End of Net Neutrality

[Michiganball]

Yea the world ended because of Obama, all he's fault of course, though that would explain why this place currently feels like hell. Down to the orange devil in a blond weave.

 

Edited December 16, 2017 by Michiganball

[Moiraine]

So sick of all the lies being told about this. I've now seen many people saying things like: "This will just make it go back to normal, to what it was before Obama passed the net neutrality law."
 

Net Neutrality has always existed. The telecomm companies had found a work around, so that work around was stopped. What the law from a couple years ago did was kept the status quo.

 

But these mega corporations know that all they have to f****** say is "Big Gov'mt" and "Obama" and 40% of the population is putty in their hands. Then they make it worth it for the right people to do what they want, and they get their way.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Moiraine

[Danny Bateman]

4 minutes ago, Moiraine said:So sick of all the lies being told about this. I've now seen many people saying "This will just make it go back to normal, to what it was before Obama passed the net neutrality law."
 

Net Neutrality has always existed. The telecomm companies had found a work around, so that work around was stopped. What the law from a couple years ago did was kept the status quo.

 

But these mega corporations know that all they have to f****** say is "Big Gov'mt" and "Obama" and 40% of the population is putty in their hands. Then they make it worth it for the right people to do what they want, and they get their way.

 

You should ask people what the hell "normal internet" was before Obama.

 

It's horribly depressing how difficult it is for our populace to learn even the most fundmental understanding of major issues beyond the weakest partisan talking points.

[funhusker]

Listened to Glenn Beck a little last night while driving until he made my head explode.

 

Literally in the same breathe, "If ISP want to limit info, more power to them, it is is poor business model. We need an unregulated internet to make things possible like the Arab Spring and allow people full access to the information they seek!".

 

How do people not see the bulls#!t?

[Danny Bateman]

5 hours ago, funhusker said:

Listened to Glenn Beck a little last night while driving until he made my head explode.

 

Literally in the same breathe, "If ISP want to limit info, more power to them, it is is poor business model. We need an unregulated internet to make things possible like the Arab Spring and allow people full access to the information they seek!".

 

How do people not see the bulls#!t?

 

They trick themselves into believe Republican dogma about deregulation and a more free market being the answer to all of our ills.

 

What information does Glenn Beck believe people currently want but are unable to access due to net neutrality? If that's actually what he said it comes across as horribly misinformed and ignorant. 

[funhusker]

Just now, dudeguyy said:

 

They trick themselves into believe Republican dogma about deregulation and a more free market being the answer to all of our ills.

 

What information does Glenn Beck believe people currently want but are unable to access due to net neutrality? If that's actually what he said it comes across as horribly misinformed and ignorant. 

That's what he said, maybe not verbatim, but it was his "point".  He, and his producer, felt if Comcast or whomever wanted to filter information the free market would let them know it was unacceptable by choosing another provider (this is where I started yelling like a looney alone in my car, where else are we consumers going to go?) He then went on to say his point about the importance of unregulated internet to insure we citizens were getting all available information.

 

I've started to respect Beck a little over the last couple years because of his stance against the Trump ilk, but it disappeared pretty quickly last night.

 

[84HuskerLaw]

On 12/14/2017 at 4:38 PM, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

Here's where I just don't understand the Republicans.

 

They support certain issues that I see could come back to really bight them in the ass later.

 

Let's say George Soros goes out and buys up the vast majority of ISP companies.  Then, he manipulates liberal websites to be more prominent on the internet than conservative sites.  Would they be happy then?  Liberals wouldn't be happy if the Koch brothers would do that.

 

Keeping Net Neutrality helps ensure voices are heard.

If all the horrors that the regulation lovers actually suggest (thev have not so far), then it is just as easy to reimpose net control as it was to terminate.   The internet has been so great without it, why on Earth would we want it now?   What bad experiences has anyone suffered before Obama and Dems imposed it?   I would really like to know.  The internet has thrived and exploded into such a popular, highly functional system.   Why would we want to stifle it so now?   The free market is the most effective and efficient way to improve society and make people's lives better.   The more open, free and and uncontrolled the more competition will develop bigger, faster, smarter and CHEAPER.   

