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US House Subcommittee Votes To Kill Net Neutrality
angry tapir writes "A US House of Representatives subcommittee has voted in favor of a resolution to throw out the US Federal Communications Commission's recently adopted net neutrality rules. The communications subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 15-8 along party lines for a resolution of disapproval that would overturn the FCC's rules."
you fools gave your houses to the right wing party. right wing parties anywhere around the world, always support corporations over people.
it doesnt matter what your reasons or excuses for voting for a right wing party. you may even be quite right and correct in your reasons. BUT, a right wing party will always support corporations over people, in every way they can. even their acts which appear pro-people, will end up being pro-corp in the long run.
Read radical news here
Walden added. "These regulations will cost jobs," he said.
I know, this is the standard-issue republican response to anything they don't like, but really could we have an explanation this time? Exactly how would net neutrality kill jobs?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
you fools gave your houses to the right wing party. right wing parties anywhere around the world, always support corporations over people.
We didn't give the government to them - at least not in the 2010 election cycle. Rather several decades (or more) ago we happily sold them to them. The only difference is that now the "two" parties are openly showing that there is virtually nothing different between them. We have a (theoretically) non-right-wing president who is continuing every last executive decision of his right-wing predecessor. Meanwhile congress is doing the same thing they did two years ago, which is what they did two years before that, which is what they did two years before that, etc ...
Sure, some people with power are now more openly right-wing, but in the end we don't have any politicians who are not right-wing.
it doesnt matter what your reasons or excuses for voting for a right wing party
Sadly, some people thought they were voting for a non-right-wing party. Now that the curtain has fallen they are realizing that indeed every politician comes from the same party now.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
from TFA: "If the Republican-controlled House approves the resolution, it would then move to the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority. The Senate is unlikely to pass the resolution."
summary fails to mention how this vote probably won't actually go anywhere.
> you fools gave your houses to the right wing party.
Does America even have a left-wing party? Surely you don't mean those center-right Democrats?
This is not surprising. With a mandate to repeal all of the worker's rights that where hard-won during the early 1900's, and legislating the idea that science is witch-craft, this is not unexpected.
We are entering a dark age.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
FTA: "The FCC lacks legal authority to pass the rules, and government intervention would hurt the Internet, said Representative Greg Walden, the subcommittee's chairman and an Oregon Republican. "The Internet works pretty well -- it's the government that doesn't," he said." He's against government involvement. That I understand. But he's admitting that he, as a member of the government, doesn't really understand the problem. He's admitted to being the problem, so why should he have his way?
"On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle." -Linus Torvalds
Republicans have just killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. The replacement goose's eggs are gold plated, cracked and spoiled.
One of the republicans supporting this resolution is... Mary Bono Mack .... wife of the late Sonny Bono, the Copyright Term Extension Bonehead... so one Bono fscks up copyright, and the other Bono fscks up the Internet. "The Circle is Complete" another dark-sider would say.
Two competing parties and almost perfect "market efficiency", in that polling is so sophisticated that the parties have almost perfect knowledge of the electorate. Hotelling's Law says they they will end up being identical.
A corollary is that your vote is meaningless, since you have a choice between two sames. You cannot bring about change at the ballot box. The only ways to change things are:
Every story like this gives me even more motivation to get my degree. That way when the effects of all of this shitty legislation in favor of the super wealthy begins to really take effect I won't have a problem emigrating to another country.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Just remember, politics don't code, administer, or run network cables. If people really want net neutrality they will get it. It's really only a question of time.
DeReggi told lawmakers he may want to block services like Netflix because they take up too much bandwidth for WiMax-based broadband.
I think that about sums it up.
As soon as Verizion pays full market rate for the land their cables go over and under then we can talk. Verizon and the others love it when government forces people to let them build under / across private property but they do not want to do anything in return for that access.
Seeing as how doubtful it is that the House Members could implement this change themselves, it would need to be performed by us geeks. Geeks of the world Unite! As long as none of us aids them, it simply won't get done.
Republicans represent the interests of very very wealthy people. They are against changes, innovations, new ideas and anything that benefits anyone who isn't in the club. Because from a rich person's viewpoint, everyone is out to grab some of what they have. (oh, and I am not claiming that Democrats got it all right).
Similar to, if I want to take a toll road, which is less congested than the rest of the highway system.
I think the cause for concern is that without Net Neutrality you will no longer have any choice in the matter. If you wish to visit certain destinations the toll road is the only way. I guess it is like Pay-Per-View for the internet.
