Especially when you have a moron in office threatening to jail the media if they don't bow to him and his wanna be mob fixer taking payments from telecoms such as AT&T.
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FCC Sets End Date for Net Neutrality on June 11 as Democrats Lead Vote to Block Repeal
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Exactly, the USA is still the 800lb gorilla in the room so we have to care what happens there if we want to or not.
Blocking and throttling is potentially just the beginning. Without these laws they are basically free to manipulate and abuse your traffic in anyway they see fit. They could literally change the information on a page you read on a website, they can sell your entire internet history to the highest bidder, they can triple dip by charging you, then Netflix more for the service you both already paid for. I have no doubt Comcast will stoop to these lows and then go lower.
But luckily most Americans live in a free market and can just change to anot.... oh wait, no they ****ing can't.
When att tried to block FaceTime to be used over cellular and Verizon blocking tethering unless you fork over more money I have no reason to trust major companies that try to play sleazy game
I suspect a fair amount of posters here would rather play political team sports instead of investigate on why NN helped stem the encroachment of consumer rights by corporations.
Well, just go to China then. Their ISP competition is fierce and “healthy”, plus, their internet is fine too.
This is exactly why Title 2 was absolutely necessary and was introduced.
You’re describing American politics in a nutshell, substitute NN for any other topic and it still applies neatly.
I hate actual team sports, let alone the political one that has resulted in UN missions declaring poverty in America approaches the conditions that war torn and third world nations have.
But wave a flag in our face and we’ll always do the bidding of corporate power and oligarchy.
As a Brit marrying an American it's gone past troubling to down right scary how brainwashed people are in the US.
I listen to friends and family in the US talk and it's like my god, wtf.
Also I'm about as conservative as they come but listening to certain political groups in the US talk makes them sound like cult members.
In many, if not most areas, there is no market. There is one choice, maybe two if you are lucky. Free market principles to not apply.
This isn't actually true, and all of you guys are showing a very common misconception.
Yes, Net Neutrality rules were only put in to effect in 2015, but they have been enforced since 2008. When Comcast started throttling BitTorrent traffic, the FCC started enforcing net neutrality. They did this several times and described network neutrality as their reason for upholding complaints against ISPs. Remember AT&T blocking FaceTime and tethering? Why do you think that stopped? The FCC upheld complaints against them on the grounds of net neutrality.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in 2008: "We are saying that network operators can't block people from getting access to any content and any applications." The FCC was enforcing net neutrality in 2008.
In 2013, Verizon successfully sued FCC because the FCC didn't actually have a net neutrality rule on the books and didn't have the authority to enforce net neutrality since they weren't classifying ISPs under Title II. Verizon won, so the FCC couldn't do it anymore. So the FCC put Net Neutrality on the books in 2015 and classified the ISPs under Title II, and the ISP's freaked out.
Net neutrality has been in effect since 2008. Repealing the 2015 net neutrality rules and Title II classification puts us back to pre-2008 settings, not pre-2015, because the 2013 court ruling blocks the FCC from enforcing net neutrality without the Title II classification on ISPs.
Things were absolutely worse before net neutrality. Before 2005, there wasn't deep packet inspection; once that tech developed, Comcast, AT&T, etc all started immediately rolling out plans to abuse it before the FCC started enforcing rules against them doing so.
I understand being skeptical of government, but the level of echo here is worrying. Don't repeat propaganda.
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Wrong argument. NN has been in place since 2008. FCC used it as rationale for several regulatory moves, including against Comcast (throttling BitTorrent) and AT&T (blocking FaceTime and tethering). It was only put on the books in 2015 because Verizon started suing the FCC for not having authority to continue enforcing it.
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American's don't realize that our media only spans the spectrum of corporate right (MSNBC for example) to downright lunacy (Fox). This has happened because we just looked the other way as 6 companies were allowed to buy literally every aspect of media Americans are exposed to. Even the "liberal" (That word doesn't mean what it used to since being coopted by the "Third Way" democrats) Huffington Post is shockingly war hungry, just hiding behind Helen Lovejoy "think of the children" hysterics.
If you don’t like Verizon doing that, go to AT&T then.
Netflix takes a lot of bandwidth. Should we also make UPS so it’s the same price to send a pencil as a engine for a lawnmower? That engine takes a lot more space than a pencil, doesn’t it?
Example: you’re sending your friend a pencil, and I’m sending my friend a new computer. Is it fair we pay the same price, or should I be charged more because I am taking more space in the UPS truck (bandwidth) than you are?
You're getting screwed by one of the TWO major players in the industry? Go to the other guy whom certainly won't ever do the same thing!
That's an amazingly naive view of how power operates.
I'm pretty careful to use the term libertarian now as the definition American's have of liberal is different to what a European would call a liberal.
I notice how insular and curated the media is in the US. It's a bit like the rest of the planet doesn't really exist. I realise the BBC has a pretty heavy left wing slant on it these days but it atleast attempts some semblance of balance. US media is full on corporate/government propaganda in my opinion. It can be hard to see it if thats all you've been exposed to.
