Obama speaks out in favor of Net Neutrality; Ted Cruz likens it to "Obamacare"

Is it actually being treated like one? I see one speech and some Twitter posts.

 

How do you figure? If ISP's can charge anyone for access, it will change the game completely.

If I am an ISP I will build my own portal and offer access to it for free. I will charge advertisers money to get placement on that page. I will then charge Yahoo and so on significant sums of money if they want their page to have access. I can do this because I can effectively lower their speed to the point where it's a horrible user experience.

It will completely and utterly change the way the internet works. Oh not on day 1. But by day 5,000, it will be like that.

 

Not really. Credit unions blow big banks out of the water in terms of service and prices.

 

The President felt like he needed to make a statement about it so that would seem to imply it is significant.

 

Obama is for Net Neutrality... So that's more than enough of a reason for millions to be against it.

 

Those business practices aren't happening now and there is no indication that they will happen. Why do we need legislation against something that isn't happening? And why in the world would those business practices be anti-American? If a business wants to run their business in that fashion then let them. There is no inkling of potential collusion among ISPs to control what people can view on the Internet. Google has blown the ISP game up with Google Fiber as well. Technology will always triumph and this idea that people will be shut off from various sites is silly.

 

Net neutrality rules were adopted in 2010 by the FCC to prevent it.

So... 1 and 2 for you.

 

Hooray! :grin:

and I will gladly chime in with an opinion on something I know nothing about!

 

The internet should be a public utility. It has become one of the most important infrastructure systems of the modern age and generates immeasurable value in education, business, communication, and the general development of society.

Most of the governments and societies of developed nations recognize this and regulate it at some level. The US has historically been a laggard versus modern nations. Meanwhile countries like S.Korea have enjoyed faster speeds for over a decade now and are pushing 10GB/s infrastructure (and at cheaper prices) http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/south-korea-make-world-even-jealous-10gbps-broadband/

I am absolutely for any legislation that makes the internet faster, more accessible, and a neutral public utility to all citizens, regardless if the legislation is reactive or more preventative of a measure

For those of you that think that there hasn't been infractions of net neutrality, here's a list of a few cases: http://www.freepress.net/blog/2014/08/20/net-blocking-problem-need-solution
There was also the recent case where Comcast throttled Netflix user speeds to detract them from using their service.

The conservative posts in this thread makes me think of this video:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/tnawa2/key-and-peele-obama-s-meeting-with-republicans

Some will be against anything Obama does, because Obama. I think this is what separates the far right from the rest of thinking America. Don't be driven by bias and hate, but for what is good for the American people as a whole.

 

The biggest problem with this whole net neutrality issue is that there is a widespread lack of knowledge and comprehension about what net neutrality actually is. That is dangerous because it makes it easier for insidious, unscrupulous entities to deliberately spread FUD and misinformation about it...and for that BS to take root in the minds of the people. Most politicians on both sides probably have no clue what net neutrality is. The only reason that idiot Ted Cruz came out against it is because Obama stated that he was in favor of it. That's it. That is the Republican strategy, especially those on the far right...simply take the opposite position of every position Obama takes, and hope that it will make him and other Dems look bad enough over time that it bolsters' the chances of the GOP recapturing the presidency in 2016. Cruz especially so b/c he's probably going to run for President.

I'm not a fan of Obama either but I sometimes think he should use reverse psychology on those tea party fools.

Ipaman explained it well and I pretty much agree with his position. In principle, I think the Internet should be a public utility. But the fact that the head of the FCC is a former lobbyist of the cable & wireless industries makes me nervous. There's a reason why AT&T and Comcast popped bubbly when that dude was announced. It would be nice if we could somehow retain net neutrality without the government getting too deeply involved, but due to all the ISP monopolies and duopolies that are prevalent in many parts of the US...there may be no other choice.

The cable and telecom ISPs, especially those that are also content providers (like Comcast, etc.) are against net neutrality for only one reason...to protect their already strong profits. In other words, greed. Since they are also content providers, services such as Netflix are competition to them. They would like nothing more than to put their own crap in the fast lane and Netflix in a far pricier tier (otherwise it's throttled big time). Every consumer and business loses except the ISP itself. The ISPs only care about themselves.

One thing I'd like to see is for the FCC/govt. to prevent states from banning local municipalities from establishing their own public high-speed internet service. Look at Lafayette, Louisiana...they have their own FTTH (fiber to the home) gigabit internet called LUSFiber, which is a municipally owned subsidiary of that city's utilities system. LUSFiber's pricing is similar to Google Fiber (which is being rolled out in my city currently) and it has no bandwidth caps. The only reason certain other states have banned or restricted public broadband is due to ATT/Comcast/other ISP lobbying. That's absurd.

 

So despite all of the tales of his smarts and brilliant debating, Cruz basically applies the logic of a Dalek.

Obama? EX-TER-MIII-NATE!

It should be very easy then to trick him, time lord style. Obama should endorse Ted Cruz.

 

I am just starting to read up on this issue...but my initial thought is this:

Who owns the infrastructure?

Why is it necessary that the government ensure equal speeds for unequal use? To me, it seems like Democrats and well, politicians in general, are trying to offer more "stuff" to people so they can say, "hey look! I stand for you!"

We do people think we are owed equal speeds? I think you should pay for what you use. There should be a standard speed offered to standard users, and higher speeds should cost more money...I'm confused, because, isn't that how it is as of now? I pay for 100mbps, it cost less when I had 20mbps. This seems completely fair to me. I am not understanding how anyone sees it differently...but I must be missing something because by the looks of Facebook, Ted Cruz is a blithering idiot on this issue and has no idea what is going on.

So please correct me, or enlighten me as to why this is a bad idea? If I don't do online streaming, why should I pay the same cost as someone who does? Why should I pay more so that YOU can use more. I'm not using more. I don't need higher speeds.

