Obama weighs in on Net Neutrality . . . is automatically wrong

[Jarhyn]

oh. So you didn't even read the post you commented to. This seems quite typical.

Ranting about cable, infrastructure, land, rivers, and other elements in a potential natural monopoly is not evidence that, in fact, the industry is a natural monopoly, or that the pricing is set by a single firm. You are using lurid speculation as a hook for your raging antipathy to rationing by price, a fundamental principal in market economics.

So let's get serious:

Anyone can use the coding and communications protocols for the internet. But the physical means of accessing the internet is not free. The servers, cabling, and other equipment of content and service providers, and of users, must be purchased. ISP's, in particular, are those who driven the creation of new and vastly improved infrastructure. The old days of an ATT monopoly with 300 bits/second data lines is dead - today we enjoy high speed DSL and Cable because the ISPS invested in their infrastructure (and we will see continued advances as companies like Verison roll out a 140 billion dollar new fiber cable networks that are many times faster).

Their infrastructure is rightfully theirs to use, improve, and profit from as they see fit. The state has no right to dictate how ISP's use their own property and data lines. And the idea that the ISP's should maintain a "stupid" Internet of "dumb pipes" that does not distinguish between the costs of high volume providers and users is absurd. And when when interest groups realize that they may have to pay for their high volume usage, or face slower service, they run to the government to demand that the government tell the ISPs to cease managing their own property as they wish.

If you want to kill infrastructure improvement and subsidize corporations like Netflix, net neutrality is a good way to start.

Except the fact that the vast majority of the cost for those networks was and is subsidized and ceded by the public in the form of land grants, taxes, and use of public infrastructure. that means that at the onset it is not 'their own' property. At best the public owes them a debt for installing the equipment

Second, it is an outright lie that they wish to discriminate merely between "high volume providers" and "everyday users". They wish to violate the very idea of 'internet service provision' and instead move towards marketed content provision.

Across the country, that 'infrastructure improvement' you claim that such marketed content providers are engaging in because of a lack of neutrality is only happening because actual honest companies are calling them out on their bullshit and installing real ISPs that shame them into right action! USInternet is the only reason CenturyLink is installing fiber in Minneapolis, and not past the borders of where USInternet threatens their stranglehold. I talked to one of the executives of UsInternet not a month ago, and the reason they can't provide fiber in my neighborhood? The municipal Authorities haven't approved their installation of a northbound fiber, and the companies that own existing dark fibers they could use instead of installing a new one are under contract with various existing providers to not sell to USInternet! Comcast already has fibers in the area as does CenturyLink, but they won't actually run fiber to homes in my area because no honest company is able to compete due to administrative barriers. After all, why supply unlimited gigabit service when you can charge the same price for 8 megabit service?

There would not be this issue if I could, say, just install a fiber and contract directly with Level 3. But I cant. I'd be jailed for trying.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Second, it is an outright lie that they wish to discriminate merely between "high volume providers" and "everyday users". They wish to violate the very idea of 'internet service provision' and instead move towards marketed content provision.

This is EXACTLY what they are fighting so hard for. If they control who is allowed to see what, they control the market by preventing the free exchange of goods and services (and ideas). I don't know if you remember some of the awful search engines before Google where you would type in say "Verizon" and be routed to page after page of "Verizon sucks switch to AT&T". Now just imagine if you wanted to buy "The Fountainhead" from the Objectivist Bookstore, and every attempt to do so was blocked and you were sent to Amazon for a $12 "Comcast convenience fee" mark-up (or join the Amazon Socialist Collective for $29.99/mo and only pay a $6 fee). Or the server speed for the Objectivist Bookstore was so slow that you could not complete your purchases. Because this is what they are looking to do. They are looking to choke the speed of commercial websites in order to make money off the ones that can afford to pay protection money and take a cut of all transactions you make online.

By throttling content, these companies are set to make trillions. This is why they are fighting and lying about what they plan to do.


