Obama wants to make the internet a utility

Mamacalled said:

Yet Obama didn't make any quips about the lobbyist who support net neutrality and their funding from George Soros. Funny how the only bad lobbyist are conservative and the liberal lobbyist are saints....cough cough

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Yeah, everything is evil special interest unless you happen to support it. That's the current average American citizen for you.

Mamacalled said:

I was in support of it until I found out that one of the biggest crooks in the world, George Soros, donated over $100mil in support of it. If he is involved then it can't be good.

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You mean the fact that Obama supported this effort wasn't enough to tell you it was a horrible idea. Look, companies have to make a profit, so why would they do things that would ultimately put them out of business?

If you people that hate these telecoms now, wait til they cozy up with govt. You'll hate them a billion fold more then. Guaranteed. Obamanet.

Mamacalled said:

Yet Obama didn't make any quips about the lobbyist who support net neutrality and their funding from George Soros. Funny how the only bad lobbyist are conservative and the liberal lobbyist are saints....cough cough

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"I've been here so much, the only thing I haven't done in this house is have Seder dinner"
-Barack Obama in 2013 while inside Comcast lobbyist David Cohen's home during a fundraising trip

Pretty clear you didn't even know the quip to which I am referring or who and what it involved. Is Soros' guy a major Democratic player and fundraiser like Cohen is? If so, I'm sure Obama has been in his house and made similar flattering comments.

The only bad lobbyists any politician sees is the one who doesn't give them campaign money or favors. That's both sides, BTW.

Come on, folks.

The internet needs a little "Fairness Doctrine" treatment from your friendly federal government.

CajunCrimson said:

Once again -- in a veiled attempt to fix something that isn't broken -- this is really only about one thing.....

Control.......

And we are using Netflix and our ability/inability to watch a buffering-free movie as the doorway to giving up the control of the one last free information sources on the planet.....

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but they are buffering movies like this that let us know what is really going on

crimsonaudio said:

Pretty solid article here - lotsa grey area wrt net neutrality: http://www.cnet.com/news/comcast-vs-netflix-is-this-really-about-net-neutrality/

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actually that article is almost a year old and shows a few misunderstanding on her part about how CDN's work and grossly simplifies peer/carrier exchange agreements. Not bad for a really high level overview.. Interestingly she appears to have changed her tune in the last 11.5 months http://www.cnet.com/news/net-fix-8-burning-questions-about-net-neutrality/

CajunCrimson said:

Once again -- in a veiled attempt to fix something that isn't broken -- this is really only about one thing.....

Control.......

And we are using Netflix and our ability/inability to watch a buffering-free movie as the doorway to giving up the control of the one last free information sources on the planet.....

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But, you see it is broken, it broke a little over a year ago when Verizon decided to sue the fcc and get rules thrown out. Since and frankly before then several of the large ISP's have been caught red handed doing things that net neutrality can prevent. Comcast slowing down Bit Torrent and Netflix, Verizon threatening to do the same. Heck, Verizon's legal council argued this in 2013 "we should be able to [block competitors’ websites]. In the world I’m positing, you would be able to,” she added, citing a “First Amendment right” to “edit” content." These companies have shown a willingness to try to convert the Internet into something it isn't. In the year they've had few rules they have already shown us how far they are willing to go and they have the monopoly power to do it, without reclassification. Any way you slice it that is broken, just because you haven't noticed that break personally doesn't make it not true

Jon said:

But, you see it is broken, it broke a little over a year ago when Verizon decided to sue the fcc and get rules thrown out. Since and frankly before then several of the large ISP's have been caught red handed doing things that net neutrality can prevent. Comcast slowing down Bit Torrent and Netflix, Verizon threatening to do the same. Heck, Verizon's legal council argued this in 2013 "we should be able to [block competitors’ websites]. In the world I’m positing, you would be able to,” she added, citing a “First Amendment right” to “edit” content." These companies have shown a willingness to try to convert the Internet into something it isn't. In the year they've had few rules they have already shown us how far they are willing to go and they have the monopoly power to do it, without reclassification. Any way you slice it that is broken, just because you haven't noticed that break personally doesn't make it not true

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if the one is fur it, then im agin it

Jon said:

But, you see it is broken, it broke a little over a year ago when Verizon decided to sue the fcc and get rules thrown out. Since and frankly before then several of the large ISP's have been caught red handed doing things that net neutrality can prevent. Comcast slowing down Bit Torrent and Netflix, Verizon threatening to do the same. Heck, Verizon's legal council argued this in 2013 "we should be able to [block competitors’ websites]. In the world I’m positing, you would be able to,” she added, citing a “First Amendment right” to “edit” content." These companies have shown a willingness to try to convert the Internet into something it isn't. In the year they've had few rules they have already shown us how far they are willing to go and they have the monopoly power to do it, without reclassification. Any way you slice it that is broken, just because you haven't noticed that break personally doesn't make it not true

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Well, I'll defer to you and Net Neutrality advocates. Your motives seem pure.
I just think that, in the years ahead, the Federal government will use this for all kinds of evil, censorship in the name of fairness, or giving high speed lanes based on who makes political donations to the party in power.
I hope I'm wrong, but we will now get a chance to see.

