Obama ruins the internet

Francesca R said:
More misdirection. Nothing is "taken away". If you think something is--say what was taken away. Exactly.

I don't think you wish to discuss the matter honestly.
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Forcing people to give away things that they own is commonly viewed as theft or being things being taken away. After all you are not about giving them the choice of if they will sell it or not.

And if you think this is the answer, start a lobbying group and go for it. Right now it is not an option that is on the table politically in the US. And you would have to fight all the major telecom companies, as despite nothing being stolen they don't actually want to give up their captive customer base. So you need to forcibly take but not steal the local networks from them.
 
quadraginta said:
What, exactly, do we consumers spank them with?

If I want to take my business away from TWC around here my only practical alternative is DSL

That isn't going to do much to improve my bandwidth.

I pay extra for higher speed service. My connection has never reached anywhere close to the the promised capacity. Not ever.

But if I don't pay the premium it would be even worse. With the devices we use in our household (pretty much average) we are pushing the usefulness of what bandwidth we do manage to achieve.

So tell me how to spank TWC. So that they would notice, that is.
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You spank them with the invisible hand of the free market. It's like Jesus, it's magic.
 
Francesca R said:
Rejected, again. Completely untrue. What assets were stolen from BT? What assets were stolen from Telecom NZ.

What assets?

Please list the assets that were stolen.
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Again you seem to be ignoring what you are being told The lost of Assets from BT and Telecom was because they breached their agreements, not because the Government confiscated them.

Ding ding. Maybe we have a winner. You don't know that that is exactly how Openreach and Chorus came into being?
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And this achieves what exactly? What stops the Parent Company telling the Lines company to give the sister ISP company a better deal than any competitors so as to keep the monopoly by an unfair advantage. This is exactly what Telecom did with Xtra here in NZ.

Whose issue is that?
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The Republicans for a start.
 
Francesca R said:
It seems as if you are peddling some "regulation / service requirements = theft" line. So is Phantomwolf.

Are you right-wing tiny-government fundies or something?
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No, I am talking about taking away property that you own by force as theft. Regulation isn't theft, but that isn't the issue, the issue is forcibly taking the ownership of the local networks away.

And being spun as theft is exactly what the add campaigns of all the major content owners would do. So suddenly all anyone hears is that the government is stealing the private property of the companies. That will go over like a lead balloon in congress, especially with the results of the last election.

How do you view taking something that you currently own and then making it so that you don't own it anymore as something other than theft?
 
Francesca R said:
Your self-contradiction is highlighted. You are welcome.
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Ok it isn't theft if I force you to sell me your house for $1? If this was a free market solution then you wouldn't need to force them at all, they would happily sell off the local networks to those who want to buy them after all. But as you need to force them to sell them, it seems that they are probably not getting what it is really worth to them after all.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Again you seem to be ignoring what you are being told The lost of Assets from BT and Telecom was because they breached their agreements, not because the Government confiscated them.
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You have yet to list what assets were "stolen". That means confiscated for no compensation.

Please do.
 
Francesca R said:
I think I agreed that the one that increases profit would thrive.

[ . . . checks post . . . ]

Yes I am pretty sure I did.
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Yeah, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you disagreement.

I think companies want to make money. I'm not sure what you think. They are not charities. Sans regulation they will do what will make the most money. If that means shafting the customer then they will. A lack of net neutrality leaves many, many avenues open to charge customers more then they do now. (Oh, if you want the HD films to be streamed, that'll cost you more. Oh no, we own the line into your house so you can't go elsewhere). Without net neutrality those money making opportunities will be taken to the detriment of the customer.
 
ponderingturtle said:
And being spun as theft is exactly what the add campaigns of all the major content owners would do. So suddenly all anyone hears is that the government is stealing the private property of the companies. That will go over like a lead balloon in congress, especially with the results of the last election.
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So you are wrongly calling it theft because special interests (that you presumably oppose) would (wrongly) call it theft?

Yeah that makes sense.
How do you view taking something that you currently own and then making it so that you don't own it anymore as something other than theft?
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Forced break up, via legislation and/or courts.

You going to try and say that has never happened in the US telecom industry?
 
ponderingturtle said:
But as you need to force them to sell them, it seems that they are probably not getting what it is really worth to them after all.
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Quite correct.