Similar to, if I want to take a toll road, which is less congested than the rest of the highway system.
What if said toll road only took you to cities that had paid to be connected to that road, or paid to block access to other cities in order to increase their own tourism/local business revenue? This is essentially what a lot of people are afraid is going to happen. Companies will have deals where they pay the internet provider to block/cripple your access to their competitor. Parts of the internet may be blocked off depending on who your provider is.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
and in return the Republicans will support some Democratic issue.
HAHAHHAHHHA
That is the funniest thing I've read in a VERY long time
I'm sorry but there seems to be a discrepancy with regard to how representatives view NN. It is not a government regulation anymore than the first amendment 'regulates' that speech must be free. Likewise, NN 'regulates' that information must be unbiased. This notion of forced freedom as a form of regulation is probably the most far fetched form of 'regulation' that I have seen. But it should be clear that NN merely forces information to be unbiased. Regulation is a form of constriction on some greater pool. In other words, regulation selects a subset of options from a grand set. NN could not be regarded as regulation because it restricts corporate regulation. NN is, therefore, the antithesis of regulation.
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
Can someone explain to me, in simple terms, why Net Neutrality is needed? What are we worried about?
I don't think most people care about paying more for more bandwidth. That's the situation that exists today. If you want 10Mpbs, you pay more than if you want 5 Mbps (to get more realistic rates, multiply by a factor of 10 if you live in Europe or Asia).
What we are worried about is the fact that ISPs, like Comcast, who in the content delivery business, are increasingly getting into the content creation business, by merging/buying the likes of NBC. Now Comcast has an incentive to manage it's network in such a way as to drive traffic to the content it owns. And because the courts and the FCC have rolled back the provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which forced Tier 1 networks to resell their lines to others to foster a competitive market, we still have monopoly and duopoly status for the majority of Americans.
If there was a competitive market in which I could select a different ISP if my current one started degrading it's competitor's (in the content creation business) traffic to me, then Network Neutrality regulations wouldn't be needed, because the market could keep Comcast, etc. honest (at least in theory).
But, if Comcast is my only choice, then if they start degrading traffic from Netflix, or CBS, so that I can only watch it in 240p, while NBC or Blockbuster Online (which they hypothetically own) comes through at 720p, that's a bad thing because I can't vote with my dollar.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Let's take Comcast and Netflix. Comcast hates Netflix because Comcast is also a content provider. They want you to pay $6 to watch their on-demand movies. With Netflix I can watch tons of movies for $6, and Comcast has to carry the traffic. Without Net Neutrality, Comcast would tell Netflix "you use too much bandwidth. We're going to throttle you down until your movies are unwatchable unless you start paying us a fee. That fee will increase until we make as much money from people watching your movies as we would if they bought them from our service".
Netflix would have to increase prices until no one would pay, thus forcing them out of business and all you would be left with is Comcast, which then jacks up the prices for their on-demand movies.
Net Neutrality provides choice.
You'll never get an example of what exactly net neutrality is supposed to solve, because there haven't been any examples.
Ha! Hahahaha. Surely you jest, bonch. Not only can examples be found in abundance, but there's a nice fat juicy one in TFA—and straight from the president of an ISP, no less!
DeReggi told lawmakers he may want to block services like Netflix because they take up too much bandwidth for WiMax-based broadband.
That is it in a nutshell.
Also, let's rid ourselves of this false notion that "ISPs run their own private networks." Who paid for these networks? The government. Who owns the land under these cables and towers? The government. It is a specious claim to say that the ISPs' networks are "their own."
Defensive much? All of your posts in this thread are silly attempts to downplay the bad side of the GOP or equate big sellouts like this to dishonesty over a bj. You sell out just like your party. So be it.
I'm for your solution as well. I think having the government sponsored/created monopolies is the problem, anyway.
Pro-corp is the same as pro-consumer. We see "big companies" and we reflexively envy the big sums of cash they control, since they're so much bigger than the sums of cash we control. We all want to force them to give us more for less, sure (and in a democratic society, it's fairly easy to leverage the political process to seemingly do just that).
But you never actually take anything away from corporations in the long run; the most well-intentioned regulatory burdens still increase entry barriers, reduce competition, and favor the larger and more well-established players in a market. Costs are simply passed along to consumers in higher prices or reductions of other product features -- whether or not they would have voluntarily payed the same additional amount for whatever the regulation guarantees.
