FCC moves forward with plan to roll back net neutrality - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14864765
SolarCross wrote:Okay, so while I can see why you would regret the loss of this legislation, the fact seems to be that this legislation hadn't addressed the root cause of the US's problems anyway. Maybe it will get even worse for end-customers, I don't know, but it seems it wasn't actually helping either if the US still managed to have more expensive connectivity than almost anywhere else regardless of whether they have net-neutrality legislation or not.


Sure.

But the reason that it's as shitty as it is stems from these companies having almost unlimited power. Moving to take away what little restrictions they do have is unlikely to do anything but make everything even worse.

I'm for the big solution, I'm a communist, I'd execute them all, hand the industry over to the employees represented through Soviets.

But that's not really what we're talking about. This is a move by the Trump administration (which has a lot of members that are tied to Comcast who has been pushing for these changes) to make things worse. For today, I'm okay just saying things don't have to get shittier.
#14864767
mikema63 wrote: Information is already restricted in some form or another by the interests of large media and tech companies. Government would just be a different form of that, while being more interested in the happiness of the public in the quality of internet over how much they can bilk them for.

In reality no company or government can entirely restrict information if you really want to find it, but in either case the disinterested are going to get a skewed view.

Since it's inevitable I think it's better to run with it and provide better socialized service on a vitally important resource with bias instead of shit expensive service that everyone needs but not everyone gets and also has bias.

It is not even remotely comparable. Let's take @The Immortal Goon as an example he is on the internet morning, noon and night plotting the overthrow of evil capitalist overlords in full public view. If he were in Stalinist Russia basically advocating the same thing as the Soviet authorities wanted too they'd throw him in jail and shoot him for being slightly divergent on a few issues. Where was Marx safe to write his nasty little tracts? London, the capital of the nation of shop keepers.

State monopolies are not a uniquely communist thing but they are almost invariably terrible. British Rail, nationalised turned to shit then sold off. Royal Mail, started as a royal monopoly because HMG wanted to read everybody's correspondance to see if they were a dirty papist traitor or a loyal prod, eventually became infected with socialism, turned to shit, then sold off and then became better. British Telecom started as national monopoly, was super shit for ages, then sold off and then got better.

How did nationalising food production work out for the Ukrainians under Stalin's rule?
#14864768
SolarCross wrote:I think you should consider the possibility that the reason this legislation is being dumped is because it is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.


The incidents of blocking before 2008 from here.

At the time, the only documented violation of these principles had occurred in 2005,
when a small rural telephone company named Madison River
Communications blocked its subscribers’ access to VoIP services. It was
alleged, and the FCC apparently concluded, that Madison River had
blocked these services not for any legitimate network-management
purpose, but simply to protect the lucrative access charges it earned for
handling long-distance calls over the conventional telephone network.


That period of regulatory quiescence ended when, in late 2007,
independent tests suggested that Comcast had manipulated Internet
packet headers to suppress its customers’ use of BitTorrent, a peer-topeer
file-sharing application.


In both cases the FCC intervened, before 2008. I'm not sure whether the Trumpanzees will simply revert whatever Obama did or go further. Either way, it's plain obvious it will favor large content providers who can afford to pay for the fast lane.

mikema63 wrote:The EU has net neutrality rules and many members states have additional stronger rules in it.


This, though it looks like most OECD countries had not adopted a position in 2013.

http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-9.pdf
#14864769
What's a good rebuttal to nationalizing utilities which has been done in scores of countries with good results....STALIN STALIN STALIN USSR BAD REEEEEEEEE! :lol:

Seriously though, nationalizing utilities has been common practice for how long now? Besides I'm hardly advocating for repealing the first amendment and shooting dissenters just because I think service provision for the internet should be nationalized as a public good. :lol:
#14864770
mikema63 wrote:What's a good rebuttal to nationalizing utilities which has been done in scores of countries with good results....STALIN STALIN STALIN USSR BAD REEEEEEEEE! :lol:

