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Net Neutrality

Riley said:
So...Should I just do as my mom says and not worry?
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Arguments over net neutrality come and go, much like political threats to tax the crap out of the Internet. There will always be someone or some group bent on destroying that which we cherish. Whether it's your Internet connection, your wallet or even your life.

It's just part of life and living in a world where communication transcends the globe right into your living room. Where we are so exposed to the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Ironically I once lived in a time when there were no computers, let alone an Internet. Yet that was during the Cold War, when major global powers were constantly weighing the possibility of mutually assured destruction.

With so many ugly and beautiful things in the world, you just learn to live with the possibilities of both without dwelling on their probabilities. And otherwise just tend to what makes up your everyday life without dwelling on so many other things utterly beyond your control.
 
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Riley said:
So, apparently, they're trying to get rid of Net Neutrality. And me? I really don't want this to happen, but I just want to sit back and hope everyone else will stop the ban. Also, I'm worried because THIS DA user is worried. Makes me afraid that society WILL collapse.
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If the FCC (who are not elected, by the way - some think that they are) decide to get rid of net neutrality, it will likely be tied up in court for a long long time, because who owns the Internet? It might just be the American military, thus making it a public resource and making it possible that getting rid of net neutrality is a First Amendment violation.

If not, and I ran an ISP, I would continue to abide by net neutrality and make sure that every consumer around knows it. Then I would have all the customers.
 
I just see the lack of net neutrality much like the proliferation of pay-tv. I'll continue to pay for basic-enhanced cable tv and broadband access to the Internet. But to pay for HBO, Showtime, Netflix....yadda-yadda-yadda? Forget it. I'd just learn to live without the net entirely not to mention all its "bells and whistles" that come with another price tag.

So will you, if you aren't willing to purchase something with money you don't actually have.

The telecommunications industry has had amazing luck on getting hapless young people to buy services for mobile devices they don't really need, and can't actually afford. But potentiated by other competing industries....combined with higher basic costs of living like housing? Something has to give, unless some fool is willing to claim their wages are outpacing their costs.

Government seems to indefinitely indulge in deficit spending, but it doesn't mean this economy is going to allow its citizens to do the same. Abandoning net neutrality is just creating another economic bubble to be burst, much like an overbought stock market or government spending more than its revenue. It's just another agenda that favors only the top echelon of society.
 
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The reason why the FCC did do net neutrality under Obama was really due to the following issues:
  • AT&T Blocked Apple's FaceTime in 2012 and part of 2013 because they felt it would hurt their phone business. they also blocked Skype around this time as well for the same reason. They demanded both companies agree to their huge extortion to gain the right to network or be damned.
  • Verizon literally from about 2013 to the passage of NN went out of it's way to block services and apps on Android that let you do data tethering, mobile hotspots or really anything that was big data usage even if you had unlimited data or a big data plan. they demanded the Google give to their demands
  • Comcast right before NN came into being literally blocked Netflix from their network because it threatened their own streaming content and they tried to extort a massive payout from Netflix. Netflix couldn't afford to pay Comcast the asking price, so they found allies in their lawsuit against them.
  • T-Mobile, Sprint, Charter/TWC etc... have all pulled stuff of this nature as well over the last decade.
The other issue why FCC did NN was the fact that Republicans refused to let NN come to committee vote in either house during that time.

The legal issues with the repeal of NN are the following:
  1. Pai (charmain and former legal counsel for Verizon) failed to follow the law. He literally violated the law and the FCC's charter with the way they are repealing it. They did not hold public hearings as required. They did not give the public enough time to read the final version of the regulation it could still change by December 14 (repeal day). They are supposed to give I think it's 60 or 90 days for the public to read and respond to the final version of the regulation.
  2. Pai also publicly stated they the Republican majority will not and have no plans to listen to the public or read the publics comments regarding the repeal. He has repeated the public can do what they wanted because their minds where made up long before they formally announced the plans.
  3. He says he going through with it regardless of the legal formalities, because it will bring "free market" back to the internet and it will bring "investment" to rural America. [insert conservative drivel about deregulation here and how companies will do the right thing].
  4. He and the Republican majority already voted to deny the legal requests of the NY AG in to the identity fraud regarding all the pro repeal comments. apparently the vast majority of them over 1.9 million and counting where stolen identities of real Americans, many of which who did not actually post them or know the FCC even had a damn website. Many of these comments where done by the telecoms themselves and other allies of the the chairman. they just recent refused to comply with a subpoena from the NY AG stating NY lacked authority to subpoena FCC employees.
  5. He and the Republican majority have already been paid off by the telecoms, even the Democratic commissioners went public with it and are now facing possible legal action for going public.
  6. The law and the FCC charter states the agency must act in the public's best interest and something about integrity and honesty etc... Obviously they are blatantly violating that very clause.
  7. MOST IMPORTANTLY THE REPEAL states that states and municipalities cannot regulate telecoms or the internet in any form, including NN and antitrust. (YES THE GOP ADDED THIS SECTION)!
  8. 7 was already ruled unconstitutional like two years ago.
  9. Oh we have also given these damn telecoms billions of dollars every decade to billed the damn cell and broadband networks out, and yet they haven't. That should be enough to keep it on the books alone.
 
