Net Neutrality

[Smitty-48]

Actually classifying it as a Title II utility meant it was a lot like how other utilities like water, gas, electricity is run. So, a Title II is basically an essential service to have our society to function. Especially since more and more people are working from home, running their business, and also taking classes.

I understand that, and that is not what the internet was intended to be, and that was never the case until two years ago, but suddenly people like you are saying the internet cannot survive without it, when the internet would never have come about in the first place, if people like you had been put in charge of it.

You're so blinded by your ideological adherence to central planning, you would kill the goose which laid the golden egg.

Explain how Net Neutrality would've killed the Internet? Because I have pointed out why NN would've saved the Internet but your side never really explain how ending Net Neutrality would make things better.

"Net Neutrality" is a meme, but it's not the reality, there's no neutrality in a public utility, a public utility is a government run service, I don't have a "side", I simply would not want the government running the internet, and if the government had been running it from the beginning, they would have run it into the ground.

It's not the phone company, it's not the power company, it's not the water company, none of those are free spaces for investment and opportunity, those are closed off markets, run by the government, the biggest monopolies of them all.

[tue4t]

The Commies are on the march now, it's Net Leftstalingrad, you're caught in the kessel. "Muh Roads!" is encircling you from the flanks.

The ironic thing about all this is that it was literally "muh roads" which allowed, and eventually led to the manifestation of ISP monopolies inlcuding other types of services that use public roads to run their infrastructure. A sip of some delicious Flint tap water anyone? Uncle Sam owns the roads, Uncle Sam gets to choose to whom he sells monopoly rights to run lines down them.

Uncle Sam never said it was telecommunications tho, the internet was never the phone company, and that's why it was so successful, Obama's assertion of "telecommunications" would have been the original sin which killed the internet in its crib.

Oh without a doubt. One of the big things differentiating it was that lack of regulatory oversight. A wild west of innovation, just as it usually is at the forefront of most breakthrough technologies with totally unpredictable horizons. Government couldn't have imagined how to regulate that, and any attempt would have certainly killed it. No-one really knew what it would become.

I still think we'd be in a better place today though if there wasn't so much state level capture by the ISP's. Most don't have a choice in ISP and that really sucks balls. Not to mention it keeps getting used to rile up the masses into thinking they need to fight back with title II type legislation. I don't think democrats are going to let this one slip by, looks like they're going to weaponise the momentum from losing a "righteous battle against capitalist pigs" to push an actual net neutrality bill of some kind.

[Smitty-48]

The ironic thing about all this is that it was literally "muh roads" which allowed, and eventually led to the manifestation of ISP monopolies inlcuding other types of services that use public roads to run their infrastructure. A sip of some delicious Flint tap water anyone? Uncle Sam owns the roads, Uncle Sam gets to choose to whom he sells monopoly rights to run lines down them.

Uncle Sam never said it was telecommunications tho, the internet was never the phone company, and that's why it was so successful, Obama's assertion of "telecommunications" would have been the original sin which killed the internet in its crib.

Oh without a doubt. One of the big things differentiating it was that lack of regulatory oversight. A wild west of innovation, just as it usually is at the forefront of most breakthrough technologies with totally unpredictable horizons. Government couldn't have imagined how to regulate that, and any attempt would have certainly killed it. No-one really knew what it would become.

I still think we'd be in a better place today though if there wasn't so much state level capture by the ISP's. Most don't have a choice in ISP and that really sucks balls. Not to mention it keeps getting used to rile up the masses into thinking they need to fight back with title II type legislation. I don't think democrats are going to let this one slip by, looks like they're going to weaponise the momentum from losing a "righteous battle against capitalist pigs" to push an actual net neutrality bill of some kind.

But the Europeans have a myriad of ISPs in competition with each other, and they don't have any trouble doing this without running them as a public utility, because they have unbundled the interface in Europe, which Title II in the USA does not do. So the idea that America must run the ISP's as a public utility in order to have market competition, is simply balderdash.

The Democrats and Pen-Pen central planners just want to get their hooks into it, cause "bad bad corporations", it has nothing to do with "neutrality", that's simply a rubric, they just want the government to run everything, ideologically, and by doing so, will simply kill the geese that lay the golden eggs.

[tue4t]

Explain how Net Neutrality would've killed the Internet? Because I have pointed out why NN would've saved the Internet but your side never really explain how ending Net Neutrality would make things better.

What are you trying to save it from though?

