Should Congress pass a new law mandating net neutrality? the FCC just killed net neutrality, which mandated that all internet service providers must provide equal and unbiased internet bandwith to all internet sites, regardless of content. Now that neutrality is ended, an internet provider can slow down traffic to a competing website, or to a website owned by a competitor of the owner of that ISP's website. they can even slow down traffic to websites that have a different political ideology than the corporate ISP owner. basically, we could have a war of ISPs.....and we would have to pay for it. is this what we want from the internet???? no!!!
just imagine: ISPs in then Liberal states discriminating against conservative media. ISPs in Conservative states doing the opposite. websites for competitor ISPs being super slow. what a disaster. i pay for full and equal access to all websites, worldwide. i dont want to pay for some damn ideological or corporate internet war
I agree. Although its completely possible, I dont think we see throttling like what you suggest. I see content being throttled heavily. Youtube being slow on a verizon connection or similar situations. How would you feel about net neutrality if the providers were completely separated from content though? Because Verizon is an ISP, they are not allowed any interest in any content providers. Google offers content, so they are not allowed any interest in a provider. I still see deals and throttling, but not nearly at the same scale.
Senate Votes to Restore Net Neutrality... US Senate Votes to Restore Net Neutrality May 16, 2018 — The U.S. Senate voted 52-47 to overturn the FCC's 2017 repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules, with all Democrats and three Republicans voting in favor of the measure.
Small Business Owners: Internet Sales Tax ‘Devastating... Small Business Owners: Internet Sales Tax ‘Devastating,’ ‘Would Put Us Out of Business’ May 18, 2018 - At a small business expo hosted by eBay in Washington D.C. on May 16, several small business owners told CNSNews.com that they opposed the idea of an Internet sales tax, calling the idea “devastating” and saying it would “put us out of business.” In April, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in South Dakota v. Wayfair. See also: New internet laws pledged as social media firms snub talks 20 May `18 - The culture secretary has agreed he does not have enough power to police social media firms after admitting only four of 14 invited to talks showed up.
How do you slow down ISPs by state? And if one provider is slowing down some ISP's versus other providers who don't who do you think will get more subscribers? Government throttling the free market never works in favor of the free market. You as a comsumer are free to choose the provider who provides you the most access you desire. In order for the other providers to get you business they are going to have to offer you more access to what you desire.
Monopolization is a problem in the free market and we already have regulations aimed at reducing it. We need the internet to be free and competitive since it is currently the greatest source of progress today.
The big problem with this issue is that very gew people understand it. I know that I don't. The news outlets that I believe, say it's bad. I don't know if they know what they're talking about, though.
Net neutrality is not the government meddling with the internet. What it does is disallow ISP's from meddling with the internet, and ya know free speech and all that. Certain ISP's could for instance decide to make you pay extra for Fox.com. It could basically price out certain geographical areas, etc, out of access to certain online information/speech. These are extremes of course but getting rid of the net neutrality laws would allow them. IMO the internet should be ruled as a public utility the same as any other.
I thought free speech didn't apply to private institutions, thereby allowing boycotts, universities banning conservative speakers, Google shadow banning conservative videos, etc? Or do you view free speech as both a constitutional right where government is concerned, and an ideal to be strived for in everyday interactions with others?
I'd be quite happy to have a discussion on it on rational terms, but unfortiunately this is one of those issues, like gun control, which tends to devolve into "you just want guns so kids will be murdered" rhetoric and assumption of the worst in people. In this case it tends to take the form of "in the absence of net neutrality the internet will be sold off piece by piece in packages like cable TV, even though these technologies are vastly different and in the 60 years before net neutrality rules were introduced this never occurred and it hasn't since they were rolled back" It's really quite disappointing, because it's an issue with a lot of good arguments on both sides.
the second one? What? I'm a free speech absolutist. Everything besides directly physically violent threats should be allowed. Besides that your integrity and dignity is on you.
My apologies, I misread what you were saying, thought you meant it was a violation of free speech for ISPs to throttle Fox.com.
It is a violation of fox.coms free speech if an ISP were to throttle it. Because in most cases, especially in rural areas, people only have access to one (maybe two) ISP(s), and if that ISP were to throttle fox.com's bandwidth with the exception of extra fees, those people (except for the few that paid) would now be virtually banned from visiting fox.com. So now that ISP would have a local monopoly on certain information and speech. Fox.com is just an example. This could happen with any website any time, and largely the users wouldn't even know it because the ISP is not required to tell them. This applies to any website or linked network with information. ISP's are no different in reality from a public utility and should be treated as such, largely because it requires a large infrastructure and would in many cases constitute a monopoly if left to itself. IMO they should go a step further and transition the internet to a public utility in the US, but now apparently we are backtracking and getting rid of a great start. That being net neutrality. Free speech does not apply to private businesses, unless they have a monopoly on that speech. Otherwise yes, any business is free to ban whatever speech they want if they so choose, but the onus is on them. Google having so much control over the internet would be another discussion worth having as although they are not an ISP, they do in a lot of ways have a monopoly on both video content and search output. Sure there are other video sites but they are largely unknown.
