Net Neutrality Rules Under Attack by FCC Chairman, it is time for us to have our say against it

Pulsar

Diamond Member
Mar 3, 2003
5,225
306
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While I applaud your effort - this was already posted a couple weeks ago.
 
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Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
15,749
4,558
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This is what conservatives want and they hold every branch of government. So it's over.
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
126
I believe the internet SHOULD be a war zone. This whole neutralzone sh!t is for pansies ;)
 

KeithP

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2000
5,659
198
106
October 29, 2007
https://www.cnet.com/news/obama-pledges-net-neutrality-laws-if-elected-president/
The question, selected through an online video contest, was posed via video by small-business owner and former AT&T engineer Joe Niederberger, a member of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org. He asked Obama: "Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate Net neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net neutrality?"

"The answer is yes," Obama replied. "I am a strong supporter of Net neutrality."

If nobody got their panties in a bunch when Obama ignored his campaign promises about NN, why do you think they will care now?

-KeithP
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
12,029
126
www.anyf.ca
Net neutrality in the US seems like a never ending battle. One year it's won, the next year it's reversed.

Here in Canada we thankfully won that battle, and think it's over. Hopefully. That said if the US loses then we are affected too. I really should not be that way, but it is. A lot of our traffic goes through the US. I think that's BS though. I should not be routing through NYC to go to Quebec. That makes zero sense, but that's what a traceroute indicates. I see that often where I connect to a server in Canada and still go through the US. We need our own fibre to go between provinces it's retarded that we rely on the states.
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,501
136
I hope this failing drives people to look at the real problems, which are the lack of competition (including cable companies not competing against each other, and mergers) and the victories the big ISPs have had in restricting municipal broadband.

Having the FCC keep net neutrality rules or pass new ones and somehow enforce them (anyone here read through the full order/rules?) sounds good, but the last thing you want is the government getting involved in the actual regulation of bits and traffic. It's hilarious that we've gone from being outraged about the NSA data collection to saying maybe the FCC should be checking to make sure our traffic is being treated equal - how exactly do they do this? What they should be doing is making it a fair market.

Even if net neutrality regulation did stay in place, ISPs would jack up the rates for consumers and blame it on a lack of ability to optimize traffic, thus requiring more infrastructure and equipment. And guess what? Because there's little to no competition, you'll just suck it up and pay the cost.

Net neutrality is just about shifting costs from businesses to us. Which maybe would be worth it if you knew your bits are always being treated equally in all cases. The reality is net neutrality legislation is a no-win situation for consumers whether it passed or failed, and we are just being propagandized by large enterprises that don't want to pay for lopsided peering, and misled individuals.

The few smaller ISPs that exist do things that are much more pro consumer like not collect data for advertising (like freaking Verizon did/does), have better support, and are less likely to throttle or negatively shape traffic because they know they can't afford to lose customers. Competition does that.

Which is the only reason in the mobile space (thanks to T-Mobile and Sprint, both benefitting from foreign investment - T-Mobile being German, and Sprint getting a sugar daddy in Softbank - substituting in for actual new competitors) we are seeing the return of unlimited data. Or for wired broadband, just look at the effect Google Fiber had for the short time they were actively rolling it out, which really panicked AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, et al. into magically being able to do gigabit when for some reason it was too expensive to do it just prior.

I used to think "net neutrality" was a no brainer issue, but that's before I started to actually think about it, look into it, and contemplate the unintended consequences. You have to ask whether this would cause more problems than it solves, rather than just take at face value the dumbed down analogies and cute explanations that are being proffered by most advocates on social and conventional media.

All of this was a colossal distraction away from real anti-consumer issues like that crappy Time Warner/Charter merger ("Spectrum"). Sure, it gets mentioned in the debate from time to time, but I don't recall the outrage or call to action being as large then.

Slightly related: I'm sure that stupid cookie warning every site on the internet has now seemed like a good idea at the time (thanks EU).

Disclaimer: none of the above was in defense of Ajit Pai or the Trump administration. I'm non-political for the most part, which isn't to say I don't have opinions on issues, but I think most politicians and bureaucrats are in it for themselves, not us. They all want to screw us over in the privacy arena for sure, Republican or Democrat seems to make no difference.
 
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