Proponents of Net Neutrality are Dumb

If you hear the CEO of Verizon tell it, people that are for net neutrality are mistaken and not up to date on what is really happening in the world.

"Proponents (of Net neutrality) have a worldview that network providers and application providers, like Google, occupy different parts of the Internet: dumb pipes versus smart apps," he said. "This is a mistake pure and simple. It's an analog idea for a digital world. It completely understates the need for sound practices and ignores the benefits of smart networks."

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"Proponents (of smart networks) have a worldview that they are entitled to profits: when competition gets tough, the competition gets together and forms a monopoly. It completely understates the idea that we can make huge bank by controlling the content that flows down our pipes."

"It completely understates the need for sound practices and ignores the benefits of smart networks."

Benefits like CEOs of big companies buying extra Ferraris and giant mansions and of course other important benefits like huge companies making new mountains of cash while end-users get a lower speed to their favorite websites because those websites don't pay extra fees to ISPs.

Net Neutrality is yet another form of government control.

You are an idiot if you think that it means that the government will just mandate that providers must not block content. The government will use net neutrality to control free speech. Anything deemed as "hate speech" will be blocked.

Internet providers own their equipment and can do anything that they want with it. Block torrents and VOIP? Oh well, it's their network. Tough crap. You can cancel your subscription and sign up with someone that will let you download 500GB a day and chat to Australia all day long.

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.


BP

I'm not sure he really wants customers to have a worldview of Internet service,they might find out how poor it is here compared to some other countries!

ButtonPuncher said:

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.


BP

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100%, always, all of the time, no exceptions.

ButtonPuncher said:

Net Neutrality is yet another form of government control.

You are an idiot if you think that it means that the government will just mandate that providers must not block content. The government will use net neutrality to control free speech. Anything deemed as "hate speech" will be blocked.

Internet providers own their equipment and can do anything that they want with it. Block torrents and VOIP? Oh well, it's their network. Tough crap. You can cancel your subscription and sign up with someone that will let you download 500GB a day and chat to Australia all day long.

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.


BP

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I think you are being rather dense and short sighted and you are likely trolling. First of all, taxpayer money and a lot of it went into those networks. They were not built solely by the providers. Secondly, net neutrality does not equal gov't barring/altering any form of content, in fact it protects consumers from that. Saying that you can just sign up with somebody else is simply not always the case.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as an actual free market in this country and in its purest form a true free market would be a complete disaster on many levels. In this context, the free market bullshit was tossed out the window the day that our tax dollars were given to the providers...and the tax breaks.

ButtonPuncher said:

Net Neutrality is yet another form of government control.

You are an idiot if you think that it means that the government will just mandate that providers must not block content. The government will use net neutrality to control free speech. Anything deemed as "hate speech" will be blocked.

Internet providers own their equipment and can do anything that they want with it. Block torrents and VOIP? Oh well, it's their network. Tough crap. You can cancel your subscription and sign up with someone that will let you download 500GB a day and chat to Australia all day long.

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.


BP

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0/10.

spinelli said:

I think you are being rather dense and short sighted and you are likely trolling. First of all, taxpayer money and a lot of it went into those networks. They were not built solely by the providers. Secondly, net neutrality does not equal gov't barring/altering any form of content, in fact it protects consumers from that. Saying that you can just sign up with somebody else is simply not always the case.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as an actual free market in this country and in its purest form a true free market would be a complete disaster on many levels. In this context, the free market bullshit was tossed out the window the day that our tax dollars were given to the providers...and the tax breaks.

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Did I read that free market in its purest form would be a disaster on many levels? I'll just come out and say it, you have no idea what you are talking about. Zero.

We don't have a free market in this country. The citizens that are asleep in this country think we do, but the government controls every aspect of it, and that's precisely why it's completely fucked up.

