Michele Bachmann lies or is completely ignorant about Net Neutrality

[DaisyDay]

Source?

Nothing is wrong with a cap-- but it is an example of classifying traffic.

By volume, not by content.

 

[Sketcher]

I should also add that even if I did believe in net neutrality regulation, which I don't anymore, I wouldn't believe in Congress to pass a decent bill on the subject. Not nearly enough tech savvy people there, so they'll just listen to the lobbyists without knowing enough to think for themselves on the matter. Most of them did not grow up with the Internet, they're playing catch-up with the people that such regulations would impact the most.

 

[DaisyDay]

I can understand the technical aspects of the NN. But we don't have technical people writing the bill. We have people who think if you get too many people on one side of an island, it'll tip over. We have people who don't care about the Constitution, and admit it. We have people who write thousand page bills and pass them at midnight on a weekend without ever having read the bill.

Do you really think senators and congressmen write bills themselves? That is what aides and research assistants are for.

As for the island tipping over, I think he was being funny.

Is the proposed problem with the internet we supposedly have now big enough to risk congressional intervention into something that seems to work quite well. Intervention that will most likely leave the internet worse off than it is now.

The reason we have an internet is because of congressional "interference".

Always remember, congress is the opposite of progress.

Cute but untrue.

 

[wpiman2]

Do you really think senators and congressmen write bills themselves? That is what aides and research assistants are for.

As for the island tipping over, I think he was being funny.

No, you can rest assured that Comcast and Verizon will write the bills and there will be provisions in there to ensure barriers to market entry are sufficiently high so it is difficult to enter the market.

Unfortunately, I don't think he was being funny. The man needs to go; he has been ravaged by disease.

The reason we have an internet is because of congressional "interference".

Sure the original internet protocol came out of DARPA but networks were evolving in the private sector at the same time. IP was designed to survive a nuclear attack on the physical medium; and networks in their original form were so poor that IP happened to be a good choice. To imagine that the internet would be vastly different have another of the myriad of standards been adopted instead of IP is a stretch.

 

[Umaro]

No, you can rest assured that Comcast and Verizon will write the bills and there will be provisions in there to ensure barriers to market entry are sufficiently high so it is difficult to enter the market.

So Comcast and Verizon are crooked enough to literally buy laws, but if we don't make any regulations about neutrality they won't try to slow down disliked sites? I'm pretty sure a company that would buy laws would also hurt the average consumer given the chance.

 

[TheNewWorldMan]

So Comcast and Verizon are crooked enough to literally buy laws, but if we don't make any regulations about neutrality they won't try to slow down disliked sites? I'm pretty sure a company that would buy laws would also hurt the average consumer given the chance.

Oh no they wouldn't. You forgot the free-marketeers' creed. Government bad, corporations good.

 

[wpiman2]

So Comcast and Verizon are crooked enough to literally buy laws, but if we don't make any regulations about neutrality they won't try to slow down disliked sites? I'm pretty sure a company that would buy laws would also hurt the average consumer given the chance.

Not with competition they wouldn't. I have several high speed choices-- keeps them honest.

 

[DaisyDay]

Not with competition they wouldn't. I have several high speed choices-- keeps them honest.

Yes, because companies never collude.

 

[WadeWilson]

Not with competition they wouldn't. I have several high speed choices-- keeps them honest.

It might keep them honest where there are choices. There are plenty of places where there is only one highspeed internet provider.

 

[Jackinbox78]

Not with competition they wouldn't. I have several high speed choices-- keeps them honest.

Actually, how many companies deliver Internet to your house? You got the cable company, the phone company and if you are really lucky you may have access to WiMax. Now, there is plenty of third parties that will rent the phone line to your house to offer Internet. The truth is that they have to use the phone company network and if the phone company want to throttle speed, they are free to do so. I'm am in that situation. I use a independent provider that doesn't throttle my connection but the phone company throttle it.

 

[Jackinbox78]

Nah. The infrastructure can be built, and it need not be intrusive. There's also WiMax, which bypasses cabling from the tower to the home. Also, Verizon has plenty of competition, including AT&T.