Saying that the FCC has no authority to impose regulations on the internet doesn't "favor corporations over the people." It simply says that a) regulatory bodies can only impose rules where they have jurisdiction, and b) in this case, companies and individuals are free to barter for bandwidth in whatever manner they see fit.
Broadband is a network industry, much like air travel. In the 30+ years since airline de-regulation in the US, prices have dropped over 38%, and service has tripled in terms of man-miles. Since then, a number of new low-cost carriers have been able to enter the market and challenge the oligopoly, offering consumers greater choice than they ever had before. The same dynamics are in play here; the less regulation there is, the more unthrottled, source-neutral and content-neutral bandwidth you are likely to have access to five years from now for the same dollar. Under regulation, you may force all providers to offer source-neutral and content-neutral bandwidth, but nobody said they have to offer you anything over 5 megabits without a huge surcharge.
Pi Ran Out
Monopolies, or near monopolies like Comcast using unfair advantage of their power to make content providers either pay them, force them out of business, or influence the content to favor them.
Doesn't this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act] prevent that?
Assuming that the Justice Department does its job re: anti-competitive behavior, and the Justice Department does its job re: not allowing monopolistic, anti-competitive businesses to merge, I cannot imagine a world in which any Justice Department would allow an ISP to prevent a given provider to prohibit the traffic of another provider. That would be like ATT not allowing an MCI Worldcom telephone call, and there would be immediate outrage. Immediate.
It sounds like to me that if we were concerned that the Content Carriers would become Content Producers, and thus would favor their own Content over a competitor's Content, then we shouldn't allow mergers like Comcast / NBC.
To sum it up, the problem is the monopoly, not the hypothetical misuse of the monopoly.
paid to block access to other cities in order to increase their own tourism/local business revenue
The United States has long ago enacted laws to prevent this sort of practice. Microsoft was nearly split up as a result of such in the 90s, if you recall. Intel was also reprimanded smartly because they paid a percentage of marketing fees for companies that would agree to exclusively use their products over a combination of Intel+AMD.
I came here to say that I will begin cutting Comcast's cables that are strung across my property if this goes any further. I simply want $1 million per month in rent.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
WTF? I'm a Troll because I don't know what the big fuss is about? I guess because I don't immediately tow the /. party line on all issues, "rabble, rabble, rabble", I'm a Troll.
If I had mod points...
I'm glad to see someone can still make this point clearly and concisely.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
You're completely right, however, to address these issues is EXPENSIVE. It requires hiring a lot of very skilled workers, who demand high salaries and it requires a lot of time. For a corporation, it is more economical to simply restrict traffic in ways which reduce strain on their network, rather than improving their network.
I don't even mean this in a bitter way. They're behaving as responsible corporations by delivering the highest profits possible to their investors.It's just that this doesn't always overlap with providing the best goods and services to the customers.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
...who voted GOP/Libertarian, enjoy paying a lot more to Comcast or Time Warner for your high speed Internet access and throttled to death P2P bandwidth.
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This is a vote for freedom. Freedom of the organizations that INVEST in the infrastructure to be the ones who get to decide how that infrastructure is used. Freedom for you to set the rules for the use of the thing which you built with your money and sweat.
Let's get this insidious Bufferbloat fixed first, and THEN worry about whether we really need network neutrality or not.
Why? They are completely separate issues. Solving bufferbloat won't tell us anything about whether network neutrality regulations are needed. That depends on the behavior of the ISPs and with the CEO of AT&T calling Google leeches who ought to be throttled if they don't start handing over cash, then I think it is already pretty clear that they aren't going to behave without external pressure of some sort. The only argument is whether market pressures will be enough or regulation is needed.
There are apparently many things we can do to enhance and optimize queuing and sorting of packets before we add another layer.
I don't understand what you are saying. What other layer are you talking about - adding QoS? I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon anyway as it requires the cooperation of everyone at once before it becomes useful. It also is orthogonal to the network neutrality issue, as you can have fair and unfair network management with or without any QoS implementation.
In this way America are kind of like Afghanistan; a country to which we've tried to introduce democracy, but whose citizens do not recognize the value of it and are thus not willing to fight for it, i.e. a horse that has been led to horse to water, but will not drink. Americans, of the other hand, had their freedom, but then gave it away willingly to the corporations... and continue to do so. Like the poor Afghans, they don't understand that their usual behavior is not in their best interest either.
