Bumping this to say that the FCC is proposing to roll back net neutrality regulations with the questionably named “Restore Internet Freedom for all Americans. If you are concerned at all (and you should be) then you can … [deleted by Bone, including linked Verge article]
Yes, I’m terribly oppressed by being able to reach all content on the internet equally. Without my ISP deciding which internet content I should be able to access I will never be free.
They love the Orwellian shit.
While obviously it’s not in their best interests to do so, I’m starting to think the only way to change minds about this is for a major ISP to announce a fifty dollar per month fee to stream Fox News or view conservative websites, to drive the real issue home for the Congresscritters and a portion of the public.
That’s why they’d never do anything like that. They’re not going to become obviously shitty on day 1 - that would only serve to rally people to the cause. They’re going to lay low for a few months and then start doing subtle behind the scenes stuff - make some streaming services run worse and demand payment from the streaming service for “priority access”, or make other services inferior to their own streaming offering, that sort of thing.
We won’t reach the level of “you can’t go to amazon.com, let’s redirect you to walmart.com” for a while yet - it’ll be eased in over years.
This is my understanding as well. This is because the full list of cogent, reasonable arguments against net neutrality is:
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[li]…[/li][/ul]
…That was it. This issue is an absolute no-brainer. It’s like… Imagine if Trump’s EPA head spearheaded an initiative called, “The Leading Environmental Freedom Act” whose sole purpose was to remove regulations that prevented companies from legally dumping lead waste into municipal water supplies. That’s the level we’re operating at. “Here’s a government regulation that protects a crucial public good from serious harm at virtually no significant cost. We’re going to get rid of it now. Freedom, yay!”
:smack:
If one’s sole, solitary measure of freedom is, “Less influence from the government”, and one doesn’t care even the slightest bit about influence from corporations… Then yes, we are technically more “free” if we get rid of net neutrality. Also, one is technically more “free” if corporations are allowed to dump lead in our drinking water.
Give it time. Net neutrality rules aren’t dead yet. This is how they want you to think about it - “If you let us segregate our content, all that will happen is that we make it easier and cheaper to use our services!” That’s the sales pitch.
But ask yourself - once it’s become clear that these rules are gone, why wouldn’t Comcast decide that Netflix is expensive and a competitor and it would be so easy to make it look bad by throttling connections to it? It’s not like it has to worry too much about competition. Do you seriously trust freakin’ Comcast not to make that decision? Removing net neutrality rules allows for all kinds of disgustingly anti-consumer actions.
This is libertarianism at its most… Let’s just say “optimistic”, because I’m friendly and what I would normally say is probably better suited for the pit. “Don’t worry, if a product gets worse, there will be competition!”
Yes, even if the barrier to entry is virtually insurmountable. Even if the existing companies have an absurdly huge head start. Even if one of the largest tech companies in the world, with major ideological backing and huge demand and a clearly better product tried and failed.
That last point should be the nail in the coffin to the idea that competition will just spring up, by the way. Google Fiber is straight-up better, pushed by a company people like a hell of a lot more, badly wanted by a great many people, ideologically supported by the company pushing it… And they couldn’t make it work. Indeed, it’s fair to argue it was doomed from the start.
So given that… Citation needed. Prove it. Prove that, if people become unsatisfied with companies like Comcast and Time Warner, competitive alternatives will spring up. Don’t just blindly appeal to free market dogma, as if the invisible hand of the market is a magic wand you can wave to make intractable problems of infrastructure just vanish into thin air. What possible reason could you have for making this baffling, baseless claim?
Bingo.
Yes that’s the problem when arguing with the anti-capitalists. You must assume the role of technician, engineer, marketer, CFO, and CEO for myriad industries. All they have to say is “there ought to be a law”, and that’s that.
How would you, personally, fare better without net neutrality?
Do you think the internet has been a force that worked in favor of capitalism, or against it?
If you think it has been a force that worked in favor of capitalism, do you believe it’s because it allows consumers and businesses a new way to connect and that it can support new business models?
If so, do you think that allowing a handful of powerful ISPs to control who can access which entities on the internet will increase or decrease the power and effectiveness of the free market created by the internet?
You claim to be “pro capitalist” and yet you oppose what’s easily the most remarkable tool for the free market in the last century - the neutral internet. In the name of capitalism, you advocate that the market should be controlled by a small number of players who do not have to compete nor have the consumer’s, other business’, or the market’s interest at heart.
What you actually advocate is to stifle the free market - to give a few corporations control over the internet - to decide who can succeed and who can fail, who can reach their customers, what business models they can use, and who can extort customers and businesses as a normal matter of operation simply to exist on the market.
Your reaction is purely a knee-jerk. If you support capitalism and the free market, you would recognize that a neutral internet is the most powerful tool in the world to promote such a thing. That the internet has been such a tool. Instead, you say hear the word “regulation” and reject it without any thought as to what it actually means.
This isn’t a radical new idea imposed on the internet. The internet has always been neutral, and that’s what has made it such a remarkable success. Net neutrality regulations simply keep the internet as it has always been - as a wildly successful tool of the free market - in the era where a few giant corporations have managed to gain control over the vast majority of American’s access to it, and who want to exploit that control in an anti-market fashion.
You “pro capitalist” types should be the biggest advocates for network neutrality, but you can’t even see it. You cannot comprehend that a regulation does not necessarily mean “government takeover”, and so you advocate for the restriction of that free market while claiming your opponents are anti-capitalist. It’s bullshit.
