No! That will never happen because of market forces and consumer choice.
It’s not like BitTorrent was ever blocked by an ISP before.
Bricker and his cohorts are merely faith-based witnessing in this thread, which is, in fact, appropriate for this forum.
Do you have a link to that movie? Uh…it’s for a friend.
Are you still going on about this idiotic semantic thing? Good lord. I hope you at least understand that literally nobody is going to fall for this bullshit - the only possible reason to keep banging on it is to distract from rational discussion.
Speaking of which, I’d like to ask you a question about this post of yours:
In this post you seem to be acknowledging the fact that any pretense you have of this not being an open invitation for exploitation and abuse is wholly and entirely dependent on the idea that the “market” would “punish” exploitative behavior, presumably through the mechanism of other service providers flooding in to offer competing, less-evil service.
And it makes perfect sense that you would say this, because there are only four possible forces that could stop ISPs from using their newfound, hard-fought, and expensively-paid-for freedom to throw everyone under the bus in various creative ways:
- Government regulatory intervention.
- Market forces.
- Their own high moral fiber.
- Aliens invading and killing everyone.
You don’t seem to be arguing that morality or aliens are going to be keeping ISPs in line, either.
And so: RESOLVED: Bricker understands that in the absence of government regulatory intervention, market forces are the only thing that could prevent ISPs from exploiting everyone around them in various ways detrimental to both individuals and society at large.
And I’ll hazard another one:
RESOLVED: Bricker understands that in a huge number of markets around the US there are infrastructure and regulatory obstacles that utterly prevent competition from being able to spring up and thus market forces are utterly neutered and will entirely ineffective at applying any kind of restraining forces on ISPs.
And of course, based on the magic of modus tolens, of both of the above are true then the following must be true:
RESOLVED: Bricker understands that without government regulation ISPs absolutely will exploit everyone around them in various ways detrimental to both individuals and society at large (absent a sudden influx of morality or aliens.)
Thoughts?
I’d normally be sympathetic to the arguments against net neutrality, however given the current environment that’s not the case. I support net neutrality for many of the substantive reasons mentioned in this thread. But the case against net neutrality has been poorly laid out here, and it would beneficial to address the substantive arguments. The ones I see, though not inclusive, are as follows:
[ul][li]Bandwidth is limited and needs to be allocated to users in a systematic way. That way should be determined at the company level rather than at the federal government level.[/li][li]Allowing the government to step in between users and internet access allows them the ability to further their spying regime and is detrimental to privacy.[/li][li]Disallowing ISPs from managing their network means they will not be able to innovate to provide better products that meet market demand.[/ul][/li]
And one that I am particularly sympathetic to is that ISPs own their networks and should have the right to control how their networks are used.
When have companies ever exploited everyone around them absent government regulation? It’s never happened in the history of the world, ever, so it definitely won’t happen THIS time.
No, the rule took effect June 12, 2015.
LOL, okay. Perhaps you can answer my question below:
This is a potentially valid point. Unfortunately, getting new networks in place to provide competition to exploitive ISPs isn’t easy. Hell, cities can’t even provide FREE access to their citizens in some cases due to ISP interference.
I appreciate the injection of actual, not-completely-moronic arguments into this thread. Seriously! It’s a welcome breath of fresh air.
And so, my rebuttals:
[quote]
[ul][li]Bandwidth is limited and needs to be allocated to users in a systematic way. That way should be determined at the company level rather than at the federal government level.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Excluded middle - there is a third option. Specifically, bandwidth should be allocated at the consumer level - users decide what gets to come down the pipe, and where from. This maximizes user satisfaction and also maximizes the effect of market forces on content providers, encouraging them to improve the quality of their content and provide it at lower prices.
[quote]
[ul][li]Allowing the government to step in between users and internet access allows them the ability to further their spying regime and is detrimental to privacy.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Clarification is needed about what is meant by “the government [stepping] in between users and internet access”. It is certainly the case that government espionage and censorship of content is a bad thing for both consumers and the market forces on content providers. It is not clear that the government merely preventing censorship is a bad thing. And net neutrality is the latter kind of government interference.
[quote]
[ul][li]Disallowing ISPs from managing their network means they will not be able to innovate to provide better products that meet market demand.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
There is no market demand for ISPs to interfere with the delivery of specific kinds of content. (There is a market demand for cheaper, thinner pipes that deliver less content in general, which is allowed under net neutrality and already occurs.)
