All Things Net Neutrality

[Dirtbag59]

Originally Posted by skinsguy

Good thread Dirtbag! I want to post more about this when I have a little time, but just wanted to comment that I'm also pro net neutrality! This is why I always go back to reminiscing about the good ol' days of the slow, yet more "deregulated" internet of the 1990's. The "Wild West of the World Wide Web". Back then, anything and everything you wanted to look up, you could find. No matter the search engine, no matter the ISP, you could still find whatever it was you were looking for.

This is a result of what happens when things get too commercial. Regulations are bound to happen, censoring is obvious, and if you want access to more information, you have to pay for it! Honestly, in some respects, I'd go back to the old 90's style internet on dial-up speed if it meant knowing that I could have access to information as I did back in the day. I miss having the internet act as more of a "library" of sorts than a shopping mall.

Honestly in terms of regulations I believe they are usually a last resort and if possible its better we make due without them, but things have gotten so bad that well...

(Joey addresses US ISP's directly)


And it's not like the US broadband industry has a Google (Fiber is only in 3 cities), Amazon, Steam, or Netflix where even though they're not always perfect virtually everything they do usually results in a better product or service for the customer. The cable industry somehow makes their products worse and then finds ways to charge more for them.

Net Neutrality won't fix the lack of competition but thats not the point of net neutrality. The point is to provide a fail safe so when the industry becomes the Oligopoly it is today we don't get screwed any further by companies that are taking advantage of us already.

As for fixing the competition problem, Tom Wheeler, of all people actually spelled out the solution a couple days ago.

If the people, acting through their elected local governments, want to pursue competitive community broadband, they shouldn't be stopped by state laws promoted by cable and telephone companies that don't want that competition.
-Tom Wheeler

Which kind of echos the sentiment written in this article last year.
Don’t Blame Big Cable. It’s Local Governments That Choke Broadband Competition | Opinion | WIRED

As for giving the government more power over the internet, well all I have to say is this. Going back to the Comcast bittorrent scandal the FCC could have easily ignored it and said that P2P filesharing just enables piracy and Comcast is well within its write to 'manage it.' Instead the FCC sided with BitTorrent. That incident alone is enough to make me trust the FCC to do whats best for the internet rather then hoping that the "free market' that ISP's 'compete' within will keep them in line. By the way if there actually was free market competition in broadband Comcast and friends wouldn't even try a fraction of the things they're trying now.

@Daseal - The funniest thing about ISP's staring down the gun of the Title II barrell is that the whole reason its even on the table was that Verizon (and friends) wanted to squeeze a couple more nickles out of everyone and they couldn't handle the 2010 FCC order. If they had just STFU and went along with it the initiative would have virtually zero public support.