Net Neutrality: Five Myths, And The Real Facts

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This net neutrality article is great for sharing with your not so tech-savvy friends.

The Internet was a simpler place a decade ago, however. Now, in an age when consumers surf the web, Skype and watch Netflix simultaneously, ISPs face a demand for more bandwidth—and naturally, they want to be paid for providing it. Net neutrality proponents say a pay-to-play fast lane won't be neutral, and may be considered less open, because it will hamper companies that can't afford faster service.
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This is a leftist article promoting government regulation of the internet masquerading as intellectual tech speak. Spare us the propaganda. Net Neutrality, Internet fairness, faaaaaiirrrnesss, eqquuuaaallliiittyy. All buzzwords and catchphrases used by immoral men and women to manipulate the lowest common denominator in society so they can come into the picture and control more aspects of an individuals life. All the while glorifying themselves in the name of faaaaiiirrnesss and eeeqqquuuaaallliiitttyyy.

Let the best company win, let the most innovative company win, let the most adept marketing company win, let the most cutthroat competitive company win. But never let the manipulators spewing buzzwords and catchphrases at you ever get the better of you. Because the latter will always be worse than anything the evil meanie corporations to do you. Like providing you a product you want and you paying for it. Grrrr thats just not fair.
 
I'm a fairly Left leaning individual and that article didn't come off as Left at all to me.

Rather it reeked of the 'truth is in the middle' trope and assumes that the ISP's are presenting valid arguments rather than just spouting cynical spin. Terrible article Steve.

Also the whole 'let the best company win' thing isn't possible when the market place is ran by a monopoly or oligopoly so you don't know what you're talking about here at all.
 
You can't really let the best company win when many places have 1-2 viable options for an ISP
 
Ever think that the companies at the top ARE the "best companies." At least for now. It's incumbent on those who seek to topple them be more innovative, competitive, and have superior marketing. The most the government should do is whatever they can to minimize barriers to entry in the market and eliminate whatever favoritism/crony capitalist subsidies they may have with any company in the market.

Just because the big ol meanie corporations are at the top exist, it does not make them Satan and inherently wrong (unless they are truly breaking the law). If you want superior products and services to arrive then beat them at their own game. Do not use the force of government to give you the illusion of faaaaiiirrrnesss and eeeeqqquuuaaallliiittyyy so you can get your warm and fuzzies in your tummy.
 
Zale00 said:
Ever think that the companies at the top ARE the "best companies."
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Bwahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahha.........

Oh my god, cant breathe......

Comcast was voted worst company in America several times. So... thinking your logic is lacking any um.... logic.
 
I should be allowed to setup and publish my own EBGP, since all traffic is equal.
 
Zale00 said:
Ever think that the companies at the top ARE the "best companies."
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Being the top company in a given field doesn't mean that they're the best in that field at all since many companies use underhanded business tactics to become the top company.

MS for instance was notorious for using FUD and threatening companies with frivolous lawsuits to cripple or shut down competitors. They even went so far as to help other companies sue competitors (ie. SCO/Linux) to hobble their business activities.

Intel was also well known for using underhanded business tactics to suppress AMD and it took years for AMD to get any sort recompense for that. They paid OEM's not to use AMD CPU's, threatened motherboard manufacturers if they made AMD compatible motherboards (slot A era), and paid to get benchmarks with secret optimizations to hide the poor performance of their chips vs AMD chips (P4 era).

Another other big, and relevant, historical example would be 'Ma Bell' monopoly on telephone communication. Standard Oil is a good one too.
 
Forgot to add: many big companies, much less monopolies or oligopolies, did lots of illegal things to ensure they stayed big and/or to hobble competitors too.

There is absolutely no reason to give the mega corps the benefit of the doubt here.
 
The corporate profit motive is infinite and inexorable, government is and can be the only effective protector of the public interest against it. Keep reading it over and over until it penetrates all those brain cells that have atophied from right-wing thinking.
 
