So, Where Are YOU on Net Neutrality?

linadragon

Quizzical said:

linadragon said:

ScotchUp said:

Against, the whole idea is smaller Government, not bigger! Plus once Government controls something they screw it all up for the citizens. We already have laws on the books to control companies, along with consumers pocket books.

And yet Ajit Pai wants to get rid of states ability to do anything about net neutrality. Not to mention that someone using spectrum can't go unregulated. Regulation is a key to making the free market work and while there are laws on the books they are not enforced in any meaningful way. Smaller government and larger government isn't the answer. It is smarter government that is the answer. Your type need to realize that sometimes regulations are a necessity because they are to protect consumers when other laws put in place fail to do so. The FCC regulates telecommunications. 

Wired connections don't use any portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Wireless connections do, but there's already a ton of competition in wireless Internet, with four national carriers and a whole lot of regional ones.  If one carrier does something you dislike, you can switch to another.

While it doesn't use wireless spectrum. You still have a particular spectrum funneled out for varying channels that say DOCSIS based modems are using. They are still referred to as spectrum from a technical standpoint by some ISPs. It's a whole weird thing there.  Plus I was tired as balls when writing some of this shit. 

linadragon

Bellomo said:

Net Neutrality makes net giants like google the gate keepers of information going in and coming out. Don't be fooled into thinking the internet was broken and needed obamas dumb ass to save it.

So you'd rather you ISP be the gatekeeper ? Net Neutrality simply means all data packets of a certain type of treated equal. It means the playing field is fair. Without it it would mean that google could literally use it's cash influence to make sure no one can compete with any of their services ever because they could pay the ISPs to slow everyone, but them down. Then again you are probably completely uneducated on the matter and just tow your party line like a good uneducated monkey republican. 

linadragon

Quizzical said:

linadragon said:

Folks like him think that because we might say republicans are vile on an issue that we are biased about it. It has nothing to do with political bias when  we actually understand the core concepts of it. We say republicans are vile or in the corporations pockets not because of political bias, but because of how things tend to go.

So apparently deciding to follow the law is now "vile"?  Whether there should be greatly increased regulation of the Internet is a political question that should be handled by the political branches of government, not by some unelected commission that runs off and does whatever it pleases.

No, they are not opting to follow the "law". The law stipulates that Telecommunications is supposed to be under Title II and has been a part of shit since the FCC was literally founded. They are supposed to be regulating them under Title II. While their websites can be treated under Title I under law if they are following their own guidelines and not having their head up the corporations asses.

It is vile because repealing it helps no one other than the corporations whom have literally stated that the only thing stopping them from doing some more crazy shit with fast lanes/tiered service is net neutrality being in play (you will note that net neutrality was a point of contention and had been in place 'loosely" since the mid 90's until verizon sued. Lobbying only started in the mid 2000's and it was only pulled back when Verizon sued the FCC.p 

If anything verizon etc are basically breaking antitrust laws if they break any tenant of net neutrality. Not to mention that while title II is a little heavier in some cases they didn't actually enact any heavy handed regulations. The only real regulation they opted for outside of net neutrality was privacy restrictions stating that the ISPs cannot sell your data without asking you first (opt in). If you want to go into "following law" pretty much every major ISP in the US would be sued under antitrust laws and these regulations would be applied to them after all the antitrust suites to begin with.

The regulations in place are simply to make it more efficient for the government to actually enforce the laws they have already put in place such as antitrust which again verizon, comcast, at&t etc are breaking regularly if you actually look at the definition of antitrust.

linadragon

Ridelynn said:

Net Neutrality is a poor compromise between actual market competition in local markets and the total monopoly oversight that being declared a utility entails.

It's not uncommon in the US for large swaths of the population to only have a single high speed provider, and maybe in larger markets a couple of lower speed options. It is almost always either a cable or telecom provider. And those providers protect their territory against even potential competition vigorously, using a lot of political leverage. But only in areas where there is sufficient population density. Live a ways outside of the suburbs, and you have trouble finding people that can monetize that - largely because companies attempting to provide rural service don't have any larger urban areas to help balance out costs like the telecom and power folks have had.

