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Seems like this is like deciding how much RAM you need when you buy a computer. Someone who only reads newspapers or email will need a lot less than a gamer. I use less so I pay less.
Wrong. More like: You pay for 1 gig of ram, but they will only let you use 100mb of that ram that you paid for on video content, so you cant watch high def video anymore without stuttering unless you pay them an extra "fee" to unlock the ram you already paid for to allow it to be used with video content.
I don't get how so many people can be so sure they are against something that they obviously don't understand in the first place. I guess being an ignorant knee jerk reactionary is just in style now huh?
And if AT&T blocks content you want, and another provider does not, you as the educated consumer should a) switch to the provider that meets your demands the best, and b) explain to AT&T why they just lost your revenue.
If a clothing store does not carry a brand you like, do you petition the government to force every store to carry every brand in equal numbers, or do you simply go to a store that you know has the brands you like?
You do realize that most places will only have, at best, two internet providers to choose from, don't you? Here in the Denver area, we have Comcast and CenturyLink. Maybe Comcast will bring Hulu to a crawl unless I pay an extra charge to get it (in addition to what I already pay Hulu for my subscription.) Fine, you say. Then go to CenturyLink....who might slow Netflix (which I also have a subscription for) down to a crawl.
And there are a number of places--mostly rural--that only get one choice.
A free and open internet should be as basic a right as clean water. Maybe conservatives will support net neutrality when Breitbart and Infowars take longer to load than CNN and NBC.
which is exactly what we had before government regulation 2 years ago.
"Net Neutrality": A misleading term for Obama-era rules forbidding Internet providers (ISPs) from slowing down or otherwise reducing data flow for heavy users.
Rather than letting users decide for themselves if they want to sign up with an ISP who does this (not-so-heavy users might like the lower prices of providers who restrict data flow to super-heavy users, while the Super-heavies might find they can use all they want but have to pay for it). During the Obama era, the Federal government decided they have to take care of users who make a bad decision, by arbitrarily restricting the ISPs who offer such choice. This allowed super-heavy users to overburden data nets, choking off everybody, including people who were only moderate users.
Now the FCC has decided to repeal such govt restrictions. Now users need to read the fine print on their contracts, and/or call an ISP and ask them if they do that, and at what levels of data flow. Super-heavy users can still overburden the net, but ISPs can either deliberately slow them down, or charge them a lot extra for their extravagance and let THEM decide if they want to slow down.
Government is no longer your mother, protecting you from every little thing that comes down the pike. You have to actually find out for yourself, and plan accordingly. Horrors!
There is literally only 1 ISP where I live. What fantasy land do you live in where everyone magically has many multiple options for ISP services? The ISP in our city also even has had exclusive rights for going on the last 15 years.
You act like streaming Netflix is a major problem. Why is it that when ISPs like Comcast face stiff competition in other areas of the country that provide municipal internet they crap their pants because muni internets have no problems providing services that can handle Netflix? The only thing Comcast wants to do is have as big of a monopoly on internet access as possible and provide the worst service they can without having to pay for structural upgrades that keep pace with the development of the internet.
The internet and access to the flow of information is literally the modern version of oil back during the gilded age. DT and Pai have literally helped Comcast become the new Standard Oil.
You guys should make up your mind. For the last year you’ve been bitching about all those rural deplorables in flyover states and suddenly you care about them. Cool story.
You didn't answer the question. All you did was throw up a deflection.
An easy way to describe it is that every street and highway in your town becomes privately owned and tolled and each company can decide what to charge and whether to hold your car up and let 100 others pass you before you can pass the intersection.
Or, we allow Federal Sale of all the airspace over the USA and then we do the same things with airfares, airlines, routes, tc.
Wrong. DT and his supporters have literally turned America's internet into a style more akin to China's now with their Great Firewall. That is the dystopian reality America now faces which absolutely makes a mockery out of everything the US is supposed to stand for in the first place.
China and Russia now could even pay Comcast to promote news websites with views that are more aligned to what they think. This sh*t is utterly moronic and infuriating.
EXACTLY. It is more sinister than just the typical GOP pay-off to large corporate donors. trump wants to control what you hear, what you see. If it was up to him all we'd have on TV is Fox News. Once it's done screwing up the internet, this same FCC will start "reviewing" broadcast TV and radio licenses.
If you think this is hyperbole, don't forget his October 2017 tweet:
Quote:
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!
7:55 AM - Oct 11, 2017
It is an expansion of the government's control over a monopoly they both created and protect. The reclassification of the ISP as a public utility protects the current behemoths that are monopoly/duopoly across most of the nation, but exerts more control over how each of these government protected behemoths must act in repayment of their monopolistic powers over the consumer.
Rather than deregulate and open the door to competition, as they did with Ma Bell in the 1980s, which led to the telecomm explosion that made the Internet possible in the first place, they added regulation to make the monopoly powers play nicer according to the standard "give us political cover while we keep your revenue streams bloated" playbook.
Today is the rolling back of one of the powers they grabbed during the Obama admin. Ajit Pai actually transferred power from government to the people. Those people, as Roboteer correctly points out, now have more freedom than before, but also have more personal responsibility to make that freedom work out in their favor. That responsibility is called "reading the fine print and becoming an educated consumer."
Next up, addressing the "last half mile of wire" foolishness and either abolishing or superseding the various state and local laws that block new providers from entering the market by employing various legal barriers that center around the 1934 Communications Act, the 1984 Cable Communications Act and the 1996 Telecomm Act. But wireless providers are already pushing towards that, which should exert market pressure on the entrenched powers that be.
Hey, if the government wants to eliminate Net Neutrality in conjunction with a deregulation that results in 15+ ISP providers servicing my home, that's fine with me. But that isn't what they are doing. Do you honestly think next on Ajit Pai's list of things to do is to drastically increase Verizon's competition and eliminate its monopoly?
All Trump has done is revert back to the rules Clinton/Gore had in place.
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