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Net Neutrality or..Follow

#1 Jan 16 2014 at 7:20 AM Rating: Decent
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why champagne is flowing in some executive suite.

I am mostly annoyed.In this, government created btw, created oligopoly, the few ruling companies now have the permission to do whatever they please.

The least we could do is to try and stop this monopoly from taking away the lube while @#%^ing the collective us.

Edited, Jan 16th 2014 8:21am by angrymnk
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#2 Jan 16 2014 at 7:31 AM Rating: Good
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The whole article went out of it's way to pretend the third option didnt exist. Silly digital landlubbers.
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#3 Jan 16 2014 at 7:43 AM Rating: Excellent
I think Internet usage should be billed like water or electricity or any other utility. No data caps, no differences in speed between websites, none of that. Say, $1 for every five gigabytes.

Just bill the person who sips data by surfing the web and reading their email the $5 for resources they're actually using, plus a base $10 or w/e service fee, and then hit the family that uses Netflix instead of cable 16 hours a day for the $100 in resources they're actually hogging up.
#4 Jan 16 2014 at 10:35 AM Rating: Excellent
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I'd feel better about the whole thing if there were more choices. If Comcast (or whatever they're called now) decides to slow traffic to a website I'm interested in there's not really another high-speed option. Smiley: frown
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#5 Jan 16 2014 at 10:41 AM Rating: Good
someproteinguy wrote:
I'd feel better about the whole thing if there were more choices. If Comcast (or whatever they're called now) decides to slow traffic to a website I'm interested in there's not really another high-speed option. Smiley: frown


Or people like me who work from home and need to use the internet on a regular basis to download and upload files constantly.
#6 Jan 16 2014 at 11:42 AM Rating: Good
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maybe the government should dole out the internet.
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#7 Jan 16 2014 at 11:46 AM Rating: Excellent
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If that happened and FoxNews.com didn't get the top tier of service we'd never hear the end of it from the Smiley: tinfoilhat types.

Smiley: rolleyes

Edited, Jan 16th 2014 9:46am by someproteinguy
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#8 Jan 16 2014 at 3:28 PM Rating: Good
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We wouldn't hear the end of it anyway.

Edited, Jan 16th 2014 4:28pm by lolgaxe
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#9 Jan 16 2014 at 4:10 PM Rating: Good
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Catwho wrote:
No data caps, no differences in speed between websites, none of that.

Does that stuff actually happen? I don't think there have been data caps on anything but mobile internet for almost a decade here and I've never even heard of differences in speed between sites.
#10 Jan 16 2014 at 6:14 PM Rating: Default
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His Excellency Aethien wrote:
Catwho wrote:
No data caps, no differences in speed between websites, none of that.

Does that stuff actually happen? I don't think there have been data caps on anything but mobile internet for almost a decade here and I've never even heard of differences in speed between sites.


And that's kinda the problem. It's a whole lot of speculation about what some company "might" do or "could" do, all of which can be dealt with via normal legal processes. It's a regulatory solution in search of a problem.

One of the things that always annoys me about this topic is how consistently the issue is framed to make it appear as though the net was always regulated/protected/whatever and just now there's some evil group of companies plotting to change it all so as to allow them to engage in some nefarious practices. But once you skip past the misleading tense usage you get to the fact that the internet was always "free" in that there was no regulation preventing such nefariousness. The call to protect us from something which never happened is a very recent thing (2010 as quoted in the linked article), and is the actual change being proposed.

No one's trying to change the internet to make it easier for evil companies to ***** over their customers. They've always had that power, yet amazingly, have chosen not to (perhaps because "******** over our customers" isn't a great business model). There is, however, a movement underway to change the internet from the incredibly successful free-market model that has allowed it to grow and thrive into one where heavy handed (and ill thought out) regulations will be the rule. And that's net neutrality.

