Police: "Our agents will be happy to help you. Please report to your nearest processing center with the materials in question and we will be with you as soon as possible. Have a pleasant day!"
So, in retaliation to the government blocking their merger with T-Mobile, they're going to drive their own customers away to their competitors by raising rates and penalizing them?
Yeah, good call AT&T. That'll teach....uh....them?
Exactly. What happens when Walmart, Target, ShopKo, Best Buy, and every other big box retailer do the same thing? What happens when every major employer in a given field starts doing this?
This kind of crap has too much of a feudalistic flavor for me to stomach...
Why is that a reasonable excuse? How is that not discrimination? Why should my current employer disqualify me from a job with another one if I meet every other criteria for employment?
Ah, I'll remember that next time there's any discrimination lawsuit. Guess "Just go get a job somewhere else, then!" is number two on the list of "reasonable excuses" for abhorrent behavior by major corporations these days...
Of course it should be. People should not be locked into one employer just because any potential employer in their field has a No Poach agreement with their current employer. It seems ridiculous now, but as these companies get larger, and their reach and influence gets larger, it's only going to get worse.
If things like this are allowed to stand, how long will it be before you're basically locked into an employer for life? People laugh at the rhetoric that gets thrown around these days, like indentured servants, or serfs, but really, what else could you call employees in a situation like this? And what recourse would employees have? Leave their field entirely? Or the deliberately ignorant "Start your own business, then!!" that is thrown around whenever anyone complains about their employer these days?
It never ceases to amaze me how much the common man will fight against his own self-interest. In what possible way could these No Poach agreements benefit anyone that is not a C-level executive at any of these companies?
Not to mention the other "used market" on The Pirate Bay.
Well, unless they're going to create the first unhackable/unmoddable console in history. In that case, consider the gauntlet thrown down, Microsoft...
You want to sell more new copies of a game? Have a non-insane pricing plan that actually decreases the cost of new games progressively as time goes on. Yes, I know they have the "Greatest Hits" line, but honestly most games they ever add to that are the ones that sold so many copies new that Gamestop won't even buy them due to having a dozen copies already they can't get rid of at $10 a piece.
If these guys started giving the consumer incentive, rather than treating them as adversaries so often by locking them out of their own hardware/software, they would probably sell a lot more, but I doubt they'll ever try, so we'll never know...
Except the MAFIAA designation implies more than just one *AA group, and has thus come to refer to all the member of the media cartels. The "Micro$oft terminology" only referenced one company and was actually harder to type than their actual name.
I prefer to simply say MAFIAA, rather than RIAA, MPAA, Business Software Alliance (BSA), Entertainment Software Alliance (ESA), and all the other organizations that have come out in support of SOPA. It may have started out as a jab, but for most, it's come to be representative of the supporters of this crap as a whole outside of the negative connotations of the name.
This is especially true of the SEC and Wall Street. They regularly trade people back and forth, and even hobnob socially, in the open. This would be akin to DEA agents and high ranking Cartel members getting together, but for some reason it's condoned at our highest levels. Well, I shouldn't say "for some reason" since we all know what the reason is, it's to rob us fucking blind.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but being associated with Big Media is pretty much toxic for politicians right now.
Not really, considering that they're all associated with Big Media. In order for that to be a problem their political opponents would have to be able to point fingers and say "Look at him! He's in bed with Big Media!!", but none of them can do that without their hypocrisy being on display. The MAFIAA and these other organizations/business groups buy off everyone. Why throw your support behind one candidate that could potentially lose an election if you can afford to hedge your bets by supporting both? There's nothing to lose, and mountains of money and influence to gain.
This is the fundamental problem with politics in the United States as of late. In order to truly compete on the same level as these politicians you need to allow yourself to be corrupted by the same people they are. By the time you finally gain enough exposure to run for office beyond a local level, you've become the very person you're competing with. Selling out is as much a requirement for office in our government as being an American citizen. Even if you miraculously buck this trend and achieve some higher office, you have both parties and their considerable resources hammering you down pretty much constantly. They'll spare no expense to destroy you.
