Senate votes to save net neutrality rules

[Goonie]

The Left just wants to control things itself..... all dressed up as concern for everyone's freedoms. No thanks Ringo

As has been stated this is nonsense, with net neutrality you are in control of what you see. Without it the corporation will dictate what sites you can access, so if you only have access to one isp, the Atheist network Inc. guest what no religion for you.

 

[Colter]

You know the term “don’t drink the Kool-Aid”? Tell me if you live in an area with access to only one ISP, and that ISP has decided to censor all religious content due to it being divisive, what will you do? Hey the owners of the ISP could be raving atheists

To date the only problem we seem to be having with the big corporations censoring content is an attempt to quash right wing views on FB and YouTube, big Left wing ideologues.

 

[mark46]

I don't expect this legislation to be even introduced in the House.

 

[Goonie]

To date the only problem we seem to be having with the big corporations censoring content is an attempt to quash right wing views on FB and YouTube, big Left wing ideologues.

Multiply that by 100 fold and welcome to non net neutrality. Sorry but placing your access to information in the hands of unelected and unrepresentative corporations is really what you support?

 

[Brent W]

That's what it comes down to isn't it, Leftist cant stand corporations who make profits. Echoes of bitter Bernie with that anti-capitalist chip on his shoulder.

Not one mention of "Leftist" or Bernie Sanders in my reply. Your inability to see an issue as anything but binary is your problem alone.

Net Neutrality is a set of basic rules that was established under a Republican President in 2005 and confirmed further under a Democratic President in 2015.

You are the one that is making this a partisan issue. This issue, in the eyes of the majority of Americans is very much bipartisan and is supported by American citizens who vote under Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green Party and Libertarian.

The only thing partisan about this issue right now are the Republican Senators, Representatives and President who wish to take a set of rules that Americans overwhelmingly favor and were supported by a Republican and Democratic President and turn them over into the hands of a nearly monopolized sector that controls the data that Americans receive.

Those billion dollar corporations had the initiative and private investment capitol to create things like the PC that you whine about corporations on!

I am not whining about Corporations. I am against monopolized sectors of our economy and that is what our ISPs have right now. Furthermore, they are no longer just providers of data, they are content creators as well. So the people who hold the keys to the internet are now the ones competing with the very people that rely on those keys to open their financial doors.

Your example is incorrect. These ISPs are not privately funded and have taken hundreds of millions of dollars of Federal funding. These ISPs are not Apple and Microsoft of the 80s. They are Bell System of the 80s.

The answer is YES! I would much rather corporations whose competitive dynamic provide us what Government can only manage to mess up!

Your ignorance on this issue shows in that you believe these ISPs are not receiving hundreds of millions of your tax payer dollars. They are, have and will in the future. Bernie Sanders would be proud with how well funded these ISPs have been with your tax payer money.

The Left just wants to control things itself..... all dressed up as concern for everyone's freedoms. No thanks Ringo

You sure seem to not want to talk about issues much and would rather spend time ranting and raving about one party. It is pretty off putting and extremely unproductive to solve issues when there are people like you who can't see past a political party to get to an issue.

 

[Brent W]

Multiply that by 100 fold and welcome to non net neutrality. Sorry but placing your access to information in the hands of unelected and unrepresentative corporations is really what you support?

It is pretty perplexing how so many people who claim to be conservatives want to take more and more power away from the people and put it in the hands of companies with small wealthy shareholders.

 

[mark46]

Net Neutrality: Here's Everything You Need To Know

Sere below for one example of what is being done. Many have AT&T as their carrier.

AT&T chooses which services to count against the customer's data plan limits and which do not. DirectTVNOW video service doesn't count against the data limits. However, you will get charged for data if you use HULU or NETFLIX.
=======
I would point out that the net neutrality rules were put forth in a Republican administration. The only reason that they are being repealed is because Obama supported them.

 

[Kenny'sID]

I still don't actually know which is the right vote, but I will say, concerning the governments control, they haven't done bad by me.

I have both AT&T Access, and Comcast Essentials, 2 programs they offer to low income people. I've been low income most of my life, and not really a problem so don't worry about that, but the things I've see because of that are awful. I have both because they only cost a total of $15, and when one tries to rob me, I have the other to fall back on. Just finished up with one today.