Just because a company prior to 2015 hadn't figured out how to "more effectively monetize" their infrastructure investment doesn't mean that, now that a very obvious method has been pointed out to them, they won't proceed to do so now unless it's not allowed. All signs seem to indicate that they very much will be moving in that direction - the big payout by Netflix to ISPs, providers imposing data caps or bandwidth restrictions ~unless~ you use their preferred service providers, auto-downgrading of video unless you use a preferred service, etc.

I"d prefer to have open and honest competition in marketplaces and just a dumb pipe to the internet that I can do with as I choose, from a company of my choosing. My (distant) second choice would be to declare internet availability a nationwide utility requirement and allow these monopolies, albeit heavily regulated. But if we can't have any of that, then let's at least agree to keep the service we have consistent across carriers.

There were some movement in that direction - federal money is available for companies to provide "Broadband" service to underserved areas. The problem was they only defined broadband in terms of speed, not actual capacity. So a lot of cellular and satellite providers get federal dollars for everyone they can sign up, and they do provide 25Mb (or faster) service -- with a catch, you only get a few gigabytes each month before they throttle you down to dialup speeds.

It's very common where I live, with Wildblue, for people to be on a 25Mbps plan, with a 10G cap, which means your internet really only works for about 50 hours a month. Verizon is the other player in my neck of the woods, and they have up to 54Mbps service, with a 4G cap - you only get about 10 hours of internet, but those 10 hours are gloriously fast.  

You may say - well how much content do you need a month? I probably don't watch 50 hours worth of Netflix each month, if I'm honest I probably don't even watch 10 hours. But take one nice Windows update that occurs in the offhours - that's a couple of gigabytes right there, and each weekly update is usually a few hundred. There are a dozen other programs that keep updated as well - Office, iPhones, routers, etc. And each computer I have needs to update. That's a big chunk of my cap right there, before I even turn on a service at all, just in keeping up with security updates.

In terms of content apart from that, I could download about 1/4 of a PS4 game - they weight in around 50G each. I could watch somewhere between 1 and 3 1080p movies. I could watch maybe 30 minutes of 4K video. I could back up or restore about 1/100th of my local computer to an online backup service.

Even older folks who are doing nothing but Facebook are hitting these caps. I get calls all the time: "Why does my internet always slow down at the end of the month?", and they certainly aren't hosting torrents or streaming 4K videos all day long - that's just from looking at baby pictures and cat videos. 

It is, but it is a necessity given the reality of the US marketplace for ISPs. Until our government actually nuts the hell up and basically forces competition in some manner, but it abolishing state laws that allow for monopolies (hey remember when the republicans said the FCC can't do that? cuz state rights and now they are saying that the current republican controlled FCC can tell states they can't have net neutrality laws of their own) 

linadragon

Quizzical said:

MadFrenchie said:

Verizon throttled Netflix and YouTube after stating they don't manipulate said content less than a year before.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/verizon-wireless-apparently-throttles-streaming-video-to-10mbps/

If they're promising customers one thing and doing the opposite, that's fraud.  Sure, that should be illegal.  But you don't need Title II net neutrality to make it illegal.  The proposed replacement for the Title II regulations basically consists of, ISPs can do largely what they want, but have to make it clear to consumers what they're doing, so customers who don't like it can switch carriers if they want to.

"We'll lose money because fewer people will buy from us if we do X" is actually quite a powerful incentive for companies to do what people want.

Most of the country can't just "switch" to a different carrier. Also it is antitrust and the regulations are there to PREVENT antitrust in the first place. This shit practice is already fucking illegal, but the government would constantly be suing the ISPs and federal courts would constantly be tied up if we had to sue them every time they overstepped into antitrust. 

Just because you feel the "law thats on the books" is good enough doesn't mean it is. It is inefficient to rely on antitrust law for everything and they consistently curtail it and it seldom is enforced. Also you show your complete lack of education on the matter in referring to it as Title II Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality and Title II are two seperate things, but one is necessary for the other to be enforceable. Title II is simply another clause of the same act that Title I comes from and is actually meant to properly deal with telecommunications. Title I is for "information services" which would be things like a website, webservice or the like. Google, facebook etc would be things that would be regulated under Title I as could video services. 