Now, onto what I came to post. I heard a story once, and I don't know if it's true or not, but basically, a long time ago, the "normal people" got fed up with the politicians and uber rich, and went to their homes, raped the wives in front of the husbands, then cooked the husbands alive and made the wives eat them. Or something really gruesome like that.

I, for one, wouldn't try to stop something like that if it happened now, to most of our politicians and heads of Wall Street/big business.

ButtonPuncher = Troll.

ButtonPuncher said:

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.

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Yea, just look how well deregulation of the stock market went.

Brilliant.

Please don't insinuate the government is going to be running the internet. I don't think you know what net neutrality means.

ButtonPuncher said:

Net Neutrality is yet another form of government control.

You are an idiot if you think that it means that the government will just mandate that providers must not block content. The government will use net neutrality to control free speech. Anything deemed as "hate speech" will be blocked.

Internet providers own their equipment and can do anything that they want with it. Block torrents and VOIP? Oh well, it's their network. Tough crap. You can cancel your subscription and sign up with someone that will let you download 500GB a day and chat to Australia all day long.

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.


BP

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The whole point of Net Neutrality is to prevent the censorship of free speech.

What gives you the idea that the government will use a law saying that ISPs cannot control the Internet to...control the Internet?

Ron Mexico said:

Did I read that free market in its purest form would be a disaster on many levels? I'll just come out and say it, you have no idea what you are talking about. Zero.

We don't have a free market in this country. The citizens that are asleep in this country think we do, but the government controls every aspect of it, and that's precisely why it's completely fucked up.

Now, onto what I came to post. I heard a story once, and I don't know if it's true or not, but basically, a long time ago, the "normal people" got fed up with the politicians and uber rich, and went to their homes, raped the wives in front of the husbands, then cooked the husbands alive and made the wives eat them. Or something really gruesome like that.

I, for one, wouldn't try to stop something like that if it happened now, to most of our politicians and heads of Wall Street/big business.

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Go read what a real free market entails. I actually like the idea of and am a proponent for an (almost) free market. The one thing I can not stand above all else about a pure free market is the lack of a single currency. That is a pretty major sticking point for me. If you can not see the downsides of a single country with multiple currencies and valuations, I suggest you review US history. To make that matter more interesting, what would said currencies be backed by? Do...not...even...say...gold.

ButtonPuncher said:

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.


BP

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Sarah Palin is that you?

As others have said, tax payer dollars have already been placed into the current infrastructure. We as legitimate tax payers should have the right to say how this "upgraded *piece of shit*" infrastructure is operated. Then to take it further we as loyal paying customers shouldn't get shafted because Verizon's CEO wants to buy his 20th mansion...

Seriously, I understand their DSL sucks a big one but their FIOS is no where near it's threshold and I will be damned if our country is to continue it's current pattern of lagging behind many other nations for internet speeds and network bandwidth...

Derfman said:

Seriously, I understand their DSL sucks a big one but their FIOS is no where near it's threshold and I will be damned if our country is to continue it's current pattern of lagging behind many other nations for internet speeds and network bandwidth...

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Consider yourself damned.

spinelli said:

Go read what a real free market entails. I actually like the idea of and am a proponent for an (almost) free market. The one thing I can not stand above all else about a pure free market is the lack of a single currency. That is a pretty major sticking point for me. If you can not see the downsides of a single country with multiple currencies and valuations, I suggest you review US history. To make that matter more interesting, what would said currencies be backed by? Do...not...even...say...gold.

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And why wouldn't I say gold? Are you one of those people who think they know what they are talking about? Let me guess, you think teh federal reserve is actually part and controlled by the US government.

Gold has been a form of currency, and worth something, since just about the begging of time. I'm not going to to the leg work for you. I learned a long time ago that even if I spend the next hour googling facts for you, you'd still stay in your little ignorance bubble. I'll just leave you with this; rest assured, that people A LOT smarter than you, know why currency backed by gold is a good idea.

That being said, there are some problems associated with a free market, like the possibility of monopolies.

