FCC Has Voted to Repeal Net Neutrality Rules

[dukebound85]

Nothing bad happened from 1996 to 2015 like you are all whining about so why would it happened now?

Except for instances of throttling sites like netflix (it happened) or google wallet? what makes you think taking away safeguards is a good idea? on the hope they won't be abusive? please

 

[Glockworkorange]

I don't know how other NN folks feel, but that was not exactly how I felt. I didn't want to "stick it" to Comcast. I've actually been pleased with Comcast service, except I do wish they were a little cheaper.

But to answer your statement of them having did all the hard work of laying cables at great cost, yes they did, they absolutely did. (Though sometimes they promised to do it, got paid, but never actually laid the cables, like Verizon's FiOS plans).

Were they losing money? Was Verizon or AT&T or Comcast predicting cash loss? No, of course not. They were still profiting. They were upset though that their infrastructure was letting other people make money.

But if you step back and look at the big picture: a well run government is basically the framework which allows a productive population and for innovative companies to be born (Apple, Google, they all owe the US Govt and its citizens because we've created an environment where they have talented individuals who they can use to succeed).

So I don't want ISPs to lose money, but they weren't losing money. Nor were they making too much. They were making exactly as much as the market was allowing them to. If an ISP charges too much (in my opinion), then I can switch to another ISP.

I do agree with much of what you say here.

 

[turbineseaplane]

If an ISP charges too much (in my opinion), then I can switch to another ISP.

Totally agree - That's why we need to break up large ISPs, local-loop unbundle and create a very competitive marketplace and then just mostly get out of the way.

The problem is that we don't have anything close to that sort of marketplace in far too much of the country, thus the need for rules.

I don't love rules, but I need rules when I have few/limited options due to a monopolistic marketplace.

We should also note that having a competitive marketplace doesn't = no rules.
The market is created by the rules that are set forth by which the competitors play.

What we need is more legitimate players in each market.

 

[EM2013]

Wish this was fake news

 

[dukebound85]

I don't know how other NN folks feel, but that was not exactly how I felt. I didn't want to "stick it" to Comcast. I've actually been pleased with Comcast service, except I do wish they were a little cheaper.

But to answer your statement of them having did all the hard work of laying cables at great cost, yes they did, they absolutely did. (Though sometimes they promised to do it, got paid, but never actually laid the cables, like Verizon's FiOS plans).

Were they losing money? Was Verizon or AT&T or Comcast predicting cash loss? No, of course not. They were still profiting. They were upset though that their infrastructure was letting other people make money.

But if you step back and look at the big picture: a well run government is basically the framework which allows a productive population and for innovative companies to be born (Apple, Google, they all owe the US Govt and its citizens because we've created an environment where they have talented individuals who they can use to succeed).

So I don't want ISPs to lose money, but they weren't losing money. Nor were they making too much. They were making exactly as much as the market was allowing them to. If an ISP charges too much (in my opinion), then I can switch to another ISP.

You realize that the government laid a lot of the network and then it got privatized right by the likes of comcast right?

 

[Glockworkorange]

I get what you are saying.... but what do you think is accomplished by saying things like "blatantly" put someone in charge... or "to destroy consumer protections"....
Statements like these do no good... because anyone that disagrees with you, who you should want to try to persuade to your thinking, is not going to respect or listen to what you have to say. Because guess what.... for a lot of these issues reasonable people can disagree on what is the best thing to do.... for perfectly valid reasons. And its pretty bold to think that because someone doesn't agree with you they want to "destroy" consumers.
As someone who's a bit older than the average person here and who's witnessed a lot of election cycles.. thats one of the biggest complaints i have about politics.. and about many of the Democrats I know. Its that they think all of their ideas are perfect.. and anyone that doesn't agree with them are morons, or corrupt criminals. But the truth is that on many issues both sides want the same outcomes, they just have different ideas for how to get there. And rather than just debate different ideas for solving a problem, they have to just create some other issue to distract you from the actual issue.

Its that they think all of their ideas are perfect.. and anyone that doesn't agree with them are morons, or corrupt criminals."

Very close. I think the left sees politics as a struggle between good and evil. The left is good and the right is evil. The right is full of racists and Nazi's and homophobes and people who want to destroy the air and drinking water and poison the planet. For the left, there is no such thing as a good faith and reasonable disagreement.

