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So what can we expect from the new FCC rules to create the abstract-sounding concept of net neutrality? For one thing, we'll eventually have "two Internets—the fast one, with great content, that costs more (maybe a lot more) to use, and then the MuggleNet, which is free but slow and crappy," writes Dan Lyons at the Daily Beast. "Cable TV vs. rabbit ears." That's because the FCC decided to allow carriers to create "fast lanes" and charge Internet companies more to use them.
Ummmm, no. The FCC has a very valid function. The radio spectrum is limited, and a lot of competing businesses and technologies want to dominate large parts of it. My dad was chief engineer of a few radio stations and had a lot of respect for how the FCC worked at verifying the interference was minimized. Without the FCC, pirate radio stations would have made any radio impossible. Even WITH the FCC, some take a while to trace and kill. I remember a pirate station in Miami that used to trounce the public radio station regularly until the FCC finally caught the SOB. The FCC was lax in the CB band playground (partly on purpose, I suspect), and the public trashed it.
As for what goes on now days, and in regulation of the net, I'm also concerned, but I'm not ready to write the commission off just yet.
ps. Oh yeah, big companies leading the FCC around? LOL!!! During Minnow's reign it was anything but that. I used to get tales of how the big guys got their tails whacked.
The FCC had regulatory authority over broadcast airways only because they used a limited resource that was the property of the general public. That is not the case with, for example, cable, or hardwire telephone, or newspapers, or people standing on soapboxes, because the capacity of those media can be expanded without a boundary. The FCC has no regulatory legitimacy in the worldwide web. To usurp it to handpick certain users and reward them with favor, and let them use it wholly for personal aggrandizement, is not the role of governance in a free society.
The FCC made matters even worse, in recent years, by awarding access to the limited broadcast spectrum to users on the basis of their economic power and their zeal to enrich themselves, rather than their inclination to use that resource to benefit the public who owned it. As a result, we have the radio and TV that we deserve, and even Dr. Minow called that a vast wasteland 50 years ago, when it was a great deal more vigorous and vibrant than it is now.
The FCC regulations in the broadcast spectrum were put in place by international treaty, to protect an asset that belongs equally to all the people of earth, and must be in concert with that objective. Now, the www is an unlimited asset that belongs to all of humanity, and the FCC is toying with something much larger than it can imagine, if it seeks to put that into its hip pocket. The web can bypass the USA, and just move on without us, which will not engender much enthusiasm on the part of shareholders of US corporations like Google and Yahoo and Microsoft, who are currently highly profitable participants.
LMAO... we already have a 5 speed Internet. It's called Tiered service.
*** When are these conspiracy theories going to stop? ***
About the only thing I haven't seen big business or government get blamed for is VD, that get blamed on the hookers.
Where do we already have this? Can you give us an example of a locality in the USA in which Tiered Service is currently in existence, and subscribers do not have the option of Neutral service?
This thread is not about whether an ISP may offer dedicated service for a premium, assuring high-speed data to special-needs clients. It is about whether an ISP must offer untiered service to a general public that desires it, which is now the case, and will remain so as long as the citizenry is vigilant and obstructs practices that you call unfounded conspiracies. I think everyone here already understands that except you.
City-data and I have a contractual agreement, which is called the Terms of Service. No entity, governmental or corporate, acting as a public carrier, has a right to impede the performance of either party to that contract, absent due cause to believe that that contract represents a public danger. This is a constitutional guarantee, which would be denied under provisions of two-tiered service.
How would you like it if your cable or satellite company said that channels 2-50 are immediately available to everyone, but if you want to watch the other channels, they can be shown to only 100 people at a time, and you might have to wait your turn, and then before you get the program, you need to watch 5 minutes of commercials that the cable company gains the revenue from. The cable stations 2-50 are the ones that either pay higher fees to the cable company, or offer programming that the cable company politically approves of. This is exactly what ISPs want to do, and are asking the FCC for permission to do so.
There will always be people who will start shouting about tinfoil hats every time the constitution is violated, but those people never bring any evidence to the table. A fact is what they want to believe, and a conspiracy is what they don't want to believe, and they never let any information get in the way of their preconditioned dogma.
Where do we already have this? Can you give us an example of a locality in the USA in which Tiered Service is currently in existence, and subscribers do not have the option of Neutral service?
