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Obama Is Threatening To Veto the GOP's Latest Assault On Net Neutrality (vice.com)
An anonymous reader cites a Motherboard article: President Obama has long been a vocal supporter of net neutrality. In a "
Statement of Administration Policy" (PDF) released Tuesday, Obama signaled that he intends to veto Republican-backed legislation that open internet advocates say could eviscerate federal net neutrality protections. Earlier this year, a GOP-controlled House subcommittee approved the "No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act," (H.R. 2666) which net neutrality supporters say could severely undercut the Federal Communications Commission's ability to police the nation's largest cable and phone companies. The House bill would "undermine key provisions in the Federal Communications Commission's open internet order and harm the commission's ability to protect consumers while facilitating innovation and economic growth," said the Obama administration's statement. "If the President were presented with H.R. 2666, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill."Please do, Obama.
Which version of net neutrality is this bill going to do harm to? The American or European version?
FP
The packets that compose an email do not have the same time constraints of packets that compose a Netflix video stream.
The infrastructure of the Internet should be allowed to take that into account; that means, it should be possible for an ISP to offer something like a guaranteed high-speed connection to Netflix, but a slower, more erratic connection to basic web services like email.
Net Neutrality is really about truth in advertising; if an ISP advertises some bandwidth for all uses of the Internet, then it better damn-well provide what it advertises. However, there should be nothing to stop an ISP from advertising and providing a tiered, tailored, customized service like the one I've just described.
Netflix, for example, could become its own ISP, providing fast, stable bandwidth for its videos, and using its excess capacity for general access to the rest of the Internet. Unfortunately, the concept of Net Neutrality ruins such innovative business models.
Unlike some monstrosities, the text of the bill is short enough that you can read it and form your own opinion.
Here's the main part:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Communications Commission may not regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet access service.
Here are the exceptions:
Nothing in this Act shall be construed to affect the authority of the Commission to—
(1) condition receipt of universal service support under section 254 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 254) by a provider of broadband Internet access service on the regulation of the rates charged by such provider for the supported service;
(2) enforce subpart Y of part 64 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations (relating to truth-in-billing requirements); or
(3) enforce section 8.9 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations (relating to paid prioritization).
So basically, it ensures the FCC can't attack things like free service offerings and doesn't price-fix services to prevent competition.
Sounds like a great bill, whose only flaw is that is doesn't go far enough to prevent the FCC from regulating the internet, but it's a good start.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Funny thing, the big claim is that ISP's are the ones claiming that Net Neutrality is equivalent to regulating what they charge customers, which is a crap argument that Obama picked up and turned into Yet Another Talking Point. The FCC has already pledged to not regulate what ISPs charge, so this bill will essentially make no difference whatsoever, save to codify the FCC's pledge into law.
So unless there's a provision in this bill that I missed which specifically kills net neutrality in any form or comes close enough to actually do so (I'll admit that I only glanced over the thing) , I think we can chalk this whole thing up to a combination of ongoing Obama-love from Vice, and partisan swordplay in Washington.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wrong. Net neutrality ensures competition by equal availability. The packets from netflix are not more important than those from youtube or hulu, and net neutrality is about preventing paid performance advantage over common carrier networks aimed at capturing market share from competitors.
"No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act" is a purposefully misleading name. I like John Oliver's suggestion of "Cable Company Fuckery" Act. What the GOP claim is that the FCC will regulate pricing by imposing net neutrality. In a way, they are correct, the FCC will regulate pricing by ensuring that the cable companies don't use their pseudo-monopolies to gouge customers for internet access. In most markets, consumers have at best two choices so they have to pay whatever the cable company will charge for crappy service. I see it in places like Topeka and Austin where Google is coming in with fiber. Suddenly the cable companies lower their prices AND start to offer higher speeds. Suddenly they start to put in fiber where they promised they would for a decade.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wrong. The FCC is already prevented from setting rates for service. Net neutrality prevents paid sabotage from diluting the effect of service competition, and is required to ensure common carrier status for data links.
He should grow a pair ans say, "I will veto this, that is a promise."
Honestly, the repubs just utterly hate the american people, and prove it by constantly trying to pass this crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In fact, it explicitly states that Net Neutrality must be preserved:
"SEC. 4. Additional rule of construction.
For purposes of this Act, broadband Internet access service shall not be construed to include data roaming or interconnection."
