Here's a perspective on the misnamed Net Neutrality you won't see on CNN.

Only a naive fool can believe that NN was going to anything good for internet access, technology development and deployment or the price we pay at the consumer level.

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Well the Patriot act was for Patriots....right?
 
The funny part is that all the liberal mindless idiot voters were up in arms claiming they would be silenced when it ended.

Meanwhile they silence all conservative speech they can from all social media.
 
Just watched the video. Lol. He said the same thing.

Great video btw. It summed that up in a way that only the truly blind can ignore.
 
Ohhh.... That's how it works. Thanks.;)
 
Just watched the video. Lol. He said the same thing.

Great video btw. It summed that up in a way that only the truly blind can ignore.

Prager is good like that. One of the few positives of driving at night in SC. They rebroadcast him at 3 am.
 
Except that his conclusion, that net neutrality means that the government will control the internet, is not supported by his arguments, other than that, great video.

Content providers DO pay more based on the amount of traffic they deliver. The issue is really that the ISPs have sold each of us end users more bandwidth than they can really provide, it’s called oversubscription. As we use more and more data the amount of oversubscription declines, and with it ISP profits. The ISPs could come clean and increase rates, but of course they are already making embarrassingly high profits and rate increases would likely draw additional risk of regulation or of new competitors. To avoid either they proposed charging fees to content providers.

Net neutrality is far from perfect, and as competition grows in the form of additional ISPs it becomes mostly irrelevant. Nonetheless, claiming that the government restricting ISPs from metering/filtering/prioritizing data is not only not “the government controlling the internet” it isn’t even a step on that path.

Let’s make this personal. ATT decides that to promote their video service and recover costs of bandwidth utilization from other video apps that they are going to charge each content provider $10 per customer per month. You happen to get Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, and each of those pass the charge to you plus an admin fee so you get a $33 rate increase (that’s mostly profit to ATT). Within days the other ISPs in your area follow suit. You suck it up and/or drop some services, basically paying a rate increase to the ISP for bandwidth you’re already paying for.

Let’s go further. One video service agrees to pay any ISP $20/mo/sub for priority access defined as allocation of most bandwidth to their application and a 1mbps cap on any competing service that doesn’t pay an identical fee. The video service is huge and doesn’t pass the cost on for a couple years, during which all competitors fail because the quality of their product sucks or they try to pass the fee through. Now having a monopoly they raise rates. No new competitor can afford to pay the fee to enter the market.

These issues could, maybe, be dealt with through anti-trust law, but the length of those cases is measured in decades.

IMHO while the implementation of Net Neutrality is imperfect, the concept that the ISP needs to bill its customers whatever it takes to maintain profitability is the way to encourage competition and declining retail rates from the ISPs.

FWIW, I’m an ISP, I don’t meter anything (okay, I meter some things related to illegal activities) and I have built the capacity to deliver to customers everything they are buying. I am not as profitable as the big guys, not by a long shot, but isn’t that a good thing?
 
The big ISP and telecom companies have a demonstrated track record of not playing fair and buying off government for their benefit as anyone who tries to get decent access in a rural area can attest. The Rectums (my name for TWC/spectrum) of the world don’t want to serve areas that aren’t population dense but damn if they want to allow these communities to develop their own municipal service leveraging existing infrastructure.

Cry them a river about their profits. More BS called American Capitalism otherwise known as privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
 
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The big ISP and telecom companies have a demonstrated track record of not playing fair and buying off government for their benefit as anyone who tries to get decent access in a rural area can attest. The Rectums (my name for TWC/spectrum) of the world don’t want to serve areas that aren’t population dense but damn if they want to allow these communities to develop their own municipal service leveraging existing infrastructure.

Cry them a river about their profits. More BS called American Capitalism otherwise known as privatize the profits and socialize the losses.

So the if big ISP and telecoms are buying off government we seems to have a law enforcement problem not an internet problem. Jail the government employees taking bribes.
 
Except that his conclusion, that net neutrality means that the government will control the internet, is not supported by his arguments, other than that, great video.
Just to start with your first statement: How is "more federal regulation of how ISPs interact with and charge consumers and content providers" not the same as "more federal control of the internet"?
 
https://www.komando.com/happening-n...ned-in-plain-english-and-what-it-means-to-you

Kim's Take - The FCC Did the Right Thing
On Thursday, the Commission ended the short, two-year, Net Neutrality experiment. Oh and don’t be fooled: There was nothing “neutral” about it. The vote will not become known as what NBC dubbed, “The Day The Internet Died.” In reality, Thursday was the day that the internet as we know was saved.