It's a stupid idea. People don't realize how stupid because most people don't really understand how the internet "works" as a communication system. What is being proposed is the equivalent of trying to pass legislation making it illegal for a business to charge different prices for different levels of merchandise. But while pretty much everyone is smart enough and knowledgeable enough about markets to noodle out that if you pass a law making it illegal to charge more for a fully loaded BMW than a base model Yugo, the result wont be everyone driving BMWs, but everyone driving Yugos, this exact same flaw isn't so obvious to most people when it comes to network bandwidth costs. Some people actually think that if all network use is "equal", and it's unfair for people to pay more for greater bandwidth, that this will actually result in them getting more bandwidth for free.

Those people are idiots, but that doesn't prevent them from being vocal about the "cause" they've adopted.
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#11 Jan 16 2014 at 6:51 PM Rating: Good
I have a data cap of 150 GB a month. After that, they charge $5 more for every 10 GB over.

**** you AT&T.
#12 Jan 16 2014 at 7:12 PM Rating: Good
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Catwho wrote:
I have a data cap of 150 GB a month. After that, they charge $5 more for every 10 GB over.

@#%^ you AT&T.


Is there some reason that an ***-backward place like western South Dakota has such awesome internet? I have no cap at all. And it's pretty fast, too, for the $40 a month I'm paying. (Can't recall exact stats and I'm at work, but it's pretty fuggin' fast.
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#13 Jan 16 2014 at 7:21 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
Catwho wrote:
I have a data cap of 150 GB a month. After that, they charge $5 more for every 10 GB over.

@#%^ you AT&T.


Is there some reason that an ***-backward place like western South Dakota has such awesome internet? I have no cap at all. And it's pretty fast, too, for the $40 a month I'm paying. (Can't recall exact stats and I'm at work, but it's pretty fuggin' fast.


Quick guess is that information actually travels at light speed (more or less) along a wire. It's all the switches and whatnot along the way, and how many others are utilizing those same segments which matter the most, and not the length of the line. What this means is that assuming the same ratio of equipment to population, resulting perceived speed for the consumer will tend to be inversely proportional to population density (relative to physical geography, not network topography).

There's more overhead putting in the infrastructure in a less populated area in the first place, but once in place, it's not surprising that resulting performance will be greater than it would be in a highly populated area.
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#14 Jan 16 2014 at 7:26 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Those people are idiots, but that doesn't prevent them from being vocal about the "cause" they've adopted.
You don't say.
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#15 Jan 16 2014 at 9:34 PM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:
His Excellency Aethien wrote:
Catwho wrote:
No data caps, no differences in speed between websites, none of that.

Does that stuff actually happen? I don't think there have been data caps on anything but mobile internet for almost a decade here and I've never even heard of differences in speed between sites.


And that's kinda the problem. It's a whole lot of speculation about what some company "might" do or "could" do, all of which can be dealt with via normal legal processes. It's a regulatory solution in search of a problem.

One of the things that always annoys me about this topic is how consistently the issue is framed to make it appear as though the net was always regulated/protected/whatever and just now there's some evil group of companies plotting to change it all so as to allow them to engage in some nefarious practices. But once you skip past the misleading tense usage you get to the fact that the internet was always "free" in that there was no regulation preventing such nefariousness. The call to protect us from something which never happened is a very recent thing (2010 as quoted in the linked article), and is the actual change being proposed.

No one's trying to change the internet to make it easier for evil companies to ***** over their customers. They've always had that power, yet amazingly, have chosen not to (perhaps because "******** over our customers" isn't a great business model). There is, however, a movement underway to change the internet from the incredibly successful free-market model that has allowed it to grow and thrive into one where heavy handed (and ill thought out) regulations will be the rule. And that's net neutrality.

