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Net Neutrality Is Over Monday, But Experts Say ISPs Will Wait To Screw Us (inverse.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: Parts of the Federal Communication Commission's repeal of net neutrality is slated to take effect on April 23, causing worry among internet users who fear the worst from their internet service providers. However, many experts believe there won't be immediate changes come Monday, but that ISPs will wait until users aren't paying attention to make their move. "Don't expect any changes right out of the gate," Dary Merckens, CTO of Gunner Technology, tells Inverse. Merckens specializes in JavaScript development for government and business, and sees why ISPs would want to lay low for a while before enacting real changes. "It would be a PR nightmare for ISPs if they introduced sweeping changes immediately after the repeal of net neutrality," he says.
While parts of the FCC's new plan will go into effect on Monday, the majority of the order still doesn't have a date for when it will be official. Specific rules that modify data collection requirements still have to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, and the earliest that can happen is on April 27. Tech experts and consumer policy advocates don't expect changes to happen right away, as ISPs will likely avoid any large-scale changes in order to convince policymakers that the net neutrality repeal was no big deal after all.
While parts of the FCC's new plan will go into effect on Monday, the majority of the order still doesn't have a date for when it will be official. Specific rules that modify data collection requirements still have to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, and the earliest that can happen is on April 27. Tech experts and consumer policy advocates don't expect changes to happen right away, as ISPs will likely avoid any large-scale changes in order to convince policymakers that the net neutrality repeal was no big deal after all.
So long as ISPs are allowed to discriminate by usage/content/device type in their terms of service, net neutrality is (has always been) a complete joke/bogus. Not being allowed to run an httpd server with *zero* fear that the ISP could legitimately choose to cease accepting you as a customer because of it, *entirely* defeats the intended level playing field net neutrality was touted as providing. The legaleze word games and fragile language that kept getting shot down in courts is an indication of what a waste the current and past laws have always been (except for Google and the NSA enjoying their advertising tracking and surveillance traffic flying under the 'unlimited' radar.)
As this headline reads, the only thing that has ever really been holding back the ISPs is public perception. And the issue is truly too complex and nuanced (especially with the wickedly slick subtle word games being used) that the population at large won't be able to muster a better sense of disgust at ISP practices until the tech leaders start admitting that Server Prohibition Matters A Lot.
$0.02...
Home Email Server packets *deserve to be treated on equal terms with gmail's packets*. Google knows the game.
Remember: always cook frogs slowly.
Don't you think the joker laughs at you?
"Net Neutrality Is Over Monday, But Experts Say ISPs Will Wait To Screw Us"
We need experts to tell us this? Are we all blithering idiots who need to be told common-sense business tactics? Hey, we've discovered that there's an apartment shortage in my area. I wish I could find an expert to tell me whether rents will go up in the near future.
...omphaloskepsis often...
My neighborhood is served by Spectrum (Charter Communications). They have a whole one-and-a-half stars on Yelp. Their prices suck, and they send lots of junk mail, even if you're already a customer. Oh, they also frequently call you on your cell phone and attempt to up-sell you, too (even when you're on the do-not-call list, and have told them repeatedly you do not want marketing calls). Their broadband service is also prone to many random brief outages. Short of starting a cable channel where their executives murder kittens on live TV, I can't imagine their reputation sinking much lower.
We have no other choice of land-based high speed provider. AT&T no longer offers DSL, and they have no plans to ever offer U-Verse. The only other competing providers are cellular networks, which don't offer the kind of data allowance you'd need for a home internet connection. Spectrum literally has a monopoly over the markets they serve. If they decided tomorrow that Netflix is now an extra $5/mo, or online gaming is an extra $15/mo, the choices are "cough it up", or "do without."
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
They're already priming the pump. I saw a Comcast commercial just two days ago that was claiming how great their new, faster service was going to be and it "included Netflix". I nearly dropped my plate. It's coming. ISPs will treat websites like channels soon enough and you're going to need to buy packaged bundles to get the websites you want.
I got screwed already by the ISPs.
I can only choose one, and they suck.
I'm pretty sure much like net neutrality laws in the first place, the ISP's lobbied for this situation, too.
McConnell, the dixie-fuck, would not let anyone else through. It was tardo-Pai or fucking no one, and unlike the TrumpVerse, no one is worse than a tardo. In theory. Turns out, that was wrong. It is the TrumpVerse after all.
