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KarmaKarma

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Posted: Jan 11, 2021 - 9:29am



 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
 



BREAKING: Parler sues Amazon for antitrust violation, breach of contract and unlawful business interference. Asks federal judge to order Amazon to reinstate the platform


cc_rider

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Location: Bastrop
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Posted: Jan 11, 2021 - 9:21am



 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
 


“Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.”  H. L. Mencken

Our government is not allowed to censor or censure free speech - with some narrowly-defined exceptions. But private citizens and companies - even publicly held ones - can not be forced to use their resources to disseminate information they find objectionable. Don't like it? Buy your own damn press.
c.


ScottFromWyoming

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Location: Powell
Gender: Male


Posted: Jan 11, 2021 - 7:51am

Well the irony is thick in here.

Parler Shuts Down After Amazon Kicks Site Off Its Servers


Proclivities

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Location: Paris of the Piedmont
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 13, 2018 - 6:57am

 rhahl wrote:
 
"The internet service market is cornered by just four corporations (Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon). Fifty million Americans have access to only one internet service provider, and more than half have only two to choose from. This number will contract even further with the potential merger of AT&T and Time Warner, which is slated for approval sometime this week."
 
Time Warner Communications has not been an internet provider for some time, they separated from Time Warner Cable several years ago, then TWC was acquired by another company named "Charter", and the name "Time Warner Cable" has been phased out - replaced by Spectrum in many places.  The company which is planning the merger with AT&T is a different and separate company - a production and channel proving company.  One reason their merger with AT&T was allowed by the courts is because the two companies do not produce competing products.  The gist of the article is relevant though, there are far too few providers.
rhahl

rhahl Avatar



Posted: Jun 13, 2018 - 6:22am

 
"The internet service market is cornered by just four corporations (Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon). Fifty million Americans have access to only one internet service provider, and more than half have only two to choose from. This number will contract even further with the potential merger of AT&T and Time Warner, which is slated for approval sometime this week."

Lazy8

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Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 23, 2017 - 3:42pm

islander wrote:
Yeah, about that. Let's go back and look at how we got here.  The reclassification was a response to the a court ruling that the FCC couldn't regulate verizon and comcast as communication providers because they were really just information providers (think about what you use Verizon and Comcast for). Verizon and Comcast were arguing that they had the right to block or impede services that were on their network (primarily youtube and netflix at the time), despite having offered 'unilimited' bandwidth to their residential customers and having sold access to their network to Netflix and Youtube at 90% percentile billing rates. They wanted the ability to go back and impede that traffic despite the fact that it was already covered by contractual arrangements.

Your history is kinda wobbly. Here's a pretty good synopsis. While hardly (ahem) neutral (it's sympathetic to the argument that the FCC should be regulating ISPs as Title II common carriers) it at least gets the history right.

The lawsuit that started the FCC on the path to regulating ISPs was not brought by telecom companies. Quite the opposite—it was brought by a local ISP suing to get them reclassified. The Supremes ruled in favor of the telcos. You might want to read Scalia's dissent—it's prescient, but more on that later.

Verizon was never part of the Comcast lawsuit; Comcast was throttling torrents (not Youtube—it was barely two years old at the time and Netflix streaming service was brand new) because they were incredible bandwidth pigs, and were ordered to stop by the FCC. Their defense was as you pointed out ("Back off, FCC, this isn't your circus") rather than a defense of the practice itself—which I think is perfectly defensible under the circumstances, but that's a side issue at this point. The Supreme court ruled in Comcast's favor.

The FCC made the decision to reclassify after a change in administrations changed the makeup of the governing board. The facts, the law, and the competitive landscape had not changed. The politics have shifted once again, and the clanking steam-powered agency has changed its mind again.

Back to Scalia: he argued that there was no longer any meaningful difference between a data service and a telecommunications service, and he was right. The FCC distinguished, at the time, between cable internet and DSL because DSL used phone networks (which were originally built to deliver phone calls) rather than cable networks (which had originally been built to deliver I Love Lucy reruns). When that distinction was made cable was a one-way delivery service, not a two-way path and that made all the difference somehow. The technology marched on but the agency did not, at least not very competently. I make phone calls over the internet, and lots of people get the internet over phone lines. The paradigm the FCC has operated under now transparently makes no sense.

