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Silicon Valley Kicks Off Fight On Net Neutrality (cnn.com)
Web companies met with FCC Ajit Pai on Tuesday and urged him not to gut the net neutrality rules that protect their traffic, a week after he met with broadband providers that have tried to kill the Obama-era regulations. From a report: The Internet Association, a trade group representing companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, stressed the importance of defending current net neutrality rules in a meeting with Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday. "The internet industry is uniform in its belief that net neutrality preserves the consumer experience, competition and innovation online," the group said in the meeting, according to a filing with the FCC. "Existing net neutrality rules should be enforced and kept in tact." The net neutrality rules, approved by the FCC in 2015, are intended to keep the internet open and fair. The rules prevent internet providers from playing favorites by deliberately speeding up or slowing down traffic from specific websites and apps. This is the first face-to-face encounter between the tech association and the new FCC head. It comes on the heels of reports Pai met with the telecom industry to discuss changing how the rules are enforced, potentially weakening them.
Customers want walled gardens! Just look at cable bundles, it is clearly that bundles is the most popular choice by far. Also, customers want more commercials - just look at how popular are Super Bowl commercials are. It follows that Internet access should be bundled walled garden with auto-play video commercials inserted into browsing. This is what consumers want! Other internet is for dirty pirates and darknet hackers.
/sarcasm
You got Trumped!
A government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth!
Corporations are people too, my friends
If I pay for internet i want my packets sent to me without any type of priority based on source or destination. I would be moderately interested in enabling classes of service for TYPES of traffic, but not based on their source. That would be something an ISP should do out of a best practice. My point is that if I pay for 10Mbit, give me 10 Mbit and leave my traffic alone. THAT is net neutrality. Anything else is just not neutral.
I say they should go ahead and get rid of net neutrality. This will, by definition mean that the various ISPs are actively curating their services, and therefor are responsible if anything bad happens (DOS attacks, viruses, etc) because they are now responsible for the traffic going through their networks.
You don't get to take control of something and then wave away any responsibility. You want control? They you have to take the responsibility too. Don't want the responsibility? Then don't take control.
This is precisely what also pisses me off about Windows 10. Microsoft has taken control away from the operating system, but they refuse to also take responsibility. The end result is that Windows 10 is quickly becoming the most despised Windows in history.
Unfortunately most people don't have a choice in ISPs, so what options do people have, besides lawsuits?
Do you use facebook? It would sure be a shame if suddenly you had to pay a $10/month premium to access it.
Want to watch Netflix without waiting 60 minutes for the show to buffer? That'll be another $20/month please.
Want to use Google? That's an extra 50 cents per search, paid to your ISP.
If you are unable to see how incredibly anti-consumer this move is, and how badly it will directly hurt *everyone* except ISP shareholders, then you are not qualified to have an opinion. If you really think that this is nothing more than some political game of playing favorites, then you are an idiot. Now go sit down and let the adults talk.
Hold on there Citizen, that attitude is not going to Make America Great Again, and I think you know that! You have to pay, and pay, and PAY if you want greatness, because only Big Corporations and the Trump Administration can give you that! You should pay with a smile on your face, and thank them for the privilege of helping to Make America Great Again </sarcasm>.
Yet. Exactly. And that powerful position is exactly why things like Net Neutrality are necessary. It's not a matter of "if" they abuse their position, but "when". You know they will fuck over literally every single person they possibly can. It's just a matter of time, and how quickly they build up their hubris.
Early mobile phone providers are a great example. They literally nickle and dimed you for every conceivable thing. For every service you wanted to access. Now, they still try to, but it just doesn't seem as bad because almost everything people use is over the internet that the provider is unable to control. Removing Net Neutrality will return you to exactly the state we were in before.
You want to use twitter? Sure, just go through our portal that conveniently charges you 5 cents per post written or read. It *will* happen, because it's been done before, and the ISPs will have no incentive to *not* do that. (Oh? You want to change ISPs? Too bad! We sued all the other players in your area to the point where we are the only option!)
Do you think companies like YouTube, Facebook, etc. campaign for net neutrality out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. They are lobbying for their financial interests, which do not coincide with yours.
Internet service in the US is such an unholy mess of regulations, rent seeking, government-granted privileges, restrictions, political interests, big money, and clueless techies that it is hard to know what any particular regulation does. I strongly doubt, however, that "net neutrality" will accomplish what people promise for it. Most likely (and given who is lobbying for it), it will simply cement the role of politically powerful and well-connected corporations.
Instead of imposing even more regulations in the form of net neutrality, it would probably be better if the federal government got rid of regulations, and perhaps also forced local governments to allow more competition.
Man, I'd love some of them 'razor margins'. I could build a rocket company. Or be president. Or own a 767.
I weep for those razor thin margins.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!