Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Politics and Other Controversies
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 01-05-2014, 08:06 PM
 
Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
10,471 posts, read 15,783,974 times
Reputation: 6435

Advertisements

I didn't post a link to the article itself, because it's on Cracked.com and that site has adult language and there's a picture of a dominatrix on page number 2, for some weird reason. If you Google "5 reasons the Internet could die at any moment." I'm sure you can find it.

The interesting thing to note is how well net neutrality is explained and what it means to you, and me, and I dunno 100's of millions of people. (If not more.)

The problem is that what we want out of this situation--cheap, infinitely scalable bandwidth--is the one outcome we can't have. And while the other threats on this list can maybe be avoided, this is one that will end in the Internet being less free, you paying a lot more or a combination of both.
So enjoy what you have while you can, for these are The Good Old Days.

So, why do you care?
GOP Threatens Net Neutrality Over 'Obamacare,' Debt Concessions | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Amidst heated debate over the Affordable Health Care Act, commonly known as "Obamacare," and in exchange for short-term funding to avoid a possible government shutdown, House Republicans have put together a proposal of demands, one of which includes a block on net neutrality.

So, why do you care?
Imagine this. You want to go to (insert huge corporation website) here. Your page loads in 2 seconds. You want to go to (insert any other site here) and it takes 1-2 minutes.

Or you want to torrent something. Or you want to watch Netflix, but they say, Nay, nay. Your ISP also controls some other movie site and their's loads at the speed of eagle and Netflix loads at the speed of snail.

Imagine if your YouTube video was taking forever to load, you call your ISP and they say, "Yes, that site is limited per our terms of agreement, however, have you tried Bing Video? That should be much faster for you! Have a nice day! "

Click.

The principle of net neutrality was enshrined in the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet order, which aims to prevent Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from interfering with Internet traffic or favoring their own services in order to disadvantage rivals.
Landmark Verizon ‘Net Neutrality’ Case Tests Open Internet Rules | TIME.com

Guess what?
Verizon, Other ISPsSeen Getting Favorable Net Neutrality Ruling VZ - Investors.com
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 01-05-2014, 08:41 PM
 
9,470 posts, read 6,938,607 times
Reputation: 2177
Any government "net neutrality" is precisely the opposite. We don't need any government involvement. Period.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 08:57 PM
 
41,815 posts, read 50,816,457 times
Reputation: 17863
Too many definitions of what Net Neutrality is.

The bottom line for me is this, the internet is just as important as water and electricity and as such needs to be treated like a utility. There is a very simple way to keep the internet neutral and allow competition and plenty of profits to be made.

ISP's need to only be able to sell bandwidth that the customer can use however they want, if they want to watch a video on cnn.com or a video on pron.com the ISP has to provide equal service to both sites. The ISP also needs to be allowed to set whatever rates or restrictions on their services they want as long as they are equally applied.

For other services the ISP may want to offer those need to be separate and have the same restrictions of any other services the customer may want to use. For example if the ISP wants to offer a video service and they have a bandwidth cap their video service has to count against the bandwidth cap.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 09:00 PM
 
41,815 posts, read 50,816,457 times
Reputation: 17863
Quote:
Originally Posted by pnwmdk View Post
Any government "net neutrality" is precisely the opposite. We don't need any government involvement. Period.
If you are using the original definition that is exactly how the internet has operated since it's inception and that is the way it should continue to operate. The problem is that defintion has morped into things net neutrality isn't, you need to be very careful about the fine print on any legislation put forth by either party on this issue.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 09:28 PM
 
46,815 posts, read 25,726,880 times
Reputation: 29293
Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman View Post
If you are using the original definition that is exactly how the internet has operated since it's inception and that is the way it should continue to operate. The problem is that defintion has morped into things net neutrality isn't, you need to be very careful about the fine print on any legislation put forth by either party on this issue.
We don't see eye to eye on many issues, but this is spot on.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 09:39 PM
 
41,815 posts, read 50,816,457 times
Reputation: 17863
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dane_in_LA View Post
We don't see eye to eye on many issues, but this is spot on.
The probelm with this isuue is that it's been muddied on both sides. Clearly allowing the ISP's to throttle bandwidth for third parties in favor of their own services or for content providers that have paid a premium is not beneficial for anyone except the ISP's. On the other side of the spectrum price controls, equal access for every consumer or even insertion of Fairness Doctrine type legislation is not beneficial either.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 10:13 PM
 
Location: Where they serve real ale.
7,242 posts, read 7,878,589 times
Reputation: 3497
Without Net Neutrality the cable company gets to decide which websites you can and cannot visit and they can slow down access to some sites in order to "encourage" people to visit the websites owned by the internet provider. No, thank you. I like the law as it stands where they have to treat every website the same and can't block websites I want to visit.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 10:19 PM
 
Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
10,471 posts, read 15,783,974 times
Reputation: 6435
From that same article - If net neutrality stays and the ISP's can't offer multiple tiers of service, then they say they will have to use an even more annoying solution: putting an end to unlimited plans completely and making you pay for every gigabyte of that Bittorrent download of every single episode of The Simpsons.

Which. as some of you might recall, was the way America Online used to do it. Then they lost to the people that gave you unlimited access for a set price.

Ain't that weird.

I'm going to share a bit of myself here. I'm a big Naruto fan. That's the only anime beside's Bleach that I ever got hooked on. I used to buy the sets from Amazon. Then, I discovered Hulu and free Naruto and I stopped buying CD sets. Yeah, there's an annoying commericial every once in a while, but hey, FREE TV. You can't beat free TV. I think watching one 30 minute show is like a 700 meg download. That's just me, one guy.

The author of that article mentions that with gaming consoles, etc. getting more and more access to these types of downloads, the water faucets are turning into fire hydrants. And moving data costs money.

Free stuff is nice. But who's gonna soak up the cost for it?

Here's a weird question. If it cost a penny to do a Google search, would you pay the penny? Or would you use Dogpile? Who even remembers Webcrawler or Hotbot? "Let me Lycos that." HA

Last edited by 70Ford; 01-05-2014 at 10:29 PM..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 10:55 PM
 
Location: Where they serve real ale.
7,242 posts, read 7,878,589 times
Reputation: 3497
Quote:
Originally Posted by pnwmdk View Post
Any government "net neutrality" is precisely the opposite. We don't need any government involvement. Period.
You're appallingly ignorant. All net neutrality says is that ISPs have to treat all websites the same so they cannot block or slow down access to some. What Time-Warner and other ISPs want to do is demand every website pay them a monthly amount in order to allow people to visit the website and if the website doesn't pay then they'll block the website so that you, the guy who is paying TW for internet access, can't visit it. Oh, and you'd better believe one of the first websites blocked will be competitors to TW so no more netflix or Hulu as TW wants you paying $100 per month for their cable TV.

Thanks, but I like the law the way it is where it is illegal for TW to run protection rackets like that.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-05-2014, 11:02 PM
 
1,825 posts, read 1,413,047 times
Reputation: 540
Eventually due to bandwidth issues I think the internet will become like a utility where you pay by usage in that a person who is constantly downloading stuff will pay more then a dude who only uses e-mail. Whether or not ISPs will control download speeds is a matter of lobbying. If the government lets them I think they definitely will.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Politics and Other Controversies
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top