This is the TrumpVerse in action. November is the last chance to act! Run these bastards back to hell!!
Because government control is soooo much better!
If you like your cable plan, you can keep your cable plan!
We'll all be equal, force-fed the same government-approved shit sandwich on our way to late-stage Socialism, just like Venezuela.
Uh, Netscape Navigator has been history in the rest of the world for more than a decade.
Ezekiel 23:20
There are a bunch of lawsuits in the pipeline over net neutrality. I imagine the ISPs will at least wait until they start to see how they will be resolved before they do anything serious to change the current situation.
It will be the perfect excuse for me to disconnect and going back to doing things in real life, the way we were intended to. I am spending entirely too much time on the internet these days and missing out on what life has to offer. The fact that the ISP is now going to screw us just makes it that much easier for me to kick Verizon fios to the curb.
Verizon already blocks 4k streams, and has opened up its media program to outside companies (i.e. trying to sell them the right to send 4k that they blocked as unfair use) so this real world you live in is a fantasy.
States have taken over this matter anyway, enforcing net neutrality via state law. So Ajit's playtime is over anyway, it's been taken out of his hands and is in the hands of grownups now.
More like late stage ultra-corrupt capitalism like "insert shitty african country".
...but states taking power from the federal government is what Trump wants. You're falling into his plan! :(
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If service providers can be selective of the content they provide, then they must lose all common carrier provisions and can be sued if they allow criminal content.
After the Obama NN law to offer zero rated service for their music/video service and a few weeks later Comcast, AT&T and TWC announced their merging with a bunch of smaller players the FCC had blocked but the FTC allowed eventually culminating in the TWC/Comcast merger.
That's luckily going away so the companies will be broken and the playing field will be leveled, right?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Treating sites like channels has happened in the past already, but I expect alternative services to pop up once the douchebags take over the web. ... Ok, they alreay have, but I mean once they prevent normal people from doing their thing with the web. As soon as that happens there will be a move away from the web. And it will happen fast. That's what I expect anyway.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Your beliefs about Trump are as credible as Trump's own claims.
In reality, Trump wants what benefits him, and has no moral principles except his own avarice, deceit, and hypocrisy.
If states wanted to build a massive monument to his glory from the bones of slaughtered peasants, he'd support it faster than you can say "Snowball is the enemy"
No one said you had to vote for a Democrat. There are *some* decent Republicans out there, but most won't ever be nominated because conservitards only care about "muh bortions" and their right to oppress gay rights and freedom of *other* religions. Vote 3rd party every time if you find both parties to be unpalatable.
I don't think things are black/or/white.
They won't block websites using this words. They will turn this into some kind of euphemism. Like: "You exceeded your monthly quota of broadband". At the same time, they will give you a few websites where this quota doesn't apply. It's already happening - slowly and in a very polite way, but it's happening.
I'm from Brazil. Here we have companies that give you unlimited data on WhatsApp. But if you want to use Telegram or Signal or whatever-the-fuck-you-want, your data will be charged. Think about it: after 25 days on the month, it is very likely that a significant amount of people on such kind of plans won't have access to Telegram/WhatsApp-competitor. This IS a BLOCK. It's bad for business, it's bad for us and it is bad for free speech.
Five years from now, none of the major fears like blocking sites they don't like will have materialized, but Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. will be more one sided than ever.
That's adorable you actually seem to believe that. If there is money to be made in blocking content then it will be blocked. The precise nature of the block is yet to be determined but it will happen in some form or fashion. Do you seriously think Comcast isn't going to prioritize their own content over everyone else's who doesn't pay them an arm and a leg? They've effectively gotten a government endorsed protection racket. "Nice website. Would be a shame if no one could see it..."
The only difference between Democrats and Republicans are the excuses they use for censorship.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Merckens specializes in JavaScript development for government and business
That is the only person quoted in the article, and that quote is the only thing establishing his "expert" status. Unclear how that translates to "expert in what ISPs will or will not do".
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Compared to the rest of the world, the poor US consumer is already well and truly ass-raped by the cable / ISP cartel.
Having taken bazillions in subsidies and done precisely fuck-all in return, (with fiber a distant dream for most USians), they're effective mono/duopolies in most areas, with high prices, low speeds and terrible customer service.