So he tried to amend the bill to point out it will not prevent the FCC from doing the things the OP worries about. Did that amendment succeed?
If so, there is no issue here. You just won't have the govenmemt communistically, central planningly setting rates for things.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Like you I read the bill and wonder why on earth the President would threaten to veto a bill which ensures that the Government can not mandate the rate people pay for service. Then I consider that this is FUD, and it all makes perfect sense.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I don't read that passage as meaning that. The way I read it, the Act prevents the FCC from regulating broadband access pricing however, broadband access by definition in this bill doesn't include the very meaning of broadband access. If broadband has no interconnection, what is the point?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You DO know that broadband prices rose before NN, right? Why on earth would they charge more if they couldn't charge Netflix too? They don't cut your bills when they get new customers, so what the hell makes you claim that not being able to force a customer relationship will cause anything different?
Net Neutrality is about pedantic nerds who want unlimited supply of limited bandwidth, while limiting private companies the right to manage their own infrastructure.
It has NOTHING to do with bits or bandwidth.
I have proposed in the pas a full and complete solution that negates the need for federal regulations on internet. It is relatively simple and doesn't really change anyone's business model. It isn't glamorous "Net Neutrality" legislation, it is a simple change in how the economics function.
Net Neutrality is a problem of the "last mile", the inability of the customer (you, me us) to SHOP for the service / price / quality of the products and services we wish to purchase. I know I have ONE option for High Speed data. That is government granted franchise agreement to the Cable Company.Government rules and regulations caused this mess, and everyone's idea of how to fix it is MORE government solutions.
Fix the last mile, make it COMMON for all (like roads) and bring all those connections back to a COLO where Businesses compete for the last mile customer. Where I, the customer, can choose between Comcast, Netflix Only Streaming, Google, and AT&T. It would free the customer, create new and innovative products and services, and create the competition that will negate the need for LEGISLATIVE rules and regulations, the same that caused this mess in the first place.
The problem is, we are so hell bent on doing things the way we always have done them (last mile franchise agreements) and applying legislative fixes, that we no longer are being creative on our solutions that would solve the problem in a very simplistic way.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
That's not what those words mean... This bill hides a business problem in technical language that is easily misinterpreted to hide it's intentions. Interconnection refers to the peering between ISPs with different physical and/or data networks; data roaming refers to similar transmissions between cell towers. Neither of those service characteristics are at risk, and the only purpose behind the bill is to reduce competition by allowing the degrading of competitors services.
We need this last mile provision as well as preventing companies who create and sell media be the ones to control the access to said media. Imagine if your home gas and electricity was through the same company and that company also happened to be a natural gas producer. Would it be fair for them to artificially inflate the cost of electricity to encourage the consumption of their other subsidiary's product?
Make it like natural gas or electricity. The supplier of the data and the provider of the service through the lines should be separate. The supplier of the lines can charge a connection and service fee, but not control at all what types or how much data passes through their pipe as long as it fits. Let the data providers compete over business while the lines themselves are charged for maintenance and upgrades.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The problem I have with a market solution is that corps are too focused on the short term gain. A little bit of regulation to define long term goals helps offset that. We are not starting from scratch though, so the prescription is more band aids to deal with the problem.
Yeah, we've got some good little goose steppers here. Libertarians, opposed to the use of force; unless they're the ones using the force. Especially economic force. Let's all follow the rule of money!
That is government granted franchise agreement to the Cable Company.Government rules and regulations caused this mess, and everyone's idea of how to fix it is MORE government solutions.
The first thing you need to realize is.... laying cable or fiber, required for internet, is a natural monopoly. It is exacerbated by government regulation and only providing a limited number of entities access to "Rights of Way" required to put cables in the ground.
Preferably, the municipalities would just bring fibre to everyone, and access to communications would be like getting a Plain old Telephone or Electricity, or other utilities; then you could pick your ISP of choice, just like you call whoever you want on the Telephone.
Yeah, because BOTH the natural and the legal situation AND the lack of foresight by legislators this has created major entities, and realistically, they aren't going away, although I would like them to. Regulation is a good first step, since it's not going to be possible to eliminate these monopolies and have broad competition in the short run, without hurting everyone.
We need network neutrality as long as the monopolies and no competition continue to exist.
We should just accept the regulation and apply it only to providers WHO:
1. Own or partner with internet properties, such as competing video service companies above a certain size, and the neutrality protection rule applies to all companies in the same industry as their in-house service.