Though these ISP's will try to steal anyone's money, they tend to go after those who they don't get much from...less chance of them making a VIP mad enough to leave them, and they have little to lose with someone like me.

Point being I have had them come after me so many times it's ridiculous. I've been to their discussion boards, and seen the awful things they do to others in trying to frustrate them into submission. In a 2 week period I had both Comcast and AT&T shut down my service, for no reason at all except to try to pull a scam. I never found out what scam they were trying to pull this time because I got the FCC on them both. Done that 3 times since I found out FCC would help, and this time for instance, I herd back from them within 8 or 10 hrs, AT&T contacted me 4 hrs after that, they tried to scam me still, but I just threatened to file again, and almost exactly 2 days after they shut my internet down, I had it back, and never had to even get on the phone with those thieves, as I always insist on email where they don't lie so much.

So if that's what they mean by government control, I have to say, in this case, I'm all for it, however, I have a feeling that may not be all there is to it so, I'm on the fence.

Sorry that got so involved but was also hoping to help other who have these ISP's come after them like that...they each do it about twice a year to me.

 

[Ringo84]

It is pretty perplexing how so many people who claim to be conservatives want to take more and more power away from the people and put it in the hands of companies with small wealthy shareholders.

The secret is realizing that they're "conservative" in name only. There's nothing conservative about the behavior of the people you describe.
Ringo

 

[dms1972]

I think I might have heard the term 'net neutrality' in the past, but I had not looked into what it refered to. Can someone explain what it is about, does it affect people outside the US - all I could find was it was to do with some ISPs throttling their services. Any good links which explain the debate over it?

 

[Ringo84]

Yep, here's a good one:
The fight to save net neutrality, explained

Vox often has these "[something], explained" articles. They're always (or almost always) really good.
Ringo

 

[Kenny'sID]

Yep, here's a good one:
The fight to save net neutrality, explained

Vox often has these "[something], explained" articles. They're always (or almost always) really good.
Ringo

I believe that probably was a good video/explanation, but even so, I'll probably have to watch it a few times.

Just something about this that doen't quit click for some of us, or not easily anyway.

 

[Kenny'sID]

For anyone who might know, I talked to the NARUC a few weeks ago and they said that within the next couple or so months the FTC would be taking over for the FCC when it came to dealing with consumer complaints on ISP's... will that not happen now or did they expect this change and that's why I was told that?

It's important because as I mentioned earlier, The FCC was doing a great job so naturally any change concerns me.

 

[Colter]

Not one mention of "Leftist" or Bernie Sanders in my reply. Your inability to see an issue as anything but binary is your problem alone.

Net Neutrality is a set of basic rules that was established under a Republican President in 2005 and confirmed further under a Democratic President in 2015.

You are the one that is making this a partisan issue. This issue, in the eyes of the majority of Americans is very much bipartisan and is supported by American citizens who vote under Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green Party and Libertarian.

The only thing partisan about this issue right now are the Republican Senators, Representatives and President who wish to take a set of rules that Americans overwhelmingly favor and were supported by a Republican and Democratic President and turn them over into the hands of a nearly monopolized sector that controls the data that Americans receive.



I am not whining about Corporations. I am against monopolized sectors of our economy and that is what our ISPs have right now. Furthermore, they are no longer just providers of data, they are content creators as well. So the people who hold the keys to the internet are now the ones competing with the very people that rely on those keys to open their financial doors.

Your example is incorrect. These ISPs are not privately funded and have taken hundreds of millions of dollars of Federal funding. These ISPs are not Apple and Microsoft of the 80s. They are Bell System of the 80s.



Your ignorance on this issue shows in that you believe these ISPs are not receiving hundreds of millions of your tax payer dollars. They are, have and will in the future. Bernie Sanders would be proud with how well funded these ISPs have been with your tax payer money.



You sure seem to not want to talk about issues much and would rather spend time ranting and raving about one party. It is pretty off putting and extremely unproductive to solve issues when there are people like you who can't see past a political party to get to an issue.