Over the past 25 years, this new medium of communications, commerce, and entertainment, came from nothing to the massive interlinked network we now take for granted. You have an internet today because there was no so-called “Net Neutrality” back then. No governmental control. No traffic cop. No government censor.

Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon were behind this net neutrality scheme. Their interests? To do precisely what they’ve been doing for the past 20 years, to seize control: Control of what you can see and whose viewpoint will get presented.
 
Just to start with your first statement: How is "more federal regulation of how ISPs interact with and charge consumers and content providers" not the same as "more federal control of the internet"?

How does limiting the ISPs ability to extort premiums from content providers, which is the core of Net Neutrality, create additional federal control of the internet?

In simple terms, what control can the federal government impose on the internet only as a result of net neutrality?

Also, look at the list of big companies that supported net neutrality...did they oppose it being eliminated? Why not?
 
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How does limiting the ISPs ability to extort premiums from content providers, which is the core of Net Neutrality, create additional federal control of the internet?

In simple terms, what control can the federal government impose on the internet only as a result of net neutrality?

Also, look at the list of big companies that supported net neutrality...did they oppose it being eliminated? Why not?

Are you trying to say that regulation of who is allowed to do what, and what agreements between consumers, ISPs, and providers are allowed isn’t more control? Really?

What was/is wrong with the system that doesn’t have net neutrality? Where are the abuses? What problem actually needs to be solved? What is the compelling and actual problem so large that the largely free market and free technical innovation ecosystem that built the internet (yes I know about DARPAnet, irrelevant to the web) needs to be regulated now?

I haven’t looked it up, but I expect that all the big companies that supported it did oppose eliminating it. They may have judged it better for them not to make a big stink about it because they didn’t think they’d prevail. I don’t know.

If we are going to talk about regulating the internet, how about we figure out whether Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are publishers or simply platforms for others. They should not be able to have it both ways and be able to exercise editorial control over content that others produce but still have no responsibility for that content.
 
Are you trying to say that regulation of who is allowed to do what, and what agreements between consumers, ISPs, and providers are allowed isn’t more control? Really?

What was/is wrong with the system that doesn’t have net neutrality? Where are the abuses? What problem actually needs to be solved? What is the compelling and actual problem so large that the largely free market and free technical innovation ecosystem that built the internet (yes I know about DARPAnet, irrelevant to the web) needs to be regulated now?

I haven’t looked it up, but I expect that all the big companies that supported it did oppose eliminating it. They may have judged it better for them not to make a big stink about it because they didn’t think they’d prevail. I don’t know.

If we are going to talk about regulating the internet, how about we figure out whether Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are publishers or simply platforms for others. They should not be able to have it both ways and be able to exercise editorial control over content that others produce but still have no responsibility for that content.

Let’s try starting from common ground. The Internet was cranking along, and except for a few small problems things were pretty good prior to net neutrality. Agreed?

So then a few large ISP decided to “innovate.” They decided that to enhance revenues and profitability they would find a way to charge content providers. This isn’t really surprising, it is the way that switched access works, or used to work anyway, in the regulated telephone business, the long distance company was required to pay to use the networks of the originating and terminating carriers. That approach has largely been eliminated, but nonetheless the point is that it is familiar.

In response to this innovation a bunch of folks cried foul, their point being that innovation of content on the internet was dependent upon an open network structure unimpeded by the ISPs.

This put the FCC between a rock and a hard space, they either needed to limit innovation of the ISPs or risk limiting innovation of content development. They decided that they agreed with my statement above, that the internet has been cranking along pretty well, so they implemented new regulation that in general simply maintained the status quo.

You liked the status quo, they maintained the status quo, you aren’t happy. Perhaps you haven’t spent enough years working with monopolies to understand that why the risks were very real even though they had not yet materialized.

Couple years go by and few of the large companies oppose the elimination of net neutrality. Their public position is that with wireless and other technology developments we’re seeing more competition between ISPs for most of the country, so any ISP that attempts to innovate in this way will have to deal with the customer backlash. That’s all good, the regulation existed when there was insufficient competition to ensure good corporate behavior, and it was eliminated when competition became sufficiently robust to ensure that the players would not act monopolistically.