, AND
2. The operation of any broadband provider in a geographical region where there is not at least 1 competing service of a minimum size with medium of a similar level of mobility and reliability (Wireless not similar to Land) with these competitors offering service to any household in the market (Competitors that only service Urban areas do not count), and the competitors' service is either all 100 Megabits or higher, or within 10% deviation.
No consumers should be limited to Comcast, Netflix, Google, AT&T, etc. If someone decides to hack together a streaming service in their garage and can afford the bandwidth on their end they shouldn't have to go around bribing every ISP out there to get the content out.
The first thing you need to realize is.... laying cable or fiber, required for internet, is a natural monopoly.
So are roads. My suggestion is to treat them like roads. We don't let FEDEX have a franchise agreement and build roads that only they can use.
Preferably, the municipalities would just bring fibre to everyone, and access to communications would be like getting a Plain old Telephone or Electricity, or other utilities; then you could pick your ISP of choice, just like you call whoever you want on the Telephone.
This is exactly what I am proposing.
Everything else is subject to real competition. I don't want, we don't need government restricting commerce because of some myopic view. I've had to deal with legislatively created monopolies that lived LONG past their usefulness simply because they were legislated into being. TelCo LATA lines (Geographic Boundaries) that separated people who lived across the street (literally), simply to divide the monopolies up in a "fair" way
The problem with Legislating is that when the technology surpasses are original grasp, we're left with that legacy for a very long time afterwards. AND That is often worse than the situation that precipitated the need for it in the first place.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Pedantic nerds limiting private companies the right to manage their own infrastructure.
Fix the last mile, make it COMMON for all (like roads) and bring all those connections back to a COLO where Businesses compete for the last mile customer.
Damn those pedantic nerds trying to regulate them, I propose regulating them instead! Makes sense.
VOIP and other time-sensitive packets must be prioritized over other packets or performance of those services won't be acceptable to users. But Quality of Service (QoS) isn't even the point of net neutrality. Net neutrality means providers and ISPs cannot prioritize packets based on their source or destination - eg: Comcast can't prioritize packets to/from their video services while de-prioritizing packets to/from Netflix, but they could (and should) prioritize all higher class of service packets over all lower class of service packets.
This is a decent idea in itself but I'm not sure the increased competition would give enough motive to voluntarily enact net neutrality. For example, there's a lot of competition among cellular providers and data plans with zero-rated services (Facebook, Netflix etc) are still common. It's a big guy vs. little guy problem - data providers can safely collude with the big guy and few people will be upset. It still stifles competition, perhaps even moreso in the long term than more targeted or self-serving arrangements.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So, rather than implement regulations that prevent companies from abusing their existing position, you want the government to eminent domain the entire internet infrastructure in the U.S. so that we can live out your idealistic market views?
Here's a thought: why don't we design laws and regulations to deal with the world as it is, and not how you want it to be?
Basically, you do not want to make the hard decision now..so, you want to ameliorate the problem in the short term while making it worse in the long term.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I agree.
That may be a reasonable practical solution, given the way our roads are owned and managed today.
However, I think it's worth pointing out that the reason we have this economic "last mile problem" isn't a consequence of "natural monopolies" or "big corporations", it exists because the inability of services to compete for last mile access customers right now. That is, last mile access is managed politically by city hall, not economically by the people who actually want service.
You mean like when government forces companies and people to invest in expensive ISDN and fiber infrastructure for the long term? You know, when ISDN is replaced rapidly by DSL, never recouping the investment, and the fiber technologies that were deployed "for the long term" turned out to be obsolete by the time fiber actually was commercially feasible? That happened where I used to live.
Corporations frequently think and plan long term. That's how all the new telecoms standards come about. Microsoft's, Apple's, and Google's software is planned years ahead. And many corporations plan a decade or two ahead. That's because today's stock price reflects that long term planning.
It is governments that are guilty of short term planning. Politicians don't care about spending too much because they don't have to; it's not their money. All they really care is getting reelected, and that means a short time horizon and a focus on fluff.
Please explain to me, how more laws fixing problems caused by existing laws is going to make things better, and not actually cause more problems than they solve?
My solution is simple, and would be VERY easy to implement on a small scale to show what it could do. Your solution proposes fixes for problems cause by government in the first place, in a "one size fits all" model that I can assure you doesn't fit ANYONE.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Technology Infrastructure has a lifespan of about 10 years, Max.
