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Kill Net Neutrality and You'll Kill Us, Say 800 US Startups (google.com)
A group of more than 800 startups has sent a letter to the FCC chairman Ajit Pai saying they are "deeply concerned" about his decision to kill net neutrality -- reversing the Title II classification of internet service providers. The group, which includes Y Combinator, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, Imgur, Nextdoor, and Warby Parker, added that the decision could end up shutting their businesses. They add, via an article on The Verge: "The success of America's startup ecosystem depends on more than improved broadband speeds. We also depend on an open Internet -- including enforceable net neutrality rules that ensure big cable companies can't discriminate against people like us. We're deeply concerned with your intention to undo the existing legal framework. Without net neutrality, the incumbents who provide access to the Internet would be able to pick winners or losers in the market. They could impede traffic from our services in order to favor their own services or established competitors. Or they could impose new tolls on us, inhibiting consumer choice. [...] Our companies should be able to compete with incumbents on the quality of our products and services, not our capacity to pay tolls to Internet access providers."
And as we all know, Republicans are all about being good for business.
And the businesses of America have always thought about the people of this country, first and foremost, whether importing hundreds of thousands of African slaves to toil on Cotton and Tobacco plantations, to starting wars over bananas, pineapples and guano.
Truly, they are blessed
Seriously, the last thing major investors (the kind that run Goldman Sachs) want is disruption. Just keep the gravy train going and fire off a little war every now and then and they're happy. Nobody wants another Google, Netflix or Square changing the landscape. Well, nobody Congress is listening too anyway.
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Remember 13 years ago when we all posted links to our American representatives and with their phones and email exploding the DRM trusted PC requirements went away from a potential bill.
Can you all afford 3 minutes of your life
Ok most senators and congressman are too stupid to know what net neutrality is. They gain their information from experts ... experts brought to by lobbyists from Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, to educate our politicians what this issue is. They are simply ignorant.
So here is the link for your congressman. Here is the link to your senator. The people who read these are called scriptwriters and if they get thousands of angry emails I can guarantee you it will at least get your politicians attention.
When I linked this in 2003 or 2004 here Slashdot posted a story a few days later stating congress was confused, dumbfounded, and shocked. The bill died :-D
If you have a Republican write professionally that you do not want big brother government to trample innovation and stop jobs. Explain your I.T. position and career and explain your employer and startups already pay extra for bandwidth and this amounts to a bribe. End it off with if the United States won't allow us to be a leader in technology another cheaper country like China or India will who do not have these problems with Net Neutrality and can operate simply on bandwidth uses without double and triple dipping.
If your senator and or congressman is a democrat explain politely that this is a terrible bill that will hurt lower income internet users and new startups. Explain your I.T. position and career and explain your employer and startups already pay extra for bandwidth and this amounts to double dipping which will hurt America's competitive advantage. Also mention the top 5 technology companies are active Democratic donors to your party including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and that if America fails to take initiative for regulating tax payer infrastructure then another country with more freedoms like India or China will take the jobs instead and this will help lower income consumers by keeping prices lower.
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"Our business model depends on the fact that we don't pay for network infrastructure upgrades." - Internet content companies.
Only people who don't understand net neutrality would say that. How do you think these 800 start-ups get the Internet? They pay for it just like every other business. What they can't pay for is privileged or special access because ISPs want more money.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And that'll work great until you get big enough that the ISPs think that you're big enough that it's worth shaking you down for extra dough and then they'll claim that they need extra money to carry your traffic. Comcast literally starting shaking down Level 3 demanding money for the traffic which was being sent to their users. If they'll go after backbone providers, I promise you that having a "commercial grade pipe" isn't going to make a difference.
This comment alone shows that YOU have no idea what Net Neutrality means. These companies ARE ALREADY paying for their commercial grade connections. Absent Net Neutrality the ISPs can throttle traffic to them or even just block them for all their customers. Suppose Comcast launches a competing service called ComCastImageur.com instead and uses their dominant position to supplant imgur, which would probably happen when 30% of US viewers couldn't load an image posted to imgur. What are you going to do, go get another provider? Not if you're one of the tens of millions of US citizens with access to only one broadband provider at their address. You'll just suck it up and live with it.
Or suppose Comcast decides that if you want to watch Netflix you'll pay another $15 a month for the privilege. Or of course you can subscribe to ComNetCastFlix for only $5 a month....
THAT is the problem we're talking about.
Ok most senators and congressman are too stupid to know what net neutrality is.
The head of the FCC is saying it needs to be done away with. Pai isn't ignorant, he knows exactly what he's doing. This isn't an accident, this is malicious.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Content owners have to pay for bandwidth too.
Without net neutrality isps want content owners to pay twice. First for their own outbound connections, and again to distribute those connections to the people who asked for them.
Right now Netflix was to pay their isp. Comcast wants to charge Netflix money for delivering Netflix content to Comcast customers who want to watch Netflix as oppsoed to Comcast own services
Netflix then has to back charge you the customer who ends up paying three times for the same bandwidth to watch a show on Netflix.
That is net neutrality. And only idiots are against it
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Your parents' ability to partially pay for your schooling is something that most people don't have working in their favor, which is something you should take into consideration before declaring yourself the captain of your own destiny. No, it's not the same DEGREE as having a million in the bank from go, but it is the same concept. You were born into a family that had the ability to give you a head start. Have some respect for those who weren't so lucky.