[Vote for Net Neutrality]

Prokofy, there is an old saying: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Valiant attempt though, I commend you

[Vote for Net Neutrality]

18 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I'm not going to say if you're right or wrong but if your government really is the most irresponsible entity possible, you have a problem that is far more serious than this whole net neutrality question can possibly ever be.

Very true. Unfortunately.

16 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Hmmm... Now what sort of thing could do that, seeing as all of the infrastructure is owned by private companies?

Consumer discipline. Like.. not buying their service? There is no easy solution here. But you sure as hell don't take the irresponsible route and just offer power to the central government without hard restrictions, such as a Constitutional Amendment that clearly defines what they can and cannot do.

15 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

You really don't want to take this line of argument unless you're trying to make the case for very heavy-handed regulation. The incumbents have repeatedly succeeded in feather-bedding their natural monopoly rents to pay for opening their facilities to competition, but they're always starving and sabotaging those "competitors."

What's worse, Pai not only proposes to remove the current competition-promoting regulatory regime but further to prevent competition by restricting pro-competitive actions of state and local governments.

(On the plus side, that overreach is almost certainly unconstitutional, so the whole action may be thrown out in the courts -- or not, as Trump has busily stacked the courts with more captives to industry interests.)

All this is in stark contrast to the UK where there actually is substantial and (comparatively) widespread competition for broadband services because of aggressive regulation.

The US "Net Neutrality" rules are really far too little, far too late, and that's a big reason that American internet bandwidth is among the worst and most expensive in the developed world. (In telecom, Canada can always be counted on to be even more backwards.) Pai's industry patrons and cronies will do anything to perpetuate their rapacious gouging of US customers while driving the nation's telecom infrastructure even further behind world standards.

Let me be clear: I don't want the federal government anywhere near the internet. I just offered the only truly LEGAL way for them to regulate it. An Amendment. Any I don't think anyone thinks companies lobbying and buying how regulations are written is good.

14 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Competition... The great rallying cry of the Free Market Fallacy believers.

Beginning of this century, here in the UK, we supposedly had 'competition' in the ISP game...

OffCom, the Govt. funded official 'watchdog/regulator', disagreed.

Technically, we had all these new isp's all over the place, cable tv companies, mobile phone companies etc., but the reality was that who ever you signed up with, sooner or later your internet traveled along BT copper or BT glass.

British Telecom, a privatised monopoly, were the Gatekeepers, they owned all the damn cable and controlled all the access, and THEY set all the prices.

They set the charges for isp's to use their cable so high that there was hardly any damn profit, so you *could* pay for Smallville Interweb Ltd, say 40.99 a month for throttled  "fair use policy" bandwidth, or pay BT 39.99 a month for unlimited bandwidth.

Offcom officially stated that BT's pricing policies were stifling growth of internet usage and e-commerce in this country. Situations improved a bit since then but realistically BT still largely set bandwidth prices in the UK.

All that waffle earlier in the trhread of what the internet is "data vs hardware" is bs... What the internet really is, is CABLES, running from point a to point b. A multi node auto re-routing network, designed to bypass lost nodes. It was created by the US Govt. as a backup civil defence coms system, that a) was based on civilian hardware and cable in non nuke-target areas, and which b) could reroute around nuked nodes, so the Buttburg Militia could meet up with the National Guard Remnant to oppose Commie ground troup, when they emerged from their tunnel under the North Pole and invaded John Wayne's house...

However, now a small number of big firms control most of that cable, and the chances for small firms to 'compete' in a free market simply does not exist. That's why we have... Regulation of markets by outside agencies like governments, to STOP Engulf & Devour Inc owning the whole damn shebang. Anti-Trust, Anti Monopoly, and Anti-Cartel regulations are commonplace in our modern world. The dream of the Free Market Fallacy died with the "South Seas Bubble" a long time ago.

The Buttburg Interweb Co, Inc, cannot compete with Engulf & Devour Web Inc, because they can't AFFORD to lay their own glass across the entire damn continent side by side with Engulf & Devours.

As I said in response to a similarly foolish post elsewhere...

It's like expecting Billy-Bob Nomates, a minimum wage trainee car mechanic from Des Moines, to open a huge factory, and produce an innovative range of new cars in large enough numbers to put Ford & GM out of business. And trust me, Billy-Bob's innovative idea of using SQUARE WHEELS, won't help him win.

 

Good grief. First of all.. who cares what a foreign government is doing. Thats their problem. And second.. how the hell would you know what a free market looks like? We haven't had one in longer than anyone has been alive truth be told, likely longer outside the U.S. Clearly you have bought into the whole 'It has to be done by a central authority or it can't be done at all!' mentality. There's no helping you. Cute analogies though, points for creativity if nothing else. Scoff and call it foolish all you like. Some of us might want to see about thinking outside the box from time to time.

12 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I removed the parts of your post that conflicted with your call to action.

Thank you for supporting Net Neutrality.

You edit my post to suit you and you expect me to take you seriously? Yea... no. Next?

.............

I'm sure more folks are gonna try to say how we have no choice but to give more power to the federal government to solve all out problems for us. Have at it. Its not like there aren't enough examples to show why thats a bad idea. But if you have to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result? I think we have a word for that, as I said before. Insanity. But sure, lets go with what those that think that way seem to want to do. Lets see what the internet looks like in the USA after a few years of changing political winds now that the foot is in the door. Lets see the results of how they saved us from the mean big companies. I mean.. we all know that someone thinking up a better tech or better way of doing something never happens right? Hardware can't be bought or sold after all. Big companies can never fail. And government invents everything!

Have fun peoples, noone can say I didn't try.

 

[Vote for Net Neutrality]

Let me get this straight.. you want to vote for the Federal Government to keep trying to control the internet? Because that's what this 'Net Neutrality' crap is. You want the most irresponsible entity possible to keep putting its greedy fingers where it absolutely does not belong? Seriously? Their utterly stupid ideas change with the freaking political wind at the drop of a hat, and they have screwed up every program they run whenever they reach outside their jurisdiction, and even make disasters of the ones they are REQUIRED to run, and you want to keep giving them MORE power outside their scope? The FCC never had ANY business getting involved or claiming the internet is now a 'utility' for them to control.

These big companies that you hate so much that are abusing the bandwidth.. that they provide and own the hardware for.. are also the ones that can weather the storm of any new regulations costs, and in fact are involved in the lobbying for how these rules are written! The little guys that might behave better if allowed into the market to compete CAN'T survive the regulation's cost of compliance. 

Net Neutrality is at best a really bad joke, and at worst a lie to get government foot in the door for control and regulation of internet content. To be suckered into actually supporting this is sad. This is insanity.

How about we look toward something useful, like figuring out how to get competition back into the market and force these ISPs to compete for our business?