to the local provider since, as both Service and Content provider, that company can use network layer CPNI to shape network traffic to make their content work better than a potential competitor operating outside the range of the ISP (or BIAS) as they call it in the document.

Seems like it's more about providing a legal groundwork for ISPs to raise prices (and pad profits) by being "required" to provide additional security for their customers, while simultaneously providing them a competitive advantage to market content to their customers. The fact that the regulations actually acknowledge the issue of many customers having little or no choice about their service provider, while proceeding to lump a ton of regulation that will only increase costs to those same consumers (with, again, little or no choice), just seems to be about giving those ISPs the opportunity to raise those prices without having to worry about normal market forces preventing it.

There's pretty much zero in there that actually increases the existing laws regarding privacy when using the internet. So yeah. Bad regulation, pushed in during a lame duck administration period, more or less in the dead of night? Probably a good idea to eliminate it. Then maybe look at actual problems with network privacy and adopt legislation addressing just those things. Just dumping the entire thing into the realm of a new agency, and shoving the square peg of internet service providers into the round hole of a nearly century old set of laws regulating telephone companies, just seems like a really really bad idea.
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#28 Apr 05 2017 at 7:42 PM Rating: Good
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Hey guys, Gbaji is setting aside his usual feelings to go along with the "Obama is bad; Republicans are good" camp! Are you all surprised? I know I'm surprised.
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#29 Apr 05 2017 at 8:08 PM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Hey guys, Gbaji is setting aside his usual feelings to go along with the "Obama is bad; Republicans are good" camp! Are you all surprised? I know I'm surprised.


I've opposed the idea of redefining ISPs as falling under the telecommunication carrier laws since long before either of us had ever even heard of Obama Joph. I get that it's easier for you to see this in terms of support or opposition of a person or group, but for me, it really is and always has been based on the actual proposed legal change.
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#30 Apr 05 2017 at 8:54 PM Rating: Decent
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Do you know how Gbaji burned his mouth?

He was eating that pizza long before any of us had ever even heard of it!
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#31 Apr 05 2017 at 10:15 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
I get that it's easier for you to see this in terms of support or opposition of a person or group, but for me, it really is and always has been based on the actual proposed legal change.

You're adorable because you probably believe that.
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#32 Apr 06 2017 at 7:19 AM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
You're adorable because you probably believe that.
Obviously it's just a coincidence that it happens 100% of the time.
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#33 Apr 06 2017 at 6:10 PM Rating: Good
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I did hear a thing on fox about how the privacy protection legislation was government overreach, and as expected, it came into this thread through a man who does not even watch news.
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#34 Apr 06 2017 at 8:51 PM Rating: Good
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Timelordwho wrote:
I did hear a thing on fox about how the privacy protection legislation was government overreach, and as expected, it came into this thread through a man who does not even watch news.


So because an opinion is mentioned on Fox, that must be the only source for that opinion?

It's almost like there isn't a section at the bottom of the pdf I linked which contains dissenting opinions (and describes the regulation as government overreach). Oh wait! There is. But let's ignore that and assume "parroting what someone on Fox said", instead. Or, and this is just crazy, maybe notice that I've posted this exact opinion about net neutrality proposals (in this case, wrapped in a not very believable privacy burrito), for like a decade and a half on this forum, and conclude that maybe my opinions predate someone's statement on Fox last week, or someone's dissent written last year. And even, for those decent at math, the entire Obama administration itself.

Shocking, isn't it?
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#35 Apr 06 2017 at 10:13 PM Rating: Decent
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Awfully defensive, Gbaji. He literally said you don't watch news.
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#36 Apr 07 2017 at 7:14 AM Rating: Good
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Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
He literally said you don't watch news.
It's all fake, except the stuff that coincidentally happen to agree with his narrative. Which is also coincidental it just happens to be Fox News 100% of the time.
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#37 Apr 07 2017 at 4:27 PM Rating: Good
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Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
Awfully defensive, Gbaji. He literally said you don't watch news.


