Should You Care About Net Neutrality? - Comments Page 1

I have been emailing my senators and congressman. The congressman has never responded, one of the senators has responded saying I was wrong and the other senator never responded.

I even pointed out that apparently many of the letters supposedly supporting Pai were written by dead people and other questionable writers.

I am not sure how to get the elected officials to support us. I have become discouraged. If you can get thousands of voters to contact the politicians, maybe we can stop this.

Agree 10000% with the author. Using ResistBot to send letters to Congress was easy and worth a few minutes of your time

The contributor missed a few points in his socialist rant, and that is the issue of censorship and the necessity of capitalist motives for improvement. Google and Facebook are exempt from many of the rules on net neutrality and consistently take a political stand on what is truth. Real news is buried if it doesn't fit the agenda. Ask Google's assistant about Hillary's violations of the law and you get silence. Same goes for Facebook. It is simply censorship of the news.
Second, there are many countries with better and faster internet service than the USA has.Yes they charge more for better service. If you are still stuck in your parent's basement playing video games, it is time to crawl out and make a living so you can afford the better stuff and learn there is no free lunch. Net neutrality stifles innovation. You will never get the speed you need for virtual reality with net neutrality.

Writing my "representatives" is a waste of time. Here in Georgia, USA, the GOP has a death grip on anything that means more money for big business.
P.S. SparkyVA - Google and Facebook are not ISP's. If you don't like their policies, and I don't, don't use them. And, please look up socialism. That term is wearing thin.

"The Internet's freedom is under attack right now, by the very people who are charged by law to preserve and protect it. Ajit Pai ... and his Republican cronies are dead set on enacting his Orwellian-named 'Restoring Internet Freedom' order..."

Orwellian ... cronies ... freedom under attack ... Bob, could this language also be a tad overblown??

The use of the word "Orwellian" in this case shows a profound misunderstanding of the term. Orwell's works are not warnings about private companies messing things up. It's about government grabbing power and control, the thing that government has been doing more and more in recent years, and now they want more control over the Internet. Is that really wise? Government has displayed more willingness to abuse power and distort information for their benefit than any company. Yes, companies working with government are a threat -- but only if government power is mighty enough for their influence to wreck havoc. Keeping government as limited in power as possible while preserving competition and free enterprise for citizens is the way to reduce the influence of greedy companies and allow people to solve their own problems.

If I want to start a business providing a service, I should be free to choose how I do that. If you don't like my policies and prices, the solution is to go somewhere else or start your own company, but if you use government to force me to do things your way, that's one step closer to the Orwellian nightmare.

It's hard to tell if David is serious or if he was putting us on. Everyone who uses the internet is entitled to the same speed of service?? What's next, all cars sold in the US must be able to deliver the same performance as a Ferrari? Makes sense, and of course, if the public wants this rule 100,000 to 1 those pesky members of Congress darn well better do it. ... If David wants the government to rule every aspect of his life and his internet then he should move to North Korea. They do a marvelous, efficient, job of regulating the internet just like David desires.

Lots of pro/con debates but one things annoys me. Proponents say utilities and the ~Net should not / do not pay for special service. I pay more extra for using more power, or water, or trash, and pay more for faster ~Net service. So we have that now.

The idea that chopping Net Neutrality is a great way to ensure progress sounds great on paper. Then, there is what we actually see. Large cities with only two options for ISPs. Where is the incentive for improvement there? What I have observed is that neither improves. After all, why? They are both so large that they couldn’t give a rodent’s rear what customers want. So, what happens when both refuse to allow a given service due to “running their businesses as they see fit?” No one in the service area can access it? How about when you have to choose which services you’re willing to give up, because neither company offers much? Should you move?

I’m not convinced that what many of us have, even in larger cities, differs much from the negative outcomes of too much government power. It’s just that it comes in the form of corporate giants in power. We are so very far beyond the days where real competition may have existed. And, the idea that a new company could really do well at breaking into what currently exists seems a bit unrealistic. However, if someone did have the resources to put in place what would be needed to offer some competition in these communications companies, I’d sure be happy to check them out.

Scream “Socialism!” all you want, but what we’ve currently got is so far from the intent of Capitalism that it’s laughable. Except, of course, no one is laughing.

David, Thank you for your simple explanation. Unfortunately many readers don't know a bit from a byte and can only regurgitate what they hear on CNN or FOX News. Personally, I would like to see the Internet regulated just like any other utility.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Big business has our best interests at heart. All the stories I have read here and other places about the telecoms taking advantage of, lying to, and ripping off people must surely be fake news.

You will all find out, but unfortunately, it may not be possible to reverse this decision.

Question, do you feel internet access is a necessity to your daily life? If so, (and all of us are on the net right now) then I personally would not trust big business to be looking out for my interests. Don't spout about competition resolving the issues. How much competition do you have to choose from as far as your ISP?

I agree that we need net neutrality. I have already wrote Senators Feinstein and Boxer as well as Representative Barragan to keep net neutrality.

The debate about Net Neutrality is really underscored by a greater political-social question, do we want a third-party to adjudicate all of our relationships? From a libertarian perspective, people should have the right to maintain their own relationships on their own terms. Businesses are responsive to the consumer because that is how they maintain their existence. Consumers will purchase from that company as long as it performs in their best interest. For all the best intentions of regulations, it changes the direct relationship between company and consumer and interjects a medium which is more like a police state. There is no better way to introduce improved service and pricing than to promote competition among businesses for the consumer dollar.

I was unclear about this until your email. Thank you for this, Bob. I hope that posting it on FB is not any kind of copyright violation. Maybe I won't answer my door tonight.