But in the shade, away from the FCC's benevolent quagmire of rules and red tape, internet service blossomed and proliferated and got massively better and cheaper while telco service has stagnated and gotten more expensive. The FCC would have been an obstacle to all that progress, and the regulatory fiction that kept it out of the way is what we're arguing about today.

Rather than arguing over which set of byzantine, archaic, cumbersome rules should be obstructing progress we should be arguing over how to get the ossified carcass of the FCC out of the way altogether. But we're not. That's a pity.

This was never really about having tiered pricing, but the ability to change their minds and randomly (well for the most profit) mess with traffic on their networks.

It's a key element in the breathless hype from your side of the argument. You don't have to defend it but you can't deny it's being made—with all the technological and business savvy of Y2K panic-mongers.

At the time they claimed that classifying them as common carriers would impact their ability to maintain profits and would kill any investment into infrastructure (https://energycommerce.house.gov/hearings/common-carrier-regulation-internet-investment-impacts/).  So what happened after they were classified as common carriers?  They invested like hell improving their networks, and made tons of money. 

So the flip side of your argument is that government overreach is awful because it has given us the rosy set of options you keep pointing to?  It's not like the regulatory burden of the last few years has crippled service offerings.

The top 12 US ISPs reduced infrastructure investment by $3.6B—5.6%—between 2014 and 2016 in the face of a recovering economy. But I'm much more worried about what the FCC could do in the future, and I'm concerned about the barriers to market entry the FCC was erecting behind those ISPs. They'll be fine in a bureaucratically-stultified environment, but the competitors who will one day eat their lunches will have to dedicate some of the energy and capital that would put Comcast out of business to jumping thru endless hoops in a circus ring full of entrenched old-guard companies.


kcar

kcar Avatar



Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 4:44pm

 islander wrote:

I'm with you here. I prefer limited regulation, but I don't think that regulation (or government) is inherently bad.  

I think this is the crux of the argument as well. Are ISP services a public utility?  I'm really of two minds here. I used to think that it absolutely was because it was a communications service.  And communications have a great public impact in increasing productivity and enhancing our quality of life. It also provides a lot of safety for the public.  But now we have blurred that with entertainment. And I don't think that should be covered as a utility unless it is using public resources (airwaves, right of way etc.) - and even this gets murky because a lot of these companies have paid for spectrum (airwaves), so they are effectively paying their own way on the public resource.  

So it really does get complex. But what I see are large entrenched corporations trying to play both sides for the most profitable circumstances and not giving a shit about the customers (the public ones or other corporations who also buy their services to reach those customers). But I smell BS right away whenever it's a Telco saying "we have to have this to maintain our business", because they have such a lousy history of behaviors in this realm.  I lean toward opposing them in general just because I've worked for them and I don't believe their stories. Most of the time I think that they are either maximizing ROI beyond what is reasonable, or squashing competition (or both). 

 


You might want to check out this pre-Trump decision by a federal Appeals court which declared that high-speed Internet service is utility: "The decision affirmed the government’s view that broadband is as essential as the phone and power and should be available to all Americans, rather than a luxury that does not need close government supervision."

The Internet does not belong telecommunications companies seeking the overturn of net neutrality: they do not have the right to control it. Also, there is a tendency in telecommunications industries to follow the law of increasing returns as companies increase in size and market power (which leads to an undesirable concentration of power and political influence in the hands of a few firms). Also, the companies's argument that they need an end to net neutrality in order to survive is bogus. These companies simply want to increase bandwidth for content that they control or profit from, and throttle speeds for their competition. 

Ajit (Idjit?) Pai is a tool of the big telco firms. 

And if you think this struggle for control hasn't happened in the US before, check out Tim Wu's book "The Master Switch." Wu is a professor at Columbia University Law School and the guy who coined the term "net neutrality. He points out that the same slow concentration of power strangled innovation and competition in American telephone, film and radio industries and created a "master switch" of control. 