For the record, I only got the 100mbps speed because it was offered to me in a package that included Showtime...got to have my Homeland!

So who owns the infrastructure? The government or the ISPs?

 

Because then the internet will turn into the mess that is cable and satellite TV. My mom loves her foreign Bengali networks but my dad loves football. If you get Dish TV you get the Bengali networks but no NFL Sunday Ticket. If you get Direct TV, you get Sunday Ticket but no Bengali foreign channels. Cable and Satellite is a mess for this reason. Do you honestly want a situation where Comcast buys exclusive rights to Netflix or Hulu or HBO go? Just look at how many people were b****ing on this board about the comcast sports net Houston fiasco. Do you honestly want those situations trasnfered to the internet? The internet is ment to be consumed in its entirety.

 

Why would Netflix or Hulu or HBO be in favor of this? Wouldn't this limit their users? Also, is this really what is at risk here? I thought net neutrality was about the speed of access. Not that Hulu would only be available to Comcast/TWC/Uverse or whatever, it's that the speeds would be different depending on the content. If you are downloading movies, you probably want/need a higher speed...if you are on Clutchfans, you probably don't need high speeds, no? So why am I (hypothetically) paying the same for Clutchfans as you are for Hulu/NetFlix? If there was more competition, wouldn't that eventually bring down the costs and break up monopoly ISP/content providers?

Still confused.

 

Why was the NFL open to having Sunday Ticket on only one televison provider? Because Direct TV threw a **** ton of money at them. No net neutrality opens the doors for these situations to occur. I admit it's slightly a slippery slope argument. However Comcast could buy the rights to a "faster" Netflix and Netflix could throttle speeds for other ISPs. So if you are in an area that does not offer Comcast you are stuck with "slow" Netflix.

 

You are so confused I'm not even sure where to start...

The issue isn't between internet browsing vs streaming customers; its about one streaming site vs another, or one shopping website vs another. My ISP should not dictate what my streaming speeds are whether I choose to subscribe to Hulu or Netflix, or whether I shop at amazon or bestbuy... that is my decision not my ISP. Without this my ISP can throttle specific companies and dictate my choices.

To put it into simple terms that maybe you can relate to, imagine if Comcast changed your connection speed to clutchfans to half speed, while boosting your connection speed to realgm, would that be ok with you?

 

I agree that's not going to happen. You want to call it fear mongering... that's fine. Same level as this fear mongering:

Really, going through a government server (it's already happening so I assume you mean government control of data which is exactly what Net Neutrality isn't anyway)? Fear mongering.

You love the wide west internet and yet you turn a blind eye toward the ISP that want to end that. You believe that market competition is going to keep the ISP honest?

There is little competition between the ISP so the ideal that the market is going to take care of itself is foolish. Maybe in a few decades if and when wireless is at a point that can truly compete with land-line. Until then, we will continue to have a few ISP calling the shots. There isn't any meaningful competition to keep their behavior honest. They aren't about customer, but about their stockholder. Any chance they get to make money, they will at anyone expense and usually that's at the consumer expense.

What tell you that once they are allowed to arbitrary control speed of certain data of their choice that they will limit that to the big data pusher like Netflix? What happen when there is a new service or even existing service that directly or indirectly compete with a service they provide or want to provide themselves?

The ISP want to change how the internet works. That's not a guess, that's a reality. Net Neutrality is attempting to KEEP the wild west internet operating as is.

 

Exactly. Do people forget that many regions in the US only one ISP is available. Most apartment complexes only provide one ISP. The complex I'm living at right now only provides Comcast. How can competition happen under these circumstances?

 

Net neutrality has nothing to do with guaranteeing "equal speeds" the way you're talking about them. Essentially net neutrality is about all bits getting equal treatment. The zeros and ones flowing from Netflix, from ClutchBBS, from Twitter, from Ted Cruz's website- no ISP (Comcast, AT&T) should be allowed to give preferential treatment to some bits over others. It should completely be up to web users what sites they want to use.

Within the framework of ISPs being regulated as a utility, they can absolutely offer pricing plans for different tiers of bandwidth, as they always have. I think you're taking Cruz's idiotic tweet and trying to fit it into some concept of "government will force the ISPs to give equal speeds for all customers." That's a totally different from the truth of net neutrality and title II regulation.

For example, AT&T has (and maybe still is?) instituted a monthly cap on internet usage- Netflix counts against that cap, but their own video service doesn't. That way watching tons of movies in HD on Netflix chips away at your cap, but unlimited use of their service doesn't. This is a way for an ISP to leverage their position as service provider to reduce customer choice, to avoid competing with another video service. It anti-capitalist. It's un-American. Net neutrality forbids this. No matter what those 1s and 0s are, they all travel without discrimination- but still within whatever bandwidth tier you are paying for. This is not about regulating speeds of individual customers. This is about preventing monopolistic ISPs from leveraging their position to gouge you.

Imagine the highways are public, but the smaller roads that lead from the highway to your home are private, owned by a monopoly, and you have no choice for another road system. That TV you ordered from Amazon hasn't arrived. Comcast, the owner of the roads to your home, says: "Oh, you want that TV? We don't permit UPS on our roads. You have to use our delivery service BendOverAndTakeIt. It will cost you... a little extra." [maniacal laughing]

Net neutrality says that the monopolistic owners of the roads to our homes don't get to say who drives to our house, or where we drive to. We pay them to get to use the road, and they have to maintain the quality of the roads. Period.

 

For the libertarians who think the free market and competition should work itself out without net neutrality...
http://mobile.extremetech.com/lates...ervice-provider?origref=http://www.google.com

How can there be a free market when 30% of Americans only have one choice.