Who said that what happens with local loop unbundling in Europe (or NZ) was a free market solution? It isn't. I have argued repeatedly that it is superior and preferable to network neutrality laws
 
3point14 said:
Yeah, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you disagreement.

I think companies want to make money. I'm not sure what you think. They are not charities. Sans regulation they will do what will make the most money. If that means shafting the customer then they will. A lack of net neutrality leaves many, many avenues open to charge customers more then they do now. (Oh, if you want the HD films to be streamed, that'll cost you more. Oh no, we own the line into your house so you can't go elsewhere). Without net neutrality those money making opportunities will be taken to the detriment of the customer.
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Exactly.

And really, it seems pretty simple. It's in the best interest of Comcast, and whoever owns them, to strangle Netflix, since it's obviously competition against their own services. The claim isn't that the folks at Comcast are evil-doers at all - throttling the competition is what they are supposed to do, to bring in the maximum amount of money to their shareholders. And frankly, choking off Netflix, Skype, and whoever, is exactly what I would demand if I were the CEO of any of these Major ISPs, and if it were allowed legally.

And so, the solution is to ban the practice.
 
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Francesca R said:
So you are wrongly calling it theft because special interests (that you presumably oppose) would (wrongly) call it theft?

Yeah that makes sense.
Forced break up, via legislation and/or courts.

You going to try and say that has never happened in the US telecom industry?
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Only the once. Otherwise it tends to be mergers and purchases that get looked at.

And you still haven't made any real argument that this is remotely politically a feasible action.
 
Mumbles said:
Exactly.

And really, it seems pretty simple. It's in the best interest of Comcast, and whoever owns them, to strangle Netflix, since it's obviously competition against their own services. The claim isn't that the folks at Comcast are evil-doers at all - throttling the competition is what they are supposed to do, to bring in the maximum amount of money to their shareholders. And frankly, choking off Netflix, Skype, and whoever, is exactly what I would demand if I were the CEO of any of these companies, and if it were allowed legally.

And so, the solution is to ban the practice.
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Yeah, no.

Comcast and Netflix are not competitors. They offer fundamentally different services. Comcast saw an opportunity to get money from Netflix. Now that they are getting some money from Netflix, they have no reason to "strangle" Netflix. And they aren't.

As for banning the practice, 1) net neutrality doesn't, and 2) most people here seem to fundamentally misunderstand the technical nature of what Comcast actually did (or more precisely, didn't do). I have yet to see anyone propose rules that would actually prevent such a scenario in the future.
 
Ziggurat said:
Yeah, no.

Comcast and Netflix are not competitors. They offer fundamentally different services.
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No they don't. I've been sent plenty of emails from Comcast, HBO, and so forth, promising me streaming over the internet, in exchange for money. That is exactly what Netflix offers.
 
Ziggurat said:
Comcast and Netflix are not competitors.
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They absolutely are competitors for certain services. I can rent and watch movies and shows directly via comcast's television services, or I can watch movies and shows via Netflix.

Plenty of people I know are cutting their TV services and opting for strictly internet and using services like Netflix, HBO Go, and Amazon Prime in place of it.
 
Mumbles said:
No they don't. I've been sent plenty of emails from Comcast, HBO, and so forth, promising me streaming over the internet, in exchange for money. That is exactly what Netflix offers.
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And yet, Comcast isn't slowing down Netflix anymore. So your understanding of the nature of that competition certainly cannot be correct.

Furthermore, I note that you haven't addressed the fact that net neutrality plays no role in this particular conflict.
 
Here's the point, and why this is broader than just one company versus the other.

What is the last, awesome, consumer-level innovation that we got from Comcast, or Verizon, or AT&T? Not just some network behind-the-scenes thing, but something that the consumer gets to use, that helps them in any way?

Personally, I can't think of anything solid since Pay-Per-View. Maybe texting, but even that required the government to step in and require phone numbers to be transferred from network to the other.

Meanwhile...Youtube. iPhone. Spotify. Twitter. Skype. And so many people have launched new ideas off of these platforms, and many others. Why should we allow people at some major, featureless company, to stifle us?
 
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