He's free to say whatever he wants. I ignored it because it's just silly fluff.

Um... But in this specific case, I read the link in the OP, searched for the text of the original FCC change,and read that, then formed an opinion and wrote it in my post. I have not read, watched, or listened to a single thing about this except what has been linked to on this thread. Crazy isn't it?
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#38 Apr 10 2017 at 8:46 AM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:
Crazy isn't it?
That after "a decade and a half" you still believe no one recognizes your patterns?
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#39 Apr 10 2017 at 10:04 AM Rating: Good
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angrymnk wrote:
Politicians write the darndest op-eds. They never cease to amuse and, at times, amaze me. ISPs and search engines are the same, Obama broke it all, and all you prole chicken littles better stop whining, because it simply does not make sense to the ruling class.

Fascinating read.
I liked this part the best:

Quote:
Others argue that ISPs should be treated differently because consumers face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace. But that claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny either. For example, according to one industry analysis, Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market), whereas Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market.
Not even sure where to start on that one... Smiley: rolleyes

Bye bye wild west of the internet you will be missed. On the plus side at least once everyone realized everyone else uses search engines to look for **** maybe we can all stop being shocked by it. But first, scandals I'm hoping.

Lots of them.

Smiley: popcorn
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#40 Apr 10 2017 at 1:56 PM Rating: Good
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Sure, I'm looking forward to seeing people's lives fall apart because they have sex the wrong way.
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#41 Apr 10 2017 at 2:32 PM Rating: Excellent
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They won't be ruined. Well maybe the first few won't go so well, but then it's just like reading about another one of Clinton's or Weiner's escapades. Saturation becomes a thing, and we're all like "meh, so what if Ivanka Trump likes watching dolphins rape each other, everyone has their kinks" and move on with life.

Edit: Wait... sex is censored but rape isn't? Seriously? Smiley: dubious

Edited, Apr 10th 2017 1:36pm by someproteinguy
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#42 Apr 10 2017 at 2:42 PM Rating: Good
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Eh, I know people who suffered 6 digit damages from legal battles against things that were not illegal, so I'm somewhat sensitized to it.
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#43 Apr 10 2017 at 3:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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It's in isolation, which is a problem. Like a bandaid, it hurts more when you do it a little at a time, gotta rip the whole thing off at once. If it only comes out that Ivanka watches dolphin rape videos, it's a problem. If her name is on a list of 29,374,908 people that watched the same video, including several other notable people, then suddenly nobody cares quite so much.

Nobody really cares about nude pictures of a new actress like they did 15-20 years ago. it's not going to ruin a career. These days it's not at all surprising if they have a fully-stocked pornhub account.

Times change.

Edited, Apr 10th 2017 2:00pm by someproteinguy
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#44 Apr 10 2017 at 6:46 PM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
I liked this part the best:

Quote:
Others argue that ISPs should be treated differently because consumers face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace. But that claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny either. For example, according to one industry analysis, Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market), whereas Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market.
Not even sure where to start on that one... Smiley: rolleyes


It's written in a bit of a mangled style, but my take is that they were pointing out that when dealing with how to help protect online user's privacy, it's not necessarily valid to focus only on the number of options available to a user, but also on the resulting choices users make. If 95% of all searches on the internet are run through google, and you're concerned about how user search histories might be used in ways that infringe their privacy, it kinda makes sense to focus your efforts on google searches first and then maybe worry about the broadband providers. They were pointing out that the changes made last year actually does it the other way around, focusing the most effort on the service providers while doing little or nothing about where most of us are actually most vulnerable (online social media and search engines). That's where information that might be valuable to a third party is most likely to be generated.

And that's not to mention that since you pay directly for your ISP, there's always some form of use agreement involved, including privacy agreements, which are already governed by the agency that has historically managed privacy agreements between consumers and businesses, the Federal Trade Commission. Ironically, by moving ISPs from the FTC to the FCC, they actually reduced the applicable privacy rules and regulations, and just kinda made up some new ones that almost certainly would not have the same effect.

