This is where the free market side of me realizes there does need to be some Govt intervention.

Leave the motherfarking internets alone

Maybe the solution is, once again, a government option.
Oh wait, I forgot. "Option" means "takeover" now.

Internet use follows the 80:20 rule. It's totally legal to limit users by having tiered services, which can (and do) include bandwidth and total usage. If you don't offer an unlimited service tier no one can complain.

Having suffered with satellite DSL for years, I will still say that's fair. Just don't use a Microsoft product with their massive and mandatory updates.

sweet!

Weaver95: Net Neutrality, for those of you in the cheap seats, would allow corporations to shut down fark, freerepublic, dailykos, powerline....pretty much anyone or anything they didn't like or didn't want online. And you would have no second chances or appeal. A corporation decides they don't like your site, you get throttled downward and that's it - no more website.


Gotcha. Now setting a ton of stuff in motion to stamp out Net Neutrality! These donations alone should help immensely.


Kyro: While I fully agree with Weaver95 and his explanation, I want to point out that he means a LACK of Net Neutrality would allow corporations to shut down fark, freepublic, dailykos, etc.

Net Neutrality is neutral, meaning it takes no sides and plays no favorites. Everything's equal.

Weaver95: er, yes. sorry. I should have read that back before hitting 'add comment'.


FFFFFFFFFFuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Go-bama!

And I don't mean the Tide.

Kyro: Weaver95: Net Neutrality, for those of you in the cheap seats, would allow corporations to shut down fark, freerepublic, dailykos, powerline....pretty much anyone or anything they didn't like or didn't want online. And you would have no second chances or appeal. A corporation decides they don't like your site, you get throttled downward and that's it - no more website.

While I fully agree with Weaver95 and his explanation, I want to point out that he means a LACK of Net Neutrality would allow corporations to shut down fark, freepublic, dailykos, etc.

Net Neutrality is neutral, meaning it takes no sides and plays no favorites. Everything's equal.

This and This. Net Neutrality is something wonderful we can't afford to destroy. Throw a few dollars to the EFF if you can.

He did say he would oppose this prior to the election and it was the only reason I voted. Keep it up.

With a republican House and democratic Senate, what are the odds this would pass Congress?

/ didn't rtfa

natazha: Internet use follows the 80:20 rule. It's totally legal to limit users by having tiered services, which can (and do) include bandwidth and total usage. If you don't offer an unlimited service tier no one can complain.

Having suffered with satellite DSL for years, I will still say that's fair. Just don't use a Microsoft product with their massive and mandatory updates.

You are more of a fool. The 80:20 rule is incorrect it is 90:10 rule was originally done which was apt for 90% local 10% remote. Of course this has now changed to 90% remote 10% local.

The tiered system does nothing to help or hinder this issue, it is a basic money grab. With most backbone network using 10 G transport fibers for all their networks. Your little bit of internet usage maybe .0001% of all bandwidth they use. Money grabs are just what they are money grabs. Tiered systems should not be used on the internet cause you are paying "tier" called XX Mbps which should not hinder anything you do on the internet till you overload your connection.


Caps and blatant throttling of websites, unless you pay a certain amount does not help alleviate bandwidth issues, or infrastructure rebuilding it is just lining their pockets.

/Network admin for an ISP
//Hate caps or anything against net-neutrality

A President McCain would not have veto'd this.

Haven't seen one since I dropped cable, but Cox here in Wichita was running some anti-Net Neutrality ads for a while. They didn't call it Net Neutrality though, they came up with some other name for it, or just referred to it as "Congress trying to do bad things".

It was literally like being in Bizarro world. The ad kept talking about how Congress or whomever was trying to "limit freedoms" and "impose regulations", like Cox was made up of Joe and Mary Cox, 4th generation cable TV farmers just trying to make a buck with the American Dream. I watched these things trying to imagine what my mother would think after she saw it, and she absolutely would have been convinced that Net Neutrality was a bad thing. No doubt in my mind.

Weaver95: Net Neutrality, for those of you in the cheap seats, would allow is what prevents corporations to from shuting down fark, freerepublic, dailykos, powerline....pretty much anyone or anything they didn't like or didn't want online. And you would have no second chances or appeal. A corporation decides they don't like your site, you get throttled downward and that's it - no more website.

FTFY

HellRaisingHoosier: A President McCain would not have veto'd this.

