Posts by Andrew Orlowski

People understand networks pretty well. You're still justifying "making stuff up" to get a policy through?

Re: Oh dear.

@Omniaural Thanks, and thanks also for an interesting post.

The audience for John Oliver / The Daily Show is overwhelmingly college-educated and “progressively inclined”, so I don’t think this is the first time they will have heard of it. Many may actually be sick of it and/or not give a crap.

"The argument for Net Neutrality is basically to maintain the status quo”

Not at all. In two ways:

- It’s about planting a regulatory flag on virgin territory: the private agreements that make up the internet. Regulating publicly-paid for pipes, and infrastructure created out of government contract - is fair game, and is not controversial. Taxpayers should see where their $$$ is going after all. For much of the past decade the goal has been to introduce pre-emptive technical regulation of these private contracts. (Compared to introducing regulation that mandates MS-DOS in 1983). Now the focus in the US is specifically on Class 2 reclassification. This appears to be the big prize.

- Since the net has never been neutral - it was a word an academic pulled out of his backside one day - this cannot be true.

"Maintaining the status quo" means using other regulation - antitrust law, and other competition law - to ensure competition is maintained and investment is encouraged. Strengthening this competition law and actually using is a start. There are other things people can do and I listed some of them.

"At this point I don't think your going to be able to reframe the arguments to be technically correct.”

I don’t know what this means, sorry. Similarly, “… I think most would choose to not let big companies hog the limited bandwidth available to them.” is not something I can map onto reality. I have never heard this one before.

The problem with allowing irrational arguments to be made with challenge, because they’re made for what somone feels is a “worthy" cause, is that pretty soon everyone is doing the same thing. They’re advancing proposals that don’t make any sense, that can’t be rationally justified. Laws are then passed on the basis of who has the biggest sense of entitlement or shouts the loudest.

Re: Oh dear.

Fast lanes, slow lanes. Conspiracies (that we can't quite see - but they're there, I tell you! they're there!). Analogies to the mob...

You have omitted everything that made his contribution - or more accurately, his scriptwriting team's contribution - quite so moronic. It's technically illiterate. It's an Alex Jones / Bill O'Reilly perspective on the world.

In that piece I explained why the net has never been neutral, why the analogies don't work, and offered half a dozen suggestions for constructive citizen action. You could actually surprise us all, and attempt to address the substance of the internet regulation debate.

Actually, I hear they're over at Google Play - tearing their hair out.

Re: "Songwriters are negotiating with a gun to their heads. The gun is piracy"

"Excuse me if I'm wrong: but I think YouTube is saying it will simply remove all content from its service for which it has been unable to negotiate terms of use with the owner."

You're wrong. There are two different services in play here: YouTube video, most of which is already licensed, and the yet-to-be-launched audio streamer.

"You can't have it both ways: 'We want to be on YouTube because we need the exposure!' 'We don't want to be on YouTube because they don't pay very well!"

So musicians should eat poo, and accept whatever chickenfeed money YouTube throws at musicians, simply because YouTube draws a large audience?

In a functioning market, creative people are paid more if their work is popular, and less if it's less popular. So you have made an interesting argument, there. Not one I'd want to defend ethically.

"Why don't they just club together and build their own distribution website?"

Then you could complain that they're stifling innovation. Or a cartel. Or something. I'm sure that whatever the independent music sector did, you'd find a reason to complain.

Re: They should probably call their bluff

I very much doubt you would think that, Dan55, if it was your own indie label being blocked from YouTube.

That's all.

Jimmy Wales gave quite a performance on Andrew Marr. In five minutes, I don't think Jimbo said anything that resembles a truthful statement.

eg,

Marr: So in theory, if I am a corrupt business person and I have had a series of convictions and so forth in the past, I can apply to Google saying I don't want people to know about this any more. And a committee on which you sit will have to decide the rules by which I'm successful or fail.

Wales: Well er, I'm advising er, Google, and basically I have joined this panel with Google. But it's not just about advising Google what to do. I think I view us having a broader remit, asking: 'how should we change the law so we can better strike a better balance between privacy and free speech'? So we don't end up with these very clumsy cases where Google has to determine whether a news story is something they're legally allowed to link to or not. That's a very hard position….that's a kind of decision that should be left to courts, at best.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04647bc/the-andrew-marr-show-01062014 -> starts at 20:20.

While it's a fascinating idea that we haven't got round to joining the EU yet, I'm afraid I have to break some bad news. The UK DPA incorporates EU law.

The European Court of Justice dealt with Google's loophole defence that it was based outside the EU. The ICO's blog on the ruling is linked to in the article: http://iconewsblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/four-things-weve-learned-from-the-eu-google-judgment/

In addition, what Google claims in its Privacy Policy (sic) is neither here nor there.

Re: Re: Question

By that definition removing spammy links is also "collateral damage". I'm not sure who you're trying to convince.

But for context:

You joined The Register forums quite recently to defend Google.

80pc of your posts are about Google.

