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I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

latimes.com

121–130 of 423 posts

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#121
post #105
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics is not the only relevant domain for public policy. Just because someone is confident in their opinion doesn't mean they're knowledgable, surely you see that regularly online. Economists are not especially self-aware or more humble than other people. Here's an ignorant comment: "Net neutrality is a fiction. Hire Akamai (et al.) to mirror your servers worldwide to speed content to your users." Using Akamai is…

>if Comcast decides your videos are hurting their cable TV business and start dropping packets That's already illegal under existing anti trust law. Zero rating is a different issue but doesn't count as paid prioritization which is what they're asking about.

> That's already illegal under existing anti trust law.

Comcast and others have already done exactly that and it was the FCC that went after them, not the FTC. And how does anti-trust apply when it's the actions of a single company? There's no collusion between businesses to drop packets, one business just does it and other businesses may decide to do it also, they don't have to all agree to do it for it to be effective (from their perspective).

It's true that the question posed in the survey was specifically about content providers paying ISPs for access (or better access) to us, the people ISPs think belong to them. But the article and the overall debate is about far more.

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a dope if you don't vote. It's impolite to mention this, but it is not a political problem, but a Republican problem. A Democratic administration's FCC enacted Net Neutrality, a Republican one is attempting to dismantle it. Vote for Democrats at every level of government, in every election possible. This will change some day, but today the Republican party has lost its mind and morals. To be clear, I'm not cal…

both parties don't make decisions i consider sane or particularly clever yet those are the only two parties i may vote for with any chance of success. the voting system is broken by outmoded/gamed structures (gerrymandering, an electoral college), and all-or-nothing outcomes (if i vote for one candidate and they don't win, i may make no second or third choice with which then to put my voting power behind). i simply f…

Considering donating to fairvote.org, I do. I should confess I don't know much about how they actually use my money but I support their stated goal of improving our voting systems.

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so you could have a single-party system and you'd end up with a split of conservatives and liberals. It's not about party, at least not about blindly voting for one party.

This is not about liberalism or conservativism at all. It would be lovely if the current Republican party was about conservativism. This is not about political philosophy, this is about party and who exercises power in those parties.

Not all Dems support Net Neutrality, not all Republicans oppose it, which contradicts your point.

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#124
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has net neutrality. You are quite naive if you think NN is a solution to censorship. Browse eff.org for more than a few minutes to see that NN doesn't even scratch the surface of underlying issues. I don't want NN because then everyone will think the internet is just fine, when NN is a joke of a solution that doesn't even cover anything more than the FTC already covers.

I am a Chinese and I am curious starting when we had net neutrality? Every major sites has to pay all major ISPs to connect into their network so that all ISPs' customers can access the site. When you rent a server, you need to make sure that the server is connected to at least two of the major networks otherwise ISPs will throttle traffic from other competitors. It is also true that connecting servers outside the co…

Wow so a nicely named govt policy has the opposite effects it’s intended to have? I’m shocked!

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#125
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if Comcast decides your videos are hurting their cable TV business and start dropping packets That's already illegal under existing anti trust law. Zero rating is a different issue but doesn't count as paid prioritization which is what they're asking about.

> That's already illegal under existing anti trust law. Comcast and others have already done exactly that and it was the FCC that went after them, not the FTC. And how does anti-trust apply when it's the actions of a single company? There's no collusion between businesses to drop packets, one business just does it and other businesses may decide to do it also, they don't have to all agree to do it for it to be effect…

If a company uses a monopoly in one industry to benefit them in another industry that can be an anti trust violation. No collusion is required.

The famous Microsoft anti trust case wasn't about collusion, but about using OS dominance to create browser dominance.

