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We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

wired.com

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Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#4
post #3

I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on the side of freedom.

What makes that amusing?

Seriously?

Because they're demanding the freedom of the telcos be overridden in favor of our own personal interests.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#5

I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on the side of freedom.

The sticking point for me is that the market is already regulated such that it makes it very difficult for a competitor to challenge companies who engage in exploitative practices (and for similar reasons, the incentive to collude is extremely high). In a free market, net neutrality wouldn't need to be regulated because companies who attempted to enact business plans like the AT&T plan described in the article would rapidly find themselves losing marketshare to competitors.

I'm not really okay with the idea of regulating net neutrality from an ideological perspective, but from a practical one, we're kind of stuck with the market we have - effective regional monopolies are granted to a very small number of companies, and there is very little space for counterbalance from competition (which is why Google Fiber is such a Huge Frickin' Deal!). Left unfettered, the end result would likely be that the AT&Ts and Comcasts end up leeching their customers dry on both ends of the pipe, because those customers don't have any alternative.

In my ideal world, there would be no need to regulate net neutrality because I could penalize bad companies by refusing to do business with them, and getting my friends and family to do the same, but we don't have those options - choosing an ISP is a lot like choosing which knee you want to be hit in. In a market where companies have been granted regulatory monopolies, the invisible hand is rather ineffective.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes that amusing?

Seriously? Because they're demanding the freedom of the telcos be overridden in favor of our own personal interests.

Seriously?

Because we don't call them inalienable corporate rights, we call them inalienable human rights. Equating a corporation to a human is part of what got us in a whole host of messes.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#10
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes that amusing?

Seriously? Because they're demanding the freedom of the telcos be overridden in favor of our own personal interests.

Would these be the same telcos that operate as regional public utility monopolies, subsidized by your taxes and mine?
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