@Judge
As 32 year old American

I need the internet to even fill out insurance forms, there is no paper version for some of it.
This is a company insurance plan, not an individual one.
Same goes for student loan repayment stuff.

i literally cannot live without basic internet and data, because it would literally make my life that much harder and most people I know from 20s to 60s. I would have that much more trouble doing my literal job at work without a good data plan (Thankfully I'm on my dad's family plan). To get my own individual cell and data plan through a major carrier would run me north of $60 due to bundling and other crap they pull. it only costs me $20 a month on the family plan (he pays for it because i take care of his mother).

Hell basic internet as in 3MB DSL (lowest you can get now out here) is ~50 from AT&T without landline or bundle. Charter or Verizon make you buy a bundle for a higher price.

I could go back to Dial up, but then I couldn't do the online stuff I need to do, because it doesn't easily support dial up or mobile.

Though I live with my grandmother still, cause its too expensive to move out even with some of my healthcare expenses not covered by my work healthcare (I paid almost $600 this month for mental health, cause my doctor hates dealing with blue cross (which are a pain to deal with and I don't blame him)). I work for a small company, but it's a good work environment, so I'm willing to except less pay.
 
Well, I'm not american but this things just got eliminated, some people wpuld say that if it is only in USA is their problem but the mayority of tech/internet based companies, the big ones, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, you name it have their headquarters and servers in american soil, so in that case the rest of the world is f...ked up.

In don't want to get into politics but sure as hell Trump and their friends are having a party right now, aside from the economical implications for ISP's, there's nothing better for a politian than a dumb, un-educated citizen, think about it, this FCC's thing is going to cut information access to millions of people, and I'm not refering to useless facebooks posts or news, or what that dumbass calls fake news, but it actually make harder to access scientific, philosophical, social databases which have the most updated and acurate information.

As Xenocity also noted, internet is a basic service nowadays, filling online forms for taxes, commerce, health, etc. I read some years ago that in Finland is a constitutional human right having at leats 1MB connection (I guess they have updated it since then), and although at first I tought it was weird/ crazy, this is protecting a fundamental human right of access to information, to let the people form a critical opinion.

And I posted before, a dumb citizen makes a very happy politician. :(
 
In the UK some sites are already blocked, mainly due to copyright infringement, it all started with The Pirate Bay in 2012 with a high court order, but this only started a large number of blocks and now it's common place. It has been totally ineffective however as people can simply use VPNs such as the free one included with the Opera browser to get around the block, or there's masses of alternative proxy domains to access The Pirate Bay and various other sites that have been blocked. Another attempt to disrupt the sites is suspending domain names, but again this isn't effective as they simply register a new one (or often more than one in case more are blocked) and it's searchable in Google within a day. If net neutrality did come in, which I hope it doesn't there's bound to be various ways around it too that will probably be illegal to the person providing the service, but probably not to the person using it (well not at first anyway). In other words people will fiercely fight it.
 
I agree, when you block/ban something for someone it will only push people to create a new way of access it, and fight against the ban. Even back when TPB main site was closed there are still hundreds of mirrors/proxy servers around the world, new less popular sites everyday and the use of proxys and VPN's is raising among users.
 
pjcnet said:
Another attempt to disrupt the sites is suspending domain names, but again this isn't effective as they simply register a new one (or often more than one in case more are blocked) and it's searchable in Google within a day. If net neutrality did come in, which I hope it doesn't there's bound to be various ways around it too that will probably be illegal to the person providing the service, but probably not to the person using it (well not at first anyway). In other words people will fiercely fight it.
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Exactly. Look at the black market for cigarettes, let alone controlled substances. Uh huh. We'd just end up with a proliferation of black market online presences apart from the dark web.

A new version of the "speakeasy" from the time of prohibition. Popping up at a rate for which law enforcement would be unable and perhaps even unwilling to combat.

This could well evolve into a nightmare of competing and conflicting proprietary interests. I'm glad I've been reducing rather than expanding my Internet "footprint". The idea of getting in the middle of some mega-corporate pissing match at my expense doesn't sound very enticing.
 
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