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Net Neutrality!!!!!!

MikeD

I'm Your Huckleberry
Staff member
Administrator
Global Moderator
"Philanthropist"
You may want to consider calling congress to try and get this stopped.

https://www.battleforthenet.com/

If the FCC gets their way then ISPs could block you from viewing gun forums, or pretty much anything, because they don't like them!!

...Or force the sites to pay in order to be accessed via their network.

Pretty much adjust bandwidth as they feel appropriate for whatever they want.
 
Consider it done...

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers like Comcast & Verizon should not control what we see and do online. In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The rules prohibit Internet providers from blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—"fast lanes" for sites that pay, and slow lanes for everyone else.


Nearly everyone who understands and depends on the Internet supports net neutrality, whether they're startup founders, activists, gamers, politicians, investors, comedians, YouTube stars, or typical Internet users who just want their Internet to work as advertised—regardless of their political party.

They Companies are Team Cable. They want to end net neutrality, to control & tax the Internet.
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Cable companies are famous for high prices and poor service. Several rank as the most hated companies in America. Now, they're lobbying the FCC and Congress to end net neutrality. Why? It's simple: if they win the power to slow sites down, they can bully any site into paying millions to escape the "slow lane."

This would amount to a tax on every sector of the American economy. Every site would cost more, since they'd all have to pay big cable. Worse, it would extinguish the startups and independent voices who can't afford to pay. If we lose net neutrality, the Internet will never be the same.
 
I started hating on cable back in '85 when they started putting commercials on it. Pay TV was not supposed to have commercials. That was one of the reasons why you paid to get it. I cancelled and never went back.

I have two DVRs and a big antenna. I record shows and I never watch anything in real time.

But this is definitely an issue in the business where I used to work because we transferred a lot of data on the web.

I don't believe that ISPs should throttle or censor, unless that's the service that you agreed to when you paid for it.

The consumer should be able to buy any reasonable level of access without prejudice.
 
Man I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this part:

This will kill the open marketplace that has enabled millions of small businesses and created America’s 5 most valuable companies.

Ummm... it's those same most valuable monopolistic companies pushing to make this money grab happen! The market we had (which was far from a free market) created these monsters. Now they want to take over the internet and jack up the rates like some Mafia hoodlum.

Are we sure the market we had was that great?

Internet providers will effectively be able to impose a tax on every sector of the American economy.

Only government can impose a tax.

This is about business wanting to raise its rates and get us all to pay more. This is where my libertarian leanings kick in, because if I own an ISP, or a cable, or a fiber optic wave guide, I would like the ability to charge whatever rate I feel comfortable charging my customers.

If I charge too much, somebody will undercut me to get the business and I will go broke. If I charge too little I won't be able to meet my expenses and I will go broke.

Now this logic falls down if you only have two or three giant companies providing all these services, and they engage in price-fixing or cooperation with the same intent, spending Millions to Lobby Congress and rip you off.

See if that's what's going on then net neutrality is just a Band-Aid on the real problem, which is allowing monopolistic businesses like Amazon and Microsoft to even exist.

I mean if you're going to start flinging around noble words about Level Playing Fields and neutrality, then you better not allow corporations so large that they have undue influence over the government.

When the government allowed the baby bells to reform, they promised that this would allow them to deliver rural internet service at reasonable prices, and other services at reduced prices.

Of course now that the Monopoly exists again the struggle is back on.

Inexpensive rural internet never happened, the whole reality changed over from wires to wireless.

There was a time, I believe, when in order to have the Miracles of modern industrialization we had to have giant corporations. For Ford to build the Model T for a price that ordinary people could afford, the Ford Company needed a huge operation.

A host of small corporations with the same total capacity to build cars would not be able to do so at an economical price. Ordinary People could not afford these cars, and most of the car companies would go out of business. This is in fact what happened, with American car companies evolving from hundreds to The Big Three.

But the world of manufacturing has changed and the world of data has likewise changed. The old rules are no good.

I'm not sure how to reconcile the free market with the undesirable existence of Mega corporations.
 
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Well of course I vote for neutrality.

All those megaliths of the communications industry are part of the swamp we want to drain!

But I want predatory business practices as the exception and not the rule. Is America the biggest predator on the planet (some folks would like you to believe that.) I'd like to think that we're the most charitable of Nations but I've heard that that's not so true as we are led to believe.
 
Internet access is a morphing creature.

In the late '80 [before Internet] I paid for data/com access by the month and for data units. Anybody remember The Source [owned by The Reader's Digest, but nobody remembers that either]?

I bought my first personal computer in 1979 and was online at 300 baud a week later. A month later I was selling data-base managing software to my stock broker. It would transfer his online data to my programs that would automate his models for analysis and give him real-time alarms of threshold crossings. The next year Visi-Calc was available and I was providing online service to insurance companies for making bids on Section 79 contracts.