NN doesn't set nominal price controls over monopoly price gouging, which is what the public utilities argument is based around. i.e. the belief that it's cheaper to build one infrastructure set, effectively creating a monopoly, and then regulating the price said monopoly can charge so that you theoretically get the best of both worlds (lower infrastructure spending and cheaper prices). NN only sets relative price controls so that instead of a few big content providers getting screwed, everyone gets the privilege of being screwed equally. And that's putting aside the failure that has been the public utilities experiment - we know now that they end up costing more because of regulatory capture, lack of innovation etc.

Also, if you read the legislative work both in the US and Europe, net neutrality legislation doesn't actually stop ISP's from dividing and parceling out access to the internet. The only thing they can't do is advertise these specialised plans (pay for youtube only bandwidth) as universal access. There isn't any mandate to offer universal access. The ISP's don't actually care about net neutrality philosophically as much as they care about the other regulatory baggage that comes with title II. Comcast has come out and said as much.

[Smitty-48]

See, the Europeans have an actual net neutrality law, not this phoney baloney that the Obamacrats are trying to pull on you, doesn't actually work mind you, the ISP's in Europe easily get around it, but because they have unbundled the interface allowing anybody to plug into any company, it doesn't really matter, because there is competition, and with that, they don't actually need the net neutrality law.

Making Comcast a public utility, doesn't make them unbundle your interface, so it makes no difference, you're still stuck with Comcast, or whoever controls your interface, so no actual competition, meanwhile, you've let the government central planners get their hooks into the internet, with all the downsides therein, and no upside.

[tue4t]

Uncle Sam never said it was telecommunications tho, the internet was never the phone company, and that's why it was so successful, Obama's assertion of "telecommunications" would have been the original sin which killed the internet in its crib.

Oh without a doubt. One of the big things differentiating it was that lack of regulatory oversight. A wild west of innovation, just as it usually is at the forefront of most breakthrough technologies with totally unpredictable horizons. Government couldn't have imagined how to regulate that, and any attempt would have certainly killed it. No-one really knew what it would become.

I still think we'd be in a better place today though if there wasn't so much state level capture by the ISP's. Most don't have a choice in ISP and that really sucks balls. Not to mention it keeps getting used to rile up the masses into thinking they need to fight back with title II type legislation. I don't think democrats are going to let this one slip by, looks like they're going to weaponise the momentum from losing a "righteous battle against capitalist pigs" to push an actual net neutrality bill of some kind.

But the Europeans have a myriad of ISPs in competition with each other, and they don't have any trouble doing this without running them as a public utility, because they have unbundled the interface in Europe, which Title II in the USA does not do. So the idea that America must run the ISP's as a public utility in order to have market competition, is simply balderdash.

The Democrats and Pen-Pen central planners just want to get their hooks into it, cause "bad bad corporations", it has nothing to do with "neutrality", that's simply a rubric, they just want the government to run everything, ideologically, and by doing so, will simply kill the geese that lay the golden eggs.

I actually think the European situation isn't as good as it looks. They're doing the same thing the US did to Bell leading up to the explosion in ISP providers and the subsequent 2001 telecom crash - artificially created competition through price fixed, mandated sell quotas from bandwidth wholesalers. There appear to be all the same precursors as well. I have a friend who works in a German ISP and he's always complaining about the abnormaly fierce price competition driving profits down and down. That bubble is going to burst when the cheap bandwidth runs out, as it probably will.

It occurs to me now that they also censor the internet quite a bit in compliance with hate speech laws and such, especially in Germany. I Wonder if it's got to do with something hidden in some dark closet of EU net neutrality law...

[Smitty-48]

Well I'm not saying the European situation is a panacea, but no market is, there are downsides in every market, but in terms of what Americans say they want, which is more choice in terms of ISP's, more competition, I would start with LLU and unbundle the interface first. You start with minimal invasive and work your way from there, you don't go straight to government take over as the first option.

In terms of a net neutrality law, that should be a law, written by congress, in the light of day, not some ad hoc "telecommunications public utility" mumbo jumbo, because that won't achieve any of the things Americans are saying that they want, but there will be a downside none the less.

I don't favour a net neutrality law, since, just exactly as you say, it will be employed for all sorts of mischief, but if someone does favour such a law, they should at least be required to write that law and pass it.

Because in actual fact, there's no net neutrality law involved here, Obama basically asserted that the FCC would just make the rules up as they go, arbitrarily, and that is actually lawlessness, there is no specific law which lays out what the parameters are. He couldn't get a law passed, so he just asserted executive authority to run shit on an ad hoc basis, and that is going to turn to mischief, inevitably.