 The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires


(Publishers' Weekly review):

Starred Review. According to Columbia professor and policy advocate Wu (Who Controls the Internet), the great information empires of the 20th century have followed a clear and distinctive pattern: after the chaos that follows a major technological innovation, a corporate power intervenes and centralizes control of the new medium—the master switch. Wu chronicles the turning points of the century' s information landscape: those decisive moments when a medium opens or closes, from the development of radio to the Internet revolution, where centralizing control could have devastating consequences. To Wu, subjecting the information economy to the traditional methods of dealing with concentrations of industrial power is an unacceptable control of our most essential resource. He advocates not a regulatory approach but rather a constitutional approach that would enforce distance between the major functions in the information economy—those who develop information, those who own the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the venues of access—and keep corporate and governmental power in check. By fighting vertical integration, a Separations Principle would remove the temptations and vulnerabilities to which such entities are prone. Wu' s engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity—and necessary deregulation—in the information age. 



islander

islander Avatar

Location: Seattle
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 11:07am

 maryte wrote:

Oh, ours nudged up (again) when TW became Spectrum. There are days when I'm quite ready to walk away from the whole bloody system.

 
It reminds me of something else where it appears we have choices, but the end results don't vary much...

miamizsun

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Location: (3283.1 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 11:04am

{#Arrowd}

 
fractalv wrote:

As an ISP myself, I am presented with a different perspective on this issue. I do have some policies in place (established before Net Neutrality rules were implemented in 2015) to try to shape network traffic to provide the best customer experience. These policies remained in place and will continue to remain in place as long as it makes for a better experience for my customers.

And as a direct competitor to the large monopoly providers, if these big companies make changes that degrade customer experience, that will mean only more business for me and my fellow independent ISPs.

This is what the national organization of internet providers that I belong to says about recent events:

WISPA Applauds FCC’s Vote for a Better Approach to Internet Policy

 
{#Arrowu}
islander

islander Avatar

Location: Seattle
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 11:04am

 black321 wrote:

Not another rule, but a simple, effective rule.  This is where i always get off the bus with libertarians: regulations.  Capitalism may be the best economic system developed to date, but it is not a panacea.  The biggest failure of capitalism is the accumulation of "excessive" capital...which has the potential to create insurmountable barriers to entry, and leave the consumer without the option to take our business elsewhere.  The role of government is to find simple, effective and fair means (regulations) of offsetting undue influence companies may acquire from the accumulation of excessive capital. 

 
I'm with you here. I prefer limited regulation, but I don't think that regulation (or government) is inherently bad.  

I think this is the crux of the argument as well. Are ISP services a public utility?  I'm really of two minds here. I used to think that it absolutely was because it was a communications service.  And communications have a great public impact in increasing productivity and enhancing our quality of life. It also provides a lot of safety for the public.  But now we have blurred that with entertainment. And I don't think that should be covered as a utility unless it is using public resources (airwaves, right of way etc.) - and even this gets murky because a lot of these companies have paid for spectrum (airwaves), so they are effectively paying their own way on the public resource.  

So it really does get complex. But what I see are large entrenched corporations trying to play both sides for the most profitable circumstances and not giving a shit about the customers (the public ones or other corporations who also buy their services to reach those customers). But I smell BS right away whenever it's a Telco saying "we have to have this to maintain our business", because they have such a lousy history of behaviors in this realm.  I lean toward opposing them in general just because I've worked for them and I don't believe their stories. Most of the time I think that they are either maximizing ROI beyond what is reasonable, or squashing competition (or both). 
maryte

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Location: Blinding You With Library Science!
Gender: Female


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 10:42am

 Proclivities wrote:

My internet and cable fees did go down several months ago, when Time Warner became Spectrum in my area, but I have "nearby" friends who that did not happen to - it may have varied by city or town, or whatever kind of bundles they had. 

 
Oh, ours nudged up (again) when TW became Spectrum. There are days when I'm quite ready to walk away from the whole bloody system.
maryte

maryte Avatar

Location: Blinding You With Library Science!
Gender: Female


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 10:40am

 Lazy8 wrote:
 maryte wrote:
BWAHAHAHA!  Bloody hell, I've got to get out of the technological wasteland that is Austin, Texas and move to rural Montana!  Our internet costs have NEVER fallen.  In fact, they go up about $1-2 a month every 4-5 months - not enough to get bitchy about (unless you're me) but the trend is ALWAYS up. ALWAYS. We'll be moving to Google Fiber as soon as it's available in our neighbourhood (six months to a year), but our savings will be marginal and only because we'll be reducing our service level. A colleague who went from Time Warner to Google with exactly the same service is saving 15 cents a month.

