Silicon Valley Kicks Off Fight On Net Neutrality (cnn.com) 126
Web companies met with FCC Ajit Pai on Tuesday and urged him not to gut the net neutrality rules that protect their traffic, a week after he met with broadband providers that have tried to kill the Obama-era regulations. From a report: The Internet Association, a trade group representing companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, stressed the importance of defending current net neutrality rules in a meeting with Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday. "The internet industry is uniform in its belief that net neutrality preserves the consumer experience, competition and innovation online," the group said in the meeting, according to a filing with the FCC. "Existing net neutrality rules should be enforced and kept in tact." The net neutrality rules, approved by the FCC in 2015, are intended to keep the internet open and fair. The rules prevent internet providers from playing favorites by deliberately speeding up or slowing down traffic from specific websites and apps. This is the first face-to-face encounter between the tech association and the new FCC head. It comes on the heels of reports Pai met with the telecom industry to discuss changing how the rules are enforced, potentially weakening them.
Customers want walled gardens! (Score:5, Funny)
/sarcasm
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I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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I'm starting to wonder if part of Trumps' 'Make America Great Again' plan involves destroying the Internet in this country, because his lackies keep doing things that lead me to believe precisely that.
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Nope! Bernie would have kicked ass! If it wasn't for Shillary and her "I'm entitled! I'm a womyn!" mentality, he'd be president and we'd not be living in this bizarro-world.
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Whether or not consumers want net neutrality makes zero difference.
Whether or not a consortium of super-rich tech companies want net neutrality makes all the difference.
This isn't cynicism, it is a statement of how the world actually works. You don't have to like it. But if you accept it, and adapt to it, you will be better for it.
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In this case, it is whether or not a group of marketing agencies can force the governments hands by repeatedly telling their business customers, all of them, how bad the end of net neutrality would be for them. Think a few million pissed of small and medium business persons, who could in combination remove all the Republican incumbents and replace them with new Republicans who will listen to them. Reality is the end of net neutrality is really, really bad for by far the majority of business. The vehicle ana
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i liked that episode of Black Mirror as well.
That's fun and all (Score:2)
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Heck the cell phones even count as broadband by the legal definition of it.
My 4G phone is faster than my home WiFi in most places in my house.
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Internet is decent @ 100/33 Mbps, but I only get about 25Mbps over WiFi, and about 30-40Mbps over 4G.
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My cell phone, when at my house, (40/20) is faster than my cable (25/5), and the latency isn't terrible either.
My cell phone has me on a private IP address though, so that sucks, and latency isn't great, but it's not terrible either.
I'm actually thinking 5g, and other such tech will start some actual competition in ISPs again. It won't be great, but it will be a lot better than now, especially if T-Mobile and Sprint stay separate, keeping some actual competition from smaller players trying to grow.
Tough luck, America (Score:3, Insightful)
You got Trumped!
A government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth!
Corporations are people too, my friends
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It's true; the super-rich control legislation whereas the President does not. It means that America is only ostensibly a democracy, but really is an oligarchy.
Of course, this was true under Obama too...
Once again, we did not elect Hillary (Score:2)
A government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations
Hey you seem to have forgotten that Hillary wasn't the one elected.
Instead we elected Trump - what reason does he have to support the corporations? Unlike Hillary he did not take millions in "charitable donations" from them. Unlike Obama he is not owned by Goldman Sachs.
In fact the most logical thing is for Trump to actually work AGAINST corporate interests, because they would be competing against Trump's own businesses!
Trump is th
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Except that tRumpf wants in on the big-boy's club and he thinks that by sucking them off they'll kick him some contracts or something. Too bad they just see him as a useful idiot and will use him to drive their own interests.
He's proven so far that what the OP stated is true under this pathetic administration:
You got Trumped!
A government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth!
Corporations are people too, my friends
... and, you're a complete blighted fucktard "SuperKendall" if you can't see that already.
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Trump does seem to be strongly in favor of government by the corporations for the corporations, particularly his corporations. He's working on dismantling things that corporations find annoying, like environmental regulation.
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Google will just happily pay extra. It's the rest of them that are screwed.
