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Democrats Pan Google-Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal
GovTechGuy writes "Four House Democrats wrote to the Federal Communications Commission, urging them to write strict net neutrality rules and reject the framework put forward by Google and Verizon. The lawmakers, including Rep. Anna Eshoo, who represents the district containing Google HQ, said the Google-Verizon proposal increases the pressure on the FCC to come up with actual net neutrality rules, and characterize the deal as harmful to consumers and beneficial for the corporations. In particular, the letter took issue with two pieces of the Verizon-Google proposal: exemptions for managed services and wireless services from strict net-neutrality rules."
I haven't logged in or posted on slash dot in almost two years and your post my very well be the most honest and real argument for true net neutrality. I have worked for big telco and other "real" players in the ISP and networking biz and let me tell you the money is not in the crops but it's in the farm. Bandwidth really isn't an issue it's getting us to pay more to play more, as more people use the net and less people use PBX / phones and what not the telcos just want you to keep paying them $65 a month one way or anther. Cable companies are now in this game as well they have lost monthly reoccurring monies to home dish systems at a rate that no one saw coming. The internet is cash cow everyone wants to milk.
IF the torrent user is not sharing
THEN the torrent user is getting dial-up speeds.
Most users will have an option to use another service provider where one is available and with truth in advertising, Comcast may be forced by market forces to back down from that position.
In may places, it's still either Comcast with a 250 GB/mo cap or any of six wireless service providers (two satellite and four cellular) with a 5 GB/mo cap.
Keep them in check from what, exactly?
To keep the cable companies from blocking/throttling Netflix to boost PPV revenue. To keep the telcos from blocking/throttling VoIP to boost LD revenue. There are suspicions that some have tried similar things, and Comcast committed a man-in-the-middle attack against its customers to damage a particular protocol used heavily for movies that are on PPV. But Terry Childs gets 4 years in jail for a delay in handing over passwords, while an actual DoS attack that violates a number of state and federal laws done maliciously and deliberately goes unpunished.
Net neutrality is absurd and its proponents largely resort to fearmongering to sell it.
If they weren't intending to harm their customers in an underhanded manner to boost their own services, then they wouldn't be fighting it so hard. So I don't trust those against it. "We'd never do that" when they've already done it doesn't strike me as a good argument.
Now we have this new generation of Government Can Do, idealistic youngsters who think the government can protect our precious Internet without stomping all over it. Riiiight.
The government isn't going to "control" anything they don't already control. The Internet was built by the government and then opened up. It was pushed to what it is now by the government. Al Gore did invent the Internet as we know it by opening up the networks and getting the government out of the way. The government hasn't tried to directly control it (other than the parts they didn't yet get rid of) and isn't trying to with this either. It's nothing more than when they told AT&T that they couldn't require only AT&T hardware on the phone network. That wasn't government control of the phone network, but a restriction on the company that runs it in order to benefit the people. And that's what Net Neutrality is. A restriction on the corporations that have a profit motive to harm their customers to where Net Neutrality benefits anyone that doesn't own an ISP (and doesn't affect honorable ISPs).
Learn to love Alaska
Do you not understand the idea that normally diverse interests can align on a particular issue? We get the idea that some corporations support net neutrality and some oppose it, but to imply that supporters are being led around all glassy-eyed and used purely for the ends of these corporations is a little simplistic. On this particular issue, supporters agree with some powerful corporations. On others, not so much.
Is everyone who doesn't agree with you a useful idiot?
You are the closest I've come to repopulating my foes list since I cleared it a few years ago. I'm actually more concerned that adherents to the suicide pact of libertarianism still shock me when I come here.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
You are crazy. Or a shill.
The best reason for net neutrality is something we haven't done yet, something no company has planned for, and very likely something that would be hindered by default, because it doesn't fit into current plans. (Or can you say, "disruption not desired!"?)
That is utter nonsense. Everyone wants control over what comes into your house because it can be monetized. The name of the game is profit and if they can get you to pay for access and then they can get someone else to pay for it too, they're going to do it. AT&T does it already, when my local WISP was first moved from some third party AT&T reseller to AT&T proper we were on a non-neutral network where we had good access to AT&T sites, good access to major media sites, and then "mysteriously" high packet loss rates and high latency to other sites like Slashdot, couldn't access Alternet at all, et cetera. Our ISP raised hell and they re-provisioned us and now I can access all those sites again.
Barring legislation which I do not expect to appear, we have already lost the battle; the internet is already non-neutral for some undisclosed number of subscribers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"