Now that their bought-and-paid-for politicians/lobbyists have finally managed to kill NN, they'll be opening the dusty box marketed "cable TV 101"...soon you'll only get your Netflix access with a "premium" bundle for an extra 50 bucks a month...
Amen
Both major parties are owned heart and soul by the rich and their "corporations" (hint: the corporations are owned and operated by the rich who are the major shareholders, the CEOs and the Boards of Directors).
The ONLY hope the non-rich have is in the minor parties, and only for as long as it takes those to become powerful enough to be noticed by the rich. Remember that the American Communist Party was a target of the FBI after it threatened to become the third party of the United States.
Vote for a minor party in the next election. Work with them so they win elections and stick with it until we get a real democracy.
After 240 years the peons of the USA deserve a little power.
I was under the impression that the C++ rewrite ditched old NN code.
Ezekiel 23:20
This is the TrumpVerse in action. November is the last chance to act! Run these bastards back to hell!!
OK sparky, settle down. Way to demagogue a non-existent issue. I've been using the Internet since 1994 and have never had any of the issues cited to justify "Net Neutrality" aka government camel's nose under the tent attempt to regulate the Internet....
I don't think commies actually have it.
Actually on any kind of monopoly of internet service, you won't have net neutrality naturally.
What the US had was literally the government pointing their guns at the monopolies and saying "you NN or we nuke you", and now there's no such thing anymore.
The real fix of course would be to break the monopolies, but as that's not possible, nukes it is.
Lucky you, here's what you've been missing. You'll soon have another chance to experience them first hand.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You're less than half right. There will be nightmare scenarios within a year, AND the social media megacorps will have a tighter grip on online discourse than ever before, because they'll be the only companies wealthy enough to get into zero-rating deals with all the big ISPs. Smaller sites including deplorable cesspools like Gab and Mind will have their traffic count towards your data cap or theoretically could be blocked altogether.
If you don't like the power of private censorship on the Internet, the NN repeal is your worst fucking nightmare.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's screwing us already, the people in Puerto Rico, Barbuda, Dominica, NYC and California wildfire country have already been screwed hard.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Republican or democrat or independent dosent matter. Only vote for candidates that take refuse all large donations, all corporate money, and use none of thier own money. I guarentee the bullshit will end almost immediately. Then force them to make big money in politics illegal. 96% of the population believes money is causing problems, so it's clearly a bipartisan issue.
With the demise of Net Neutrality, I kind of expect the big ISPs to try wringing money out of major internet sites. For example, threaten to throttle Netflix unless Netflix agrees to pay some sky-high peering fees, or inject high latency and dropped packets to Facebook and Google unless these companies also pay the insane peering fees. Don't be surprised if the cost of Netflix goes up as a result, even if your ISP isn't one of the big ISPs doing this. Everyone seems to expect ISPs to create fast lanes for specific sites and sell these fast lanes to their customers, but because everyone will be watching for this, I think it's less likely to happen.
Much like the article suggests, they probably won't do this right away, and when they do, expect them to do it slowly and incrementally. Start by charging just a small increase in peering fees, then gradually increase those fees over time to "boil the frog".
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
While I'm sure the monopoly ISPs enjoy let's them give no fks, I'm confident they will do a slow boil on us frogs. Without rioting in the streets, it will be much easier on them if suddenly the senate and/or congress flips blue later this year.
We are just being lightly screwed, we had some protection at least. I'm pretty sure without neutrality, given the near complete monopoly/duopoly structure in nearly all areas, it's going to be a full on kidnapping, bloody wrists and feet manacled to a poorly lit, moist, and dirty industrial basement, where the only release will be the fond memories of just occasional light sodomy.
But I have large doubts that there will be much of a wait. I wouldn't put it past any of them to make changes and then in court argue that going back would cost too much money or be too hard since they've now grown used to having those profits.
That's the sort of scum we're dealing with here.
I think in this most recent presidential election on the Republican side there were about six "traditional" candidates - successful government and business leaders who basically did what candidates do, and then there was Donald Trump. The votes for "some reasonable choice of a person with a good track record" got spread amongst several primary candidates, leaving Trump to pick up all of the "somebody different" vote. Plus Trump is just good at getting attention.
Also, we're living in a world where most voters have an attention span of 140 characters. People aren't reading in-depth analysis in the editorial pages, they are reading tweets.
