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President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

whitehouse.gov

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Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#441

Post by JoeAltmaier »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #438
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those are artificial bottom-rung services. We all know that an internet connection is an internet connections, right? So restricting this bogus program to certain websites was an attempt to capture the consumer, nothing more. Its somewhat like offering the poor special-price moldy bread, deliberately poisoned to make them have to buy your medicine or whatever. There's no point to it, except evil.

Its somewhat like offering the poor special-price moldy bread, deliberately poisoned to make them have to buy your medicine No, that's a completely unfair characterization. There's nothing "poisoned" about the lower level of service being contemplated here, it's just a lot less capable. You seem to be putting yourself into the position of deciding for these hypothetical poor customers that if they can't have the A+ l…

I didn't make my self clear then. Its absolutely poisoned. They had to go to special trouble to disable browsing anything but the services they wanted you to see. Like putting on blinders. Or to use the food analogy, to destroy the food value of the bread so as to influence your subsequent behavior.

The lowest rung, the only rung, on the internet ladder is - a connection. Nothing costs more or less than that. The rest is an attempt to charge rent on property that isn't theirs. To mix the metaphors. They are a carrier; they don't provide web sites and its none of their blessed business which ones you visit using their precious phone.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#442

Post by dasmithii »

forgotpasswd3x wrote: post #166
padobson wrote: post #56

I hope no one is getting excited about this. President Obama is a lame duck. His party just got tossed out of the Senate, relegating his political capital to basically 0. In the wake of this, he's decided to take maybe the most important economic issue of the next 20 years and politicize it. Neither the red team nor the blue team could say they owned this issue, but one of the most divisive voices in politics just st…

Sure would be fucking nice if they (democrats and republicans) could not have to take opposing sides on fucking everything, but you're right. Since he's for it, they're going to rally against it. Really disappointing.

> Sure would be fucking nice if they (democrats and republicans) could not have to take opposing sides on fucking everything

There is a selection bias in the issues you speak of. Non-polarizing topics are handled swiftly, without much attention from the public spotlight. There is no point in discussing what's already agreed upon, and that's one of the more reasonable justifications of political polarization.

That said, the polarization is greater than would be optimal, so I do agree - it would be nice.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#443

Post by dasmithii »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #104
mpweiher wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are the same thing: in order to protect net neutrality (the free and open internet), you need strong regulation, it doesn't happen by itself.

This sounds very George Orwell, like "Freedom is Slavery". It's going to take a very strong argument to support the idea that freedom is enhanced by limiting freedom. Not that it's impossible; my glib statement plays fast-and-loose with "freedom", using the same word in one sentence to mean both the overall amount of freedom as well as in a microcosm. But even so, the apparent contradiction should make us think befor…

"Freedom from whom, and to do what?"

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#445

Post by MarkMc »

aidenn0 wrote: post #409
MarkMc wrote: post #403

Can a net neutrality advocate please help me understand why the internet is different to physical roads and bridges? UPS and FedEx are free to charge a different price when delivering a package from Amazon.com compared to Walmart.com. So why should an internet service provide be prevented from charging a different price for delivering data from Amazon.com compared to Walmart.com? Is it simply a case of there not bein…

> Is it simply a case of there not being enough competition between internet service providers? This is a big part of it (2/3) of the US have 2 or fewer options for broadband. > UPS and FedEx are free to charge a different price when delivering a package from Amazon.com compared to Walmart.com. This is the wrong analogy. A better one is probably a gated community (which Wikipedia tells me is rare in Australia, unfort…

Thanks for the detailed reply. In your analogy the 'last mile' is a monopoly - ie. comcast / community association. I agree that it's fair to regulate such a monopoly with 'net neutrality' rules.

But what about situations where there are multiple providers of the 'last mile' connection and effective competition between them? Should net neutrality rules apply in those cases?

