whatever happened to being ispFollow

It's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea for the following reasons:

1. It's based on a slogan and has no real logical, legal, or technological rationale behind it (ie: it "feels good" to the uninformed masses, which is a terrible basis to use for regulation).

2. It's the opposite of what he claims he's doing (not surprising really). Just read these two quotes:





Things are not made "free and open" by heavily regulating them. I get that this is a hard concept for the "government gives us rights!" crowd to accept (yay cross thread shenanigans!), but it's true.

3. The proposed regulation makes no sense and provides no explanation as to how it would make consumer experience "better" (it doesn't even define "better"). It's contrived.

Basically, you have a nearly completely free market structure in the internet, which has existed in this form for decades and has provided massive benefit to those who use it, and this apparently drives the "government makes our lives better!" crowd nuts, so they feel they must regulate it. They have hyped up some relatively minor abuses that some ISPs have engaged in, conflated them with normal performance limitations on any network, and then used the resulting consumer anger to push for "net neutrality", with a layer of "magic" in between the problem and the solution. What's funny to me is just how blind people seem to be to this.

Go back and read the article you initially linked. Note that it has nothing at all to do with throttling traffic or internet fast lanes, yet you lumped it in with an argument for net neutrality. Why? Do you not see the bait and switch? This is about making you angry at service providers so you'll accept regulation on service providers, no matter how irrelevant the regulation is to the problem you are angry about. Heck. Let me point out one more thing. Do you honestly think that, if the government does lump a bunch of additional regulation on ISPs that this regulation will actually prevent them from adding web tags to client sessions (which is what the article was about)? Actually stop and think about this. Do you think that the government would impose regulations on ISPs so as to prevent them from adding session tags to client connections which would allow them to trace any web activity back to the client home/location?

It's not really a trick question. Having the ability to track sessions like that would be a boon to law enforcement. If anything, government regulation would require all ISPs to do stuff like that. You're essentially arguing for the very thing that is making you angry. And you aren't aware of it.



Stop and ask what problems really exist with ISPs. Then think about what regulation would prevent these things. it's not the regulation that is being proposed. Making ISPs utilities would increase the amount of control over your use of the internet. It would take all of the things that ISPs do today that **** you off and make them worse. The difference would be that instead of Comcast deciding how much to charge each customer and peer to move data across their network, the government would set those prices. Do you honestly think they'll do a better or "more fair" job of it? What will happen is that the big companies who lobby the government will get the best performance and the little guys will get screwed. And they'll all be required to provide vastly more information to the government and law enforcement about your activities across their networks (cause they're utilities now, right?) than they do now.

It will not be a more free and open internet. It will be a vastly more controlled internet. What staggering about this is that the bulk of the uninformed who support this are people who honestly think they'll be able to do more streaming and pirating and peer sharing if only the government stepped in and regulated those ISPs. That's insane. It will not happen that way.

Highways are evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man. At least, the M25 is...

Welp, it's official. Gbaji is the new Varrus. Now I guess we just need a new Gbaji.

Exactly. Or have you forgotten whose slogan that was?

One thing huh? Ok.. I do not like that they are in a position of duo/oligopoly depending on the market. How would I solve it? Regulate them so they cannot abuse their position ( like they do now ). Is that simple and clear enough for you?

George W Bush's. Was that a trick question?

I'll hazard a guess that gbaji is heavily invested (literally) in the current oligopolies, so it's OK with him, platitudes be damned.

He can cherry pick them when they suit his needs.

That's not a sufficient answer. The existence of oligopoly is necessary because they're physically running wires to your home. We can talk about the long history of local governments licensing only one or two companies to do this and why it's necessary if you want, but how about we just accept that it is and move on?

So. What about this state is harmful to you? What do you not like? What practices do the cable/tv companies do that you believe abuses this privilege? And what regulation do you propose would fix these specific problems. I'm asking you to be specific. Generalities like "they have an oligopoly" and "we need regulation!" isn't sufficient. What regulation? What exactly should it do? How should it do it?

That's the issue for me. If you can't say what regulation you want, and what effect it would have, and how that effect would be "better", then maybe you should not be supporting regulation? Just a thought.

Check the sun's position.

It's not yet gbaji hour.

When the person calling for it can't define what he wants the regulation to do, and how that will fix a problem, much less even what the problem is? Yeah. I do have a issue with that. So should you.

Edited, Nov 13th 2014 12:22pm by gbaji

Again, conservatives have issues with it. You just mimic it for attention. At least be a little honest from time to time.