Libertarian view (Score:2)
As a mostly libertarian person, I see this as a reason for the government to have control of the communication system in the same model as they have roadways. Want to connect to the roads (by driving your car on it), then you have to meet specific standards meant to protect everyone else, but other than that you are free to connect and go where you want. You pay for your usage (through gas taxes...a model that is currently in flux due to electric vehicles), but other than that, no one tells you how much y
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As a mostly libertarian person...
Honestly, you gotta let the whole "I DID NOT CONSENT TO BLOOD TRANSFUSION FROM A DEMOCRAT" thing go.
that's a naive analysis (Score:2)
Google, Facebook, and Amazon have razor-thin margins and huge volumes. If they had to pay for access, their business models might be in big trouble. Cloud computing might get more costly relative to local computing as well. So, no, they don't do this out of selflessness, they do it because it matters to their bottom line, big time.
In contrast, smaller players tend to have bigger margins, so they can more easily pay for this out of those margins. But ISPs are probably not going to bother with trying to charg
Re:that's a naive analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
Man, I'd love some of them 'razor margins'. I could build a rocket company. Or be president. Or own a 767.
I weep for those razor thin margins.
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If you think that video streaming is so profitable, you're welcome to create your own site. You'll find that it's hard.
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razor thin margins on huge volume apparently adds up to huge market valuations and even some profit. Who would have thought that math works?
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Yes, and razor thin margins also make businesses extremely sensitive to even small changes in cost structures. Furthermore, it's only really big businesses that can operation on razor thin margins.
See, tiny costs multiplied by a lot of volume means a lot of money, while tiny costs multiplied by a small volume means not very much money. That's why net neutrality is a big
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I know right? I guess that's why those companies are like, tots on the edge of bankruptcy, always asking for bailout money and stuff... totally! \
Let's say we agree that they're acting in their own best financial interests, would that make you happy? Chances are they are acting in their own best economic interests. I do feel however that the larger companies are much more able to adapt to a higher bandwidth cost scenario than watchLosFromLA_makeAnAssOfHimself.com/livestream would. Seriously, I would be
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Well, and I just explained to you why that's bullshit.
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Really? I totally missed where you explained that. Could you explain it with more detail? Sometimes subtle stuff gets by me and I miss it.
Were you trying to show that small businesses are more immune to a non-neutral net than a neutral one? Because your several sentences did not appear to explain that at all. Of course I only started speaking, writing, and reading Americanese some 41 years ago so maybe something got by me...
is a real comment on... (Score:2)
Google, Facebook, and Amazon are information incumbents....
For them support NN is a real comment on how important it is to the network.
Or is it a real comment on how the real purpose of NN is in fact to keep new kids unable to compete with the incumbents?
In fact you'll find this is the effect of most regulations, keep the largest players fat and happy and free of sky "competition".
Regulations support corporatism, not capitalism.
Get rid of Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
I say they should go ahead and get rid of net neutrality. This will, by definition mean that the various ISPs are actively curating their services, and therefor are responsible if anything bad happens (DOS attacks, viruses, etc) because they are now responsible for the traffic going through their networks.
You don't get to take control of something and then wave away any responsibility. You want control? They you have to take the responsibility too. Don't want the responsibility? Then don't take control.
This is precisely what also pisses me off about Windows 10. Microsoft has taken control away from the operating system, but they refuse to also take responsibility. The end result is that Windows 10 is quickly becoming the most despised Windows in history.
Unfortunately most people don't have a choice in ISPs, so what options do people have, besides lawsuits?
Re:Get rid of Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't get to take control of something and then wave away any responsibility. You want control? They you have to take the responsibility too. Don't want the responsibility? Then don't take control.
I agreee with you, but what'll happen in reality is lots and lots of denial when anything goes wrong, finger pointing, obfuscation, and flat-out lies, followed by no one compensating anyone for any damages whatsoever, especially end-users.
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Privatized profits, socialized costs.
This is modern capitalism at work.
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I say they should go ahead and get rid of net neutrality. This will, by definition mean that the various ISPs are ... responsible if anything bad happens (DOS attacks, viruses, etc)
Ha! Any rights you had were taken away in the contract you signed with them.
This is precisely what also pisses me off about Windows 10.
Then stop using it!
Unfortunately most people don't have a choice in ISPs, so what options do people have, besides lawsuits?
