Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T Want Congress To Make a Net Neutrality Law Because They Will Write It (theverge.com)

From a report on The Verge: Companies and organizations that rely on an open internet rallied on Wednesday for a "day of action" on net neutrality, and America's biggest internet service providers have responded with arrogance and contempt for their customers. Comcast's David Cohen called arguments in favor of FCC regulation "scare tactics" and "hysteria." Beyond the dismissive rhetoric, ISPs are coincidentally united today in calling for Congress to act -- and that's because they've paid handsomely to control what Congress does. There's one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on, and that's taking money from ISPs. The telecommunications industry was the most powerful lobbying force of the 20th century, and that power endures. It's no secret that lobbyists in Washington write many of the laws, and the telecom industry spends a lot of money to make sure lawmakers use them. We've already seen net neutrality legislation written by the ISPs, and it's filled with loopholes. It's not just in Congress -- companies like AT&T have deep influence over local and state broadband laws, and write those policies, too. Some pro-net neutrality advocates are also arguing today that Congress should act, and there are some good reasons for that. Laws can be stickier than the judgements of regulatory agencies, and if you want to make net neutrality the law of the land that's a job for Congress. But there's a reason the ISPs are all saying the same thing, and it's because they're very confident they will defeat the interests of consumers and constituents. They've already done it this year under the Republican-controlled government. Further reading: 10M+ web users saw yesterday's net neutrality protest -- but rules are still getting scrapped.

Comments

Big surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine that, it's almost as if government regulation keeps competition out of the market by letting lobbyists influence the letter of the law.

Re:Big surprise

[AxeTheMax]

That's democracy!

Re:Big surprise

[HornWumpus]

Letting the federal government decide exactly what is and isn't QoS (and hence legal prioritization). What can go wrong?

Re:Big surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Congress let pharmaceutical companies write the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act in 2003 through the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America? The one that still bans Medicare from negotiating drugs prices?

Let's not do that with the Internet.

Re:Big surprise

[dgatwood]

The last time there was an actual free market on Internet Service was when you could connect to it with a 56k modem over your telephone line.

Want to have a free market again? Pass a federal law that overturns all state laws banning municipal broadband projects and creates an unfunded mandate requiring each state to run government-owned fiber to every home and business, freely leasing fiber access to any ISP that wants it. Provide an optional exemption for areas that already have commercial fiber if the existing commercial fiber providers agree to lease access to anyone who asks for no more than 10% above the actual average maintenance cost of the fiber.

Expecting a free market when the barrier to entry is so high (20–30 years to recoup your investment in fiber even if there are only two companies in a market) is naïve. There can only be one wire provider, realistically, unless you're in a major city with high population density. If that provider is not the government, there will almost never be competition.

Re:Big surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Health Insurance lobbyists wrote Obamacare.

Then Pelosi said, "You have to pass it to see what's in it."

Re:Big surprise

[HornWumpus]

Tell it to congress, I'm sure they will listen to the details of your private definition of 'net neutrality' and give it all due weight.

Re:Big surprise

[rogoshen1]

influence, or write - full stop?

Re:Big surprise

[interkin3tic]

As opposed to the free market utopia we have in service providers now?

"Government regulation bad" seems like the worst possible interpretation to take from this. A still bad but better lesson would be "No matter what happens, they win."

Maybe the best lesson is once you let regulatory capture happen and monopolies form, it's nearly impossible to undo it, so enact aggressive government regulations before that point.

Re:Big surprise

[RavenLrD20k]

One provider on the pole - The local government municipality. From there, you connect a box your chosen ISP gives you to your end of the line, municipality CO performs switching (likely automated based on MAC addressing of connected device...like cable companies do already) to connect you to the ISP of your choice. Municipality keeps up the line infrastructure, and your internet service is connected through an ISP that doesn't have direct operational jurisdiction over the lines; just the boxes at either end of municipality's infrastructure.