[zoogs]

I love the "give unchecked power to corporations to shape the world, we can always throw something in at any time" philosophy. It's so beautifully innocent.

 

It's true, the world did not know suffering before Obama became President.

[funhusker]

8 minutes ago, 84HuskerLaw said:

If all the horrors that the regulation lovers actually suggest (thev have not so far), then it is just as easy to reimpose net control as it was to terminate.   The internet has been so great without it, why on Earth would we want it now?   What bad experiences has anyone suffered before Obama and Dems imposed it?   I would really like to know.  The internet has thrived and exploded into such a popular, highly functional system.   Why would we want to stifle it so now?   The free market is the most effective and efficient way to improve society and make people's lives better.   The more open, free and and uncontrolled the more competition will develop bigger, faster, smarter and CHEAPER.   

There is a time and a place for a free market.  Hopefully and ideally that is MOST of the time.  However, how is a "start up" to begin digging up neighborhoods to lay the fiber optics necessary to create their own service?  This would be more extreme of an analogy of me saying, "I'm going to start selling things out of my garage to be the next Amazon in a few years.  Meanwhile, I should grin and bear it while Amazon charges me at 500% margin".

 

[Danny Bateman]

31 minutes ago, funhusker said:

That's what he said, maybe not verbatim, but it was his "point".  He, and his producer, felt if Comcast or whomever wanted to filter information the free market would let them know it was unacceptable by choosing another provider (this is where I started yelling like a looney alone in my car, where else are we consumers going to go?) He then went on to say his point about the importance of unregulated internet to insure we citizens were getting all available information.

 

I've started to respect Beck a little over the last couple years because of his stance against the Trump ilk, but it disappeared pretty quickly last night.

 

 

Hmmm....

I'd like to believe in the conservative company line about how the free market eventually sorts everything out. Indeed, innovation and competition are crucial to producing a lot of very important advancements for improving the human condition. 

But we're at a point in history where it's more than fair to assert large companies and corporations have way too much freedom and power. The telecom industry amounts to an oligopoly. Some of these mergers that are going on are truly frightening from a consumer POV. 

 

Unabashed free marketism isn't the solution when they already have unparalleled freedom and power to do what they want. This Congress and administration has done nothing but remove the few remaining restraints they do have. 

Telecoms are a particularly poor example of why we need more deregulation. It may seem fine for a lot of these affluent, financially secure conservative minds to preach "more freedom!" but what about Joe Blow in rural America with one internet provider. If Comcast has a monopoly on internet in a rural area, what option is left for an average American when they overcharge for crappy service? There isn't one/ And this is where the arguments of Pai & Beck & all the other anti-NN shills come tumbling down.

[Landlord]

I mean, first of all, there isn't even such thing as a free market in the first place. The entire thing is a total non-existent myth.

 

But let's be very clear about the language we use - net neutrality is an unregulated internet. If we get rid of it, that is a regulated internet - regulated by ISP's who monopolize connections. The government keeping net neutrality laws is keeping the internet freely (not financially speaking) accessible, it is not imposing anything on the internet. This should be a perfect example of what good government's role is from a conservative perspective, but too many conservatives have no idea what the idea even means anymore.

[HuskerNBigD]

5 hours ago, Landlord said:

I mean, first of all, there isn't even such thing as a free market in the first place. The entire thing is a total non-existent myth.

 

But let's be very clear about the language we use - net neutrality is an unregulated internet. If we get rid of it, that is a regulated internet - regulated by ISP's who monopolize connections. The government keeping net neutrality laws is keeping the internet freely (not financially speaking) accessible, it is not imposing anything on the internet. This should be a perfect example of what good government's role is from a conservative perspective, but too many conservatives have no idea what the idea even means anymore.