Also Net Neutrality for those seemingly lost in history was basically a point of contention. The ISPs have not liked it since the mid 90's and they started to lobby heavy against it in the mid 2000's (other sides lobbied for it to be officially enshrined as well, this was around 2005 - 2006) Net Neutrality has pretty much always been a part of how the internet  has operated until the early 2010's when companies willingly violated it because they realized it wasn't officially enforced anywhere. 

People then woke up when this happened including Tom Wheeler and web services like netflix, google, and pretty much any others stood up with them. Verizon flat out sued the FCC for trying to enshrine Net Neutrality officially which as far as regulations go as others have stated is basically just doing nothing other than bog standard QoS and the like and being "dumb pipes" for the internet. Verizon won the court case because Title I  gives no resource because net neutrality can't really apply to a "information service" which an ISP may offer information services from themselves or others, but the internet they offer themselves is actually a telecommunications service and falls under the purview of title II regulations. Title II allows the FCC to enforce Net Neutrality and gives a better basis for regulation although realistically speaking we should come up with entirely modern regulation that is worded with today's technology and the like.

This isn't archaic regulation though by any means and as stated the FCC as is went very light touch on what they actually enacted with title II. There was a whole lot more they could of done such as price caps, local loop unbundling and all sorts of other shit that the ISPs won't like. Quite frankly I'm hoping the next time the democrats have control of the FCC they go flat out ham fisted and push those regulations through so the ISPs can stop price gouging and actually have to allow competition to use their built out lines to get back to the backbone providers. 

linadragon

We also need to bring up the fact that verizon is auto-unfollowing people who are following net neutrality and pulling posts that are tagged with net neutrality stuff on tumblr to try and quash things and they are to be trusted according to some of the people here? 

frostymug

The deductive fallacy here is that people think net neutrality means that the government is running the internet or access to it. 

Net neutrality has been here the whole time, either implicitly or, more recently, explicitly. It is a basic tenet of the internet itself. The entire thing works the way it does because of it.

The government hasn't fucked you on internet access or forced you to use them as your ISP yet. You know why? Because they aren't in the industry or trying to be. They only want to regulate those who are because those who are in the industry will bend you over as fast as the can if given a tiny chance. They already tried and succeeded at times, even with regulations in place. ISPs have shown it is worth it to push the limits, lie, and eat the fines if they have to just to see what they can get away with. So it will be better to not have anything in place to deter them at all? Sure...

If anything, the government screwed up by allowing monopolies, more or less, in providing incentives for private sector build out of the infrastructure that left most areas with little to no competition to date, but that's water long under the bridge. Monopolies in our capitalist society never turn out good for the end consumer. Regulating and enforcing net neutrality is just the government's atonement and cross to bear for putting everything on the path to this point.

If you want to run the free market and innovation angle, one of the standard benchmarks of a successful free market is a range of choices provided to the consumer. If you are in a place that has a range of choices for competitively priced decent access speeds, lucky you, but you aren't in the majority nationwide. Regulation may stifle innovation, but monopolistic practices stifle it more. Why try if you don't have to? The alternative in most places is to go to ridiculously slow DSL speeds, pay exorbitant prices for satellite internet, dance with cellular caps, or go without altogether.

Thus, in my opinion only, net neutrality really needs to stay in place until that time which there is a range of choices offered to at least a vast majority of the country. Then, when there can be a truly functional free market with consumer options, and only then, should there be any consideration to phasing out net neutrality. Even at that point there will need to be regulation or a watchdog of some sort to prevent any sort of collusion.

linadragon

Horusra said:

Medicare costs 3 trillion dollars and is constantly on the rise and is projected to fail in 2026 due to the fact that when you pump federal tax dollars price inflate.  Same with college tuition.  Medicare much like Social Security is great in the short run, but horrible for the future.  It artificially props up the market.  Liberals never can look past helping today to see how it screws the future.