Zale00 said:
Because the latter will always be worse than anything the evil meanie corporations to do you.
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Well the "evil meanie corporations" have currently lobbied to lock up an oligarchy of ISP coverage in the USA so that we have to pay more and get less for internet than almost all of the developed world. Besides bandwidth caps, now they want to try and squeeze more money by prioritizing their own conflict-of-interest content + whoever can pay the most. So uh, what exactly is worse than that?
 
Limahl said:
Bwahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahha.........

Oh my god, cant breathe......

Comcast was voted worst company in America several times. So... thinking your logic is lacking any um.... logic.
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Well, in fairness I think that Monsanto should have won that honor (a company that is poisoning our food and water seems worse to me than a company with high priced internet) and I don't think that internet voting is always reflective of reality ... when Time Warner was considered the great Satan I never had any issues with them ... they did become more competitive after I left them for Fios but they were fine for me even before I left (speed was my main issue for leaving).

Comcast is high priced but but I haven't had any significant issues with them as a service provider since I moved to a new city where they are the provider ... I think that more competition would be good but that is a choice that the individual cities need to make ... I certainly don't believe that the last mile should be taken over (although cities should definitely try to buy it at a fair price if they want to manage the internet infrastructure themselves)

Personally I tend to agree with Reagan when he said the nine scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" ... as bad as industry sometimes gets they are still better than the government ... and people's biggest complaint about business (profit) is a red herring designed to marginalize the system of capitalism that has led the USA to become the world's largest economy ... even when China eventually displaces us from that position they will do it with three times our population :cool:
 
My WAG: He'll probably say something along the lines of those companies only have their regional monopolies and national scale oligopolies due to the govt. and if we got rid of the govt. somehow ~free markets~ would automagically appear and make everything better.

Somehow....

Problem is monopolies and oligopolies have existed before without govt. intervention (ie. Dutch East India Co. would be the most famous and well known historical example) and were incredibly powerful and awful.
 
kbrickley said:
... and people's biggest complaint about business (profit) is a red herring designed to marginalize the system of capitalism that has led the USA to become the world's largest economy
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Actually my biggest complaint about businesses was destruction of the environment, pollution, exploitation of workers, paying lobbyists to change laws that undermine workers' rights and give them special treatment, tax avoidance and in a few cases, flat out breaking the law. I don't think "them making profit" is even on the list...
 
kbrickley said:
Comcast is high priced but but I haven't had any significant issues
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And yet tons of people are and have complained bitterly about it. Your personal experience is worth nothing against the experiences of a vast and overwhelming majority.

kbrickley said:
capitalism that has led the USA to become the world's largest economy
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You realize the US economy didn't become a global economic powerhouse until during WWII right? And that during WWII the US had a command economy with price controls, material/food rationing, and the govt. essentially commandeered whole factories in order to get them to stop producing cars and appliances and to instead produce weapons?

That and about half the world's nations had their economies and factories blown up while the other half pursued a Marxist/Leninist/Maoist 'utopia' which resulted in horribly corrupt and inefficient totalitarian countries which couldn't compete very effectively.

Capitalism had very little to do with it.
 
kbrickley said:
Well, in fairness I think that Monsanto should have won that honor (a company that is poisoning our food and water seems worse to me than a company with high priced internet)
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I can see that, but the issue with Comcast isnt just high pricing, its about them controlling far too much of something, and using it to extort money from everyone, and if you dont pay.... they throttle you.....

Problem is, people only notice whats right in front of them at a given moment.. aka the cable bill or the PC screen trying to show a video but lagging too much because of ISP throttling.

If the Comcast/Time Warner deal is approved in any way, be read to bend over, because they'll use that stranglehold to wring every dime out of us they can, without providing any additional service for it other than to not throttle things.......

John Oliver had it right, it's a mob style shakedown in the making.
 
mesyn191 said:
You realize the US economy didn't become a global economic powerhouse until during WWII right? And that during WWII the US had a command economy with price controls, material/food rationing, and the govt. essentially commandeered whole factories in order to get them to stop producing cars and appliances and to instead produce weapons?