Agreed. Sometimes good can from the government and this was an example of that. We will see over the next few years the ramifications of the decision, Netflix will get taken advantage of, for sure. 

[RedDenver]

14 hours ago, 84HuskerLaw said:

The free market is the most effective and efficient way to improve society and make people's lives better.   The more open, free and and uncontrolled the more competition will develop bigger, faster, smarter and CHEAPER.   

First, as @Landlord said, the free market is an abstract concept that doesn't really exist. Second, the free market concept is theorized to be more effective and cheaper, but the evidence doesn't really support this (it depends on a lot of other factors like the type of market and the distribution assumptions), and neither the theory nor the evidence support making people's lives better. Third, the internet is NOT open, free, and uncontrolled like you suggest because there's a limited number of companies that can provide that service. The ISP's control how users can connect and interact with the internet. In fact Net Neutrality exactly does the things you claim the market will do: ensures that the internet remains open, free, and uncontrolled.

[methodical]

On 12/16/2017 at 8:23 PM, 84HuskerLaw said:

If all the horrors that the regulation lovers actually suggest (thev have not so far), then it is just as easy to reimpose net control as it was to terminate.   The internet has been so great without it, why on Earth would we want it now?   What bad experiences has anyone suffered before Obama and Dems imposed it?   I would really like to know.  The internet has thrived and exploded into such a popular, highly functional system.   Why would we want to stifle it so now?   The free market is the most effective and efficient way to improve society and make people's lives better.   The more open, free and and uncontrolled the more competition will develop bigger, faster, smarter and CHEAPER.   

 

1) The FCC reclassifying the ISP as title 2 originally to enforce network neutrality was in direct response to them pulling some of the things us "regulation lovers" are warning about.  They started doing this years ago.

2) ISP's are local monopolys in most cases and you cant really rely on a free market as there is no free market by their nature.  They are granted exclusive agreements to run the cable to the homes in a municipality in most cases and that investment in infrastructure is then theirs alone.  No other ISP can come in and use it without having to lay the same cable again which is a huge barrier to entry.  The large national ISPs collude to split up territory because it doesn't make sense to try and rerun the same infrastructure over and over there'd be no sense in making that investment multiple times to fight for one customer.  So unless the government was to take over last mile cable/fiber to the home/business and offer the lines to any ISP at wholesale you aren't going to get a free market economy for Internet Service Providers.  So you can just stop the regurgitation of the free market line, because that isn't happening any more than running utility lines and power are going to be solved by the free market.

3) Stifle? LOL, no network neutrality is how the internet worked for the first 10+ years, it lowered the barrier of entry for new businesses.  NN codifies that ISP's can't do the things they were starting to do in the past 10 years to double dip or kill competing services by charging companies for good access to their ISP customers or blocking other services from competing with services ISP's themselves were trying to offer at a premium (like blocking voip so customers had to order their in house phone service).

 

NN is about your free and open and uncontrolled access to information on the internet not to be f'd with by your ISP and whoever told you otherwise sold you a line of bulls#!t.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2017 by methodical

[Making Chimichangas]

If all the horrors that the regulation lovers actually suggest (thev have not so far), then it is just as easy to reimpose net control as it was to terminate.   The internet has been so great without it, why on Earth would we want it now?   What bad experiences has anyone suffered before Obama and Dems imposed it?   I would really like to know.  The internet has thrived and exploded into such a popular, highly functional system.   Why would we want to stifle it so now?   The free market is the most effective and efficient way to improve society and make people's lives better.   The more open, free and and uncontrolled the more competition will develop bigger, faster, smarter and CHEAPER. -- 84HuskerLaw

 

"We" don't.  Republicans in Congress however, they want to stifle the internet because giant telecoms are paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes campaign contributions.

 

It's amazing.  86% of Americans favor net neutrality and yet Republicans are taking it away anyway.  I have thoughts on why Republicans are doing this, but these thoughts are my own suspicions, guessing at their ulterior motives, with no real proof.