Re:Big surprise

[JackieBrown]

I hear this idea allot. How would this open private competition? Wouldn't every ISP have the exact network capacity, same up time, same cost, etc?

I am probably missing something here, but this seems to me like the city running the creation and maintenance of the roads and streets and saying that we just created a huge business competition opportunity for driveway companies.

Re:Big surprise

[rahvin112]

Imagine that, someone claiming this is government regulation on slashdot.

This isn't government regulation, it's crony capitalism. This is the largest firms getting together with congress to write a law that will enevitably favor them to distract from the real issue. Whereas regulation would be the independent regulators who are not subject to the whims of politics creating a regulatory policy that gives everyone a level playing field then enforces those rules without regard to the size or political contributions of the violator.

What will come out of congress will be exactly the type of regulation the big companies like Comcast and ATT prefer, that's the kind that lets them do whatever they want, with no enforcement and prevents the FTC from declaring anything a monopoly. Mark my words, the big ISPs will write the bill and it will do the exact opposite of what the net-neutrality movement is about.

Re: Big surprise

[Zero__Kelvin]

Why not? Just call each one and ask them, for example: "If you had the choice between net neutrality and rickets, which would you prefer?"

Re: Big surprise

[Zero__Kelvin]

Allow me to answer for him: "Well you see, it involves the Internet, which is like a series of tubes, and it is neither good or evil, but sometimes it is lawful and sometimes it is chaotic"

Re:Big surprise

[JackieBrown]

Is that even close those? USPS vs FedEx vs UPS have ways of increasing / decreasing costs/service. They can charge more and hire more people to offer quicker turnarounds or hire less and charge less but offer slower turnarounds. How would companies be able to make changes to service plans if they are all using the same lines and have the same capacity?

Re:Big surprise

[Rockoon]

What is your definition??

The only definition that matters is the one written into law.

Thats clearly not important to some people... the idea itself is so good that it just doesnt matter what the law actually is.

Re:Big surprise

[Rockoon]

Affordable Care Act that people can't afford.
Citizens United that unites.... corporations.

Re:Big surprise

[dgatwood]

It would be a free market for ISPs, just not a free market on wire providers (which, as I said, is impossible). In an ideal world, the government would demand that companies that own fiber sell the existing fiber to local governments at cost (eminent domain), but I have no confidence that such a policy would ever pass. The ability to keep the fiber and charge 10% over maintenance cost to slowly recover their expenses is at best a poor compromise, but it's what I think might actually be possible. But at least it would create a free market for the actual Internet service providers, even if the fixed baseline wire service portion of the cost would be slightly higher in areas that chose to not lay down a redundant fiber service.

Re:Big surprise

[antdude]

Well, you can still do that with dial-up ISPs today even though not many want to use dial-up. ;)

Re:Big surprise

[dgatwood]

Especially non-point infrastructure. It's less important for infrastructure that can be in one spot (like an airport or cell tower) than for infrastructure that is sprawling across the country (like roads, last-mile fiber, possibly backbone fiber).

Re:Big surprise

[citizenr]

In civilized world what you call lobbying is called bribery and is illegal.

Re:Big surprise

[labnet]

Which is what Australia is doing with the National Broadband Network.
The troubles is, Americans might get infected by communism if the government laid the fibre.

Re:Big surprise

[dgatwood]

Don't confuse "Free Market" with "Unregulated Market"! Even Adam Smith (the originator of the term "Free Market") understood that government regulation is nearly _always_ required to keep markets and trade free.

I don't disagree with that, but IMO, a regulated monopoly or duopoly, no matter how regulated, can never be a free market in any meaningful sense of the word, and we basically have a natural monopoly or duopoly for wire providers in pretty much all of the United States except for certain business-heavy areas.

