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rmgill

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Finally, an actual counter argument from someone who really understands what net neutrality is.

 

I disagree, however, as we in Germany already saw the crap that ISPs were trying to pull to keep Netflix and other quality streaming services from gaining market share among German customers by trying to put their own crappy "content" into their data plans.

 

Anyone who ever had to endure a sales pitch from an annoying T-Online customer service guy where you have a hard time explaining that NO, you don't want any TV packages from them and NO, also no included German streaming service, thank you very much, would be crazy to oppose net neutrality legislation.

 

 

The problem is that in order to get that nice high speed connection to NetFlix, you need a nice high speed high bandwidth connection to them. Which means you need them to have a PoP (Point of presence) in your space at your local switching office. OR you need to build connections to where they are. Or they need to be working with a CDN (Contend Distribution Network like Akamai) that is in your space or near where you CAN hook into.

 

All that costs money.

 

To put it in more common terms

 

Why doesn't this:

 

 

 

have the same bandwidth and speed (cause they're not the same thing) as this?:

autobahn.jpg?w968h681

 

 

Why don't they cost the same to use too?

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Disclaimer -- my employer is an ILEC and an ISP, and my opinions expressed here are my own, some of them in stark contrast to my employer's.

 

Purely as a matter of principle, Network Neutrality is a step in the wrong direction. The internet service providers own their infrastructure, so they should have the final say in who uses it, how, and for what price. That's what "ownership" means. By inserting itself into this decision-making process, the government effectively made itself co-owners of formerly private property, by fiat.

 

That having been said, it could have been worse. In actual practice, the FCC applied its authority to enforce NN very narrowly. They smacked Comcast's hands and got them to stop the asinine business practices that had pissed off customers enough to get NN passed in the first place. They didn't abuse it, or apply it more broadly, even though the letter of the law would have allowed them to.

 

And then NN was repealed earlier this year, so it's almost a moot point. It remains to be seen whether the the big ISPs will refrain from the kinds of practices which prompted NN's enactment. If they know what's good for them, they'll tread more lightly, and there will be no demand for making NN law again. NN no longer binds them, but the threat of potential future NN laws might keep them in line.

 

Tangentially, if NN hadn't been repealed, it might have been used to provide sites like Tanknet with legal protection against blocks and filters. By the letter of the law, any practice that discriminated against some sources of traffic on the basis of its content was actionable. Taken in the broadest sense, that could have been misused to prohibit ISPs from combating DDoS attacks and spammers, but presumably the FCC wouldn't do that.

 

If one is worried that the FCC could be subverted by evil executive forces and ruin the internet with its NN authority, that would be a valid argument against future NN legislation, but as things stand the opposite actually happened.

Edited by TTK Ciar
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Purely as a matter of principle, Network Neutrality is a step in the wrong direction. The internet service providers own their infrastructure, so they should have the final say in who uses it, how, and for what price. That's what "ownership" means. By inserting itself into this decision-making process, the government effectively made itself co-owners of formerly private property, by fiat.

 

REGULATION is not disappropriation. You have regulations for fresh water supply, for railways, for public roads. They are natural monopolies and the internet has stopped being a purely optional geek gadget. We regulate toxic emissions into water and air because it affects everybody. We regulate how much share of the press / TV / radio market may be concentrated in the hands of a single person/corporation.

 

In short, there never has been purely free and unregulated private ownership anywhere, at any given time, except maybe in the Wild West where it was basically anarchy/rule of the strongest. Regulation comes in as soon as there are a lot of stakeholders in addition to the few investors.

 

I'm sorry, in this case your point of view seems to be clouded by your profession. Regulation is a regular part of all economic activity. I see no reason that ISPs should be exampted from that principle.

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keep in mind that TankNet itself has been under regular attack by Google and others and has been listed as a malicious site for quite some time even though hundreds if not thousands of notifications have been sent in by regular posters here

 

On that note, it is interesting to note that the specific malicious URL my AV spit out was the Avatar used by Der Zeitgeist. When I explicitly whitelisted this grate site, DZ's Avatar remained blocked. All other avatars continued to render. I don't know why his specific image is considered malicious - even if he's using steganography to relay data, I am not aware of any image based exploits in the wild.

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Ryan, I would find that argument more compelling if ISPs were not already making veey good money providing high speed, high bandwidth internet under net neutrality and if I thought the SJWs running them wouldnt decide to use their powers for justice as YouTube et al do.

