---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <E3732FD6-725F-4E69-8027-07ED38D16CFB@roscom.com> Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2017 05:36:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: The Never Ending Battle Over Net Neutrality Is Far From Over The never ending battle over net neutrality is far from over. Here's what's coming next. As the FCC and net neutrality activists gear up for a court fight, many policy experts say they're exhausted. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/15/the-never-ending-battle-over-net-neutrality-is-far-from-over-heres-whats-coming-next/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <E9428FE4-0AF3-424D-BE0C-C0155FA92D15@roscom.com> Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2017 05:50:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Two million people were impersonated in net neutrality comments 2 million people - and some dead ones - were impersonated in net neutrality comments. "My late husband's name was fraudulently used [in comment to FCC]." By Jon Brodkin An analysis of public comments on the FCC's plan to repeal net neutrality rules found that 2 million of them were filed using stolen identities. That's according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. "Millions of fake comments have corrupted the FCC public process - including two million that stole the identities of real people, a crime under New York law," Schneiderman said in an announcement today. "Yet the FCC is moving full steam ahead with a vote based on this corrupted process, while refusing to cooperate with an investigation." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/dead-people-among-millions-impersonated-in-fake-net-neutrality-comments/ ***** Moderator's Note ***** "'Twas ever thus, 'twill ever be." I'm not sure why I expected the FCC to be fair or competent, but it's obvious that they've been corrupted. The immense sums of money that the "public" auctions of public airwaves brought in to feed the ever-more-greedy mouths on Capitol Hill have made it inevitable. The media moguls, whom have uttered only an occasional word or two about the Kleptocracy now ensconsed and expanding throughout our government, have bought and paid for every favor the FCC is deliving to them, and I've just realized that this has been a long time in the planning. I worked a contract for NOAA a few years back, and in the process I discovered that there is an "Internet Two," which links some of the major educational institutions with lines that handle traffic only for them, in just the same way that the original Internet hadnled traffic only for the institutions which created it. The "owners" of the Internet - for practical purposes, the owners of the major backbones - want more, and more, and more, and they want it now. Having been paid to provide the circuits that make up the backbones, they are not content to simply count their profits and to keep doing what they've been doing for thirty years. That, it seems, is no longer enough: they were always good at planning ahead, and now their plans are coming to fruition. They will, once again, be sitting on top of a toll gate that bottlenecks the paths from individual browsers to the advertising servers that will now be a few seconds too late in delivering oh-so-carefully-selected come-ons for all the things we didn't know we needed. The only thing on the Internet which really requires "real time" transport are the advertisements. The reason is simple: ad agencies have been inserting JavaScript in the original web pages of every major site that they pay to run their ads - commands which prevent ad-blocking software from being effective - but any delay in the arrival of the advertisements means that the scripts hold up the "splash" pages for too long a time, and /that/ means the ads are being presented to irritated consumers who wll remember only a brand name to assoicate with their frustration. VoIP, despite its appeal, hasn't been making money for the "right" people, and therefore can be quickly made unusable via the simple mechanism of delaying the packets in favor of more profitable offerings: VoIP was only made possible because the backbones, essential to the delivery of the ads that pop over, under, around, and through every web site, required massive bandwidth if they were to arrive "on time" to affect users' buying habits. Notwithstanding the fact that latency and poor quality have become routine due to cellular phones and their sub-standard transmission quality, VoIP can be delayed and fragmented with little notice by anyone who's important, to the point where even jaded "Can you hear me now" cellular users will ante up for virtual circuits once again. The few business users that might have enough lobbying power to prevent it have, by and large, been using traditional circuit-switched trunks all along. There are technical solutions for delays to almost every other kind of traffic on the net: email doesn't need real-time transport, nor do ordinary webpagees, although both will be protected from excessive medling by the influence of the major corporations which now depend on them for day-to-day business. Neither do the streaming video services, surprising as that sounds: they can simply choose to do longer buffering intervals, uploading an entire movie overnight for viewing the next day if needed. The currently low cost of memory chips and of proprietary encryption schemes to prevent diversion of movies onto the DVD-copy markets has been accompanied, so it seems, by low-cost laws which have been in place for years and which will keep any major players from breaking the copyrights which are so dutifully enforced by an F.B.I. now dedicated to keeping the rich and privileged in power - they didn't prevent the opiod epidemic that killed my nephew last year, and I guess they must have been doing /something/ besides public relations and storing fingerprints to earn their pay. It's the ads that count, but the end users that they are directed towards are impolite enough to turn their computers off if those ads don't show up lickety-split after Joe Average clicks on the link for whatever distraction the media magnates have planned. The pipeline owners, which have spent the last thirty or so years crying "Me Waaaaana Own Everything Again!", are now, at long last, able to collect the tolls they have coveted ever since the end of toll calls and the end of their ever-so-sweet situation on top of the bottlenecks of the past. Now, we'll see if we techno-geeks can figure a way around this power play. Modems are still usable, because of the fact that the rush to kill fax machines and other "circuit hogs" has been held off by requirements that cable phone services must still support Type II fax on their telephone offerings - one elephant fighting another, no doubt - and that means that unprofitable traffic such as Usenet feeds, personal emails, and person-to-person photographs can be diverted to overnight "Store and forward" servers - just like the start of the net, when delayed emails could be held for days until the receiving node regained lost connectivity (a behavior which is still specified and in-use, by the way). Is FidoNet still in operation anywhere? Any Bulletin Boards out there? Don't shake you head like I just did: this isn't really about personal emails or pictures of the kids or Usenet messages. THIS is about keeping the social networks going, so that the lower classes such as we will be able to find out just how badly the one-percent want us to bow when they ride by. -- Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <0390C901-8513-4382-8CBB-3DA654CB0125@roscom.com> Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2017 05:45:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Comcast to be "unleashed" on rivals when NBC merger conditions expire Comcast to be "unleashed" on rivals when NBC merger conditions expire By Jon Brodkin Yesterday's repeal of net neutrality rules isn't the only good news Comcast is getting these days. In January 2018, the conditions imposed by the US government on Comcast's 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal will begin to expire. Smaller cable companies that compete against Comcast are worried that Comcast will raise the price for carrying "must-have" programming such as regional sports networks, NBC's local TV stations, and NBC's national programming. The merger conditions require Comcast to submit to arbitration when there are disputes over prices, terms, and conditions of programming agreements with other pay-TV companies. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/comcast-to-be-unleashed-on-rivals-when-nbc-merger-conditions-expire/ ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Mon, 18 Dec 2017