And when the other side is evil, you are almost obligated to tar them as horrible monsters, right? After all, the evil has to be called out, identified and then destroyed. That's why people who disagree with some of the left's policies are labeled as such. It's much easier to destroy "Joe the Nazi" who voted for Trump than Joe the guy down the street with the 9 year old daughter.

If you're looking for the reason our political discourse is so poisonous, there it is.
[doublepost=1513299216][/doublepost]

got privatized right by the likes of comcast right?

I have no idea what this means. Land got privatized right by Comcast? What?

 

[palmerc2]

Except for large portions of the country, consumer options for ISP is limited to 1 or 2 options. More often then not it's one ISP that owns all the lines in the area. In order to get DSL you have to live within a short distance to a hub to get service. In my area we have comcast and att, att is twice as slow as comcast. Other then that there are no other options. That's how it is for most rural areas. Even in places that allow third parties to use the main lines, they still have to pay for that usage which always gets passed on to the consumer and they rarely offer the same quality service the main holder of those lines could offer. So while that would qualify as an open market, that in no way equates a win for the consumer.

How was your internet before 2015? Was it throttled, was it sold in packages / tiers, and you were limited in your free speech? Unless I’m severely mistaken, I’d say the answer is no.

Except the big ISPs have such powerful regional monopolies and powerful legal arms they literally block and crush any attempted competition. It's so hard to build a competing ISP in the US that Google, one of the biggest companies in America gave up.

ISPs have bought regional politicians and governments up to the point where they enact regulation that actively prevents newcomers from entering the market. If Google struggled fighting this then what snow balls chance in hell does anyone else have?

Please don't be so niave.
[doublepost=1513293387][/doublepost]

Can you post some up? Because this is one topic I can honestly say I've researched to death and I've yet to find any reasonable arguments against it.

I saw this video today which opened up my eyes a bit....I’d say it’s valid. All I’ve heard up until this point is net neutrality is good, so it’s interesting to hear a different perspective.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Do we need to talk about left and right in the Net Neutrality thread?

Polling showed 83% of the country, Left & Right making that number up, doesn't like what just happened.

This is way more about entrenched moneyed interests vs actual citizens, left and right together in that.

 

[JamiLynee]

Are you being ironic on purpose???

Apologies. I should have added some winky faces and stuff

 

[blacktape242]

I guess we will see how this effects everyone. could be panic for nothing.

 

[bopajuice]

I find it hard to believe anyone here on these forums, anyone that uses the internet, anyone interested in Apple products, anyone who likes discussing technology, could take an issue like net neutrality and turn it into a political argument.

To say that in any shape or form that getting rid of net neutrality is a good thing, or worse is a Democrat issue?

After the millions of bots posting comments against net neutrality, after the FCC closed commenting on net neutrality, after they abruptly cleared the room during comments about net neutrality. After the protests, we still have a group of partisan sheep who think this is a good thing? Where have you guys been for the last decade when Netflix service was cut off, when companies were being throttled, yet the services of the provider were not? Is it really just about politics?

Fine. When your service is interrupted because you refuse to accept your provider's preferred content, or the price of service goes up, or data caps and/or throttled service becomes the norm, then we will talk.

 

[mudslag]

How was your internet before 2015? Was it throttled, was it sold in packages / tiers, and you were limited in your free speech? Unless I’m severely mistaken, I’d say the answer is no.

I said nothing about free speech, so what exactly does that have to do with my post? Nothing about the rest of your post addresses anything else you quoted me on either. You want to give it another try?

 

[Macintoshrumors]

Lots of lawsuits coming.

For what exactly?
[doublepost=1513300959][/doublepost]

Well done Trump voters. Hope you're enjoying America becoming great again

Have you bothered reading the 210 pages of the 2017 proposal or are you just regurgitating your opinion based on the misinformation that you have seen plastered online. There was nothing wrong with the internet before 2015 and now the govt grip on the internet is lossened. Read the repeal, the doom md gloom is not going to happen.

 

[palmerc2]

I said nothing about free speech, so what exactly does that have to do with my post? Nothing about the rest of your post addresses anything else you quoted me on either. You want to give it another try?

My bad, allow me to clarify....blocking free speech is one of the things the media and public figures are pushing is ISP’s now could prevent free speech, among other things. Just more nonsense.

People are acting as though the internet was horrible, sold in packages, throttled, etc, before 2015.

 

[827538]

How was your internet before 2015? Was it throttled, was it sold in packages / tiers, and you were limited in your free speech? Unless I’m severely mistaken, I’d say the answer is no.