Not sure that I believe that competition is sufficiently robust, and I don’t believe large corporations any more than I believe statements out of N. Korea or China, but we’ll see how it plays out.
 
Let’s try starting from common ground. The Internet was cranking along, and except for a few small problems things were pretty good prior to net neutrality. Agreed?

So then a few large ISP decided to “innovate.” They decided that to enhance revenues and profitability they would find a way to charge content providers. This isn’t really surprising, it is the way that switched access works, or used to work anyway, in the regulated telephone business, the long distance company was required to pay to use the networks of the originating and terminating carriers. That approach has largely been eliminated, but nonetheless the point is that it is familiar.

In response to this innovation a bunch of folks cried foul, their point being that innovation of content on the internet was dependent upon an open network structure unimpeded by the ISPs.

This put the FCC between a rock and a hard space, they either needed to limit innovation of the ISPs or risk limiting innovation of content development. They decided that they agreed with my statement above, that the internet has been cranking along pretty well, so they implemented new regulation that in general simply maintained the status quo.

You liked the status quo, they maintained the status quo, you aren’t happy. Perhaps you haven’t spent enough years working with monopolies to understand that why the risks were very real even though they had not yet materialized.

Couple years go by and few of the large companies oppose the elimination of net neutrality. Their public position is that with wireless and other technology developments we’re seeing more competition between ISPs for most of the country, so any ISP that attempts to innovate in this way will have to deal with the customer backlash. That’s all good, the regulation existed when there was insufficient competition to ensure good corporate behavior, and it was eliminated when competition became sufficiently robust to ensure that the players would not act monopolistically.

Not sure that I believe that competition is sufficiently robust, and I don’t believe large corporations any more than I believe statements out of N. Korea or China, but we’ll see how it plays out.

I trust government regulators far less than I trust the free market, even when there are near monopolies. Government is _always_ a monopoly. It _always_ serves itself and tries to grow (Trump reining it in temporarily notwithstanding).

So I consider "net neutrality" an earthquake to the status quo. Gov intervention into one of the last areas of freedom, and one that was working excellently, is _not_ status quo. The mechanisms going on in the background are just as important to me as the effect on my ISP bill.

Frankly, what is wrong for charging for bandwidth? If the bandwidth is a scarce resource, then someone has to pay for it or it has to be rationed. Currently the ISPs are mostly charging consumers for bandwidth. That is one reasonable business model. But it isn't the only one, and I don't think that .gov should be dictating that it is the only allowed business model. If there is an ISP that can manage to charge youtube and netflix for what they use, what is wrong with that? What is wrong with google and FB having to fund the bandwidth they use to turn us into the products they are selling? And who are you or the FCC to say what model is best for me, or for anyone?

The reason we get innovations in the internet (like new longer distance higher bandwidth services) isn't because it can be done, it's because somebody thinks they can make money doing it. If the ISPs are regulated common carriers (and that's the path they were headed down), then cost+regulated profit is a given and there is no point to improving the technology, because there is no money to be made doing it.

No thanks. We'll figure it out just fine on our own. "We're from the government and we're here to help." is a lie, unless you insert " a particular set of corporations than donate a lot and have good lobbyists" or " self-righteous power-tripping bureaucrats/politicians who don't actually understand the complex systems they are messing with" between "help" and ".".
 
I laugh every time someone thinks there is a free market, it makes me picture mice running through a maze while thinking that they are free to find some cheese.
 
Frankly, what is wrong for charging for bandwidth? If the bandwidth is a scarce resource, then someone has to pay for it or it has to be rationed. Currently the ISPs are mostly charging consumers for bandwidth. That is one reasonable business model. But it isn't the only one, and I don't think that .gov should be dictating that it is the only allowed business model. If there is an ISP that can manage to charge youtube and netflix for what they use, what is wrong with that? What is wrong with google and FB having to fund the bandwidth they use to turn us into the products they are selling? And who are you or the FCC to say what model is best for me, or for anyone?
The problem is that as the subscriber paying for their service, I am paying for X amount of that bandwidth, possibly metered in some form, possibly not. I’ve paid for X band width. If I want to watch Netflix that’s my choice. What’s happening is that These ISPs have largely integrated themselves as content providers and Netflx is a threat to that model. So now they have multiple incentives to make my Netflix experience bad or try to charge Netflix (which I also pay for).

I pay for access to the content I want. Not what is profitable for Rectum to delver.

