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The guy has learned nothing. The only way to keep the internet free and open is for a lack of government regulation.
Keep your hand out of my pocket and your nose out of my ass
So let's let Time Warner and Comcast which combined control a significant majority of households to squeeze the little man and boost the business of the guy who can afford it?
Yeah okay... because the cable companies will be in our best interest!
The USG is pushing this for no reason.
The internet is free.
But they see a boogieman in the future and the more they think this needs to be pushed the more worried I get that one day they will take it over because of this perceived boogieman and then our free internet will be gone forever.
So let's let Time Warner and Comcast which combined control a significant majority of households to squeeze the little man and boost the business of the guy who can afford it?
Yeah okay... because the cable companies will be in our best interest!
Nah..competition is what keeps the prices low.
Don't be afraid to switch out.
I'm out in the sticks and I have several choices for internet service.
What gets people trapped are all these bundled services they buy.
The USG is pushing this for no reason. The internet is free.
But they see a boogieman in the future and the more they think this needs to be pushed the more worried I get that one day they will take it over because of this perceived boogieman and then our free internet will be gone forever.
And that's the beauty of the internet... to abolish Net Neutrality is to get rid of that freedom.
But I'm not sure the FCC does either. IMO this FCC seems less intent on protecting the public than figuring out some way to get their claws into the Internet. Once they do, then what? We'll have administrations that swing pro-corporation, some that go the other way. You folks really want to see the Internet get turned into a political football?
People like the Internet a lot. That's why this little FCC proceeding has generated so much ink and bluster. Politicians have to worry about messing with things that people like. People don't even like health care all that much, and look how much flak the White House got for the ACA. The truth is that high speed internet access is already political. Neutrality protects consumers. The absence of neutrality hurts them, helping the ISPs and the corporate giants who can afford the fast lanes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by prosopis
Ok, noted. I must have mistook your meaning.
How is the tiered system any different than my opting for the cheapest connection vs. my neighbor desiring more speed and paying for it? If it's me or him, or netflix or amazon, what is the difference?
The degradation of service to encourage higher payments for improved service is better addressed through market competition than regulation. Break the monopoly, or if the tools to do so aren't there, work on providing them.
I agree with you there. Consumers should have several choices as well as content providers having several choices. I don't see that FCC regulation will actually do that - instead it will legitimize the monopolistic business plan of the ISP's in exchange for keeping their abuses down to a dull roar. The loser will be the consumer, as usual when business and government get together.
The difference is that you and your neighbor are making your choices about speed and making your monthly payments. While your neighbor pays extra for his 50mb/s connection, his ISP might slow down Hulu when he wants to access it because Hulu hasn't paid for the highest speed lane. It's kind of like charging both the sender and the receiver for mail delivery.
The monopoly is a separate, though related, problem (that needs fixing). If Comcast and Time Warner had viable competition as ISPs, then net neutrality would not be so pressing, because there would be opportunities for market-based solutions. At the present, there is not a clear path forward to introducing competition in the ISP market.
There is a theoretical argument that monopolies last longer when regulated, which is a point raised in your last paragraph. Net neutrality is a very light touch. It treats the ISPs as pipes for undifferentiated information. It does not provide new powers to the monopolies. In fact, it reduces the suite of powers available to them. You may argue that taking those powers away makes those monopolies a little more palatable and thus likelier to persist. I don't see much of a dent until a technology breakthrough eliminates the need for wires at the last mile (and maybe the last 100 miles).
Quote:
Originally Posted by prosopis
If the system is not being rigged in the way you note below, it is up to me at my end and up to netflix at their end. To some degree their choice is influenced by mine - since I will likely prefer the streaming service that is fastest.
No, it's not there at the moment. But as I keep saying, as others keep saying, making this a regulated monopoly will hardly address the actual problem - monopolization. While better than unregulated monopoly, this is going to be a terd sandwich we have to fix all over again later.
Free markets work when consumers, regulators, and competitors all work to keep them free. We won't be seeing that here - we'll be seeing a single company working with the regulator to decide just how far they can screw the consumer.
I think net neutrality would give us a baseline of consumer protection beyond which the monopolists continue to extract their rents. They will still be a problem, but downstream competition will be promoted.
What if Comcast and Time Warner decided to create a "Search" fast-lane too expensive for startups to afford. They would be handing Google an even greater hold on the "Search" market than it already has. I think that the lack of neutrality encourages increases the likelihood of greater consolidation in the technology market, as well as increasing barriers to competition, and I don't think that is a good idea.
11-10-2014, 04:09 PM
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n/a posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
The USG is pushing this for no reason.
The internet is free.
But they see a boogieman in the future and the more they think this needs to be pushed the more worried I get that one day they will take it over because of this perceived boogieman and then our free internet will be gone forever.
Except for the part where it isn't, because the DC circuit court ruled that the FCC has no authority to enforce net neutrality because ISPs aren't considered common carriers.
And now Verizon purposely cripples Netflix. So did Comcast, but Netflix forked over the cash.
Which is why they need to be labeled as utilities so that the FCC can regulate them.
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