I saw this video today which opened up my eyes a bit....I’d say it’s valid. All I’ve heard up until this point is net neutrality is good, so it’s interesting to hear a different perspective.

You had Title 1 classification for ISPs before 2015. Now there won't be any.

 

[groovyd]

Any ISP who invests in establishing fast/slow lane technology will just eat those costs in a few years. Well, actually they will just make the customer eat the cost of their mistakes like everything else they do.

 

[LizKat]

Its that they think all of their ideas are perfect.. and anyone that doesn't agree with them are morons, or corrupt criminals."

Very close. I think the left sees politics as a struggle between good and evil. The left is good and the right is evil. The right is full of racists and Nazi's and homophobes and people who want to destroy the air and drinking water and poison the planet. For the left, there is no such thing as a good faith and reasonable disagreement.

And when the other side is evil, you are almost obligated to tar them as horrible monsters, right? After all, the evil has to be called out, identified and then destroyed. That's why people who disagree with some of the left's policies are labeled as such. It's much easier to destroy "Joe the Nazi" who voted for Trump than Joe the guy down the street with the 9 year old daughter.

If you're looking for the reason our political discourse is so poisonous, there it is.

The reason our political discourse is so poisonous us from our categorizing people as left or right and then sterotyping their beliefs, behavior or both. There was a time it was okay to be independent. Now even the indies are categorized as right-leaning or left-leaning. As far as the two major parties go, the idea of a bipartisan solution in Congressional legislation is rejected by both parties for all but local issues and feel-good resolutions that end up without appropriations to make them meaningful.

As a lefty, I have to say I don't subscribe to busting down the Republicans as "evil" but I think their policies are clearly not designed to serve ordinary Americans, particularly in this legislative session under President Trump. The GOP is not fond of social safety nets and plans to pay for its tax cuts by repealing the mandate for ACA coverage and then by continuing to press for cuts to what they like to call "entitlements". I won't call that evil but I call it misguided and... unpopular, actually.

On topic: I'm unhappy about the FCC's vote today. It doesn't surprise me. It's a myth that we can just switch to another ISP if we don't like how the current one treats us. Much of the country is carved up into turf where there's at most two choices, usually one that serves up DSL and the other is one of the major cable players offering broadband services. The desire to intrude on that and go head to head in some rural county or even a suburban district is roughly nil. That's why an essential service like internet connectivity needs to be regulated by government.

The "free market" is not free, it is profit-incentivized and takes one look at a county like mine up here in the mountains and says well Frontier and Spectrum got that covered probably, good on them. Yeah, good on them. They got us by the fill in the blank. We would not even have that had around here, had it not been for the original landline telephone services having been classified as a public utility.

Spectrum only came into the area when they saw a nearby township's indie phone co become willing to run its DSL out farther into the next town, and figured ok we could scarf all that up along the main drags out of both towns on the county highways and let Frontier (formerly GTE, formerly Continental F-a-Phone) keep running the DSL up in the hill villages. This is how it is now all over the country in rural and some exurban areas. One cableco, one formerly POTS co running DSL on copper lines to assorted hubs where their servers connect to fiberoptic to the net. They're not competitors although there's some churn. They're symbiotic, and they can already eat us alive with their offers and termination fees and fine print if we fall for the churn game that enriches the coffers of both outfits. That's before they now get to do whatever they want as long as they tell us they're doing it. I can hardly wait. /S

 

[turbineseaplane]

There was nothing wrong with the internet before 2015 and now the govt grip on the internet is lossened. Read the repeal, the doom md gloom is not going to happen.

Definitely more nuanced than that..

Good background here from EFF:

https://mobile.twitter.com/EFFFalcon/status/935634760352665600

And good update today from Wired:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-biggest-whoppers-from-the-fccs-net-neutrality-meeting/
[doublepost=1513301681][/doublepost]

The GOP is not fond of social safety nets and plans to pay for its tax cuts by repealing the mandate for ACA coverage and then by continuing to press for cuts to what they like to call "entitlements"

And those entitlements are hugely popular with their own voting base...

They really care about their donor class, not the people that vote for them (usually against their own best interests, like in this case)
[doublepost=1513301764][/doublepost]

The reason our political discourse is so poisonous us from our categorizing people as left or right and then sterotyping their beliefs, behavior or both. There was a time it was okay to be independent. Now even the indies are categorized as right-leaning or left-leaning. As far as the two major parties go, the idea of a bipartisan solution in Congressional legislation is rejected by both parties for all but local issues and feel-good resolutions that end up without appropriations to make them meaningful.