Re:Big surprise

[Raistlin77]

There is one major downside to all of this though. It's hard enough as it is to get your shitty cable company to fix a problem that is not on your premises but maybe a pole or two away. Good fucking luck getting your local municipality to fix that in a timely manner, you'll be lucky to get issues fixed in the same year that you reported it.

Re: Big surprise

[mrclevesque]

"who's going to pay for it?"

Do you mean like who pays for roads or water works?

Re:Big surprise

[Obfuscant]

This is a downside that was a big lesson we should have learned from the breakup of Ma Bell. Used to be, Ma Bell was the provider of all. If there was a problem with "phone service", you called Ma Bell and it was Ma Bell's responsibility.

Cue divestiture and hundreds of long distance companies all competing for your dollar. First, this created some huge issues of fraud, and there was at least one company that named itself "None of the above" so that when they called and asked which long distance service you wanted from the list they read to you, and you said "none of the above" ... Or they'd call and simply switch your service no matter what you said. That's called "slamming", and you wind up paying $1/minute for LD service.

But more important, when something didn't work who did you call, and who would take responsibility? If you had a problem making a long distance call you might call "the phone company" who would tell you to call the long distance company. The LD company told you it was a problem in the telco system, call the telco.

This idea of the city holding the hardware and the ISP doing the ISP means when your internet breaks you call the city who tells you it is the ISP, you call the ISP who tells you it is the city. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Re:Big surprise

[Obfuscant]

Citizens United that unites.... people.

FTFY. CU allows PEOPLE to form CORPORATIONS for the purpose of paying for speech, which the first amendment says congress shall not create laws to infringe upon. Remember, some of those "corporations" are unions, which we love because they usually speak on a certain side of the issues. If CU had not reiterated (not created) the concept that corporations could spend money on speech then unions, among others, would have had to stop, too.

The difference between CU and ACA as examples is that CU supported an existing ruling regarding corporate speech and the ACA created a precedent of the government mandating that people buy a commercial product simply because the people exist.

Re:Big surprise

[dgatwood]

What's your point? You aren't disagreeing with anything I said.

Re:Big surprise

[rtb61]

Quality of service is easy, simply maintain sufficient capacity to ensure you can always deliver it. If you mean strangleband though, that is something different. Claim to sell something you can only provide if nobody uses it, now that's fraud and the ISPs and the Telecom incumbents have been getting away with it for years.

If those piece of shit fuckers ran power companies than brownouts would become a regular, daily occurrence basically selling capacity they do no have and can never provide.

So it is lies and bullshit and continuing to sell what they do not have and can never provide because it is way more profitable that way and they won the politicians to write the laws to ensure they can continue the fraud.

Re:Big surprise

[strikethree]

Maybe the best lesson is once you let regulatory capture happen and monopolies form, it's nearly impossible to undo it, so enact aggressive government regulations before that point.

There is a way to undo it. The people who created this country even enshrined the way to do it within its founding documents: Voting, or, in the worst case, overthrowing the current implementation of government itself. Please note that even if you do overthrow the government, the new government had better still be based on the US Constitution though or I will likely be against you.

I am still waiting on a founding document that is superior to the US Constitution... and it has been 200+ years. What is the deal people?

Re: Big surprise

[mrclevesque]

"Yeah where is this extra money going to come from?"

Investments, private and public.

"Do you honestly think your government can maintain this infrastructure indefinitely and at what costs?"

Yeah, and productively, like many countries do for education, transport, and utilities.

"Today's infrastructure has been built out over the last 50-100 years."

Not sure why your using an inaccurate generalization, or how your relating it to the next sentence:

"Its hard to compete with 50-100 yrs of existing services already in place."

Re:Big surprise

[Agripa]

Pass a federal law that ... creates an unfunded mandate requiring each state to run government-owned fiber to every home and business, freely leasing fiber access to any ISP that wants it.

Federalism means that the federal government may not order the States to do things. The only power they have over the States is to withhold related funding like highway funding unless speed limits are passed.

