DarthMatter
Space Marshal
Competition only works if there is a choice. From what I have seen some ISPs have entered agreements to stay away from each others areas, creating localized monopolies, negating all good that come from competition.
Net Neutrality fell
- Thread starter Shadow Reaper
- Start date
Well that's what happens when you treat the internet like a "utility" ... you get government sponsored monopolies. The FCC is the biggest roadblock in this country when it comes to technology innovation and progress.
Beerjerker
Grand Admiral
In terms easier for you to understand, that's still not extortion.
Me not buying Netflix's service, but being charged for it anyway is a reason I should go cry on behalf on Netflix's failed business model? They can pay their own bills and charge whatever continues to lose them money (last I heard -$20 million per year). Netflix can suck an egg.
Consumers do have choice. There are several satellite services, even phone services have better running internet than ISPs now, or they can just not buy internet service at all.
Let me first say I hate regulation as much as any other business person.
That being said, the reason there is so little choice is: (A) it costs an insane amount of money to invest in enough infrastructure to get economies of scale large enough to compete with the incumbents; (B) though monopolies are illegal, the government in no way attempts to prevent monopolies from existing, partly because economy of scale is beneficial to consumers and partly because government is made up of people who don't have any idea how to do anything other than shake people's hand and try not to offend anyone.
The lack of choice has nothing to do with FCC regulations.
Given that there is no choice and it's primarily because no other company wants to invest billions to become an ISP which has relatively small profit margins, it SHOULD be regulated as a government-sanctioned monopoly. Since the government allows the monopoly to exist, it must also prevent the monopoly from abusing its power.
Either regulate it as a utility, which it effectively is, or break up all the ISPs so consumers actually DO have a choice.
The problem with breaking it up is costs will go up for consumers, in some cases probably quite a lot.
The lesser evil is, I think, just to regulate it and sanction the monopoly. I'd be happy if they broke up all the ISPs as well so we actually did have a free and open market, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen. It just doesn't make financial sense in this case.
Under net neutrality you do not pay for Netflix at all if you don't use it. You clearly have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
With net neutrality you pay for the amount of Internet you use. It doesn't matter what you watch.
Without it, you pay for the amount of Internet you use, and the quality you get is terrible unless the services you use are ALSO paying your ISP to not throttle them.
For example, you want to download Star Citizen? It's 30 GB. Your ISP says fuck that, and they extort RSI. Either RSI pays your ISP a lot of money to get fast download speeds to you, or it takes you 4x as long to download Star Citizen.
Net-neutrality isn't about making sure consumers don't have to pay for the "Netflix channel". It was about giving special bandwidth access to those companies with a large enough bankroll to grease the government's wallet.
You and @Beerjerker are anti-regulation Republicans, it's clear. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just that it doesn't really apply in this case. You both have a clear misunderstanding of what net neutrality really is and why it matters and you're just railing against the FCC having any power at all.
That's fine, you're entitled to your opinions. They are however, IMO, misguided. A blanket "fuck the FCC" stance is not useful in all cases, and net neutrality is one of them.
I'm done trying to help you understand what's really happening here. Thanks for the discussion - we will have to agree to disagree. :)
Beerjerker
Grand Admiral
Here I was about to type up a tirade at being told what I do and do not understand. Agree to disagree works for me.
I apologize if I gave offense. I'm not great at communicating.
We clearly both feel strongly about this from different perspectives and that's part of what makes humanity interesting. :)
I mean ... you keep acting like we don't understand what net-neutrality is while making "futuristic claims" of what is to come without providing any meaningful proof.
Having an engineering degree in networking, I've actually read Title 2 and know full well what the FCC regulations of 2014 were for and what they did. The ONLY thing the 2014 regulations did was give special treatment to large corporations willing to buy more of the pie.
That's just simply a fact. Consumer options have DECLINED since the FCC began regulating the internet, not the other way around.
Having an engineering degree in networking, I've actually read Title 2 and know full well what the FCC regulations of 2014 were for and what they did. The ONLY thing the 2014 regulations did was give special treatment to large corporations willing to buy more of the pie.
That's just simply a fact. Consumer options have DECLINED since the FCC began regulating the internet, not the other way around.