However, the pathways needed last forever. You can pull new fiber down existing conduit, provided you put the conduit in place when you pulled it the first time.
Give me a budget for a small town (mine would work) where I could build out a COLO facility, and put in conduit and fiber to every home, and I'll show you how well it would work. I'll bet that I could have most houses wanting High Speed Internet at a fraction of the cost of Cable. I'll bet I have 5 to 10 providers clambering for customers, offering specials and deals just to get them signed up. I'll even bet there develops new services/products that I can't even imagine now, developed to lure customers.
And I will even bet there is at least one "Unlimited, Net Neutral" carrier that tries to succeed but ultimately fails because its prices are too high because there aren't enough geeks whining about Net Neutrality that are also willing to pay for what they are whining for. And I suspect that is why they don't like my idea, because "There ought to be a law" is much easier solution .
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Exactly. My solution is initially hard, as you have to build the infrastructure right. But once that is done, everything becomes MUCH easier.
The Infrastructure can be built with Bonds and paid by property taxes, or taxes on service (when purchased) or both.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Exactly how my solutions solves that problem. Customers choose the service from ANY number of providers, as they see fit. Best fit solution.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Net Neutrality is about pedantic nerds who want unlimited supply of limited bandwidth, while limiting private companies the right to manage their own infrastructure.
Are you high?
It has NOTHING to do with bits or bandwidth.
Yes, it does.
Not sure what the fuck you're on, but it's not good for you.
It is relatively simple
Eh, no. It's anything but. Insane...
Net neutrality is the government take over of the private Internet to get ready for the TPP.
https://ustr.gov/tpp/
Which the TPP is a world wide copyright law to help evil Disney, and all the rest of the CA movies makers make more money.
Thanks. No, seriously this time.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Imagine if your home gas and electricity was through the same company and that company also happened to be a natural gas producer.
I'm in California, in Silicon Valley. In my area (as with much of the state) the electric and gas utility are both PG&E. I get a single bill for both services, and the regulated rates are set by government approval of rate proposals generated by that company.
So it looks like exactly the doomsday market scenario you describe applies to me - and millions of others here on the Left Coast.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Geeks can band together and build their own "neutrality" based service
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
it exists because the inability of services to compete for last mile access customers right now.
Correct. But that is largely due to Franchise agreements that restrict competition for that last mile. Those agreements served their purpose during the early periods where CATV didn't offer but one service (TV). Now you have it competing with TriplePlay style services (Internet, Voice, TV). And many of these are irrelevant once you realize that two of the three services (perhaps all three) are just Internet.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In 2011, 47? percent of all Americans paid no net federal taxes. That sounds like a delivered promise. Even if there is not much appetizing to go along with it.
I think hard-wired networks should be so robust that no set of user demand could ever saturate the possible bandwidth.
Unfortunately, the protocols don't work that way. In particular, things like file transfer over TCP and things like streaming over UDP, inherently break such scenarios.
TCP, used for file transfer (and other things that require reliable delivery of large amounts of data, where the delivery time is not critical but higher data rates are better), increases the bandwidth used until packets are saturating a bottleneck along the way - as detected by packet loss. Then they back off in a way that divides the bandwidth evenly among the streams passing through the tightest bottleneck, and constantly measures this by forcing packet drops on all traffic through the bottlenecked connection (and also keeps queues full, increasing latency unless the routers counter this with algorithms like "random early drop" (RED)).
Streams, on the other hand, require low latency and reliable delivery - but have a limited bandwidth and could care less if a packet delayed too much is discarded (and would PREFER it to be discarded, rather than delay ANOTHER packet later in the stream).
No matter how wide you make your backhaul and backbone pipes, as long as they're too small to carry ALL the traffic from ALL the last-mile drops (which would be prohibitively expensive), TCP will run up the consumption until links are saturated and packets are dropping. If you treat all the packets the same way, it will then break streaming media.
But if you treat the packets differently - giving streaming media connections, up to a bandwidth limit, priority routing but dropping delayed packets - they can play very well together.
Unfortunately, the same technology that enables this "traffic management" ALSO enables treating different company's packets differently. And that enables anticompetitive practices - both by ISPs that bundle internet service and services that are carried on it (giving them incentive to treat their OWN division's packets better than its competitors) and by ISP who want to use their gatekeeper position to make extra money by selling better treatment to packets from some services for extra money - and encouraging payment by making the default treatment too rotten for a service to be viable (in violation of what it means to sell "internet service" and perhaps common-carrier status in general).
