the funniest thing about net neutrality is all the dumbass conservatives that got tricked into thinking the FCC was trying to censor the internet. (when the reality is the FCC was trying to stop corporations from censoring the internet) i even had one of my college professors (i’m a computer networking grad) who still does contract CNS jobs on the side trying to tell me that if the FCC won that the gov’t would be forcing ISP’s to run lines out to places that they wouldn’t otherwise. gotta love fox disinformation… oh, this is the same professor who keeps telling me i’m not a progressive and that i should watch glenn beck -_-;
outside of his political views though the professor is extremely knowledgable.
They’re flaring the continuous leak… Obama and BP are retarded.
Hey guys, here’s a bunch of toxic stuff coming out so let’s just burn it and release it into the atmosphere where it can contaminate the entire Earth because that’s obviously safer than releasing it into a pump as was done in previous oil spill cases. I remember someone got mad Obama got drawn as a monkey, but these guys really are monkeys because they’re on boats cleaning that shit by hand when you can just set up a boat with a pump and filtration system as was done in other cases. You can also automate the process.
Also, on topic, let the companies have control and the government with minor control in case companies get out of hand. If Verizon or Comcast will suck then switch. If the government has full control then you have no choice. If a site will say something the government doesn’t like then they will remove it. Soon, instant messaging will become illegal and you will be able to go to jail for saying anything not according to a certain rule set. It seems that the more “advanced” we become, the more we limit and imprison ourselves. I give it a couple more years/decades until the word privacy is removed from the dictionary, with freedom being removed shortly after.
the legislation is either corporations control it or nobody does, the gov’t will not be stepping in to that spot in their place, it’s not like they do that now. for instance if i so chose i could have made a “i hate bush” website or one for obama, they can’t and wont have the power to block that at their discression. and i would prefer nobody get the option of either limiting bandwidth or access (as long as your paying for the service neither should be limited by any party).
You realize that’s not going to happen, right? If somebody found out that a company is deliberately trying to stop the free expression of ideas, especially politically, that somebody would notice and it’d cause a massive PR nightmare.
Out of the things in the bill of rights, freedom of speech is pretty low in the totem poll. All they have to say is some nonsense about safety and protection and lights out.
i would rather them not have that ability to even need a PR nightmare to clean things up. speaking of PR nightmares, how is that BP PR nightmare going for having the corporations handle things in a proper manner… oh that’s right, corporations don’t care about that shit. no honestly everyone needs to hear this, a corporation can’t be reasoned with like a person, it doesn’t have a heart it has a legal responsibility to maximize profits. so unless you force them to either not have the ability to do something in the first place or not allowed to do something… they are going to do it.
Which is the point. They’re not going to block barackobama.com because doing so would lose them customers, thus dropping their profits.
Plus, let’s be straight. The telecommunications industry isn’t going to block barackobama.com. It’s going to block mittromney.com or charliechrist.com first. Not all soulless corporations back Republicans, bro. If they did, this shit wouldn’t have been locked down so hard.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. the opposite is true. all innovation and startups will get murdered by this. the shitty broadband companies will basically have all the power to decide what web sites succeed or not. smaller tech companies are going to get stifled by this shit, because they’re not gonna be able to afford to pay through the nose to get better bandwidth. meanwhile, the shitty broadband companies will devote all their bandwidth to their own shitty websites instead, which nobody wants to visit anyway.
so you’ll have big giant corporations stomping on smaller businesses, and paying through the nose to ensure it stays that way. fuck these stupid republicans. has deregulation ever worked? NO. did they learn nothing from last economic crisis?
If the FCC doesn’t step in, that’s the type of future we’ll end up with for broadband internet. Personally, I lost hope. We’re pretty much in a lose/lose situation no matter what.
Glad that this is going to pass. I’m just waiting for all these dumbass, corporate shills in the Republican party to try to repeal the bill and carve the internet up among their friends at the telecoms.
Okay, first this isn’t a “Bill”. It’s a bunch of nameless faces in the federal bureaucracy overstepping their authority to regulate space that they’re threatening to use 130 year old definitions to regulate… An overwhelming majority of congress is against the FCC taking this action. The minute this rule comes up for vote in the FCC and hits the FCC’s rule book there will be a court challenge and immediate injunction citing the FCC’s lack of prescribed legal authority to regulate the internet space… an authority that no congressional legislation has given them and an authority few people in congress now want them to have… That’s Democrats and Republicans alike.
I disagree with your analysis of the economics. The fear for larger companies in the internet space is the ability for them to invest in startups and promote them to a size and scope where they can become active players in unused internet space so the larger corporation can get dividends from that space by owning parts of small start up companies.
