Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 22 May 2014 @ 10:34am
Re: Google
Google was one of the first companies to buy paid peering years ago
[citation needed]
Paid peering was a thing long before Google even existed.
When the internet first started catching on, there were only 5 or 6 "Tier 1" networks - AT&T, Sprint, MCI, etc. A Tier 1 network was not defined by its size, but simply that it was a network that could reach every other network out there. That's really important on the Internet, as either you, your ISP, or the ISP's ISP (that they buy transit through) needs to be able to reach all other networks or else there's places that you can't get to on the Internet (no roads lead there from where you are).
Those Tier 1 networks were happy to have free peering between them, because it helped both sides more efficiently route traffic, and they generally sent about as much as they received from each other. Everyone that wasn't a Tier 1 network had to buy transit from them (or buy transit from someone else who also bought transit from a Tier 1).
Where does Google fit into that? Well, Google was a content company (as far as the architecture of the internet is defined), so they just had to buy service from an ISP (strictly speaking, multiple ISPs), and that ISP would handle the transit/peering. Eventually Google started buying up their own infrastructure, and became their own ISP, so they would buy transit and peering agreements from other ISPs. And Google wasn't the first that had both content and their own infrastructure, either.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 22 May 2014 @ 9:49am
Re:
Google doesn't "push" ads. If you choose to use a Google service like Gmail or Youtube, or if you visit a website that uses their ad service, sure you'll see ads. But to call that abusive or pushing shows how little you understand how things work. Google benefits from more people using the Internet in general, so it doesn't need to make money from their fiber.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 22 May 2014 @ 6:43am
Re: So...quick question
I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that you cannot sign away your rights, no matter what the fine print says,
Those rights apply to interactions with the government. The government can not take away those rights.
You can however sign away your rights to a company. If you work for a company larger than a few dozen people (and probably even for most of those), you've almost certainly signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement that says you have agreed not to talk about anything the company considers a trade secret or any privileged information. If you violate that, you've also probably agreed to be liable for civil damages as a result of that disclosure.
I am not a lawyer - assuming that clickwrap/shrinkwrap EULA and terms and conditions and whatever else are otherwise legally sound and binding - but there's no legal reason that a company couldn't try to enforce such terms.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 21 May 2014 @ 11:51am
Re: Re: How do we fix it?
I made no claim that no lawyers had a hand in creating the monstrosity of a legal system we have. I simply said that most well intentioned lawyers that read Techdirt had no hand in creating it.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 20 May 2014 @ 1:21pm
Re: So only people with money can start such a business
I don't think Mike was saying it "should" be like that, only that it "is" in the current reality.
I don't see why this is so surprising. The US government has savagely attacked everything related to publicly available encryption for the last 40+ years. if you're going to go into that space, you should know what's coming. Whether it's right is entirely a different question - and that's where my first comment is coming from - how do we get away from what the current reality is and move to a better place.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 20 May 2014 @ 1:10pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No, this is NOT Levison's fault
I did not read the article as a moral attack on Levison. I simply read it as Levison should be blamed for being unprepared. There was no moral judgement.
On the other hand, you wildly "extrapolated" Mike's comments to somehow supporting the government abusing the legal system. And that rightly deserves to be called bullshit - no interpretation or extrapolation needed, statement of fact time: your comment was bullshit.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 20 May 2014 @ 12:10pm
Re: Re:
But it's not just "the laws" that are the problem. Even if a law is short, you'll still need a lawyer to know about all of the various court decision that apply (caselaw), and to follow all the proper procedures in a court case.
Let's look for a minute at the Constitution and its amendments. Most of them are short and understandable. Yet there are entire sections in law school libraries filled with volumes of constitutional law.
Lessig is attacking problems in politics with money for transparency. I think he's got a good idea and has a shot of fixing some of the issues with transparency we talk about, and that could lead to a lot of good changes. Can someone find the right spot for a targeted attack for injustice in the legal system?
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 20 May 2014 @ 10:36am
How do we fix it?
What has happened to equality under the law? To me this shows a very clear imbalance among those with real access to the legal system (namely those with money or connections to lawyers), and those without.
Every other day I've got to "agree" to some type of legally binding contract to buy things, install basic software, or use basic services - and it all changes without any warning or objection I can raise. I have to sign 20 pages of dense legalese contracts to get a job, and to be expected to keep up with it when it changes without notice. I luckily rarely deal with the government, but the situation is the same there. If you don't want to be screwed by someone with their lawyer, you need multiple lawyers skilled in wildly disparate parts of the legal code available to you all the time.