There’s an interesting way to look at this: by removing net neutrality, you’re putting ISPs in the position of governing and regulating the content that is passing through their pipes - which is to say, at a mechanical level, anything the ISP does with their new power is functionally a form of government regulation. It has the exact same kinds of effects on market forces - you can directly analogize everything they might it to adding taxes, tariffs, restrictions, and bans - right down to the two reasons to do so (to gain money and/or to limit or restrict certain products and substances) and also in that these actions by the governing body add no value other than to curtail things that are deemed “undesirable” (like preventing children from seeing porn or buying cars, for example).
Competition between ISPs, then, is like citizens being able to change which country they live in and are under the governance of. And, as with countries, some people are in a good position to change their citizenship, and some people are less able to move between countries/ISPs for one reason or another.
Really the only substantive difference between government regulation of content and ISP regulation of content is that, which governments are likely somewhat corrupt, ISPs are guaranteed to be corrupt - in that they’re explicitly devoted to profiting themselves and the members of the governing body. There is significantly less incentive for companies to care about the welfare and happiness of their constituents than there is in democratic countries, and thus a rational person would expect ISPs to be more exploitative and abusive than governments are, given the chance.
So, seriously, any proper and rational libertarian or free market conservative should love net neutrality, and violently oppose any attempt to remove it. Because removing net neutrality doesn’t free you from your governing overlords - it just replaces them with gangsters.
Electric companies own the generating and distribution networks. It’s the same for gas and water companies. These along with ISP providers are natural monopolies which are regulated because they are natural monopolies.
And yes, Netflix or Google or Facebook already do pay for that service.
Additionally, in most cases the end consumer has a choice on the speed of a service that they purchase from their Internet provider. If the end consumer purchase a 5mbps plan that does not support streaming well, then they would expect that. If they purchase a 60mbps plan, along with the premium price they would expect that streaming a show, or even multiple streams, wouldn’t be an issue. They would also expect to be able to support fast file transfers, gaming, etc.
But again, Netflix is paying for the bandwidth to support their data output, and the consumer is paying for the data they wish to consume. It is incumbent on the ISP to ensure their ability to provide that stated 60mbps plan to the consumer, and have the network to be able to support it. Heck, I believe that the majority of largish ISPs also have a Netflix appliance on-prem to significantly decrease the amount of peering or transport traffic.
This is where the analogy breaks down due to the fundamental difference in shipping data packets/content vs. shipping perishable goods.
This is the only even half-compelling argument I have seen against net neutrality.
I can see an argument that it would be great if my ISP offered better service for streaming video, to pick everyone’s favorite random example of a high-bandwidth use of the net. My ISP is Comcast. Comcast owns NBC/Universal, which is a gigantic content provider. Now, they have an incentive not to fuck with the cable channels I get to advantage NBC properties (or disadvantage others), because there is a competitor for television (DirectTV) that’s nearly as good. But there’s no broadband competition to my house that’s meaningful (DSL is less than 1/4 the speed of cable). So Comcast has huge incentives to advantage content from services they own, and I can’t really do anything about it.
In treis’s analogy, it’s as if the trucking company could not only offer tiered service for speed of delivery, but also owned a spinach farm and delivered their spinach even faster. Who could compete with their super-extra fresh spinach?
So, I guess I’d be OK with getting rid of NN if and only if the ISPs are required to open their last mile to competition, just like the local telephone monopolies were required to allow people to choose long-distance carriers (and, later, local carriers) on their equipment. I might even be ok with a “fast-streaming” tier of service, but only if it applied universally to all streaming content providers. I think this may be what Bricker referred to somewhere above as “by type”, rather than “by content”. But it doesn’t seem to me that the existing large broadband providers have any incentive to provide that kind of neutrality. And the evidence from before the 2015 rules is that they will indeed favor their own content. And if that wasn’t a thing the large providers had in mind, I doubt they’d have spent so much buying…I mean lobbying…Congress and the FCC.
They could offer to connect you to all of their sites at high speed but other sites at 56k, thereby ensuring that their sites are heavily trafficked, increasing their effectiveness at commercial marketing and political influence, as well as increasing their revenue. That would be a big improvement, from their perspective.
Most job applications were already online in 2015. Many university courses, as well. If they worked (all the way back) then, why wouldn’t they continue to work today or tomorrow?
Like toll road owners decide speed limits and rules of the road.
Since my OP also acknowledged that specific abuses would justify correction by regulation, examples that assume some horrid situation would occur without correcting regulation are strawman attacks.
Sure, you acknowledge that specific abuses would justify correction by regulation. But what you, and others, fail to acknowledge is that specific abuses occurred ALREADY, and those abuses led to NN being implemented.
When this fact is pointed out to you, it seems you conveniently ignore it.
Wow! That doesn’t seem to benefit me as a consumer at all! 
Ah, but what if they let you pay more for it as well? Wouldn’t that make it better?