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posted by martyb on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-change-to-a-competitor dept.

For years, Comcast has been promising that it won't violate the principles of net neutrality, regardless of whether the government imposes any net neutrality rules. That meant that Comcast wouldn't block or throttle lawful Internet traffic and that it wouldn't create fast lanes in order to collect tolls from Web companies that want priority access over the Comcast network.

This was one of the ways in which Comcast argued that the Federal Communications Commission should not reclassify broadband providers as common carriers, a designation that forces ISPs to treat customers fairly in other ways. The Title II common carrier classification that makes net neutrality rules enforceable isn't necessary because ISPs won't violate net neutrality principles anyway, Comcast and other ISPs have claimed.

But with Republican Ajit Pai now in charge at the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast's stance has changed. While the company still says it won't block or throttle Internet content, it has dropped its promise about not instituting paid prioritization.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/comcast-quietly-drops-promise-not-to-charge-tolls-for-internet-fast-lanes/


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  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:02PM

    by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:02PM (#603026) Journal

    At what point does the shit being pulled by the corporations be worse than that which the government can pull? There are pros and cons to having the government take over and the other way around as well. When it comes to not handing our data over to the government, the corporations have been pretty shitty up until this point and just hand the stuff over, how much of what the government wants relies on the corporations to effectively collect the data, is it something that an incompetent government would do better or worse?

    I think where I am finally at in life is that maybe we should be treating internet as a utility. I am normally greatly in favor of things being done by the private sector but with how intermingled everything is corporations are pretty much government entities, what they want becomes law. So just cut out the middle man and pipe the internet into my house like electricity or water. My local city has been building fiber lines in the downtown area and wants to expand it further, with them owning the infra it is a good chance to just pipe it out.

    Risks are that it is easier for them to take information, people could technically vote to ban or prioritize stuff, government incompetence could lead to slower internet and outages. On the other side that information will be handed over by comcast with a wink and a nod, they will ban and prioritize stuff as well, and they don't upgrade their systems leading to no change in internet and at least in my area occasional outages.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam