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FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

nytimes.com

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Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#191

Post by Cody-99 »

paulddraper wrote: post #148
Cody-99 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ISP customers already paid for that. The ISP customer already paid for the bandwidth, hardware, and all other costs. Not sure why this is confusing for you. The ISP isn't paying more because Bob next door decides to watch netflix for a few hours a night. >Who do you think is paying? The customer..? Are you really confused about this?

> already paid In some cases. In other cases, it hasn't even happened yet. > Are you really confused about this? I'm not at all confused. The ISP spends $X to build and maintain infrastructure for Y Gbps internet. Mobile carriers do the same.

>In some cases. In other cases, it hasn't even happened yet.

..? By the point ISP customers receive internet they have either already paid for the service, paid a deposit, or agreed to pay for it the following month like other utilities. In all of these cases by the time the user makes use of their service they have already agreed to pay for the internet service which includes data, hardware, and other infrastructure fees.

>The ISP spends $X to build and maintain infrastructure for Y Gbps internet.

EXACTLY. You are proving my point! The customer of the ISP has already paid for that. It doesn't cost the ISP any more money if I make use of my service by sending data to netflix, reddit, or whoever! If I watch netflix 12 hours a day it costs the ISP exactly $0 extra dollars. Asking me to pay more money or be throttled is ridiculous.

Hell, if you have one of the largest ISPs they pay nothing for any amount of data transfer over their networks anyway so your argument is even weaker lol.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#192

Post by yterdy »

jrockway wrote: post #75
bearjaws wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill punted on forever. Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.

To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill. The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality. I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone wants it in both parties. Just get it done. Even more annoying is th…

>To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill.

That's just three different ways of saying, "Wrote checks to fill the pockets of monied interests, the bill for which will be paid for by the generations which explicitly oppose such policy."

Talk to me when they pass Medicare For All, the Green New Deal, campaign finance reform, and a border/immigration bill that finally puts that issue to rest. Until then, it's just another round of avoiding addressing the issues that are easiest to run on if they haven't been fixed in a prior term.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#193

Post by acdha »

paulddraper wrote: post #148
Cody-99 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ISP customers already paid for that. The ISP customer already paid for the bandwidth, hardware, and all other costs. Not sure why this is confusing for you. The ISP isn't paying more because Bob next door decides to watch netflix for a few hours a night. >Who do you think is paying? The customer..? Are you really confused about this?

> already paid In some cases. In other cases, it hasn't even happened yet. > Are you really confused about this? I'm not at all confused. The ISP spends $X to build and maintain infrastructure for Y Gbps internet. Mobile carriers do the same.

The ISP’s customers pay for their costs. The problem started when those ISPs decided they weren’t satisfied with 15-20% profit margins and started finding other ways to generate revenue like selling their customers’ activity data to advertisers, injecting ads, or by trying to get popular services to double-pay their operating costs.

You can tell it’s not a real barrier to the business in two ways: one is that it only affects MBA-infested companies - small ISPs and municipal broadband never seems to have a problem providing better service for less money – and the other is that they’re not asking their customers to pay more. If their cost of providing service had actually gone up, they’d have been open about that and own the claim that a few Mbps costs more than it used to despite all evidence to the contrary. Keeping as a back room deal lets them try to hide all of the details behind NDAs.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#194

Post by guptaneil »

richwater wrote: post #60

Remember when the Internet freaked out and "when dark" to protest how the lack of NN would ruin the internet?....and then nothing changed? The boy who cried wolf...again.

The fight for net neutrality may not have been as public anymore, but it kept going over the last 5 years. Plenty of court cases challenging the FCC's ruling have been ongoing and California even passed their own net neutrality law. Congress attempted to pass a bill that would enshrine net neutrality as well, though of course the Republic majority never allowed it to get to a vote.

All this is to say despite net neutrality technically not being federally required between 2018 - 2024, it wasn't feasibly for ISP's to roll out metered plans that would go unchallenged. I suspect most were stuck in a "wait and see" stage, and likely expected this eventual rollback anyway given the landscape is still so rapidly changing.

So the protests and constant pushing back against NN did have a positive impact on our eventual outcome, even if it's not obvious or a direct line from reddit blackouts. Like most things, the truth is complex.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#195

Post by rsanek »

backtoyoujim wrote: post #143
redserk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that these agencies and their powers did not spring up out of thin air. Various elected Congress sessions wrote the laws that created and empowered these agencies to create rules. This is a reasonable implementation of a "democratic republic" as Congress still has oversight.