There is also the slippery slope of censorship. Look at what’s happening with YouTube, Twitter, Google, and others on 2A issues. How about when Rectum says, “Sorry, we think gun violence is bad so you can’t access that ... forum, video, on line store, etc.
 
Funny how the internet got along juuuuuuuuust fine from its humble beginnings in Al Gore's basement up until the advent of "net neutrality" concerns.

It grew and flourished just fine.

The whole concept of net neutrality is bullsh*t. What made it even stink more of bullshIt was the fact that big ticket ISP companies backed it. When that happens, you can bet the bullsh*t is going to be so deep the smell will only go away when your nose is completely buried in it and your suffocating.

Net neutrality means ISPs no longer have the ability to direct traffic as they see fit in order to optimize performance overall.

And yes...that makes a frickin' difference, because not all traffic on the internet is the same and not all traffic on the internet should therefore be subject to the same traffic controls all the time. It's all about bandwidth and how it's used.

Bandwidth, in layman's terms, is the capacity to transmit data. The larger the bandwidth, the more data you can transfer in the same amount of time. Much like highways and interstates. An 8 land interstate road can pass more vehicles in the same amount of time than a 2 land interstate.

But traffic within those interstates are supposed to be governed by certain rules...for example, slower traffic is supposed to use the right hand lanes, allowing faster traffic to use the left hand lanes. If you make all the lanes equal, allowing the slower traffic to use any lane they wish, then you end up bogging down traffic on the interstate as a whole.

Just a small analogy, take it as you see fit.

Email, for instance, doesn't require the bandwidth that streaming video does...not by a long shot. So to allot users whose majority usage of the internet involves "lower speed traffic requirements" to have the same bandwidth as those with "higher speed traffic requirements" means an overall reduction of available bandwidth which can be used for higher speed traffic requirements.

Prioritization agreements also allowed ISPs to shift internet traffic around during high traffic conditions and times in order to optimize internet access.

Removing the option for ISPs to "direct traffic" by specifically allotting bandwidth to customers based on usage and need means these companies cannot optimize the traffic controls and performance of their bandwidth capacity.


So, if a company needed or wanted more bandwidth...they bought more bandwidth to suit their needs. When traffic conditions were high, the ISPs could shift bandwidths around to ease the load on the higher traffic "lanes".

And where, pray tell, is this "unfair"?


Big companies have much less problem dealing with this than small ISP companies. Why? Because they have the resources to expand and smother out the businesses of the smaller providers.

Which means big companies get bigger and smaller companies end up being bought up by the big companies or going out of business.

Which is why the big companies behind the ISPs were behind the net neutrality push a few years ago. It's about money and power. NOT about "fairness".


Here's a question for people here...was there EVER any evidence that internet access was not open to all? Was there a problem with the laws governing internet communications somewhere? Were things just not working?

The answer to all these questions is "NO". There was NEVER a problem. For a quarter century, things worked just fine...in fact, the internet and internet usage was growing by leaps and bounds, just as fast as the technology could grow and be integrated.

So WHY, then, all the concern about "net neutrality"?

Again...follow the money.

Net neutrality, by it's very nature, is a bid to control the flow of data.


So screw "net neutrality". It can be said the nothing's really "neutral", but when the government starts sticking its fingers in it, it's decidedly LESS so.


https://www.komando.com/happening-now/434301/my-take-on-net-neutrality-do-you-agree
 
Funny how the internet got along juuuuuuuuust fine from its humble beginnings in Al Gore's basement up until the advent of "net neutrality" concerns.

It grew and flourished just fine.

The whole concept of net neutrality is bullsh*t. What made it even stink more of bullshIt was the fact that big ticket ISP companies backed it. When that happens, you can bet the bullsh*t is going to be so deep the smell will only go away when your nose is completely buried in it and your suffocating.

Net neutrality means ISPs no longer have the ability to direct traffic as they see fit in order to optimize performance overall.

And yes...that makes a frickin' difference, because not all traffic on the internet is the same and not all traffic on the internet should therefore be subject to the same traffic controls all the time. It's all about bandwidth and how it's used.

Bandwidth, in layman's terms, is the capacity to transmit data. The larger the bandwidth, the more data you can transfer in the same amount of time. Much like highways and interstates. An 8 land interstate road can pass more vehicles in the same amount of time than a 2 land interstate.

But traffic within those interstates are supposed to be governed by certain rules...for example, slower traffic is supposed to use the right hand lanes, allowing faster traffic to use the left hand lanes. If you make all the lanes equal, allowing the slower traffic to use any lane they wish, then you end up bogging down traffic on the interstate as a whole.