There is no legal ban on them visiting Fox at all, it just so happens that they do not have the means to do so. If I am the only paperboy servicing a rural county with newspapers from a nearby city, am I obliged to offer all the city's papers, because without my service they have no recourse and have to drive to the city to access other paperboys? Would it be a violation of the free speech of a rural couple for this paperboy to charge more to deliver the Financial Review because it weighs 60% more than other papers? If not, why can't Comcast charge 60% more to use Netflix, given that "paper" weighs a whole lot more than Fox.com. Netflix uses 15% of national bandwidth at any given time. Where do you get this from in the 1st amendment? That reads that Congress shall make no law which abridges the freedom of speech. It says nothing about private, voluntary monopolies. In addition, the vast majority of media is controlled by coercive monopolies created through collusion with government, not voluntary monopolies created by circumstance. Sony BMG has a monopoly on Lou Reed's fifth album, if they decide to stick the price up $5 you have no recourse. Either pay them, break the law and steal the album (analogous to tapping your neighbors internet), or go without. I struggle to take seriously the whole "monopolies are bad" angle because everyone who takes this position seems so resolutely against voluntary monopolies but are typically very supportive of intellectual property and the "free trade" deals which enforce it. Google has no monopoly on video delivery, other sites just suck is all and have few viewers. So I'm confused, do private companies have an obligation to provide you access or else be in violation of free speech?
This is just a bad analogy. Packets of information via the internet is not analogous to physical papers with weight. ISP's, with or without net neutrality can decide to limit bandwidth of all websites (all being equal content wise), which would not allow the users access to high bandwidth information like video. There is no similarity in the physical paper world since paper is not passed around with little bits of information at a time. Netflix does not "weigh" more. Using your example of wanting to charge more for higher bandwidth content that can already be done, and would not go against net neutrality. So back to the original analogy. If the paper were to set up a network of pipes that would supply bits of information of whatever article was requested at any given time (at a certain speed), than yes, that paper would be obliged to offer all articles equally, since until requested it has sent nothing to the requester. As that newspaper has a monopoly on information locally it should be obliged to offer whatever information it has access too (if requested). The paper of course (as you can with your ISP now) offer different paper bit speeds (bandwidth) at various prices. In this case I'd go beyond what the first amendment grants and have to go into free speech as a concept and where it can or could be limited systematically, whether that be in the public, or through a private business. In this case the business is providing a platform for speech of every kind and does have a monopoly, at least in many cases as I described. The ISP only provides a connection to the user to it's infrastructure. That business is an ISP. I'll grant you that. Though some would argue google is virtually an information monopoly. Sony in this case is not a platform for music, and if it were, that platform would not have a monopoly. I only see a problem when a platform has a monopoly, which is what ISP's are given if there are no net neutrality rules (they give a platform and provide the infrastructure to connect users to the internet). The same way I would have an issue with my power company not being regulated as a utility and having a monopoly on my electricity, though in this case I'm a bit more peeved since now you are entering the realm of information and therefore peoples speech. A university in no way could be considered a public utility since it does not have a monopoly on information. A university is not a worldwide pipeline that is used as a method of communication, so does not have the same standards. Same goes for the standard private business. Because information is the lifeblood of any democracy any largely public highway for this information must be heavily regulated so as not to allow systematic control of that information. Because ISP's have direct control over the flow of this information they must be treated as a public utility. Equal access to information must be guaranteed.
It is precisely government meddling with the internet. The government activity is known as regulation. I disagree completely with you.
I don't want the profit motive to determine what I see on the internet and how fast I get to see it. I pay for DSL. I want DSL.
How exactly does net neutrality meddle with the internet? The internet is simply a large network of computers. A set of rules protecting consumers of this network from being exploited by the ISP's who have control over how it is accessed, and in many cases have a monopoly on this access (throttling a particular site for example), is not meddling with the internet, which is an external entity. You don't seem to understand how the internet works. If ISP's were not required for instance, and everyone was somehow able to directly jack in, net neutrality would not need to be enforced. Net neutrality is already fixed in that case. This is however not reality. In reality ISP's can meddle with how a consumer perceives the internet by unequal content control, meaning a monopoly can restrict you access to certain content without you even really knowing. This is incredibly dangerous. For example you might open a browser one day and find that this site loads incredibly slow compared to others, so slow that it's impossible to do anything. There is no reason they have to tell you, and if they did they can bribe you to get access to other online content. Ask yourself if that would be a problem for you, with any site/content you can think of. Net neutrality protects against that. Or are you also one of those people who doesn't think public utilities should be a thing either? The internet fits all the bills for a public utility. A vast and expensive infrastructure that usually requires a virtual monopoly to provide access points and which is supplied bits at a time (water, gas, bandwidth).
Plus people who spend 20 hours a day gaming and/or streaming flicks need their service subsidized by others.