I know there's a lot of lawyers that read Techdirt. I know most of you are both very good at what you do, and very well intentioned. You're just trying to help those of us without years of legal training navigate through a crazy byzantine system you had no part in creating. But there is something fundamentally *broken* about the legal system.
I'm a technical, engineer type person. When I see something that doesn't work well, or work fairly, or work efficiently I want to fix it. Rather than just working in the system with its faults, what can be done to make the legal system better? What can be done to simplify it for normal people so that we don't need a lawyer for every minor interaction we might have with the government, with other companies (or our own), or any random passerby on the street?
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 20 May 2014 @ 6:38am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: customers hate it
Those statistics are based on past performance (if they are even remotely close to reality and not made up horseshit).
Will Comcast commit to indefinitely raising the caps so that the large majority of their users don't hit them? Unlikely.
Just think, what if they put the caps in 10 years ago? We didn't have Youtube then. Netflix existed, but it was all DVD-by-mail then. Streaming music services were in their infancy with almost no user base. Steam was just getting off the ground as well and there weren't many games going to digital distribution. What was the average usage back then? Couple hundred MBs a month, if that? Now even going by that link, 10 years later, it's 2 or 3 orders of magnitude greater.
Caps by their very nature inhibit innovation, as it adds barriers to new services, and it adds a mental transaction cost on the users side if they have to worry about going over.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 19 May 2014 @ 7:37am
I see three possible outcomes.
1) NSA gets forcibly reformed. (Unlikely) 2) Cisco becomes the next Qwest, John Chambers the next Joe Nacchio. (More likely) 3) Cisco mutes opposition, shortly thereafter granted big money no bid contracts. (Near certainty)
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 15 May 2014 @ 1:26pm
Re: Re: Re: Curious About Edge Case
And that's why general warrants and dragnet communication are entirely incompatible with the 4th. There is no way to legally and constitutionally collect everything and try to sort it out later.
Look, I'm a reasonable person. If there's a specific reason for the NSA or other government agency to be targeting someone (foreign or not) and getting their communication, and I happen to communicate with that person, then of course they're going to read what I said/wrote. That's perfectly fine - assuming they had a specific reason to be obtaining the target's communication. If they've got that specific reason, then there is no reason they couldn't get a specific warrant for that target's communication.
Other than sheer laziness, I don't see why a warrant requirement, and competent oversight by a non-rubberstamping FISA court is so difficult.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 15 May 2014 @ 10:35am
Re: Re: Re: Re: what about investment per account?
It's not inflation. The cost goes up 10% or more every 2-3 years for the same (or decreasing) level of service.
The latency and packet loss is at the edges of the networks. Without going into too much detail, the links between the ISP network (Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, ATT) and the backbone/tier 1/other internet providers' network (Level3, Cogent) are at or above capacity. Historically, when these links get close to capacity, they are upgraded, and in most cases, this is extremely cheap to do (sometimes as cheap as running an extra cable or two through a co-location data center from one rack to another). Consumer ISPs that have an effective monopoly have been increasingly not upgrading these links as internet traffic has increased. It's not just Netflix, but Youtube, other video, streaming music providers, bittorrent, and just general web page traffic that has been increasing, and as such all is being effected. While it is all being effected, it is only most noticeable in situations where latency and data integrity is key - streaming video/music, VoIP, online gaming, and such. If Techdirt takes an extra second or two to load, no big deal, but when your video stream buffers or pauses, or when your command to dodge out of the way of that bullet/sword doesn't reach the server, you notice.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 15 May 2014 @ 9:07am
Re:
I think you're setting up the voltage argument as a strawman. A personal note is a personal note whether it exists as ink on paper or a collection of electronic bits in a standard format.
Does the 4th amendment apply to an ink on paper note sent through the US postal service? Yes, of course. What about an ink on paper note sent through UPS or Fedex? Again, of course it does. Why would it not apply to a collection of bits that represent a note sent through a wire? The government doesn't 'cut us some slack' - the government is absolutely prohibited from snooping on those things without a warrant that describes what is to be searched.
Additionally, the 4th doesn't specify that my right to be secure is dependent on only communicating with other US citizens while in the US.
As to scenarios I can imagine - do you think that US courts should be accepting into evidence used to convict someone something that was gathered by a foreign intelligence service? Does it matter if they are our allies, or would something from Russia or China be good too?
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 15 May 2014 @ 6:33am
Re: Re: what about investment per account?
So why do my bills keep going up with no increase in speed (even the advertised rate that no one can reasonably expect to get)? Why does the actual speed of my connection get worse, have higher latency, and more dropped packets? Why do only other countries reap the corresponding savings of lower cost of equipment and lower costs per subscriber?