Here's a list of ISPs in Austin and their rates for selected services/speeds. You have terrific options available city-wide, and even more that are neighborhood-specific.

Will everybody's monthly bill always go down? Of course not—but over time what has undeniably fallen is the cost/M. You have options at less than $.45/MBPS. Harken back to the days of dialup at $15/month: over $250/MBPS.

Face it, you are spoiled rotten!
 


 
I've looked into several of these - and the nightmare stories I've heard from customers makes them more terrifying than terrific. One example: when my SIL (RIP) ran the advertising agency of record for Grande, she used to grit her teeth about the service they were obliged to use from their client.  And comparing the cost/M to dialup is a little like apples and oranges.  Back when we were using dialup, most websites were NOT script-heavy...nor were streaming services even available, much less the go-to service for entertainment/broadcast-type services.


islander

islander Avatar

Location: Seattle
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 10:39am

 Lazy8 wrote:
 black321 wrote:
I'm no expert here...but as far as i know, i'm offered difft prices from the providers, but not necessarily based on quality of the stream (each provider has POP)?  So how how will this new law change pricing?

Hell, John Oliver is no expert either, and that doesn't stop him.

There are many services called POP, not sure which one you mean but none of them has any relevance to ISP connection speed that I know of.

Most of us have options for the connections we pay for, varying from dial-up (slow but requires only a POTS (Plain Ol' Telephone Service) line to fiber (fast but requires a trench dug to bury a dedicated fiber) and various others in between. There are also high speed/high latency options (satellite) and medium speed/low latency options (ISDN or T1). What counts as "quality" depends on what you're trying to do over the line, but in general higher speed is cheaper than lower latency.

And you'd never know it listening to the news, but there is no new law. Regulatory agencies can't make laws in any case, but what the fight is about is reclassifying internet service providers as Common Carriers, which comes under the regulatory authority of the FCC. The FCC can, apparently (without authorization by Congress or statutory authority) just declare some businesses to be Common Carriers and regulate them. That's what they did two years ago, and that's what is being undone now.

So look back on the apocalyptic landscape of the internet two years ago. That's the dystopian future we're facing. Continuously improving service almost everywhere, continuously falling prices due to technological and business innovation. Horrors.
 


 
Yeah, about that. Let's go back and look at how we got here.  The reclassification was a response to the a court ruling that the FCC couldn't regulate verizon and comcast as communication providers because they were really just information providers (think about what you use Verizon and Comcast for). Verizon and Comcast were arguing that they had the right to block or impede services that were on their network (primarily youtube and netflix at the time), despite having offered 'unilimited' bandwidth to their residential customers and having sold access to their network to Netflix and Youtube at 90% percentile billing rates. They wanted the ability to go back and impede that traffic despite the fact that it was already covered by contractual arrangements. 

This was never really about having tiered pricing, but the ability to change their minds and randomly (well for the most profit) mess with traffic on their networks.  

At the time they claimed that classifying them as common carriers would impact their ability to maintain profits and would kill any investment into infrastructure (https://energycommerce.house.gov/hearings/common-carrier-regulation-internet-investment-impacts/).  So what happened after they were classified as common carriers?  They invested like hell improving their networks, and made tons of money. 

So the flip side of your argument is that government overreach is awful because it has given us the rosy set of options you keep pointing to?  It's not like the regulatory burden of the last few years has crippled service offerings. 

Proclivities

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Location: Paris of the Piedmont
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 10:38am

 Lazy8 wrote:
 maryte wrote:
BWAHAHAHA!  Bloody hell, I've got to get out of the technological wasteland that is Austin, Texas and move to rural Montana!  Our internet costs have NEVER fallen.  In fact, they go up about $1-2 a month every 4-5 months - not enough to get bitchy about (unless you're me) but the trend is ALWAYS up. ALWAYS. We'll be moving to Google Fiber as soon as it's available in our neighbourhood (six months to a year), but our savings will be marginal and only because we'll be reducing our service level. A colleague who went from Time Warner to Google with exactly the same service is saving 15 cents a month.

Here's a list of ISPs in Austin and their rates for selected services/speeds. You have terrific options available city-wide, and even more that are neighborhood-specific.

