There are 4 classes. Lower, middle, upper, and the 2%. The 2% sit back and laugh while they prod the other classes to fight amongst themselves.
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FCC Expected to Repeal Net Neutrality Rules in Vote Next Month
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Think of Net Neutrality laws being like a vaccine.
Now just because you don't get a vaccine it does not automatically mean that you will contract that disease, but the risks of you getting it are significantly reduced if you are vaccinated.
Prevention is always more effective than cure.
Hi OldSchoolMacGuy, not picking on you here but using your post as representative of a particular narrative.
What you describe is not the most likely situation. The far more likely scenario (because we've seen it before) is that particular ISPs that also have services providing content would throttle competing services to make their own more appealing. This could take the form of "all you can eat" access to the provider's own service (e.g. DirecTV video consumption doesn't apply against your monthly mobile data cap) so it appears as a benefit to subscribers of their service. Alternately this could be done via throttling bandwidth to competing services until those services pay an interconnect fee to the provider (e.g. Netflix pays a fee to Verizon so that Verizon will let their traffic pass full speed to Verizon customers and stop complaints coming into Netflix from Netflix subscribers on Verizon networks unhappy with video quality). Neither of those is posed to the end customer as "pay us for access to site X." All of the doom and gloom scenarios people use as examples where we have to pick from a list of web sites and services much like we'd pick cable channels aren't very likely. The cases I've laid out above are still definitely negative but I think there's some hyperbole going on by painting a vision where we have to pay ATT $5/mo to get access to Google/Facebook/Macrumors/Twitter/Whatever.
On the flip side, some of these programs feel like real benefits to consumers and would be outlawed under a strict net neutrality policy. For example, T-mobile's Binge On program at one point allowed users to opt-in to allow video throttling to 480p (which I'm sure a lot of customers on mobile phones really wouldn't care about - yes I know some of you absolutely have to have 4k HDR @60fps on your 5" screen but many people honestly don't care) and would zero rate the content so it didn't eat into your monthly bandwidth allotment. That sort of promotion doesn't exist under a pure net neutrality policy so if you're viewing video content a lot on mobile and you hit 22GB monthly too bad, you're going to be throttled across the board now (which is legit under the existing net neutrality rules). Another example is ATT and DirecTV, they zero rated DirecTV content (which they own) so subscribers could watch DirecTV without impacting cap. That's certainly providing a competitive advantage over other OTT content providers but if you are a customer who likes DirecTV and doesn't want to change platforms that's a benefit that would be made illegal under a strict net neutrality scenario. Those are programs that some consumers like and benefit from that go away under a purist every packet is equal approach. I acknowledge that the ATT example gives a competitive advantage but if it is an unfair anticompetitive tactic we have existing law to deal with that.
There isn't a black and white right and wrong here. Personally I'm torn. I like most of what Net Neutrality speaks to but I also want discrimination based upon service type (VoIP vs video vs email vs chat vs web browsing etc) to allow for QoS to be enforced for real time communications (and other time and bandwidth sensitive protocols) and I want that to be flexible enough that it keeps up with new services we haven't thought of yet without a burdensome and lengthy government review. I'm pessimistic that government can do that.
There are NO computers that you can use free to access the Internet. Someone is paying for them, namely ME by taxation. Or do you think free really means free?
This thing has been going on for almost a year. It's amazing so many people are hearing it for the first time. Why is MacRumor only doing an article on it when there's no time for anyone to do anything about it?
I think of the internet as the new phone system. How many people in the 80’s do you know that did NOT have phone service? Not many? Why? Because that is how you got a job, called in sick, got a doctor’s appointment.
Today, how do you get tax forms? Internet only (my post office stopped carrying them). How do you apply for a job? Many jobs are internet only. How do schools have students research papers? Many are internet researched. How are journal articles offered? Many are from the internet. I could go on.
Maybe the question is: should the internet be considered a necessity/right or a nice-to-have/privilege? If the former, we need it more open, not less. More affordable, not less.
Today, how do you get tax forms? Internet only (my post office stopped carrying them). How do you apply for a job? Many jobs are internet only. How do schools have students research papers? Many are internet researched. How are journal articles offered? Many are from the internet. I could go on.
Maybe the question is: should the internet be considered a necessity/right or a nice-to-have/privilege? If the former, we need it more open, not less. More affordable, not less.
God forbid tax payers help pay for libraries. And schools. And infrastructure.
Then you hotspot off your phone. Wireless is where we're headed. Heck where I live, it is the only option, and I have four choices, plus cellular.
Hahaha you’re a sad sad man. Spinning liberal lies and MSM propaganda. It will come back to haunt you.
It was said today the Republicans are not against net neutrality persee, just regulations, which means they are for large corporations who are against net neutrality. They really don’t care if large multinational corporations have their way with you, that’s part of the fun of having power. 
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Well except they are behaving exactly the same. They are clearly voting straight across party lines with very few exceptions.
And that's an incredibly selfish viewpoint - are you really upset that YOU help pay for libraries? I help pay for schools but don't have children. Luckily I realize this is necessary in order for society to not fall apart. Good luck with your what's mine is mine attitude.