Which do you think is better for Comcast for instance? To be put into competition for its services with other providers where it has to compete efficiently to win OR to be put into competition with idiot federal regulators who its going to outsmart and take an already perverted market for internet services and distort even further against future competition? Comcast is going to pick number two everytime. The truth is when regulations enter an existing market it doesn’t hurt large companies, they have tons of smart people to outsmart the regulators. It hurts smaller companies who don’t have the financial means to overcome the barriers to entry to the marketplace. As to providers charging more for access to certain groups, that’s not going to happen. There’s enough economic pressure to maximize subscriber rolls that no internet provider is going to pick and choose who it does and does not provide bandwidth to, especially when their current pricing models are so effective. If you want more bandwidth, pay for it. If anything the implementation of this regulatory scheme might encourage more US companies to put hard monthly bandwidth caps on individual subscribers. Comcast already has a limit at 250GB (which is huge by international standards but still…), but in a regulated space, the arguements for further limiting bandwidth to help operate “in compliance” becomes a lot easier to swallow.
We can talk about the merits of deregulation and the way overhyped claim that deregulation caused an economic crisis… If you want to have a more detailed discussion on that we can take that PMs because the technical economic details are… long, boring, and complex to most and I don’t think most people want to read that discussion here. So, to say that I disagree with that statement is putting it lightly. We do not need a highly regulated internet sphere being regulated by people who don’t have the authority to regulate the space and the FCC’s claim to that authority is tenuous at best. Broadband operators have enough incentives in place to not do what you’re talking about. In short, I feel markets work when competition exists and there’s enough knowledge about the products they provide that people can make reasonably informed choices. Regulating this space is only going to add to the complexity of existing internet subscription products and there are enough options for most of the country (i.e. AT&T / Verizon vs. Local Cable vs. Satelite vs. Wireless Broadband) that companies are in enough of a competitive space that consumers have options when one options pricing gets out of line. People are not going to tolerate not having access to certain websites, internet providers are not going to risk the PR backlash they would recieve from information freedom groups if they started redirecting traffic and quite frankly I don’t think consumers are interested in buying “Internet on wheels” anymore. The failure of AOL is proof that that concept has come and gone. People know they want “The Internet” and that means all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly… and trust me, if anything, it will be free market conservatives who will throw the first stone at companies who limit the ability of online companies to do business because their webtraffic was redirected by a hostile ISP… its just not going to happen.
Further, I don’t understand why people would complain about business in the internet sphere taking place like business in the brick and mortal sphere. Small companies get bought up when they’re efficient and doing well and larger companies learn from their efficiencies… or they get taken over themselves.
I really don’t understand the problem with the status quo here… I don’t see it.
Everybody knows about this, it’s not a secret. Lack of knowledge isn’t really the problem here. Nor is lobbying.
Lobbying is simply a function of free speech. We all have the right to talk to our representatives about what we want, and what we think is needed, the real question is why should they listen to you? What do any of us actually have to say that’s worth hearing, and what sort of impact do we actually have?
Also people can’t be reasoned with either, see current debates over everything having to do with economics. Everybody wants what they want as cheaply as possible with no regard to if it’s possible, or the consequences of it. Walmart is a case in point. Walmart is a horrible fucking company that destroys lives. But people want cheap shit, and a lot of it.
There is really no way to make a ton of cheap shit without mega corporations behind it. So we kinda have to chose. Do we like having things made of plastic, electronic widgets, cheap food transported all over the place? Well then we are going to have to deal with big oil because with out it all of that would cost a ton more than it does now or simply not be available.
As for net neutrality, it’s interesting, but there is more to it than “comcast is run by cock smoking ass goblins who’s only goal is to rape your dog and steal your money”. Comcast obviously wants to make more money, but the way they are operating now is rather silly. You pay for an internet connection and then hulu, netflix, et all come in and steal a good portion of their share of cable customers who now fall into the “fuck y’all I want it free, free, free, screw paying for shit” category. So comcast wants to charge companies like L3 who does netflix streaming service to make up for lost revenue, it makes a lot of sense.
so, since this thread got bumped i noticed this quote from 6 months ago… “not going to happen” eh? oh what’s that? comcast put massive extra fee’s on Netflix’s broadband provider so as to make it more difficult for them to provide competing services to comcast customers (comcast offers streaming content via Xfinity)… oh, and no massive PR nightmare happened. they got a tiny bit of bad press and moved on with it.
exactly as i called it months ago. BTW comcast allready has complaints against it from 3rd party router manufacturers claiming that comcast puts unfair restrictions on 3rd party routers so as to make it more difficult for them to be used with comcast service… surprise surprise that comcast will rent a router out to it’s customers (for way more money after as short a time as 6 months than just purchasing a router would have cost).
The gov’t has a purpose when regulating, the purpose is to stop large corporations from taking advantage of individual citizens who have very little if any power to ever fight back…
as for “the fcc overstepping it’s boundaries” actually the fcc wasn’t talking about overstepping shit, they are the body granted sole authority to regulate on the internet by congress. that’s actually what regulators do, kinda like how the financial reform bill put all the powers to actually regulate wallstreet into the hands of the regulators (it’s actually a fairly common practice in our country… of course it’s not effective anymore because of how weak our regulators are)…