Here's hoping a "pro-net-neutrality" ISP "screws its customers" for an hour by, say, randomly inserting pro-NN ads or slowing NetFlix to a crawl for 10 seconds every 5 minutes "because they can."
Of course, to work well they will need to alert their customers ahead of time and get buy-in from them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why is it not possible to break the monopolies? Just stop treating ISPs as utilities, lower the artificial barriers to entry, and we'll have an explosion of local ISPs just like we had back in the old days, before we erected a regulatory wall to stop mom-and-pop internet providers and force us into these monopolies.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Because it isn't as catchy as "Will wait to implement site level throttling."
and Comcast Sucks ins't news is is just matter of fact.
The thing is people get emotional because Net Neutrality is touted as killing off your netflix and your youtube. But the real damage is all the stuff that your ISP handle that isn't consumer level.
I have 100mbs internet connection at home. I will VPN into work to do my work. If my ISP decides to throttle VPN Connections (because it is what bad people do too) And my work doesn't have the money or the willingness to pay the ISP ransom amount. I am stuck using a product Advertised as 100mbs but only getting 10mbs because they decide to throttle it.
I could care less if Netflix takes an extra 5 seconds to load, or I don't get 4k resolution. But If I am transferring hundreds of megs of information back and forth of work data, then having to wait is wasting my time, and costing my company money. And I am getting ripped off, because I chose that ISP because of the bandwidth promised me.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Probably because AT&T and Verizon are just as eager to come up with new add-on charges for their service contracts as well.
Funny story about that. It turns out we don't actually have a two-party system, we just have a system where the biggest current two parties have been getting away with saying that while illegally strangling additional parties in crib for over a century.
Why is it not possible to break the monopolies? Just stop treating ISPs as utilities, lower the artificial barriers to entry, and we'll have an explosion of local ISPs just like we had back in the old days, before we erected a regulatory wall to stop mom-and-pop internet providers and force us into these monopolies.
It's too complicated and expensive for government to perform mass data collection & tracking if they have to deal with thousands of small mom-&-pop ISPs.
Once the US internet is in the hands of just a very small handful of mega-ISPs then they can collude and/or be pressured to limit whose speech they will allow on their networks just as a small handful of major banks/CC corporations have decided they will no longer provide any financial/CC/loan services of any kind to those businesses involved in providing the means to exercise a Civil Right guaranteed to We The People in the Bill of Rights.
If the 2nd Amendment can fall to such strategies, methods, and practices, then so can the 1st Amendment.
It's much better to weather the stormy and unpredictable seas of liberty than to drown under the placid waters of tyranny and authoritarianism.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Net neutrality was a fix in search of a non-existent problem, and eliminating it won't magically make that problem poof into existence. When (IF) the problem actually arrives, then is the time to go after it legislatively. "Correcting" things ex ante is just stupid. As for this article, it's clearly setting up to explain away what will soon to be obvious: the end of net neutrality doesn't bring about the apocalypse that the more sweaty purveyors of doom were predicting.
This is an old story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Nope, no sig
but I expect alternative services to pop up once the douchebags take over the web
The problem is that in many cities, by law, there can only be one ISP (at least for cable, for DSL you can usually get more than one, and dialup is still an option if you really want to be pedantic). This is basically cities screwing themselves, but it happens a lot.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'd also worry about blocking sites. Here in Canada, they're trying to get permission to block sites because of piracy. Thing is their site blocking is usually to broad and once they're blocking sites, they can block them for political reasons. Block the other parties site or even worse, target certain neighbourhoods and block (or really slow down) the voters registration sites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"Free speech" is an extremist American interpretation. Civilized countries don't have it, they have strong laws against hate speech. In America, it's OK to deliberately stir up hate with placards like "Allah was gay", while in civilized countries this sort of targeted hate gets you permanently banned from entering. What kind of country do people want to live in? Not the extremist one, that's for sure.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
They ditched the old CSS/HTML renderer, but up until very very recently even the original Netscape Plugin API was still being carted around by Firefox.
The same thing that happened last time; local municipalities still have the rights to change their own laws to spite "mom-and-pop" internet providers, and they absolutely will when the town mayor is personally paid in a large solid gold statue of a bear. Then you're right back to square one of needing big bad evil government to step in with their jackbooted thugs and forcibly throat-stomp a free market onto these bought-and-paid for capitalists.
"It's too complicated and expensive for government to perform mass data collection & tracking if they have to deal with thousands of small mom-&-pop ISPs."