100pc of your posts about Google defend its evasion of some law: competition law, privacy law etc.

So at least you're being consistent.

Re: Re: I don't understand

You were asking if other search engines / services fall under the ruling. You're trying do this by not to reading the article - or the decision!

The Justices made it pretty clear that the societal impact that a service has is important. Google has a huge reputational impact. A subscription clippings service, or a search engine nobody uses (eg, Bing) less so. They simply rejected Google argument that it isn't exempt from EU law.

I'm sorry but your description of filters doesn't make sense to me, and I don't see its relevance. But just as with any other publisher, a search engine has some control over what it publishes.

Re: Re: I don't understand

Um, nice troll - but do you really think Google doesn't "censor" what its crawlers return? Google chooses not display millions of spammy sites already. It block deletes entire domains, too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/06/google_cans_11m_dot_co_dot_cc_sites/

If you think the internet "has just been broken", it's because you don't know how it works.

Re: I don't understand

Blame the French, it was their idea.

Europe adopted "the right to a private life" as a fundamental right in 1995, it was incorporated into UK law more recently (hence the superinjunctions, etc) and Europe's highest Court has simply ruled that Google is not exempt. Newspapers have their own derogations.

I would recommend reading the ECJ's ruling as it is in plain English and the three page summary for idiots even more so:

http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-05/cp140070en.pdf

Re: "it can't really work any other way"

The "other way" is all packets traveling at the same priority. Care to start a network that operates on that basis? :)

Re: @ Irony Deficient

That's true in most countries - cable and DSL keep each other competitive, if not honest.

4G, WiMAX and 5G should be frightening the crap out of the incumbents. Why aren't they?

Re: Excellent article

Fred, my tiny local ISP in the Bay Area stopped providing DSL because Of all those competitive suggestions at the end, local loop is probably the most promising.

I guess the grass is always greener. Most countries have a "duopoly" of cable & DSL. They keep each other competitive. In practical terms my 4G connection is as fast as my 120mbit/s cable at home, for most applications. I leave it on most of the time.

Does anyone seriously argue "common carriage" improves competition in the access market? That's what you do to copper to make it decay more slowly, isn't it?

Common carriage merely manages the decline, it seals in the incumbents we have today - that everyone love so much! If "common carriage" is the end goal of neutrality (not an "open internet", or whatever it is this week), then it's purely a political campaign, right?

Better competition or CC - pick one.

Re: My Comments List Re: The Article; USA ISPs Versus Their Customers

At the end of that piece I offer half a dozen strategies Americans might like to pursue to get better competition. They're not mutually exclusive - you can pursue more than 1.

You don't seem to want to pursue any of these. It sounds a lot like you're stamping your feet and shouting "But MOMMY, it's not FAIR!”

[ lifted from:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/22/dziuba_net_neut/ ]

I don't know any neutrality campaigner who thinks access networks will become more competitive because of neutrality rules - let alone the transit or backhaul networks. Neutrality is a massive diversion from the issues.

Sure, life isn't fair. But if you ask for nuthin', you get nuthin'.

Yes, Silver is much broader, it's the creation of a new branded premium Android platform, rather than one-off reference designs.

Silver phones are assured updates, etc. Pretty much an invitation to either play nice, or fork off.

Re: A Very Strong Stink of Corruption

"And you say Google and Netflix are the beneficiaries? No. They're about to be casualties."

Google and Netflix are "Big OTT". Now they can screw Little OTT, and OTT startups. Those are the defining markets.

I think you're talking about something quite different - the "pricing out" of any/all OTT players by bundling content with the pipe - like BT does here. (I presume you want to outlaw this). The sums involved though are really small. Netflix saved money by switching to Comcast.

See my other posting below... and in particular, the ratpie post.

Re: A Very Strong Stink of Corruption

So you really wanted media contol all along?

Re: A Very Strong Stink of Corruption

Almost.

It's "Uncle Ron's Video Startup" that will suffer, even if you have the best video content in the world. You'll stil need to do the deals. Netflix switched distributor and now deals directly with Comcast rather than via an intermediary. It was a straight swap and wasn't an additional cost to Netflix, I believe Netflix has said it has saved money, net.

But even though you have mis-identified who the beneficiaries are, the competition concerns are valid.

Re: A question

Didn't really have a chance to play with it. But they moved out synced MP3s, Podcasts, Radio, Xbox Music etc into their own apps, the "Music Hub" is no more.

Re: Looks quite nice

Yes, I have a screenshot of that. I'll stick it in, and the Swype-y keyboard.

Re: Re: Crucial difference

Yes, there is some doubt whether the antennae are actually attached to anything.

Re: How is this theft?

No, the confusion is entirely yours - you don't understand how the law treats a) personal time-shifting and b) rebroadcasting differently. Aereo was founded on the hope that the freedoms under a) would blow away the protections under b).

It's pretty simple.

Re: Re: Wouldn't this be making more money for the broadcasters?

"The thing is that now the broadcaster, cable company, content producer, and advertizer are all the same company"

The funny farm is on the left.