Just a small analogy, take it as you see fit.

Email, for instance, doesn't require the bandwidth that streaming video does...not by a long shot. So to allot users whose majority usage of the internet involves "lower speed traffic requirements" to have the same bandwidth as those with "higher speed traffic requirements" means an overall reduction of available bandwidth which can be used for higher speed traffic requirements.

Prioritization agreements also allowed ISPs to shift internet traffic around during high traffic conditions and times in order to optimize internet access.

Removing the option for ISPs to "direct traffic" by specifically allotting bandwidth to customers based on usage and need means these companies cannot optimize the traffic controls and performance of their bandwidth capacity.


So, if a company needed or wanted more bandwidth...they bought more bandwidth to suit their needs. When traffic conditions were high, the ISPs could shift bandwidths around to ease the load on the higher traffic "lanes".

And where, pray tell, is this "unfair"?


Big companies have much less problem dealing with this than small ISP companies. Why? Because they have the resources to expand and smother out the businesses of the smaller providers.

Which means big companies get bigger and smaller companies end up being bought up by the big companies or going out of business.

Which is why the big companies behind the ISPs were behind the net neutrality push a few years ago. It's about money and power. NOT about "fairness".


Here's a question for people here...was there EVER any evidence that internet access was not open to all? Was there a problem with the laws governing internet communications somewhere? Were things just not working?

The answer to all these questions is "NO". There was NEVER a problem. For a quarter century, things worked just fine...in fact, the internet and internet usage was growing by leaps and bounds, just as fast as the technology could grow and be integrated.

So WHY, then, all the concern about "net neutrality"?

Again...follow the money.

Net neutrality, by it's very nature, is a bid to control the flow of data.


So screw "net neutrality". It can be said the nothing's really "neutral", but when the government starts sticking its fingers in it, it's decidedly LESS so.


https://www.komando.com/happening-now/434301/my-take-on-net-neutrality-do-you-agree

The internet doesn’t work like that.
Dude, you have bought the corporate spin hook, line and sinker. If you think about it for a minute you’ll see that it is simply corporate propaganda. Don’t get so invested in your “government is bad” position that you overlook the fact that corporations are becoming, if they haven’t always been, a far greater risk to liberty.
 
The internet doesn’t work like that.
Dude, you have bought the corporate spin hook, line and sinker. If you think about it for a minute you’ll see that it is simply corporate propaganda. Don’t get so invested in your “government is bad” position that you overlook the fact that corporations are becoming, if they haven’t always been, a far greater risk to liberty.

If I've learned anything in more than 5 decades, I've learned to shy away from BS like this.

You may believe otherwise, of course. I won't begrudge you this.

Be I'm just not seeing the "need" for the government intrusion they call "net neutrality".
 
If I've learned anything in more than 5 decades, I've learned to shy away from BS like this.

You may believe otherwise, of course. I won't begrudge you this.

Be I'm just not seeing the "need" for the government intrusion they call "net neutrality".
Of course, and your skepticism is perfectly understandable, but if you don’t understand how things really work, if your understanding of how they work comes from the same folks that your getting your position on the issue from, shouldn’t you question that position? They are feeding you enough of what you already believe that you then believe the rest of what they are pushing. Similarly you believe that some or all of my post above was BS, so you start reading this one thing it’s all BS. You are a victim of confirmation bias...as am I on other issues.

My first use of the internet was in 1976, of course it wasn’t the internet at the time. I became involved in managing commercial networks in the late 198o’s and today I operate voice, video and internet delivery companies. I am generally opposed to regulation, but in this instance I remain opposed to allowing ISPs to charge content providers largely because this type of “innovation” is really nothing new and in no way enables additional innovation.

Who said “Everything you know is a lie”? Maybe Neo?
 
Certainly, I'm as guilty of confirmation bias on somethings as anybody else is. No argument there.

But I'm not buying confirmation bias on this one. "Net neutrality" starts off sounding great. And in the beginning, I thought it was. Until I started studying up on it.

It's a load of steaming horse manure over a problem that doesn't exist, and most certainly not on the consumer level it's made out to be.
 
I am not an ISP but I do know something about it. I have been in the computer industry working for 30 years with a Masters in CS.