And I'm going to trust the CEO of the company that stands to rake us across the coals one day if we don't have Net Neutrality.

Sure. No problem...

"The free market will fix itself"

Yeah, and how's that working out for us right now?

CitiBank, hitting all it's customers up with a 29.9% interest rate.

And the totally unaffordable cost of Pharmaceuticals, caused partially by the customers paying for their expensive TV ad's.

What a friggin' deal.

TechLarry said:

"The free market will fix itself"

Yeah, and how's that working out for us right now?

CitiBank, hitting all it's customers up with a 29.9% interest rate.

And the totally unaffordable cost of Pharmaceuticals, caused partially by the customers paying for their expensive TV ad's.

What a friggin' deal.

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Since we don't have a free market, your argument gets filed in the "ignore the ignorant guy" file.

What you need to be mad at is greedy politicians that get bought and paid for, that make laws which ruin the markets ability to stabilize itself.

Ah, yes. Resorting to name calling.

Thank you, fine citizen.

Ron Mexico said:

Since we don't have a free market, your argument gets filed in the "ignore the ignorant guy" file.

What you need to be mad at is greedy politicians that get bought and paid for, that make laws which ruin the markets ability to stabilize itself.

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What is Net Neutrality?

Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days. Indeed, it is this neutrality that has allowed many companies, including Google, to launch, grow, and innovate. Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online. Today, the neutrality of the Internet is at stake as the broadband carriers want Congress's permission to determine what content gets to you first and fastest. Put simply, this would fundamentally alter the openness of the Internet.

From here.

"Still, other companies have acted in contrast to these assertions of hands-off behavior and have begun to use deep packet inspection to discriminate against P2P, FTP and online games"

From here.

Sounds like net neutrality isn't such a bad idea as long as it is just against discrimination and the government doesn't try to push an agenda or censor anything.

If you think the government will not go beyond just net neutrality once they have their hooks in it, you are nuts.
This is a shitty situation, because there is nothing but lose no matter what way you go with this.

Net neutrality can easily be "interpreted" to mean no QOS for business, VOIP, and government traffic. No traffic management at all. Which is stupid at best. Little Jonny Warez's torrents are not more important than my business traffic. I pay more to have those pipes and QOS, net neutrality does threaten that, however they are trying to word it.

But, leaving the situation alone will leave us with the same pile of shit that we have had for a while. It will only ripen with time, and prolly some day lead to an internet split between fast pay sites and slow to blocked every thing else.

Since we are prolly screwed either way imho, I would rather not invite the government to a party where ass rape is likely to be the end result.

The unhindered free market leads to oligarchies and monopolies. The free market is not a 100% self-sustainable system. Those that are for a regulation-free market don't understand the consequences.

Small business-->corporation-->Monopoly-->No competition-->Oligarchy = no more free market or democracy.

Regulation is essential, over-regulation is not.

Ron Mexico said:

And why wouldn't I say gold? Are you one of those people who think they know what they are talking about? Let me guess, you think teh federal reserve is actually part and controlled by the US government.

Gold has been a form of currency, and worth something, since just about the begging of time. I'm not going to to the leg work for you. I learned a long time ago that even if I spend the next hour googling facts for you, you'd still stay in your little ignorance bubble. I'll just leave you with this; rest assured, that people A LOT smarter than you, know why currency backed by gold is a good idea.

That being said, there are some problems associated with a free market, like the possibility of monopolies.

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For every smart guy that is in favor of a gold standard I can find (at least)one equally as intelligent who disagrees. You should know better then to assert otherwise. I do not appreciate you calling me ignorant simply because I disagree with you. You'll find many people disagree with you, and many disagree with me as well. Where does that get us? Name calling? Brilliant.

As to the monopoly aspect, in a free market the gov't should step in against fraud and prevention of monopolies unless you take the extreme side of an already extreme view on what free markets actually entail. Thankfully it would remove gov't backed monopolies like the flipping Postal Service which is the poster child for why gov't backed monopolies are bad.