You are fully aware that that is because of corporate cronyism. Not to mention a whole slew of others things such as Bush policies taking away medicaire's ability to negotiate prescription medication costs and a whole slew of other crap enacted upon them. It inflates because someone is pocketing a whole lot of money when government does things and I'll give you a hint they are the people currently in control. People like trump, the healthcare industry, and the 1%'ers. 

linadragon

Fearum said:

I don't need some government or large company to tell me what i can view or what not to view. I also don't believe that the earth is flat... so go figure.

That's just it. This is literally what the ISPs are wanting to do while they have their puppets in government/the FCC blowing smoke up people's asses about the government doing it without proof that the government would do such a thing (it'd be illegal to do so for starters unless they change the constitution), and yet there is plenty of proof of what the isps want to do straight from their own freaking mouths and actions. 

linadragon

SedrynTyros said:

linadragon said:

Ridelynn said:

Net Neutrality is a poor compromise between actual market competition in local markets and the total monopoly oversight that being declared a utility entails.

It's not uncommon in the US for large swaths of the population to only have a single high speed provider, and maybe in larger markets a couple of lower speed options. It is almost always either a cable or telecom provider. And those providers protect their territory against even potential competition vigorously, using a lot of political leverage. But only in areas where there is sufficient population density. Live a ways outside of the suburbs, and you have trouble finding people that can monetize that - largely because companies attempting to provide rural service don't have any larger urban areas to help balance out costs like the telecom and power folks have had.

Just because a company prior to 2015 hadn't figured out how to "more effectively monetize" their infrastructure investment doesn't mean that, now that a very obvious method has been pointed out to them, they won't proceed to do so now unless it's not allowed. All signs seem to indicate that they very much will be moving in that direction - the big payout by Netflix to ISPs, providers imposing data caps or bandwidth restrictions ~unless~ you use their preferred service providers, auto-downgrading of video unless you use a preferred service, etc.

I"d prefer to have open and honest competition in marketplaces and just a dumb pipe to the internet that I can do with as I choose, from a company of my choosing. My (distant) second choice would be to declare internet availability a nationwide utility requirement and allow these monopolies, albeit heavily regulated. But if we can't have any of that, then let's at least agree to keep the service we have consistent across carriers.

There were some movement in that direction - federal money is available for companies to provide "Broadband" service to underserved areas. The problem was they only defined broadband in terms of speed, not actual capacity. So a lot of cellular and satellite providers get federal dollars for everyone they can sign up, and they do provide 25Mb (or faster) service -- with a catch, you only get a few gigabytes each month before they throttle you down to dialup speeds.

It's very common where I live, with Wildblue, for people to be on a 25Mbps plan, with a 10G cap, which means your internet really only works for about 50 hours a month. Verizon is the other player in my neck of the woods, and they have up to 54Mbps service, with a 4G cap - you only get about 10 hours of internet, but those 10 hours are gloriously fast.  

You may say - well how much content do you need a month? I probably don't watch 50 hours worth of Netflix each month, if I'm honest I probably don't even watch 10 hours. But take one nice Windows update that occurs in the offhours - that's a couple of gigabytes right there, and each weekly update is usually a few hundred. There are a dozen other programs that keep updated as well - Office, iPhones, routers, etc. And each computer I have needs to update. That's a big chunk of my cap right there, before I even turn on a service at all, just in keeping up with security updates.

In terms of content apart from that, I could download about 1/4 of a PS4 game - they weight in around 50G each. I could watch somewhere between 1 and 3 1080p movies. I could watch maybe 30 minutes of 4K video. I could back up or restore about 1/100th of my local computer to an online backup service.

Even older folks who are doing nothing but Facebook are hitting these caps. I get calls all the time: "Why does my internet always slow down at the end of the month?", and they certainly aren't hosting torrents or streaming 4K videos all day long - that's just from looking at baby pictures and cat videos. 

It is, but it is a necessity given the reality of the US marketplace for ISPs. Until our government actually nuts the hell up and basically forces competition in some manner, but it abolishing state laws that allow for monopolies (hey remember when the republicans said the FCC can't do that? cuz state rights and now they are saying that the current republican controlled FCC can tell states they can't have net neutrality laws of their own) 

Because it's all crap designed to achieve a specific end.  The ISPs want to make more money, that's the only thing they care about and Net Neutrality is in their way.  Lucky for them, they have the "OMG GOVERNMENT IS THE EVILS" group on their side.  If they had a country full of rational, thinking human beings, this horeshit we're dealing with wouldn't even be on the table and Net Neutrality would already be the law of the land.

