The Federal Communications Commission approved the policy known as net neutrality by a 3-2 vote at its Thursday meeting, with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saying the policy will ensure "that no one — whether government or corporate — should control free open access to the Internet." The Open Internet Order helps to decide an essential question about how the Internet works, requiring service providers to be a neutral gateway instead of handling different types of Internet traffic in different ways — and at different costs. "Today is a red-letter day," Wheeler said Thursday. The dissenting votes came from Michael O'Rielly and Ajut Pai, Republicans who warned that the FCC was overstepping its authority and interfering in commerce to solve a problem that doesn't exist. They also complained that the measure's 300-plus pages weren't publicly released or openly debated. The new policy would replace a prior version adopted in 2010 — but that was put on hold following a legal challenge by Verizon. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled last year that the FCC did not have sufficient regulatory power over broadband. After that ruling, the FCC looked at ways to reclassify broadband to gain broader regulatory powers. It will now treat Internet service providers as carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which regulates services as public utilities. Personally, I'm for less government. Once the government has it, I believe we'll be taxed even more and our privacy (what little we have) will be further diminished. What are your thoughts on this?
Agreed. Just another way to impose taxes and force the government upon us. More government more government more government. That's all either party wants any more.
Uh, I'm not too knowledgeable about this topic, but I was under the impression that net neutrality was a good thing. I can understand philosophically being against increased government involvement, but in this case, what are you specifically against? There's so much BS with getting internet. I can only get internet from TWC in my area and the basic tier that they offer is essentially unusable. I have to pay like an extra $20/a month to them when compared to their basic package just to get working internet, and I have no alternatives. That's just a random anecdote about my hatred for all the big internet companies. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with that kinda stuff. But the idea of these companies throttling internet speeds, or one day even treating the internet like cable where you can only access a select few websites that you're subscribed to, is terrifying. That all sounds good to me.
As I understand it, net neutrality means that things stay exactly as they are in terms of access, but if the government turns the internet into a utility that they oversee, the fear is that they add more layers of fees and taxes that raise rates, etc... That is however better than the alternative you describe
HJ - I'm like you. I don't know what it all means. I know what I fear and don't trust the government to manage much. Someone once said if the government took over the beach, we'd run out of sand in a year. I saw an interview with Mark Cuban and he said this is a horrible thing. he said pretty soon our TVs will be buffering as we watch television and despite what anyone says, "a bit is a bit and there's no changing that."
I'm not an attorney, but the issue with Comcast sounds more like an anti-trust problem than a net neutrality problem. Comcast often has a monopoly in an area with poor or no DSL service. So they're the only broadband provider in town. They want to use that monopoly to charge users who use VOD services like Netflix by claiming that these users are "hogging bandwith". The truth is that Netflix is a direct competitor to Comcast's cable tv interests so they're using their monopoly to squash it. This is the kind of behavior that anti-trust laws should be dealing with. Not FCC regulation. If an anti-trust lawsuit prevails, Comcast may have to break up their Cable and Internet services into separate companies, possibly with each company sharing maintenance costs. Also, if cities would make it easier for companies like Google Fiber, who have no cable tv interests, to move in and compete with Comcast, it would help to level the playing field. Which would be much more preferable than spending tax dollars on anti-trust lawsuits and FCC regulation.