Re:Big surprise

[dgatwood]

That's not really true, because the entity or entities that run that monopoly or duopoly own the wires, and any attempt to confiscate them with eminent domain would face a significant uphill battle, as I said in one of the other posts in this thread.

Re:Same as healthcare

[Rockoon]

Congress is supposedly "working on" a new healthcare package. But really the work has already done by K Street insurance lobby. They wrote the bill, and handed it off to their lapdogs in congress to pass. The healthcare bill is one mamoth crony capitalist golden subsidy to the insurance companies.

Its not a big conspiracy. Its a lot of little competing ones. The politicians all agree that regulation is the way forward because regulation equals money, but they dont agree on which specific companies get the most benefit because each politician is getting money from difference sources, at different times. Whats not on the table is the good of the people.

Re:Same as healthcare

[HornWumpus]

You DID!

But we had to 'pass the bill to see what was in it'.

Don't trust the government

[computational super]

"it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics. Encryption is too important to be left solely to governments." -- Bruce Schneier

How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[Rick Schumann]

Impromptu poll:
How many of you would be willing to abandon the Internet entirely, if it came down to that being the only form of protest against this bullshit that was left to you?

For my part, it would suck but I'd be willing if that's what it took to get the message across.

Of course I'm holding out hope in two areas: One, that there will always be companies that see profit in doing what's right, attracting customers who won't tolerate being jerked around like the Comcasts and AT&T's of the world jerk you around. Two, that Trump won't be in office for more than 1 term (if even that long, the way things are going) and the next POTUS will, hopefully, repair this and other damage being done to the country.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> For my part, it would suck but I'd be willing if that's what it took to get the message across.

Don't let the router hit you on the ass.

>> if it came down to that being the only form of protest

Ah...but it's not. Even if you have no skills (sad but possible on Slashdot), you can get off your butt and 1) educate the people you know, 2) send letters (even copypasta) to your elected officials (who will at least count how many letters they got on X) and 3) send some money to organizations that fight/lobby for your cause. If you have skills, you could also 4) organize an actual protest (yes, they are still quite legal) and get on TV/newspaper, 5) create a potentially "viral" video or other creative piece that demonstrates how your issue is important and what people should do or 6) donate a lot of money to the organizations mentioned about. So...don't give me your bullshit about "only form of protest" - that strawman just keeps people on the couch.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[Rick Schumann]

Playing Devils Advocate for a moment: If I were ISPs and everyone did as you say, doing an end-run around my 'tiered walled garden', my response would be to ban all 'unauthorized' encrypted traffic, and threaten disconnection to anyone who violated the ToS that states that. I'd also ban use of Tor on the same grounds, since that's what most people would go to, to try to circumvent my ToS.

If you believe that the Internet is something totally optional, just a luxury, then your assertion that we don't need 'more government' in this case might be correct.
But even I think that the Internet is now too thoroughly integrated into everything to call it a 'luxury' anymore, not much more so than electricity, water service, and sewer service.
If the Internet is NOT a luxury, then ISPs should not be allowed to fuck us over as if it WERE a luxury. Otherwise it starts approaching the jackassery of Mylan and their gouging people for Epi Pens.

I'm serious when I say that if it came right down to it, I'd dump the Internet, and I'm fully cognizant of how much it would suck to do so. But if it came down to that, it would suck less to dump the Internet than it would to be fucked over by ISPs. If you can't get the government to step in and regulate bad behavior by private companies, then that may be the only avenue left to you to protest being fucked over.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[Rick Schumann]

Could you please be bothered to READ WHAT SOMEONE WRITES before going off on them!? I SAID: IF IT CAME DOWN TO IT, meaning: IF ALL OTHER AVENUES OF ACTION FAILED. Please don't preach to the choir.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[Frederic54]

Impromptu poll:
How many of you would be willing to move to Canada where BS like "fastlane" is outlawed, if it came down to that being the only form of protest against this bullshit that was left to you?