Net neutrality wouldn't even be a necessity in a world  where we had a country full of rational, thinking, educated human beings because we'd actually have proper competition in the first place and no one would be letting these companies run rampant monopolies in many areas. 

TheScavenger

Dunno what net neutrality or whatever its called even is. dont care either. 

linadragon

TheScavenger said:

Dunno what net neutrality or whatever its called even is. dont care either. 

If you are living in the US you should care because it could negatively impact any webservice you use if they get rid of it.

FlyByKnight

Idealogues can't even break character and have a logical conversation about something so straight up. That's some sad sh!%.



#idiocracy #freedumb #murica

Scot

Asm0deus said:

Scot said:

Asm0deus said:

Scot said:

The problem with "net neutrality" is it has become a label for doing what you like on the net. We do not have "neutrality" when it comes to phone calls, the post, anything else for that matter.

The idea that a neutral zone could be established that went beyond our social bounds was a grand one. But it was a naïve one too. I am still in favour of one speed for everything, but not the idea that no censorship is required. I guess I grew up.

I think you are confused about what the issue is here and what "net neutrality" really is.  Go look at that chart/picture posted earlier and realize the issue isn't about anonymity or breaking laws as you are implying here.

The internet is a relatively new beast, it's a little like the wild wild west where huge rich ranch owners kinda made up laws in smaller areas until the west was tamed so to speak and the "laws these ranchers made" were put down and proper laws fair to all were made by the ones that are suppose to be making them in the first place.

Right now some of the huge ISPs in the USA are wanting to make up their own laws as they go , like them ranchers did, when it shouldn't be up to them to make laws for these new areas of business.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

A number of posters seem to think I have missed the point, as you will see from Wikipedia, the term covers everything I mentioned. Yes its about an ISP "land grab" as well, but in fact over the years that has been the issue I have seen the least in the media.

You really need to go and actually read that wiki page. It not at all about what you were implying and it is all about putting control into the ISP hands which is frankly the lamest idea ever.

Edit: removed stuff that wasn't really relevant

Asm0deus said:

Scot said:

Asm0deus said:

Scot said:

The problem with "net neutrality" is it has become a label for doing what you like on the net. We do not have "neutrality" when it comes to phone calls, the post, anything else for that matter.

The idea that a neutral zone could be established that went beyond our social bounds was a grand one. But it was a naïve one too. I am still in favour of one speed for everything, but not the idea that no censorship is required. I guess I grew up.

I think you are confused about what the issue is here and what "net neutrality" really is.  Go look at that chart/picture posted earlier and realize the issue isn't about anonymity or breaking laws as you are implying here.

The internet is a relatively new beast, it's a little like the wild wild west where huge rich ranch owners kinda made up laws in smaller areas until the west was tamed so to speak and the "laws these ranchers made" were put down and proper laws fair to all were made by the ones that are suppose to be making them in the first place.

Right now some of the huge ISPs in the USA are wanting to make up their own laws as they go , like them ranchers did, when it shouldn't be up to them to make laws for these new areas of business.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

A number of posters seem to think I have missed the point, as you will see from Wikipedia, the term covers everything I mentioned. Yes its about an ISP "land grab" as well, but in fact over the years that has been the issue I have seen the least in the media.

You really need to go and actually read that wiki page. It not at all about what you were implying and it is all about putting control into the ISP hands which is frankly the lamest idea ever.

Edit: removed stuff that wasn't really relevant

It seems to me this is a major beef of yours, so the term is not allowed to apply to anything else. I think I am quite right in pointing out that the ISP control issue has in fact over the years been the least focused on. But certainly, right now, it is the most focused on.

Scot

linadragon said:

Scot said:

KezBot said:

Google, Amazon, Facebook is where all of the content is.   