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#446

Post by smsm42 »

saraid216 wrote: post #433
smsm42 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but corporation can be influenced for the general good too - by its customers. In fact, you can argue customers have more control than the voters - if the politician has 50%+1 votes in his pocket and appoints the bureaucrat, the opinion of the rest of 50%-1 voters have absolutely no weight to him (unless he is of a special rare breed of saint which is so rare in real politics). However, for the corporation losi…

> if the politician has 50%+1 votes in his pocket and appoints the bureaucrat, the opinion of the rest of 50%-1 voters have absolutely no weight to him (unless he is of a special rare breed of saint which is so rare in real politics). This sounds plausible, but it isn't correct. Remember, first of all, that no politician has real access to who did and did not vote for him. He has access to polling data, which general…

>>> Obama, since 2012, has no real reason to care about who voted for him in 2012 because he's not going to get any votes in 2016

That's not entirely true. Obama is not alone, there's a party around him, and what he does influences how this party is viewed and how others in the same party do on elections. However, if their base support is wide enough for being elected, there's no reason to feel any obligation to cater to people who are not part of that base.

>>> their job is to reconcile every interest with every other interest.

If it is so, most politicians do their job extremely poorly, as they are nowhere near every. In fact, it is very common to dismiss interests of opposing or unaffiliated groups completely, or even present them as evil for voicing such interests, let alone trying to get them recognized and respected.

>>> It can know if you stop spending money, and it can calculate exactly what effect that will have on its bottom line.

In theory, it could be possible if some corporation owned/had access to all the data, in practice, I don't think any big corporation does it on personal level. But on statistical level, it works the same way - the difference it, the market share is more fine-grained. So for the corporation offending each person is a direct loss, for a politician usually offending 20-30% of the population is no problem, provided all the others are OK with it.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#447

Post by nathan_long »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #432
nathan_long wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom can be enhanced by limiting freedom. In the US, you may not have a slave or be a slave. It is illegal, even if both parties are willing. Why can't we decide? Because if we could, it would open the door to trickery and coercion. The fact that no slavery arrangement is legal keeps a lot of people from being tricked or coerced into one. Hence, limiting freedom (of agreements) can enhance freedom generally (no sl…

We want a market where houses below a certain level of quality just don't exist, because it's better for everyone. But are we sure that's true? A couple months ago I recall seeing that one of the major wireless providers was planning a level of service that was (a) very cheap; (b) allowed unlimited access to Facebook and a couple of other major social apps; and (c) was very expensive for data usage outside that area.…

>> We want a market where houses below a certain level of quality just don't exist, because it's better for everyone.

> But are we sure that's true?

It depends on how you calculate the cost of the low-quality thing. Take houses. If people could sell houses made of compressed dryer lint, some would. And some poor people would buy. And many of them would be horribly burned in fires.

What's the cost? It depends on how much responsibility we take in caring for them. Do we pay to treat their burns? Do we pay for their funerals? Do we pay to raise their children and give them counseling? What about the lost potential of all those people to contribute to the world? What about the value of life itself?

> One outcome of the arguments for net neutrality, and your argument in particular, is that there's no means for providing low-cost services designed for the less-rich. It's not obvious to me that setting a bar this high is a good thing for the lower economic rung in our society.

It's not obvious to me, either. But it seems like Facebook-only phones are a bit like dryer-lint houses. How much would it cost society to have its bottom ranks unable to read Wikipedia or look up medical conditions on MedLinePlus or comparison shop on Amazon?

And if such plans succeed, how long until we have to consider every ISP's plans with "features" such as "doesn't block category X" and "doesn't throttle site Y"?

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#448

Post by baldfat »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #52
untog wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that Libertarians are pro-net neutrality? It's government regulation that limits what ISPs can do - hardly a free market philosophy.

+1. I'm a libertarian, and I'm not necessarily pro-NN.

So you are for Government to change the Internet by making rules that only help a localized Monopoly?

I don't get how people don't see that this is a monopoly based on Government intervention???? Started with cable TV and now we are stuck with this in internet monopolies which are 100% anti-free market.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#449

Post by LyndsySimon »

baldfat wrote: post #448
LyndsySimon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. I'm a libertarian, and I'm not necessarily pro-NN.

So you are for Government to change the Internet by making rules that only help a localized Monopoly? I don't get how people don't see that this is a monopoly based on Government intervention???? Started with cable TV and now we are stuck with this in internet monopolies which are 100% anti-free market.

I have no idea how you drew that conclusion from my post.
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