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[Oswald McWeany]

Impromptu poll:
How many of you would be willing to move to Canada where BS like "fastlane" is outlawed, if it came down to that being the only form of protest against this bullshit that was left to you?

As long as most of the influential tech companies are in the US and the data has to pass through the US to get to you it won't help.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[HornWumpus]

Canada? The nation where you can go certainly be bankrupt and possible go to jail for not calling someone that identifies as an attack helicopter 'huey' (it's chosen pronoun)?

How about a nation that doesn't have a SJW shadow court system with no presumption of innocence?

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[Rick Schumann]

What if the 'regulation' is 'NO regulation'? FREE AND OPEN INTERNET. All ISPs provide is connectivity and never mind the bullshit. Would you think that's OK? Or does it have to be the Wild West for ISPs, and let them do whatever they want?

You think you're smarter than everyone else; that's clear enough. I'm saying you're probably not as smart as you think you are.

Dear Customer,
We've been detecting suspicious traffic on your IP address. We suspect that your computer might have been hacked. Please have a computer professional scan your computer for malware immediately. If you ignore this notice and we continue to see suspicious traffic on your IP address, we'll have no recourse other than to cancel your service.

Have a Nice Day,
Customer Service

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> (I said) IF ALL OTHER AVENUES OF ACTION FAILED (and net neutrality expired)

No, you said "if it came down to that being the only form of protest", where "protest" literally is about communications shutdown, not the enactment of a law/regulation.

Please see actions #1-3 above if you're passionate about this.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[Rockoon]

How do you tell encrypted data from un-encrypted? It's just 1s and 0s.

The encrypted data is the stuff that follows perfect statistical randomness. Every other kind of data has an identifiable coherence. Data compression produces a just-slightly-not-perfect statistical randomness that can be detected by a model with an order higher than the order of the model used to compress the data.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[HornWumpus]

They haven't even started trying to disguise it yet... There is encryption aside from SSH.

Re:How may of you would abandon the Internet?

[HornWumpus]

So you're saying: they can't practically tell encrypted from compressed?

Higher order model? What does that even mean in that context?

Telecommunications = top?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> The telecommunications industry was the most powerful lobbying force of the 20th century

Hmmm...two special interests I'd stick ahead of that (certainly in terms of money-in-politics) would be the defense industry (which got theirs) and government employee unions (ditto).

Re:Telecommunications = top?

[HornWumpus]

The 'American Bar Association', they don't even have to lobby, shysters everywhere in DC. All the _worst_ politicians are lawyers.

Well, yeah

[Trailer Trash]

Comcast et al are scum, but the fact is that Congress is the proper place to implement net neutrality with the FCC's input. Then it can't be removed at the whims of whoever's running the FCC.

The internet companies are going to lobby the hell out of Congress, so we need to make sure that the other side is heard as well. I don't see that as a problem with Google and company lobbying heavily.

Fix the problem don't treat they symptom

[budsetr]

Why don't we fix the real problem here: massive corporations. All the bad shite comes down from these massive corporations. If we limited the size of a corporation and the number of entities one corporation can "own" most of these problems would go away.

Re:Fix the problem don't treat they symptom

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah torches, blah blah blah pitchforks, blah blah blah OH SHIT, RUN!

Re:Fix the problem don't treat they symptom

[strikethree]

Why don't we fix the real problem here: massive corporations.

Because you have not proven that big corporations are a priori (really Firefox? You do not know what a priori is and flag it as incorrect? I get so tired of this crap.) bad.

This is a country based on the idea of freedom, not dictatorial mandates. It would behoove you to change your perspective... or go live in another country that supports ideals such as prior intervention.

Re:Fix the problem don't treat they symptom

[DiEx-15]

You sir/madam/it win the Internet.

I salute you.