But only because he doesn't support regulations on fishing.

If you use Comcast, YOU are part of the problem.

MBA Whore: With a republican House and democratic Senate, what are the odds this would pass Congress?

/ didn't rtfa

With an authoritarian House bought and paid for by major corporations and an authoritarian Senate bought and paid for by major corporations, what are the odds this would pass Congress?

/FTFY

Net neutrality benefits people, not corporations. Therefore it is socialist.

/Conservative logic

RoosterCogburn: I assume this Net Neutrality thing is a lot like what China uses to suppress information

Close, only substitute China for Comcast/etc.

Fox decides to pay Comcast for a "premium" service. Suddenly anyone using Comcast is loading Fox at 10x the speed of CNN/MSNBC/etc. if they can load them at all. Same goes for any site. Like shopping Target online? Too bad, Amazon paid the cable company more.

mr.doctor: Tiered systems should not be used on the internet cause you are paying "tier" called XX Mbps which should not hinder anything you do on the internet till you overload your connection.

The way I heard it explained was that you paid for a certain number of sites. Comcast would offer Comcast.net along with a handful of other sites at full speed, while the rest of your network usage is capped. Supposedly, a top tier plan would let you surf unhindered to any site or server. Of course, I'm sure other restrictions would still be in place.

Don't like it? Choose another provider. Oh look at that, Verizon is the only other game in town and they're pulling the same shiat. Guess you'll have to go live in a cave, then. Isn't consumer power great?!

Weaver95: Net Neutrality, for those of you in the cheap seats, would allow corporations to shut down fark, freerepublic, dailykos, powerline....pretty much anyone or anything they didn't like or didn't want online. And you would have no second chances or appeal. A corporation decides they don't like your site, you get throttled downward and that's it - no more website.

Concur. But it seems to me the current legislation fails to allow traffic shaping. I'd like the ISPs to be able to de-prioritize torrents in favor of web traffic or email. With traffic shaping, the torrents can soak up the remaining bandwidth freely with no impact on my surfing. That would be much more useful than bandwidth caps.

I Like Bread: mr.doctor: Tiered systems should not be used on the internet cause you are paying "tier" called XX Mbps which should not hinder anything you do on the internet till you overload your connection.

The way I heard it explained was that you paid for a certain number of sites. Comcast would offer Comcast.net along with a handful of other sites at full speed, while the rest of your network usage is capped. Supposedly, a top tier plan would let you surf unhindered to any site or server. Of course, I'm sure other restrictions would still be in place.

Don't like it? Choose another provider. Oh look at that, Verizon is the only other game in town and they're pulling the same shiat. Guess you'll have to go live in a cave, then. Isn't consumer power great?!

Local monopolies are the pinnacle of the free market!

Retro42: Suddenly anyone using Comcast is loading Fox at 10x the speed of CNN/MSNBC/etc

It goes deeper than this. The Internet is made possible by peering agreements on the back end. Comcast doesn't just own the last-mile line that delivers Internet to your house. They also own backbone trunks. As does Level3, Verizon, and several other companies. A packet on the Internet will cross many different networks along the way. In a neutral network, the network operators route the packet to its destination and that's that.

Without network neutrality, Comcast could throttle packets that simply cross their network. You could be a Verizon customer and Fark could be on Level3's network, but if Comcast owns one of the lines that connects those two end-points, they could drop 50% of the packets if they felt like.

Anyone who votes against net neutrality will never get my vote again. I don't support a lot of what Obama has done but I fully support this.

See. I think for myself and don't just use the party line. Too bad the rest of the country can't do the same.

Was the HERO tag loading too slowly?

An-Unnecessarily-Long-Name: Leave the motherfarking internets alone

Actually, I can see both sides of this one.
There are business rights issues to consider. Also, the major players have not yet exercised any really untoward behavior such as throttling Fark, or ever shown that they would. I think their claim is that they just need to be able to control the traffic for the sake of expediency or other technical considerations.

Although that does sound a little like Iran when it says it only wants nuclear tech for energy purposes. Still, they haven't nuked anybody just yet.

I Like Bread: mr.doctor: Tiered systems should not be used on the internet cause you are paying "tier" called XX Mbps which should not hinder anything you do on the internet till you overload your connection.