That and about half the world's nations had their economies and factories blown up while the other half pursued a Marxist/Leninist/Maoist 'utopia' which resulted in horribly corrupt and inefficient totalitarian countries which couldn't compete very effectively.

Capitalism had very little to do with it.
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This. But shhhhhhhh with your silly facts and logical responses. Libertarians will have none of that.
 
Myth 1: There is some definition of what net neutrality is
Myth 2: Everybody knows what it is
Myth 3: Deciding what net neutrality is is a solvable problem
Myth 4: My list has five myths :)
 
Zale00 said:
This is a leftist article promoting government regulation of the internet masquerading as intellectual tech speak. Spare us the propaganda. Net Neutrality, Internet fairness, faaaaaiirrrnesss, eqquuuaaallliiittyy. All buzzwords and catchphrases used by immoral men and women to manipulate the lowest common denominator in society so they can come into the picture and control more aspects of an individuals life. All the while glorifying themselves in the name of faaaaiiirrnesss and eeeqqquuuaaallliiitttyyy.

Let the best company win, let the most innovative company win, let the most adept marketing company win, let the most cutthroat competitive company win. But never let the manipulators spewing buzzwords and catchphrases at you ever get the better of you. Because the latter will always be worse than anything the evil meanie corporations to do you. Like providing you a product you want and you paying for it. Grrrr thats just not fair.
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Quote of the day, you good sir, win the Internet!
But to be fair in the name of fairness, everyone in this thread wins. Glory to me for pointing this out! :D
 
mesyn191 said:
I'm a fairly Left leaning individual and that article didn't come off as Left at all to me.

Rather it reeked of the 'truth is in the middle' trope and assumes that the ISP's are presenting valid arguments rather than just spouting cynical spin. Terrible article Steve.

Also the whole 'let the best company win' thing isn't possible when the market place is ran by a monopoly or oligopoly so you don't know what you're talking about here at all.
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People who lean a certain way are oft ignorant of the slants of a particular article or bit of reporting that bends towards their line of thinking.

Its an inherent bias. Same goes with people who are right leaning and reports that bend to the right.
 
mesyn191 said:
And yet tons of people are and have complained bitterly about it. Your personal experience is worth nothing against the experiences of a vast and overwhelming majority.


You realize the US economy didn't become a global economic powerhouse until during WWII right? And that during WWII the US had a command economy with price controls, material/food rationing, and the govt. essentially commandeered whole factories in order to get them to stop producing cars and appliances and to instead produce weapons?

That and about half the world's nations had their economies and factories blown up while the other half pursued a Marxist/Leninist/Maoist 'utopia' which resulted in horribly corrupt and inefficient totalitarian countries which couldn't compete very effectively.

Capitalism had very little to do with it.
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War is very profitable when doing it right.

The reason it continued after peacetime was that some capitalists took the advances made during the war and managed to find peaceful uses to advance our own personal technology, which is where the capitalism comes in, my commie friend...
 
If we had actual competition we wouldn't have a problem to fix.
 
I really don't understand people that are against net neutrality. I am almost positive that either a.) They don't understand how the internet works or b.) They work for one of the large ISPs.

I am really not left at all, pro gun, pro business, but trying to profit on the pipes themselves just fucks everybody in the end. We are already starting to lag behind and these morons that have no fucking idea what they are talking about and we'll have third world internet and business to follow all in the name of competition. Who the fuck built the U.S. interstate system? It wasn't Exxon. Why do you think the internet is sometimes referred to as the Information "Super Highway"? What would happen if Wal-Mart controlled all of our highways and forced all their competitors to drive along the shoulder?
 
Zale00 said:
This is a leftist article promoting government regulation of the internet masquerading as intellectual tech speak.
Click to expand...

I usually try to stick to attacking ideas rather than people, but... not only are you an idiot - you're mocking those smarter than you in such a childish way. Please grow up.

The government already regulates the internet in the worst possible way - with exclusive contracts that literally prevent competition.