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a dope if you don't vote. It's impolite to mention this, but it is not a political problem, but a Republican problem. A Democratic administration's FCC enacted Net Neutrality, a Republican one is attempting to dismantle it. Vote for Democrats at every level of government, in every election possible. This will change some day, but today the Republican party has lost its mind and morals. To be clear, I'm not cal…

both parties don't make decisions i consider sane or particularly clever yet those are the only two parties i may vote for with any chance of success. the voting system is broken by outmoded/gamed structures (gerrymandering, an electoral college), and all-or-nothing outcomes (if i vote for one candidate and they don't win, i may make no second or third choice with which then to put my voting power behind). i simply f…

From any given viewpoint, both parties may not be ideal. But within both of those parties are numerous different ideological groups. On the right, the major wings range from evangelicals, libertarians, neoconservatives, "traditional", and so on. On the left, the parties tend to fall into a mix of "Blue Dog" democrats, Clintonians, progressive caucus, black caucus, and a whole bunch of single issue and identity issue groups.

No matter what your particular viewpoint is, one of those groups likely aligns with most of it. During primaries, those different groups hash out against each other, and then redirect the party as a whole.

So the key, then, is to find the smaller groups and politicans that more closely reflect your beliefs, and lend your support to them.

Yes, our two party system doesn't allow for second and third choices on a single ballot. But what it does allow for is for you to vote for your preferred candidates (the above caucuses) in primaries as your first choice, and then vote for your second choice in the general if your favorite candidate didn't win or run in a specific primary.

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#127

Nick Gillespie: Your plan will, according to a write up in Politico, and I think this is accurate, it quote, "will jettison rules that prohibit internet service providers from blocking or slowing web traffic or creating so called paid internet fast lanes." Question for you, do you think fast lanes will become a thing? What is the value of a internet fast lane? Ajit Pai: The answer to the first is we're not sure. We'v…

> "If murder hadn't happened in a certain area yet, would it be 'too preemptive' to outlaw it?" But even with murder, the law doesn't stop murders before they happen, but rather only acts retroactively (and that is for good reason). > "Fast lanes DO exist in other countries right now." But this is ignoring the whole debate: proponents of net freedom don't consider fast lanes to be a problem.

> But even with murder, the law doesn't stop murders before they happen

At least in Germany planning a murder is illegal. Just like preparing a terrorist attack is - otherwise the police wouldn't be allowed to stop it.

Also Wiki: "In some jurisdictions, the very act of preparing for a crime is a criminal offense in itself" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_preparation)

For the US, interesting read: https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/criminal/criminal-law-bas...

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#128

It's probably futile, but you might sign this "Do Not Repeal Net Neutrality" [0] petition on the White House petitions site. It already has over 100,000 signatures -- the threshold at which the White House is supposed to, at minimum, respond to it. Since we can't vote on this and our representatives aren't voting on it either, it's worth a shot. [0]: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-not-repeal-net-...

battleforthenet.com and democracy.io are two much more direct alternatives.

Battleforthenet will be over the phone (and therefore be a bit more influenential), so I recommend it. But democracy.io (from the EFF) will have you contact all of your representatives directly, via email, within a minute or two.

I highly recommend them.

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#129
post #109
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics is not the only relevant domain for public policy. Just because someone is confident in their opinion doesn't mean they're knowledgable, surely you see that regularly online. Economists are not especially self-aware or more humble than other people. Here's an ignorant comment: "Net neutrality is a fiction. Hire Akamai (et al.) to mirror your servers worldwide to speed content to your users." Using Akamai is…

>ISPs do not operate in a market, consumers have little to no choice amongst providers The market being discussed is between companies and ISPs, where companies can pay more for priority.

I don't think that's clear from how the comment is written.

I just realized the presumption embedded in the original question, "Considering both distributional effects and changes in efficiency, it is a good idea to let companies that send video or other content to consumers pay more to Internet service providers for the right to send that traffic using faster or higher quality service."

It assumes companies paying ISPs to reach consumers is normal. It's not. So even the people asking the question don't understand the subject.

Re: I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality

#130
post #7

Sorry I'm not buying into the panic. Between wide scale TLS deployment and larger swaths of bandwidth available, I'd rather see free market solutions so these regulatory powers can't be abused. Net neutrality only matters if your ISP can decrypt your traffic and there is a limited share of bandwidth available.

Network providers can effectively filter and manipulate traffic regardless of TLS. Look at China.
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