Re:Same as healthcare

[HornWumpus]

I'm going to save that one. I've not seen such clear proof of Snoops being partisans elsewhere.

Re:Same as healthcare

[interkin3tic]

The mental gymnastics here are amazing. The details of obamacare were publically debated and negotiated for about a year. A third grader reading the transcript could understand that quote was taken wildly out of context. Pelosi was wrong to say that only because she assumed once the bill was passed, the outright lies from the far right about Obamacare would die down and people would understand the benefits.

Especially disturbing the right wing is pretending there's an equivalence with now. The house bill was intentionally passed with no debate before the CBO projection. The senate healthcare bill isn't even being shown to the entire republican party, let alone democrats or the public, and the goal is to pass whatever by next week.

"Yeah, this boat we are on is about to explode, but LOL, remember how they said the titanic couldn't sink!!!"

It should be done by Congress and not the FCC

[bjdevil66]

Congress should be running the show. Not a couple of GOP-appointed, former corporate shills with conflicts of interest on the FCC.

The problem, however, is can Congress get it right - with all the money that flows around in the Capitol building and K Street?

My faith in Congress is a shade above zero. Outright bribery (aka "political donations") have made it just about impossible for the Legislative branch (Congress) to do anything substantial for the common man.

Because of that, the Executive (which manages groups like the FCC) and Judicial branches (especially the Supreme Court) are becoming the only truly functioning part of the American government. That means that smaller and smaller groups of people are deciding major policy now; Meanwhile, we and our senators/reps are forced to sit and cheer on the bickering as if it actually matters - like an ancient Roman circus.

Re:Same as healthcare

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit. The specifics were: 'you lose, insurance companies win'. Which is a dead on assessment of Obamacare.

More of the same...

[Dread_ed]

... and it never stops.

Petrochemical companies write the EPA regulations.
Big pharma and insurance companies wrote Obamacare.
Senators and congressmen write the regulations on their income, retirement, and health care.
And now, internet service providers write the regulations on net neutrality.
Great.

All of this is brought to you not by the parties, but by the partisan. You, those people who eat, sleep and drink the words of your "political party" and violently regurgitate them at everyone you meet, are the ones that make all of this happen.

If you elect multi-millionaires to every political office in the federal government you should not be surprised if you are treated like one of their assets or possessions. You are merely another of their resources to be irresponsibly exploited for power, corporate profit, and taxes.

The only recourse against government leaders is dissent. However, in a miraculously fortunate (for our aristocratic leaders) and totally not contrived or engineered in any way sort of circumstance (yeah right!), a side effect of the two party system is that dissent and dissatisfaction against actions of the government are directed only at one of the parties and not the government as a whole.

Haven't you figured it out yet? If you are partisan, you cause shit like this because you won't keep your own party clean. You can't keep your finger out of other people's faces which means you will never deal with the issues in your own party and ultimately in your own mind. As long as you have a scapegoat to blame you will let your government get away with ANYTHING.

The result is that those of us who haven't done the Kool-Aid colonic like you have not only have to listen to you prattle on incandescently (because you get so hot about stuff that is completely inane, haha) but we also have to deal with the immense political problems facing our country which your actions create. Of course you never feel responsible for any of them because its always the other party's fault. In reality, the only reason we have these problems is because partisan people will never do the one thing that would give them incredible power to dictate the course of our country: hold their own party accountable.

Re:More of the same...

[RiddleofSteel]

Completely agree, it's become this weird fucking fanboy attitude like you are rooting for your favorite sports team that can do no wrong. A two party system is broken at it's core. I can't stand either party, but it's funny how if I post a comment critical of one of the parties it automatically makes me a republican Nazi or a Libtard by half the respondents. They all just assume everyone is part of this sick red/blue liberal/conservative crazy divisiveness that is destroying the country. Sadly the few alternatives ran absolute shit candidates which is just as frustrating. It becomes the lesser of two evils game where everyone loses except the evils.