As a lefty, I have to say I don't subscribe to busting down the Republicans as "evil" but I think their policies are clearly not designed to serve ordinary Americans, particularly in this legislative session under President Trump. The GOP is not fond of social safety nets and plans to pay for its tax cuts by repealing the mandate for ACA coverage and then by continuing to press for cuts to what they like to call "entitlements". I won't call that evil but I call it misguided and... unpopular, actually.

On topic: I'm unhappy about the FCC's vote today. It doesn't surprise me. It's a myth that we can just switch to another ISP if we don't like how the current one treats us. Much of the country is carved up into turf where there's at most two choices, usually one that serves up DSL and the other is one of the major cable players offering broadband services. The desire to intrude on that and go head to head in some rural county or even a suburban district is roughly nil. That's why an essential service like internet connectivity needs to be regulated by government.

The "free market" is not free, it is profit-incentivized and takes one look at a county like mine up here in the mountains and says well Frontier and Spectrum got that covered probably, good on them. Yeah, good on them. They got us by the fill in the blank. We would not even have that had around here, had it not been for the original landline telephone services having been classified as a public utility.

Spectrum only came into the area when they saw a nearby township's indie phone co become willing to run its DSL out farther into the next town, and figured ok we could scarf all that up along the main drags out of both towns on the county highways and let Frontier (formerly GTE, formerly Continental F-a-Phone) keep running the DSL up in the hill villages. This is how it is now all over the country in rural and some exurban areas. One cableco, one formerly POTS co running DSL on copper lines to assorted hubs where their servers connect to fiberoptic to the net. They're not competitors although there's some churn. They're symbiotic, and they can already eat us alive with their offers and termination fees and fine print if we fall for the churn game that enriches the coffers of both outfits. That's before they now get to do whatever they want as long as they tell us they're doing it. I can hardly wait. /S

Oh my - Post of the day.
Well. Done.

 

[applefan69]

Expected this forum to be more level headed. First page is 60% trump bashing. Do not forget to blame him next time your lightbulb burns out. Jeese ever heard the phrase beat a dead horse and no trump is not going to impeached get used to it.

This FCC news is terrible. I am pretty sure everyone should look into a thing I read the other day, Verizon was specifically caught saying they should get a brainwashed individual into power of the FCC and Ajit just happened to be a part of that conversation . . . . . . Sounds like the root to me. I dont think Trump had anything to do with that.

 

[Zachari]

please tell me what benefit you see from this? The internet is a lifeblood in today's world whether we like it or not

The internet flourished before 2015 and it will continue to progress after net neutrality. It’s really simple.
[doublepost=1513302962][/doublepost]

Expected this forum to be more level headed. First page is 60% trump bashing. Do not forget to blame him next time your lightbulb burns out. Jeese ever heard the phrase beat a dead horse and no trump is not going to impeached get used to it.

This FCC news is terrible. I am pretty sure everyone should look into a thing I read the other day, Verizon was specifically caught saying they should get a brainwashed individual into power of the FCC and Ajit just happened to be a part of that conversation . . . . . . Sounds like the root to me. I dont think Trump had anything to do with that.

Exactly. Obama appointed Ajit.

 

[Daniel Reed]

So is the like your Job?

Seems like your just trying to sway public opinion.

Pretty much, check out the post history for user ThisIsNotMe.
Pure destructive criticism aimed at working folks up into a frenzy.
Sadly, one of the best ways to break down a society is to cause infighting.

 

[Zachari]

Screw Trump and Republicans.

Heh. Now you know how we felt for 8 years.
[doublepost=1513303086][/doublepost]

He's joking right?! Please, tell me he's joking...

No.
[doublepost=1513303133][/doublepost]

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or serious?

100% serious.

 

[TsMkLg068426]

There goes my cat vids and porn.... Wait Trump is still president? WTF!
[doublepost=1513303318][/doublepost]Wonder if I have to pay for each letter I type here or on any other site going to get expensive under GOP communism.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The internet flourished before 2015 and it will continue to progress after net neutrality. It’s really simple.

Please see my post above (#551) - The links are very relevant to the Internet in the past and understanding what's different about where we are now heading.

 

[SeaFox]

Hey! They throw in "Social" for free!
nice!!...

How else would they spread fake news and influence elections so they can stay in power and make these regulatory changes?