While they're at it they could restore the FCC fairness doctrine, repealed in 1987.
FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
481–490 of 598 posts
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
The doomsday "propaganda" didn't come to pass because several states and localities promptly passed their own net neutrality laws after it was deregulated at the federal level. The larger ISPs couldn't find a workable way to implement their non-neutral bullshit in some markets but not others, and the local ISPs in places with no net neutrality laws never really had enough clout to do crappy things in the first place.
I didn't know that. That's actually a good explanation for the why.
If that didn't happen, and the ISPs started profiting off non-net-neutral tactics, it could have been permanently fucked.
Once someone depends on a legal source of income, if that source of income gets banned in the future, they generally get to keep that source of income "grandfathered in" if they take the issue to court.
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't know that. That's actually a good explanation for the why.
If that didn't happen, and the ISPs started profiting off non-net-neutral tactics, it could have been permanently fucked. Once someone depends on a legal source of income, if that source of income gets banned in the future, they generally get to keep that source of income "grandfathered in" if they take the issue to court.
> Once someone depends on a legal source of income, if that source of income gets banned in the future, they generally get to keep that source of income “grandfathered” forever if they take the issue to court.
That’s… not true.
Otherwise, all the people depending on selling drugs that were later banned would have been grandfathered in when the drugs were prohibited.
Even when there is a regulatory taking (that is, government regulations eliminate the value of existing property in a way that is considered a taking under the 5th amendment), the remedy is compensation for the lost value of the property, not a lifetime exemption from the regulation.
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm. I would encourage a different, less intense angle here. It’s possible the doomsday didn’t come to pass because a lot of passionate people worked very hard to make sure we avoided it.
The null hypothesis is that market forces takes care of it. Like your airline ticket prices. The onus of proof is on you to market forces aren't enough.
Airline fares are regulated by the FAA and the DOT to disallow deceptive business practices and require minimum service levels: https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer...
Similarly, the FCC net neutrality rules allow telcos to charge any price for the service while disallowing blocking or throttling particular Internet sites or protocols. If such rules weren't indeed necessary, big telcos wouldn't be spending their money campaigning against them, would they?
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#485While they're at it they could restore the FCC fairness doctrine, repealed in 1987.
As a United States immigrant, I had never heard of the fairness doctrine before. My first thought is: how would it be compatible with the freedom of the press granted by the First Amendment?
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#486I'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?
Your comment inspired me to make this: https://net-neutrality.vercel.app/
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#487The amount of pro-net neutrality in here is a clear demonstration of the opinion forming power of John Oliver, by dressing the issue as affecting users instead of companies.
A lot of people seem very confused about what “neutrality” means, and it’s consequences. As an analogy, VAT is an equal tax (everyone pays the same VAT) but it’s a very non-progressive tax (it burdens poor people more than rich people.
Your ISP doesn’t really care about your speed, it could increase yours and all your neighbors speed by a big chunk and it won’t really notice it. The problem is that to handle a Netflix they need to do a massive investment.
Yes, non net neutrality is about creating differentiated “highways”, but you are not going on that “highway” no matter what.
The discussion is if internet is considered infrastructure (as roads are) and thus they should be built with everyones money, no matter how specific they are to a single company, or if we should leave it to the market.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me why a company that makes massive amounts of money from the internet shouldn’t be paying a higher proportion of the infrastructure costs than a user.
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
What changed for me is that my home internet provider (Comcast) implemented an overly-burdensome impossible data cap that I can only get rid of if I agree to use their router with deep packet inspection, ad injection, and more.
Fwiw you can set their router to bridge mode and use your own. It is probably still doing some traffic analysis but certainly no ad injection. This is what I do to get unlimited data without paying their exorbitant standalone fee.
The parent post misses the main reason they sell these. It's not for the ad injection but because they broadcast a Wi-Fi hotspot that you cannot turn off, which shares your internet connection.
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
The data suggests that "both sides" isn't really the case here. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457289.2019.15... "these results suggest that Trump was able to leverage populist anger for political advantage in ways that other candidates were not and that such anti-elitism played an important and underappreciated role in explaining the outcome of the [2016] presidential election." *Edit - added year in…
Not going to pay 50 bucks to read that article, but if the term "populist anger" is used there in its common meaning, it's not about "other side" at all. It's mainly about people feeling supposedly representative government has abandoned any pretense of representing the population and their interests, and that understandably makes some people feel bad about it. It's not about pissing off some imaginary opponent, it's…
You're trying to say that policy and representation is the broad concern. The studies say otherwise. The whole of government is one part of the elite that conservative America wants to tear down.
Do you think "owning the liberals" is a completely made up thing? How do you think it compares to the phrase "owning the conservatives", a phrase nobody uses nor seemingly aspires to?
Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
#490The amount of pro-net neutrality in here is a clear demonstration of the opinion forming power of John Oliver, by dressing the issue as affecting users instead of companies. A lot of people seem very confused about what “neutrality” means, and it’s consequences. As an analogy, VAT is an equal tax (everyone pays the same VAT) but it’s a very non-progressive tax (it burdens poor people more than rich people. Your ISP d…
Net neutrality laws are not an US only thing. EU (The Net Neutrality Regulation 2015) and many other countries have net neutrality laws.
>I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me why a company that makes massive amounts of money from the internet shouldn’t be paying a higher proportion of the infrastructure costs than a user.
Because ISP is in business of selling internet access to consumer. ISP can sell different tiers of service to the consumer, but can't sell the product twice. Netflix pays huge sum in their end.
This is how money flows:
customer--->[ISP]-->|backbone|You see.