Net Neutrality 2014

[wolf39us]

[CapnAwesome]

I don't really understand the net neutrality scare. I mean the ideas that he's presented just don't jive with reality. It's borderline conspiracy theory. If internet providers were really going to do that, they would of by now. The market has done great with the internet, which is the ultimate source of free speech. I'd much rather keep it as is rather than give the government any control.

[wolf39us]

I don't really understand the net neutrality scare. I mean the ideas that he's presented just don't jive with reality. It's borderline conspiracy theory. If internet providers were really going to do that, they would of by now. The market has done great with the internet, which is the ultimate source of free speech. I'd much rather keep it as is rather than give the government any control.

I'm not so sure I agree with you here. If you give ISPs the power to strike deals with media providers and are given the ability to restrict access or otherwise limit access to other websites that the ISP isn't fond of, then you strip the abilities of smaller businesses.

If visiting a video streaming service (who couldn't afford to pay these "premium" charges like Netflix has with Comcast) will result in slow or choppy video streams, then who will want to use them? Those businesses could not afford to get their feet off the ground and are squelched before even getting out on the playing field!

Why strike down Net Neutrality if this isn't the case? Companies want to squash competition and this is bad for innovation.

Not to mention for all of you torrent users like myself, the ISP will now have the ability to shut that down without question.

[SteelCurtain]

[Minimalist]

[Dragonetti]

Net Neutrality will hinder the progress of small companies. Prices will raise, as companies broken backroom deals to not compete.

Also, we lag behind other countries in terms of speed and connectivity.

John Oliver's segment would shed light on these backroom deals.

[Minimalist]

Prices will raise, as companies broken backroom deals to not compete.

Ssshhh! Some people call that "the invisible hand of the market."

[Dragonetti]

Many utilities already have done this! Which is why there are regulations by the government.

Internet needs to be consider a basic utility.

[Jackalope]

I don't really understand the net neutrality scare. I mean the ideas that he's presented just don't jive with reality. It's borderline conspiracy theory. If internet providers were really going to do that, they would of by now. The market has done great with the internet, which is the ultimate source of free speech. I'd much rather keep it as is rather than give the government any control.

I haven't watched this particular video, so I don't know what this guy's beef is - however, to understand one of the issues behind the push for net neutrality, consider what has actually happened.

Some of Comcast's links to top-tier bandwidth providers are saturated a good part of the time. Comcast blames Netflix, and tries to shake them down for $, and threatening to throttle streams from Netflix to Comcast customers.

The underlying issue (that Comcast has grossly oversubscribed it's uplinks) remains un-addressed. In addition, there is suspicion that what Comcast is *really* doing is attempting to discourage use of streaming services in order to promote it's own On Demand (i.e. pay-per-view) service.

Netflix has offered to install a caching server on Comcast's network gratis to alleviate the uplink bandwith issues (as they will do with any internet provider of sufficient size), Comcast refused.

There are, I am sure, many other examples of abuse, but this one I am intimately familiar with, in that I am subject to a regional Comcast monopoly on high-speed service.

[MindForgedManacle]

I don't really understand the net neutrality scare. I mean the ideas that he's presented just don't jive with reality. It's borderline conspiracy theory. If internet providers were really going to do that, they would of by now. The market has done great with the internet, which is the ultimate source of free speech. I'd much rather keep it as is rather than give the government any control.

They haven't done it because they haven't been allowed to. However, they're already starting to do it, the most well-known case being with Netflix.