Obama ruins the internet

Ziggurat said:
Could they block sites they don't like? In principle, yes. Is that a serious concern? Not really. That approach is likely to backfire (see: Streisand effect), and it's trivially easy to route around anyways with proxy servers, Google cache, and even just reposted content. ISP's haven't made any moves like that yet, there's really no reason to think they'll start doing so, or that they won't get spanked (hard) by consumers if they do.
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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.
 
Francesca R said:
You are making excuses for a misleading piece.
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No, I'm not. The internet is not literally a driveway with junk on half of it. The cartoon is, no kidding, a metaphor used to help less technical people understand a complex system.

Francesca R said:
What ISP voluntarily wastes their own infrasstructure capacity?
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This is now effectively a straw man argument.
 
Francesca R said:
Not only is it alternate, it is the appropriate solution.

Lack of competition is bad. You seem to agree, despite your penchant for more, ever stronger regulation that does nothing to increase it.
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Yet many things don't have competition, for example I have to get my electricity hooked up by the local company, and people have few choices in terms of who plows the road they are on and so on. By its nature high speed internet makes sense to be similar to a utility because it really isn't practical to have 6 high speed internet services run their cables in every neighborhood. That is massively more expensive than is really necessary.

That is why cable companies, phone companies and power companies are utilities as well, it isn't practical to put multiple wires for each on every utility pole.

Now if we could disconnect who you buy your service from from who owns the connection to your home similar to how electricity works in some areas it might be possible but the industry doesn't seem to be going that way.
 
ehcks said:
It's an impossible solution, because the major ISPs literally collude, and have outright admitted to doing so. They will not offer service in the same area.

Few companies have the resources to build new lines. Google is probably the only one, and they're still going at a rate of a city or two per year.
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And then competition is only in cities.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Yet many things don't have competition, for example I have to get my electricity hooked up by the local company
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I don't. I have a choice of at least five suppliers I think. And at least seven ISPs. And only one set of cables for each. It is called local loop unbundling.

I am not in the US but to declare it impossible because the US has not done it, when other places have is, well, "exceptional".
Now if we could disconnect who you buy your service from from who owns the connection to your home similar to how electricity works in some areas it might be possible but the industry doesn't seem to be going that way.
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This is superior to network neutrality laws IMO.
 
Ziggurat said:
I will ask again: how does net neutrality fix this problem?

And once again, the answer is that it does not.
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The problem is ISPs limiting the speed of certain sites, either because they use a lot of data, or their content is deemed unacceptable by the ISP.

Net neutrality explicitly prevents that, and exists solely to prevent that.

So yes, it does.
 
ehcks said:
The problem is ISPs limiting the speed of certain sites, either because they use a lot of data, or their content is deemed unacceptable by the ISP.

Net neutrality explicitly prevents that, and exists solely to prevent that.

So yes, it does.
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No. The visible effect here was to slow access to Netflix, but how it happened matters. Verizon and Comcast did not block certain sites. They did not slow down certain sites. In fact, they did nothing at all. Do you not get it yet? Verizon took no action. They did nothing to slow down Netflix.

So no, net neutrality cannot do anything to prevent that problem.
 
Upchurch said:
It is not the same regulation that caused the ISP monopolies. You are conflating the two.
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I never said it was. But you said the answer to NN regs you thought didn't work, was stronger regs. Pretty sure you said that.

And that is even given what I detect as tacit admission from you and others that the regs are not actually tackling the problems that you identify.
 
ponderingturtle said:
And then competition is only in cities.
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For a limited definition of "cities".

We still have people in so-called "rural" areas that don't even have cable. In the case of Mrs. qg's aunt "rural" being on a major road with residences no more than five hundred yards apart, within fifteen miles of three different major towns on three different sides.

All serviced by TWC.

She can only get DSL from the phone company. And not particularly robust DSL at that.

I guess she needs a paddle too, and all of her neighbors.

"Take that! TWC. Bet your bottom's sore."
 
Upchurch said:
That may very well be true. How would you recommend the US make different decisions in the past to get us to a place we have a system like the UK? How do we move forward from here to make that happen?
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The UK? I don't want our internet to be like the UK. I want our internet to be like South Korea.

100 Mbit/s service is the average standard in urban South Korean homes and the country has rolled out 1 Gbit/s (1,000 Mbit/s) connections nationwide, which cost $20 per month
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds
 
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Francesca R said:
I never said it was. But you said the answer to NN regs you thought didn't work, was stronger regs. Pretty sure you said that.
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I said "stronger network neutrality". How that is accomplished, through regulation or other means, I don't care.

Francesca R said:
And that is even given what I detect as tacit admission from you and others that the regs are not actually tackling the problems that you identify.
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Oh, that's just Zig. Don't take him (or anyone, really) too seriously.
 
Upchurch said:
This is now effectively a straw man argument.
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Erm. It is the argument the comic makes. And I challenge it as bogus. And you know it is too. Yet you wave it through. You would do better to admit it is misleading I think.

Otherwise it looks like you approve of misleading the public. For some reason.
 
Upchurch said:
That may very well be true. How would you recommend the US make different decisions in the past to get us to a place we have a system like the UK? How do we move forward from here to make that happen?
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Get a better FCC.

And yes--that means a better regulator. Because regulators have a legitimate purpose. You do yourself no favours protecting ones that don't serve that out so well.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. The visible effect here was to slow access to Netflix, but how it happened matters. Verizon and Comcast did not block certain sites. They did not slow down certain sites. In fact, they did nothing at all. Do you not get it yet? Verizon took no action. They did nothing to slow down Netflix.

So no, net neutrality cannot do anything to prevent that problem.
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You're right they didn't plug in the router which exists and was unused and would increase bandwidth. Verizon did nothing with their excess capacity and you're right net neutrality wouldn't prevent that. So is it obvious, additional regulations are needed to prevent companies like Verizon from playing such malicious games.
 
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