In other words this goes way beyond streaming content. This goes to the core of commerce in the United States.

 

[ksen]

If you want to kill infrastructure improvement

Maybe you're not aware that one of the biggest complaints against companies like Comcast is their refusal/foot dragging about upgrading their infrastructure.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...me_warner_and_at_t_have_nothing_to_worry.html

and subsidize corporations like Netflix, net neutrality is a good way to start.

wat

 

[Jarhyn]

In other words, net neutrality has no problem with the throttling of traffic by volume, and every problem with throttling it by source. Imagine if Comcast just outright throttled Fox News, Breitbart, and The Drudge Report, unless users paid a 'stupidity premium'. Tomorrow, conservatards everywhere would be SCREAMING for net neutrality.

 

[dismal]

It's funny how the right wing folks always want to retain the right to deny people fairness in favor of a reality that denies social responsibility. The do it over and over again.

Only fair as a government law, not if a business is doing it. Is it fair that senior citizens get cheaper coffees at McDonalds or movie theaters. Where is the outrage that Obama should now be dictating that senior citizens pay more for coffee.

Of course we can regulate coffee.

All the cool governments are doing it:

Authorities mostly turned a blind eye to the informal commerce, but late last month Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro went on TV to decree a ban on street sales of coffee, eggs, shampoo and some 50 other “regulated” items whose prices* are capped by the government. He ordered the National Guard to police market stalls for such items as mayonnaise and powdered milk, and threatened to prosecute recidivist violators.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...b79f52-87da-442b-b7b3-cb0989903dd7_story.html

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In other words, net neutrality has no problem with the throttling of traffic by volume, and every problem with throttling it by source. Imagine if Comcast just outright throttled Fox News, Breitbart, and The Drudge Report, unless users paid a 'stupidity premium'. Tomorrow, conservatards everywhere would be SCREAMING for net neutrality.

This is what I don't understand. Wouldn't it be conservative to support Net Neutrality? This isn't about free access to the web, it is about not letting the few ISPs that exist to choke the line for the last few miles of data's trip. In effect, the local ISPs area holding data hostage. Netflix pays to upload, we pay to download.

This seems to be their argument.

By having the online media companies pay more that will mean the consumer has to pay less because the ISP will drop their rates and instead charge the online companies more for better streaming rates that we were already paying for. The online company won't increase their rates due to this increase because... umm... they won't.

But if Big Bad Government got involved, then Comcast would have had to raised their rates in order to be able to upgrade their broadband capabilities that they apparently oversold to their customers. And the customers would have had to pay more in order to get the service they were originally promised at a lower price!

Sure, it could argued that the Online company is already paying to upload their data and we are paying to download it, so this would be double dipping, especially if the Online company's Internet provider is the same as their customers. But then we would be stricken with the necessity of having regulations which only hurt the job market and will prevent the Canadian Tar Sands from being transported along high speed fiber lines.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Maybe you're not aware that one of the biggest complaints against companies like Comcast is their refusal/foot dragging about upgrading their infrastructure.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...me_warner_and_at_t_have_nothing_to_worry.html

The radio/tv antenna was installed in my apartment (12 units) in the 1920s, cable in the 1970s. DSL in the 2000s. The fiber optic in the 2010s.
Comcast and Time Warner did not install/upgrade any of these.

and subsidize corporations like Netflix, net neutrality is a good way to start.

wat

double wat

 

[maxparrish]

Ranting about cable, infrastructure, land, rivers, and other elements in a potential natural monopoly is not evidence that, in fact, the industry is a natural monopoly, or that the pricing is set by a single firm. You are using lurid speculation as a hook for your raging antipathy to rationing by price, a fundamental principal in market economics.