Well, two of those disasters I mentioned, Love Canal and Valley of the Drums, were what led to the Superfund bill that gave the EPA the authority to deal with those issues. Prior to that it was pretty much up in the air, and the severity of those disasters and the problems in dealing with those issues were the driving motivations for that bill. The third, Times Beach, was an ongoing case that occurred before the Superfund bill but was not dealt with until after.
At any rate, it seems to me that there have not been any disasters near the scope of the three cases I mentioned since that time (outside of some oil spills, but there are regulations in place dealing with cleanup). Not to say that there hasn't been pollution or environmental issues, obviously, but most companies aren't throwing drums of toxic waste around, either. Maybe they're related, maybe they're not.
I'll grant that regulating industry isn't as easy as allowing the justice system to just react on a case by case basis individually, but that solution has it's problems as well. For instance, what about people of limited means that can't necessarily afford to shoulder the burden of suing a multibillion dollar company in civil court? It's not like we're talking one homeowner suing his neighbor. Simply being a large enough company and having the resources to drag a court case out for years and years would mean that the average Joe is going to have a hard time fighting this case. After all, it's a civil matter, so you've pretty much got to hope there's a lawyer out there willing to take your case for a cut of the potential settlement. Depending on the resources of the Defendant, many lawyers would probably elect not to take the case at all based purely on the fact that they do not want to invest the time and energy into a case that they may possibly lose. It seems to me that this would ultimately have a sort of chilling effect on these lawsuits being brought to court at all.
What about the resultant complexity of 50 different states worth of legal precedent in lieu of a federal regulation? If I win a case in Florida against a company that polluted the groundwater with benzene, does that mean that a company in Texas can technically dump benzene since the precedent only applies in Florida state law? Are we going to have to basically litigate every possible type of pollution in all 50 states to replace the EPA? And how does that deal with pollutants that cross state lines? Say in Texas you can dump benzene, benzene travels down river and ends up in Oklahoma, where dumping benzene is illegal. Am I going to jail? Am I liable for the pollution in Oklahoma if it originated in Texas where the law hadn't gotten around to ruling on whether dumping benzene was a liability to me? Or is Oklahoma going to have to sue Texas itself, who in turn will then have to sue me?
As for encouraging lobbying, I consider that a non-issue as I think that direct lobbying should be totally prohibited anyway. It's nothing but bribery with another name. Yeah, I know, anyone can petition the government, yadda yadda yadda....I don't believe that our Founding Father's would have intended for the law to allow people to give our representatives cash rewards in exchange for voting a certain way. It certainly doesn't seem like an idea they would have supported based on what I've read of some of their writings, but I admit that I do not know for certain, obviously. Either way, I find it abhorrent.
I also consider the China argument a non-issue as well. If they wish to live in a polluted hell-hole that is their right (although I suspect the vast majority of Chinese citizens aren't given the choice in the first place, so there's that), but it seems to me that most people here don't want that, and we have a choice. Is the economy more important than clean air, water, and earth? I admit, there may be some regulations that are considered a little extreme, and I fully support going through regulations line by line and getting rid of the stupid shi
My question concerning these types of situations and the whole libertarian "pollution is a civil matter and the polluter is liable for damages" method of dealing with pollution is; What if the polluter does not have the money or assets to clean up the mess they made?
Say I buy a corporation with a plant that handles toxic chemicals. It turns out these chemicals have been leaching into the groundwater for decades. I get sued by the property owners all around me and all the people that draw off that groundwater. I go to court and fight it out. I lose the case, and now owe $5 billion dollars in damages. The corporation files bankruptcy, but that's fine with me, because I walk away scot-free.
So, who ends up on the hook cleaning up the contamination? My corporation went the way of Enron, so it's not me or my corporation. Wouldn't the public then be on the hook for cleaning up the mess? What measures would the public be able to take in order to prevent a similar situation from happening again? Libertarians generally don't want regulations that would prevent this type of behavior before it occurs, so how do we actually prevent something like this from happening? Once it's happened, it's too late. We've all been drinking the poison, bathing in it, washing our clothes in it...