Threats, violence, torture, murder, extortion and... maybe cannibalism. ;)
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I was trying to be optimistic. :P . (LOL yeah yeah I know...)
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Various ISPs? In most market there's the Telephone company or the cable company.
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Very excellent points. I'd mod you up if I could.
wat we need is a truely free market (Score:1)
forget net neutrality - lets have a real open market for access - stop cutting subsoity checks to ATT/Verizon/Comcast and CUT THE RED TAPE TO GET ACCESS TO EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE! Force the telcos to sell access to polls the same way FRAND patents have to be shared - no denials and reasonable terms. This is more than fair because the telcos use eminent domain to have the polls in the first place, and thats fine so long as its a community resource.
CALPERS (Score:2)
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World's 6th largest economy according to the latest numbers thank-you-very much. The pension won't break our economy anyhow, and who cares if it does, fuck, we'll just go bankrupt and start over. FTW.
Intact (Score:2)
Nice editing CNN.
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"in tact"?
Nice editing CNN.
Well, yeah. No one benefits from tactless rules and regulations.
big rent seeking companies (Score:3)
Do you think companies like YouTube, Facebook, etc. campaign for net neutrality out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. They are lobbying for their financial interests, which do not coincide with yours.
Internet service in the US is such an unholy mess of regulations, rent seeking, government-granted privileges, restrictions, political interests, big money, and clueless techies that it is hard to know what any particular regulation does. I strongly doubt, however, that "net neutrality" will accomplish what people promise for it. Most likely (and given who is lobbying for it), it will simply cement the role of politically powerful and well-connected corporations.
Instead of imposing even more regulations in the form of net neutrality, it would probably be better if the federal government got rid of regulations, and perhaps also forced local governments to allow more competition.
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it would probably be better if the federal government got rid of regulations, and perhaps also forced local governments to allow more competition.
Do you realize that it is federal government regulation that has eliminated exclusive franchises for cable companies? Poof went their legal monopolies. And, of course, ISPs have NEVER had monopolies from the local government.
What new kind of legislation or regulation do you see that wouldn't overstep federal limits but would force local governments to "allow more competition" when the regulations that currently exist say they have to allow competition?
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The bottleneck, and the place where competitors frequently run into problems, is putting wires in the ground and putting up wireless towers. Local governments are often motivated to act against the interests of residents because that kind of construction work generates lots of income fo
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Generally speaking, protecting individual property rights and allowing more local decision making.
Given that the problems of cable monopolies came about because of "more local decision making", I don't see how you can think that "more local decision making" would result in more competition.
A city council for a city with a population of 1M should not have much power deciding what happens in individual neighborhoods.
ISPs don't operate on an "individual neighborhood" basis. "Individual neighborhoods" don't have a political structure that can enter into contracts or manage infrastructure, and yes, if that "individual neighborhood" is part of the city that elected the city council, the city council has the authority. If you and your
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See, and stupid reasoning like yours is why we have monopolies. And to address that stupid reasoning, you propose even more stupid solutions.
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See, and stupid reasoning like yours is why we have monopolies.
No, we had monopolies because we had nearly complete control of the franchise process by local authorities, who offered exclusive franchises in exchange for service requirements. When federal regulation removed that control of the franchise process, they also removed the ability to create exclusive franchises. That was so long ago that any exclusive franchises have expired.
It's too bad that you don't know history here, or you'd know that it was not federal regulations that created exclusive franchises (mon
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Agreed. For YouTube, Net Neutrality means that Comcast pays for YouTube traffic.
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I'd be more than willing to pay Comcast for my YouTube traffic at the same rate I pay Comcast for Comcast traffic.
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it would probably be better if the federal government got rid of regulations, and perhaps also forced local governments to allow more competition.
Would that competition include municipal broadband?
I didn't think so.
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Municipal broadband isn't competition; it's a government handout to special interest groups: public sector unions, construction companies, and privileged and wealthy residents.
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Municipal broadband has gotten lots of people decent access, and has pushed private ISPs to do better. They're pretty much the same as municipal roads, sewers, water, gas, electricity, and telephone service, which are usually performed by the municipality or a private company under supervision. I assume you consider these to be handouts to special interest groups, public sector unions, construction companies, and privilege and wealthy residents.
