I don't disagree with that premise, and I'll admit I'm only vaguely familiar with the issue in question. However, I also don't disagree with the idea of covering pre-existing conditions (with some considerations, of course) regarding healthcare, but that does not mean that ObamaCare was a good thing.

I think the Act could have been simplified to prevent the "problem" while avoiding the more intrusive government impositions.

That is specifically why I despise the left as well. Any organization that seeks to deny rights to corporations that it readily grants to labor unions is undeniably corrupt.

In the battle for Big Money versus Big Money, the Big Money that claims to look out for the workers wins, whereas the Big Money that actually provides jobs to those workers, should be crap-out-of-luck, according to the left. That leaves their credibility at zero, as far as I'm concerned, despite the fact that I ideologically agree with them on more than a few issues.

Intellectual integrity should count for something.

No.. Because when the big guys have the same rights they use them to squash the little guy.

Edit: The fact is the "internet" is FROM the government FROM the military (You think a company gives a rats butt that the network survives a thermonuclear war?) And if the gov did not regulate and put in standards we would be using 10-50 different "Internets" by now.

If ANYONE here thinks that Comcast would use some kind of "promise of no net neutrality" ruling just to throttle file sharers and stop DoS attacks deserves to be laughed at in my opinion. ISPs are salvating at the thought of having say google pay millions hand over fist to keep from having say youtube slowed down.

Yes corporations ought to have the right to defy safety standards and threaten to outsource at the first sign of "union resistance" Is that right? oh wait they already do. Sounds like they don't really need those rights as opposed to say the guy who gets fired for showing up late once while the hot coworker with a nice bum gets a promotion despite being late many times before.

Crap out of luck eh? Sounds like comcast disagrees today eh?

Again, I think that many agree that some form of net neutrality is a good thing, but that does not mean the way the FCC went about it is desirable.

It strikes me that such a law should not be too complex—and it should be a law. Making it the whim of unelected regulators means that the net is one bad appointment from regulating far more than we would ever want regulated.

So wait - you're CHANGING my argument to make a point against it?

Because I implied SAME rights as a union, and in any case was clearly referring to election laws.

Besides, your counter-argument to my "union versus corporation" argument precludes the union altogether, which I did not do. Ergo, strawman.

We don't often agree, but we do on this issue.

The scary part of this is that as it currently stands, the outcomes are very bad for consumers. The ideologues will try to paint this as the big bad gubmint trying to control things on the internet, but they misunderstand the argument.

As it stands now:

But the last laugh may be on the ISPs. The FCC could potentially reclassify them as telecoms, bringing them under the FCC's purview. And that comes with a lot of regulation that the ISPs probably wouldn't like.

Read more here: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/fcc-next/

Coulda, woulda, shoulda ...

But they don't.

In any case, it isn't up to the FCC to make those determinations.

But they don't? Comcast already throttled bittorrent traffic back when they werent 100 percent sure they were in the clear.

Not up to the FCC? Again read up on the history of the internet. The backbone of it all is from the gov.

There are some GOP pro net neutrality congress critters so moving ISPs back to telecoms would be easy. My guess is tho congress is going to take a pass right now and watch.

Right now its MAD If comcast tries somthing again Net Neutrality will likely be passed. They ought to have accepted the punishment it would have been less likely to have NN passed.

So wait - you have a problem with a company attempting to prevent any legal liability on their part?'

Besides, thats hardly restricting access to Google in favor of, say, Bing.[quote]Not up to the FCC? Again read up on the history of the internet. The backbone of it all is from the gov.[quote]Yes, not up to the FCC. Specifically correct. That, in fact, is what this entire topic is about.

A court has ruled that it is not up to the FCC. Agree with it or not, the FACT is that it is not up to the FCC. I don't know how to make this clearer.

The FACT then is that the FCC by its own choices does not have the authority its the usual Bush era BS that can be fixed quickly by moving them back into telecoms.

Its MAD

But for how long? I'd like to see it regulated in stone that they can't.

I'm normally as Capitalist as anyone here but in all fairness when has an opportunity to make more money not been pursued by big business? Has that ever happened, ever?

I don't much give a crap as long as my bill doesn't go up (in fact I'd rather see it go down), but if my internet bill becomes as convoluted as my electric and telephone bills with their tax for this and charge for that and delivery charge (which somehow is different from transmission charge) and the rest of it i'm gonna be pissed.

There IS a remedy to the Comcast decision no one has addressed yet. Virtually ALL of Comcast's cable service areas are local Municipal Monopoly Operations. That means that Comcast signed deals with local towns and cities for monopoly service in exchange for building the coax cable infrastructure in the US. What if people in their local communities were to lobby their municipal elected officials to end the Monopoly agreements and open the contracts up to competitive bidding to ALL Telecoms, ISPs, cable and wireless companies? How would THAT impact Comcast's bottom-line? The National fiberoptic backbone is ultra-fast at OC-192 DWDM levels, or over 4 million voice channels per fiber. That backbone is slowed considerably by the fact that most of the last mile subscriber loops in the country are either 40-50 year-old coaxial cable or 60-70 year-old twisted copper wire pairs. The analogy I use is if you took a Ferrari Testarossa and put a 45 mph governor on the fuel intake system. Until fiber is actually deployed to the subscriber loop, this problem will not go away.

Comcast gets to be king of the hill with coax but google and city broadband utilities are starting to go for fiber all the way. Any town that gets google ISP is going to see comcasts local profits crumble. One of the reasons why they are politically shooting themselves in the foot by getting this ruling. If they try somthing funky they may face a double whammy of being switched to telecom and harsh competition from fiber.

Whatever the case tho. DSL is so screwed :P