Net Neutrality

[peggy]

I'm in agreement with jp1. Tiered pricing for various speeds or services seems like a logical business model. Technology Y costs more than technology X to build, but if you're willing to pay for it I will build it. I don't understand why that should be a problem and from the arguments above I'm not sure it is. Peggy? Beyond that, it should not matter in any way shape or form what the content I'm viewing with my service is. Furthermore, the providers and the government should not be in a position to monitor what content I'm viewing, but we all know where that statement ends up.

Here's the problem. Net Neutrality keeps the internet the way it is now. Up to now the internet has been wide open, so to speak. Not classified really and pretty much a free for all.

Comcast looked at Netflix and saw they had a lot of content (as well as deep pockets) so they said, "hey, we think you should pay us some money for providing our customers with all that content". Netflix said "hey yourself, you promised your customers x amount of speed, unlimited, so, no, we aren't going to pay this ransom". Then Comcast sloowed down Netflix streaming juuust enough to piss off their customers. Netflix paid the ransom and surprise! the streaming went back to normal speed. This is what Net Neutrality is fighting against. Cause you know if they get away with this from Netflix, they will do this to amazon, your bank, your library, and your goat porn sites. Now if Comcast offers x amount of unlimited speed, it doesn't matter what I use it for, or from which sites.
Net Neutrality reclassifies the internet so all sites are treated equal. If Comcast wants to offer dial up speeds for cheaper, they certainly can, but I doubt they would have any customers. But with net neutrality, Comcast can't decide which sites deserve regular speed, and which get dial up speeds. (who don't pay, don'cha know)
That's what the argument is about. As Jane says, If it ain't broke, don't fix it...but put the safeguards in place so no one else breaks it.

[Gregg]

So then we agree. Nice when that happens.

[ToomuchStuff]

Had an emergency phone call, so I am just now back to this.
I agree with JP1 and Comcast tried this destructive behavior before with Torrents. While there is a lot of illegal copyright violations with torrents, torrents are also used to distribute legal software, such as the operating systems Allen and myself use.
That said, Bae is mixing up a service (internet), with what the cable companies are/were. In my area, there is one licensed cable provider. If you were lucky enough to live in a situation like the house I grew up in, mixed city limits in the yard meant there was another one we could choose (long harried process), but that company is being bought out by Comcast (eliminating its competitor there). The post office is a government approved monopoly of local mail, but competes with packages, that doesn't eliminate that it is the only one that can do local mail. (yet a non profit doing a constitutionally mandated job of someone else). Now the internet, I view more as a utility, especially since more and more want you to have an account/signup online (things like Social Security). It has moved beyond a nicety to more of a both the government and big business, want you to have a searchable, marketable/to digital fingerprint.
There are others that do offer it as a service, although there were some restrictions that caused problems and less choices when I first started online. (free dial up with our local library, years back) Some were technical (couldn't get DSL to my house, just out of reach, satellite cost a LOT more and still used dialup for uploads, while had higher usage restrictions), while others were stopped by court cases (see some of the municipal broadband cases). Smart phones, internet, has their own issues (cost per month, verses things like vision issues, etc).

[catherine]

So I just happened to come across this article which talks about some of the theories of Jeremy Rifkin. I was interested in the article because it talks about the inevitable transition from our current capitalist paradigm to a Collaborative Commons model.

Seems that if we operate on the old established paradigm, the end of net neutrality is a logical application. However, if we accept that things are evolving to what Rifkin calls "Third Industrial Revolution," which would be a aero marginal cost society, net neutrality must be a given.

I, for one, am really excited at the prospect of a world where the "prosumers" innovate and collaborate at virtually no marginal cost.

Here's one article from The Guardian

And one from the Huffington Post

[kib]

So I just happened to come across this article which talks about some of the theories of Jeremy Rifkin. I was interested in the article because it talks about the inevitable transition from our current capitalist paradigm to a Collaborative Commons model.

Seems that if we operate on the old established paradigm, the end of net neutrality is a logical application. However, if we accept that things are evolving to what Rifkin calls "Third Industrial Revolution," which would be a aero marginal cost society, net neutrality must be a given.

I, for one, am really excited at the prospect of a world where the "prosumers" innovate and collaborate at virtually no marginal cost.

Here's one article from The Guardian

And one from the Huffington Post

The Venus Project also posits something like this, a steady state economy with people doing work out of passion and enjoyment, not a drive for "profit". I watched some documentary the other day that made a very depressing posit: 'back when', perhaps as much as 150 years ago, manufacturers were concerned; they were now automating the manufacture of products that could last a lifetime. Whether through lack of imagination or just laziness, they decided that they had made everything that would ever need to be made, so they'd be in the poor house if they couldn't figure out how to make more profit from the few things that were being created. It was a turning point for capitalism, an intentional turning-away from the idea that people might be free to purchase these items once and then move on to a life of concerning themselves with something other than procuring money to buy essentially the same crap in a new wrapper over and over again.

It's not news, but it disturbed me to feel like ... we had the choice for a steady state economy a long time ago, and if we'd chosen it then, the world probably wouldn't be in this financial and environmental pickle now. However, it's never to late to dream!

ETA: for those who'd say this would have stifled all ingenuity and drive to create, I say that's not true. I think we might have made much greater strides if we were prodded to create honestly new and wonderful things in order to make money (or better, in order to feel creatively fulfilled), and not just lowered the bar so everything was unsatisfying or designed to fall apart. As it is, for every exciting thing we do - creating the internet, for example - the whole focus immediately turns to making it profitable at the expense of making it great.