Its funny, or sad really, the internet was once a place of untold number of sources, content and ideas. We pointed to AOL and thought the idea of an internet environment, corralled of from the web was crazy. But now that's effectively what we have, how many videos do you watch which are not on You Tube?

It has become all about big names, focused content; a huge world of the net, narrowed to some sort of "My Internet". Yes, the other content out there may not be as good as the big names, but our experience of the internet has become more insular.

The thing there is those "big names" became big because they offered better service in the people's eyes and the people are the ones that have chosen to use them. It isn't some gatekeeper in front of them making them successful or not. If someone sprang up tomorrow that was actively better than google in every possible way while offering the same services google had people would flock to it. The same goes for amazon, facebook, or really any big name service.

People watch plenty of videos that are not on youtube when you consider video is on netflix, etc. I watch videos that are on twitch, hulu, amazon prime video, youtube, vimeo, and quite a few others we won't mention here. There are varying sites for video that deliver different kinds of video content. Youtube is popular because it is easy for people to use and is free and the like. 

The difference is they got popular of their own accord and stay popular of their own accord. As stated, they don't have some gatekeeper in front of them basically picking winners and losers based on who they personally like or who can pay them more etc. 

Good points, I must admit I was not including the like of Netflix which is pertinent. But I do think we have narrowed the range of sources we get online material from, in terms of it now all coming from established vendors. The internet started as the domain of the individual, not companies.

I am certainly against the idea of ISP's deciding what we see in a blanket fashion. But to me it is a separate issue when it comes to the likes of terrorist videos, kid porn and the like. The danger is once that principle is accepted it will get misused. But any policy can get misused, that's a case for watching the watchmen, not throwing out the idea.

I was wondering what people thought about Google? They choose what we see on the basis of the algorithms they create. That is a gatekeeper in effect and they are hardly transparent about how they pick pages.

RexKushman

linadragon said:

Net neutrality wouldn't even be a necessity in a world  where we had a country full of rational, thinking, educated human beings 

This is going to be off topic but too bad....You and @SedrynTyros have both used this attack in this thread and it needs to stop. This elitist, looking down your nose at those who disagree with you attitude is exactly why we got the Great Orange Buffoon as our CIC. Some people simply disagree with the role of our Government in our lives, If you cant have a discussion without resorting to petty name calling and impugning those who disagree with you as uneducated ignoramuses then maybe you should just shut the hell up.

RexKushman

FlyByKnight said:

Idealogues can't even break character and have a logical conversation about something so straight up. That's some sad sh!%.



#idiocracy #freedumb #murica

God I miss In Living Color.....

Quizzical

MrMelGibson said:

Quizzical said:

SedrynTyros said:

Ozmodan said:

Cleffy said:

Title II regulations doesn't adhere to the tenant of the internet. Communication companies were removed from title II in the 90s. Most of what we would attribute to being the internet age was under Title I regulations. Title II regulations would handle ISPs worse as it was made for copper telephone service using switch operators.
The FCC was budget neutral. It was funded through licensing RF spectrum. They don't really levy a tax, but operate more like a business. The subsidies they provide are gained through fees and licenses they charge to ISPs.

Well sorry, but just because they did not do it in the past does not mean they won't do it.  To start with most of the big ISPs are monopolies.  Only a few big cities have any choice of ISP, they tend to avoid areas serviced by other providers.  So there is really nothing a subscriber can do if an ISP decides to do such.  These big ISPs are in the business of making money and as cable fees continue dropping you can bet they will be looking at these other methods of making income and it will not be good for the consumer.

Of course they will.  It is insanely naive to believe otherwise.

I mean, I get the anti-government ideology, but do the people who believe in that ever come up for air and look at what happens when government regulations are removed?  We have to live in the real world and deal with things as they are not as we believe they should be.  And the truth is that given half a chance the corporations would own us.  The only thing stopping them is government.

For example, when they deregulated the airlines, it resulted in planes becoming more cramped--but with airfare much cheaper than before.  Apparently most fliers wanted cheaper flights--in multiple senses of the word--that the airlines couldn't offer while heavily regulated.