It was working fine. There was no reason to change what was working. Government never “helps”. Government is always serving someone’s interests, and rarely are those my interests. Maybe I am a cynic, but since I don’t make large campaign donations or have any lobbyists in DC, I pretty much assume that it’s my money and my freedoms that will pay for whatever idiot scheme they have come up with.

I am also a student of history, politics, and economics. Not an expert but I have a clue.

The statement that corporations are more dangerous than governments is laughable. Governments have a monopoly on force. Now, corporations that get the gov to do their bidding, that’s dangerous. Hmmm.... what does that sound like?
 
The problem is that as the subscriber paying for their service, I am paying for X amount of that bandwidth, possibly metered in some form, possibly not. I’ve paid for X band width. If I want to watch Netflix that’s my choice. What’s happening is that These ISPs have largely integrated themselves as content providers and Netflx is a threat to that model. So now they have multiple incentives to make my Netflix experience bad or try to charge Netflix (which I also pay for).

I pay for access to the content I want. Not what is profitable for Rectum to delver.

There is also the slippery slope of censorship. Look at what’s happening with YouTube, Twitter, Google, and others on 2A issues. How about when Rectum says, “Sorry, we think gun violence is bad so you can’t access that ... forum, video, on line store, etc.

So? Use a different ISP if you don’t like that one. Whether you pay extra to Netflix or to your ISP for the bandwidth is just moving it around. Let them fight it out. We could have ‘free’ ISP plans for basic service living off providers and ad revenue. That could meet some market demands. We could have other plans structured differently. I really don’t care how the monetization of my eyeballs on YouTube gets split up or how they fight over it.

Think about it this way. I am making up the numbers, but if YT makes $100B revenue from ads but that service costs $200B in bandwidth to deliver (which they don’t pay any of now), what is wrong with YT paying some or all of that? Why shouldn’t they cover some or all of the actual costs of their service while they are making money hand over fist from data about the public?

And why should the decision about what business models are valid for internet companies be in the hands of gov regulators? Even if there is a problem (which nobody showed me yet) that is the last place I would go for a solution.
 
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So? Use a different ISP if you don’t like that one.
The absurdity of this statement is immense. Don't try playing coy and claiming that there is real competition. Sorry, dial up is not an effective solution and in many places you can't even get that.

I will also throw out that as this is most certainly an interstate issue, it is within the realm of uncle to regulate.
 
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The absurdity of this statement is immense. Don't try playing coy and claiming that there is real competition. Sorry, dial up is not an effective solution and in many places you can't even get that.

I will also throw out that as this is most certainly an interstate issue, it is within the realm of uncle to regulate.

As you wish. There are certainly places where there is little competition. And had gov regulators been in charge in the past they would probably have no service at all unless we were all forced to subsidize that service.

Let’s just be clear though, the Constitution was written to exclude states from enacting tariffs or other restrictions on each other. Not to encourage the feds to do so.

And unless I am buying ISP services from another state (which clearly isn’t the case if there are lines to my house), it isn’t interstate commerce.

The commerce clause has been mightily abused to let the feds regulate anything and everything. That should be revisited and undone.
 
The absurdity of this statement is immense. Don't try playing coy and claiming that there is real competition. Sorry, dial up is not an effective solution and in many places you can't even get that.

I will also throw out that as this is most certainly an interstate issue, it is within the realm of uncle to regulate.

Oh, yeah...Uncle Sam has certainly established the precedent with respect to this.

Roscoe Filburn certainly learned this the hard way.

One might ask the question with respect to "real competition"...where does the government's "net neutrality" lie with respect to the ability to compete with the big providers?
 
As you wish. There are certainly places where there is little competition. And had gov regulators been in charge in the past they would probably have no service at all unless we were all forced to subsidize that service.
In most municipalities there is typically one provider of note; often times the tv cable company. Satellite, wifi, and DSL aren't anywhere near the level of performance. It is in practice a veritable monopoly. Outside of the municipalities, most don't even have that. Largely in part because of buying of the politicians. They don't want to serve these areas but they want to guarantee that the areas can't serve themselves, either. Believe it or not, even satellite is not always available in rural areas due to bandwidth limitations on the spot beams.

And unless I am buying ISP services from another state (which clearly isn’t the case if there are lines to my house), it isn’t interstate commerce.
That is a myopic view, I would say intentionally so. The moment you hit enter on your http request that data is going to stream across multiple states, if not countries in milliseconds. That traffic is the subject of neutrality regulation. That you contracted with service in a particular location is irrelevant.