Seriously though, nationalizing utilities has been common practice for how long now? Besides I'm hardly advocating for repealing the first amendment and shooting dissenters just because I think service provision for the internet should be nationalized as a public good. :lol:

Okay so which countries and good results for whom? Robbery is a common practice for how long now? All that will happen if you nationalise the ISPs in the US is that service will get worse, much worse, then eventually it will all be sold off again to fix it.
#14864772
SolarCross wrote:It is not even remotely comparable. Let's take @The Immortal Goon as an example he is on the internet morning, noon and night plotting the overthrow of evil capitalist overlords in full public view. If he were in Stalinist Russia basically advocating the same thing as the Soviet authorities wanted too they'd throw him in jail and shoot him for being slightly divergent on a few issues. Where was Marx safe to write his nasty little tracts? London, the capital of the nation of shop keepers.


What? How is this comparable to net-neutrality? Nobody has advocated any of this, it's not on any agenda. This has to do with big companies that are already doing everything they can to fuck the consumer in this case getting the power to dictate what the consumer is allowed to look at.

As mentioned, politically this polls terribly (I don't think it's a surprise that they're announcing this right before a national holiday and during a big tax-bill that's sucking up all the news).

I was honestly curious if Trumpites would come to the defense of this move.

I suppose it may have been inevitable that this would simply revert to a 165 year-old strawman argument instead of looking at the issue at all:

Marx wrote:Flat as a riddle whose answer is known in advance. Whether it was a question of the right of petition or the tax on wine, freedom of the press or free trade, the clubs or the municipal charter, protection of personal liberty or regulation of the state budget, the watchword constantly recurs, the theme remains always the same, the verdict is ever ready and invariably reads: "Socialism!" Even bourgeois liberalism is declared socialistic, bourgeois enlightenment socialistic, bourgeois financial reform socialistic. It was socialistic to build a railway where a canal already existed, and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a cane when one was attacked with a rapier.
#14864773
mikema63 wrote:Are we seriously going to pretend that utilities don't exist? :eh:

Your damning critique of asserting things is rather unconvincing.

Nationalising things is not a new solution, it has been done so many times in so many places now we know what happens, you can pretend to be oblivious to how it plays out but it won't stop history repeating itself.
#14864775
SolarCross wrote:Nationalising things is not a new solution, it has been done so many times in so many places now we know what happens, you can pretend to be oblivious to how it plays out but it won't stop history repeating itself.


That's fun. But nobody with any power has suggested nationalizing it.
#14864778
The Immortal Goon wrote:That's fun. But nobody with any power has suggested nationalizing it.

Okay, but it was raised in this thread, not by you, but it was raised, so I answered.

Now don't get me wrong, I have a few libertarian reflexes in me yet but I am reconciled with the necessity of regulation to the healthy functioning of civilisation. It should just be good regulation. On the face of it net-neutrality as a concept seems okay, implementation has potential for problems as ever, maybe it might skew prices such that light users end up subsidising heavy users maybe, I am not sure.
#14868283
Just listened to an npr interview or an FCC commissioner on the topic.

Among notable bits of bullshit.

Claims we have better internet than Europe

Claims net neutrality stops investment

Claims that the horrible regulatory over reach that kills investment is redundant and the ftc will protect us from throttling.

Claims that the former Verizon employee who is now a commissioner is totally unbiased.
#14868285
The roll back of net neutrality is going to be a fucking disaster for us.

Let's not forget that Comcast already forced Netflix to pay them money for better access to Comcast customers (Comcast refused to improve the bandwidth between Netflix delivery networks and network transit providers). Rolling back net neutrality basically means, Comcast can now stick it to individuals and small businesses more easily, in the same way they stuck it to Netflix.

The internet is gonna go to shit. Limited access based on what you pay. :hmm:

Anyway, Comcast will probably screw people in a more subtle way. I figure they will charge Content Delivery Networks and Transit providers money based on types of traffic going into the Comcast network. These folks will then push the cost up to the likes of Netflix, etc. which will then pass the price increases to us.

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