That's a pretty deceptive comparison. Netflix was being charged by the amount of bandwidth they consume. The ISPs wanted to charge them even more, because Netflix was taking away their video subscribers.
Better comparison: Imagine if the water company developed the tech to monitor water usage, and decided it wanted to charge you different rates for shower water vs toilet water, even though it's the same water. Net neutrality is simply: "Water is water, you cannot monitor usage and charge differently depending on how the customer uses it."
10 MB of video and 10 MB of e-books should have the same cost.
That's all net neutrality is.
Comcast etc are motivated to throttle video traffic because they are also large media companies, so getting people to use their video services is profitable. In true capitalism, you could avoid Comcast, but in reality, we have regional monopolies that make it impossible to avoid. Where I live, Comcast is the only option over 25 mbps.
Same deal with AT&T vs Verizon. Until recently, T-Mobile was crap in comparison, and both AT&T and Verizon were violating net neutrality, so what option does the consumer have if the FCC does not intervene?
What makes you think you can just go to AT&T? You are aware that many many places simply don't have a second ISP option, right?
Apparently you forgot about Netflix being throttled a while ago and the standoff that followed. Or Verizon being accused of throttling, or carriers giving priority to their services and throttling others. Ya let's leave it up to the corporations to decide whats best for us. Meanwhile the big guys continue to buy up the smaller providers which will give us even less choice but to go along with it.
The BBC has been complicit in furthering the lies of May and Johnson, they've never been "left" but are certainly further in that direction than anything in the USA.
Which reminds me, when are we going to insist that the BBC file as a foreign agent here in the US being state funded and all?
Netflix PAYS FOR THE BANDWIDTH IS USES. Jesus, do people actually need a lesson in how the internet works?
You pay for the internet on your end, Netflix pays on its end. Data is not like water or electricity - once the bandwidth is there the amount of data used over it is pretty irrelevant.
Comparing the internet to the postal service is a completely wrong and foolish analogy and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of telecomunications. I should add I have a MSc in Electronic and Electrical Engineering.
Broadband was just becoming the norm in there early 2000s when all this started (well, this chapter anyway). Before then, most people didn't have throughput worth throttling. Around then, providers were still trying to wrap their heads around whether to tick off customers by making "fast lanes", etc, but the FCC started intervening before it really took hold and it went back and forth until 2015. This is not just about AT&T blocking Skype or whatever, it's also about AT&T blocking/slowing B&H because NewEgg used them for their network over Verizon (for example, no idea who these places really use). This will not end in June; there'll be suits for unfair business practices, stifling competition, etc in addition to all the mom-n-pop litigation and class actions. Without some form of neutrality in place, either by law or as a matter of practicality due to technology (or lack thereof) back in the day, we'd still be printing MapQuest pages for our road trips and using the web to get Blockbuster's number to find out what time they close.
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Your response is ridiculous. First you say NN wasn’t needed and had no impact. Then presented with a list of impacts, your response is “lol free market is gud”
NN doesn’t prevent a free market in any way. It means exactly what it says: neutrality in terms of the data ISPs transmit. Simple, common sense. You’ve just chose a side based on party politics.
If this is what Net Neutrality is about according to you, you haven’t understood a thing. Your example can be easily fixed by Data Limits where you have to pay for extra traffic when you’re consuming too much.
Without Net Neutrality your ISP might block or slow down internet content for whatever reason. Say they want to help Repulicans win the next election by slowing down Democrat websites? Or they block the website of competitors? Or they block certain news media or websites critical of their services, or the government?
ISP’s should simply move data from A to B, they shouldn’t be the gatekeeper.
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"Net neutrality is communism, folks! You don't want them liberal pinkos ruining the internet god graced us with!"
Your comparison doesn't make sense because that's not what happened to Netflix. Also, you're completely forgetting all of these ISPs got their networks started, maintained, upgraded, heavily paid for by our tax dollars.
The BBC has been complicit in furthering the lies of May and Johnson, they've never been "left" but are certainly further in that direction than anything in the USA.
Which reminds me, when are we going to insist that the BBC file as a foreign agent here in the US being state funded and all?
I am no fan of the BBC. From the forced firings/redundencies of white male journalists to make room for diversity.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Radio-4-comic-told-need-women-minorities.html
To the cover ups of child rapists and massive pay outs for executives and talentless stars. Not too mention the totally unfair mannor in which the BBC is funded.
I'd say the only media outlet further left than the BBC is the Guardian.
You 100% free market types should pick up a history book. Do you have any idea how many millions of lives government regulations have saved since the 19th century? If you really want to see what a completely free market looks like, go read about the age of the robber barons. Consumers and citizens absolutely deserve protection from corporate interests.Because of Net Neutrality, broadband infrastructure development and market competition was hindered. Smaller ISP's actually had a more difficult time breaking into the market, so those rural areas with only one "big" ISP (which is a big talking point for the pro-NN folk) had deep enough pockets to deal with the burdensome regulations.
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You think I am kidding?