Jeff:

David's use of the term "Orwellian" is quite appropriate. You failed to understand that he applied the word not to describe the political issue under discussion, but simply to the cynical choice of title given to the proposed ruling. Having read Orwell's essays on "Politics and the English Language", you should recognize that it is indeed "Orwellian" to cleverly describe something as the opposite of what it really is. So the title "Restoring Internet Freedom" is a very good example of that. The only "freedom" it restores (or creates, actually) is the freedom of a handful of utilities to hamper effective communication for services that are not owned by them unless they are high bidders with deep pockets.

Having said that, I'm sorry to see that Bob's articles are frequently met with knee-jerk responses that make a technical issue more political than it needs to be. So I will just make one comment of my own that hopefully will remind net neutrality opponents to stop and think a little longer about this issue before dragging in the usual bogeymen : If you truly don't like Big Government for the reasons you usually give, then you should certainly not like Big Corporate, which doesn't even have to worry about accountability or being re-elected. And no, the marketplace will not "decide" anything in this case since these utilities are often protected monopolies. Of course, you will still have the choice of becoming your own ISP, or perhaps trying to live and compete without equal access to the Internet. Good luck.

First of all, the hysteria by "net neutrality" supporters is way overblown. Rolling back the current regulations to what existed just two and a half years ago is not going to mean the end of the world; it's not suddenly going to destroy freedom on the Internet. My natural inclination when people scream that the sky is falling is to conjecture that the problem lies more with those screamers than with the sky.

As a general principle I prefer to keep the government out of regulating the Internet. I don't consider it a public utility in which ISPs need to be treated as common carriers. The reason it has been so successful to date, with so much innovation and explosive growth, has been that government has mostly stayed out of the way. The idea that more government involvement has now become imperative seems highly counterintuitive and runs counter to historical experience.

My prediction is that when the net neutrality regs are overturned by the FCC, very few if any of the horrible consequences envisioned by the FCC's detractors will actually come to pass. Life will go on normally, and the Internet will continue to prosper to everyone's benefit.

Hello to Yank1967:

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with forcing ISP's to allow all customers to have the same Internet speeds. Let's use your analogy to driving: Consider the ISP's to be like highway authorities, who control the ONLY viable method for your Interstate travel needs. Now suppose that a new "deregulation" ruling would allow them to sell the two fastest lanes to a few large trucking companies for their exclusive use. Sure, your small company can still crowd its truck into the slow lanes with all the others who can't afford the real highway speed, but is this restrictive practice a "freedom" that the highway authority should be entitled to? Are you able (or even allowed) to build you own highway if you don't like theirs?

So nobody is saying home customers should be entitled to upload & download speeds that they are not willing to pay for. This is about protecting small businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators, and anyone trying to achieve the American dream from being squashed by those who already "got there" and are now trying to slam the door shut on any competition. So true conservatives out there (and we're not talking about those in the media who shill for their ISP partners)...whose side are you on?

Please don't fall for this being painted as an example of government trying to control every aspect of your life and your Internet. In this case, it's the opposite: The Internet currently does operate with the freedom you say you want, and the government has pretty much done nothing to change that. Net Neutrality rules were the first effort to insure it stays that way. But this new ruling would now deliberately take that away from you and those businesses YOU choose to deal with online. Instead, it would leave control in the hands of the biggest powers of all: the companies that treat you as their products. Unlike the government, you can never vote them out of office.

Bob, the use of terms like, "Republican cronies", and "henchmen", are definitely not unbiased. My take is that, like what you said, everyone's argument seems valid. What we really need is for someone to present the pros and cons put forth by both sides of the issue. Unfortunately, Dec-19 is only two weeks away, and the FCC is going to rule on this regardless of what the people say.

I see that Net Neutrality has become a Democrat versus Republican issue - In other words politics as usual.

If, the FCC truly is going back to the rules that were enforced about 2 or more like 3 years ago - Let's do it. I don't see any real improvement today, but I do see that the US Government has more of it's fingers in the pie! I really don't see why the FCC even exists. Not one person on the FCC really understands the whole picture any more than most of us. Forget Congress, most of them can't even find their way out of DC, yet alone know what is best for the Internet.

Yes, bribes, corruption, and lots of bad things happen on the Internet, but all of that happens in other fields, too. Medicine is one of the biggest fraudulent users of Medicare and has been for decades, plus there have been kickbacks to the tune of billions of dollars. The car industry has been mentioned, heavens the prices of cars has gone up at least 1000% or possibly 10,000% since the 1960's. Government has intervened throughout those many years and do we really have any safer cars than we did in the 1960's??? I don't think so. Yes, they are more fancy filled with all the technological stuff inside of them, but are they really safer? People still die in car accidents and always will.

Free capitalism is what made this country and to go where where it looks like now, socialism, this isn't what we fought valiantly for freedom. This not what I want to see for the USA in the future. I'm 74 and maybe have about 15 years or so left, if I am lucky - But what I see going on in my country today scares the holy out of me. I want my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to see the USA like I saw it growing up. Yes, the American Dream that had come true, for millions of individuals.

I'm so glad I don't live in Trump's USA.

The commenters who espouse libertarian delusions of "rugged individualism" are living in a fantasy world where Gandalf faced down a gigantic demon and legion of orcs, and where a single brave archer slew Smaug the dragon. I note that several of them are so divorced from reality they don't even realize that I, not Bob, wrote this op-ed.

That myth of "rugged individualism," BTW, was concocted by millionaire robber barons as the ultimate "divide and conquer" tactic. No one who has ever been in a serious dispute with a corporation can credibly claim to have won all by himself.

If you fear your government, you voted for the wrong people. It's as simple as that. Learn, and choose more wisely next time. If you trust only yourself, then run for office yourself. But don't expect me or many others to vote for such paranoia.