News FCC Formally Proposes Net Neutrality Rules

Ummm... No, it doesn't.

What alternate reality are you from? This works great in theory. In the real world where corporations use every edge to make a profit, including unfair business practices and taking advantage of loopholes, an absence of laws and/or unethical practices legislation is needed for consumer protections.

I'm not real sure the fear should be your motivating factor. Being treated fairly as a consumer should be. It's naive to trust large corporations who act in their own interest and not the interest of the consumer to go un-regulated. Making money is great, but let's do it ethically.

So you want to wait until things get bad? Do you understand how our legislature works and how difficult it is to have our political leaders pass legislation that they have no incentive to pass?

To place these types of restrictions on their services would almost certainly cause backlash that would push for legislation to stop it. Their first step is to pass legislation to protect themselves so they can control it and charge what they want. This prevents that from happening. It's preemptive. You wait until this industry gets their legislation on the Hill and it's too late.

Exactly. This will keep the playing field level. The government is not a solution to everything and I have not offered it as a solution to everything. We're talking net neutrality, so let's try to stay on topic.

It's a simplistic way of saying, just look at who supports the legislation and who doesn't. That AT&T, Comcast, TimeWarner, etc. really, really do not want this to pass and that they're investing heavily in political leaders to see that it does not pass should tell you something. Bells should be going off. Flags should be raising.

That you feel this way reveals that you simply do not possess an understanding of what this legislation involves or how it will impact our lives. It seems as if you're simply sticking to a "all government involvement/legislation is bad" point of view. I guess that's cool if you're living in a cabin somewhere in Idaho, living off the land and waiting for the "revenoo-ers" to show up. This impacts me, my wallet and lifestyle so I'm not sure why I should side with corporations who wish to

I simply do not trust an industry that has already shown that it cannot be trusted to operate ethically without government legislation to hold it accountable.

 

i know what it does. it involves the government in a place it shouldnt be.

i will give you an example.

lets say i start a new internet provider, martin-net. martin-net offers super cheap internet. the way we do it is we restrict access to google and instead direct our customers to bing. we have an agreement with microsoft. this agreement is so profitable that we can offer internet for less than the competition. the only difference for the consumer is that they do not use google, they use bing. microsoft will make the profits from their searches, and instead of that money going to google, some of it goes to martin-net, and is passed on to the consumer in the form of cheaper rates. you dont have to use martin-net. you can get a regular provider and pay more for a "neutral network". but martin-net offers you an option that you might choose. options are good, right? or are they so scary that your leaders in washington need to protect you from them?

this is what you want to make illegal. you are scared of it. you want idiots in government to ruin this. you want laws and regulations preventing the evil corporations from offering a service like i just mentioned. you do not want the consumer to have an option such as this. you are punishing the consumer because you think you know how everything should be run.

STOP THINKING THE GOVERNMENT KNOWS BEST

 

thats not an argument. you are repeating what i said.

any argument to add? excited because you found another non-problem for the government to solve?

 

ok then good work.

let me tell you a little story about two fellas who like the internet.

one is named marvin. he uses a huge amount of information. he likes to pirate music and movies and he downloads lots of video podcasts to watch on the train. he downloaded every episode of band of brothers and futurama in super hi def. he loves pornography. he leaves his bittorrent client open 24/7 and has it set with rss feeds to pick up things like entourage. he downloads every new ubuntu iso for his netbook. he has an xbox 360 and he plays against high school friends over the internet. this dude, he is nuts, he uses so much data. his cable internet provider hates him. his neighbors that also have cable internet, they hate him because he strains the network.

the other guy in the story is named blue55. he likes the internet too. he reads message boards. they require little data to be sent around the net. text mostly. he like the occasional youtube video of obama, or crosby stills and nash or some other old stoner crap. he doesnt use much info, he doesnt steal music or movies, thinks its is wrong. he likes to use dictionary.com to find the occasional definition to misinterpret. he doesnt work his internet connection very hard. dsl doesnt work like cable, so his neighbors are less affected by his habits than marvin, but anyways the phone company loves him.

so anyways, the internet providers, they have costs for running the network. they want their customers to pay based on on how much they use, and they want to optimize the data so that time sensitive packets move quickly. blue55s phone company wants to offer him basic dsl for 5$. bitttorent is blocked. so is netflix HD streaming. they will use deep packet analysis to figure out what kinda information is being shuffled around, and when his packets of wikipedia article pass through, they speed them along to his computer. same with his occasional voip calls. they sign up lots of light users and give them all very quick, very cheap internet. blue loves it.

meanwhile, marvin realizes he cant deal with any restriction. he needs the fastest and dirtiest porn possible, he likes to steal media at turbo speed. he prefers to watch downloaded copies of mythbusters on his ipod on the train than to watch it on regular tv, which he also pays for. he wants to transfer tremendous amounts of info, but he still wants his VOIP packets to have priority so he can talk without lag. he is willing to pay more, he is willing to pay his fair share and have his data priotized for his usage.

if the internet providers are allowed to optimize their networks for various customers and charge appropriately, these two fellas can both be given options that please them. if the government mangles the rights of the networks to manage themselves, then these consumers are screwed.

all data on the internet is not of equal importance. a voip call is more important than a sex and the city torrent file. and the data flow is not infinite. optimization for the best user experience might become necessary. and the providers will want to give consumers a product they want to purchase. lets let them manage it without involving clumsy government rules, eh?

 

After reading up on it I'd say I'm FOR net neutrality. It protects consumers from the ISP's.

Without net neutrality, it's only a matter of time before companies like ATT block all traffic to google voice, not just the iphone app like they do now. I don't want to be forced to buy more minutes from AT&T.

I also don't want to have to pay a "sports tier" to access ESPN, Tigerforums.. or be forced to use yahoo video instead of youtube...or be forced to use IE because getfirefox is blocked...etc.

Martin, your scenario is all fine and dandy... I can definitely see the pros and cons of each position, but I don't trust the ISP's like you do to use it to provide better service. They'll use it to make as much money as possible, thus screwing the consumer.

You'll always have the option to pay less for slower internet, and as far as I know bandwidth capping is not a part of NN. Grandma doesn't need fast internet if she's just checking her email.

Louisiana residents who have used Cox, do you really trust them to use the lack of regulation to provide better service?

They charged me $53 to install a cablecard. How hard is it to install a cablecard? Plug it into the slot, and call in the numbers on your screen.

Why do they charge this? Because they want you to use Cox DVR's, instead of your own... so they just tack on a huge fee to encourage you to use the Cox DVR instead. Why do they offer the cable cards at all? Because they're forced to by the FCC. I live in an Apt, so I don't have any other options for cable.

I'm usually against increased regulation, but in reality net neutrality would limit the regulations that the ISPs could impose on you... so it would result in less regulation overall...if that makes any sense.

 

There's nothing about the new rules that refer to managing QoS. It's strictly about blocking material arbitrarily because they feel like it and being transparent about the things that they do choose to block. It isn't going to affect bandwidth.

They can still offer lower bandwidth plans for lower prices and they are free to manage their autonomous system however they want. It even says that if bandwidth management becomes a problem for performance that there will be exceptions made where the ISP can take over and block certain things, they just have to let people know about it.

If some peckerhead is stealing all of your bandwidth downloading torrents, there isn't anything that the ISP can't do about it now that they could do before. They aren't going to lay a bigger fiber line to a residential area because of one person. They are just going to cancel that dudes internet for hitting the bandwidth cap and then the problem goes away. That's not blocking material, that's account management and outside the scope of net neutrality.

 

You have convinced me with this rock-solid argument.