You don't have an FTC regulated business relationship with google, btw. Or with Facebook. Or almost any "service" on the internet (unless you pay for it, of course). So the previous changes were very poorly aimed, and as I mentioned earlier, almost certainly had little to actually do with privacy, and more to do with increasing government regulation on *how* broadband providers operate (hence my comment about wrapping long sought after net neutrality rules into a bogus privacy burrito).

Turning that bad regulatory change back to where it was previously is actually a really good thing.

Quote:
Bye bye wild west of the internet you will be missed. On the plus side at least once everyone realized everyone else uses search engines to look for **** maybe we can all stop being shocked by it. But first, scandals I'm hoping.


Which is strange because if anything, this restores the "wild wild west" of the internet that you're going to miss. The previous regulation changes, which this change is undoing, is what was going to break the old status quo.

That's not to say that there may not be a need for further regulation on service providers for the purpose of online privacy, but that's not what the previous changes did, nor does this undoing of that change affect that either. It's just setting things back to the previous state.

Quote:
Lots of them.

Smiley: popcorn


No more than there were previously. Because, all this change is doing is putting things back the way they were prior to the changes last year. So I'm not sure why there's massive crying about privacy here, but total silence when the actual harmful regulation was put in place last year.
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#45 Apr 10 2017 at 7:26 PM Rating: Good
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I don't care if google is giving me better ads when I use their service. I can choose to use to use DDG instead if it bothers me. I don't need to use social media, and can curate the content which goes there.

ISPs are usually regional monopolies or at best oligopolies. I cannot use the internet for any purpose without them. They also have access to far more personal information, by virtue of it all traveling over their wires, whereas google only sees a fraction.

As a computer engineer, the fact that you don't see this rather basic distinction is frankly shocking.

ISPs have also recently done another shitty thing which is traffic shaping, in which they look at content and choose how fast to serve it, essentially allowing them to pick winners and losers in the market, and I don't trust them not to use this purely for personal enrichment.

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#46 Apr 10 2017 at 8:46 PM Rating: Good
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Timelordwho wrote:
ISPs are usually regional monopolies or at best oligopolies. I cannot use the internet for any purpose without them. They also have access to far more personal information, by virtue of it all traveling over their wires, whereas google only sees a fraction.


Er, yes and no. The personal information your ISP has about you (your name, address, SSN, email address, and whatever contact/payment info you provide as part of being their customer) is already covered/protected by existing business law. The same FTC laws which prohibit your bank from handing out information about you, or your credit card company from doing the same, or the vendor you purchased something from, etc, etc, apply to your ISP. Again, ironically, moving the regulations from the FTC to the FCC for ISPs and only ISPs could actually result in fewer legal protections for customers, not more. Hence my suggestion that this wasn't ever really about privacy protections in the first place. That was just the smoke screen they used to cover for the move.

For completions sake, the stuff that *isn't* protected are exactly the sorts of online activities that google and facebook are more likely to collect about you. And yes, I suppose your ISP could also trap that data, but it's actually harder for them to do so, and they aren't nearly as poised, market wise, to actually use it. It's not an all or nothing situation here, but the point is that to single out ISPs for new/different rules, while claiming you're making a change to improve privacy for online users, is pretty darn misleading. Which was also the point of the editorial linked earlier.

Quote:
As a computer engineer, the fact that you don't see this rather basic distinction is frankly shocking.


I do see this distinction. And as a computer engineer, I also understand what that distinction actually means in terms of actual privacy concerns and where the loopholes are in our existing laws, and how those loopholes may be exploited by each party involved, based on how the actual technology operates.

Quote:
ISPs have also recently done another shitty thing which is traffic shaping, in which they look at content and choose how fast to serve it, essentially allowing them to pick winners and losers in the market, and I don't trust them not to use this purely for personal enrichment.