I'm fine with you having to negotiate with all your neighb
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Oh, stop lying. What you are "fine with" is people being forced to pay taxes for municipal infrastructure and then not delivering on that infrastructure.
It has been my experience that municipalities generally try to incorporate neighboring unincorporated areas against their will, and then impose infrastructure and administrative costs on them.
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What part of what I said was a lie?
Why do you think I'd be in favor of taxing for infrastructure projects that don't happen? I've been against ones that did. In reality, some municipalities have set up reasonably efficient and very useful networks, which is getting value for one's money.
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The part where you are saying that you are "fine with" people substituting private services for municipal services. Municipalities are coercive, and if you support them, you support their coercion.
I'm sure that there have been plenty of infrastructure projects that worked really well for you. Politicians like to
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You misinterpreted me in calling me a liar. I said that I was fine with you having to negotiate for private services for everything, since you're so against government services. If you think municipalities are coercive, try a private business that knows it has you by the balls.
The big municipal services around here include water and sewer, which are at a reasonable cost for everyone, rich or poor. There's no way I could get the rest of the privileged middle class together and get service that good tha
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I interpreted you correctly. I'm saying I don't believe you.
Add that to the list of your economic delusions.
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Content providers on the Internet are effectively operating in a free market; there's millions of sites to choose from and they all get treated the same by our networks until the data reaches your ISP. ISPs are not operating in a free market due to all those government subsidies and regulations you're referring to, as well as the incredible up front cost for setting up a new broadband network in the US. Net neutrality is there to ensure that the Internet of content providers remains a free market by regulat
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The regulations that are imposed on ISPs act like subsidies on some ISP customers and charges on others, hence their customers don't operate in a "free market" either. And net neutrality distorts t
Re: big rent seeking companies (Score:1)
Constraining shady business tactics is a tax on the shady business and subsidy for the honest business? And you accuse me of ideological reasoning?
You also seem to be for constrained government but unconstrained business. Tell me how unfettered monopolistic business tactics lead to a healthy market.
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The only "ideology" here is that you arbitrarily label business decisions to be "shady".
Well, actually, it's not arbitrary, it's actually self-serving and corrupt, because the business decisions you label as "shady" happen to be the ones that are contrary to your interests as a (presumably) educated, upper middle class techie.
What about the people? (Score:1)
If it's going to be that unpopular -- and I'm sure they know it will be -- how about... not trying it in the first place because you're supposed to represent me and not corporations? They're going to either start a smear campaign over Net Neutrality as it gets closer or be as quiet about it as possible, but only because I'm pretty sure they know they have to convince people that removing it is not the worst thing to hit the Internet since fake news.
This is such a prime example of how much power companies ha
Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc neutrality in 2016... (Score:1)
...election campaign would've done a lot more for their cause than millions of dollars in lobbying. Instead, they went all in for Hillary, and fought tooth and nail for her. Don't be surprised if the current administration is rather pissed off at them. Elections have consequences. Backing the wrong side in elections has bad consequences.
Money Mouth First (Score:2)
Plus the telcos claim it "hurts jobs", Trump got the champion kill to lead the Department.
Nope, if Silicon Valley want's to save NN, those tech billionaires break need to break out the war chest check books, it's time to "go to the mattresses".
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So If I agree to slow lanes they will build a lane to my house?
I can't pay extra for priority if I can't get a lane.
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Then with all the extra profit they will actually run fiber,dsl,cable or something else fast to my house? Yay! /s
Oh that's not the way it works either is it?
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It depends. Is your house on $TELCO executive's brand new yacht?
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Nope not even near water.
Have they ever considered putting their yacht in a pond?
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I'm OK with the Danegeld if they make it legal for a bunch of us to put on helmets and pick up swords and attack the corporate offices. That's the traditional way to deal with Danegeld.
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If I pay for internet i want my packets sent to me without any type of priority based on source or destination. I would be moderately interested in enabling classes of service for TYPES of traffic, but not based on their source. That would be something an ISP should do out of a best practice. My point is that if I pay for 10Mbit, give me 10 Mbit and leave my traffic alone. THAT is net neutrality. Anything else is just not neutral.
Re:Let the little guy subsidize the big guy (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not what I want at all (Score:1)
If I pay for internet i want my packets sent to me without any type of priority based on source or destination.
