openleft.com— I'm happy to report that every single Democratic challenger with more than $500k in cash on hand has announced their support for net neutrality. This is a milestone for the fight for internet freedom.
Jul 24, 2008View in Crawl 4
Your link has a number of problems with it's assumptions, not the least of which is the fact that there aren't many ISP's to switch to. In my area, I have Verizon and Cox; if neither keeps things fair, I'm screwed as a consumer. Because of the effective monopoly ISP's have in their respective areas, government regulation is necessary. Furthermore, there are a number of faulty assumptions about why ISP's want deregulation, and what they would do should they get it. "Following the same logic as "Net Neutrality", the same could be said for "Television Neutrality" where any corporation could add their own TV channels without paying anything to the Cable TV providers."This argument is fundamentally flawed by the fact that cable companies use bandwidth based on the total number of channels, while ISP's do not use bandwidth based on the number of websites on the internet. What they do pay for is how quickly they can send packets to the people on the end, which does carry proportional pricing. "There is a fear some websites will be blocked - this is not true - just delayed"That is actually untrue. Without some sort of government regulation, ISP's would be free to block whatever websites/services they want. If they offered a video service, and didn't like that youtube was limiting their sales, they could simply block it entirely. Of course, then there's the issue of the article saying so often saying things like"Some network packets are more important"and"Internet Service Providers must be allowed to prioritize packets and charge a different price based on the bandwidth quality"which are not inherently true.Using the traffic jam analogy, it would be similar to making it so that, in the event of a jam, whoever paid the most got to go to the front of the line. Theoretically speaking, you could even go so far as to say that, if you didn't pay, you simply couldn't go through at all. Net neutrality about keeping ISP's from any specific thing, it's about making sure they can't do any of the things they could do if it weren't there. There are a lot of "horror stories" about what the ISP's might do, and while many of them seem extremely unlikely, they still might come to be, and I feel a whole lot safer knowing they're not going to happen than simply hoping they won't.
I guess the thousands of elected Libertarians and the millions of votes cast for them never happened? Libertarian candidates are getting elected and anyone who votes for the D&R gang is part of the problem. From the county sheriff to commissioners and council members Libertarian candidates are and have been getting elected. Your comment would have fit well in the 1980's, not now. There is MASSIVE discontent, look at the single digit approval ratings for Congress! It is the lowest EVER!
Closed AccountJul 25, 2008
Did you get Gore’s opinion? Since he has self described himself as inventing the Net…..
lacronicusJul 25, 2008
Your link has a number of problems with it's assumptions, not the least of which is the fact that there aren't many ISP's to switch to. In my area, I have Verizon and Cox; if neither keeps things fair, I'm screwed as a consumer. Because of the effective monopoly ISP's have in their respective areas, government regulation is necessary. Furthermore, there are a number of faulty assumptions about why ISP's want deregulation, and what they would do should they get it. "Following the same logic as "Net Neutrality", the same could be said for "Television Neutrality" where any corporation could add their own TV channels without paying anything to the Cable TV providers."This argument is fundamentally flawed by the fact that cable companies use bandwidth based on the total number of channels, while ISP's do not use bandwidth based on the number of websites on the internet. What they do pay for is how quickly they can send packets to the people on the end, which does carry proportional pricing. "There is a fear some websites will be blocked - this is not true - just delayed"That is actually untrue. Without some sort of government regulation, ISP's would be free to block whatever websites/services they want. If they offered a video service, and didn't like that youtube was limiting their sales, they could simply block it entirely. Of course, then there's the issue of the article saying so often saying things like"Some network packets are more important"and"Internet Service Providers must be allowed to prioritize packets and charge a different price based on the bandwidth quality"which are not inherently true.Using the traffic jam analogy, it would be similar to making it so that, in the event of a jam, whoever paid the most got to go to the front of the line. Theoretically speaking, you could even go so far as to say that, if you didn't pay, you simply couldn't go through at all. Net neutrality about keeping ISP's from any specific thing, it's about making sure they can't do any of the things they could do if it weren't there. There are a lot of "horror stories" about what the ISP's might do, and while many of them seem extremely unlikely, they still might come to be, and I feel a whole lot safer knowing they're not going to happen than simply hoping they won't.
nationalistJul 25, 2008
the only new party is the emo-communist socialism and liberation
Closed AccountJul 26, 2008
Most congressmen have no clue about anything involving the internet. Why are they deciding it's fate?
canyoodiggitJul 26, 2008
Al Gore is cool now because he invented global warming dont knock him
inaktivistJul 26, 2008
Woot.
Closed AccountJul 26, 2008
I guess the thousands of elected Libertarians and the millions of votes cast for them never happened? Libertarian candidates are getting elected and anyone who votes for the D&R gang is part of the problem. From the county sheriff to commissioners and council members Libertarian candidates are and have been getting elected. Your comment would have fit well in the 1980's, not now. There is MASSIVE discontent, look at the single digit approval ratings for Congress! It is the lowest EVER!
linageeAug 6, 2008
Make your own lines. How did you think I meant "The tools are readily available"?