Basically, nothing Obama did has anything to do with consumers actual complaints here, it's not going to achieve anything that the consumers are asking for, but at the same time, it will cause all sorts of unintended consequences which they won't like, and which will in the end just make things worse. Not only a blunt instrument, but it isn't even going to bludgeon the things that consumers want bludgeoned, it's going to bludgeon other things, which they never intended it to.

[The Conservative]

You don't need Amazon though to compete in our society. You do need internet, unfortunately. Apples and bowling balls.

You want to sell something online and reach the most amount of people for cheap, you go to Amazon. You want to go online, you can use a dozen other ISPs...

That is not the case for huge parts of the country. Many folks have a single ISP in their area. If there was serious competition, people wouldn't be losing their shit like they are now.

You realize that the reason for this is because of the TItle II clause that was put onto ISPs, which meant they were to be treated as utilities. Most ISPs that were not the big 5 (in theory) wouldn't be able to compete in such a market because to enter it was way too high to just enter into the market.

[The Conservative]

Ok, here is the thing, people are crying all over that Net Neutrality has been killed, why is this a problem? Think about it before going for the reaction of "It will allow ISPs to charge whatever they want for services."

Are people afraid Facebook and Youtube are going to cost $5.00 a month to get standard bandwidth treatment instead of being throttled?

People, seriously?

Know what, people paid real money for microtransactions (loot boxes) in games until recently, and they didn't seem to have an issue with it.

Others had no issue paying extra for expansions, even though you bought the CE version of a game... Others don't blink paying $10.00 a month for MS to get "free games" or $25 (or whatever it is) a year for EA to get their library...

So why are people terrified? That their gaming will be throttled down? You aren't that big of an impact on the bottom line.

Want to know what will probably be throttled down, and rightfully so? Netflix! Netflix uses almost 36% of the entire internet bandwidth. (that is over a third of the total bandwidth)

http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/ne ... 201801064/

Amazon, Apple, and YouTube combined don't even break even to that with all of the audio and video streaming they all do.

http://static1.businessinsider.com/imag ... h-hogs.jpg

Netflix and Youtube are the biggest though, after that everything else is minuscule. Your HTTP and Others are the largest after that.

The point is that your internet will not change much, what needs to change is the way companies do business. Netflix has already increased their prices by a dollar; anyone else notice that?

They are preparing to pay for the use of bandwidth, but in turn, they are also pushing the cost of that expense towards you.

Now let's talk about Title II protection, what did that mean? In reality nothing. It made the ISPs into utilities, which are another problem altogether.

Utilities are required to make life better, they have limitations, but in reality, they also don't care about you either. They charge a premium for their services, and if you don't pay, they can shut you off. So what does Title II mean?

Its definition is as thus:

An organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies.

So, making a utility public means nothing, it just means that it has to follow the rules and regulations to make sure people can get the service.

It says nothing about costing more or less based off of usage, it says nothing about how you can't be turned off if you don't pay... it especially doesn't say anything about fairness.

It just says that it has to provide you services...

So the ISPs were removed from Title II? While under Title II, did you get your guaranteed speed? Did you never drop from the internet, did you never have to reset your modem? Did you never complain about a bill? How about slow internet?

No? Then you were one of the lucky ones, most of us did, and we did so every day very vocally elsewhere.

If you use Netflix and expect your service not to be throttled, try again... it deserves to be because it eats up so much bandwidth. The company needs to learn how to be Youtube or Apple...

If you are gamer or a general user, you will have nothing to worry about. Comcast, Cox, and any other internet service will destroy your internet by charging too much, providing very little, and saying it's your fault instead of theirs.

If you want to blame the ISPs for anything, blame them for being able to strong arm states, cities and communities from having the infrastructure that they paid for many times over.

How we lose internet every time there is a strong storm, how come it's not redundant and protects itself from wire damage?

I'm sorry if people think that they were fed a pack of lies in fearmongering, we need to think of the bigger picture. One entity loses big on this, and it should, Netflix.

This Net Neutrality ruling will not destroy the internet, what will though is our willingness to have sub-part infrastructure and data sent to us.

We are paying premium money for services, and we are told the plate of shit in front of us is butter-bathed lobster... and some of you are believing it.

[DBTrek]

I miss 25 pages, come back, and StA is now celebrating the repeal of NN.
Guess some folks just need a day or five to work the reactionary venom out of their system before being able to think.