You have a political bias, we all do, it's inescapable, so spare me the golly jeepers why so political-stuff?! Net Neutrality is an attempt to equilibrate the space of the internet via picking winners and losers. Proponents put a deceptive name on this initiative in the same way that the same kind of ideologues put Affordable Care Act on a government intervention scheme enforced by the IRS. They ALSO claimed its "just a simple set of rules" to help everyone be equal, who could possibly be opposed to that???? Only evil selfish people could be opposed to such an abundance of goodness in our good idea!

ISP's provide a product to customers. If the ISP's limited access to customers to the extent that the hysteria assumes, they would go out of business! Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and numerous other innovative companies and products emerged without the benefit of neutrality. The government would have been trying to control the pipe into our homes when smartphones and other mobile devises completely changed how people connect to the internet!

Technology is changing so fast that any attempt by government to do a study and write regulation gets outpaced by new dominant formats. Had Net Neutrality been in force for that past 10-15 years, we would still all have equally bad dial up! We all want many flavors not just vanilla.

"Social evolution should be encouraged by governmental supervision which exercises a minimum of regulative control. That state is best which co-ordinates most while governing least."

 

[Colter]

It is pretty perplexing how so many people who claim to be conservatives want to take more and more power away from the people and put it in the hands of companies with small wealthy shareholders.

Because Conservatives know that the U.S. government is in itself just a kind of corporate entity that doesn't have to answer to consumer sentiment and provide innovative products. Its the wealthiest, most powerful entity on earth! If they don't like the "content" of a political entity, it can use it's power through one of many agencies like the IRS for example to harass and suppress it's critics. Government doesn't fear the people like content providers do. ***See Starbucks new bathroom policy.

 

[trunks2k]

I think I might have heard the term 'net neutrality' in the past, but I had not looked into what it refered to. Can someone explain what it is about, does it affect people outside the US - all I could find was it was to do with some ISPs throttling their services. Any good links which explain the debate over it?

Brief concept:

Net Neutrality is the idea that a bit of data is a bit of data and that data should be treated equal to any other bit of data along its trip from point A to point B. Lets say that my service provider is Comcast - they couldn't decide to give priority to information from, say, Comcast's streaming service over information from Netflix. Similarly, let's say I also run a website; Verizon can't look at traffic and say "hey, this is from a Comcast network. Slow that down". Nor could comcast say "For X dollars a month, we'll give you basic internet access. For $5 more, you can get access to popular social media sites like Facebook". This could also apply to mobile data. Deals that offer Netflix usage that doesn't count against your data usage may run against Net Neutrality (IMO, it does but I have a problem with the whole idea of data usage limits to begin with).

This would be true of all steps along the way. From your computer, through your ISP, through the various other networks & backbones to your peer ISP, to your peer. The goal is to get the data to its destination as quickly as possible regardless of source & content. There are, of course, some caveats. It wouldn't apply to malicious/illegal traffic, nor does it prevent standard traffic shaping when a given network is getting saturated provided the shaping is neutral in its choices (i.e. slowing down a high bandwidth user regardless of who it is so you can serve more low bandwidth users). Nor does it prevent a company from regulating the content it provides - i.e. YouTube can still put whatever rules it wants on which videos can be put on their website.

NN is an important, if not not fundamental, feature of the way the internet has worked to date and is what makes it so successful. It significantly lowers the barrier of entry for new websites & services and keeps large corporations from picking & choosing what information you do and do not see.

 

[Lucian Hodoboc]

Thank you to the three Republican Senators that crossed lines and allowed Net Neutrality to live to see another vote.

We will need even more Republicans in the House however, as the margins there are bigger than the Senate.

PLEASE keep emailing your Representative and ask them to stand up for a free and neutral internet!

Don't the Net Neutrality laws conflict with the GDPR?

 

[Goonie]

Don't the Net Neutrality laws conflict with the GDPR?

Irrelevant GDPR for one thing is a European law, not the US. Also why do you think it does?

 

[Lucian Hodoboc]

Irrelevant GDPR for one thing is a European law, not the US. Also why do you think it does?

GDPR applies to sites from all over the world if they have users from the EU. The only way GDPR wouldn't apply to a site was if that site geo-blocked the traffic from all the EU's countries.

 

[Goonie]

GDPR applies to sites from all over the world if they have users from the EU. The only way GDPR wouldn't apply to a site was if that site geo-blocked the traffic from all the EU's countries.

The thing is how is GDPR relevant to net neutrality?