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Net Neutrality and League (TIME IS RUNNING OUT TO PROVIDE YOUR OPINION)

Sir ArmaMalum·7/18/2014, 7:59:00 PM·5 votes·728 views

So to all U.S. Citizens and anyone else who is curious, today is the last day to provide your individual opinion about Net Neutrality to the FCC. There have already been 1 million comments collected already, but by 12:00am EST (9:00pm PST) they will stop taking them to further discuss the issue and I highly advise you to give it a go if you haven't already.

Submit an official comment here (Imagine it like a forum post!)

or send an e-mail to [email protected]

The residing commision over the issue will then be taking replies to these filed comments until September 10th.

#What exactly is Net Neutrality?

Simply put, it's the idea that all aspects of the the internet should be treated with equal weight and most importantly equal access. It's pretty much how the internet has been treated in the U.S. so far. There has been a lot of controversy and blurred vision over what the whole deal is. So, to provide an unbiased and complete view:

here

Raw Link (warning: download): https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A1."pdf

Here is the publicly available official proposal as of May 15th that is bringing this issue up (and the one taking comments till the end of today). I suggest reading through it as I am at this very moment.

#What does this have to do with League?

Well, besides the broad statement if it's an internet based service, more specifically one danger that the debate over Net Neutrality is fighting against is the "last-mile" treatment of certain services like Google, Amazon, Netflix or the largest active online game in the world: League of Legends. What this means is that carriers could bottleneck bandwidth to competing services and companies while providing "fast-lanes" to others if net neutrality is not supported. As an example of a danger, Verizon could strike a deal with Amazon to provide a fast lane to its service and in retaliation, Comcast could limit its customer's bandwidth to strike at Amazon's sales. Now of course this would be a bad business practice on all sides but I hope it explains why it can be a big deal for everyone here. I won't go into the full implications of this as I am not a professional in anyway but this is what I have come to understand to be one the bigger focus points of the debate.

I cannot stress this enough, please read the proposal in its entirety before talking about it. There have already been full on reversals of opinions based on biased, misinformed media and figureheads. Hence my emphasis of READING THE DOCUMENT.

#A Request

If I may be so bold, I would love an official Rioter comment on Riot's stance on the proposal. Of course unofficial individual opinions are always welcome as well! (Just be sure to heavily state it's an individual opinion to prevent people from getting uppity). I know a lot of tech giants like Google, Apple and others have heralded the "Title II" aspect from my various stumblings through heated media outlets. (For those who do not know, that's the idea of converting internet service into a utility service, a service treated as a 'Title II' hence the name.)

I am very curious on where Riot stands and why.

#No Other Sources?

I usually don;t do this, but I've done my best to make sense of this whole thing and have found that a lot of different news outlets have conflicting opinions and 'facts' as well as a higher than normal amount of bias to the whole thing. If you would like to see articles on the subject, google it yourself but be warned it will be a bit confusing. I say again, I highly suggest reading the proposal itself for the best interpretation: your own.

#Questions

I'll be taking questions about this if you are confused.

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a professional and am subject to being incorrect, if anyone finds me conflicting myself or talking out of my ass PLEASE call me out on it. I've done a bit of research, but by all means of you feel confident on the subject help me out :)

4 Comments

bzhen09157/19/2014, 4:03:35 AM2 votes

Umm I'm pretty sure what most of our opinions will be. Do I need to say it?

the lack of net neutrality could definitely mess up our internet. Imagine someone is forced to have 500 ping just because they are on a certain specific provider. That definitely sounds fun.

P.S I really enjoy your discussions about topics like this (I realize that this is not a full SALT), and it really provides us with plenty of insight on the game and community. Keep it up!

Karn Bishop7/19/2014, 7:37:44 AM1 votes

There is no point to this, its already been proven that they don't care and that individuals cannot stop them, if they fail they just keep trying until they succeed. Basically if you want something done about it we must rely on other Titans like netflix, amazon, and google to step up and fight, after all if Attack On Titan has taught us anything the only way to kill a titan is with another titan.

Orinne7/19/2014, 9:14:56 AM1 votes

I can understand why they'd like to do away with net neutrality in that people are just generally not doing anything productive when using the Internet, especially in relation to Netflix, Youtube videos, porn, etc. which tend to be bandwidth hogs. Despite this however, this is pretty much what the Internet has evolved into, and making efforts to try and control what shouldn't be controlled in the first place is just egotistical.

Aside from that though, the problem with doing away with Net Neutrality in the US is that in terms of services like providing Internet, companies have already, more or less, made agreements to not meddle in each others territories and as a result, they can maximize their prices because of lack of competition. It's also illegal for many communities to build their own networks for Internet access, almost purely because Internet providers don't like the idea of having to compete with dirt cheap Internet infrastructure. As a country, most people have come to accept this and it's difficult to fight back. Not everyone can afford to congregate in an area to protest and threats to boycott won't do anything unless the majority of the country chooses to go without Internet for several weeks; fat chance given how integrated the Internet is in our daily lives.

It's not entirely impossible, but we'd need backing from some pretty big names if we're to get even a shot at putting Internet providers in their place.