Will everybody's monthly bill always go down? Of course not—but over time what has undeniably fallen is the cost/M. You have options at less than $.45/MBPS. Harken back to the days of dialup at $15/month: over $250/MBPS.

Face it, you are spoiled rotten!
 
My internet and cable fees did go down several months ago, when Time Warner became Spectrum in my area, but I have "nearby" friends who that did not happen to - it may have varied by city or town, or whatever kind of bundles they had. 
Lazy8

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Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 10:16am

 maryte wrote:
BWAHAHAHA!  Bloody hell, I've got to get out of the technological wasteland that is Austin, Texas and move to rural Montana!  Our internet costs have NEVER fallen.  In fact, they go up about $1-2 a month every 4-5 months - not enough to get bitchy about (unless you're me) but the trend is ALWAYS up. ALWAYS. We'll be moving to Google Fiber as soon as it's available in our neighbourhood (six months to a year), but our savings will be marginal and only because we'll be reducing our service level. A colleague who went from Time Warner to Google with exactly the same service is saving 15 cents a month.

Here's a list of ISPs in Austin and their rates for selected services/speeds. You have terrific options available city-wide, and even more that are neighborhood-specific.

Will everybody's monthly bill always go down? Of course not—but over time what has undeniably fallen is the cost/M. You have options at less than $.45/MBPS. Harken back to the days of dialup at $15/month: over $250/MBPS.

Face it, you are spoiled rotten!
 

Red_Dragon

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Location: Dumbf*ckistan


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 10:10am

 maryte wrote:

BWAHAHAHA!  Bloody hell, I've got to get out of the technological wasteland that is Austin, Texas and move to rural Montana!  Our internet costs have NEVER fallen.  In fact, they go up about $1-2 a month every 4-5 months - not enough to get bitchy about (unless you're me) but the trend is ALWAYS up. ALWAYS. We'll be moving to Google Fiber as soon as it's available in our neighbourhood (six months to a year), but our savings will be marginal and only because we'll be reducing our service level. A colleague who went from Time Warner to Google with exactly the same service is saving 15 cents a month.

 
Hear! Hear! Our ISP has done nothing but increase in price since we contracted with them. Also, they are basically the only high-speed option in town.
maryte

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Location: Blinding You With Library Science!
Gender: Female


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 10:01am

 Lazy8 wrote:
 black321 wrote:
I'm no expert here...but as far as i know, i'm offered difft prices from the providers, but not necessarily based on quality of the stream (each provider has POP)?  So how how will this new law change pricing?

Hell, John Oliver is no expert either, and that doesn't stop him.

There are many services called POP, not sure which one you mean but none of them has any relevance to ISP connection speed that I know of.

Most of us have options for the connections we pay for, varying from dial-up (slow but requires only a POTS (Plain Ol' Telephone Service) line to fiber (fast but requires a trench dug to bury a dedicated fiber) and various others in between. There are also high speed/high latency options (satellite) and medium speed/low latency options (ISDN or T1). What counts as "quality" depends on what you're trying to do over the line, but in general higher speed is cheaper than lower latency.

And you'd never know it listening to the news, but there is no new law. Regulatory agencies can't make laws in any case, but what the fight is about is reclassifying internet service providers as Common Carriers, which comes under the regulatory authority of the FCC. The FCC can, apparently (without authorization by Congress or statutory authority) just declare some businesses to be Common Carriers and regulate them. That's what they did two years ago, and that's what is being undone now.

So look back on the apocalyptic landscape of the internet two years ago. That's the dystopian future we're facing. Continuously improving service almost everywhere, continuously falling prices due to technological and business innovation. Horrors.
 


 
BWAHAHAHA!  Bloody hell, I've got to get out of the technological wasteland that is Austin, Texas and move to rural Montana!  Our internet costs have NEVER fallen.  In fact, they go up about $1-2 a month every 4-5 months - not enough to get bitchy about (unless you're me) but the trend is ALWAYS up. ALWAYS. We'll be moving to Google Fiber as soon as it's available in our neighbourhood (six months to a year), but our savings will be marginal and only because we'll be reducing our service level. A colleague who went from Time Warner to Google with exactly the same service is saving 15 cents a month.
black321

black321 Avatar

Location: An earth without maps
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 9:56am

 Lazy8 wrote:
 black321 wrote:
I'm no expert here...but as far as i know, i'm offered difft prices from the providers, but not necessarily based on quality of the stream (each provider has POP)?  So how how will this new law change pricing?

