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Chewybunny, it has been explained to you on numerous occasions that 2015 is not when Net Neutrality started, the laws have been in place since the early 2000's and due to ISPs constantly fucking suing the FCC, they made them Title II in 2015 in order to shut them the fuck up.

Stop with this libertarian bullshit, the government is not a goddamn demon. ISPs are less beholden to public scrutiny and there is much greater danger from them than the government.

There. Is. No. Free. Market.

And I have made it perfectly clear that net neutrality as a concept isn't my beef. I am very well aware of the history of net neutrality as a set of principles, and as a set of laws and regulations. That the FCC had no jurisdiction was the main reason so many of these ISPs sued the FCC -
yet the same corporations inevitably worked out a deal between themselves, with some assistance by the FTC. The law that turned these ISPs into utilities so they can adhere to net neutrality is. And given the context of all my arguments, that has been the crux of my issues. I am perfectly happy with the ISPs being regulated by the FTC as private companies. Not as utilities by the FCC.

>Stop with this libertarian bullshit, the government is not a goddamn demon.

My argument has not been that the government is a goddam demon. My argument is that government is horrendously inefficient and public utitlies which are regulated like monopolies are horribly inefficient in comparison to private enterprise. If I was pushing the Libertarian view of it to it's most I would also be demanding that the FTC get's it's hands off of the internet. But I am not.

>ISPs are less beholden to public scrutiny

Are they more beholden to public scrutiny since they became utilities? If so, please provide me some concrete evidence of that. And let's compare and contrast, I'd love to know.

>There. Is. No. Free. Market.

I know. And that's not my argument.

Maybe you should actually address the points I make instead of strawmaning?

@Chewybunny

I don't disagree with your data and some of your points, but the idea of "before net neutrality" is very misleading. Very early on, the internet didn't have established websites, and wasn't quite a public service yet because it wasn't widespread. The earliest attempt to enforce net neutrality type principles was in 2005 too, very early in the widespread adoption, more about blocking than slowing down things however. I find with such a young industry and little gap in FCC expectations for ISPs, "before net neutrality" data would not be very accurate to the current environment.

So your issue is that ISPs are being forced to adhere to Net Neutrality? Do you really fucking trust them to adhere to it otherwise?

The point of making it a utility is to make sure that the folks who maintain this shit, the ISPs, follow the rules and don't fuck people over. That's all it is. A safeguard. A prevention of harm. If we have to strongarm them into doing that, so fucking be it.

Nobody fucking cares about your precious "innovation", as long as we're not being fucked around. Internet doesn't need innovation anyway, it's fine at it is, mechanically speaking.

Can you site the evidence that it was a public service (because the dot.com boom and bust proved that it was anything but)?

>I find with such a young industry and little gap in FCC expectations for ISPs, “before net neutrality” data would not be very accurate to the current environment.

We have over 20 years of data sets to look at. Saying any industry is "young" is relative. I've been using the internet since 1998, when I was already a teenager. and I was mostly accessing sites for information, downloading SNES Roms, playing Ultima Online and EQ later, and hanging out on AOL Chatrooms. Back in the 90s there was also a mad rush of private investment into all forms of websites. No one viewed the internet as a public service. They just viewed it as a service.

To say that, in 2005, the internet was too young to make such a metric is disingenuous imo. By that standard, I could disqualify any statistical evidence anyone presents on why FCC's regulation of net neutrality as just not being good enough.

I think I'd prefer a congressional law for net neutrality, but I hardly trust the republican government to support regulation based on the track record. I would have preferred the FCC regulations staying in place until we could put net neutrality in law, as we couldn't do it before due to the republican majority in congress. Guess we'll have to do it in 2018

Do you read any of my arguments? At all?

No, my issue isn't that ISPs are being forced to adhere to net neutrality. My issue is that ISPs are now public Utilities. I have been railing against the idea that it should be a public utility. That's been the crux of every single one of my arguments. I am not convinced, given the nature of public utilities, that this is a good decision. I have never once questioned or even criticized net neutrality principles. I have been dissenting towards how those principles are now enforced, i.e. turning ISPs into a Utility.

>The point of making it a utility is to make sure that the folks who maintain this shit, the ISPs, follow the rules and don’t fuck people over.

I understand that. But with that caveat comes a lot of consequences, which I have laid out a few posts prior. There are tons of ways of making s ure that ISPs don't fuck over people. TONS. And, the examples that people present, such as Comcast throttling, actually are between two corporations, that are eventually resolved through their own deal making, or with pressure from the FTC. It's a safe g uard that comes with consequences. No one is talking about those consequences, at all. They are being dismissed. As you are dismissing them now.

