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Net Neutrality Goes Down in Flames as FCC Votes To Kill Title II Rules (arstechnica.com)
As we feared yesterday, the rollback of net neutrality rules officially began today. The FCC voted along party lines today to formally consider Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to scrap the legal foundation for the rules and to ask the public for comments on the future of prohibitions on blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. ArsTechnica adds: The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to start the process of eliminating net neutrality rules and the classification of home and mobile Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposes eliminating the Title II classification and seeks comment on what, if anything, should replace the current net neutrality rules. But Chairman Ajit Pai is making no promises about reinstating the two-year-old net neutrality rules that forbid ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful Internet content, or prioritizing content in exchange for payment. Pai's proposal argues that throttling websites and applications might somehow help Internet users.
Feels like we've had a lot of those lately.
The internet was NOT invented for ISP profitability. Fuck this treasonous noise.
If it isn't crystal-clear to everyone by now, let me state the obvious for your benefit: The FCC, which apparently is in the hip pocket of ISPs and wireless companies, does not give a flying fuck about what the citizens of the U.S. actually want the Internet to be, all they care about is being Good Little Doggies for their corporate patrons. On the other hand the Baby Boomer generation will probably love it; the Internet will likely become like a larger version of AOL.
Corruption is the biggest thing our founders were worried about as a threat to our form of government. For years it has been getting worse and worse. We've finally reached the point of critical mass and are now in a snowball or thermal runaway type of situation where we cannot recover.
From a system designed to ensure information flows no matter what... to a system designed to ensure selected information flows at a rate determined by your wallet.
Another change to America that will squeeze the 99% for the enrichment of the 1%, sold with the lie that they're doing it for the exact opposite reason.
You know, I'm not big on class warfare but at some point you have to realize that your society is going to shit if its primary focus is to benefit a small subset of the population to the detriment of the majority.
When civilization has reached the point where open access to information is a necessary component to personal liberty and critical decision making, the curtailing of neutral access in favor of preferential access based on monetary criteria is the first step toward societies in which people are starved and beaten. That you fail to appreciate this causal relationship only underscores the futility of your use of expletives.
No this is the fault of having a 2 party system. You have to buy into the whole package, or the other whole package. There is no sane option.
One of the things I always told my kids growing up is that a piece of the truth is almost useless by itself; you need enough of the whole truth to understand what's going on.
The piece of truth you learn in capitalism Sunday school is that businesses try to maximize profits and that this forces them to innovate. This is true, but it misses the other part of the truth: businesses also try to minimize risk, and this cuts against the innovation impulse.
It's the force of competition that makes businesses take risks and thus innovate, and nowhere is the competition fiercer than in a commodity market. That's why businesses want to differentiate their products, and that's what net discrimination is all about. They want to make it impossible to compare different services by making it impossible or difficult to get content except through certain channels. Expect exclusive deals so you'll find yourself choosing between getting local baseball programming on one provider or the latest Star Trek series on another.
It's all about hanging onto customers, and there's two ways to do that: to make them happy, or make it painful to leave. Of the two, making it painful to leave is less risky.
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While I am agree to your comment, I am still amazed by the extent of Republican corruption this year. And yes, the DNC had their share too but it pales compared to whats going on now with the power structure on Republican side with the Healthcare bill, the budget and scandals etc!
Sure. Look at how Internet service worked on cell phone networks before Apple blew the old system up with the iPhone. Apple didn't do this out of idealism, but because it couldn't differentiate itself in an environment where the carriers controlled the user experience.
In fact in general look at how inferior US cell service is to the rest of the developed world. This was a result of a deliberate calculation by the Reagan administration that a more innovative network would result if carriers were free to choose their own standards. What they did was try to make it as painful as possible to change carriers while nickel-and-diming their subscribers for all they were worth. It was a safe, profitable strategy, like auto companies taking their mediocre old car platforms and putting exciting new bodies on them.
Meanwhile, in Internet services the competition is cutthroat because a level playing field is baked into the very architecture of the system, and innovation has been moving too fast for ISPs and cellular carriers to tie down their customer bases with "exclusive content". But it is coming. I've dealt with these people before and that's their wet dream: a captive customer base.
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Net Neutrality has nothing to do with how much your ISP charges you.
Except that my ISP is my cable TV company. Without net neutrality they can slow down Netflix, Hulu, et al. to discourage cord-cutting, or charge per-packet while zero-rating packets from their own streaming service. Plenty of other shenanigans are possible.
Whomever owns the last mile has to be required to deliver every packet without discriminating