I must plead ignorance, never heard of "neutral service" before and see no references to it other than your conspiracy rantings.
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This thread is not about whether an ISP may offer dedicated service for a premium, assuring high-speed data to special-needs clients. It is about whether an ISP must offer untiered service to a general public that desires it, which is now the case, and will remain so as long as the citizenry is vigilant and obstructs practices that you call unfounded conspiracies. I think everyone here already understands that except you.
General public desires it? Do some research, over 40% of American households don't want or need the Internet. What you are saying is the ISP's need to be forced into a specific business model (one service). Reminder: this is a capitalist society, not a socialist society....
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City-data and I have a contractual agreement, which is called the Terms of Service. No entity, governmental or corporate, acting as a public carrier, has a right to impede the performance of either party to that contract, absent due cause to believe that that contract represents a public danger. This is a constitutional guarantee, which would be denied under provisions of two-tiered service.
So now contracts are public dangers, more socialist ideas... I just reviewed the TOS for CD and don't see the verbiage you talk about. Between which lines should I read on the TOS?
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How would you like it if your cable or satellite company said that channels 2-50 are immediately available to everyone, but if you want to watch the other channels, they can be shown to only 100 people at a time, and you might have to wait your turn, and then before you get the program, you need to watch 5 minutes of commercials that the cable company gains the revenue from. The cable stations 2-50 are the ones that either pay higher fees to the cable company, or offer programming that the cable company politically approves of. This is exactly what ISPs want to do, and are asking the FCC for permission to do so.
Again, this is America, a capitalist country.... You get what you pay for. I don't think it's fair car companies offer vehicles where some can only go 80MPH and another model 120MPH and another 160MPH... Tiered vehicles costing increasing amounts of money. Sound familiar????
Quote:
There will always be people who will start shouting about tinfoil hats every time the constitution is violated, but those people never bring any evidence to the table. A fact is what they want to believe, and a conspiracy is what they don't want to believe, and they never let any information get in the way of their preconditioned dogma.
Man what logic, you conspiracy guys have it nailed down. Yours is the ONLY TRUTH and everybody else is clueless.
If your ISP receives a lump cash payment from Google on condition that they block users from accessing Yahoo, or add a surcharge for accessing Yahoo, and you have a Yahoo email account, you're OK with that---right?
Like you think Roadrunner is doing, now that you think their basic 10M package denies their users access to many sites on the internet that are available only to their high-priced clients.
Most people who understand English know the meaning of 'neutral' and they know what 'service' means, and when someone forms sentences by putting an adjective with a noun, they comprehend what it is without doing a search for it to see if it is authorized or permitted usage. They would then read the first paragraph above, and if I said that was not 'neutral service', they wouldn't run around in circles babbling and bumping their protective helmet on things.
If your ISP receives a lump cash payment from Google on condition that they block users from accessing Yahoo, or add a surcharge for accessing Yahoo, and you have a Yahoo email account, you're OK with that---right?
Like you think Roadrunner is doing, now that you think their basic 10M package denies their users access to many sites on the internet that are available only to their high-priced clients.
Most people who understand English know the meaning of 'neutral' and they know what 'service' means, and when someone forms sentences by putting an adjective with a noun, they comprehend what it is without doing a search for it to see if it is authorized or permitted usage. They would then read the first paragraph above, and if I said that was not 'neutral service', they wouldn't run around in circles babbling and bumping their protective helmet on things.
LMAO, you really believe this crap? Tiered service allows access to additional web sites....
OK, make a believer out of me, I am a RR customer with the basic service. Give me a list of web sites that only the RR extreme service can access and I can't.
And don't give me BS that the list is secret or confidential. If this were true I think RR subscribers (just to name one group) who would be screaming their heads off.
But not one peep from any website like Slashdot or The Register, not a word on the ACLU web site.
So lets see a list of these web sites.....
And please stop with english lessons, I didn't care for english back when and don't care for an elitist conspiracy person who serves up BS to give me them now.
OK, make a believer out of me, I am a RR customer with the basic service. Give me a list of web sites that only the RR extreme service can access and I can't.
.
There aren't any. They can't restrict them. But they want to.
The Republicans and the corporations want to change the rules, so they can. Then, they'll be able to block access to popular websites, unless you pay for the high-priced tiers.
That's what the debate is about.
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