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 15 May 2014 @ 6:24am
Re: Re: Re: not misleading
NCTA is a lobbying organization. They don't exist to be honest, they exist to generate spin and to massage any numbers into supporting the position they're paid to support.
On the post: Google Fiber: You Know How Comcast Is Making Netflix Pay Extra? We Don't Do That Kind Of Crap
Re: Google
[citation needed]
Paid peering was a thing long before Google even existed.
When the internet first started catching on, there were only 5 or 6 "Tier 1" networks - AT&T, Sprint, MCI, etc. A Tier 1 network was not defined by its size, but simply that it was a network that could reach every other network out there. That's really important on the Internet, as either you, your ISP, or the ISP's ISP (that they buy transit through) needs to be able to reach all other networks or else there's places that you can't get to on the Internet (no roads lead there from where you are).
Those Tier 1 networks were happy to have free peering between them, because it helped both sides more efficiently route traffic, and they generally sent about as much as they received from each other. Everyone that wasn't a Tier 1 network had to buy transit from them (or buy transit from someone else who also bought transit from a Tier 1).
Where does Google fit into that? Well, Google was a content company (as far as the architecture of the internet is defined), so they just had to buy service from an ISP (strictly speaking, multiple ISPs), and that ISP would handle the transit/peering. Eventually Google started buying up their own infrastructure, and became their own ISP, so they would buy transit and peering agreements from other ISPs. And Google wasn't the first that had both content and their own infrastructure, either.
On the post: Google Fiber: You Know How Comcast Is Making Netflix Pay Extra? We Don't Do That Kind Of Crap
Re:
On the other hand, it is Comcast who is hijacking or redirecting unknown DNS queries to their own page with ads that benefited Comcast.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/08/comcasts-dns-redirect-service-goes-nationwide/
On the post: French KlearGear Rep Fires Off Email Defending Company's Actions, Claims Suit Against It Wasn't Served Properly
Re: So...quick question
Those rights apply to interactions with the government. The government can not take away those rights.
You can however sign away your rights to a company. If you work for a company larger than a few dozen people (and probably even for most of those), you've almost certainly signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement that says you have agreed not to talk about anything the company considers a trade secret or any privileged information. If you violate that, you've also probably agreed to be liable for civil damages as a result of that disclosure.
I am not a lawyer - assuming that clickwrap/shrinkwrap EULA and terms and conditions and whatever else are otherwise legally sound and binding - but there's no legal reason that a company couldn't try to enforce such terms.
On the post: Google Fiber: You Know How Comcast Is Making Netflix Pay Extra? We Don't Do That Kind Of Crap
Re: some BS from AT&T on Google Fiber
He must never have had to do an old school fiber run.
On the post: Google Fiber: You Know How Comcast Is Making Netflix Pay Extra? We Don't Do That Kind Of Crap
Re: Yeah but...
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: Re: How do we fix it?
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: So only people with money can start such a business
I don't see why this is so surprising. The US government has savagely attacked everything related to publicly available encryption for the last 40+ years. if you're going to go into that space, you should know what's coming. Whether it's right is entirely a different question - and that's where my first comment is coming from - how do we get away from what the current reality is and move to a better place.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No, this is NOT Levison's fault
On the other hand, you wildly "extrapolated" Mike's comments to somehow supporting the government abusing the legal system. And that rightly deserves to be called bullshit - no interpretation or extrapolation needed, statement of fact time: your comment was bullshit.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: Re:
Let's look for a minute at the Constitution and its amendments. Most of them are short and understandable. Yet there are entire sections in law school libraries filled with volumes of constitutional law.
Lessig is attacking problems in politics with money for transparency. I think he's got a good idea and has a shot of fixing some of the issues with transparency we talk about, and that could lead to a lot of good changes. Can someone find the right spot for a targeted attack for injustice in the legal system?
On the post: Supreme Court Admits Copyright Infringement May Actually Help The Copyright Holder
Re:
On the post: Supreme Court Admits Copyright Infringement May Actually Help The Copyright Holder
Re:
Those damn time traveling pirates ruin everything.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
How do we fix it?
Every other day I've got to "agree" to some type of legally binding contract to buy things, install basic software, or use basic services - and it all changes without any warning or objection I can raise. I have to sign 20 pages of dense legalese contracts to get a job, and to be expected to keep up with it when it changes without notice. I luckily rarely deal with the government, but the situation is the same there. If you don't want to be screwed by someone with their lawyer, you need multiple lawyers skilled in wildly disparate parts of the legal code available to you all the time.
