And your internet can be turned off if you don’t pay your bill. No one here would dispute that.
Same as you don’t get very good credit scores if you don’t pay your debts.
But if the Internet is so essential for living in today’s world, why can it be turned off for non-payment? What’s the operational theory there? The gas company can turn you off for non-payment, yes – but not in freezing weather. Because heat is essential in freezing weather, right? How then can you support cruelly depriving users whose only crime is failing to pay? Have you no heart, sir? Are you history’s greatest monster? Are you???
With all due respect, that is a really silly objection. It’s akin to those guys who, while exploiting unfair bugs in video games, swear up and down that what they’re doing is not only OK but actively endorsed by the makers of said game on the grounds that “Hey, it’s in the game and the developpers haven’t fixed the issue yet, therefore it’s gotta be intended !”.
The fact is that access to the Internet is crucial to simple existence in the modern world - be it for access to information on a day-to-day basis, to looking for a job, to even *get paid *in many a field (e.g. I am, or used to be, a freelance translator. Without access to both paypal and the various translation websites, I could not only not find a single job, 99% of contractors wouldn’t be able to pay me because the jobs entails lots of small international contracts for lots of third parties, the likes of which preclude a traditional paycheck). Quite a few first world countries have cottoned to that fact and tried to address it for the benefit of their less fortunate, be it by offering free access in select venues on publicly owned machines or, in the more benevolent cases (like Lithuania, of all fucking places) providing free high speed internet to everybody.
The further fact that the US government has done absolutely dick all in this department is irrelevant to the previous fact.
Uh, all the ones discussing here did pay the Internet. Of course the ones suffering more deprivation will not be able to reach you or others. There are some that indeed have no access and one good reason for that has to do with the efforts made by the new and unimproved FCC.
But never mind that, what you are going for there is like having the opinion that a cat has the breath of cat food, nice, but not useful in favor or against net neutrality. (although it shows that, once again, the Republicans in power do like to toss the poor under the bus) Again, the discussion is about if we should allow new business or content creators to be tossed under the bus by the big corporations that are in reality against competition.
It is clear that many Republicans now think that that is ok, never mind that that “ideology” means that new entrepreneurs will have the game rigged against them thanks to the big companies influence on the current anti competitive conservatives in congress.
You kind of get to the point where you don’t want to believe it’s basically attention seeking, but his answers tell you it really is just that.
Don’t public libraries offer such access?
And freedom of liberty and association are rights as well, and yet we take those rights away from people when they break laws.
Such hypocrites we all are, huh.
Non-responsive. I never claimed that there was an Obama-led takeover of the Internet. This is a strawman. Address the argument I made, not the argument some other person made.
I claimed that the FCC reclassified ISPs as common carriers under Title II.
Do you agree?
Yes! I am abashed!
Truly, your point is a good one.
Now, since it seems that we CAN take those rights away, I wonder if we can limit them sort of taking them away? I mean, if we can take them away, it seems obvious we can do less than taking it away for similar reasons, yes?
Read it again, I never claimed you did say that, only that I have seen that you are coming with a ideas against net neutrality that did not come out out of thin air, just where the source of your biases include also in their menu to their followers. A lot of your points can be indeed explained as coming from the same sources that also do press that false narrative.
In any case I was the one that mention it as another factor of why we are here, that you do not want to deal with it is ok, it just points to once again a blind spot you have regarding this issue.
I have to add also that the first bit you quoted of me was not related to the complaint you are making here so you still need to deal with that.
And the quotes I made also point about why was that. Again it is clear than then the points I made stand.
I have no idea - it’s your country. Like many such questions, I expect the answer is “yes, but kinda not, really it varies from place to place” and in any case the availability of public libraries within walking distance of one’s home is hardly a given anyhow.
Not that it’d make for a satisfying solution even if there were public libraries in every two horse town in the US, mind you, for a number of reasons - my own country provided such a solution for a while, then realized it was far from enough then implemented further options - that are still far from enough (and just as discriminatory, but that’s another issue). But I digress.
I agree with that assessment, I worked part time in a school of a poor neighborhood in Phoenix. The library was close to some students but far away for many, teachers do not leave much homework that nowadays does require a lot of technology know how, so a lot of the activities must be completed then at school.
Of course that means that the poor kids do continue having a disadvantage over the ones living in better neighborhoods.
Yes, now you are getting it.
We can limit the rights of entities, if their actions seem to be harmful to society. We lock up thieves and rapists and murderers, we tell those with less offenses who they can and cannot associate with, in all cases we can tell them that they have to give up some of their property in recompense for their harm.
So, when corporations take actions that are harmful to society, we can limit their rights for similar reasons, yes?
Anyway, just to re-boot a second.
Are you against regulations against ISP’s, or are you just against the way that they were implemented unilaterally by the executive branch?
If the latter, then I’m kinda in agreement with you. If nothing else, implementing things unilaterally at the executive level means that they can be reversed easily by the next. That’s not optimal for alot of reasons.
If the former, if you would be against the legislature properly putting together a bill that would put appropriate restrictions and regulations onto ISPs, then I fully disagree.
So, would you support congress putting into place net neutrality rules? Maybe with a different exact legal framework behind them?
Do you feel that the government passed laws that enabled the FCC to classify something as Title II if the FCC felt is was necessary?
Absolutely.
But . . . I’d say that if we wished to, say, limit the right of a corporation to display neon signs larger than four feet high, we should not start by forbidding all signage.
Yes. In 1934. They did that.
Since the second paragraph of my two-paragraph OP said that I’d be open to addressing any future abuses with further rules, you can sort of get the hint that I don’t oppose regulating ISPs.
But I do oppose the omnibus Title II reclassification method.
Absolutely would support Congress doing that, or even Congress delegating that power to the FCC, or even the FTC, to the extent that the abuses represent deceptive behavior rather than simply openly favoring sources over other sources.
This seems to say that you’re not necessarily opposed to net neutrality, but the mechanism by which it was enacted (and repealed). For the sake of argument, if congress were to pass legislation for the exact same net neutrality rules that the FCC imposed previously ), then what would be your take on those rules? Because here I thought we were talking about the substantive issues, not procedural ones.
I have no idea what you mean by “the exact same net neutrality rules that the FCC imposed previously.”
Do you mean the literal rules that were imposed when ISP were classified as common carriers? Because that is a thing that happened.
Or do you mean the supposed result of “forbearance,” in which the FCC pinky-swore to only enforce a few of those rules?
You dismiss that distinction as “procedural,” and I do not.