"President Obama urged the US government to adopt tighter regulations on broadband service in an effort to preserve "a free and open Internet." http://www.cnet.com/news/president-obama-calls-on-fcc-to-keep-internet-free-and-open/ I won't comment on what I think until later. I'm curious what you think.
I would opine that 'free and open' means something completely different to me than it means to Obama's boys.
My problem with your poll is that while I may not trust the govermnetm to regulate it, I trust them MORE than I trust the private entities who would like control instead. I believe in net neutrality.
That would be your problem with my poll and my problem with you. So, if it isn't private business who can't put you in jail or seize all your property or force you to do business with them whether you want to or not then you want the government which can, and does, do all of those things. For me, the lesser of two evils is private business. But, in fact, some private businesses such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft want the internet left unregulated by the government and other private businesses like Sprint, ATT, and Comcast want the government to regulate the internet to their benefit. I'm just guessing businesses like Sprint, ATT, and Comcast are certainly willing to pay the politicians for their kind consideration. Hotdogr, I suspect "free and open" to President Obama means something similar to "transparent and honest".
I believe in air neutrality. When are we going to turn air over to the corporations for priority billing and service?
Obama Calls for Expanded Internet Regulation From a man who could not lead his people in establishing an Obamacare website that works. It shouldn't surprise anybody as he either refuses to or is incapable of listening to anyone or anything that does not go along with his aim of destroying American freedoms. Read more @ http://humanevents.com/2014/11/11/president-obama-calls-for-expanded-internet-regulation/
The internet should not be regulated...and probably cannot be. Freedom of speech and expression alone should prevent this, however as this country is more and more owned by the "Corporation Peoples" of citizens united...the loss of this freedom to money is pretty much inevitable. You and I simply get to deal with it, and complain as our service gets worse and the providers get richer.
Cute but air has already been turned over to special interest groups pretending to be interested in the envrionment. You're already paying them, Phoebe. So, do you want the internet to remain as it is or to be regulated by the all-compassionate, all-knowing, immensely capable government? Oh, wait, it's Phoebe so I should say that was sarcasm.
I don't get bills from the special interest groups; in fact I make money off the special interest groups by not having to pay the taxes the polluters place on my lungs. If the ISPs provide higher speeds and lower prices to the big purchasers, that's the same as placing another tax on me (and probably you). This is already done with water and electricity and real estate taxes. I want the government to stop all that crap and not let it even get started with the net.
First of all, my professional background [It manager] makes me think that to control internet is substantially impossible for a democracy, in a country like China I can guess they block entire categories of IP addresses and that they filter accesses and contents, but in a democracy this would be at least questionable, so that the room for proxies would still exist [and this would make it quite ridiculous to "manage the net"]. Internet is absolute freedom and to control it means to deny its own nature.
Just think what it would mean to the ISPs if they can establish a tiered-system and provide higher speeds and lower prices for bulk users. $billions and $billions and $billions. So much for freedom when there is cash to be made.
I'm confused by this. In order for me to access the internet I have to connect to a service. I know of no way to connect out of thin air so that means I'm going to have to pay someone to let me use them to connect. In the past, I could use the phone to connect to a private site called an EBBS and through them connect. I don't think they exist anymore. So, is there still a way to go through the local phone company to find a free service to connect to the internet with? So, that means I have to use a commercial provider that the FCC wants to somehow turn into a utility like the phone company. Is that regulating going to limit who I can connect with once I'm on the internet - or only connecting to the service provider?
If we had an internet infrastructure like South Korea's, net neutrality wouldn't be an issue, since it's publicly maintained with private providers. There's enough competition in their market that no ISP would dare screw its customers. In America and much of the rest of the West, local ISP markets are often so oligopolistic (or monopolistic) that net neutrality enforced by government is necessary. But hey, if you guys want to let ISP's screw you, that's your prerogative. You already get screwed by car dealerships, power companies, oil companies, and banks, so what's one more industry?
The internet is regulated today. It will be regulated tomorrow. It is not regulated by the POTUS. The FCC, the state PUCs, the Department of Agriculture and the Commerce Department all regulate it in one form or another. Try to stop politicizing everything to the point where rational conversations are impossible please.
I honestly could care less what happens. Its beyond my control. If it's going to happen then so be it. If not, I'm fine with that as well.
100% concur. For so many years Net Neutrality was the standard our ISP's operated under. But recently, Comcast screwed Netflix by throttling speeds Comcast customers could receive Netflix streams through, frustrating Netflix customers and forcing Netflix to pay a huge sum to Comcast in order to just be treated equally. This is what Net Neutrality is all about...equality on the Internet for the customer to choose what they see and how they see it, within the speed limitations of the service level they pay for. Cable companies cannot be allowed to limit what you see, when you see it and how you see it...that's what Obama was saying. Government screws up nearly everything they touch, but in this regulation they're actually limiting anyone's power to use the Internet as a weapon against a competitor in terms of limitations to access or speeds of transport. Data is data and they'll be mandated to treat it as such. This may be the one good thing coming out of government in years, but it's an FCC decision, not a president's. Americans have spoken loudly that the Internet needs to stay fair so I'm not sure why anyone would be against carriers to be held to that standard. I hate stupid regulation, but if they are sincere and this is only about keeping the monopolies from screwing customers and other businesses (without other motives we won't know about until later) then I'm for it.
open and free means as it is now most people do not understand that net neutrality means keep everything as it is now don't allow ISP's to start charging you an access fee on top of your service to access the top 5 websites as an example if you want access to websites to be sold like cable channels in a package, vote against net neutrality, if you do not want that, vote for net neutrality .
Well folks like Comcast want to do away with net neutrality. Mo money, mo money, mo money is driving it. So, if the gov't must get involved, in order to keep it neutral, then there is no other choice. For if left up to Comcast, net neutrality is dead. No one owns the internet, so a corporation should not be able to act like they own it. There are people who do not want the gov't to regulate anything. But this here is an example of why gov't sometimes has to step in, in order to keep a corporation from changing something to just benefit themselves. If corporations did not habitually do this, for mo money, mo money, mo money, there would be no need to regulate. No one in their right mind would want to move away from net neutrality, unless they were trying to shove their hands deeper into the pockets of others.
We should be hearing about how the providers will not be able to increase speed or capacity with net neutrality any day now if it hasn't already happened. FOTM is, they've already had years and years to increase speeds and we still have the slowest internet speeds in the world.
It probably does mean something different to you. In this sense, "free and open" means that the internet belongs in the public domain and does not belong to internet service providers. The ISPs didn't invent or patent the internet any more than Al Gore did, and it doesn't belong to any of them. Not unlike water or electricity which have been bastardized by private usurpation where consumers end up paying for Lear Jets and stock dividends, internet usurpation is going to be stopped.
You have two options. The first one is it not regulate and simply let the chips fall where they will. Since telecommunications companies by definition have monopolies like utilities that means that they would have carte blanche to do whatever they want without fear of competition. The other choice is to let the government regulate it and hope that they only prevent down throttling. The problem is that this is the government and when have they EVER stopped at their supposed initial goals? In this day and age I have to wonder why we simply don't allow competition among providers. They already had it for phones where 3rd party carriers would simply charge a usage fee to whichever company owned the lines and yet still you could find cheaper prices with them. I would like to know if there is some technical reason why the only cable provider is either Time Warner or Comcast for cable internet.