Like Dr.Phil Says, "You can't fix what you don't acknowledge"
but YOU DO ACKNOWLEDGE exactly this ironic, universal, flaw of human nature. Civilization-at-large has perpetuated and permeated this myth across all ethnic, political, temporal, historical, cultural and other designations of humanity since the dawn of reason. That would include us peeps now. Therefore, it makes complete sense to me that if we the people keep acting just like people usually behave, then we should continue to get comparable results. And if you really look at it all closely, objectively and/or subjectively, within the context of a mortal human lifespan, it looks like all human development from an infancy to the grave: Potty training will continue to be necessary for civilization until we no longer exist. The Sphinx learned this riddle and the Nile went to straight hell, yet again. So, like all neurotic behavior, humans will continue to ruin a perfectly good empire, civilization, dynasty, or Renaissance. Its what makes us so successful at being human, in spite of our denials and accomplishments. Nature and God just don't care how much we flail around like goof balls and visionaries. And perhaps thats exactly why everything that you state above is precisely as you have wisely observed with stunning clarity. You have seen the light, in spite of all of the stunning darkness that persists. Don't let the turkeys get you down, no matter the futility of reality. Bravo. Encore Lather, rinse, repeat.
If they're libertarians, they should be perfectly okay with that - "what the market can bear" and all that.
After all, they can always start a new ISP if it gets real bad (funny how it never does, apparently).
Those were both antitrust actions against highly dominant companies abusing their monopoly status via certain arrangements, not illegality of those arrangements per se. If a bit player like Transmeta struck the same deal, the FTC would not have flinched. Similar deals are struck all the time - a good example is the exclusive arrangements between restaurant chains and soft drink companies (ever wonder why most fastfood chains serve Coke products or Pepsi products, but never both?)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I have to admit I don't understand the business model that allows the internet to work. I do understand that it was started by the government. Why did the government do that and interfere with the marketplace. I remember at the time that companies like AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy were attempting to start their own networks. If the government hadn't stepped in with the government supported service, mightn't those companies have succeed? Woiuldn't competition between them have led to a better way of doing the internet? You can raise your questions about interoperability between systems, or about this service or that service, but we all know that competing firms work hard to offer things the users want. They would have met these demands.
Which brings me to the biggest "what if..". What if those companies in trying to compete with each other had made a determined effort to show that their network was free of viruses and malware? What technologies would they have developed? With the internet being "free" and everyone using the same protocol, there is no competition to see who can build the best network.
People often point to the internet as an example of the benefits of a government sticking its fingers into everything. But think the internet would be better if the government had not gotten involved.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Wish I could mod you up, both for your comment and sig.
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You made my point beautifully. My point is that the same principle would/should apply to Comcast, rather than making the original practice illegal as a preventative measure.
Is there a site or something that gives the vote records for subcommittees? If these articles are saying it was along party lines someone must have a list. If we can put names to decisions that's a lot more useful than blaming the entire party.
Assuming this was strictly on party lines here is the site of subcommittees, but some apparently didn't vote.
For the lazy here is the table of members. Take note of whether your representative is on the naughty list.
Republicans
Greg Walden (OR) Chair
Lee Terry (NE) Vice Chair
Cliff Stearns (FL)
John Shimkus (IL)
Mary Bono Mack (CA)
Mike Rogers (MI)
Brian Bilbray (CA)
Charlie Bass (NH)
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
Phil Gingrey (GA)
Steve Scalise (LA)
Bob Latta (OH)
Brett Guthrie (KY)
Adam Kinzinger (IL)
Joe Barton (TX)
Fred Upton (MI)
Democrats
Anna G. Eshoo (CA)
Edward J. Markey (MA)
Michael F. Doyle (PA)
Doris O. Matsui (CA)
Jane Harman (CA)
John Barrow (GA)
Edolphus Towns (NY)
Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ)
Bobby L. Rush (IL)
Diana DeGette (CO)
John D. Dingell (MI)
Henry A. Waxman (CA)
I couldn't get past the stupidity. Since when do free people let their government make any rules about how they communicate? And, in a government that explicitly gives the power to the people and not the government. Not to mention, this is a part of the government that doesn't have the power to make rules like this. If you don't like the corporation, don't buy from them. "It's the only game in town". Whine some more, or do something about it.
As soon as Verizion pays full market rate for the land their cables go over and under then we can talk. Verizon and the others love it when government forces people to let them build under / across private property but they do not want to do anything in return for that access.