As the owner of several internet content companies, I tell you from experience that prior to net neutrality being enacted in 2015, we were in fact being extorted by many ISPs in the US.
It cost us a lot of time and money to try to negotiate with all the ISPs and pay their extortion money so they wouldn't throttle our bandwidth so our customers could actually use our services. It didn't matter to them that their customers were already paying them, it just mattered that they could single us out and make our service suck unless we paid them extra.
Now that net neutrality is dead, our costs will almost certainly again go up and our customers will be getting poor performance until we can detect that their ISP is doing this and negotiate the payoff money.
Make no mistake, it's not "futuristic claims" so much as making the most-likely-to-be-valid assumption that history will repeat itself.
Anyway, I don't control the ISPs so you're right, I don't know for certain that they'll reinstate the extortion of content providers. I'm making an assumption that now they've won the FCC over they will once again do what they did in the past.
Takeiteasy
Space Marshal
I bet Anonymous will have something to say about it. They already have said things about it and if this really passes as in it gets put into effect then I can see our internet falling down to DDOS of epic proportions.
That may or may not be a problem. Having to pay extra for Netflix directly to your isp is very unlikely ... and that seems to be the comments I read the most about the issue.
The biggest problem with the FCC regulations was enabling Title 2, which essentially gave the FCC tons of loopholes to do exactly what their supposed regulations were meant to prevent. Applying Title 2 to the internet is a wolf in sheeps clothing.
The biggest problem with the FCC regulations was enabling Title 2, which essentially gave the FCC tons of loopholes to do exactly what their supposed regulations were meant to prevent. Applying Title 2 to the internet is a wolf in sheeps clothing.
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They need to stop threatening litigation and actually write LEGISLATION that ensures open access to the internet. I'm tired of independent government agencies being allowed to create their own psuedo-laws. What ever happened to check and balances?
Legislators need to start legislating again rather than just point fingers in hope that its enough to get re-elected.
They did write that legislation. That's what was just repealed. It is perfectly appropriate for the states to now sue the feds for failure to protect the people. This above is a good thing.
The FCC wrote the "legislation" ... not Congress. Congress has the ability to enact laws to protect the internet that supersede any agency regulation. Yet they do nothing but hand responsibility off to self-serving agencies.
I mean sweet baby jesus ... we have the DEA (the agency in charge of forcing drug laws) making the very laws they enforce in this country. Can't get much more Anti-American than that.
People of the United States of America, all is not lost - now more than ever is the time to raise your voices and be heared, by acting as one people you can make yourselves heared, you can change your destiny, you don't have to put up with this and you can do something about it right now.
Here is what to do:
...yes, we may put higher taxes on Tea but y'all drink coffee nowadays, anyway.
Here is what to do:
- Contact your local congressman and contact the white-house directly if you can.
- Go on record as raising an official complaint that the interests of the American People are no longer being served by the elected representatives.
- Demand to join the Commonwealth and become a British Dependency.
...yes, we may put higher taxes on Tea but y'all drink coffee nowadays, anyway.
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I'm sure there will be places available online to show your support. This isn't near over now that the states have taken a hand. The GOP is going to wear this like egg on their faces if they don't find a way to back-peddle.
AstroGimp01
Space Marshal
OUTRAGE. CONCERN. SALT.
It's the end of the world as we know it, Trump is Hitler, Pai hates the gamers, think of the children, oh the humanity, BUT MY BANDWIDTH, or something, because, WOKE, and racist!!.
OR, alternative interpretation:
Interwebz was just fine before this non-effective law become a non-effective law only a couple years ago, and interwebz will probably be just fine going forward without the non-effective law being a non-effective law, like say from 1969 when ARPANET was invented until 2014 - and we benefit from improved requirements for fee transparency and allowed competition between service providers.
'Gimp
It's the end of the world as we know it, Trump is Hitler, Pai hates the gamers, think of the children, oh the humanity, BUT MY BANDWIDTH, or something, because, WOKE, and racist!!.
OR, alternative interpretation:
Interwebz was just fine before this non-effective law become a non-effective law only a couple years ago, and interwebz will probably be just fine going forward without the non-effective law being a non-effective law, like say from 1969 when ARPANET was invented until 2014 - and we benefit from improved requirements for fee transparency and allowed competition between service providers.
'Gimp