A large city near me is Worcester, MA. Comcast recently proposed to take the city over from Charter. The city basically said hell no. Then Comcast pulled their strings, promised to keep the call center there open for at least 3 years (yes, government is so short-sited that this seemed like a good deal to them) and now they are taking the city over. And it is considered a prerequisite to the Time Warner deal. So in order for Comcast to become larger by acquiring Time Warner, it must... first become larger by forcing some of the only competition it'll have left to give up some of the market.

Government is literally only allowing this monopoly to expand if it.. expands even more.

You're right that some regulations - such as price controls (which aren't even on the table) - will make things worse and open the door to further corruption and stupidity from politicians. But the way you are expressing your distaste for the system is wrong. The proposed regulations are not so stupid and will improve things. But ultimately they are the wrong solution. The right solution is Capitalism. Something that doesn't exist in this industry at present due to the WORST kind of government regulation.
 
Zale00 said:
This is a leftist article promoting government regulation of the internet masquerading as intellectual tech speak.
...
Let the best company win, let the most innovative company win, let the most adept marketing company win, let the most cutthroat competitive company win.
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Regulation is not bad, the problem is we have rampant corruption so we often get corrupt regulation. No surprise simple folk will write the whole thing off completely.

The most "cutthroat" company in the case of internet service are natural monopolies, that kills the free market completely. If line sharing was instated then this wouldn't be the issue but as things stand each line to a home is owned by one entity, it's a stupid situation that prevents progress.

Anyway, good news for Kansas residents, they get to join Sweden and gang in the "modern age internet" quality charts, giving the rest of us hope for the future:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/12/att-wins-right-to-intervene-in-citys-fiber-broadband-plan/

According to The Wichita Eagle, “the service the city is planning has a download speed of 1Gbps and is projected to cost $40 a month for city residents. That’s 14 times faster and 60 percent cheaper than the fastest Internet service that Chanute residents can get now. [/URL]

Hopefully more towns follow because the FCC can't stop shilling for the fat lazy incumbents.
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Gah, clicked submit by mistake. I hope this BBS joins modern age too some day lol.
 
Wierdo said:
Gah, clicked submit by mistake. I hope this BBS joins modern age too some day lol.
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It's just this section that doesn't allow edits. I don't think a single person likes that policy, but nobody that runs the site actually cares about what its users want. Why give the users what they want when you can instead give them pointless rules that bring nothing good?

I say DOWN with this corrupt regulation of the news forum by the site admins! *grabs pitchfork and torch*
 
Wierdo said:
Regulation is not bad, the problem is we have rampant corruption so we often get corrupt regulation. No surprise simple folk will write the whole thing off completely.[/url] This really is at the core of just about every anti-government post I've seen. Government is a tool to help correct forces that would screw us all left uncheck. When corrupt forces get hold of it, it's a tool that works against us. The reasoning always seems to be if you remove that tool, the corruption... somehow magically disappears and doesn't find OTHER ways to screw us?
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mesyn191 said:
You realize the US economy didn't become a global economic powerhouse until during WWII right? And that during WWII the US had a command economy with price controls, material/food rationing, and the govt. essentially commandeered whole factories in order to get them to stop producing cars and appliances and to instead produce weapons?

That and about half the world's nations had their economies and factories blown up while the other half pursued a Marxist/Leninist/Maoist 'utopia' which resulted in horribly corrupt and inefficient totalitarian countries which couldn't compete very effectively.

Capitalism had very little to do with it.
Click to expand...

Capitalism had everything to do with it ... the USA economy was 228 Billion dollars in 1945 (at the end of the war) ... adjusting for inflation that would be about 3 Trillion dollars in modern money ... the USA economy in 2012 was 16 Trillion dollars (a 500% increase over the 1945 levels) ... the USA's only problem (as some have noted) is that we are not capitalist enough ... we need to eliminate regulations that prohibit growth (wages, environmental, etc) and replace them with regulations that encourage growth (eliminate corporate taxes so they are not forced to offshore their money, etc)
 
mesyn191 said:
Being the top company in a given field doesn't mean that they're the best in that field at all since many companies use underhanded business tactics to become the top company.

