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Youtube Communications Government Republicans The Internet Technology

YouTube Stars Defend Net Neutrality In Open Letter To the FCC (theverge.com) 48

More than 100 YouTube creators from the Internet Creators Guild have signed an open letter to the FCC calling on the agency to keep strong net neutrality protections. "Our rapidly growing industry employs hundreds of thousands of people and yet it barely existed more than a decade ago," reads the letter. "As creators in this fast-moving industry, changes to the existing Net Neutrality rules would have an outsized impact on our field and jeopardize our livelihood." The Verge reports: The letter has been signed by major names in the YouTube community, such as the Fine Brothers. In total, the guild says, the letter represents video creators with an audience of more than 150 million people. The YouTube creators directly address FCC chairman Ajit Pai in the letter. The letter argues that the removal of protections would lead to "the inevitable creation of fast lanes that would privilege the large media companies that can afford to pay for such service," putting smaller media creators in danger. "We strongly urge you to oppose anything that would threaten this level playing field," the letter from video makers concludes. "The stakes are simply too high for our democracy, culture, and economy."
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YouTube Stars Defend Net Neutrality In Open Letter To the FCC

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  • >> YouTube Stars

    Obligatory South Park:
    http://southpark.cc.com/clips/165195/meet-the-internet-stars
  • by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Thursday July 06, 2017 @05:10PM (#54759975)

    Who? Wait, let me ask ky 13 year old daughter....

  • I don't those words mean what you think they mean... They certainly do not describe what the rules actually are.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    They wanted to trademark reaction videos and make everyone else pay them. Now they talk about "affordable services", "democracy" and "culture? What a hypocritical joke.

  • Sure, but let's be honest here. People who make a living from YouTube videos have a vested interest in net neutrality. Throttling and new fees would cut into their profits, which are likely narrow enough to force many YouTube stars into finding new careers. The FCC is under no obligation to protect individual jobs from changes in the market.

    That said, I really do believe that Net Neutrality is the best option. And anything else would consolidate power into a few corporations that switch packets. And perhaps

    • Nah, they don't have a vested interest in net neutrality. They have a vested interest in Google, which has a market cap of 645 Billion dollars. They are "employees" of a massive company. They're not "the little guys" trying to get equal network footing, they're "employees" of one of the largest companies in the world.
    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      The government is in the business of protecting jobs, since fucking when are they not, I mean seriously, show me the fucking politician who said fuck jobs more profits for corporations and I of course mean publicly. However it is against the constitution for the Government to act in the interest of a select few companies at the expense of ten of thousands and more companies. It would be a criminal act, creating a law tilted in favour of a few, and removing a law that creates neutral equal access to competit

      • The FCC is not all of the government, and the aspects of government that you refer to are not part of the FCC charter. It's a regulatory agency that at one time was apolitical, and would still be if we had a healthy democratic government. That said, I expect there to be some proof of corruption before claims are made where you expect me to act. I can't operate on conjecture. I must insist that we stick to the facts, such as the directives and history of the FCC.

  • ...if there was competition in the market instead of regional monopolies and cartels.

    Imagine you had (at least) two potential ISPs ready to provide service, and one throttles and the other doesn't...

    Make the means of communication (the fibre, copper, and wireless spectrum) public infrastructure, lease access to private entities to provide whatever services they want (like connecting you up to the infrastructure, providing email, tech support, etc.). Anything less is going to result in the sub-standard serv

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Imagine if you only had toll roads if you wanted to travel by car, and only two possible routes to work. Data's not much different

      Except for the concept known as the last mile. Yes data packets can take many different paths on the way to you, but ultimately it goes through one pipe to get to you, your ISP. Here's the more accurate car analogy:

      You only have one (ok maybe two) driveways in and out of your property onto a privately owned and tolled road, complete with a toll collector in your driveway. There i

    • Imagine if you only had toll roads if you wanted to travel by car, and only two possible routes to work. Data's not much different.

      It's not different, in that you can't just wave a magic wand and have another route to use. Even if you opened up those markets to competition, it would be some time before any actually materialized in many of them.

  • by spiritplumber ( 1944222 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @05:51PM (#54760175) Homepage
    Right now, the country is being run by old people. They may or may not have any idea why Youtube content producers are a big deal. They are more likely to recognize "old media" stars.
  • Youtube stars? phfft.

    How much money did you give $representative in the last 3 months? If that value is less than 6 figures your opinion doesn't matter.
  • In total, the guild says, the letter represents video creators with an audience of more than 150 million people

    I wonder how did they manage to deduplicate viewers: Many of them follow mutliple Youtube stars. Google has the information, but AFAIK authors do not.

    • They probably didn't even try. A significant number of those subscribers are also likely to be from outside the USA. All that said 150 million subscriptions probably represents at least a tenth of that in actual US Citizens. And that is not an insignificant number of constituents.

  • I used to be vehemently in favor of NN, but when you stop to think about it, do we even really have it right now?

    Per the FCC:

    Blocking: Broadband providers may not block access to lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices.

    Name one big cable company that lets you serve lawful content via port 80 on your home internet connection.

    Throttling: Broadband providers may not deliberately target some lawful internet traffic to be delivered to users more slowly than other traffic.

    Name one bi

    • I used to be vehemently in favor of NN, but when you stop to think about it, do we even really have it right now?

      Per the FCC:

      Blocking: Broadband providers may not block access to lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices.

      Name one big cable company that lets you serve lawful content via port 80 on your home internet connection.

      This is a tough one. Yes, they block port 80, and you are right that doing so is technically in violation of that requirement. However, most ISPs still leave 443 open. The bigger issue would be if Backblaze was blocked or throttled, but not Carbonite.

      Throttling: Broadband providers may not deliberately target some lawful internet traffic to be delivered to users more slowly than other traffic.

      Name one big cable provider that doesn't offer multiple speed tiers. If you've got the lowest/standard tier, watch what happens when you download something from a fast server: your download speed hits an artificial limit, according to your service level.

      True, but that's based on my service tier, not the type of traffic. If I'm paying for 10Mbits/sec down, and Netflix, Hulu, Redtube, and some rando's MediaGoblin site all are able to use the full 10Mbits/sec down, that's not a neutrality violation because my ser

      • The point of the argument is that NN used to be an inherent part of the internet. Whatever speed you got, everyone moved at that speed. The point of NN is to fight against what's now possible - ISPs mucking around with internet traffic artificially so they can charge both sides to get the advertised speeds.

        I agree with that. NN is optimal strategy; anything else is necessarily a degradation. And letting politicians make these kinds of decisions instead of us techies is like letting a McDonald's employee p

  • by Briareos ( 21163 ) on Friday July 07, 2017 @02:22AM (#54761971)

    https://internetcreatorsguild.com/net-neutrality [internetcr...sguild.com]

    I know this is Slashdot, and I know I shouldn't have RTFA, but neither the summary nor the linked piece of clickbait fluff included a link to the actual freaking letter...

  • I just want to know what Laughing Baby has to say about all this.
  • It'd be nice if Google played by the same rules as they want others to. Instead they've banned anyone presenting a positive view of guns from receiving any advertising money.

    Channels are not barred for presenting anti-gun views. Channels are not barred for presenting guns as a novelty. Any channel posting a reveiw of a gun is barred. Show a trick shot: barred. Teach people anything about how to shoot a gun: barred. Teach people about gun safety: barred.

    I wish I could support Google on this one, but th

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