World Affairs Council - Net Neutrality MOVED
THIS POST MOVED TO MY NEW BLOG AT
https://blog.phor.net/world-affairs-council-net-neutrality
Interesting properties of the entropy function
Update 2017-07-03: Corrected equation for associative definition, thank you /u/Syrak. This may not be the first time someone recognized this, but I have recently discovered some interesting and useful properties of the entropy function and now share them. First a definition: Entropy — H(p 1 , p 2 , ..., p n ) — is a function that quantifies surprise in selecting an object from a set where the probability of selecting each object is given: {p 1 , p 2 , ..., p n }. This has utility in communications, information theory and other fields of math. H b (p 1 , p 2 , ..., p n ) = Σ(i..n)-p i log b (p i ) where b is normally 2, to express entropy in bits. Other definitions of H() use expected values and random variables. As an analog to the definition above, I will discuss entropy of a set of frequencies. p i = f i / Σ f i. Entropy defined without bits: A definition that doesn't use bits is: H(p 1 , p 2 , ..., p n ) = Π(i.....
Comments
How about this: If the network companies own the network pipelines, why should anyone be able to tell them what they can do with that hardware? They want to build some amazing new infrastructure and in order to pay for it they are going to have to charge extra for the heavy bandwidth users who are going to chew that up. In other words, the 'net is going to get even more amazing. Folks like Google and Microsoft, who will be using the infrastructure first, should pay for it first. As they do so, the technology will expand and get cheaper.
Instead, those companies want to push legislation through so that they don't have to pay this premium, pushing it on to YOU.
So-called "net neutrality" would abolish a toll system, possibly, but it would do so by guaranteeing universally lackluster Internet performance in the US.
Government regulation does little to improve anything. It hasn't improved industry, it hasn't diminished drug use, it hasn't gotten rid of corruption. It certainly won't help the Internet.
http://dontregulate.org/
In so doing, they would stifle progress of Internet technology in the States, if not freeze it altogether.
There is a company called Vonage that produces a service called VOIP. When Comcast produced a competing service, they blocked access to the Vonage homepage and degraded the quality of the Vonage VOIP service running over the Comcast connectivity service. Because Comcast is the only service provider in many markets, they are considered a monopoly. Therefore, they used a monopoly power to reduce competition in another market that they were involved in.
This is illegal and in direct violation of competition laws.
Since most internet service providers have monopolies in many markets, many people are vulnerable to this anti-competitive behavior.
When a majority of people are vulnerable and a majority of service providers are expressing an interest in legalizing anti-competitive behavior, a law needs to be passed.