Ummm... in order to get those permissions, telecom/cable companies almost always have build out provisions imposed on them.
Otherwise, the poor/rural areas would never get served.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's apt and no one will vote to kill that.
Your assumption fails, and that's why your conclusion fails.
The justice department is just as whored out to big business as the rest of the government. Or did you forget all the RIAA lawyers Obama hired?
I think it's a great idea.
So great that Monticello got their asses sued off by TDS when they tried it.
Natural monopolies where redundant capital costs make competition inefficient should also be cases where the government IS the monopoly.
Internet access, because of its capital heavy nature, should be a publicly owned utility just like water and electricity.
My friend who works at the FCC always reminds me that the FCC is not controlled by the White House but by Capital Hill. He says the Commissioners don't seem to always remember that. I am not sure what this means for this dispute. Perhaps Obama cannot veto their moves? Could they remove the Commissioners from office?
I will admit I am ignorant of how this works.
It's spelled "you're."
Funny thing: they didn't agree about spelling in the days of youre.
(who is pretty right wing by Canadian standards, but basically a flaming commie pinko by US standards)
Ah, I see Canada is yet another one of these western world countries that does have a left wing ;-)
no one builds network infrastructure all by themselves. it is done in tandem with government rules and agreements. and no, that is not a freedom destroying convention that should also change: you want people just laying cable willy nilly wherever they want?
the truth is, any network, cable, telco, whatever, is a government enterprise, built of government grant and monitoring and debate and licensing. yet you imagine it to be the work of some ayn randian captain of industry who wills the whole thing into being by himself, and gets to decide everything that happens on it, and if anyone complains, they are a communist, right?
where do you idiots get this bizarre mythology that bears absolutely no relation to how things actually work in reality?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I see your point and agree with you, it's also important to see that there is exactly nobody who is in a position to only use WiMAX as their connectivity medium. WiMAX only exists in metro areas where other options (Cable, DSL, fiber, etc.) also exists.
Can't stream NetFlix on your WiMAX connection? Fire your WiMAX provider, and tell them why. Businesses exist to make money, and if they can't offer compelling products, they don't make money any more.
(I'd like to again reiterate that I believe that Net Neutrality is necessary for continued growth of the Internet as a common exchange medium, just so the typical flamers can blow off.)
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
if I want to take a toll road, which is less congested than the rest of the highway system.
From this statement I can tell that you have never taken a toll road.
Does that mean that if the toll road is congested you don't have to pay? Of course not, don't be silly. Oh, and due to factors X and Y, now we have to raise the tolls. So sorry. Your alternative is to take side-streets, because these toll roads are the only major roads that get you from A to B.
Yeah, I used to live in the Chicago area.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
They aren't separate issues since certain the problems/stuttering we're having with big services like VoIP or video streaming wouldn't exist (or be heavily reduced) if these latency problems weren't there. With bufferbloat fixed, big companies wouldn't care so much about having priority, since everything would run fine in the first place. Instead there'd be a push more towards higher bandwidth generally for small and big companies. As you can see, that saves us all a layer of complexity at each network point.
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Well, I didn't vote GOP or Libertarian. But I also didn't vote Democrat during the last election cycle. See, the Democrats around here have some odd positions. They have been waging a continual war on anyone that doesn't want to send money to Hollywood. They have a great track record of dismantling the agricultural industry (one of the larges industries in my state). They detest on of the cleanest, greeenest, most efficient forms of power generation that we know of today. They seem to think that everyone in my state can afford to live an upper-middle class lifestyle, and seek to regulate which items we can and cannot purchase in order to impose that lifestyle on us. And there are a few other grievances I have.
So I didn't vote GOP. I didn't vote Libertarian. I didn't vote Democrat. Who the fuck should I have voted for? (For the record, I pretty much voted for local Indpendents and wrote in some intelligent folk for the higher-up offices).
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That sounds like a bug with the "net neutrality" bill! Why shouldn't ISPs be allowed to sell QoS? Net neutrality should stick to dealing with filtering, which is the real problem. So long as they let the traffic through, it shouldn't matter if they do QoS on it. For example, I would very much like, as a consumer, to be able to purchase internet service with 10-50 mbps bandwidth, but maybe only 5 GB of low-latency bandwidth. I can then set the proper QoS flags on my VoIP packets for realtime phone conversations, while leaving bittorrent running with standard/bulk QoS flags.