>Nobody fucking cares about your precious “innovation”, as long as we’re not being fucked around.

You weren't really being fucked around to begin with. No one cares about innovation until they start wondering why it takes days for the ISP to fix your internet outage instead of a few hours. Why your internet speed remains stagnant. Why costs start going up.

>Internet doesn’t need innovation anyway, it’s fine at it is, mechanically speaking.

Really? I disagree. I'd like to have better speed and faster technology that is more reliable – especially since my business involves constantly having to send large amount of data to remote locations.

@Chewybunny

I'm guessing you're talking about other people's arguments to make it a utility and what not. I frankly don't care for the utility thing, but I feel net neutrality was more important than the other consequences of Title II, though if net neutrality becomes law I'd be fine with letting Title II go. I have no intention to prove it was a public service as that's not my fight.

You made a mistake bringing up the dotcom boom, as that makes my point about a young industry well. The dotcom boom was a time period where ISPs wouldn't try to regulate what sites you can and can't see, because the experience of the internet at the time was to explore these new websites popping up. It would have been detrimental to the internet's growing appeal to the public to limit the growing internet world and would only cost them. In addition, such a boom shows how young it was at the time, as the boom represents a realization of the potential of the internet, albeit one that assumed too much potential for the time.

Said boom ended in 2000-2001. Considering the first net neutrality application in 2005, that leaves a gap of about 4-5 years, with a less static web environment and internet usage only just passing 50%. I still don't feel the evidence of such a time period would hold much weight. It exists and I will acknowledge it, I don't feel companies will outright block websites due to that evidence, but I don't take it as something that can decide this debate at all.

@chew
>That’s just not true.

That graph shows it to be true though..
In case you didn't know, the baseline for broadband internet is 25mb/s
Saying under 25mb/s is internet access is like saying a gas station is a grocery store access. Its not even considered the baseline.

>Has your internet speed gone up since 1996 when we were all on dial-up?

Mine has, but my parent's internet last went up in speed in the mid 2000s. super speedy 3mb/s. Fiber 1gb/s internet has been around for around a decade, yet most Americans don't have access to it.

>May we compare the internet today to what it was before net neutrality and not the worst from a hypothetical future?

Didn't need it in the past, so don't need it in the future. Go ahead and throw after any unused medical kits, fire extinguishers, life/car/home insurances, car air bag, smoke detectors, etc.

What's hilarious is that, considering all the lawsuits to come and the fact that the vote was along party lines, the Republicans basically just shot themselves in the fucking foot.

MrLake said:

Nevermind the fact that there’s pretty much no physical overlap between ISPs and therefore zero actual competition…

88% of US customers have access to 2 or more ISPs that provide 3mbps internet. It drops down to 70% when bumped up to 10 mbps (which is about the standard "comfortable" internet speed for most activities).

Black Graphic T said:

And Congress is threating to VETO and Sue the FCC.

It's pretty unlikely Congress would pass a Congressional Review Act resolution given the majorities the GOP currently has. It's not impossible, but I wouldn't be counting on it. And the courts would be highly skeptical on the basis of standing of any Congressman's lawsuit.

documents1 said:

ISPs want to get more money out of the same wires.

The big thing ISPs are doing is data caps. You're allowed a certain bandwidth per month (AT&T is 100 GB) and if you go over that, they charge per GB. They then try to leverage these caps--whether it's through waving data usage for certain services (as Verizon did for it's Mobile Video platform) or incentivizing bundling services (if you get DirectTV with your internet, AT&T will wave the cap).

The two current plans that have been mentioned don't involve small sites at all. One has ISPs provide websites with extra bandwidth for a fee (the "fast lanes"). Everyone who doesn't pay for the extra gets the regular bandwidth. The second, and more controversial due to its potential impact on consumers, is charging heavy usage sites extra whether they want to be charged or not. These sites are all massive video sites (Netflix, Youtube, Twitch, etc.) and small sites wouldn't be charged since they don't use a ton of bandwidth. Those sites may charge end users extra to compensate for the additional bandwidth cost.

…it’s oversimplifying its status…

Not really. Congress tried to pass a net neutrality law five times between 2006-2012 (it was in one of those attempts the famous series of tubes meme was born). They failed. In 2014, the FCC proposed two regulatory courses: "fast lanes," or reclassifying the internet as a utility. President Obama elected to back the utility option which led to the 2015 ruling.

