News FCC Formally Proposes Net Neutrality Rules

network performance is an issue. i believe maybe 25% or more of the traffic on the net is bittorrent? wouldnt banning torrent packets result in increased network performance without necessarily paying to upgrade infrastructure? and wouldnt that benefit people who dont use bittorrent?

and generally what i am saying is that i cant imagine a negative scenario that i need to be frightened or protected from by the government.

explain to me a scenario where martin the consumer, who uses time warner cable internet, is screwed by a lack of network neutrality laws. lets say cable bans voip packets. and lets say i can no longer hear my buddy talking when we play madden online. i get pissed and i get fios. and time warner says "dang man, that sucks we lost a customer". and verizon says "sweet, our service is bettr and we are making profits!". and comcast will then realize their mistake and allow voip packets.

the market protects us. the government screw us. thats how things work in the world.

i understand that there has been a technological monoply. some folks dont have lots of options. not everyone is like me, they cant choose between dsl or fios or a couple different cable companies. but enforcing these laws will not make them have more choices. in fact it might cause less competition, as new companies that might want to offer tiered plans would be dissuaded from entering the market.

going forward, we will have more options, and we dont need laws to muck it up.

 

It wouldn't matter if 5000% of the traffic on the internet was torrents because we aren't even close to using all of the available bandwidth. Fiber advancement far outpaces development of bandwidth hungry applications. The only reason you experience lag when your roommate downloads stuff is because of the wiring in your apartment/house. That's your problem or your landlord's problem and if you think switching to a different carrier is going to fix that, you are in for a massive disappointment.

You are missing the point that there is no law against offering a tiered internet package. If you bought into a tiered package you would typically be aware of what you were getting. You would know why your stuff was getting shut down. They don't do it because it would be stupid and impractical. The rules dictate only that they can't block legal content without an explanation or making people aware. That's it.

 

wouldnt this be covered under current fraud laws? you ask them to provide service that doesnt block legal content, and if they agree, but they actually do block content, you sue them for fraud. if they refuse to disclose what they block, then you simply find another service.

consumers, if they want internet service that is "neutral", should ask for it. if they ask, the providers will provide. if the providers lie, and actually block content, then there are already laws for that.

 

No idea. I'm an internet guy, not a law guy. Perhaps tinsley can help us out.

Why have to ask for it when we already have it?

 

clearly if you sign up for a service that restricts nothing, and they are secretly packet shaping or whatever, that is fraud.

exactly. why do we need these laws?

 

So ISP's can't block content without telling it's customers...or anyone.

 

as a consumer, you can fight this quite easily without new laws.

when you sign up for intenet ask, "do you guys block any content?" if they say they do not, then you find out they do, sue them. easy as pie. no hamfisted fcc bs necessary.

 

That's a LOT easier said than done. Chances are, some random internet user has no idea how to tell who is blocking content or even the difference between blocked content and a fubared configuration. You and I both know that you don't just sue someone. There is a lot more involved than that and we still haven't even confirmed whether or not current laws cover this anyway. If you still haven't read the article, at least read this part of it.

 

of course current laws cover it. it is fraud to sell something to someone if you are tricking them and not giving them what they agreed to.

it isnt gonna take many court cases before the internet providers stop blocking or whatever it is you are so scared of.

of course your FCC guy says all that nonsense. he is a government idiot whose job is to grow his own authority.

'Net Neutrality' Laws Will Cause $70 Billion Loss : Internet Business Law

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]What do Internet Pioneers Think of this Net Neutrality Legislation?
A man referred to affectionately as the Father of the Internet, Robert Kahn, has delivered a strident argument against "Net Neutrality" legislation. First, Kahn dismissed the phrase "Net Neutrality", as "a slogan", and he warns against dogmatic views of the development of the still-young Internet. Kahn said, "If the goal is to encourage people to build new capabilities, then the party that takes the lead is probably only going to have it on their net to start with and it's not going to be on anyone else's net. You want to incentivize people to innovate, and they're going to innovate on their own nets or a few other nets," and "I am totally opposed to mandating that nothing interesting can happen inside the net," he said. He claims the "Neutrality" legislation runs a great risk of fragmenting the ‘Net, instead of uniting it. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Virtually all of the early pioneering senior engineers responsible for creating the Internet of today oppose "Neutrality" legislation, it turns out. The so-called "Grandfather of the Internet," Dave Farber, is a scathing idea of the legislation. The fear is such impetuous legislation would starve funding and therefore inhibit systems engineers from improving infrastructure upgrades necessary to move data at speed. [/FONT]