It's a stupid idea. People don't realize how stupid because most people don't really understand how the internet "works" as a communication system. What is being proposed is the equivalent of trying to pass legislation making it illegal for a business to charge different prices for different levels of merchandise. But while pretty much everyone is smart enough and knowledgeable enough about markets to noodle out that if you pass a law making it illegal to charge more for a fully loaded BMW than a base model Yugo, the result wont be everyone driving BMWs, but everyone driving Yugos, this exact same flaw isn't so obvious to most people when it comes to network bandwidth costs. Some people actually think that if all network use is "equal", and it's unfair for people to pay more for greater bandwidth, that this will actually result in them getting more bandwidth for free.

Those people are idiots, but that doesn't prevent them from being vocal about the "cause" they've adopted.


Gbaji,

The thought that you have anything to do with any kind of technology with some sort of managing component ( or the other way around ) is truly horrifying to me. Excuse me while I do not buy your high school level microeconomics class explanation.

However, I do feel in a rather giving mood today so I will let you, instead of me spelling out the reasons you are wrong, to come to the conclusion on your own by answering simple questions that may, and I do mean may, allow to you extend a rather tenuous grasp of the "free markets" around you.

Question the First: Do you feel the markets are free?
Question the Second: Do you think markets are efficient?
Question the Third: Do you think people are rational?
Question the Fourth: Do you think people are ******* coated bastards?
Question the Fifth: Do you think current set of ISP/content (yes ISP slash content ) are oligopolies?
Question the Sixth: Why do you think oligopolies will not **** with you unless they are tightly regulated?

You don't have to answer me here, but for all that is unholy, do think about it a tiny little bit. Please, for the future of all mankind*.

* I do not believe in womankind.

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#16 Jan 16 2014 at 9:50 PM Rating: Default
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Your questions are absolutes, but the real world is always about degrees. No market is perfectly "free", nor "efficient", nor wholly regulated, or oligarchical, or anything. Asking them is meaningless to any real world discussion.


I'm also not sure why you think any of that has to do with the issue of network neutrality. Regardless of how oligarchical you think our network/communication market is, we're talking about a specific set of proposed legal changes with specific desired results. So how about we restrict the conversation to those specifics?


In this case, there are two major problems with network neutrality:

1. The problem it claims to fight isn't really a problem. Aside from a very small number of abuses, almost all by smaller local ISPs, and all of which have been resolvable via existing legislation and litigation, the behavior and actions of the companies involved in managing the flow of internet data have overwhelmingly done so in ways that positively benefit everyone, not just those who pay them directly. The internet is arguably one of the best arguments for minimal regulation of new/emerging technology we've seen in human history. It's succeeded beyond even the most insane beliefs arguably precisely because for profit businesses were allowed to grow it as they saw fit absent more than some basic standards forming legislation.

2. The proposed solution arguably causes so much more problems that the initial problem it claims to fix that it's laughable. So even if we buy the whole "OMG! They can block or slow down traffic to/from sites they don't like, the cost of doing so is horrific. It's like swatting at a fly (or a fly you think might be there) with an atomic weapon. You literally "break" the internet if you implement net neutrality.



I can go into complete detail about the various proposed legislation out there and go step by step over the issues at hand, how they actually work, and the actual effects they would have if you want. I've actually done this in previous thread on this topic, so I don't feel like repeating it right at the moment. All I'll say at this point is that I know enough about how the internet actually works to know that "net neutrality" isn't about making the net "more free". It's about making it less so. Clever names aside, it's really honestly not what people think it is.
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#17 Jan 16 2014 at 10:15 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I'd feel better about the whole thing if there were more choices. If Comcast (or whatever they're called now) decides to slow traffic to a website I'm interested in there's not really another high-speed option. Smiley: frown

Oddly enough (for Comcast), they have decided to stick with the current rules of the inrawebz until 2018.
#18 Jan 16 2014 at 10:16 PM Rating: Excellent
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I believe in one of their acquisitions they were required to sign a deal to guarantee certain equality of speed until 2018, so not so much a choice.
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#19 Jan 16 2014 at 10:22 PM Rating: Default
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gbaji wrote:
Your questions are absolutes, but the real world is always about degrees. No market is perfectly "free", nor "efficient", nor wholly regulated, or oligarchical, or anything. Asking them is meaningless to any real world discussion.