I've been reading about different environmental disasters here in the United States lately, things like Love Canal, Times Beach, Missouri, and the Valley of the Drums, and I wonder how the libertarian principles would have corrected those situations. The Superfund law gives the EPA the power to identify and work towards cleaning these sites up, but most libertarians I talk to think the EPA should be abolished due to the whole "regulations" thing. That being said, if we get rid of the EPA, how would sites like this be handled, and who would pay for it?
I'm not trying to be facetious; this is an honest question, because, while I totally agree with some tenets of libertarianism, such as legalization of drugs and ending the nation-building all over the world bullshit, I don't see how the free market alone could deal with situations like these. These problems, due to their severity, seem to extend beyond the ability of any one private entity to deal with. The people living around these areas certainly couldn't have done anything about it, these sites cost billions to clean up, and there's over a thousand Superfund sites in the U.S., as of November, 2010.
If my use results in my bandwidth being throttled, how is that "the same service"? The same service is the same bandwidth, not "oh, you're downloading a torrent, so you're only going to get 5 mbps instead of the 10 the VOIP guy is using, but you're both paying for the 10 mbps plan."
Like I said, it sets a horrible precedent, because you know they're going to turn around and do the same thing with video streaming services. "Oh, it's neutral; we're throttling all video streaming traffic, not just Netflix". Or online gaming. Or whatever segment they feel like squeezing.
Think about it, what would stop them from deliberately degrading service to sell higher-tiered plans to people? It's not like they inform people they're being throttled while they're being throttled. All Joe Blow End User knows is that the movie he's watching is stuttering and skipping and shit, or that he's lagging from one end of the map to the other. "Better get the next higher tier!" he says to himself, while all the while it's not because his current bandwidth cap is inadequate, it's because his ISP is being a fucking asshole and only actually providing half the bandwidth he's paying for. He runs a Speedtest, gets the full speed returned because it's not throttling the web itself, and thinks he needs to upgrade. The ISP, of course, laughs it's ass off all the way to the bank.
Why wouldn't an ISP do something like this? They're in the business to make money, why wouldn't they take this opportunity to make more? How many alternative ISPs do most people even have access to in a given area? And even if something does come out, like this, and people go ballistic..."We're committed to excellence and will review this very closely to make sure we are providing the best service to all our customers.", in other words "blah blah blah we'd better find a way to hide our bullshit better". Either that or they just go full retard and blame all their bandwidth ills on the torrenters. And then the video streamers. And then the online gamers. And on and on and on....
VoIP should get priority because when bandwith is limited it needs it for the service to work. Your P2P will handle delays in packets getting through. It doesn't care. VoIP does because people do.
Since when is that my problem? If the ISP isn't providing enough bandwidth to support VOIP along with all the other traffic, they need to bone up on their infrastructure, not start arbitrarily slowing down my perfectly legitimate use of the bandwidth I pay for. What you're basically arguing for is prioritizing one set of customers over another. That's fine if they want to do that, but why the fuck should I have to pay the same rate as they do if I'm not going to receive the same service?
And it's not just about P2P. It's about traffic in general, because there is absolutely no way they would ever stop at prioritizing VOIP traffic and you know it. It'll start there, but then it will quickly evolve to other types of traffic as well. The ISPs have a particularly big hard-on for streaming video services right now, so don't for one second believe that they'll start doing some deep packet inspection to see what the hell your traffic is doing. "Oh, streaming video?! Not for long!! Should have got our cable television service, too!! What do you mean 'net neutrality'?! We ARE being neutral, there's 'too many VOIP users on right now', and they get priority!!"
As long as I pay the same amount for my internet as the guy next door, we damn well better be getting the same service, regardless of what the fuck I'm doing on it. If not, I want a fucking discount, because we're not getting the same level of service. End of story.