As to your assumption on my beliefs about the Fed, you would be absolutely incorrect. I do not and never have pretended to be an economic genius, but I can read, and there are simply not enough reasons/excuses out there to justify the Fed and its practices.

Oddly enough, I believe if you were able to not get petty and juvenile you would find we have much more in common then we disagree on, likely by a wide margin. However, keep on thinking that anyone who disagrees with any one of your beliefs is living in a bubble of ignorance, I am sure that such open mindedness will serve you well.

serious?
in a completely free market competition will merge/be bought out into one monopoly and you definitely wont have a choice on your ISP besides not having internet

I support net anonymity but I'd be willing to listen to arguments that some traffic, like medial records for example, is more important than the movie that some guy is illegally downloading.

ButtonPuncher said:

Net Neutrality is yet another form of government control.

You are an idiot if you think that it means that the government will just mandate that providers must not block content. The government will use net neutrality to control free speech. Anything deemed as "hate speech" will be blocked.

Internet providers own their equipment and can do anything that they want with it. Block torrents and VOIP? Oh well, it's their network. Tough crap. You can cancel your subscription and sign up with someone that will let you download 500GB a day and chat to Australia all day long.

Don't let the government control the internet!!! The free market will fix itself.


BP

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Where do you live you have such a diverse breadth of options to choose from? I have ONE choice for broad band access.

GORANKAR said:

Since we are prolly screwed either way imho, I would rather not invite the government to a party where ass rape is likely to be the end result.

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You are already getting ass raped. I guess its the rapist you know vs. the one you don't.....

bigdogchris said:

I support net anonymity but I'd be willing to listen to arguments that some traffic, like medial records for example, is more important than the movie that some guy is illegally downloading.

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Medical records? Do you really think the internet is being used to download massive amounts of medical records?

Dethred said:

The unhindered free market leads to oligarchies and monopolies. The free market is not a 100% self-sustainable system. Those that are for a regulation-free market don't understand the consequences.

Small business-->corporation-->Monopoly-->No competition-->Oligarchy = no more free market or democracy.

Regulation is essential, over-regulation is not.

Click to expand...

This is correct.

Anyone arguing for a free market is hopelessly out of date and clinging to Austrian School failures. The sheer number of nobel laurettes writing about market failures(something the Austrian School doesn't even believe in) for the past 20 years is rather telling. Additionally, even Greenspan (a disciple of Rand's) admitted free market ideology is what got us into the mess of CDO's and securitization of complex assets. The free market does not police itself in a global economy that's more complicated than simple supply and demand of raw materials. Debt, securitized assets, and complex derivatives cause major havoc and require significant oversight.

You have to face the facts at some point, both socialism and laissez-faire are economic utopias that solve no practical problems. They're academic ideologies to argue from, nothing more.

InternationalHat said:

This is correct.

Anyone arguing for a free market is hopelessly out of date and clinging to Austrian School failures. The sheer number of nobel laurettes writing about market failures(something the Austrian School doesn't even believe in) for the past 20 years is rather telling. Additionally, even Greenspan (a disciple of Rand's) admitted free market ideology is what got us into the mess of CDO's and securitization of complex assets. The free market does not police itself in a global economy that's more complicated than simple supply and demand of raw materials. Debt, securitized assets, and complex derivatives cause major havoc and require significant oversight.

You have to face the facts at some point, both socialism and laissez-faire are economic utopias that solve no practical problems. They're academic ideologies to argue from, nothing more.

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*Slingblade voice* I like the way you talk, mmhmm.

How does net neutrality & digital distribution work in the age of HD?

I am not for more government control but I simply don't understand why some people think businesses whose primary interest is to make money is capable or willing to "regulate itself". If that is the case why not get rid of all anti trust laws.

