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Does anyone here actually oppose Network Neutrality?

jhunter1163 said:
So we should rely on the invisible hand of the free market and great humanitarians like this guy? "Anyone who expects to use these pipes for free is nuts!"

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2005-11-06/rewired-and-ready-for-combat
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Yep. The ISPs weren't charging companies like Netflix to make up for some lack of technology. They were extorting money from them because they could.

The Internet is a vital resource. It may not be required for physical survival as are water, electricity, gas, etc., but the US economy relies on it, and requires it to be as open and free as possible without ISPs being able to limit the flow of data on a whim.

Leaving the Internet under-regulated would be as irresponsible as waving openly gun-toting passengers through security checkpoints at airports.
 
Babbylonian said:
Yep. The ISPs weren't charging companies like Netflix to make up for some lack of technology. They were extorting money from them because they could.

The Internet is a vital resource. It may not be required for physical survival as are water, electricity, gas, etc., but the US economy relies on it, and requires it to be as open and free as possible without ISPs being able to limit the flow of data on a whim.

Leaving the Internet under-regulated would be as irresponsible as waving openly gun-toting passengers through security checkpoints at airports.
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Posts like this are very revealing. You are confirming that this isn't about "net neutrality" at all. It is about regulating every aspect of the internet.

Just as has been suspected.
 
G6000 said:
Posts like this are very revealing. You are confirming that this isn't about "net neutrality" at all. It is about regulating every aspect of the internet.

Just as has been suspected.
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To which "aspects" are you referring? Mostly, I'm against monopolization and extortion.

I was a youngster in the 1980s who had a 300 (later 1200) baud modem. Early on, the phone company wanted to charge customers a premium for residential customers to use a modem on a phone line. They had to abandon it because it was just plain wrong, both because it cost them nothing for me to use the phone line in that fashion and because we had zero options when it came to phone service.

Today, I get to choose between a whole two proper, wired ISPs. If one of them decides to restrict what I can do with my broadband connection, then I can move to the other. If both of them do it, then I'm **** out of luck.
 
It is nice to see open admissions now that the real aim is for the government to regulate the internet in myriad ways. "Net neutrality" is a classic Trojan horse.

Exactly as was predicted by opponents.
 
G6000 said:
I'm sorry, but your Redtube videos are neither critical to our economy nor our security.
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No, but the VPN connections I maintain to hospitals around the country may turn out to be critical to a patient's health care. Maybe my ISP should be allowed to limit how many VPN connections I have active, too?

Believe it or not, the Internet isn't all about streaming video.
 
G6000 said:
Here's the thing. I don't know if you guys know this, but the internet has had a "net neutrality" rule in effect for something like the past 15 years.
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Absolutely false, ISPs have had the legal right to outright block any content they wanted to block and there was no legal recourse. This has only happened once on a large scale (Comcast/bit-torrent, 2006 IIRC) and due to public pressure it ended. They have also had the legal right to limit the speed of delivery for any content they wanted to limit. This has never been done as far as anyone can prove.

The re-classification and rules now makes it illegal to block or limit content.
 
Babbylonian said:
To which "aspects" are you referring? Mostly, I'm against monopolization and extortion.
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Tell me something. When you moved into your residence, from how many public utility power companies were you able to choose?

Yeah. One.

Public utilities are government-sanctioned monopolies. How's that working out for you? You going to tell me that people don't get raped on their power bills?

Everywhere I have lived, there has been only one choice of electricity and water. When governments regulate "public utilities", that is what happens.

I have at least four choices of internet service, not counting cell phone companies that offer internet access.
 
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paulhutch said:
Absolutely false, ISPs have had the legal right to outright block any content they wanted to block and there was no legal recourse. This has only happened once on a large scale (Comcast/bit-torrent, 2006 IIRC) and due to public pressure it ended. They have also had the legal right to limit the speed of delivery for any content they wanted to limit. This has never been done as far as anyone can prove.
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That is a technological problem, and will be solved by technology, not government.
 
There's nothing in the rules about tariffs or taxes, nothing about regulating content, none of the scaremongery stuff you see on Faux Noise. Net neutrality is a good thing for the consumer and a good thing for the content provider. It's not so good for the ISPs but I'm having a hard time mustering up sympathy for companies which consistently show up in the Bottom 10 for customer service.
 
G6000 said:
Tell me something. When you moved into your residence, from how many public utility power companies were you able to choose?

Yeah. One.

Public utilities are government-sanctioned monopolies. How's that working out for you? You going to tell me that people don't get raped on their power bills?

Everywhere I have lived, there has been only one choice of electricity and water. When governments regulate "public utilities", that is what happens.

I have four choices of internet service.
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My electrical service is heavily regulated and there are straightforward steps to take for redress if the company tries to screw me over, or if something happens and I'm unable to pay my bill for a time. That's why the company is allowed to operate as a local monopoly. I don't know if that's the best way to run it but it works pretty well.

If the ISPs are interested in being operated under the same heavy regulatory influence as power companies, I'd certainly be open to that discussion. Until that happens, or until regional Internet service is openly competitive everywhere, then there have to be limits on how anti-consumer and mob-like the weasels can be.
 
jhunter1163 said:
There's nothing in the rules about tariffs or taxes, nothing about regulating content
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Yet. It's only been one day.

Get this through your head. They are labeling the internet as a public utility. What has been the trend line for government regulation with respect to every other public utility?

Do you really expect the government to stop at "net neutrality" now that is has given itself the tacit power to set prices, for example?

Just look at the people in this topic already clamoring for more rules! In the name of "national security", for God's sake!!!

Fox News, et al., are more often wrong than right about a lot of things. But "net neutrality" is blindingly obvious as a Trojan horse to government regulation of the internet. It doesn't take a genius to see it. That's why even Fox News was able to figure it out.
 
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G6000 said:
That is a technological problem, and will be solved by technology, not government.
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I don't know why you keep insisting that it's a "technological problem." It isn't. It's a companies-making-crappy-decisions-that-their-customers-have-to-live-with problem. And that will not be solved allowing said companies to keep doing it.
 
G6000 said:
That is a technological problem, and will be solved by technology, not government.
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Not even close to true.

There is exactly one broadband provider available to me where I live in Massachusetts (neighbors trees block satellite, Verizon refuses to provide DSL or fiber and cell companies have so far not added towers close enough for reliable service). Under the previous rules, if they decided to block Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. so that I could only get on-demand programming from them @ $7.00 per show it was their legal right to do it. There is absolutely no technical solution that I could deploy to get around the situation.
 
Can anyone name a public utility where they live that has more than one company offering the service?

Anyone?
 
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