The way I heard it explained was that you paid for a certain number of sites. Comcast would offer Comcast.net along with a handful of other sites at full speed, while the rest of your network usage is capped. Supposedly, a top tier plan would let you surf unhindered to any site or server. Of course, I'm sure other restrictions would still be in place.

Don't like it? Choose another provider. Oh look at that, Verizon is the only other game in town and they're pulling the same shiat. Guess you'll have to go live in a cave, then. Isn't consumer power great?!

Don't worry, the Invisible Hand of the Free Market™ will punish the corporations if they get out of line.

They can always go to one of the hundreds of little mom and pop telecoms.

Now that Weaver's mangled it, let's give Network Neutrality another try:

Let's say you buy your internet access from the cable company. Since they sell you cable, it is in their financial best interest to keep you from using cheap internet video streaming like Hulu or Netflix. The cable company can flip a switch in their equipment and make their competitor's internet video so slow it's unusable, thereby killing off a competitor.

The question is, should they legally be allowed to do this?

If you sell internet access to people, are you allowed to change what your customers are allowed to see and do?


The FCC adopted a weak version of Network Neutrality rules that would prevent these sorts of actions. The Corporations that own our Government are not happy even with the weakened version of the rules.

As for the rest of it, we already know Obama likes to pretend to be a populist during campaign season.

The rules, which don't go into effect until Nov. 20, bar broadband providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable from playing favorites with internet traffic.

I have TWC service in NYC. Now, I know the terms "shoddy" and "behind the curve" get thrown around a lot around here...

/ But Christ, my hate knows no bounds
// Their DVR is a joke
/// Not entirely ruling out moving based on where I can get FiOS.

t3knomanser: Retro42: Suddenly anyone using Comcast is loading Fox at 10x the speed of CNN/MSNBC/etc

It goes deeper than this. The Internet is made possible by peering agreements on the back end. Comcast doesn't just own the last-mile line that delivers Internet to your house. They also own backbone trunks. As does Level3, Verizon, and several other companies. A packet on the Internet will cross many different networks along the way. In a neutral network, the network operators route the packet to its destination and that's that.

Without network neutrality, Comcast could throttle packets that simply cross their network. You could be a Verizon customer and Fark could be on Level3's network, but if Comcast owns one of the lines that connects those two end-points, they could drop 50% of the packets if they felt like.

I work for one of those backbone companies and I'm getting a kick...err.

this guy's totally right. And when you figure that EACH provider will have their own "pass through my network tax" it just gets all kinds of f'd.

Hector Remarkable: Actually, I can see both sides of this one.
There are business rights issues to consider. Also, the major players have not yet exercised any really untoward behavior such as throttling Fark, or ever shown that they would. I think their claim is that they just need to be able to control the traffic for the sake of expediency or other technical considerations.

Although that does sound a little like Iran when it says it only wants nuclear tech for energy purposes. Still, they haven't nuked anybody just yet.

What "rights" do businesses have?

Opposition to net neutrality is entirely an extortion plot. ISPs already throttle speeds and most have data transfer caps. Now, ISPs want websites to pay them off even though subscribers already pay exorbitant amounts for crappy service.

No one, literally no one, who understands the issues and haven't been bought by telcos are against net neutrality.

t3knomanser: Retro42: Suddenly anyone using Comcast is loading Fox at 10x the speed of CNN/MSNBC/etc

It goes deeper than this. The Internet is made possible by peering agreements on the back end. Comcast doesn't just own the last-mile line that delivers Internet to your house. They also own backbone trunks. As does Level3, Verizon, and several other companies. A packet on the Internet will cross many different networks along the way. In a neutral network, the network operators route the packet to its destination and that's that.

Without network neutrality, Comcast could throttle packets that simply cross their network. You could be a Verizon customer and Fark could be on Level3's network, but if Comcast owns one of the lines that connects those two end-points, they could drop 50% of the packets if they felt like.

I can choose between Comcast and Verizon Fios where I live and picked Fios because Comcast has already proven themselves to be evil. Verizon does not own its own television networks in the way Comcast does, and therefore doesn't seem to screw around with things like throttling and download caps.

If we had a truly free market, Comcast would be paying me rent (I would charge $1 million per month) for their lines that are crossing my property. Reading these types of articles really makes me feel like cutting their lines off my property and throwing them into the street sometimes.

So they can't slow down my donkey show feeds WOOHOO!