The issue is not technical, but competitive: "Non-neutrality" can be good when applied equally to all packets of a set of packet and service types, regardless of source or destination, but becomes one or more of several kinds of improper business behavior (monopolistic, cartel-forming, tying, false advertising, ...) when applied to packets of equivalent services from different companies or people.
FCC is good at, and empowered to, handle technical stuff. The FTC, on the other hand, is explicitly empowered to handle anticompetitive stuff, and (as that's their sole power) has historically been willing to exercise it.
The FTC uses its hammer rarely. But it's a BIG hammer. Must ISPs and "content providers" be separate companies, to avoid conflicts of interest leading to performance degradation? Can they co-exist, but are limits required preventing the ISP from favoring the company's content services? Look what the FTC did to AT&T over whether local and long distance services needed to be separate companies, Standard Oil on drilling, refining, wholesale, and retail distribution, Microsoft on bundling Internet Explorer with Windows vs. Netscape's browser, etc.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Net Neutrality is a problem of the "last mile", the inability of the customer to SHOP for the service / price / quality of the products and services we wish to purchase
I agree.
You are wrong. Net neutrality has nothing to do with how much you pay for the pipe into your home, or who sells it to you. Net neutrality means that when you use that pipe the service provider does not differentiate unnecessarily based on the source of the data you access.
That means that an ISP that is also a content provider does not artificially limit your access to content from other providers in preference to its own. It does not mean that the ISP cannot allow unmetered access to some content based on certain criteria (like data rate) except if the criteria include monetary benefit to the ISP (like "you buy content from us, we won't charge you for the data...").
This law is correctly named, and it is very simple to understand. The FCC would be prohibited from regulating rates for broadband. That's what the title says. Net neutrality is not involved.
Who is to say what the class of a packet is?
Think about what you just said. You want to control the work of others, completely, via Legislation. Are you REALLY comfortable with that?
You're already marked Troll, and probably you are, because you can't be as stupid as you sound. But I'll bite anyway.
Yes. Yes. I am. I'm really really comfortable with that. See, there are assholes in the world who think it's fun to break capitalism. Some of them might even have pretentious names resembling that of Christian demi-gods. I'm perfectly comfortable with controlling everything that kind of asshole does, with legislation, backed up by jack-booted thugs. Because otherwise those assholes will fuck it up for the rest of us. And that's not cool.
Are you willing to let others decide what you can do with the fruits of YOUR labor simply because they don't like how you use/sell them?
Others already decide what to do with the fruits of my precious labor. I have to assign my copyright to the company as a condition of employment. Like 90% of all programmers in the world. So yeah, I'm fine with that. I am compensated for my labor. Just as ISPs are. But I'm not allowed to be a dick about who gets to use my software, and they aren't allowed to be a dick about who gets to use their hardware.
As it should be.
...look like complete idiots these days, on pretty much every possible area, from who can use a bathroom to net neutrality, not to mention the presidential race...
This seen from outside of US.
Nope.
The problem, if you can call it that, is that companies are expected to grow, every year, every quarter, forever, to make investors happy.
Perpetual growth is Capitalisms dirty little secret. No CEO wants to tell the shareholders the fun is over.
ISPs run out of that growth when everyone has a wire connected to their modem. Dial up, then DSL, now faster fiber, but at some point it's all fast enough.
And since many ISPs are also cable companies, they're connecting people to HBO, Showtime, Netflix, and youtube, all of those compete with the cable companies Pay Per View service and premium service offerings.
And of course ThePorns.
To offset this stagnation and even revenue loss (sorry Cox/Comcase, you're the buggy whip companies of today), the ISPs want to divvy up the inter-webs and charge you tier levels, just like they do with cable.
So this:
Tier 1 - Wikipedia, Amazon, shopping websites, and Cable Company Pay Per View - 79.99 per month
Tier 2 - TheBlaze.com, Foxnews.com, Hulu - 99.99 per month
Tier 3 - Netflix, HBOGo, Showtime on Demand, unlimited access to the WWW - 129.99 per month
They may let you have access to higher tiers but at very limited speeds.
Net neutrality should mean Oh Hell No to this kind of garbage. Just because you were a useful company 10 or 20 years ago doesn't mean you are today, or somehow "deserve" to be in business forever.
My tax money created the series of tubes (thanks Al Gore) and my Free Speech rights may well depend on an open and fair internet.