Hell, John Oliver is no expert either, and that doesn't stop him.

There are many services called POP, not sure which one you mean but none of them has any relevance to ISP connection speed that I know of.

Most of us have options for the connections we pay for, varying from dial-up (slow but requires only a POTS (Plain Ol' Telephone Service) line to fiber (fast but requires a trench dug to bury a dedicated fiber) and various others in between. There are also high speed/high latency options (satellite) and medium speed/low latency options (ISDN or T1). What counts as "quality" depends on what you're trying to do over the line, but in general higher speed is cheaper than lower latency.

And you'd never know it listening to the news, but there is no new law. Regulatory agencies can't make laws in any case, but what the fight is about is reclassifying internet service providers as Common Carriers, which comes under the regulatory authority of the FCC. The FCC can, apparently (without authorization by Congress or statutory authority) just declare some businesses to be Common Carriers and regulate them. That's what they did two years ago, and that's what is being undone now.

So look back on the apocalyptic landscape of the internet two years ago. That's the dystopian future we're facing. Continuously improving service almost everywhere, continuously falling prices due to technological and business innovation. Horrors.
 


 
Interesting, thanks.
Lazy8

Lazy8 Avatar

Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 9:49am

 black321 wrote:
I'm no expert here...but as far as i know, i'm offered difft prices from the providers, but not necessarily based on quality of the stream (each provider has POP)?  So how how will this new law change pricing?

Hell, John Oliver is no expert either, and that doesn't stop him.

There are many services called POP, not sure which one you mean but none of them has any relevance to ISP connection speed that I know of.

Most of us have options for the connections we pay for, varying from dial-up (slow but requires only a POTS (Plain Ol' Telephone Service) line to fiber (fast but requires a trench dug to bury a dedicated fiber) and various others in between. There are also high speed/high latency options (satellite) and medium speed/low latency options (ISDN or T1). What counts as "quality" depends on what you're trying to do over the line, but in general higher speed is cheaper than lower latency.

And you'd never know it listening to the news, but there is no new law. Regulatory agencies can't make laws in any case, but what the fight is about is reclassifying internet service providers as Common Carriers, which comes under the regulatory authority of the FCC. The FCC can, apparently (without authorization by Congress or statutory authority) just declare some businesses to be Common Carriers and regulate them. That's what they did two years ago, and that's what is being undone now.

So look back on the apocalyptic landscape of the internet two years ago. That's the dystopian future we're facing. Continuously improving service almost everywhere, continuously falling prices due to technological and business innovation. Horrors.
 

black321

black321 Avatar

Location: An earth without maps
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 18, 2017 - 9:42am

 Lazy8 wrote:
 black321 wrote:
Really?  They are the anomaly?  My anecdotal evidence paints a different picture.  Of 1/2 dozen cos. i've worked for (from fortune 500 to small entrepreneurial), 4 were involved in some type of unethical behavior...not an individual (e.g., taking a bribe), but the corporation.  And for those cos. that are "ethical" how many are so because of the regulations that force them to be? The only difference i see in the ethical behavior between corporate and gov entities is that gov are less likely to regulate themselves.  

That's the thing about anecdotes: you can paint any picture you like with them.

Depending on how we define ethical behavior all companies, all organizations, all individuals can be painted as unethical. And large organizations have many players; the more players the more opportunities for misbehavior.

That it never happen is an unrealistic expectation, but when it reaches the scale of the examples you cited the relevant question is: what can we do about it?

The regulatory answer is usually write another rule. But what about us puny humans?

We can take our business elsewhere. And we do. When we're allowed.
 


 
Not another rule, but a simple, effective rule.  This is where i always get off the bus with libertarians: regulations.  Capitalism may be the best economic system developed to date, but it is not a panacea.  The biggest failure of capitalism is the accumulation of "excessive" capital...which has the potential to create insurmountable barriers to entry, and leave the consumer without the option to take our business elsewhere.  The role of government is to find simple, effective and fair means (regulations) of offsetting undue influence companies may acquire from the accumulation of excessive capital. 


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