GORANKAR said:

If you think the government will not go beyond just net neutrality once they have their hooks in it, you are nuts.
This is a shitty situation, because there is nothing but lose no matter what way you go with this.

Net neutrality can easily be "interpreted" to mean no QOS for business, VOIP, and government traffic. No traffic management at all. Which is stupid at best. Little Jonny Warez's torrents are not more important than my business traffic. I pay more to have those pipes and QOS, net neutrality does threaten that, however they are trying to word it.

But, leaving the situation alone will leave us with the same pile of shit that we have had for a while. It will only ripen with time, and prolly some day lead to an internet split between fast pay sites and slow to blocked every thing else.

Since we are prolly screwed either way imho, I would rather not invite the government to a party where ass rape is likely to be the end result.

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I can see you are one of those individuals who believes that the government is violating your rights and taking things away from you on a daily basis, so I'll ignore that portion of your post.

There should never be traffic management in the way you suggest, I'm sorry but your business traffic holds no higher value than "Johnny Warez" downloading a torrent, as you so succinctly put it. What about me downloading a legally purchased movie? Oh wait thta would be classified as business, and who is going to justify what businesses would have higher priority?

How about we let you decided that, I'm sure in all your infinite wisdom that you could come up with the perfectly fair model.

Your line of thinking is akin to saying something like "well 18 wheelers should have priority on the road, so you must always let them pass you, BECAUSE ITS FOR BUSINESS" Your business operates within an environment, if it can not survive in said environment due to the internet not prioritizing your information over others it's margins are obviously not sufficient enough to be a business in the first place.

Seriously.. the shit people come up with, I'd have more respect for you if you just pounded random keys.

GORANKAR said:

If you think the government will not go beyond just net neutrality once they have their hooks in it, you are nuts.
This is a shitty situation, because there is nothing but lose no matter what way you go with this.

Net neutrality can easily be "interpreted" to mean no QOS for business, VOIP, and government traffic. No traffic management at all. Which is stupid at best. Little Jonny Warez's torrents are not more important than my business traffic. I pay more to have those pipes and QOS, net neutrality does threaten that, however they are trying to word it.

But, leaving the situation alone will leave us with the same pile of shit that we have had for a while. It will only ripen with time, and prolly some day lead to an internet split between fast pay sites and slow to blocked every thing else.

Since we are prolly screwed either way imho, I would rather not invite the government to a party where ass rape is likely to be the end result.

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Exactly!

No, I am not a troll. I love the name calling just because I don't have the same view as John Stewart.

BP

The moment we let government enforce "net neutrality" is the moment we lose the internet.

The moment we let government enforce "net neutrality" is the moment we lose the internet.

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Please, explain.

I love how all the anti-competition pro-monopoly chinese gov't conspiracists cant give a single example of how "teh government will control your internets!" whilst all the other folk can give numerous examples of what happens in a "free market" economy if we just "let it fix itself".

Censorship? Yes, the United States government, home of the country who's biggest bragging right is the freedom of speech, is just going to up and start CENSORING things to the tune of the Chinese government out of the blue, and nobody will notice. Websites you visit will be blocked, keyword searches will be logged, and we wont be able to look up the civil war and know what it means in 20 years. The government intends to do this by simply writing a paper law which says that no ISP can discriminate against any website. Yes thats right, somehow between saying all data must flow equally within the constraints of their networks, the government intends to slip in billions of dollars in traffic monitoring hardware and software with scores of people dedicated to running it. No particular reason, they just will, because our government has shown a propensity towards this type of behavior. Us damn Americans, always trying to censor things.

This is much more likely than say perhaps, comcast being paid millions of dollars by advertisers who compete with each other and shut each others websites down by conveniently "prioritizing" traffic away from their sites. And of course, such financing could be used for anything, say perhaps a future political party, one in which the very googling of the word "democrat" just turns up a blank page because conveniently all available bandwidth is being directed towards republican run websites. Yea, that scenario is far more unlikely than our government committing mutiny against its own population in broad daylight.