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I always thought that it was just the usual "RAH RAH, Obama, leftist, socialist, evil" argument, but it seems R011 is right and they really just don't know and think it's something about "neutrality" in the sense of "impartiality of viewpoints".

Net Neutrality fundamentally is about the US government treating the internet as a utility. On the face it's about allowing poorly run internet businesses piggy back on the infrastructure of those with better business models. Under the face of it, in this climate of Orwellian quashing of speech, it would also have been used to quash "hate" speech. Hate speech being defined as that speech the left finds offensive.

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Realistically, it couldn't, not unless the next NN law is significantly different from the previous.

 

Here's the full text of the order:

 

in PDF -- http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1686026/fcc-15-24a1.pdf

 

in text -- http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1686026/fcc-15-24a1.txt

Edited by TTK Ciar
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I'm sorry, in this case your point of view seems to be clouded by your profession. Regulation is a regular part of all economic activity. I see no reason that ISPs should be exampted from that principle.

The problems most desired to be fixed by NN are caused by local and state government regulations assuring rent seeking. If you want to fix the actual problems, minimizing the rent seeking ability would be best. Increase the facility for competition rather than allowing municipalities to give special deals to specific companies in exchange for anti-competitive laws.

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Ryan, I would find that argument more compelling if ISPs were not already making veey good money providing high speed, high bandwidth internet under net neutrality and if I thought the SJWs running them wouldnt decide to use their powers for justice as YouTube et al do.

Depends on the ISPs. When you look at smaller companies, they're at a major disadvantage. Big companies can make deals with a given city/county/state gov't to keep out competition.

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First of all, congrats to Ryan on putting up a really thought provoking thread. A lot of stuff here I confess I hadn't previously given much thought to. I have a question though.

 

If a bakery run by people with a faith is allowed to refuse to bake a gay couple a wedding cake, why should a privately owned ISP or online news agency be forced to display the content of right wing extremists?

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First of all, congrats to Ryan on putting up a really thought provoking thread. A lot of stuff here I confess I hadn't previously given much thought to. I have a question though.

 

If a bakery run by people with a faith is allowed to refuse to bake a gay couple a wedding cake, why should a privately owned ISP or online news agency be forced to display the content of right wing extremists?

I think there are a couple of levels of debate going on. First, should private companies be compelled to provide equal service to everyone, regardless. Second, is it a healthy thing for a few large companies to coordinate (conspire?) to actively target a particular group when they effectively control the overwhelming majority of discourse in the public sphere. If there was a Google of cake baking, might there be a greater case to compel them to bake a particular cake? A person or group can be "deplatformed" out of having their voice and opinion heard. Even larger more powerful groups like the NRA can be effectively strangled if their voice is silenced on social media, no ISP chooses to sell them access to the internet or host their web entities, if no bank will do business with them for sales and dues, etc.

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All of the FAAG's basically argue that they're just providers, and are not responsible for content, while at the same time deplatforming anyone whom they decide contradicts the narrative. The are mutually exclusive positions, which doesn't stop the amoral sociopaths from making them.

 

Comparing the shitlibs going after Ma and Pa bakery to a multinational globo corp which exists almost solely due to government sanction is frankly preposterous. It's a form of dishonesty. All these civil rights laws, which are being used to strangle anything which contradicts the narrative, should apply only to government, because you have no alternative. Now, you could honestly and reasonably make the case that corporations are a construct that exist only due to government recognition, but that's never discussed. It's all or nothing.

 

There is only winning; the only thing that matters. S/F....Ken M

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Comparing the shitlibs going after Ma and Pa bakery to a multinational globo corp which exists almost solely due to government sanction is frankly preposterous. It's a form of dishonesty.

 

I certainly did not intend it to be dishonest and I think you've known me long enough to know I wouldn't lie to you. The thing is, both the bakery (and, whilst I probably fit most criteria of a shitlib, for the record I absolutely do not think they should have been forced to bake the cake) and Google, Youtube, Facebook, whatever are privately owned entities. You can argue that they are different, but there is a continuum between them with no clear demarcation line anywhere that I can see.

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Google is publicly traded mega corp with a horde of lawyers and bought and paid for politicians, Ma and Pa bakery is doubtless a sole proprietorship, perhaps an LLC at best. There's your clear line. There has always been business, there has only recently (historically) been liability protected legal creations, full of unaccountable bureaucrats, who constantly work to increase their authority while avoiding accountability, as is their very nature. S/F....Ken M

Edited by EchoFiveMike
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If a bakery run by people with a faith is allowed to refuse to bake a gay couple a wedding cake, why should a privately owned ISP or online news agency be forced to display the content of right wing extremists?