Tidewater said:

Well, I'll defer to you and Net Neutrality advocates. Your motives seem pure.
I just think that, in the years ahead, the Federal government will use this for all kinds of evil, censorship in the name of fairness, or giving high speed lanes based on who makes political donations to the party in power.
I hope I'm wrong, but we will now get a chance to see.

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That is certainly something that they may try. I haven't seen the new rules yet but based on what we've been told to this point the new rules will specifically stop the kind of behavior you describe.

Like any government regulation there is certainly room for abuse and clear reason to worry about future abuses and the slippery slope. Unfortunately we simply had no other way to deal with the situation as it stood in 2015 other than what happened this week.

CajunCrimson said:

And we are using Netflix and our ability/inability to watch a buffering-free movie as the doorway to giving up the control of the one last free information sources on the planet.....

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Just from a high level standpoint, you are assuming that you had control in the first place. You currently rely on your ISP to keep its word. You may not think that the government will do a better job, but at least the government hasn't explicitly stated that they think they should be able to charge you extra depending on what you want to see and or limit what is available purely based on what they (the ISP) deems is something you need to see.

You make the statement that it is one of the last free information services on the planet. Do you mean free in free speech terms? Just seeking some clarification, but for this post I am going to assume that is what you mean.

In a letter written to the FCC in May of 2014, 150 tech companies sent a letter advocating for net neutrality. http://engine.is/wp-content/uploads/Company_Sign_On_Letter_051414.pdf

A small breakdown of the companies (inexhaustive list):

E-tailers
Amazon
Ebay
Etsy
Cogent

Cloud services
Dropbox
Github

Social Networks
Facebook
Foursquare
LinkedIn
Reddit
Tumblr
Twitter
Digg
Imgur
Instapaper
StackExchange

Search
Google
Microsoft (Sticking them here, I am not sure even MS knows what MS wants to be)
Yahoo! Inc.
DuckDuckGo

Venture Capitalism
Kickstarter

CDN and Backbone
Level 3
CloudFlare Inc.

Content Providers
Netflix
Lyft

Application Developers
Mozilla
Zynga2600hz, Inc.
BitTorrent

Services Company
iFixit

Now as stated before this is far from an exhaustive list of companies that support net-neutrality, it is merely a subset of the 150 companies that were particularly vocal in May of 2014. One could say that any one of these companies would most definitely not benefit from a reduction in the freedom, freedom of speech wise, of information carried on any of their networks. Many of the companies that very specifically are being used as the reason for Netflix's slowdown argument "It wasn't really the ISP's it was just business contracts between providers, CDNs and ISPs" are the very same companies that show up on this list.

Who doesn't show up on this list? ISPs and old media.

You have an immediate and natural distrust for anything government. What I find amazing is that you are willing to trust companies like Comcast, ATT and Verizon. Especially given the fact that those three have explicitly stated their belief of what you should be able to see, how they think they should be able to control it, and how it is only recently that their position changed into saying that they didn't really think those things.

If this is a business concern, the companies listed have a valuation of near or greater than the collection of ISPs that have been fighting net-neutrality propositions. To me, wanting the status quo only props up 3 or 4 massive companies at the expense of innovation in the startup realm. This seems to be so very anti republican, small business focus and all that jazz. On the other hand, I guess if large companies muscling out smaller companies through litigiousness is the true free market, then I guess thats republican too.

chanson78 said:

Just from a high level standpoint, you are assuming that you had control in the first place. You currently rely on your ISP to keep its word. You may not think that the government will do a better job, but at least the government hasn't explicitly stated that they think they should be able to charge you extra depending on what you want to see and or limit what is available purely based on what they (the ISP) deems is something you need to see.

You make the statement that it is one of the last free information services on the planet. Do you mean free in free speech terms? Just seeking some clarification, but for this post I am going to assume that is what you mean.

In a letter written to the FCC in May of 2014, 150 tech companies sent a letter advocating for net neutrality. http://engine.is/wp-content/uploads/Company_Sign_On_Letter_051414.pdf

A small breakdown of the companies (inexhaustive list):

E-tailers
Amazon
Ebay
Etsy
Cogent

Cloud services
Dropbox
Github

Social Networks
Facebook
Foursquare
LinkedIn
Reddit
Tumblr
Twitter
Digg
Imgur
Instapaper
StackExchange

Search
Google
Microsoft (Sticking them here, I am not sure even MS knows what MS wants to be)
Yahoo! Inc.
DuckDuckGo

Venture Capitalism
Kickstarter

CDN and Backbone
Level 3
CloudFlare Inc.