That's a pretty terrible example.  Airlines are a mess now.  Overbook and over sell seats so that when everyone shows up not everyone can get on? Check.  Price gouging for extra carry on bags and etc.  No meals in flight.  The list goes on.  Jesus, they should put those regulations back in.  Flying is a nightmare now.  This really doesn't bode well for your argument.

The trade-off for all of that is that your ticket probably doesn't cost half what it would if they hadn't deregulated the airlines.  If you want it the old way, a lot of airlines still sell first class tickets.  As with many things in life, there are no perfect solutions, but only trade-offs.

Personally, I generally find that an ordinary seat on Southwest gives about the right price/service/comfort trade-offs for my preferences.  Someone who desperately wants to save a few more dollars and is willing to put up with a miserable experience might fly Spirit or RyanAir.  Someone who wants a much nicer experience and is willing to pay for it can fly first class, or at least pay for extra leg room, whatever food and drinks they sell, and early boarding on some airlines.  I'm glad I have that option, rather than being forced to pay a bunch of extra money for how the regulators think it should be, even if it would genuinely be a nicer flight.

Quizzical

Ridelynn said:

Quizzical said:

I'm more open to regulations to ensure a properly competitive market than to regulations that try to grant someone (whether a government or a private corporation) an artificial monopoly and then try to get them to behave.  Cellular already has a suitably competitive market in most of the United States, though some places could really use more competition in wired ISPs.  I'm glad that I had the opportunity to switch from Comcast to Verizon where I live--and the threat of switching helps to keep both ISPs in line.

I agree with all of that, but see, most people don't have the luxury of choice. In the major city I'm near, it's Comcast up to 100MB or ... I guess there's AT&T DSL at 1/10th the speed, or radio wireless for 1/30th the speed, or LTE cellular for 1/2 the speed and data caps.

Comcast lobbies very hard to keep it that way, and makes it extremely difficult for another company to get permitting and use rights to install a competing infrastructure. The radio ISP isn't even independant, they use Comcast backbone and pay a good bit to do so - and it's reflected in the pricing. You pay more for a 3MB radio link than you would 100MB cable, but Comcast isn't willing to run cable everywhere - hence radio has a market, even at that price.

It's kinda like saying  you always have the option of walking, but when your destination is 50 miles away, is isn't an appealing option.

I would contend that the regulations stopping other, competing companies from coming in and building an alternative network to Comcast are a case of regulations that exist but shouldn't.  That can be considered too much regulation, or alternatively as bad regulations.  One shouldn't assume that giving regulators a ton of power to do whatever will result in the regulations you want.

While I view Internet regulations primarily as a question of, how can we get more companies to build more infrastructure so that consumers have more options, you're right that situations where there is an effective monopoly on good Internet service are a problem.  Out further away from major cities can be a huge problem.

What would you think of a regulatory regime in which there is one set of regulations when there is only one high speed Internet option in an area, but a different, much looser set of regulations when there is better competition?  We absolutely don't want to tell companies considering building infrastructure that we'll strangle them in regulations so they'll never make enough money to pay for the cost of the investment.

Quizzical

SedrynTyros said:

Medicare is constantly on the rise because healthcare is constantly on the rise.  If you think private insurance does it more efficiently, you're out of your mind.  If we had single payer, we'd be paying a lot less for health insurance as a nation.  Private insurance is for profit, not for the welfare of its customers.

The fundamental problem in health care is too much insurance.  People hardly ever ask, "What will this cost?"  Rather, they ask, "Will my insurance cover this?", or at most "What will my co-pay be?"  When people need health care but it isn't a "go to the nearest hospital right now" emergency, a large fraction of society should pay small expenses out of pocket rather than having them be covered by insurance.  I understand that some people can't do that, but if you make $80k per year and a $200 doctor bill would be ruinous for you, you're probably doing something severely wrong in life.   Get people to care about the cost of providing health care because they're paying those costs and the same market pressures that drive costs down in so many other industries would do so in health care, too.

Avarix

I read a comment the other day for someone in favor of getting rid of net neutrality. They said it kills innovation and startup companies. Won't removing net neutrality do exactly that? When Netflix starts paying Comcast millions of dollars a year, so you can get top speeds using their service, it will kill a small site attempting to compete with Netflix because they can't pay that same fee to Comcast.