Yes, that's why the push for regulatory barriers happened in the first place. I'm not saying it *will* be undone, just that it *could* be.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Or they disable VPN entirely unless you're paying the extra $150/month for a "VPN capable" connection. I mean it's not *that* much more, not after paying the $10/month for access to Slashdot, the $20/month for Netflix access, the $7.95 for email service access, etc,etc,etc. (fine print: access charge does NOT cover any applicable fees for the various sites/services, just your ISP allowing you to access them)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And who they censor.
So just to clarify, the FCC rules for the Internet going back to what they were a few years ago isn't going to be the end of the Internet and won't cause the economy to tank and won't make it so that no one can communicate ever again?
Wow, who would have predicted that!
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Funny how what is supposed to be a disaster has harmed no-one to date, and promised harm keeps slipping into the future...
The only idiots I see are the ones promising harm that never comes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First link is denialist bunk. Not surprised, I mark Slashdot users as foes as a way to keep track of the denialists. Accumulated cyclone energy hasn't increased but it sure as hell hasn't decreased either:
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
Of course you had to cherry pick for your second argument. "Last year's Santa Ana fires in particular weren't made worse by global warming! Everything's fine, nothing to see here, pay no attention to all the other wildfires linked in the same article!"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...positive market ramifications of repealing Net Neutrality.
You should probably stop pretending you know anything either.
Then Obama should have made use of the bully pulpit and called Pai an obvious cocksucker for the industry.
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I think the whole "net neutrality" thing was supposed to go down under Queen Clinton's regime where they could have properly leveraged the fake Russian threat into more government control. The "Muh Russia" narrative, as well, was supposed to emerge during a Clinton regime in order to garner more Federal control over the election process and social media platforms.
That's the main reason, IMO, that the whole "Muh Russia" narrative was so nonsensical and disjointed under Trump, he wasn't supposed to actually win and the Democrats had to improvise in order to keep the narrative going under Trump. I don't think the anti-Russia narrative was ever meant to be used against Trump per se, it was supposed to be an excuse for increased federal powers.
Not if you are realistic. Banning abortion or cutting access to abortion services doesn't result in a decrease of abortions, just an increase in complications. And the accompanying lack of birth control causes MORE abortions.
Plus, there are far more natural "abortions" than medical ones. Finally, regarding late term abortions, there are roughly 100 a year, and they are pretty much all health complications that will kill the mother and/or fetus. You'll save far more children improving vehicle safety standards than any late-term abortion bill.
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If the government runs it, then "free speech" actually applies.
Unless they decide "free speech" doesn't apply like the 4thA doesn't apply regarding civil asset forfeiture nor does the 1stA apply regarding freedom of religion if you run a business.
All that's required is for government to outlaw "hate speech" on the internet and then expand the definitions of what constitutes "hate speech".
Handing the internet to the government is the same thing as handing the freedom of the press to the government.
Too bad you didn't pay attention in civics class.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Such a fool, only thinking of gaining control via brute force. if I wanted to seize control of the internet, I'd suck up to ISPs like the Trump administration is doing.
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Indeed, there were a lot of "Never Trump" people. They didn't all rally around one candidate, though.
The caucus system, used in 14 states, is more like a run-off, but it has its own problems.
Even the Roberts Supreme Court didn't say free speech included anonymous campaign speech. It's the Republican congress, who thinks they will always win in a money race, that refused to require more disclosure. And nobody thought free speech included Russian trolls pulling for Trump, but pretending to be Black Lives Matter activists explaining why targeted BLM fans on Facebook should stay home instead of voting for Hillary Clinton. The same Hillary Clinton who, along with Bernie Sanders, campaigned on overturning Citizens United to tamp down on that stupid money == speech, corporations == people nonsense.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Or, perhaps, the ISPs want to avoid a PR disaster. The question is whether or not ISPs can be trusted, and the answer is no.
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mostly because there's a raft of companies they'd like to buy out and/or merge with and the last time they tried even our staggeringly corrupt legislature didn't let them. ISPs would like very much for you to forget how awful they are so they can get back to the work of being awful.
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either by voting in their Primary, voting for different general election candidates or just plain voting? Because if not, this is all just pissin' in the wind...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
See here. Your narrative is incorrect.
