[Dirtbag59]

@tshile
In regards to Sprint I'm more concerned with a provider essentially picking winners and losers on their own network. Not to mention the involvement of Virgin Media with their CEO outright declaring that he will put companies that don't pay up in the bus lane to be outright disturbing. You are right though in they're not blocking anything yet and in the big scheme of things not blocking or throttling sites and services is priority one which Sprint isn't doing at this time. Plus the plan is optional. However to me it represents a sign that ISP's really want to be able to turn the internet into Cable TV.

I'm starting to like Wheeler

FCC Chair Blasts Verizon For Plan To Throttle Some Users 07/30/2014

“'Reasonable network management' concerns the technical management of your network; it is not a loophole designed to enhance your revenue streams,” Wheeler tells Verizon. “I know of no past Commission statement that would treat as 'reasonable network management' a decision to slow traffic to a user who has paid, after all, for 'unlimited' service.”

FCC Chair Now Has Two Chances To Overturn Bans On Municipal Broadband – Consumerist

First up is Tennessee, where state law says that a city-owned electric utility may provide telecom services, but that it must go through a bureaucratic maze of disclosures, hearings, voting, and other requirements that a private telecom provider would not have to endure. Additionally, telecom services — including broadband and pay-TV — may only be offered to those within that utility’s electric service area.

The second petition filed this week comes from North Carolina, where a 2011 Time Warner Cable-backed bill put new restrictions on cities wanting to offer broadband service.

This story is easily among the most disgusting one's I've come across so far. Basically telecom companies are buying the support of civil rights groups.
Why Is The NAACP Siding With Verizon Over Net Neutrality?

More than 40 civil rights groups are supporting broadband providers that oppose strict net neutrality rules. The civil rights groups say they're siding with the Internet giants because it's in the best interest of minority communities.

Yet critics say many of those groups are against stronger net neutrality rules because they've received substantial funding from Internet providers. Many of the civil rights groups currently siding with the broadband giants also supported the controversial Comcast-NBC Universal merger, came out in favor of AT&T's failed takeover of T-Mobile in 2011, and supported broadband providers the last time the Federal Communications Commission ruled on net neutrality back in 2010.

In other news the prospect of Republicans possibly winning the Senate is outright terrifying. If that happens the only thing standing between the open internet and the worse case scenario will be the presidents ability to veto anything that would essentially give ISP's the freedom to do whatever the hell they want.

Heck Comcast would essentially become a good guy until 2018 because they would be the only ones legally bound by net neutrality. Of course in the short term Verizon is easily the most evil of all the ISP's in play.
Democrats troubled by Verizon's free speech argument in net-neutrality case | TheHill

In its lawsuit, Verizon claimed that it has a First Amendment right to decide what traffic to carry on its network just as a newspaper editor chooses what articles to publish.

The company said the net-neutrality rules "strip providers of control over which speech they transmit and how they transmit it, and they compel the carriage of others’ speech."