As a consumer it will be a choice of 'Do I go with the new guy? They have a decent selection at a cheaper price. However, with Netflix I never have to deal with buffering videos and being forced to watch it on 480p' I will pick no buffering every time.

Also, I have zero interest in internet packages like '$50 a month from Comcast will now get you unlimited Yahoo mail, Google search, Netflix, and Hulu! For an additional $50 you get unlimited Pandora, Spotify, and iTunes'

Quizzical

SedrynTyros said:

Because it's all crap designed to achieve a specific end.  The ISPs want to make more money, that's the only thing they care about and Net Neutrality is in their way.  Lucky for them, they have the "OMG GOVERNMENT IS THE EVILS" group on their side.  If they had a country full of rational, thinking human beings, this horeshit we're dealing with wouldn't even be on the table and Net Neutrality would already be the law of the land.

Businesses wanting to make money is not unique to ISPs.  The goal should be to structure things in such a way that the easiest way to make money is to provide a good service at a good price so that consumers want to buy it.  Having competition so that customers who dislike one ISP can readily switch to another is a very important part of that.  But that is a goal, not a policy, and the question of how to get there is something that reasonable people can and do disagree about.

FlyByKnight

RexKushman said:

linadragon said:

Net neutrality wouldn't even be a necessity in a world  where we had a country full of rational, thinking, educated human beings 

This is going to be off topic but too bad....You and @SedrynTyros have both used this attack in this thread and it needs to stop. This elitist, looking down your nose at those who disagree with you attitude is exactly why we got the Great Orange Buffoon as our CIC. Some people simply disagree with the role of our Government in our lives, If you cant have a discussion without resorting to petty name calling and impugning those who disagree with you as uneducated ignoramuses then maybe you should just shut the hell up.

The people who claim to have a problem with the role of government in most cases ARE misguided and in most cases uneducated though. Laws & regulation =/= big government. Big government is spending tax payer dollars on unnecessary departments, pork barrels, or nepotism. Written & agreed law is not. It's the foundation of any healthy fair society.

Small government is NOT anarchy and letting people do WTF they want ESPECIALLY as it pertains to capitalism which is the proverbial horse that will eat until it explodes (except in this case the horse kills everyone around it, gets nursed to health and eats until it explodes again).

Most of these people RP'ing as rebels fighting a tyrannical government are isolated, misguided, and ignorant. They're just playing Monday Night Football with their political ideology and incapable of taking the paint off their face and being reasonable.

"Big government big government. Mah guns. My right to get bent over by big banks and corporations. Mah freedumb. Damn you Obama"

Stop.

As a gamer  and a power user of the internet, how does the rollback of Net Neutrality regulation effect you? Do you want it/Don't want it? Why?

P.S. @RexKushman my rant isn't targeting you personally, just a culmination of reading through so far.

MadFrenchie

Quizzical said:

SedrynTyros said:

Medicare is constantly on the rise because healthcare is constantly on the rise.  If you think private insurance does it more efficiently, you're out of your mind.  If we had single payer, we'd be paying a lot less for health insurance as a nation.  Private insurance is for profit, not for the welfare of its customers.

The fundamental problem in health care is too much insurance.  People hardly ever ask, "What will this cost?"  Rather, they ask, "Will my insurance cover this?", or at most "What will my co-pay be?"  When people need health care but it isn't a "go to the nearest hospital right now" emergency, a large fraction of society should pay small expenses out of pocket rather than having them be covered by insurance.  I understand that some people can't do that, but if you make $80k per year and a $200 doctor bill would be ruinous for you, you're probably doing something severely wrong in life.   Get people to care about the cost of providing health care because they're paying those costs and the same market pressures that drive costs down in so many other industries would do so in health care, too.

The larger issue, I would argue (though I don't disagree with you here), is that most folks aren't worried about their health until they develop a condition that forces them to worry about it.

Many of these costly health conditions are completely preventable.  It just requires people make time to keep themselves healthy.

JeffSpicoli

Im for it!!! Aint nobody gonna take away my porn & throttle /pol/!!!!