People voted Trump because they're hurting economically and being ignored. Trump won the General because Hilary kept ignoring those people and campaigned in Red States instead of Swing States. There's other factors (Russia, Hillary's poor health, the 30 years of bad press she got) but that's the big one.
What's funny is if you look at Trump's policy he's pretty much Hilary Clinton but with a tinge of Racism and bigger tax cuts for the rich. He supports DACA, TPP, backed down on health care & H1-Bs and didn't get us out of the 7 wars we're in and just started #8 and he filled the swamp with the same Goldman Sachs people who are always in charge (America's Royalty).
I don't think any of this matters. The Dems are on track to run another right of center insider and Trump will do his shtick and the Dems will lose again. Because why vote for some milktoast Dem who'll do nothing for you when Trump at least gives lipserves. False hope is better than no hope.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Or, perhaps, the ISPs want to avoid a PR disaster. The question is whether or not ISPs can be trusted, and the answer is no.
So which motive is stronger? ISP's wanting to avoid the PR problem or wanting to put one over on their customers? Which is the stronger motive?
Just a thought... IF the PR disaster is enough, then we don't really need federal oversight... I'm not saying it is enough, but you brought it up...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Then Obama should have made use of the bully pulpit and called Pai an obvious cocksucker for the industry.
I think Pai is doing that job quite well all by himself. Anything more seems like effort wasted.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Pai was appointed to the commission, not to lead it. A minor but important distinction. That it was under the gun of McConnell is another point.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
First link uses the EXACT SAME SOURCE as your link; I guess you're full of denialist bunk as well? Typical anti-science stance you take - it's not the message, but the messenger that matters.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You don't need the motives to directly compete if you plan gradual changes, particularly ones that don't occur the very second the option is possible. Sustained outrage is tough, while lobbying is a long-term investment.
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Um.... if you're going to accuse someone of liking Comcast, then you probably need to have them having said something in favor of Comcast, which I haven't. Ever.
So for the record, I've never had service from Comcast, nor worked for them, but I don't like them on general principles because 1. I don't like cable companies in general (and) 2. People I know who have had Comcast didn't like them.
I'll even go ahead and stipulate that I don't like the vast majority of cable internet and DSL providers in the U.S. I prefer services which don't rely on government-granted monopoly access to infrastructure.
Now that that's out of the way, the FCC repeal of Net Neutrality rules is still good, limiting the FCC's ability to manipulate and control Internet access in the U.S., it's not going to cause any major issues for Internet users (because they aren't stupid and companies make more money giving people what they want), it will result in more flexibility and lower costs (a little) between users and their ISPs (because the FCC won't be telling them how to organize their business based on outdated and lobbyist views of the ISP industry and they won't be requiring as much regulatory compliance paperwork), and if your ISP decides to defraud you, you can still enforce your contract against them or else leave them for another one, or even start your own.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Since this has literally never happened either in the U.S. before the FCC's NN rules, nor anywhere else in the world which doesn't have NN rules, I'm pretty sure we're safe, but if it does, I'll just, you know, stop contracting with that company if they aren't providing the service I want at the price I'm willing to pay.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I'd also worry about blocking sites. Here in Canada, they're trying to get permission to block sites because of piracy. Thing is their site blocking is usually to broad and once they're blocking sites, they can block them for political reasons. Block the other parties site or even worse, target certain neighbourhoods and block (or really slow down) the voters registration sites.
Your basic point is correct, but in most other countries with this kind of censorship, the ISPs only implement DNS blocking which can be avoided by choosing a DNS other than the one provided by your ISP. However Russia and China are more hard core in their censorship activities.
It helped the monopoly telcos keep other services from starting. NN was a wonderful federal rule that only a few monopoly brands could support.
The NN paper insulated wireline was kept safe from new networks.
The end of federal NN rules should see more new innovative network services in different cities and states.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Not the messenger, the interpretation. Your crank sees a decline where there is none.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's only true to a certain extent, and certainly less true for monopolists, especially when they have conflicts of interest.
Quite the joker, I see.
Hilarious.
Good one.
I'm dead from laughter now.
Let's face the facts, if we crushed the efforts to crush municipal and community broadband, it would do orders of magnitude more for users than any NN repeal would. That's why I called you a shill. You are delusional to the facts in front of your face.
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And that's largely useless at this point, since his position isn't elected. The point is to scare the turtle, so he's goes back in his shell, and you do that by making the man he wants to appoint known to America to be awful BEFORE appointing him to the FCC. Then, we could have appointed someone reasonable.