That's kinda like the whole issue, they are throttling one type of traffic and prioritizing others. If we're all paying the same amount for the same amount of bandwidth, how I use said bandwidth is at my discretion, not yours or my ISPs. If I want to sit here and watch the same Youtube video of adorable kittens over and over and over and over and over again, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, that's my business, is it not?
Why should VOIP or any other web service get priority? What makes their usage more worthy of the bandwidth?
Besides, once this particular Pandora's Box gets opened, consumers are boned. You'll see how fast these ISPs start throttling anything and everything, at least, until you purchase the appropriate tiered plan. They'll have the VOIP priority plan, the Web priority plan, the Streaming Media priority plan...all the same pipe, all the same potential for bandwidth consumption, totally different rates. How much you think they'd gouge the "Online Gaming" tier?
Of course. Even if he was actually charged with am actual crime of some sort (doubtful), he'd just end up being pardoned. These guys all take care of their own...
These state-sponsored monopolies have gone on long enough. If the 'private market' market will not meet the demand, what else are people supposed to do? Just deal with shit-tier internet at exorbitant prices? Bullshit on that...the major ISPs are no worse than the MAFIAA or the Cartels.
They're selectively enforced. Believe me, if they need a reason to bust your ass and can't come up with anything else, they'll be perfectly happy to break out that shit if they need to.
Slashdot Mirror
Police: "Our agents will be happy to help you. Please report to your nearest processing center with the materials in question and we will be with you as soon as possible. Have a pleasant day!"
So, in retaliation to the government blocking their merger with T-Mobile, they're going to drive their own customers away to their competitors by raising rates and penalizing them?
Yeah, good call AT&T. That'll teach....uh....them?
Exactly. What happens when Walmart, Target, ShopKo, Best Buy, and every other big box retailer do the same thing? What happens when every major employer in a given field starts doing this?
This kind of crap has too much of a feudalistic flavor for me to stomach...
Why is that a reasonable excuse? How is that not discrimination? Why should my current employer disqualify me from a job with another one if I meet every other criteria for employment?
Ah, I'll remember that next time there's any discrimination lawsuit. Guess "Just go get a job somewhere else, then!" is number two on the list of "reasonable excuses" for abhorrent behavior by major corporations these days...
Of course it should be. People should not be locked into one employer just because any potential employer in their field has a No Poach agreement with their current employer. It seems ridiculous now, but as these companies get larger, and their reach and influence gets larger, it's only going to get worse.
If things like this are allowed to stand, how long will it be before you're basically locked into an employer for life? People laugh at the rhetoric that gets thrown around these days, like indentured servants, or serfs, but really, what else could you call employees in a situation like this? And what recourse would employees have? Leave their field entirely? Or the deliberately ignorant "Start your own business, then!!" that is thrown around whenever anyone complains about their employer these days?
It never ceases to amaze me how much the common man will fight against his own self-interest. In what possible way could these No Poach agreements benefit anyone that is not a C-level executive at any of these companies?
Not to mention the other "used market" on The Pirate Bay.
Well, unless they're going to create the first unhackable/unmoddable console in history. In that case, consider the gauntlet thrown down, Microsoft...
You want to sell more new copies of a game? Have a non-insane pricing plan that actually decreases the cost of new games progressively as time goes on. Yes, I know they have the "Greatest Hits" line, but honestly most games they ever add to that are the ones that sold so many copies new that Gamestop won't even buy them due to having a dozen copies already they can't get rid of at $10 a piece.
If these guys started giving the consumer incentive, rather than treating them as adversaries so often by locking them out of their own hardware/software, they would probably sell a lot more, but I doubt they'll ever try, so we'll never know...
Our voices count for even less in Canada than American voices do in the USA.
Boy, if that isn't a fucking terrifying thought...
Except the MAFIAA designation implies more than just one *AA group, and has thus come to refer to all the member of the media cartels. The "Micro$oft terminology" only referenced one company and was actually harder to type than their actual name.