Something tells me the anti-neutrality folks probably have a lot in common with the birthers, truthers, and moon landing hoaxers. Just plain dumb.

Greenspan, a true Ayan Rand disiple (I mean serious fucking true believer who should NEVER have been allowed in government) admitted last fall IT and HE was WRONG and he had (at Seventy something) to rethink his entire view of the universe and how it works.

Fact is he and the other cocksuckers... like Rand, fucking ugly XXXX... lived such sheltered lives they never came to understand basic human nature.

Pure capitalism is as impossible and faulty in a HUMAN world as communism or any other ism that requires real people to act in any way non-selfishly on a mass scale.

There is not and never has been a COMMUNIST country. It doesn't and cannot work in a world of people.

No pure capitalist society as well has ever survived, though some have existed for a short time... SOMALIA is currently the ONLY pure capitalist counrty... I don't see anyone flocking to live there, and it won't be allowed to exist indefinitely, as that very pure laisse faire-ness of utter anarchy eventually pisses off the neighborhood of actual people trying to live in a civil society.

There is ALWAYS someone bigger/smarter/more ruthless than you, in the end pure capitalism will "for the good of the peoples" devolve into something else... socialism or military dictatorship.

MAKE NO MISTAKE

Our nation and all those of the free industrialized world are living in SOCIALIST societies, where to some extent certain critial elements of infrastructure... social, economic, security, safety, health... are performed by socialist government or private non-profit organizations.

Roads, Army, Police, Fire, Water, Sewage, etc, etc... all handled by socialist mechanisms. The US is and has always been a socialist nation, as is modern Europe and Japan and Canada and Oz, etc, etc.

It becomes not a matter of CAPITALISM vs SOCIALISM, but instead, simply deciding where the LINE is drawn between private for-profit activities and government responsibilities.

I choose to draw the healthcare line at 100% coverage of everything for every CITIZEN, and it costs what it costs and we tax whom/what ever is required to make it work as most efficiently and least expensively as possible while meeting the overall goal.

Simply implementing Medicare for All and taxing the top 1%, high-fructose products, smoking, pot, booze, everyone's paycheck... all in appropriate proportions to pay for... would be the best solution for our society.

I choose to draw the line on financial regulation at the point where rampant fraud and thievery is prevented AND punished severly, and our financial system doesn't crash into depression everytime the goofballs find some new way to put $trillions at risk to make themselves a quick buck, while risking OUR entire economy.

I choose to draw the line at 100% public campaign finance, no limits on private or corporate contributions (so no constitutional issue) but 100% MATCHING FUNDS for candidates who choose public financing only. This utterly negates the resource advantage the wealthy and corporations have in political speech.... and will end the insanity because business does not spend money on utterly pointless efforts (at least not for long).

I choose to have our state/local governments start running government like government NOT as a business. There is no CEO in government. We NEED the bridges maintained, we do NOT need some asshole deciding to save the "taxpayers" some money by delaying maintainence and later killing those "taxpayers" because the bridge fell down.

Government is NOT a business... wanna run a business, go get a job in business.

InternationalHat said:

This is correct.

Anyone arguing for a free market is hopelessly out of date and clinging to Austrian School failures. The sheer number of nobel laurettes writing about market failures(something the Austrian School doesn't even believe in) for the past 20 years is rather telling. Additionally, even Greenspan (a disciple of Rand's) admitted free market ideology is what got us into the mess of CDO's and securitization of complex assets. The free market does not police itself in a global economy that's more complicated than simple supply and demand of raw materials. Debt, securitized assets, and complex derivatives cause major havoc and require significant oversight.

You have to face the facts at some point, both socialism and laissez-faire are economic utopias that solve no practical problems. They're academic ideologies to argue from, nothing more.

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Whoa there little fella. Let's not let reason and well thought out positions get in the way of clueless rhetoric and Faux News talking points!