As a technically astute users I want MY packets sent such that Netflix has priority over my other web traffic. I don't care if my web pages load a little slower so long as it does not affect streaming video quality in the house.
Why is this so hard to comprehend? Why do so many Slashdot users not understand that people WANT PRIORITIZED TRAFFIC. Don't make something people strongly want illegal, b
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Please don't be so harsh to SuperKendall, he's a moron and an idiot.
Re:AKA "Obama favored US!!!!" (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you use facebook? It would sure be a shame if suddenly you had to pay a $10/month premium to access it.
Want to watch Netflix without waiting 60 minutes for the show to buffer? That'll be another $20/month please.
Want to use Google? That's an extra 50 cents per search, paid to your ISP.
If you are unable to see how incredibly anti-consumer this move is, and how badly it will directly hurt *everyone* except ISP shareholders, then you are not qualified to have an opinion. If you really think that this is nothing more than some political game of playing favorites, then you are an idiot. Now go sit down and let the adults talk.
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Quite frankly, if what you just outlined came to be reality, I'd dump the Internet entirely, and I think many other people would, too, which is why I'm starting to wonder if part of the 'Make America Great Again' plan is to destroy the Internet in the U.S.
Ha. You think tehre's a plan.
The Trump administration makes the underpants gnomes look detail oriented.
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what are "underpants gnomes"? Are they very vague and fuzzy creatures?
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I can't tell if you're serious or not, but...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)#Plot [wikipedia.org]
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I was definitely serious. Thanks!
South Park is not in my regular rotation, not my style. I watched a few episodes but just couldn't get into it, my life doesn't feel that impoverished for having deleted that from my viewing habits.
Re: AKA "Obama favored US!!!!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet. Exactly. And that powerful position is exactly why things like Net Neutrality are necessary. It's not a matter of "if" they abuse their position, but "when". You know they will fuck over literally every single person they possibly can. It's just a matter of time, and how quickly they build up their hubris.
Early mobile phone providers are a great example. They literally nickle and dimed you for every conceivable thing. For every service you wanted to access. Now, they still try to, but it just doesn't seem as bad because almost everything people use is over the internet that the provider is unable to control. Removing Net Neutrality will return you to exactly the state we were in before.
You want to use twitter? Sure, just go through our portal that conveniently charges you 5 cents per post written or read. It *will* happen, because it's been done before, and the ISPs will have no incentive to *not* do that. (Oh? You want to change ISPs? Too bad! We sued all the other players in your area to the point where we are the only option!)
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tangent much?
I get that you have a drum to bang but, could you do it somewhere more appropriate? Like on the walls of your Mom's basement instead of the interwebs? Your use of bolding is impressive, it is great to see you now have some command of using HTML tags. Great job!
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I Pay my ISP to provide that infrastructure.
I pay 40% more than I used to, for the same speed.
It looks like I am indeed Paying to increase the total bandwidth I (not Netflix, it is me making the request) use.
How is Netflix adding to their cost, is Netflix running stuff over their Network just for fun, or is it to their customers that are requesting it?
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Or prevent it by supporting net neutrality, you dumbfucktard.
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If you are unable to see how incredibly anti-consumer this move is, and how badly it will directly hurt *everyone* except ISP shareholders,
I have a friend who lives for every word Rush Limbaugh spouts. He knows nothing how the Internet works or what net neutrality is other than it's big government squashing the common man and as soon as net neutrality is abolished his cable rates will go down. You can't argue with people like that and Limbaugh has legions of followers who truly believe this. If killing net neutrality brings a dystopian Internet perhaps that will be enough to break up these ISP monopolies like what happened with AT&T in
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Wait, it's 2017 and you've never heard of Linux or the GPL?
The thing about people who get played is that it looks even worse if they start their reply with the very thing that should've made it obvious that they're getting played.
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This idiot troll is posting everywhere. I guess it gets paid by-the-post, with no basis on the quality or originality of the work. Same body, "more relevant" subject line. The troll's sponsor apparently could not afford to pay for mod points so it is living in a well-deserved "-1" oblivion, I wish there was a -10, cause this one deserves it based on its mendacity and laziness.
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It's also a copy&pasted troll story older than the hills, just FYI.
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Amazing that people can't spot themselves about to be played from a mile away.