The FCC attempted several times, starting in 2009, to impose net neutrality under Title 1 but was shot down each time by the US Court of Appeals. The 2014 ruling in Verizon Communications v FCC is what finally made them implement Title 2. At no point until then were ISPs under legally binding net neutrality. Prior to 2009, all FCC net neutrality policies were non-binding (and, in 2005, even backed by the NCTA, the ISP trade association).

Ryumaru Borike said:

There is no competition between ISPs in the US because most people only have access to one ISP in their location.

Please see the first link.

@documents
>I’m guessing you’re talking about other people’s arguments to make it a utility and what not.

Which is fine, but that isn't what the debate here is about. The problem is that once something becomes a utility, the longer it stays as such the longer it becomes entrenched.

>I have no intention to prove it was a public service as that’s not my fight.

But it is the big fight. That's the problem. Now that net-neutrality laws have been repealed, maybe we can transition into talking about a much better mechanism or legislation to make it fair.

>The dotcom boom was a time period where ISPs wouldn’t try to regulate what sites you can and can’t see, because the experience of the internet at the time was to explore these new websites popping up.

Can you site me some examples of when ISPs actually regulated which sites you could and couldn't see? As xTSGx addressed in the other thread and I quote

"Websites either pay extra for extra bandwidth (fast lanes) or bandwidth heavy sites have to pay extra for eating bandwidth. The first is optional, the second, mandatory. Neither directly impacts users.

Why would an internet service provider want to restrict access to the internet? This is especially true since most ISPs have caps on data usage (how much bandwidth you can use)--in other words, the more internet their customers use, the more money they’re going to make.

There’s a reason The Pirate Bay’s biggest ally in its many legal fights has been ISPs. Every time a court tries to force an ISP to block a site, they fight it tooth and nail. All those movies and video games add up to a ton of bandwidth."

>I don’t take it as something that can decide this debate at all.

Then by what metrics can you we decide this debate on? Ideology? I really would like to keep ideology out of this despite being accused of doing so.

I don't know if I'm in the wrong here, but this somehow doesn't worry me. You still have a fighting chance.

@poochyena
>That graph shows it to be true though..
In case you didn’t know, the baseline for broadband internet is 25mb/s
Saying under 25mb/s is internet access is like saying a gas station is a grocery store access. Its not even considered the baseline.

Yes, the baseline which was set in 2015 (the graph is from 2014) by the FCC which interestingly also points out "The increase of baseline Internet speeds might come as a shock to some who will now find that they no longer qualify as having "broadband." Although it won't change the performance that users currently experience, this could cause protests against ISPs who previously sold customers a service plan predicated on having "broadband" speeds. If an Internet service contract defines broadband Internet at a speed of under 25Mbps, that's technically no longer broadband." Yet despite that the problem is that the majority of Americans that receive sub-standard ISP speed is people in rural areas.

Additionally, let's also be crystal clear here. Even in 2014 80% of Americans had access to 25/mb internet. That there wasn't enough competitors that can offer that kind of speed back in 2014 is a separate issue.

However:
I decided to do a little of digging. And I found an article that mentions how many households today have no access to more than 0 or 1 ISPs that can provide 25mb/ they state. "50 Million US Homes Can't Get 25 Mbps From More Than One ISP" Which is tragic, to be sure. But out of 125.5 Million Households, that's about 39.8%. If you look at the 2014 chart I provided, 77% of US households did not have access to 2 or more ISPs that can provide 25mbps.

So since 2014, that number has dropped from 77% to 40% (rounded up), an entire 37% drop. Not bad, despite the fact that the same article goes on to highlight how little ISPs have actually been trying to provide this.

Sure, I can entertain the argument that the FCC's re-classification of what broadband is defined is has put pressure on increase…but…this isn't what we're talking about.

>Mine has, but my parent’s internet last went up in speed in the mid 2000s. super speedy 3mb/s. Fiber 1gb/s internet has been around for around a decade, yet most Americans don’t have access to it.

Right, but is higher internet speed available to your parents?

"Didn’t need it in the past, so don’t need it in the future. Go ahead and throw after any unused medical kits, fire extinguishers, life/car/home insurances, car air bag, smoke detectors, etc."

Grasping at those straws at this point, eh? Wonder, would you suggest that the things above should also be regulated as title II utilities?

>That there wasn’t enough competitors that can offer that kind of speed back in 2014 is a separate issue.

WHAT?
That is literally THE issue.

>Right, but is higher internet speed available to your parents?

no

muh buzzwords

Instead of everyone being worried about neutrality, they need to fix all this bullshit advertising and monopolies on the web.

