Net neutrality act .. squashed !

[Bubblehead1980]

This is why I despise the left and Dem party, over the years they have managed to play enough identity politics, take advantage of those who are less fortunate etc that we have generations now who think it's all "little guys vs big guys" meaning the companies are bad, bad, bad and the government is the referee on the side of the good guy, the "little" guy.I am sorry but this is crap!

The net neutrality act is a government agenda to control the one medium they do not, the internet.They are not trying to help the little guy here(they never are, just their playbook in getting support for things) so glad this part of the agenda failed this time.Give them an inch, they will take a mile.

[Ducimus]

There are two sides to every story, and while everybody wants to paint the Net Neutrality debate as being a Braveheart-style battle of freedom-lovers versus corporate monarchs, there is more to it than that.

If you're not familiar with the subject, basically right now we have net neutrality. ISPs are essentially dumb pipes and they don't know or care if that data you just downloaded was in the form of historical documents from local university libraries, or an encyclopedic collection of Brazilian fecal fetish pornography. The Internet today is the wonderful, endlessly fascinating place it is in large part due to the fact that it's been free and open its entire life.

ISP's want to change that, mainly because different applications use massively different resources. There's no comparing the stress that downloading HD movies puts on their network versus, say, reading a Cracked article's worth of text. So they want to change their infrastructure and how they bill you for it.

The problem is this also would let them slap on all sorts of controls they never could before, such as blocking competing websites, or signing exclusive deals for content. After all, Comcast both provides Internet access to millions and owns NBC, so taking away net neutrality could let them block competing networks and that could turn ugly fast. It's thus no surprise that a variety of semi-respected sources, including the chief of the FCC, are standing up for net neutrality.

Phew! The Chairman of the FCC! We're safe, right?

Actually...

The carriers continue to push against net neutrality. Its future is hardly secure, as mobile carriers AND ISPs have ample motivation. Google, patron saint of the "free information" movement, has even dipped its toes in anti-neutrality waters. They approached "major cable and phone companies" with a proposal to give Google content a "fast lane" of its own.

Major corporations and political entities getting bandwidth preference over small, independent sites and individuals is exactly what net neutrality advocates fear the most.

So What Can We Do? Well, this is where it gets complicated.

The ISPs aren't just being greedy here. Bandwidth costs a lot of ****ing money and usage is growing at a retarded rate. For instance, most of the video game consoles now offer HD movie and TV show streaming, and soon they may give up physical media completely to stream all of the games you buy directly to the system (because it would kill off the used games market that they claim is eating all of their profits). Everybody is quickly replacing their faucets with fire hoses.

If net neutrality stays and the ISP's can't offer multiple tiers of service, then they say they will have to use an even more annoying solution: putting an end to unlimited plans completely and making you pay for every gigabyte of that Bittorrent download of every single episode of The Simpsons. And you won't be able to simply switch ISPs unless you find one run by some eccentric billionaire who feels like giving away his money for the good of the people.

The problem is that what we want out of this situation--cheap, infinitely scalable bandwidth--is the one outcome we can't have. And while the other threats on this list can maybe be avoided, this is one that will end in the Internet being less free, you paying a lot more or a combination of both.

So enjoy what you have while you can, for these are The Good Old Days.

Taken from an article on cracked.com

[Platapus]

an encyclopedic collection of Brazilian fecal fetish pornography.

Link?

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Link?

LOL, i love cracked.com, its a great humor and satire site, and they drip with more sarcasm then even i could conjure. But occasionally they make a point and back it up with references. If i just provided the link, nobody would have read it.

The bit i pasted is from page 2 of this article:
5 Reasons The Internet Could Die At Any Moment

[CaptainHaplo]

Net Neutrality as it is pushed is a bad thing - but that doesn't mean all the ideas in it are bad.

Like most things, its never a black and white issue. However, when any "regulation" over-reaches and goes beyond what is needed - it should be rebuffed. That is what occured here.

The issue isn't dead, but issues will be corrected and you will see it again.

[tater]

What was the actual law proposed? Was it longer than something like:

"All packets must be forwarded, and in the order received." ?

I'd wager it was. Probably included pork, too, lol. At 1000 pages.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

This is why I despise the left and Dem party, over the years they have managed to play enough identity politics, take advantage of those who are less fortunate etc that we have generations now who think it's all "little guys vs big guys" meaning the companies are bad, bad, bad and the government is the referee on the side of the good guy, the "little" guy.I am sorry but this is crap!

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.

[Zachstar]

Originally Posted by Aramike

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.

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?