I'm also not sure why you think any of that has to do with the issue of network neutrality. Regardless of how oligarchical you think our network/communication market is, we're talking about a specific set of proposed legal changes with specific desired results. So how about we restrict the conversation to those specifics?


In this case, there are two major problems with network neutrality:

1. The problem it claims to fight isn't really a problem. Aside from a very small number of abuses, almost all by smaller local ISPs, and all of which have been resolvable via existing legislation and litigation, the behavior and actions of the companies involved in managing the flow of internet data have overwhelmingly done so in ways that positively benefit everyone, not just those who pay them directly. The internet is arguably one of the best arguments for minimal regulation of new/emerging technology we've seen in human history. It's succeeded beyond even the most insane beliefs arguably precisely because for profit businesses were allowed to grow it as they saw fit absent more than some basic standards forming legislation.

2. The proposed solution arguably causes so much more problems that the initial problem it claims to fix that it's laughable. So even if we buy the whole "OMG! They can block or slow down traffic to/from sites they don't like, the cost of doing so is horrific. It's like swatting at a fly (or a fly you think might be there) with an atomic weapon. You literally "break" the internet if you implement net neutrality.



I can go into complete detail about the various proposed legislation out there and go step by step over the issues at hand, how they actually work, and the actual effects they would have if you want. I've actually done this in previous thread on this topic, so I don't feel like repeating it right at the moment. All I'll say at this point is that I know enough about how the internet actually works to know that "net neutrality" isn't about making the net "more free". It's about making it less so. Clever names aside, it's really honestly not what people think it is.


Are they absolutes? Are they really? Compared to your opening my post was barely a couple of questions aiming to establish whether you know what you are talking about. I am not being cute. I am cute. But I am not being cute.

Allow me to quote from your previous post which led me to believe that you are a firm believer in the religion of the free market.

gbaji wrote:


the incredibly successful free-market model that has allowed it to grow


If the incredibly successful free-market model used as an argument does not point to a person who is a little too enamored with the concept I am not sure what does.

***

Now, to answer your questions... to an extent:

1) If it was a problem that could be addressed by the existing legislation, or litigation, we would not be having this discussion. HOWEVER, the ISPs in question effectively managed to block most of the offending legislation, and bound most customers to agreements in which they simply cannot sue ( I don't remember anymore if CA was still an exception to that ). You see, my successful free market friend, when a company becomes big, it becomes powerful. It can sometimes become too powerful; especially if there is no competition to keep it in check ( or sufficient regulation ). As it stands right now, there are only several real choices of ISPs and they seem pretty powerful since they can convince the legislative bodies (and retards like you ) that it is actually good for the customer.
In your defense, I do not blame you. I blame the US education system. I does not teach critical thinking; at all.
2) Ok, so what do you propose? I don't agree with you, so please do prepare something better than: let the free markets reign supreme..



As for your ending paragraph, I will end with a question again.. why do you think ,since the internet was soooo free ( it wasn't.. but lets say I buy into your idiocy here), the ISPs in question only decided to go at those changes now? Wait, a bonus question, do you think FCC can regulate teh interwebz? If not, why not?

If you break the interwebz by implementing it, how comes it managed to work before it ( because you know .. common carrier and bla bla bla )?

Did you head just explode?


Edited, Jan 16th 2014 11:22pm by angrymnk

Edited, Jan 16th 2014 11:27pm by angrymnk

Edited, Jan 16th 2014 11:28pm by angrymnk
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#20 Jan 17 2014 at 3:46 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
Catwho wrote:
I have a data cap of 150 GB a month. After that, they charge $5 more for every 10 GB over.

@#%^ you AT&T.