MS for instance was notorious for using FUD and threatening companies with frivolous lawsuits to cripple or shut down competitors. They even went so far as to help other companies sue competitors (ie. SCO/Linux) to hobble their business activities.

Intel was also well known for using underhanded business tactics to suppress AMD and it took years for AMD to get any sort recompense for that. They paid OEM's not to use AMD CPU's, threatened motherboard manufacturers if they made AMD compatible motherboards (slot A era), and paid to get benchmarks with secret optimizations to hide the poor performance of their chips vs AMD chips (P4 era).

Another other big, and relevant, historical example would be 'Ma Bell' monopoly on telephone communication. Standard Oil is a good one too.
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MS under Gates was a pretty good company ... they pushed the technological envelope and they earned most of their market status through exceptional business acumen and aggressive competition ... they were penalized generally for bogus things like integrating their browser into Windows

Intel had a few questionable behaviors but if AMD had actually been a good company with reliable production then Intel wouldn't have been able to persuade companies not to use them ... AMD also had their shot during the Athlon days but they failed to invest their R&D dollars responsibly and Intel was able to claw their way back up to the top spot with the core technology
 
mesyn191 said:
And yet tons of people are and have complained bitterly about it. Your personal experience is worth nothing against the experiences of a vast and overwhelming majority.


You realize the US economy didn't become a global economic powerhouse until during WWII right? And that during WWII the US had a command economy with price controls, material/food rationing, and the govt. essentially commandeered whole factories in order to get them to stop producing cars and appliances and to instead produce weapons?

That and about half the world's nations had their economies and factories blown up while the other half pursued a Marxist/Leninist/Maoist 'utopia' which resulted in horribly corrupt and inefficient totalitarian countries which couldn't compete very effectively.

Capitalism had very little to do with it.
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Wow. Are people today really this stupid? (Okay, to answer my own question, Keynesian idiots have been around for a while now.)

First of all, of course the US took some time to become a major power. It is a large area and it's a relatively new country compared to the powerhouses before us.

Secondly, wartime production does not benefit a country. Correlation is not causation. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEbdgpIQ7n4 ("Make Progress, Not Work")

Government regulations usually hold back both Capitalism AND progress, and oftentimes, jobs (even though they claim to try to protect jobs, which is not even a valid or worthwhile goal of government).

If the above video is too boring, these musical videos (similar to "Epic Rap Battles of History" but also informative) actually explain some of the problems. I recommend these videos either way as they are both entertaining and informative.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
 
kbrickley said:
we need to eliminate regulations that prohibit growth (wages, environmental, etc) and replace them with regulations that encourage growth (eliminate corporate taxes so they are not forced to offshore their money, etc)
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Okay I would love to hear the explanation on this one. You say we need to eliminate environmental regulations that encourage growth. Okay, so how does the environment get protected in that scenario? There is often no profit incentive to protecting the environment. Quite the opposite, there are often great short to medium term rewards towards destroying it.
 
tetris42 said:
Okay I would love to hear the explanation on this one. You say we need to eliminate environmental regulations that encourage growth. Okay, so how does the environment get protected in that scenario? There is often no profit incentive to protecting the environment. Quite the opposite, there are often great short to medium term rewards towards destroying it.
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I, and many economists (which I am NOT), agree with you. Capitalism works well for many things, but today's money does not care about tomorrow's environment. Though, like any regulation, there is very much such a thing as too much.

In this case, as I previously said, LACK of Capitalism is the problem in this industry. Why does government think it has the authority to offer exclusivity to certain companies? Our government should/does not have such authority. But people refuse to stand up and hold stupid politicians accountable. (Doesn't help that most smart people don't want to be politicians and most that do want to be politicians are not the smartest guys on the block...)
 
tetris42 said:
Okay I would love to hear the explanation on this one. You say we need to eliminate environmental regulations that encourage growth. Okay, so how does the environment get protected in that scenario? There is often no profit incentive to protecting the environment. Quite the opposite, there are often great short to medium term rewards towards destroying it.
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The market would still regulate itself ... if the company is unsafe then workers will not work there ... if the environment is unsafe then people will not live near the company or buy their products ... there may not be a direct profit incentive to be environmentally conscious but most companies want to sell their products and look good doing it so they will come up with sensible guidelines that provide some level of environmental protection but don't hurt the company doing it

