The FCC is once again considering net neutrality regulations
In a nutshell: Net neutrality means a company like cable ISP’s comcast, and Time Warner can not punish you for using services like Hulu and Netflix.
They would have to treat you the same as someone downloading NBC universal content, which is a division of comcast.
Meaning, if you pay for Comcast cable internet, but not cable TV, you can not be discriminated against by Comcast corporate
If comcast is allowed to discriminate against consumers, it could kill off Hulu, Sony network and Netflix, thus forcing people back into the arms of comcast.
By Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
Published: November 20 2010 00:49 | Last updated: November 20 2010 00:49
The Federal Communications Commission is expected to announce plans next week for regulations that would forbid internet service providers from blocking or favouring content online.
The so-called “net neutrality” rules could be passed by the commission as early as December 15. The move would fulfil a campaign promise by President Barack Obama and infuriate the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill, which has said it would oppose the plan, but would have little power to stop it.
While I enjoy have unrestricted internet its not the gov’s job to tell a service provider what they have to allow.
If you use this precedence on other business activities would you be kosher with that?
Look what its done to health care costs. Instead of getting only the services I want I have to pay hundreds extra for services I dont want because the gov stepped in, and regulated what is allowed to be sold.
I don’t want the gov to have the power to go around to various industries mandating what services they have to provide because once you start down that path its almost impossible to reverse. It can, and will get out of hand very quick if nots already.
As much as I hate government being involved in anything, if Net Neutrality isn’t put in place I feel we will see an end to the open communication we currently have on the Internet.
Communication is not a free market. They are Monopolies, and they act like monopolies. Companies like Ebay and Paypal already ban the sale of firearms items. What is Time Warner or Comcast suddenly decided that they didn’t want their customers to access Firearms related sites. Or Political sites for candidates or parties they don’t support.
You would have no options but to see only what they want to show you.
Considering that Comcast now owns NBC, including MSNBC, without net neutrality, they could easily restrict the bandwidth of people who frequent Drudge or foxnews.
What if you stream fox news, and Comcast says that is against their usage policy. “You have to buy cable TV to watch fox news”. What are you supposed to do? Get screwed? That is all you can do when dealing with a monopoly
Yep. This exact thing happened a couple weeks ago when some of the networks were having a pissing match with some of the providers. It only effected a few sports games but who says it will end there.
I can list off at least 4 companies I can get net and cable through in my area, and there are a few more too if you want to go OTA.
I have a hard time believing they would all jump to restricted services at once, and a company offering unrestricted access would not suddenly get a shit ton of new customers.
Either way its not within the feds realm of powers to regulate what a company can offer as a product.
You are lucky then. In my area you only have two options. And the more expensive, less usable option buys bandwidth from the main provider. So they still control it in the end.
Also in my original post I accidentally typed is instead of isn’t and changed what I was trying to say. I support net Neutrality and feel that Conservative organizations need to get their head out of their collective ass and see the broader implications.
So then you don’t have a problem with the feds regulating what health care options you have when it comes time to purchase those services?
If you allow them into any area of business where they can tell a company what services they have to offer and how they are to conduct business (besides a basic sense) then you can’t complain when they mandate the insurance carriers provide a bunch of shit you dont want.
Im willing to sacrifice net neutrality for keeping the feds in their pig pen.
So it has to be either the government restricting choice or the corporations restricting choice? Everything doesn’t have to be an extreme. History has shown that with both to much and to little government intervention is bad.
I would love to see the market completely regulate itself. But that doesn’t work Eventually one or two large players take control and you get screwed there.
The choices are expanding. Some areas are still limited. Here I can get quite a few land line choices, there are a couple OTA’s, and at least one sat option.
In fact Im about to call up TWC see why I should continue doing business with them since my monthly bill went from 140 a month for all 3 to 190 a month. The great thing about having so many choices is they are much more willing to work out issues and respond to customer complaints. I used to work for a Dish sub contractor so I have a decent idea of how these companies view things.
Choice is coming but with how large the US is, and how expensive it is to run cable out and put up towers the natural movement is to have a few big players.
Once more infrastructure is in place you’ll have even more choices like I do. For some reason this area is like a test bed for lots of companies that eventually expand nationwide. Theres been a big boon in USB wireless adapters here. Even TWC is getting in on that game. I just got an offer in the mail for their wireless OTA service. We are getting all kinds of 4G stuff here that will be as fast as broadband in many instances. Wireless is the future, and as fast as fiber came in its going to go out except in industrial and commercial applications. Its simply far cheaper to go wireless so you arent running extremely pricey cable all over the place.
The market will sort itself out but right now the tech is advancing so fast its going to take time to catch up to the consumer pricing side. Just wait til laptops are going to come built in with integral 4g cards.
I took classes that included quantum mechanics and this Net Neutraility thing drives me nuts.
I understand we want unfettered free access to information and content, but if you don’t allow people to control their own infrastructure, why would they invest in putting up more? It becomes a commons that no one has a real interest in keeping up, and we all know how publicly used areas become shit holes.
Once no one wants to put up the billions to update the networks, guess who steps in. The government. They will be more than happy to take our money and build the network. The only thing worse than having an oligarchry of businesses having some control over content flows is a monopolistic government controlling everything. Wasn’t it just last week that some dems thought getting rid of MSNBC and FOX would be OK, since it is even. And of course, once the govenment takes it over, there will never be a way for private businesses to get back into the market.