Re:Same as healthcare

[Merk42]

What are the specifics of the current bill?

Re:Same as healthcare

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter! The other guys did something we don't like, so now we get to do whatever the hell we want. By compounding enough wrongs we'll surely make things right sooner or later.

Re:Same as healthcare

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you on about? Yes, there are people in the senate refusing to let people see the health care bill, and in response Republican senators have vowed not to vote for it if they're not allowed to see it. It's not going to pass because the a lot of Republicans don't like that they're not allowed to see it, kind of like how the last version didn't pass because Republicans didn't like what was in it. Take this as apposed to the Dems who "had to pass it no matter what" and gave us a bill so poorly understood that it had a tariff on any medical devices designed or manufactured *domestically*. I've heard of tariffs on imported goods, but domestic ones is taking the whole globalization angle a wee bit far wouldn't you agree? And of course that had nothing to do that large portions of obamacare were written by GE medical who at the time was busy off-shoring their entire medical devices department to China.

God make me industrious -- but not yet!

[epine]

The mind boggles at how a person already too lazy to yell at their congress critter over obvious corruption and industry capture expects to thrive in a fully deregulated marketplace.

No shit Sherlock

[guruevi]

The current net neutrality law was written by them and allows them to do things like zero-rate and prefer their own content while discriminating against Netflix and YouTube.

Obama legalized the practices the Net Neutrality crowd is railing against. Read the current law, it has nothing to do with the bits on your Internet connection and should be abolished to the pre-Obama rules where common carriers were violating the law when they were rate-limiting Netflix and YouTube.

I'm all for Net Neutrality but the only true Net Neutrality laws (Netherlands had them at least) were recently shot down by the EU for being anti-competitive. And somehow these idiot protesters think the US laws were better than the Netherlands?

Re:Same as healthcare

[guruevi]

3 States just lost ALL their insurance carriers. Also, since Obamacare 1 in 5 people can no longer afford to visit the doctor. Give that a thought - the US had ~10% of people that couldn't afford medical care before ObamaCare, now we have over 20% that can no longer afford to go to the doctor.

Wrote my representative yesterday...

[Ogive17]

I sent a letter to my representative yesterday about basically not giving the keys to the hen house to the foxes... I did receive a response within a couple hours and while it may have been a form letter it was at least somewhat on topic. Unfortunately it was partisan drivel.. blaming the far reaching Obama administration for hurting competition and stifling innovation.

I'm not sure if my response will get through but I asked "other than the dial-up era in the late 90s, when have we ever had competition? Right now it's like choosing between a voluntary enema or voluntary colonoscopy."

My rep is a freshman rep and relatively young.. but he's already been assimilated.

Re:Wrote my representative yesterday...

[Obfuscant]

other than the dial-up era in the late 90s, when have we ever had competition?

You mean for an ISP? Today. There are at least two wired ISPs readily available in my city and half a dozen wireless. If I wanted to get other wired ISPs, I could. At least one dialup if I wanted that. Not a huge city, by the way, and not unlike many others.

Re:Wrote my representative yesterday...

[Obfuscant]

You want to use Sling TV, but guess what, Comcast doesn't want you to access Sling so will have poor performance or no access at all.

I have found no block on my access via Comcast to Sling.

And what happens if Century Link get bought out by the folks who own Sling and you want Hulu or NetFlix

You can hypothesize all day all kinds of bad things an ISP can do.

, if we did have all these major corporations abusing their power, we wouldn't need regulation.

No, apparently all it takes is the ability to hypothesize that some evil corporation will do something evil for there to be a demand for government regulation. You're hypothesizing a buyout of a major telco and a block on access to other stuff as an argument for regulation, for example.

If you know your Rail Road history

[rsilvergun]

or the history of AT&T you know it's basically the opposite. Government regulation is the only thing between you and the company stores. That's because little 'ole you and me with our meager wallets can't go toe to toe with mega corps let alone robber barrons. We've got to get organized and when we do we call that organization 'government'. Remember that picture of the snake cut into 13 pieces? That's you without an organized response.