Agencies are not beholden to Congress; they are beholden to the executive branch that creates them. That is why Nixon created the EPA so that there would not be a Department of the Environment that was out of the hands of executive power.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#196

Post by jahewson »

feoren wrote: post #167

This flip-flopping happens because there is no commonality to find. One of the only (effectively) two major political parties of the United States is completely uninterested in governing. They have no policy. They have no plan for governing; they don't like governing. Their only goal is the piecemeal selloff of government powers to the highest bidder, and they convince their stalwart followers of this by making sure…

Neither party is interested in governing - have you seen the border right now? The out of control spending?

Instead we have a crusade against the number of Doritos in a bag https://news.yahoo.com/elizabeth-warrens-shrinkflation-rant-...

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#197

Post by yterdy »

graycat wrote: post #186
gmueckl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of dysfunctional/autocratic/kleptocratic governments based on constitutions that are somewhat democratic in nature. The US is just a high profile example of government structure slowly sliding into one of these failed states (faster if Trump gets another term).

> (faster if Trump gets another term). I didn't keep track and don't have a good list, but a guess is that Trump did push through a lot of regulatory changes. If the media would publish a well documented list ...!! From all I've seen, I like Trump, but apparently a lot of people don't. I wonder where am I going wrong. Why do some people not like him? A guess is the now old collection of video clips from the MSM (main…

Kindly read or listen to any long-form work by Sarah Kendzior.

But I don't know if the statement you quoted is correct either. Trump isn't the politician who has people tracking their stock trades because they so consistently outperform the market (that would be legislators, including Democrats, who trade on insider information, but face no consequences because the arbiters of such judgment are... themselves). Unfortunately, I'm not sure that even a second Biden term will save us.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#198

Post by massysett »

vkou wrote: post #155
SeanAnderson wrote: post #13

I'm happy this reversal occurred, but I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. Feels like we're stagnating as a nation by going in a circle rather than finding commonality to go forward. Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it?

We are flipfloppimg because the legislature is paralysed, so only the executive can function. This is a fundamental issue with the American form of government. Parliamentary systems which have the executive made up of members of the legislature have way less flip-flopping, finger-pointing, and paralysis. The governments they produce are more reflective of current public sentiment, end up with more than two parties, a…

This "paralyzed" legislature just passed, by large margins, a large amount of foreign aid and a very significant provision on a popular social media platform.

Before that it spent billions of dollars on covid aid.

Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running.

This "paralyzed" narrative is something the press and politicians like to push because it serves their ends, though for different reasons. It's false.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#199

Post by acdha »

lr4444lr wrote: post #80
redserk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and I'd rather Congress weigh in now that we've had this specific issue flip-flop twice. I do not like the implication that agency rulemaking is anti-democratic though. We have utilized this structure for well over 120 years, or practically half of the country's history.

The scope creep of these agencies in recent decades is substantial, though. It's one thing to set rules for dumping that protect wildlands, or verify drugs in the medical supply chain aren't toxic. Deciding the rules of commerce? I'm less than thrilled.

It’s not scope creep as much as recognizing that Congress is less functional than it used to be. Obstruction has been normalized since the backlash to Obama’s election – think about how often people claim you need 60 votes in the senate – and that means anyone who sees a problem has an incentive to figure out how to do it without needing timely action.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#200

Post by feoren »

s3r3nity wrote: post #188
feoren wrote: post #167

This flip-flopping happens because there is no commonality to find. One of the only (effectively) two major political parties of the United States is completely uninterested in governing. They have no policy. They have no plan for governing; they don't like governing. Their only goal is the piecemeal selloff of government powers to the highest bidder, and they convince their stalwart followers of this by making sure…

> They have no policy. They have no plan for governing; they don't like governing. This is an unfair analysis, and is either naive at best or disingenuous at worst. I'm not a registered Republican, but I AM strongly against an all-powerful centralized body of government that continues to expand exponentially. I would rather focus powers in a more decentralized direction closer to the individuals and the States themse…

Homogeneity also comes with its own problems -- smaller, more homogenous governments are much more likely to discriminate against the "out group", for instance.

Government grows because what we do grows. We didn't need legislation on airspace and radio waves and net neutrality and cyber bullying when our Constitution was written. In many cases, powers simply come into existence, and I'd rather the government have those powers than a monopoly or oligopoly of private rich entities.

Rather than limited Government, I'd rather see an Open Government -- one that is accountable to, accessible to, and made up of us. Then why does it matter if government gets big? Government is us, after all. At least we can work toward that. Maybe?

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