Is there some reason that an ***-backward place like western South Dakota has such awesome internet? I have no cap at all. And it's pretty fast, too, for the $40 a month I'm paying. (Can't recall exact stats and I'm at work, but it's pretty fuggin' fast.


Quick guess is that information actually travels at light speed (more or less) along a wire. It's all the switches and whatnot along the way, and how many others are utilizing those same segments which matter the most, and not the length of the line. What this means is that assuming the same ratio of equipment to population, resulting perceived speed for the consumer will tend to be inversely proportional to population density (relative to physical geography, not network topography).

There's more overhead putting in the infrastructure in a less populated area in the first place, but once in place, it's not surprising that resulting performance will be greater than it would be in a highly populated area.
So...the providers are forcing high user density area people to pay more to get a higher cap? Aside from pure greed I don't get why.


That's an serious question, btw.
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#21 Jan 17 2014 at 5:42 AM Rating: Good
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Lack of competition?
#22 Jan 17 2014 at 10:41 AM Rating: Excellent
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Lack of competition?
Precisely.
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#23 Jan 17 2014 at 10:44 AM Rating: Excellent
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Lack of regulation as well. As much as it's needed in this day and age Broadband access should be a utility.
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#24 Jan 17 2014 at 11:11 AM Rating: Good
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Lack of regulation as well. As much as it's needed in this day and age Broadband access should be a utility.


This, a thousand times this.

Sad thing is, we'd pay more for a better service if one was available. Our other choice of broadband is Charter, and their connection resets itself hourly even though we told the router to only reset once a day at 3AM. It resets on their end. Not exactly conducive to playing MMOs.

AT&T's service is slow, but stable. I've had exactly one unexpected disconnect since I got a new modem a few months ago, and it came back up five minutes later. 99.99% uptime and slow as hell, versus fast and fat pipes and frequent connection resets? Oh, and both have the data caps. I think Charter's is 200GB/month, only slightly better than AT&T.



#25 Jan 17 2014 at 12:45 PM Rating: Decent
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No regulation: ISP tells Steam they have to pay them X dollars to facilitate big usage by Steam's customers or they'll have to cap the bandwidth coming from their IP(s). Steam says "but your customers already pay for their bandwidth". ISP: BOOOM Banhammertime! ISP gets to use less infrastructure and their customers don't ever know what Steam is because they can't use it and therefore can't get upset at their ISP about it. This is ridiculously easy to accomplish technologically, single statement (or lack thereof depending on which route you take) on a piece of hardware that's already in the loop. "Steam sucks, it's soooo slow" not "Rogers sucks, it's soooo slow"

Regulation: Customer pays for X bandwidth with X cap (or not). Customer gets the same speed no matter which site they access assuming that site has the bandwidth with their own service provider to match. No blocking, no favoritism. Steam is as fast as "Joe's blog of Pink Thingamajigs."
#26 Jan 17 2014 at 2:24 PM Rating: Decent
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angrymnk wrote:
Question the First: Do you feel the markets are free?
Question the Second: Do you think markets are efficient?
Question the Third: Do you think people are rational?
Question the Fourth: Do you think people are ******* coated bastards?
Question the Fifth: Do you think current set of ISP/content (yes ISP slash content ) are oligopolies?
Question the Sixth: Why do you think oligopolies will not @#%^ with you unless they are tightly regulated?


angrymnk wrote:
Are they absolutes?


Questions one through five are absolute questions. They allow only for a yes or no answer. A non absolute question would be more like "How efficient do you believe the US market is?", or "How rational do you think people are?".

Get it?

Oh, and the sixth question is what's known as a "complex question fallacy" since the question itself makes an assumption that the answerer must accept before answering (ie: "when did you stop beating your wife?"). So equally invalid. If you want to know what I think, ask me what I think. Don't play 20 questions.


Quote:
Are they really? Compared to your opening my post was barely a couple of questions aiming to establish whether you know what you are talking about. I am not being cute. I am cute. But I am not being cute.