But there's no real reason to do that, especially if you're fearing reprisals from your competitors. Besides, that wouldn't even be the first priority traffic to throttle if an ISP was even going to throttle. It's the illicit downloads that really eat up the bandwidth and bring hassles to the ISPs. You've got the government agents and big media's hired guns getting on their case on one end, and the customers getting on their case for responding to the former on the other end. Throttling that stuff and letting your customers know that you block illegal downloads makes these problems go away. If customers want to download that much stuff that badly, they can switch providers. But it would take a pretty strong stand on the part of the ISPs to even do that, since lots of people want to use the Internet to download stuff illegally, and the ISPs want the pirates' money too.

How they know if the stuff you download is illegal? There is plenty of legal torrent on the Internet. I don't want my provider to spy on my connection and decide what I'm allowed to download or not.

 

[wpiman2]

It might keep them honest where there are choices. There are plenty of places where there is only one highspeed internet provider.

With terrestrial internet that is true. Typically this is because local governments protect the one carrier and give it a local monopoly.

But you can use WildBlue or Hughnets high speed internet over satellite anywhere.

 

[WadeWilson]

With terrestrial internet that is true. Typically this is because local governments protect the one carrier and give it a local monopoly.

But you can use WildBlue or Hughnets high speed internet over satellite anywhere.

Unless your neighborhood has a covenant preventing you form putting up a satellite. Also latency and weather interferance is terrible with satellite internet. So it might be 'high-speed' but it is still inferior for activities that require low latency.

 

[BotanicalBob]

Do you really think senators and congressmen write bills themselves? That is what aides and research assistants are for.

No, lobbyists write the bills.

As for the island tipping over, I think he was being funny.

Then you give him too much credit.

The reason we have an internet is because of congressional "interference".

No, we have the internet because of the military. Despite what Al Gore may claim.

Cute but untrue.

I suggest you look up "con" in the dictionary.

 

[HerbieHeadley]

I know the answer to this. Order everyone in the country to buy an internet service and if they don't, fine them.
(The Democrats way of standing up to big corporations)

LOL!

Government regulation of the Internet? If the FCC can make "network neutrality" regulations, where does it end with their demands, is the problem. I'm not sure where I stand with this issue other than keeping censorship out of it all.

 

[TheNewWorldMan]

Unless your neighborhood has a covenant preventing you form putting up a satellite. Also latency and weather interferance is terrible with satellite internet. So it might be 'high-speed' but it is still inferior for activities that require low latency.

Precisely. Satellite internet really isn't a full-fledged competitor to terrestrial. It's great for rural areas--a lot better than nothing. But twice the expense for half the speed and four times the latency really isn't competitive.

 

[wpiman2]

Precisely. Satellite internet really isn't a full-fledged competitor to terrestrial. It's great for rural areas--a lot better than nothing. But twice the expense for half the speed and four times the latency really isn't competitive.

The latest satellites are pretty quick- in the 3 mbit/sec range. WildBlue uses the Ka spot beams which are also are more immune to weather phenomena. $50 a month.

Satellites in geosynchronous orbit have high latency rates. Good point. Not good for gaming or VPNs. I believe there is a company working on a low earth orbit system with multiple satellites. The will alleviate the latency issue.

Still, it would be better if local governments didn't allow these monopolies to continue. My old town allowed three cable companies to operate and prices were quite low.

 

[Jackinbox78]

LOL!

Government regulation of the Internet? If the FCC can make "network neutrality" regulations, where does it end with their demands, is the problem. I'm not sure where I stand with this issue other than keeping censorship out of it all.

Without Net Neutrality, providers are free to censor the internet. It did happens in the past. Generally, the don't block sites entirely but slow down some type of content. Claiming that net neutrality is censorship is either a lie or an idiotic comment.

 

[WadeWilson]

Back to the OP and topic at hand,

Claiming that net neutrality is censorship is either a lie or an idiotic comment.

My vote is ignorance.
After all, the internet is a series of tubes.

 

[chaz345]

Net neutrality is basically encoding into law that which providers have been doing for years on their own..

So if they've been doing it for years on their own, why do we need a law?