As long as I have known, I'd never for one second trust anything that makes profit on the internet.

Since the web was invented, corruption and misleading ads and scams continued to prosper.

Not caught off guard when this type of BS happens but it does make a frequent user of their services fucking pissed AF when they change shit that you agreed to or even signed a contract.

Before this I always said that 3g/4g mobile users got fucked, this might be worse depending on how the government decides how to do this…. :_;

So this is kinda what I was talking about with hysterics. See, in your vigor to denounce someone with different opinions then you, you basically just declared that the Internet should stagnate.

The fact is, the internet isn't fine as it is. Ethernet connections are not the end state of the internet, nor is the current state of coding for sites the end. That's like declaring that dial up and Avi files are the pinicle of experiencing online videos, and that aol chat is the only online chatting people need. With new innovations in fiber optic cables, traditional cable internet is definitely not the best, as it's prone to outages and limited in range and bandwidth.

But I guess to folks like you that innovation is irrelevant, as is the future debate on changing the baseline material of wires from copper to other, more efficient materials. The "good enough" defense is ones utility companies use a lot as well, and it's also why Americas infrastructure is constantly, constantly, constantly, breaking down, and falling apart, and not being fixed.

With the current monopoly the internet in USA already stagnated, so does it make a difference? I mean is not like conservatives do anything besides unmaking what liberals do, they just mention the "free market"…and then nothing, hardly anything ever happens besides slow decay.

By what metric are you judging any of this on?

Ok, maybe not all conservatives, but I think it is quite clear with the republican party, they are quite reactive almost all laws and actions they take nowadays revolve around removing something the liberal party is doing (Go through their stuff it all revolves around preventing something). So the liberals can't do anything, the republicans don't do anything and the companies are the ones with all the control. It is quite jading and you see this effect all over the world. Honestly this whole fiasco left me more cynical than before not so much the fact that net neutrality is gone (which I don't like) but the fact that you can bullshit your way through laws this blatantly.

I do not think you understand how the US system works. Trump ran on negating a lot of the Obama era laws that were enacted and were unpopular. But that also has to come from the congress and senate, and there are also judicial courts to make sure the changes are constitutional. Net-neutrality happens to be one of those laws that Trump ran on changing, and people voted for him partially on that.

And neither is Net-Neutraliy as an enacted law is done for "generous" reasons, or for the benefit of the people. It was pushed by Tom Wheeler, the FCC chair from Obama, who also was a well-regarded venture capitalist and former cable and wireless industry lobbyist.

You're view of corporations and corporate control over the US political system is grossly misinformed my dude. Lobbying groups from all industries, exist. Lobbying groups from various issue-based ideologies exist. Lobbying from non-profits exist. They all compete to influence members of congress – and they don't all share the same views.

>but the fact that you can bullshit your way through laws this blatantly.

Can we at least agree that not all laws are good? And some laws need to be changed, even if they benefit some corporations, over others?

No, the issue is over-all competition. I have pointed out that competition has been growing.
What isn't the issue is why in 2014, competition was so limited. You want to have that discussion, yes, let's, because I have already mentioned the myriad of barriers, legislative, logistical, technological, etc.

As I mentioned before, just because technology exists doesn't mean it's cost-effective to implement everywhere, or logistically possible.

But the main thing is that there has been a dramatic rise in how many people can more than 3 options in 25/mb speed.

Do you want to address any of my other points?

This isn't the end of the corruption that the FCC is showing though: The FCC Is Blocking a Law Enforcement Investigation Into Net Neutrality Comment Fraud
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjzjv9/net-neutrality-fraud-ny-attorney-general-investigation?utm_source=mbtwitter

looks like Ajit Pai pushed his luck with those fraudulent comments I would be surprised if he can keep his job in the next elections after all of this.

Right, because whenever I post content on this site, I have to sign a form saying this post will be compliant with the laws of the United States.

Meanwhile, private entities will be able to prohibit users from visiting content that is critical of them, because they're not a government entity.

It's important to note that the Repeal isn't final. Congress can still stop the repeal, and currently, more congressmen are for net neutrality than against it (excluding those whose stance is unknown).

How many of them will vote against rejecting the FCC's vote?
I mean, you saw the capitulation of the Republican Party to Trump yesterday around the Tax Cut bill, right?

That was taxes. Way less of the Republicans base was against the tax plan then are against repealing net neutrality. That was also "The presidents plan", but this isn't one of those. Nobody is going "Trump repealed net neutrality". This is an Ajit Pai issue, and an "Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality issue". And not a lot of Republicans have any obligations of loyalty to Ajit Pai.