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Rather, your crank gets it wrong; at the good Dr. Maue's site you can find the raw data, and it has a slight negative slope on the fit.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No, pretty sure you call me a shill because you can't muster any actual arguments. Traditionally on the left, that leads to name calling.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
See here. It's a full 180 on his previous position. A big part of this is the evangelical leaders stick with him no matter what. They in turn bring their followers with them.
The "normal" candidates (who would have done all the same policies as Trump but been nice about it) would have stayed in and fought if they thought they had a chance. They dropped out because Trump was destroying them. And the reason why is because those economic reasons I mentioned.
The #nevertrump crowd didn't stay home, so much for #nevertrump. At the end of the day the Republican party fell in line with Trump and Trump fell in line with Goldman Sachs. The party's been had. If you voted Trump or supported him you've been had. He's not the populist you wanted him to be. The sooner you acknowledge that the sooner we can start voting these bums out.
Or not. They're the American Royalty. Easier said than done getting rid of your kings and queens.
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Your argument is just a bunch of unsubstantiated right-wing talking points, which don't apply at all to such a non-free market like ISPs. The paperwork will be a rounding error compared to power of holding users/sites hostage, the contracts are worthless due to things like mandatory arbitration clauses and terms being subject to change, the choice in ISPs is pathetic, and states have banned many of the most effective means of starting competing ISPs. I made an argument with actual evidence: municipal broadband and its better service. States have effectively banned municipal broadband at the request of the same entities the FCC is deregulating. Our arguments are legislating away competition versus theoretically less paperwork.
I'm honestly probably more conservative than you, I just have the capacity to think at greater complexity than regulations = bad and business = good. Consolidation of power is problematic in both governments and businesses, and that opinion puts me in with nutjob commies like Adam Smith. So no, I'm not more concerned about cutting down paperwork as much as I am concerned about unchecked monopolists who happen to often conspire with the government and own many other things that conflict with the interests of their customers.
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I'm expecting that you're right that it'll be at the DNS level. Still while you and I might know enough to change our DNS servers, most people aren't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
So the actual scientists at skepticalscience are cranks, and some dude on a climate conspiracy blog is trustworthy? Off to a great start.
Which graph shows a slight negative slope? Certainly not the '70-'17 global ACE graph.
Beware of "skeptical" slope interpretation, and good luck with that Santa Ana house.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
1. If the problem is government regulation, then the solution isn't more government regulation. Having the FCC regulate things just leads over time to regulatory capture of the FCC by the entrenched ISPs at the expense of newer or more innovative ones. See as an example every Federal regulatory body ever which existed for more than a year or two and the well-documented phenomenon of regulatory capture.
2. If the real issue is State and local level monopolies given to companies (and that is a major issue in some locations), then the proper solution is to work at the State level and local levels to remove monopolies which have been granted and instead allow competition. I'm all for that.
I'm against government regulators at any level screwing up the Internet, including via #1 and via #2 above. The FCC bringing Internet access under Title II is an example of "Consolidation of power is problematic in both governments and businesses".
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Okay, so you are basically going to throw out any kind of possibility for rational discussion, since you can't handle more complexity than a bumper sticker. The actual problem is that ISPs are primarily infrastructure projects, and for-profit, unregulated entities work poorly for managing infrastructure.
The problem is in the very nature of an infrastructure based market. The legal monopolies have been banned for 30 years, but it's a moot point because it's a natural monopoly.
Except that the internet thrived under Title II, and had considerably MORE competition. Back in the dial-up days, the phone company had to allow anyone to lease out the lines, and a similar model exists today in most countries that have competitive ISP markets.
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You're empirically and factually wrong.
ISPs aren't a natural monopoly. If they actually were, there would have been be no need for exclusive and monopoly franchise agreements with local governments, the first mover would just win automatically. There are places where there is _actually_ competition, so obviously not a "natural" monopoly, just a legally created one.
Internet access was never under Title II until a couple of years ago, so if anything it thrived because of no NN/FCC Title II rules. I was there. I used dial-up BBSs at 300 baud. I started a dial-up ISP (A business I sold during the transition to digital). There were no Title II FCC regulations specific to us. You don't know what you're talking about. Sure, anyone could buy phone lines. Anyone today can buy fiber optic cable and _except where the government prevents them_, can run it to houses.