So let's get serious:

Anyone can use the coding and communications protocols for the internet. But the physical means of accessing the internet is not free. The servers, cabling, and other equipment of content and service providers, and of users, must be purchased. ISP's, in particular, are those who driven the creation of new and vastly improved infrastructure. The old days of an ATT monopoly with 300 bits/second data lines is dead - today we enjoy high speed DSL and Cable because the ISPS invested in their infrastructure (and we will see continued advances as companies like Verison roll out a 140 billion dollar new fiber cable networks that are many times faster).

Their infrastructure is rightfully theirs to use, improve, and profit from as they see fit. The state has no right to dictate how ISP's use their own property and data lines. And the idea that the ISP's should maintain a "stupid" Internet of "dumb pipes" that does not distinguish between the costs of high volume providers and users is absurd. And when when interest groups realize that they may have to pay for their high volume usage, or face slower service, they run to the government to demand that the government tell the ISPs to cease managing their own property as they wish.

If you want to kill infrastructure improvement and subsidize corporations like Netflix, net neutrality is a good way to start.

Except the fact that the vast majority of the cost for those networks was and is subsidized and ceded by the public in the form of land grants, taxes, and use of public infrastructure. that means that at the onset it is not 'their own' property. At best the public owes them a debt for installing the equipment

Second, it is an outright lie that they wish to discriminate merely between "high volume providers" and "everyday users". They wish to violate the very idea of 'internet service provision' and instead move towards marketed content provision.

Across the country, that 'infrastructure improvement' you claim that such marketed content providers are engaging in because of a lack of neutrality is only happening because actual honest companies are calling them out on their bullshit and installing real ISPs that shame them into right action! USInternet is the only reason CenturyLink is installing fiber in Minneapolis, and not past the borders of where USInternet threatens their stranglehold. I talked to one of the executives of UsInternet not a month ago, and the reason they can't provide fiber in my neighborhood? The municipal Authorities haven't approved their installation of a northbound fiber, and the companies that own existing dark fibers they could use instead of installing a new one are under contract with various existing providers to not sell to USInternet! Comcast already has fibers in the area as does CenturyLink, but they won't actually run fiber to homes in my area because no honest company is able to compete due to administrative barriers. After all, why supply unlimited gigabit service when you can charge the same price for 8 megabit service?

There would not be this issue if I could, say, just install a fiber and contract directly with Level 3. But I cant. I'd be jailed for trying.

Anytime someone has dissolved policy structure into personalizing and moralizing on the character groups of corporations, as if they are run by groups of "honest" employees vs groups of "dishonest employees" , and "getting the inside scoop" from the "honest executives" tells me they have drank the Koolaid of the populist rage and out to find witches to burn. Exactly why and how the pervasive barriers of municipal Authorities should be addressed by semi-nationalization of an industry remains obscure...if anything it serves as an object lesson about what needs to be done about our local government, not the market.

But then, anything to justify a power-grab of private property, heh?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Only fair as a government law, not if a business is doing it. Is it fair that senior citizens get cheaper coffees at McDonalds or movie theaters. Where is the outrage that Obama should now be dictating that senior citizens pay more for coffee.

Of course we can regulate coffee.

You are aware coffee is a commodity. Like oil.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

But then, anything to justify a power-grab of private property, heh?

What private property are they grabbing? None of our cable lines are owned by the cable companies but are considered public property that Comcast is contracted to upkeep as part of a utility service -- along with other providers for our fiber optic, wireless network and dsl lines.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

But then, anything to justify a power-grab of private property, heh?

What private property are they grabbing? None of our cable lines are owned by the cable companies but are considered public property that Comcast is contracted to upkeep as part of a utility service -- along with other providers for our fiber optic, wireless network and dsl lines.

Really? I would have thought that they owned the lines, but not the land (they have an easement).

