FCC flips off entire Web; wants to end Net Neutrality

Double A

♫We got the guillotine♫
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html?_r=3

SO. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said some crap about "fast lane" policies, which basically means Net Neutrality is boned. NN, in a nutshell, is an ISP has to give everyone the same deal like a phone company instead of charging for content like a cable package. If you know anything at all about how the Internet works, you know that it would be entirely ridiculous to do the latter as the ISPs don't actually pay for the content or anything like a cable company does.

tl;dr, former ISP lobbyist wants to block your access to Netflix.

This is a pretty cool article too:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...-Sellout-A-Wakeup-Call-And-A-Slap-In-The-Face

In my personal opinion, I feel like if this goes through, Google will step up its Fiber game and offer the same rate for the same access to everyone. They will then proceed to snatch up all of Comwarner's customers and get a functional vertical monopoly on the entire goddamn Internet.
 
I'd rather deal with a Google monopoly than a Comcast monopoly, even though I want neither. Comcast is verifiably terrible.
 
In my personal opinion, I feel like if this goes through, Google will step up its Fiber game and offer the same rate for the same access to everyone. They will then proceed to snatch up all of Comwarner's customers and get a functional vertical monopoly on the entire goddamn Internet.

Companies like netflix have a lot more to lose financially speaking if net neutrality goes out the window, not your average consumer.

Mind you if we lose net neutrality the internet will be broken, so consumers will be affected as well. We might see higher rates as well, if we want to access those high-bandwidth sites or whatever. Either way, netflix couldn't get around this by sticking to google infrastructure or whatever, so google expanding fibre would be good, but it wouldn't solve anything.

I wonder how this is going to play out with the EU recently passing internet neutrality laws. Are internet companies slowly going to migrate into the EU.? I have no idea, I'm just thinking out loud.
 
The internet is always at risk in the US due to most of those in charge of regulating it being utterly ignorant of how it works. What's probably the average age of a US congressman? 50+? Maybe even 60+?
 
Horrible news. Just horrible.

And i agree than no monopoly will help. Moreover i have no reason to trust Google either, if anything that company already is far more powerful than it should have been.

That said, (sadly) it would not be surprising if the creation of a monopoly by default, is what all those supposedly 'dumb' or 'out of touch' decisions were meant to lead to anyway.
 
I was under the impression that Netflix was in favor of ending Net Neutrality, because it has already negotiated a deal to give its content a preferred priority and stream faster. This requires them to raise their price, but would tend to benefit them as their competitors and start ups that might otherwise try to compete with them would have a harder time getting those same premium speeds.
 
We're all gonna switch to a pay-for-content service and only buy certain websites :run:
 
Libertarians rejoice!
 
It's not, but the US has a history of trying to wedge regulation or the lack thereof into trade deals with foreign nations (see the leaked stuff about the TPP, or NAFTA, or any other trade deal we've signed in the last couple decades).
 
We're all gonna switch to a pay-for-content service and only buy certain websites :run:

CFC, and nothing else!

Libertarians rejoice!

I would think most libertarians would be for net neutrality. Net neutrality is all about everyone running a server being free to send their data to any and all customers and comers without discrimination - in other words, it's pro-liberty.
 
We're all gonna switch to a pay-for-content service and only buy certain websites :run:

Gah, because paying porn subscriptions was already a pain and a half.

This is what will destroy USA; once you deny their freedom with your freedom, anarchy begins.

And the Libertarians win.
 
Libertarians rejoice!

I would think most libertarians would be for net neutrality. Net neutrality is all about everyone running a server being free to send their data to any and all customers and comers without discrimination - in other words, it's pro-liberty.

Well I'm a libertarian so I guess I get to speak on behalf of all of them now, because that is clearly how it works.

Net Neutrality isn't technically the free market, but letting companies with congressmen in their pockets dictate policy is even worse. NN is equality and ending it is corruption.
 
Double A: President of Libertarians for Gov't Regulation of the 'Net.
 
Well if this passes through it just adds wind in the direction of less US control over web infrastructure. (digital and solid)
 
Yeah, but it's still gonna hurt a lot of people in the meantime. That's really the only thing that'll ever provoke meaningful movements, though, so I'm not too worried.
 
This can only hurt Obama politically.
 
I am not certain this is the best place to put this, but as the most recent thread about Net Neutrality it will do:

From El Reg

RFC 791 ... specified how packet networks would talk to each other. That's what "internetworking" was, and is - networks agreeing to talk. No wonder it's known as the "mother of all internet protocols" - every significant protocol refers to this, and it described the IP packets you're using today to read this.
...
right from the start, the internet was designed as a multiservice, or "poly service" network. Packets were never "equal" - they could and would have to go at different speeds.
...
The buyer (a Netflix or Google) achieves a far greater efficiency of content delivery [under the current system], and is able to compete better for the contended, congested bandwith on the consumer network, which effectively squeezes out competitive video from the internet [by getting their video to the ISP using private networks].

There is lots more. I do not really know enough about the subject to agree or disagree but it seemed a well written and informed article.
 
I would think most libertarians would be for net neutrality. Net neutrality is all about everyone running a server being free to send their data to any and all customers and comers without discrimination - in other words, it's pro-liberty.

But net neutrality can only be enforced by governments. It requires governmental intervention against corporate actors. I wouldn't dispute that net neutrality is pro-liberty, but in order to achieve it additional governmental regulation is required, which is antithetical to the libertarian position.
 
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