For example, the RoHS directive in the EU has had little effect on environmental dangers to the public but it has resulted in massive costs to the companies to comply with the misguided law ... and in many cases made products that are less reliable or safe (due to the elimination of chemicals that are integral to the manufacturing of most electronics) ... modern business is not as nefarious as the anti-capitalists like to make them out to be ;) ... besides I think the industry is more than capable of coming up with sensible regulations that protect their consumers without harming the companies :cool:
 
kbrickley said:
The market would still regulate itself ... if the company is unsafe then workers will not work there ... if the environment is unsafe then people will not live near the company or buy their products ... there may not be a direct profit incentive to be environmentally conscious but most companies want to sell their products and look good doing it so they will come up with sensible guidelines that provide some level of environmental protection but don't hurt the company doing it
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That's why they outsource pollution whenever possible, so it's out of sight of the average consumer. This method is extremely effective. Many tech companies have their manufacturing done in China which has horrific pollution problems, they sell the finished product here, then after its end of life it gets shipped off as e-waste to Africa, where it gets burned by locals so they can sell the copper from the circuitboards. The only thing "sensible" about any of it is it gets largely removed from American soil, so consumers can feel happy.

Even when that's not option, history has shown us we don't really care so long as we're making money. I seem to recall the Cuyahoga river catching on fire when USA manufacturing was booming.
 
All I know is what we have right now is terrible compared to the rest of the world...and we started the damn Internet. Something needs to change for the better.
 
mesyn191 said:
I'm a fairly Left leaning individual and that article didn't come off as Left at all to me.

Rather it reeked of the 'truth is in the middle' trope and assumes that the ISP's are presenting valid arguments rather than just spouting cynical spin. Terrible article Steve.

Also the whole 'let the best company win' thing isn't possible when the market place is ran by a monopoly or oligopoly so you don't know what you're talking about here at all.
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It's guilty of shifting the arguement from one about ISP's selectively fucking with different content provider's traffic to one about data caps and everyone should get premium service.... Its not far from there to saying those who can pay should subsidize those you can't pay and subsidize those who choose to live in Timbuktoo.

Basically this will lead to ISP's degrading service and increasing fees (on me at least) so eveyone can have the same shitty service and so one needs to feel Jelly. Does absolutely fucking nothing to protect my access to whoever I want to access..
 
kbrickley said:
The market would still regulate itself ... if the company is unsafe then workers will not work there ... if the environment is unsafe then people will not live near the company or buy their products ...
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I think you're one blind ass individual. The masses don't typically revolt until the damage is already done.
 
JeffDC said:
The corporate profit motive is infinite and inexorable, government is and can be the only effective protector of the public interest against it. Keep reading it over and over until it penetrates all those brain cells that have atophied from right-wing thinking.
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This is a loony toon comment, which is popular among hard leftist that tippie-toe on the planks of communism. The government is not some kind of riotous diety that is infallible and can do no wrong. The government is made up of the same kind of men and women that are found in evil corporations. Government and evil corporations are equal in their level of saintliness.

The only difference is that it is far easier for the individual to hold accountable businesses with their choice of purchasing their goods/products/services, and the business is expected to act within the limits of the law, and are limited by limited amount of $ they have access to. The government on the otherhand, in the era of regulation via unelected bureaucrats are not held accountable by the individual and are capable of pulling an unlimited amount of $ from the public treasury.

In otherwords, should a business choose poor business practices which drives their customers away or allows the rise of competitors to take their customers, then they FAIL. The government although, can never fail.

So if I had to choose, I would much rather the future of the internet be decided by companies butting heads with one another than allowing the government to come in and project a false impression of faaaaaiiirrrnnneeesss and eeeqqquuuaaalliiitttyy so I can get my warm and fuzzies.
 
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