P.S. Your personal insults aren't convincing anyone, they just get tiresome and expose your lack of ability to argue "complex" issues.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Yeah, and they did pretty much all the time. You are arguing that BECAUSE monopoly agreements existed, that they weren't natural monopolies, which is not evidence.
No, there aren't. Name a place in the US that has access to 10 wired ISPs. You can't, because most places are lucky if they have 2.
Yeah, because it was Ma Bell that was under Title II, and you were the leasee. Unless your name Alexander Graham Bell, of goddamn course Title II regulations didn't apply to the company you founded.
I don't need to convince everyone. EVERYONE ON SLASHDOT IS ALREADY ON MY SIDE.
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Did you happen to notice that Verizon hack Ajit Pai, in his arrogant rush to repeal NN (for which the FCC is being sued because he ignored millions of public comments opposed to repeal, a gross violation of the rule-making process) reclassified ISPs as common carriers, freeing states to make their own NN rules, which is proceeding apace, much to Pai's consternation. WTF did he think would happen? Answer: He didn't think. A lawsuit to overturn this "oversight" has been threatened or is in the works. Good luck with that. For Republicans (especially) and other free-marketeers, states' rights are Good until they're Bad, deregulation is Good until unintended market-skewing consequences in favor of consumers make it Bad.
Pai is a Trump appointee.
Hardly "minor" -- it's policy. In order to "destroy the administrative state," Steve Bannon's wettest dream, all the cabinet henhouses have been stuffed with rapacious, corrupt foxes intent on freeing the US of chickens (not the frightened kind) who would contribute to the commonweal rather than trashing it.
No, he was appointed under Obama, but made head of the FCC under Trump. Obama shouldn't have let him, but he loves appeasing the GOP.
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I should think her advisers and handlers would come up, and largely execute, such strategies. That's what she pays them for.
Things started falling apart for the "establishment" when Trump refused to go down after they "went nuclear" with accusations of sexual impropriety, etc. He was supposed to quit in the face of such attacks, as any normal politician would do. This took them completely by surprise, especially when the public failed to care about the substance of the media smear tactics.
As far as conspiracy goes, I'd be interested in seeing the partisan makeup of the US Civil Service workers. The idea was to insulate the bureaucracy from "partisanship" but only in the sense of preventing politically motivated partisan stacking of the workers making up the Civil Service. Given the way other institutions have been leaning heavily left (largely without direct political machinations) it's not exactly "out there" to assume something like the Civil Service has done so as well. Having the institution which is the literal beating heart of the Government lean favorable for either party is a disaster waiting to happen.
If the rest of the country is enmeshed in partisan tribalism only a moron or apologist could believe government workers aren't subject to the same social forces. It doesn't make any sense.
Last I checked, the Republican leadership in Congress is a willing accomplice to Trump's relentless sabotage of democracy, replacing it step but step with an authoritarian state. Those steps, BTW, are predictably common in the rise authoritarianism, as if there were a playbook. Most but not all of the rank and file gauleiters in Congress who carry water for Trump are Republicans. The party has long had authoritarian instincts and caters to the perennial subset of Americans who yearn for authoritatian rule, for the daddy state. Most of us are frogs in the proverbial pot, either unaware of, indifferent to, or silently complicit in the slowmotion coup underway. Historically, the rise of fascism or totalitarianism goes unchecked until the water in the pot gets unbearably hot. By then it's too late.
Civics is no longer taught in many schools nor is any meaningful account of our nation's history. Consequently, we have a growing number of ahistorical citizens who have no notion of how govt works. They are easy marks for fake news, conspiracy theories, cults, and dumbed-down or outright false assertions in textbooks because they have no frame of reference, the one once provided by education.
Civics is no longer taught in many schools nor is any meaningful account of our nation's history. Consequently, we have a growing number of ahistorical citizens who have no notion of how govt works. They are easy marks for fake news, conspiracy theories, cults, and dumbed-down or outright false assertions in textbooks because they have no frame of reference, the one once provided by education.
Totally agree. Spot-on.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If you can define what "screw" means in that prediction, and pick a date by which you say it will happen, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
And perhaps a modest wager. How's fifty bucks sound?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
You don't have to look at the source code, as nearly every browser has "Mozilla" in the user agent.
Though I'd be surprised if any current browser still shares any actual source code with the old Netscape.