Verizon? T-Mobile? AT&T? I am amazed at the number of my friends using their phones now for all their internet given the "all you can eat" plans available. Truly cutting the cable.
But even then, 60%-70% of the US population live in urban metros (>100,000) and not small little towns. Take that to 50,000 and the number jumps to 80%. So saying most people have at most 2 options is a blatant lie and nothing but FUD.
[doublepost=1511297629][/doublepost]
There isn't a monopoly. What part of that do you not understand?
https://arstechnica.com/information...-choice-for-many-especially-at-higher-speeds/
Most Americans have 1-2 ISP choices.
Prior to the Internet there really wasn't much in the way of wide area networking. Certainly not AOL style dial-up networks. If you had a computer in your home in the 1960s you were WAY outside the norm. Even between research institutions there wasn't much wide area communication between computing devices (some message switched or direct point to point existed and I believe and there was a research network in the UK that predates ARPAnet). BBS didn't become a thing until the late 70s and didn't become popular until the early 80s (well after the launch of ARPAnet in 1969 or the first use of the term Internet in 1972 [I think?]).
You are correct that there was no requirement for businesses to use the Internet, in fact the government initially forbade commercial use of the internet (hello regulation). And although the US military initially funded the scientific research of what became the internet let's not discount the involvement of Bell Labs (a monopoly that's being referenced elsewhere in this thread as something to avoid) in many technologies critical to our modern Internet (from the transistor to Unix to cellular communications) plus Xerox (ethernet) and a whole host of other private companies. The private sector can fund and produce incredible innovation just as universities (UCLA, MIT, Stanford), non-profits (RAND corp), and government granting agencies (DARPA, NSF) can. All of these organizations have led us to the Internet we all know and love.
In any case, going back to the roots of the Internet wouldn't be returning to a corporate controlled gated network, it would be returning to a government program that disallowed all of the most popular services currently available to us (no advertisement means no Google or Facebook or Youtube, no commerce means no Amazon or Ebay, no paid services means no Netflix or Spotify or Apple Music). Do you want to return to that fully regulated environment?
I don't want the wild west of anarcho-capitalism either but let's not be naive and think that all things government are good and all things corporate are bad. That's bumpersticker politics and ignores all the subtleties of both sides.
This is literally a scenario that could only happen without net neutrality.
[doublepost=1511314719][/doublepost]Dear right-wingers,
If Net Neutrality was reversed, George Soros could buy a controlling interest in AT&T, Verizon, & Time Warner Cable and COMPLETELY BLOCK access to Fox News, Breitbart, etc. for 99% of the country.
Let that sink in.
This isn’t a partisan issue.
(HT William LeGate)
All these gloom and doom.
Things were sooo terrible before 2015. Oh, wait, things just functioned just fine.
What most of you don't get is giving the government control of the internet is fine at first. Then later they will decide that certain content are "unsafe" so they will order their "utilities" to block them. Pooof! No more dissenting voices.
Net Neutrality, Patriot Act, Food Safety Act. All great sounding, but in the end, meant to screw us over.
This tells me you don’t understand what Net Neutrality is. Take the time to do your research. There’s nothing in net neutrality that would allow the government to determine what’s safe/unsafe.
Do you understand what “neutral” means? In this case it means all internet is fair game and cannot be blocked or slowed down. It gives the government the ability to punish ISPs for slowing/blocking content. There’s nothing in net neutrality that allows the government to categorize and discriminate content. Your ISP is doing that for you, which is why we need net neutrality.
Please don’t do that. Hillary was a **** candadite and I don’t blame anyone who didn’t vote for her. Being pro net neutrality doesn’t outweigh how horribly corrupt and untrustworthy she was. Acting like you are better than others is exactly what we don’t need right now.
How long has the internet been around and has any of that happened? Were you all just getting hosed before 2015? ***** sky is falling cry babies.
Also, I LOL'd when an idiot commenter started throwing out Nazi Germany hysteria. Get a grip, people.
Don't say I told ya so...
People think Trump or whoever that gets in is "great" until something like this happens...
Anyone else could have done the same thing anyway...
This would just encourage more users to use VPN's as u are not gonna slow down encrypted connections as well to a stand still.
People think Trump or whoever that gets in is "great" until something like this happens...
Anyone else could have done the same thing anyway...
This would just encourage more users to use VPN's as u are not gonna slow down encrypted connections as well to a stand still.
The FCC has been unofficially punishing ISPs.
Also Comcast has slowed down Netflix streaming. Netflix had to pay Comcast a premium to get speeds back to normal. You think Netflix will eat those costs or raise subscription prices?
I guess that also includes Neil Gorsuch, instead of some activist judge rewriting the US Constitution to fit their left wing ideology.
Lol so your response is "We weren't getting screwed over by ISPs prior to 2015, why would we want consumer protection to prevent it from happening in the future?"
I don't know how it could possibly be more clear. The reason ISPs are spending millions to fight net neutrality is because they know they can profit from packaged services. It's already happened in other countries like Portugal without NN. So why would you even want to leave the possibility open?