Content Providers
Netflix
Lyft

Application Developers
Mozilla
Zynga2600hz, Inc.
BitTorrent

Services Company
iFixit

Now as stated before this is far from an exhaustive list of companies that support net-neutrality, it is merely a subset of the 150 companies that were particularly vocal in May of 2014. One could say that any one of these companies would most definitely not benefit from a reduction in the freedom, freedom of speech wise, of information carried on any of their networks. Many of the companies that very specifically are being used as the reason for Netflix's slowdown argument "It wasn't really the ISP's it was just business contracts between providers, CDNs and ISPs" are the very same companies that show up on this list.

Who doesn't show up on this list? ISPs and old media.

You have an immediate and natural distrust for anything government. What I find amazing is that you are willing to trust companies like Comcast, ATT and Verizon. Especially given the fact that those three have explicitly stated their belief of what you should be able to see, how they think they should be able to control it, and how it is only recently that their position changed into saying that they didn't really think those things.

If this is a business concern, the companies listed have a valuation of near or greater than the collection of ISPs that have been fighting net-neutrality propositions. To me, wanting the status quo only props up 3 or 4 massive companies at the expense of innovation in the startup realm. This seems to be so very anti republican, small business focus and all that jazz. On the other hand, I guess if large companies muscling out smaller companies through litigiousness is the true free market, then I guess thats republican too.

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yup

CajunCrimson said:

Well.....if you think the Government has fixed anything in the last 40 years....you are in for a treat......let's come back in 5 years and see how much you love your internet.....

Did Comcast pay for their lines? If so, then can't they regulate who uses the lines?

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so your question is an interesting one, did Comcast pay for the lines?

In my case the answer is sort of my lines were laid by MediaOne, which was a regulation required spin out of AT&T, AT&T spent well over $105B building out this infrastructure only to have to let it go to Comcast a little over a decade ago for $47B, so Comcast did pay for these lines they did it @ $.44 cents on the dollar. In many, many other cases Comcast was able to buy lines at less that 1% of the cost of someone else simply due to the fact that the incumbent went bankrupt and Comcast was one of only a few companies that could actually run the network. Time Warner, Cox and others have had the same happen to them. If you bothered to actually read the economic argument from a Conservative on why Net Neutrality is good that I posted a few pages back you would easily see how this happened and why these sort of things are a very natural result of the industries drive towards monopoly, a natural result that sadly only Government regulation can resolve.

CajunCrimson said:

Well.....if you think the Government has fixed anything in the last 40 years....you are in for a treat......let's come back in 5 years and see how much you love your internet.....

Did Comcast pay for their lines? If so, then can't they regulate who uses the lines?

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and now i'll answer your second question and it is a much simpler answer.


No

ISP's are not content providers, they are onramps to something else. Unlike Cable tv where Comcast, Verizon, Cox, TWC, get to decide what channels you have available all ISP's do is in that very name, Internet Service Provider, the Provide you a Service to connect to the Internet. That's it and it's all most of us want from them. Connect me to it, it being the same Internet that has spurred not just most of our current economic growth but on a personal level my entire carreer. Allowing 4-5 companies to have local monopolies and tight control of what you and I get on the Internet is the antithesis of what Tim Berners-Lee defined this thing to be

Jon said:

But, you see it is broken, it broke a little over a year ago when Verizon decided to sue the fcc and get rules thrown out. Since and frankly before then several of the large ISP's have been caught red handed doing things that net neutrality can prevent. Comcast slowing down Bit Torrent and Netflix, Verizon threatening to do the same. Heck, Verizon's legal council argued this in 2013 "we should be able to [block competitors’ websites]. In the world I’m positing, you would be able to,” she added, citing a “First Amendment right” to “edit” content." These companies have shown a willingness to try to convert the Internet into something it isn't. In the year they've had few rules they have already shown us how far they are willing to go and they have the monopoly power to do it, without reclassification. Any way you slice it that is broken, just because you haven't noticed that break personally doesn't make it not true

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This ...

I agree that they brought it on themselves. And I fully support the what net neutrality really means.

However, I doubt Robert Kahn ever thought TCP/IP would be used for phone conversations and streaming video, but here we are. I actually do feel for the providers in that they are stuck between a rock and a hard place providing bandwidth models that work with all the services being provided. I understand since the phone and media companies had basically taken over they are trying to make their own services work first. I like others believe that the FCC will make it worse instead of better.

"The government that cannot properly set up ONE internet site for healthcare is now taking control of all of them."
Think about that and tell me how this is a good thing.

Gr8hope said:

"The government that cannot properly set up ONE internet site for healthcare is now taking control of all of them."
Think about that and tell me how this is a good thing.

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again you prove that you have absolutely no understanding of this issue and what is going on here



hurr durr gubment cant do nuttin raght