 

[fromderinside]

Anytime someone has dissolved policy structure into personalizing and moralizing on the character groups of corporations, as if they are run by groups of "honest" employees vs groups of "dishonest employees" , and "getting the inside scoop" from the "honest executives" tells me they have drank the Koolaid of the populist rage and out to find witches to burn. Exactly why and how the pervasive barriers of municipal Authorities should be addressed by semi-nationalization of an industry remains obscure...if anything it serves as an object lesson about what needs to be done about our local government, not the market.

But then, anything to justify a power-grab of private property, heh?

Really? Try this on for size and applicability to your dishonest, employees hell, corporations

Here's More About $200 Billion Broadband Scandal http://www.newnetworks.com/scandalquotes.htm

This was known way back in 2006 and it hasn't gotten any better.

BTW utilities are regulated entities, usually with safe territories and compacts with other companies for use of infrastructure. If we didn't have them there would either be lines, now towers and fiber, everywhere, or only those who were low lying fruit would have service or the government would provide the service. Companies just aren't good citizens. They are profit engines. Remember, companies exploit technology they don't develop it. New stuff and theory has been the realm of government since government was invented.

 

[Jarhyn]

Except the fact that the vast majority of the cost for those networks was and is subsidized and ceded by the public in the form of land grants, taxes, and use of public infrastructure. that means that at the onset it is not 'their own' property. At best the public owes them a debt for installing the equipment

Second, it is an outright lie that they wish to discriminate merely between "high volume providers" and "everyday users". They wish to violate the very idea of 'internet service provision' and instead move towards marketed content provision.

Across the country, that 'infrastructure improvement' you claim that such marketed content providers are engaging in because of a lack of neutrality is only happening because actual honest companies are calling them out on their bullshit and installing real ISPs that shame them into right action! USInternet is the only reason CenturyLink is installing fiber in Minneapolis, and not past the borders of where USInternet threatens their stranglehold. I talked to one of the executives of UsInternet not a month ago, and the reason they can't provide fiber in my neighborhood? The municipal Authorities haven't approved their installation of a northbound fiber, and the companies that own existing dark fibers they could use instead of installing a new one are under contract with various existing providers to not sell to USInternet! Comcast already has fibers in the area as does CenturyLink, but they won't actually run fiber to homes in my area because no honest company is able to compete due to administrative barriers. After all, why supply unlimited gigabit service when you can charge the same price for 8 megabit service?

There would not be this issue if I could, say, just install a fiber and contract directly with Level 3. But I cant. I'd be jailed for trying.

Anytime someone has dissolved policy structure into personalizing and moralizing on the character groups of corporations, as if they are run by groups of "honest" employees vs groups of "dishonest employees" , and "getting the inside scoop" from the "honest executives" tells me they have drank the Koolaid of the populist rage and out to find witches to burn. Exactly why and how the pervasive barriers of municipal Authorities should be addressed by semi-nationalization of an industry remains obscure...if anything it serves as an object lesson about what needs to be done about our local government, not the market.

But then, anything to justify a power-grab of private property, heh?

Except they were paid for the infrastructure and to improve it, but they didn't. We aren't out scouting for witches to burn. There's an actual witch here. It's hopping up and down screaming 'I'm doing witch things', then decapitating babies and making blood circles, and summoning the fell lord Jesus, so that they can feed it the corpses of babies they just decapitated, right alongside a journal detailing that they planned to decapitate babies to summon dark hell beasts and make pacts to burn the constitution.

I am not saying to go search for witches to burn and I wouldn't have suggested to burn this one, if it wasn't performing a demon summoning on my own damn front porch.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

And slightly off topic guess who attempts to override my wifi signal every time I log on: xfinity a.k.a. Comcast.

 

[dismal]

Of course we can regulate coffee.

You are aware coffee is a commodity. Like oil.

Don't tell Starbucks customers that. They pay $4 for something they could get at quick trip for a buck.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

You are aware coffee is a commodity. Like oil.

Don't tell Starbucks customers that. They pay $4 for something they could get at quick trip for a buck.

And it still remains a commodity.