 

 

1. It's a question of customized service specific to the special party. In the above cited case the baker offered to bake a more generic cake for them. He just wasn't going to put the homosexual references on it. Thus an ISP dropping services to a specific group which are no different than other groups is specifically discriminatory.

 

2. There's the aspect of the size of the company. In the case of the baker, the person running the business was also the person owning the business and was very much the primary owner as I understand it. That's different than a major corporation with share holders and a board. Easy for the person who owns a small company to have a given view that they represent in their mode of operation. This was borne out by a supreme court decision relating to Hobby Lobby. The Supreme court has a very specific aversion (rightly so) to parsing religious doctrine.

 

3. Youtube and the other internet companies are not online news agencies. They're providers of a service. If you want to get a video hosted, Youtube is the go to place. After that its someplace else. Youtube, as in the case of forgotten weapons specifically targeted certain groups. Twitter makes itself out to being advancing free speech but shadow bans folks on the right and allows the same speech (or worse) from those on the left. They want to be treated like a common carrier but don't behave as one.

 

Edited by rmgill
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The thing is, both the bakery (and, whilst I probably fit most criteria of a shitlib, for the record I absolutely do not think they should have been forced to bake the cake) and Google, Youtube, Facebook, whatever are privately owned entities. You can argue that they are different, but there is a continuum between them with no clear demarcation line anywhere that I can see.

 

The key demarkation between a the bakers and Youtube are is one a "closely held corporation"? Closely held corporation are where one or a small group of folks owns the company not hundreds if not thousands (tens of thousands +) of people. The distinction was underscored in Burwell v Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby isa closely held corporation. There's a small board of all the stock holders. It's there company in name and in fact.

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keep in mind that TankNet itself has been under regular attack by Google and others and has been listed as a malicious site for quite some time even though hundreds if not thousands of notifications have been sent in by regular posters here

You do know that trying to access this site from a new computer sometimes redirects you to some sort of porn site? I have seen that a couple of time including twice at work fortunately we don't have a HR department that tracks logs (a least for that kind of thing). I'm pretty sure this is the cause of the "malicious site" warning. Edited by glappkaeft
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First of all, congrats to Ryan on putting up a really thought provoking thread. A lot of stuff here I confess I hadn't previously given much thought to. I have a question though.

 

If a bakery run by people with a faith is allowed to refuse to bake a gay couple a wedding cake, why should a privately owned ISP or online news agency be forced to display the content of right wing extremists?

And by extension, why should a privately owned power company, of which there are multitudes in the US, be forced to provide electricity to LW extremist home owners and businesses?

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Interesting, woke up this morning and checked out the local paper online. I don't subscribe because it went from a balanced paper in the 80s to a liberal rag. They just announced they're changing the commenter policy to take away the ability to post anonymously. I don't post there because you have to be a subscriber to do so and I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire let alone pay them. Reading the commenters, many are conservatives taking issue with the paper's bent, they are almost all cancelling their subscriptions and leaving because they fear retribution in their personal lives and at their jobs. The Left has proudly proclaimed that Trump supporting conservatives should be hounded at their places of business, at restaurants and that their children should be harassed at school. There has been next to no blowback from other liberals on this. Now the media is saying that for the purpose of "transparency" they are removing the anonymous comment option for paying subscribers. I'm careful about what I do on social media, I have zero bumper stickers on my vehicle, I post here anonymously because the Left has made it clear they will take action against conservatives for their political beliefs. We've already had a local "activist" come into my office and threaten us with Black Lives Matter protests because he doesn't like a sticker on my assistant's vehicle. We've actually had to call the police twice and they have told him that if he steps foot again in our office he will be arrested for trespassing. Look for this "common sense transparency" push to become widespread in media. This is another attempt to force the right out of the public sphere. You'd think members of the press would understand the history in the US of anonymous political commentary, Silence Dogood and Publius but a couple of examples. They don't care, it's for the Greater Good.

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Always in the name of the Greater Good

 

 

We all know where this is leading. I don't see any way to change course.

 

Silencing all other views, all other positions is not one of the first, but rather one of the last steps to violence.

 

 

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable"

 

People on both sides think they're going to come out winners in the violent revolution.

 

No.

 

There won't be winners. Only losers, corpses, and rubble.

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Yes, the demarkation point is publically traded.

 

I was watching a Tom Tanks film last night called "The Circle" which reminded me just how sinister the likes of Google, YouTube and Facebook are. I have been ignoring FB for over a year but I'm going to close the account now.

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