I will say this. Once again if these corporate bozos don't stop with their bad behavior, they will get govt. regulation shoved down their throats and have nobody but themselves to blame. Honestly not only do we need a "government repair kit" we need a "corporate repair kit" just as badly.
 
Ok, average non technical guy here. No ISP or internet expert. But I have trained people on the hardware side, sold millions of $$ of networking products and know enough to be dangerous about networks and how they work. Here is my take from the Joe the Plumber point of view.

From where I sit it appears that what we have is a pissing match between content providers and ISP's. So each group has their lobbyists and paid for politicians that are drawing up the battle lines. They are fighting for their turf and profits and all have a vested interest. What I don't really see is anyone in the fight that gives a crap about me and the millions of other Joe the plumber people. There is no neutrality or any attempt to make things better for me. Just 2 groups and their paid for lackey's fighting for more money and control. A pox on all their houses.

Whoever wins and whatever new Gov regulations that are inacted surely won't benefit me so hopefully they fight to a draw.
 
In most municipalities there is typically one provider of note; often times the tv cable company. Satellite, wifi, and DSL aren't anywhere near the level of performance. It is in practice a veritable monopoly. Outside of the municipalities, most don't even have that. Largely in part because of buying of the politicians. They don't want to serve these areas but they want to guarantee that the areas can't serve themselves, either. Believe it or not, even satellite is not always available in rural areas due to bandwidth limitations on the spot beams.


That is a myopic view, I would say intentionally so. The moment you hit enter on your http request that data is going to stream across multiple states, if not countries in milliseconds. That traffic is the subject of neutrality regulation. That you contracted with service in a particular location is irrelevant.

I will say this. Once again if these corporate bozos don't stop with their bad behavior, they will get govt. regulation shoved down their throats and have nobody but themselves to blame. Honestly not only do we need a "government repair kit" we need a "corporate repair kit" just as badly.

If the corps are so bad and they have bought the pols as you have said then any Gov regulation will be written by the Corps and be just as bad. They will make it so they control the business and have such onerous regulations that only they can succeed. It is an old racket perfected by lots of Corporations. Who needs to build a monopoly when the Gov will just enact legislation to help you ge there?
 
From where I sit it appears that what we have is a pissing match between content providers and ISP's. So each group has their lobbyists and paid for politicians that are drawing up the battle lines. They are fighting for their turf and profits and all have a vested interest. What I don't really see is anyone in the fight that gives a crap about me and the millions of other Joe the plumber people. There is no neutrality or any attempt to make things better for me. Just 2 groups and their paid for lackey's fighting for more money and control. A pox on all their houses..
That is my take too, with one addition. They are spending part of that money on lobbying the consumer via propaganda to believe and regurgitate the desired message.
If the corps are so bad and they have bought the pols as you have said then any Gov regulation will be written by the Corps and be just as bad. They will make it so they control the business and have such onerous regulations that only they can succeed. It is an old racket perfected by lots of Corporations. Who needs to build a monopoly when the Gov will just enact legislation to help you ge there?
Thats what they did. The city of Wilson started their Greenlight service because Rectum, formerly TWC didn't want to serve them. Rectum got mad and bought off a (blankety blank) Raleigh area representative to sponsor legislation they wrote effectively putting a prohibition on other municipalities or rural communities from doing the same.
Google this: municipal broadband site:arstechnica.com you'll have plenty of reading material on the subject and the NC case is rather prominent in many of the articles, but it's a national problem.
 
Easy solution.

Tar and feather the crooked pols.
I agree. Before I went down that road, if I were an unserved municipality or rural region, I would disregard their prohibition and do it anyway. "They" only have power over you that you're willing to let them have.
 
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@noway2 - so why is gov regulation serving corporate interests good in the case of "net neutrality" but bad in the prohibition on municipal broadband.

None of them are working for us. Sure, the corporations are greedy and trying to make more money off us. Giving them the additional power of law (guns) shouldn't be a good thing even for you. Again - NONE of them are working for us. If people get up in arms about it and demand that something be done, politicians will bloviate, industry lobbyists will write the laws, and we will be fleeced all the more while the pols take credit for "doing something".

No thanks.
 
@JimB I appreciate what you are saying, but most of the behavior you predict is already illegal under anti-trust laws. And to the point of the video, if you leave it alone, technology will solve this. For example, 5G will make "unserved communities" a thing of the past anyway.
 
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