Yeah, you are. You may not be aware of it (cause god knows tons of people just use this sort of technique because that's what they see others use and they think it's effective or something), but you are playing "debate tricks" rather than engaging in an honest discussion of the issue.

Quote:
Allow me to quote from your previous post which led me to believe that you are a firm believer in the religion of the free market.


Why? I am a firm believer in free markets (and it isn't about religion. Again, stop playing debate games).. There's no question about that. My issue is that you keep dancing around the specifics of a discussion of this particular market in favor of making clever comments. It's kinda annoying. Actually, no. It's incredibly annoying. If you feel strongly about a position on this issue, then actually state your position and provide solid support for it. If you disagree with my position, then present solid arguments against what I've posted. You're not doing that though.


Quote:
If the incredibly successful free-market model used as an argument does not point to a person who is a little too enamored with the concept I am not sure what does.


It's not about being enamored or not. It's about what I believe. If you disagree, instead of saying 'OMG. You're just enamored with that concept", why not actually say why you disagree. If you think I'm wrong, say why. You aren't doing that. You're just declaring the fact that I hold a position to mean I'm "religious" or "enamored" about my position and then moving on. Um... So what? You could counter any position with that BS. OMG! You believe that gravity makes objects with mass fall towards each other? Well, you're just enamored with your religious assumptions about this so called "law of gravity".


See how that's not really an argument?

Quote:
1) If it was a problem that could be addressed by the existing legislation, or litigation, we would not be having this discussion.


Of course we would. You're ignoring the possibility that there might be a motivation out there for those who favor greater government regulation to do so even when such regulation isn't really needed. The mere fact that someone proposes legislation doesn't prove that legislation is needed.

Quote:
HOWEVER, the ISPs in question effectively managed to block most of the offending legislation,


The fact that they blocked the legislation doesn't mean that the legislation was good, or needed. Please tell me you understand that? Pretty please?

If someone tries to pass legislation forcing you to walk on your hands all day long, and it gets blocked, does that mean that the legislation was good and should have been passed? No, it doesn't. Therefore the fact that ISPs have been able to block net neutrality legislation to this point doesn't tell us a damn thing about whether the net neutrality legislation is good or bad. See how that works? So why do you mention this?

Quote:
...and bound most customers to agreements in which they simply cannot sue ( I don't remember anymore if CA was still an exception to that ).


Huh? This is the US. You can always sue. Whether you succeed or not is a whole different matter. You know who else "binds you to a contract"? Um.... Every business you buy a product from. Again, you are making irrelevant statements which tell us nothing about whether net neutrality laws are needed. You're talking about every single thing except what the proposed laws do and whether you think that's good or bad.

Even if I agreed that the ISPs were the most evil and powerful companies in the world and abused that power regularly, that would not mean I agreed with net neutrality as a good law to counter that. You need to argue *for* the proposed law. Simply arguing that ISPs are mean isn't good enough (and you aren't actually arguing that so much as just declaring it).

If we lived in 1930s Germany, would the fact that this up and coming **** regime and this Hitler guy were bad scary people mean that we should pass a law requiring everyone to shot themselves in the head? No. See, you have to look at the proposed law and see if it's a good thing. You can't just say "This thing over there is bad, so pass this law that maybe has nothing at all to do with that, and don't bother looking at it, cause look! Squirrel!!!".

That's just dumb. Argue *for* net neutrality if you think it's good legislation.


Quote:
You see, my successful free market friend, when a company becomes big, it becomes powerful. It can sometimes become too powerful; especially if there is no competition to keep it in check ( or sufficient regulation ). As it stands right now, there are only several real choices of ISPs and they seem pretty powerful since they can convince the legislative bodies (and retards like you ) that it is actually good for the customer.


And again, that doesn't constitute a legitimate argument in support of net neutrality legislation. See, there's this big gap in your logic where you don't show how condition A requires response B (and that's ignoring the fact that you also haven't proven condition A even exists).