Screw these lying GOP/Tea Tards who are taking money from the cable companies and lie to their constituents.
The IEEE:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_P802.1p
VOIP and other time-sensitive packets must be prioritized over other packets or performance of those services won't be acceptable to users.
ISPs want to argue that, but it's not as relevant as it looks. Because QOS priorities really only matter if the network is congested. And, the ISP shouldn't have congested backbone links.
The car analogies the ISPs offer up are broken. It's not really about being able to have a faster than *normal* lane. Having a higher QOS priority is more like driving in a normal speed toll lane during rush hour because the the non-toll lanes are congested. But, outside of rush hour, when the non-toll lanes are running just as fast, there's no point to paying to drive in the toll lane. ISPs shouldn't have the congested links that are analogous to the rush hour though.
Much of the ISP's desire to do shaping seems to be about having intentionally under-provisioned links and then either charging a toll to "uncongest" or making a competitor's traffic suffer while the ISP's traffic doesn't.
I can't believe I'm feeding the troll, but dammit I'm a libertarian. As crazy as this might seem to you, libertarians do support government action when it is necessary to ensure a free market. You cannot have a free market when a cartel of companies control the media and the access. The problem is not that Comcast, Time Warner, and others want to control the distribution of their own work, they want to discourage the distribution of competing works. This is fundamentally no different than UAW workers vandalizing non-union made cars in parking lots because they own all the parking lots.
This is the biggest case of Black or White fallacy ever. There are a few degrees of government intervention in markets. It's not just monopolies and communism.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The doomsday scenario is not that you have one provider, but if that provider had the power to increase electricity rates to encourage the use of natural gas while the same provider is doing fracking. It sounds like the government regulates their charged rates and something tells me they wouldn't allow the increase of electricity rates because PG&E wants to sell more gas.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The general practice in American capitalism is to be ever increasing income. Big biz is so good at this that they even buy (effectively) public offices to gain political favor on legislation designed to add another edge in their biz model. As we all know, this ultimately results in a widening rift between the rich and the poor. The rich keep getting richer (and thus can afford the ever increasing costs) while the poor get poorer (generally, and can afford fewer and fewer things). By allowing the 'net carriers to be free to do what they want, like charge per bandwidth, and allow each other monopolies (read: collusion) in 'their' areas of coverage, the rift will also widen for users here. The internet, like our nations roadways system and our military, has become a critical infrastructure need for our society. And, as such, may require fair government management. We just need a government agency that knows what they are doing!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Suppose we have one law, which bans murder. The law has problems in that it allows all sorts of other things to happen. Therefore, according to you, a law to ban rape or armed robbery would be trying to fix a problem with the murder law, and therefore won't make things better and will cause more problems than it solves.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Eli Lilly decides to buy interstate 70 through Indianapolis. Okay, that could actually be good because Lilly might do a better job maintaining the motorway. But then they turn around and say that, since they own the road, their employees and delivery vehicles are allow to go 120Mph, regular folk must drive 55mph, and their competitors must restrict their speed to 25mph. Oh, and the CEO can go as fast as his European supercar can take him.
It's been done successfully in other countries. What makes the US such a special flower that it wouldn't work here? Because we love capitalism and hate the government for any and everything? Boo fucking hoo.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
The only reason a content provider can artificially limit access to content from other providers is because access to the "last mile" is limited. If access to the last mile weren't limited, then if one provider attempts to limit access to the content from other providers, people would simply get their Internet access elsewhere. Therefore, Archangel Michael is right and you are wrong: net neutrality very much has to do with the last mile.
You could. But you don't have such a budget and you don't run a small town, and that's no accident. If you did, you'd have donors, lobbyists, unions, and corporations breathing down your neck, and you would end up making the choices that let you keep your job, not the choices that are objectively best for the public. That's how the political process works.
You are not a libertarian.
Because we love capitalism and hate the government for any and everything?
That's not why. The current situation is almost as far-removed from capitalism as you can get --- it's the opposite of capitalism, where the government creates a monopoly and incentivizes the monopolist to abuse their position, and doesn't do much to reign them in.
Perhaps, but most people don't seem to realize that despite the appearance of choice, they don't have a choice.
Especially when it comes to the ISP market.
And often when it's WAY past "too late".
In any case I've seen it referred to around here as "crony capitalism" and I neglected to add that modifier... but you may talking about something else entirely.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)