At first service was charge by calculating time + speed + data costs. Just a few percent of the US population was "online."

Then yada-yada-yada for 20 years and everybody is online all the time. Today data service has similarities to utilities. Awful things happen to people if sewer, electricity, or water are interrupted. Frankly, I know people who would rather lose their water service than have an interruption to their Facebook feed.

So what is the proper balance between commercial business vs. utility paradigms as it relates to electronic data delivery?

I don't know.
 
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Internet access is a morphing creature.

In the late '80 [before Internet] I paid for data/com access by the month and for data units. Anybody remember The Source [owned by The Reader's Digest, but nobody remembers that either]?

I bought my first personal computer in 1979 and was online at 300 baud . . .


Scoop, this should take you back a couple years.
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I still keep these two old babies in the Boneyard. I'm not sure why . . . maybe someday they'll be antiques. Somewhere along the line I lost the PC XT. I think I traded it to somebody for a keyboard.

From the days of fat cables and manual switches.
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I am really hoping that the free market will take care of this business without too much government intervention. The Internet isn't just a utility in the normal sense because it spans the world. It is a mega utility, because it is the one which is available to every human being (with access to a cheap device.) We're all paying cable companies and isps for access. I don't see that changing. I just see more of them springing up.

Knowledge is power and data is knowledge. The gatekeeper to that date as a pretty important "person."

Imagine if the whole world only had one sewer system. Everybody would have to be on it. It would be perfectly reasonable to charge Everyone by how many gallons of sewage they made. But you don't get direct access. You need a middle man or a broker.

Pretty soon you'll hear Bernie supporters screaming about "free internet service for all!" After all, you can't go to college nowadays without the internet (and they're all going to get free college, right?)

I think sometime in the near future there's going to be an upstart that puts an alternative internet server in orbit around the Earth. Direct solar power, no air conditioning required, difficult to take out with a terrorist attack. What's not to like?

Except for the fact that it won't be convenient for humans to run the thing. It will need to be run by robots that don't need food, oxygen, water, piss breaks, or stable temperatures.

After all, the logical evolution of the internet is Skynet. A physically inaccessible system that is designed to provide its own security.
 
Net Neutrality My Ass...

GAME OVER MAN...GAME OVER !!

Gun Forums will be some of the 1st bastions the liberals will decide to tax or get rid of...

But that filthy camel humpin' Hadji will still be able to radicalize online...

You want Justice...!? Forget it...

This world IS going to Hell in a hand basket...and... I'll be there to kick the dirt into the hole.

See ya on the other side...
post apocalypse.
 
Not sure how fast change will come, there will be legal challenges to this.
 
You all are watching way too much CNN and MSNBC! :rolleyes: Take a deep breath--everything is going to be fine. The marketplace will take of us. :)

Remember, this was a Nobama monstrosity from a mere 4 years ago. It is akin to Nobamaphones. Do you think EVERYONE should have the same internet access speeds? My, that is awfully Robin Hoody of you ... :rolleyes: ;)
 
If it was a free market I would believe that it would take care of itself. Unfortunately it is not; in many areas Comcast is the only show in town, there are no other terrestrial options. In others its Charter, etc. Because the carriers have already been allowed to monopolize certain areas, the consumers have no options and are subjust to the will of the ISP's.

I normally agree with a free market, but in this case its not a free market for a large number of consumers.
 
We only have momopolies because the govt promotes them.

I believe this was just part one of a long series of changes to come.
 
I live in a VERY rural area; no comcast, no Xfinity, no Time Warner, etc, etc, no cable period and will never see it. My internet went from dial up to satellite to finally DSL. I don't think it had anything to do with government getting out of the internet business but my service continues to get better and the price has went down. Today my DSL provider asked for permission to walk my property as they want to string new cable to our home--almost 1/2 mile. They tell me this will get our speed in the 25 mb range for about the same money. Nothing like cable can do but for DSL and providers who are losing customers to wireless, I am happy about it. I never thought the government did a very good job running anything so I am okay at least for now with businesses doing it. Time will tell.
 
Cable is available here but I quit paying for cable when they started putting advertisements on pay TV.

I have a digital subscriber line as well as a regular phone line and the cell phones. Staying in communication is not an issue.

But I get my television from a regular antenna on the roof and I screen out the commercials by having a TiVo DVR. Everyone I know has cable and of course they all think I am eccentric..
 
Net neutrality only came to be a couple years ago and was an Obama administration piece of legislation that big corporation ISPs (google) helped to write. It meant tax dollars to pay for expanded government and unaccountable bureaucracy.

So I’m happy to say goodbye to net neutrality. I’ll take less government on any given day.
 
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