Uh huh. And this is the far more complicated actual issue at hand here, not the BS privacy excuse being trotted out in front of us.

And even within the correct context, there's a whole lot of fear mongering and false BS that gets tossed around. There are a boatload of very good, and arguably necessary reasons for ISPs (broadband providers as a whole) to engage in "traffic shaping". Hitting the entire thing with a giant mallet is an incredibly naive approach, and in most cases will cause far more harm to the functioning of the internet than good. Again though, I've made this argument several times in the past in several different net neutrality threads. I don't really feel like re-hashing them here. My point is that this move was always about imposing NN restrictions, under the guise of "privacy protection". So basically, they couldn't win the NN argument on its own merits, so they just changed the label and pretended it was being done for a different, even more BS, reason.
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#47 Apr 11 2017 at 12:18 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:

It's written in a bit of a mangled style.


Smiley: lolSmiley: laughSmiley: oyvey


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#48 Apr 11 2017 at 7:21 AM Rating: Decent
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Timelordwho wrote:
As a computer engineer, the fact that you don't see this rather basic distinction is frankly shocking.
Is it really that shocking?
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#49 Apr 11 2017 at 10:26 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
I liked this part the best:

Quote:
Others argue that ISPs should be treated differently because consumers face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace. But that claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny either. For example, according to one industry analysis, Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market), whereas Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market.
Not even sure where to start on that one... Smiley: rolleyes


It's written in a bit of a mangled style, but my take is that they were pointing out that when dealing with how to help protect online user's privacy, it's not necessarily valid to focus only on the number of options available to a user, but also on the resulting choices users make.
I'm not sure we're on the same point here. To clarify my "Smiley: rolleyes" was based on the following things:

1) Since when does mobile internet = broadband? Smiley: dubious

2) When people are complaining about lack of choice in the marketplace they're usually upset someone like Comcast is the only person who can bring premium high-speed service to their address, with other options such as phone line, satellite, or mobile service only offering lower speeds on data transfers, and forming more of low-quality service option, instead of direct competition.

3) That somehow having the 4 top carriers in the USA (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T) take up ~75% of the market share is better, as if an oligopoly is going to offer them drastically better service, or not want to harvest their personal data for business use. Your phone isn't exactly a bastion of privacy either for that matter.

gbaji wrote:
Quote:
Bye bye wild west of the internet you will be missed. On the plus side at least once everyone realized everyone else uses search engines to look for **** maybe we can all stop being shocked by it. But first, scandals I'm hoping.


Which is strange because if anything, this restores the "wild wild west" of the internet that you're going to miss. The previous regulation changes, which this change is undoing, is what was going to break the old status quo.
I doubt search engines, websites, and other misc. internet-based businesses, the government, etc are going to stop tracking browsing history, web traffic information, and gathering misc. personal data just because we eased regulations a bit.

gbaji wrote:
So I'm not sure why there's massive crying about privacy here, but total silence when the actual harmful regulation was put in place last year.
I've been told I whine too much already. Have to choose my battles, or at least wait for others to go first so I can claim I was caught up in the crowd mentality. Smiley: frown
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#50 Apr 11 2017 at 10:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
Timelordwho wrote:
As a computer engineer, the fact that you don't see this rather basic distinction is frankly shocking.
Is it really that shocking?
Hopefully not too much. I'm not a computer engineer or anything, but have heard-tell that random arcs of electricity and computers aren't the best of friends.
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#51 Apr 11 2017 at 11:52 AM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
1) Since when does mobile internet = broadband? Smiley: dubious
Pretty much about the time when cell phones became surgically attached to people's wrists and they needed a trendy moniker to label it. Tablets, usb modems, laptops, pretty much anything that can take advantage of wifi hotspots that I've misspelled as wife the last six times I tried to type it. Which, in itself would also probably be a good business venture.
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