I prefer to simply say MAFIAA, rather than RIAA, MPAA, Business Software Alliance (BSA), Entertainment Software Alliance (ESA), and all the other organizations that have come out in support of SOPA. It may have started out as a jab, but for most, it's come to be representative of the supporters of this crap as a whole outside of the negative connotations of the name.
This is especially true of the SEC and Wall Street. They regularly trade people back and forth, and even hobnob socially, in the open. This would be akin to DEA agents and high ranking Cartel members getting together, but for some reason it's condoned at our highest levels. Well, I shouldn't say "for some reason" since we all know what the reason is, it's to rob us fucking blind.
Here is a great article that details the close relationships between the SEC and Wall Street. If you can read this and not want to go down there and get your pound of flesh out of these cocksuckers, you're a far better man than I...
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but being associated with Big Media is pretty much toxic for politicians right now.
Not really, considering that they're all associated with Big Media. In order for that to be a problem their political opponents would have to be able to point fingers and say "Look at him! He's in bed with Big Media!!", but none of them can do that without their hypocrisy being on display. The MAFIAA and these other organizations/business groups buy off everyone. Why throw your support behind one candidate that could potentially lose an election if you can afford to hedge your bets by supporting both? There's nothing to lose, and mountains of money and influence to gain.
This is the fundamental problem with politics in the United States as of late. In order to truly compete on the same level as these politicians you need to allow yourself to be corrupted by the same people they are. By the time you finally gain enough exposure to run for office beyond a local level, you've become the very person you're competing with. Selling out is as much a requirement for office in our government as being an American citizen. Even if you miraculously buck this trend and achieve some higher office, you have both parties and their considerable resources hammering you down pretty much constantly. They'll spare no expense to destroy you.
America! Fuck Yeah!!
Well, two of those disasters I mentioned, Love Canal and Valley of the Drums, were what led to the Superfund bill that gave the EPA the authority to deal with those issues. Prior to that it was pretty much up in the air, and the severity of those disasters and the problems in dealing with those issues were the driving motivations for that bill. The third, Times Beach, was an ongoing case that occurred before the Superfund bill but was not dealt with until after.
At any rate, it seems to me that there have not been any disasters near the scope of the three cases I mentioned since that time (outside of some oil spills, but there are regulations in place dealing with cleanup). Not to say that there hasn't been pollution or environmental issues, obviously, but most companies aren't throwing drums of toxic waste around, either. Maybe they're related, maybe they're not.
I'll grant that regulating industry isn't as easy as allowing the justice system to just react on a case by case basis individually, but that solution has it's problems as well. For instance, what about people of limited means that can't necessarily afford to shoulder the burden of suing a multibillion dollar company in civil court? It's not like we're talking one homeowner suing his neighbor. Simply being a large enough company and having the resources to drag a court case out for years and years would mean that the average Joe is going to have a hard time fighting this case. After all, it's a civil matter, so you've pretty much got to hope there's a lawyer out there willing to take your case for a cut of the potential settlement. Depending on the resources of the Defendant, many lawyers would probably elect not to take the case at all based purely on the fact that they do not want to invest the time and energy into a case that they may possibly lose. It seems to me that this would ultimately have a sort of chilling effect on these lawsuits being brought to court at all.
What about the resultant complexity of 50 different states worth of legal precedent in lieu of a federal regulation? If I win a case in Florida against a company that polluted the groundwater with benzene, does that mean that a company in Texas can technically dump benzene since the precedent only applies in Florida state law? Are we going to have to basically litigate every possible type of pollution in all 50 states to replace the EPA? And how does that deal with pollutants that cross state lines? Say in Texas you can dump benzene, benzene travels down river and ends up in Oklahoma, where dumping benzene is illegal. Am I going to jail? Am I liable for the pollution in Oklahoma if it originated in Texas where the law hadn't gotten around to ruling on whether dumping benzene was a liability to me? Or is Oklahoma going to have to sue Texas itself, who in turn will then have to sue me?