- makes call *
[deleted by Bone]
Does anyone understand what this has anything to do with? Because tbh, this is just gibberish to me. It clearly has no relation to what else is going on in the thread.
As a reminder, from the registration agreement:
Please do not post as a call to action.
[/moderating]
Yes! Much in the same way regulations against dumping heavy metals in municipal water supplies are motivated by “hypothetical harms and prophecies of doom”. Well, okay, not really. More by realistic predictions about the only reasons anyone would want these regulations to not exist. But sure, we can use your wording. You absolute fucking cretin.
Sorry, I’d forgotten about that, I won’t do it again.
Like SenorBeef, I think it’s weird to see the libertarian and free-market types come down on the anti-neutrality side, but then I see comments that imply that in many cases, they just don’t understand the issue, and are responding with a knee-jerk “regulation bad” reaction.
And that’s ironic, because if you don’t like regulation, you want net neutrality. Your choice isn’t between regulated net-neutrality and unregulated freedom woo-hah! It’s between a little regulation that enforces a simple policy of equal access for all and the alternative of an ever-increasing amount of regulation as telecommunications companies exercise their newfound freedom to restrict network traffic in new and novel ways, and the FCC and congress repeatedly step in to pass rules and laws to reign them in, and dictate what they can and cannot do in this arena.
That’s an angle I hadn’t thought of. Imagine all the roads were privatized, and in the past roads were simple and free - everyone could drive on any road whenever they wanted. But then the road owners started imposing all sorts of limitations. Only red cars can drive east/west from 4pm-6pm. People from a certain city couldn’t use the roads to drive to Taco Bell. A whole mess of complicated rules. (I almost said regulations here, but they’re only evil regulation when originating from the government).
And the government came in and made a law that said “for a flat fee, anyone can drive anywhere just like they used to”, would libertarians oppose it vehemently? I’d imagine they would, because a labyrinthine network of rules by an owner is always closer to their dogmatic view of freedom to them than a simple, fair regulated system that practically results in more freedom for everyone else. But then what if the practical consequences of such a thing were the government trying to step in and curb each impractical rule the owners imposed rather than simply designating that everyone was free to drive where they want? Sure, they would oppose both, but if we knew the situation was going to demand some sort of curbs on the powers of the gatekeepers then we’d a call for more, smaller regulations to try to curb the worst of the problems. That would actually create the greater legalistic mess and more regulations, with more unintended consequences.
As far as regulation goes, “internet traffic is all treated equally, just like it always has been” is just about the least disruptive, most consumer-friendly regulation you can have. It’s just maintaining the status quo, which we know works fantastically. Allowing ISPs to discriminate traffic is actually the risky new idea that might backfire.
And so you see the dangers and perplexing results of a dogmatic view of “regulation” - conservatives, who generally should want to stick with what works with no dramatic changes would rather throw out the successful status quo, fight against those who want to keep the internet the same. Libertarians, who could point to the free and open internet as the greatest tool of the free market ever devised, want to hand over control of all information exchange and commerce on this new medium to a handful of corporations who have already proven themselves to be consumer-unfriendly, introducing a sort of gatekeeping that might even be considered worse than anything we saw in the robber barons era. And all of these twisted, perverse motivations simply stem from a knee-jerk reaction that regulation is bad.
Lose it to who? Every place I’ve ever lived, I had exactly two choices about internet access:
- Put up with whatever bullshit my provider pulls on me.
- Don’t have internet.
If Comcast decides to throttle the fuck out of Netflix, then I just don’t have Netflix anymore. I don’t have any other options. And it’s not like I live out in the boonies, or in some impoverished area: I’m in one of the richest regions of the US, and in the heart of the tech industry.
If you’re not out in the boonies, you should at least have a choice between a wired ISP like cable and a wireless option like 4G. Probably slower DSL and satellite, too. And don’t forget, dialup is still an option! I used dialup as recently as 2009 when I got pissed at the cable company. The Straight Dope works fine over dialup.
I agree, they’re not very good choices, and dialup just won’t work for streaming, but if you absolutely must have Netflix, and the cable company blocks or throttles it, you can pay more for 4G service, in order to send a signal to the cable company. If thousands of others do the same, it can be effective. There’s also the classic option: “go without”. It’s extreme, but it will put pressure on the telecom giants, too, if enough people do it.
Not as effective or easy as switching from Myspace to Facebook, however, or from walmart.com to Amazon. Agreed on that point.
Net neutrality is critical for 2 reasons:
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A lack on competition among ISP’s.
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It prevents large web-based companies (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) from buying preferred access, which would allow them to neuter all competition from smaller companies.
The apt analogy is with the railroads of the later 19th century. They had limited infrastructure and were owned by a handful of monopolistic companies. The large corporations (Standard Oil chief among them) were paying the railroads providers extra to give them “preferred access.” It crippled all competition and led to rate hikes so severe that Congress had to intervene. The exact same characteristics exist with the internet in 2017. Net neutrality is necessary.
For all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth in this thread, as far as I can tell, no one has shared anything bad that actually happened but would have been prevented by net neutrality.
… because the internet has been neutral from the start, and only recently have ISPs started to reach outside of that, which is the FCC slapped down. How are people supposed to be injured by illegal things?
That’s like saying “I haven’t heard anyone dying of arsenic from public water supplies - so I think it’s pretty clear we can do without regulations about the amount of arsenic in public water supplies”
Net Neutrality is not some newfangled idea being forced upon the internet. The internet has been neutral all along. This is maintaining the status quo.