I know there's a lot of lawyers that read Techdirt. I know most of you are both very good at what you do, and very well intentioned. You're just trying to help those of us without years of legal training navigate through a crazy byzantine system you had no part in creating. But there is something fundamentally *broken* about the legal system.
I'm a technical, engineer type person. When I see something that doesn't work well, or work fairly, or work efficiently I want to fix it. Rather than just working in the system with its faults, what can be done to make the legal system better? What can be done to simplify it for normal people so that we don't need a lawyer for every minor interaction we might have with the government, with other companies (or our own), or any random passerby on the street?
On the post: Comcast Says It's Going To Slap All Of Its Customers With Data Caps, Makes Half-Hearted Attempt To Walk Back Earlier Statements When Backlash Kicks In
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: customers hate it
Will Comcast commit to indefinitely raising the caps so that the large majority of their users don't hit them? Unlikely.
Just think, what if they put the caps in 10 years ago? We didn't have Youtube then. Netflix existed, but it was all DVD-by-mail then. Streaming music services were in their infancy with almost no user base. Steam was just getting off the ground as well and there weren't many games going to digital distribution. What was the average usage back then? Couple hundred MBs a month, if that? Now even going by that link, 10 years later, it's 2 or 3 orders of magnitude greater.
Caps by their very nature inhibit innovation, as it adds barriers to new services, and it adds a mental transaction cost on the users side if they have to worry about going over.
On the post: Cisco Goes Straight To The President To Complain About The NSA Intercepting Its Hardware
1) NSA gets forcibly reformed. (Unlikely)
2) Cisco becomes the next Qwest, John Chambers the next Joe Nacchio. (More likely)
3) Cisco mutes opposition, shortly thereafter granted big money no bid contracts. (Near certainty)
On the post: DOJ Says Americans Have No 4th Amendment Protections At All When They Communicate With Foreigners
Re: Re: Re: Curious About Edge Case
Look, I'm a reasonable person. If there's a specific reason for the NSA or other government agency to be targeting someone (foreign or not) and getting their communication, and I happen to communicate with that person, then of course they're going to read what I said/wrote. That's perfectly fine - assuming they had a specific reason to be obtaining the target's communication. If they've got that specific reason, then there is no reason they couldn't get a specific warrant for that target's communication.
Other than sheer laziness, I don't see why a warrant requirement, and competent oversight by a non-rubberstamping FISA court is so difficult.
On the post: Cable Industry's Own Numbers Show General Decline In Investment Over Past Seven Years
Re: Re: Re: Re: what about investment per account?
The latency and packet loss is at the edges of the networks. Without going into too much detail, the links between the ISP network (Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, ATT) and the backbone/tier 1/other internet providers' network (Level3, Cogent) are at or above capacity. Historically, when these links get close to capacity, they are upgraded, and in most cases, this is extremely cheap to do (sometimes as cheap as running an extra cable or two through a co-location data center from one rack to another). Consumer ISPs that have an effective monopoly have been increasingly not upgrading these links as internet traffic has increased. It's not just Netflix, but Youtube, other video, streaming music providers, bittorrent, and just general web page traffic that has been increasing, and as such all is being effected. While it is all being effected, it is only most noticeable in situations where latency and data integrity is key - streaming video/music, VoIP, online gaming, and such. If Techdirt takes an extra second or two to load, no big deal, but when your video stream buffers or pauses, or when your command to dodge out of the way of that bullet/sword doesn't reach the server, you notice.
On the post: DOJ Says Americans Have No 4th Amendment Protections At All When They Communicate With Foreigners
Re:
Does the 4th amendment apply to an ink on paper note sent through the US postal service? Yes, of course. What about an ink on paper note sent through UPS or Fedex? Again, of course it does. Why would it not apply to a collection of bits that represent a note sent through a wire? The government doesn't 'cut us some slack' - the government is absolutely prohibited from snooping on those things without a warrant that describes what is to be searched.
Additionally, the 4th doesn't specify that my right to be secure is dependent on only communicating with other US citizens while in the US.
As to scenarios I can imagine - do you think that US courts should be accepting into evidence used to convict someone something that was gathered by a foreign intelligence service? Does it matter if they are our allies, or would something from Russia or China be good too?
On the post: Cable Industry's Own Numbers Show General Decline In Investment Over Past Seven Years
Re: Re: what about investment per account?
On the post: Cable Industry's Own Numbers Show General Decline In Investment Over Past Seven Years
Re: Re: Re: not misleading
On the post: Cable Industry's Own Numbers Show General Decline In Investment Over Past Seven Years
Re: Accounting
I'd like to see someone ask them to separate out the standard maintenance from the actual new build out and upgrades.
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