As for encouraging lobbying, I consider that a non-issue as I think that direct lobbying should be totally prohibited anyway. It's nothing but bribery with another name. Yeah, I know, anyone can petition the government, yadda yadda yadda....I don't believe that our Founding Father's would have intended for the law to allow people to give our representatives cash rewards in exchange for voting a certain way. It certainly doesn't seem like an idea they would have supported based on what I've read of some of their writings, but I admit that I do not know for certain, obviously. Either way, I find it abhorrent.
I also consider the China argument a non-issue as well. If they wish to live in a polluted hell-hole that is their right (although I suspect the vast majority of Chinese citizens aren't given the choice in the first place, so there's that), but it seems to me that most people here don't want that, and we have a choice. Is the economy more important than clean air, water, and earth? I admit, there may be some regulations that are considered a little extreme, and I fully support going through regulations line by line and getting rid of the stupid shi
My question concerning these types of situations and the whole libertarian "pollution is a civil matter and the polluter is liable for damages" method of dealing with pollution is; What if the polluter does not have the money or assets to clean up the mess they made?
Say I buy a corporation with a plant that handles toxic chemicals. It turns out these chemicals have been leaching into the groundwater for decades. I get sued by the property owners all around me and all the people that draw off that groundwater. I go to court and fight it out. I lose the case, and now owe $5 billion dollars in damages. The corporation files bankruptcy, but that's fine with me, because I walk away scot-free.
So, who ends up on the hook cleaning up the contamination? My corporation went the way of Enron, so it's not me or my corporation. Wouldn't the public then be on the hook for cleaning up the mess? What measures would the public be able to take in order to prevent a similar situation from happening again? Libertarians generally don't want regulations that would prevent this type of behavior before it occurs, so how do we actually prevent something like this from happening? Once it's happened, it's too late. We've all been drinking the poison, bathing in it, washing our clothes in it...
I've been reading about different environmental disasters here in the United States lately, things like Love Canal, Times Beach, Missouri, and the Valley of the Drums, and I wonder how the libertarian principles would have corrected those situations. The Superfund law gives the EPA the power to identify and work towards cleaning these sites up, but most libertarians I talk to think the EPA should be abolished due to the whole "regulations" thing. That being said, if we get rid of the EPA, how would sites like this be handled, and who would pay for it?
I'm not trying to be facetious; this is an honest question, because, while I totally agree with some tenets of libertarianism, such as legalization of drugs and ending the nation-building all over the world bullshit, I don't see how the free market alone could deal with situations like these. These problems, due to their severity, seem to extend beyond the ability of any one private entity to deal with. The people living around these areas certainly couldn't have done anything about it, these sites cost billions to clean up, and there's over a thousand Superfund sites in the U.S., as of November, 2010.
More like their high-priced whores.
For just $250,000, you too can have a special one-on-one encounter with your Congressmen! Just call 1-900-FREEDOM for more details!!
If my use results in my bandwidth being throttled, how is that "the same service"? The same service is the same bandwidth, not "oh, you're downloading a torrent, so you're only going to get 5 mbps instead of the 10 the VOIP guy is using, but you're both paying for the 10 mbps plan."
Like I said, it sets a horrible precedent, because you know they're going to turn around and do the same thing with video streaming services. "Oh, it's neutral; we're throttling all video streaming traffic, not just Netflix". Or online gaming. Or whatever segment they feel like squeezing.
Think about it, what would stop them from deliberately degrading service to sell higher-tiered plans to people? It's not like they inform people they're being throttled while they're being throttled. All Joe Blow End User knows is that the movie he's watching is stuttering and skipping and shit, or that he's lagging from one end of the map to the other. "Better get the next higher tier!" he says to himself, while all the while it's not because his current bandwidth cap is inadequate, it's because his ISP is being a fucking asshole and only actually providing half the bandwidth he's paying for. He runs a Speedtest, gets the full speed returned because it's not throttling the web itself, and thinks he needs to upgrade. The ISP, of course, laughs it's ass off all the way to the bank.
