SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1937
Net neutrality advocates are planning two days of protest in Washington DC this month as they fight off plans to defang regulations meant to protect an open internet.
A coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission on 26 September in DC. The next day, the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet.
The FCC has received 22 million comments on "Restoring Internet Freedom", the regulator's proposal to dismantle net neutrality rules put in place in 2015. Opponents argue the rule changes, proposed by the FCC's Republican chairman Ajit Pai, will pave the way for a tiered internet where internet service providers (ISPs) will be free to pick and choose winners online by giving higher speeds to those they favor, or those willing or able to pay more.
The regulator has yet to process the comments, and is reviewing its proposals before a vote expected later this year.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:51PM (5 children)
Yes, outright lying in ad copy is already illegal, but as is all too common now, laws are only enforced in a sporadic fashion. That needs fixing generally.
No, I seriously doubt you can find over 8K subscribers willing to pay $100/mo for Internet inside a footprint small enough to build out for 5M. Most people are perfectly happy with their current, much less expensive, service. You have a math error somewhere or missed some major expenses. Doesn't even pass the smell test.
Ok, you are pissed because your ISP is crap. Fair enough. I actually get half of the speed I pay for out to the wider Internet (not just to the speedtest.net node on my ISP's wire) so I could stream if I wanted to, but usually just stream audio. I'm deep in flyover country but I'm not expecting high speed Internet miles out in the wilderness either.
Not really. This ain't a free market, not Internet, not much of anywhere. I want to push toward one. They do work, every time they are actually tried and socialism / heavy handed government monopolies fail every time. Success / Fail is almost directly related to whether the thing observed is closer to the free / non-free side.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @05:09PM
"Most people are perfectly happy with their current, much less expensive, service. You have a math error somewhere or missed some major expenses. Doesn't even pass the smell test."
I am currently paying $75/month for 2 meg service. The next - and highest - level of service is $99/month for 3 meg. Yes, there are enough customers who would be willing to pay $100/month for OH MY GOD GIGABIT FIBER!!! Basically, all of us.
But, I guess that I'm better off than you are. Most of the time, I get better than half of the bandwidth that I'm paying for. Usually, it's pretty close to 3/4.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:06AM (3 children)
Care to cite an example of a free market that has worked and not eventually degraded into a monopoly/cartel situation? There is no "pure" system that does not end up with a flawed result.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:55AM (2 children)
That is something I have said before. Mises solved economics with his _Human Action_ but we still lack the social technology to create a government that can permit it to be implemented. Our experiment with a Constitutional Republic was mostly compatible with a market economy but decayed into a Universal Franchise Democracy that obviously isn't. None of the 20th Century *isms even pretend to be compatible. This is the leading problem currently facing civilization. We all can see that only market economics can possibly create enough wealth to sustain even half of the current world population but it is equally obviously dying from a fatal case of Democracy in the West and worse elsewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:13PM (1 child)
Few countries actually have Democracy, and the US has been so subverted by politics and corporate lobbying that it is a joke. What we need is real democracy, not some dictatorship like you anarcholibertarian types seem to want.
I wasn't sure what "human action" was supposed to mean so I looked it up, first paragraph on the page was
Color me disgusted. Anyone who bothers reading after an intro like that is obviously a sucker looking for the cure-all.
From wikipedia:
So blowhard intros, sweeping claims of grandeur, and nit picking words in order to feel special lol "true dynamics". Yeah, you're in a cult jmo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:18PM
@.@
Shouldn't be surprising then that you consider a democracy as something desirable, as opposed to just tyranny of the majority oppressing all those minorities which are so fashionable to defend these days.