Luke-Jr
Democrats are only evil when they are in power.
Republicans are pretty much evil all the time.
I still remember Reagan talking about making the government smaller, while during his two-term presidency the US government expanded at the highest rate in recent history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
As you can see, Reagan and Clinton were President while the spending was reduced, and all the others saw spending increase during their terms (as a percent of GDP).
"I'm done with this guy."
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
the lesser-known Futball.
I think a few billion people would disagree with you.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
"The real split here in the US is bigger government versus smaller government."
This canard is the generally accepted BS for the doctrine that somehow ignores the reality that there will be some kind of government large enough to do the job.Those too small will be displaced by larger governments elsewhere in time, such as is now being seen in the transition from a US dominated world to a Chinese dominated world.
The real question is whether public policy, call it government or whatever you like, will favor those private interests who can carve out special exemptions, privileges, and special benefits not available in general to other members of society, or those who believe that they should be dispensed more equitably, with laws designed to insure such equality. Corporations will gladly accept dollars from Uncle Sam, just as they would from your pension or health plan, so don't expect "big government" to go away as corporations want Uncle Sam as a captive customer. There only role in society for corporations is to take money from those who have any. "Small government" is just another name for the idea that if you don't have any money, you don't have any roll to play in public policy. Instead those rolls, whether it be managing the global ecosystem that supports life or other "economic" issues, will be "privatized" to be run by those with the right business connections and economic leverage.
What most people don't understand is that corporations are effectively small groups of people, who use their insider status and asymmetric social and economic relationships to simply put, "have things their way". Consequently, it is not a choice between big government or small government, but rather between those who want to see human affairs to be dictated by a special few and those who want to see a more equitable and reasoned dispensation of the riches of the natural world. Unless, you are a corporate insider, voting for more privatization (ie more corporate power) is just a way of saying that rather than a system where all the public gets to decide, only a few will decide and reap the cream. Its no accident that the "Tea Party"/anti-big government crowd primary benefactors and think/tank steering committees are the pet projects of billionaire corporatists.
Ignore reality and the perils of republicanism/corporatism at your peril.
The irregularity of global weather patterns that are transitioning to a climate of a warmer world are rapidly reducing crop yields globally. Your diet will become a lot less diverse, whether you keep your auto or not. Keep in mind the contradictory nature of your response, since keeping your auto, which probably will cost you $5-6/gallon to fill up, thereby also reducing the diversity of your diet by virtue of diverting your income away from food and to the Koch Brothers and Exon Corporation.
In the future the price of living in a healthy environment will be extremely high, because there will be so little of it left to go around.
Ignore the consequences of republicanism at your peril.
No Libertarian is okay with this because broadband is not a free market. If there were a true free market in broadband access, it would be any operator's right to manage their networks however they choose. What we have now are monopolies created by government, so it's no violation of Libertarian principles to say I should be allowed to do whatever I want on the network I was forced to pay for.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I can see that, but most of the motivation that the ISPs have to throttle (and the situations where doing so would cause the most harm), are business driven not technical. The incentive for Comcast to throttle Netflix will be there regardless of how much bandwidth there is. The incentive for ISPs to prioritize their own VoIP over Skype will remain regardless of latency of the network. The ISP could even do things like fix buffer bloat in their trunks but not the outbound routers, to give themselves the advantage.
There will always be the possibility for both legitimate network management, and unfair prioritization, regardless of what technical problems are solved.
This what happens when the lazy liberals did not get out and vote this last time. There was not excuse for not voting with early voting except for laziness. And you know who you are. A democracy government cannot be ran by a few but a totalitarian government is ran by a few.
Multiple independent citations for all that pugwash up there or it didn't happen.
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http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Markups/Telecom/030911_HJRes37/passage.pdf
Same sight you linked to had the vote buried in some text. Quick glance at the vote does indeed show 100% republicans in favor, 100% dems against, with a few of the dem's not voting.
Good points, though I'm thinking of big companies other than just ISPs which may be thinking of paying ISPs to give them priority. On that front, I'm tending to think instead that these companies may get a lot of complaints from customers about stuttering video/audio, and that they want this reduced. An advantage over competitors would be nice sure, but even more, they want happy customers with a consistent connection that doesn't keeping timing out, or producing an intermittent signal.
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Dear God the last thing I want is a bureaucrat deciding which neighborhood gets the next broadband upgrade.
I would rather have competition too, myself.