Why wouldn't an ISP do something like this? They're in the business to make money, why wouldn't they take this opportunity to make more? How many alternative ISPs do most people even have access to in a given area? And even if something does come out, like this, and people go ballistic..."We're committed to excellence and will review this very closely to make sure we are providing the best service to all our customers.", in other words "blah blah blah we'd better find a way to hide our bullshit better". Either that or they just go full retard and blame all their bandwidth ills on the torrenters. And then the video streamers. And then the online gamers. And on and on and on....
Even the Congressional Pages aren't safe!!!
VoIP should get priority because when bandwith is limited it needs it for the service to work. Your P2P will handle delays in packets getting through. It doesn't care. VoIP does because people do.
Since when is that my problem? If the ISP isn't providing enough bandwidth to support VOIP along with all the other traffic, they need to bone up on their infrastructure, not start arbitrarily slowing down my perfectly legitimate use of the bandwidth I pay for. What you're basically arguing for is prioritizing one set of customers over another. That's fine if they want to do that, but why the fuck should I have to pay the same rate as they do if I'm not going to receive the same service?
And it's not just about P2P. It's about traffic in general, because there is absolutely no way they would ever stop at prioritizing VOIP traffic and you know it. It'll start there, but then it will quickly evolve to other types of traffic as well. The ISPs have a particularly big hard-on for streaming video services right now, so don't for one second believe that they'll start doing some deep packet inspection to see what the hell your traffic is doing. "Oh, streaming video?! Not for long!! Should have got our cable television service, too!! What do you mean 'net neutrality'?! We ARE being neutral, there's 'too many VOIP users on right now', and they get priority!!"
As long as I pay the same amount for my internet as the guy next door, we damn well better be getting the same service, regardless of what the fuck I'm doing on it. If not, I want a fucking discount, because we're not getting the same level of service. End of story.
Then it would no longer be "neutral", would it?
That's kinda like the whole issue, they are throttling one type of traffic and prioritizing others. If we're all paying the same amount for the same amount of bandwidth, how I use said bandwidth is at my discretion, not yours or my ISPs. If I want to sit here and watch the same Youtube video of adorable kittens over and over and over and over and over again, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, that's my business, is it not?
Why should VOIP or any other web service get priority? What makes their usage more worthy of the bandwidth?
Besides, once this particular Pandora's Box gets opened, consumers are boned. You'll see how fast these ISPs start throttling anything and everything, at least, until you purchase the appropriate tiered plan. They'll have the VOIP priority plan, the Web priority plan, the Streaming Media priority plan...all the same pipe, all the same potential for bandwidth consumption, totally different rates. How much you think they'd gouge the "Online Gaming" tier?
Of course. Even if he was actually charged with am actual crime of some sort (doubtful), he'd just end up being pardoned. These guys all take care of their own...
Does this lend credence to the conspiracy theory that antivirus vendors are, in some way, behind the very viruses they're supposed to remove?
Behind them? In my experiences trying to fucking remove Norton Internet Security, I really wonder if it is one in itself...
Cue up the bullshit, meaningless response! Boy it's great having a voice in government, even if it's constantly ignored!
No PAC's associated with him? After all, they don't have to report their donations and can, themselves, donate directly to a candidate's campaign.
Here's Jon Stewart discussing Colbert's PAC, Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.
Monticello, Minnesota fight with TDS...
(Link fail Q.Q.)
Go ask the people of Wilson, North Carolina how well private interests provided high speed to them.
Then ask the people of Monticello, Minnesota
These state-sponsored monopolies have gone on long enough. If the 'private market' market will not meet the demand, what else are people supposed to do? Just deal with shit-tier internet at exorbitant prices? Bullshit on that...the major ISPs are no worse than the MAFIAA or the Cartels.
They're selectively enforced. Believe me, if they need a reason to bust your ass and can't come up with anything else, they'll be perfectly happy to break out that shit if they need to.