Having covered this field as a tech reporter for several decades, I’m going to take all of that with a grain of salt.
But the people who are saying this is not the place to go on about neutrality are right. We will no doubt see in the next few years how things shake out.
Oi, vey! I didn’t mean to stoke a political firestorm on GF forums. I seriously just wanted to know what people thought the impact of the change in net rules/regs meant for this company. Although, I should have expected that this would be a hot-button issue for tech-savvy people, as GF’ers tend to be. From what I gather, the prevailing opinion is that folks don’t expect any immediate impact on Glowforge, but there is worry about the internet being turned into a turn pike rather than an interstate, which is a gross oversimplification, I know, but that’s how metaphors work.
I posted the question mainly because I began to get concerned that this device that I’ve paid a lot of money and waited a year and a half for will be bricked if the company goes under, and the changes to net rules could present a threat to the company. It sounds to me like most folks aren’t concerned about this being the downfall of GF, or even a significant threat, so for that, I am relieved.
Have a great Holiday!
You don’t have to take it with a grain of salt, if you’re a tech reporter, DO YOUR JOB, and do the RESEARCH. What is it with the media these days? I gave you all the sources. I’m not making anything up.
Don’t bother replying to me personally, I’ve unsubbed to this topic. topics like these shouldn’t be allowed on a forum like this. They exist to perpetuate this fear that somehow we lost a free and open internet by the dismantling of “Net Neutrality”, when in reality, we got it BACK.
Let’s see here, this topic shouldn’t be allowed but I’ll pontificate anyway and then I’m going to unsubscribe to the thread so I don’t see anyone else’s point of view.
I bet he’s fun at parties 
Wow. Quite the story you got there. Lots of conspiracy and intrigue. Interesting read (really-- an interesting read-- all stuff I was tangentially familiar with and I appreciate the succinct summation).
It isn’t actually what Net Neutrality is really about. I mean-- what you posted is mostly true, with a bit of hyperbole, but it is not actually relevant to the core of the Net Neutrality argument that is currently happening.
The current argument is specifically about violations of Net Neutrality that quash competition, quash innovation, and prevent anything resembling a free and open market.
Like, for example, Comcast throttling the crap out of Netflix until Netflix paid them a ton of money. Or Madison blocking Vonage. Or Verizon filtering pro-choice text messages. Or AT&T blocking FaceTime.
IF we were actually getting a “free and open internet” without Net Neutrality, I’d be all for it.
But we aren’t. There is no competition in most ISP markets. There are regional monopolies exactly because we, the taxpayer, put up billions of dollars for the telecom companies to build said regional monopolies under the promise that we’d have free and open access to high speed internet across the country.
Which we didn’t get.
And, now, with Trump’s “open internet”, as you describe it, the DisneyFoxABCESPNs of the world are quite free to totally squash any kind of innovative up start competition. Either by charging a premium to their customers or by simply not carrying the traffic at all.
I’m not a Democrat (nor a huge President Obama supporter). Having said that, it’s entirely probable that there is no conspiracy and that the law was passed in the interest of national security against foreign actors and had nothing to do with prioritizing band width or things of that nature against our citizens. Who knows though, it’s good to keep a watchful eye on such things.
Disclaimer: President Obama was my my elected president, commander in chief, and he signed my retirement orders.
Yes. There are many risks to the existence of a small, new company like Glowforge. It’d make a pretty long read if you were to list them out like public companies do in their SEC filings
However, probably much more risky to GF than Net Neutrality would be your mundane business risks like whether or not enough people want a laser for their home, how well does the Proofgrade and design catalog concepts work and can you charge a profitable price with this small of a user base, parts availability, manufacturer contract issues, etc. and then there are a variety of legal liability issues that could pop up and cause problems. All of those I would guess as more likely to be existential than Net Neutrality.
You’re citing some stuff, which is good, but then extending that citation to some conclusions and that is where you lost me.
I am not at all understanding how the Telecom industry is not powerful enough to contest their licenses being taken away? Then that is used as grounds to conceal information from the public? If that is true, I would love to see where you found such information.
You say Snopes, but you do not link any Snopes articles.
Also, I never heard of Netflix being the one to slow down their own connection, or making their connection look slow so as to manipulate to the government to give them power over the telecom industry.
The CIWA was done in response to Russia, everyone but maybe Alex Jones agrees with this, conservative and liberal media. Also, why would doing this at the end of his term matter? That makes it really weak as the next administration can just roll it back if they do not like it. Also, it has been in control of the Trump administration longer than it was under the control of the Obama administration at this point.
I won’t outright say you are wrong, but your arguments are not convincing me that net neutrality is/was bad.
As to the fake news stuff, I guess I can go back to just watching Fox n’ Friends 
. There are for sure issues with the news industry, there always will be as well. That is why it is really important, especially today, to seek multiple sources which also disclose their bias when possible.
I just saw the part where they said they unsubbed from the topic 
.
I don’t mind political debates, or even a little bit of politic ribbing so long as we remember we are each human beings.
I can’t believe someone will bring politics issue to our community. To even suggest that NN will be an issue for 2d prints is a pathetic argument. Updates maybe and I mean maybe but to suggest that it will have an impact on printing please go and take that argument to any of your local fake news Stan.
Given that ISP’s have used their control of the physical network to promote their paid services over competitors quite a few times already, and to throttle popular web services until they paid additional fees to restore good performance, I’d say that history shows that any business that relies on the internet as at risk of the ISP noticing them and interfering with their traffic. ISP’s have already been caught injecting ads into web pages that transit their network, and redirecting web site lookups to the ISP’s preferred search engine. One ISP was even caught injecting Amazon affilliate codes, so anything you buy on Amazon makes them money, without your permission. And that was all before the loss of the net neutrality laws.
You’re right that right now Glowforge isn’t the biggest target. But that doesn’t mean that as it grows it couldn’t become a target…
fake news
If this is an attempt to claim that ISP’s didn’t do what they’ve been caught doing, there are links in my post earlier in the thread.
For glowforge, it is more likely that they’ll get caught in the same net as all the other super tiny players that don’t generate a huge amount of traffic.
By and large, traffic won’t be touched because no one will bother putting the routing rules in place to filter/throttle it.
Until they accidentally do.
At least, that’s exactly what happened the last time we went through this in the early 90s and that is also what is happening right now on the services that sell “packages”. As soon as the service switches from “default OK” to “only what we allow”, then small companies are hosed.
I have personal opinions, but will keep them to myself, as Glowforge does not have an position.
Since politics often makes for poor forum discussions and this thread has attracted a few flags, I’m going to close it.