Quote:
In your defense, I do not blame you. I blame the US education system. I does not teach critical thinking; at all.


Um... You think I'm the one failing at critical thinking here? That's hysterical.

Quote:
2) Ok, so what do you propose? I don't agree with you, so please do prepare something better than: let the free markets reign supreme..


Propose for what? Look. If an ISP is abusing its position with regard to content services, then I have no problem with passage of laws prohibiting that, or ensuring that customers can sue if such things are done. But that can be handled at the local and state levels pretty easy, and isn't really specific to network businesses. The problem is that the proposed net neutrality legislation goes far far beyond simply protecting consumers from abusive practices though. It proposes to require that networks treat all uses of their product equally regardless of the amount being paid.


That's an absurd requirement. It is precisely like telling a retail outlet that they must charge the same price for the Louis Vuitton bag as the cheap knockoff brand. And those who support it do so under the mistaken assumption that if they do this, then stores will be forced to sell them the Louis Vuitton bag for cheap knockoff prices. But what will really happen is that the stores will either stop carrying the Louis Vuitton bags and only carry the cheap ones *or* they'll increase the costs on everything to Louis Vuitton level. So either everyone loses or the "poor folk" lose (cause now all purses are priced out of their reach, not just the fancy high cost brands).

Same thing here. Net neutrality attempts to require that network providers must treat all packets equally regardless of type or source/destination. And the idiots who support it think that this means that they'll get higher speeds for the current low prices they're paying are just as wrong as the minimum wage earner thinking they'll be able to buy a fancy bag for bargain prices. It simply wont work. What will happen is that either all network traffic will get slower in order to accommodate the requirements *or* (more likely), ISPs will dramatically increase their prices in order to allow for the fact that they must provide just as much bandwidth to the guy paying for basic internet as the company paying for their international wan network. Which will mean that most people will no longer be able to afford *any* network connection.

So you're trading the situation today where if you pay bargain price, you get bargain performance while those who pay more get high performance (OMG! That's so unfair, right?), for a situation where everyone pays high performance prices and gets high performance. But of course, if you can't afford the high performance price, you get nothing at all. Wow! That's such a great idea. Oh wait. It's not.

Quote:
As for your ending paragraph, I will end with a question again.. why do you think ,since the internet was soooo free ( it wasn't.. but lets say I buy into your idiocy here), the ISPs in question only decided to go at those changes now? Wait, a bonus question, do you think FCC can regulate teh interwebz? If not, why not?


What changes? I'll repeat my earlier point: The false assumption here is that the ISPs are trying to change the internet to allow them greater power/control. That's simply false. There is no change on their side. They've always had that amount of power and control. Always. Yet, abuses have been few and far between and the benefits to the masses in terms of service to cost has been incredibly good. The "change" is net neutrality. I find it really interesting how consistently those who argue net neutrality first convince people that it's the ISPs trying to change things, and they're just fighting to "keep the internet free!". In fact, it's the other way around.

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If you break the interwebz by implementing it, how comes it managed to work before it ( because you know .. common carrier and bla bla bla )?


Um.... That's the point. It worked before. Nothing's changed. The net neutrality folks are the ones who want to change it. And they lie to you to make you think that the ISPs are the ones trying to change the system that "worked before". That's the point. Once you realize that the ISPs haven't changed how they do things at all, you realize that this whole thing isn't about protecting the freedom of internet users, but is a power grab by the government.

If oligarchy is bad because just a small number of companies have a large amount of control, isn't sole control by the government infinitely worse? I mean, you can't sue the government. It's not bound by the laws of some other higher power. It's far far more likely to abuse the power than a collection of ISPs and backbone providers, who are obligated to provide a service to their customers in order to make money, and bound by (reasonable) regulation on their industry. Why change a system that's worked so well up to now? What is motivating this? Does anyone actually honestly think that the internet is "broken" right now?
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