Jack House
Regular Member
Doom and gloom? Comcast and other ISPs absolutely were throttling services like YouTube, Netflix, torrents, peer to peer and the like.
Doom and gloom? Comcast and other ISPs absolutely were throttling services like YouTube, Netflix, torrents, peer to peer and the like.
Waay back in the Eighties the expense of my IP was explained as my share of building the state's fiber network as I watched the T1 fiber crawl around the state. Even then I could access it only through my academic account. The people paid for the Internet infrastructure.
Yes, doom and gloom propaganda. If you don't like throttling then get a contact that says no throttling. Get an SLA. Companies should be made by the courts to keep their contractual obligations, not much more. 'The internet' is not something you have any right to access, much less at an arbitrarily defined service level. You do understand that these companies build these infrastructures, and own these lines and networking equipment, right? It's not like they just found this **** in the wild. It's theirs. If you think there isn't enough competition check out exclusivity agreements, that's a government problem there and you aren't going to fix that problem with more government.
Honestly, "free speech" is not my biggest concern here. It's economics. Many of the issues with ISPs we face today are essentially enabled by government involvement and coercion, and now we want the FCC to fix it? Get real, figure out the actual problem and figure out a solution (which probably means government out of the game). The problem is that regulations like these will stifle the industry.
ya know, ma bell tried that very same explanation and it failed in the courts...the infrastructure isn't theirs. getting a sla then trying to enforce it in the courts cost $$$ which you will not recoup! the big boys know that which is why throttling became fashionable...who's got the umph to challenge them...definitely not JqPublic, even in a class action suit.
ipse
The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition.
The internet was already state owned. The government developed the internet in the first place. Until recently it was under DoD control and ownership. Nothing bad happened then.
The government already paid to expand internet access and capability. But you free market types didn't like that. So y'all allowed ISPs to abscound with two hundred BILLION dollars of tax payer money.
Free market would be fine, if there was a free market, but there isn't. The barrier for entry is impossibly high. Look at Google, they've been trying to roll out fiber to Austin for I can't remember how many years now.
FCC regulation is the only way to ensure a free and open internet, to ensure there is a free market.
Otherwise ISPs will control the market and how you can think that's any better than the government is beyond me.
Free: free of cost?
Freedom of choice, of self ownership
Nothing is truly free of cost, just a matter of how much. "Free" in this context simply means there was a transfer of the true cost from some people to other people. Same with "free access" and a lot of other "free" stuff.
Freedom of choice is the logical position, because then each individual is free to choose what they want and how they will pay the cost with their own resources instead of stealing it.
There is a false idea that some people have a "right" to the resources of others, some authority to confiscate someone else's time and productivity for their own use.
Unfortunately, far too many people truly believe that this bogus authority is inherent in government, even those who object to the perceived "excesses."
Who owns your life? Do you think you (or your elected surrogates) should own you, or anyone else?
Why would that be?
The government didn't "invent" the internet.
Even if they did it doesn't mean they "own" it.