Huh?

[rsilvergun]

I still had to have a phone line and I only had 1 provider. Free markets and telecom don't really work. It's too expensive/difficult to build the infrastructure.

I think the point he's trying to make

[rsilvergun]

is that if you did away with all government regulation and power then it couldn't be abused. The funny thing is if you make the same argument for guns the folks railing against government get kinda upset.

It's a nice idea

[rsilvergun]

but it'll just get circumvented through shell companies. A better solution would be a parliament system of proportional representation, and end to the electoral college and Senate systems. Careful regulation of gerrymandering and finally the crown jewels: Mandatory Voting. Everybody votes. You can send in a blank ballot if you want, but you're going to vote. And since everyone votes there's no such thing as voter suppression.

Re:It's a nice idea

[Obfuscant]

Mandatory Voting. Everybody votes. You can send in a blank ballot if you want,

You think this will make things better? It will increase the impact that advertising has on the results, which is a BAD thing. People won't send in blank ballots. They're likely to think "I saw an ad for X and he seems ok, I'll vote for him."

And since everyone votes there's no such thing as voter suppression.

With the large number of blank ballots and uncaring people holding them, you're very likely to get the increased effects of ads like I propose, or the other result will be voting of those ballots by spouses or others. "Hey, honey, you're sending in a blank one, let me fill it in for you."

The golden Rule

[sit1963nz]

The golden rule states "he who has the gold writes the rules"

Re:Same as healthcare

[interkin3tic]

Obamacare puts a tax on absurdly overpriced medical devices and you call that a poorly written bill.

Wealthcare makes 20 million more people uninsured, and causes a death spiral for the rest of us... no comment on the quality of the bills

Democrats spent a year hammering out the points, accepting hundreds of suggestions from republicans, in an effort to reduce the unacceptably high number of uninsured, and bring down astronomical healthcare costs and that's "Had to pass no matter what".

Republicans are pushing to have a bill in a matter of weeks and are refusing to talk to democrats. All the proposals that have come out so far will shoot the uninsured right back up and dramiatically increase healthcare costs... nothing?

Just admit you dislike democrats and want to see them fail. I can at least respect the honesty in that case. Convincing yourself what democrats did was bad, with or without a comparison to republicans? Go fuck off and die of an opiate overdose, you ignorant hypocrite.

Re: Frist Post

[MercTech]

Net neutrality is about letting those that payed the R&D budget to develop the backbone keep equal access to the backbone. The more lucrative model is to allow the ISP, which is the local service provider, to give preferential treatment in access to sites that they own or have paid agreements with.

Without net neutrality, it is the corporate ISP that will decide what you can access and how fast you can access it. I had to deal with an ISP that did exactly that in Texas. If it detected torrent file sharing, it disconnected blocked you for 12 hours and reported you to the ISP web security department who automatically send you an email to let you know you were involved in "unlawful activities". Not just y torrent application triggered disconnect and block not someone running a file sharing application. This translated to being blocked if you had a Blizzard game installed. And if Microsoft update fired up; you were disconnected and blocked. for 12 hours. Comcast and AT&T would love to have such control and charge high premiums for service by the megabyte.

Traditional ISP pricing is based on leasing a certain size pipe with the total amount of content moved being irrelevant. This is how backbone access is billed; how big a pipe are you leasing? FAP policies and data caps are just to charge more or are hiding a fact that the ISP is selling more bandwidth than they have leased from the backbone providers. Like overbooking an air flight; someone is going to be dragged out kicking and screaming for resisting being forbidden what they have paid for.

I, for one, don't want to go back to the days of Compuserve and AOL that would give lightning fast access to content they own but only a slow and error ridden access to content outside of their little sandbox. Keep and prioritize net neutrality.