Ajit Pai Backs Out of Planned CES 2018 Appearance (techcrunch.com) 277
New submitter sdinfoserv writes: Ajit Pai, the most hated person in tech since Darl McBride, backed out of a speaking engagement at CES 2018. Apparently he lacks the spine to justify himself before the group of individuals his decisions affect most. Consumer Technology Association head Gary Shapiro announced: "Unfortunately, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is unable to attend CES 2018. We look forward to our next opportunity to host a technology policy discussion with him before a public audience."
Rotten Tomatoes (Score:5, Funny)
Best case scenario, he would only get pelted with rotten tomatoes. I can't imagine why he wouldn't show...
Re:Rotten Tomatoes (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say his concerns are entirely justified. All it would take is one ignorant neckbeard with a gun, who doesn't appreciate that Pai is a puppet and easily replaceable with someone else who can authorise the same laws. I don't think they pay him enough to die for the job.
Re: Rotten Tomatoes (Score:2, Insightful)
He's no puppet. He waited for the opportunity and he's moving forward with his and his buddies plans to fuck over Americans for a buck. He is deeply involved and getting huge paychecks from Comcast, verizon and the others. He's been carefully crafting his way to this for years.
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Keep shooting the puppets. At some point, nobody wants to be the next puppet anymore.
People learn from negative reinforcement.
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Really? Name one member of the alleged administration that has learned one fucking thing from being repeatedly shot down by facts?
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Their skull are impenetrable for facts. Or at least they routinely refuse to let them affect them.
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But politics is not about facts. You should know this. You can lie with facts. Just as you can tell the truth without facts.
For every fact I have a narrative. For every narrative I have a counter narrative. For every counter narrative I have a name to call you. People Agree With Me (TM). That is politics.
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The danger is not one ignorant neckbeard with a gun..
it is one informed neckbeard with a gun,
Re: Rotten Tomatoes (Score:2, Informative)
But, under Obama, he was just a member and the head guy. He had no real say before...a puppet expressing GOP concerns. Nobody expected Hillary to lose and allow Trumpâ(TM)s ilk to dominate over common sense.
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Undoing fat-fingered mod
Re:Hillary was destined to lose (Score:4, Insightful)
To quote: The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
(guess who said that....)
Re:Hillary was destined to lose (Score:4, Funny)
You mean the tens of millions which were less than the millions that voted for her?
To quote: The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
(guess who said that....)
Works as intended. Bug closed.
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The bookies were offering something like 7 to 1 on Trump. There's not much more to say.
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You can't? Here in the UK you can bet on just about anything. I had a few pounds on Clinton - far shorter than 2:1 odds though.
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So blame Obama for playing by the rules, but don't think that Pai is Barack's idea of who should be head of the FCC.
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Maybe he doesn't like bad movies?
More than that (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing it's more like he fears for his life at this point. Never underestimate what a group of angry people will do. If society can justify punching out people they disagree with then they can just as easily justify beating the crap out of Pai.
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fuck you. i'll punch any nazi i see, you piece of shit nazi sympathizer.
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Same here. I had 7 uncles and a dad who fought in WWII, only two in the Pacific but I would still count imperial Japan as a bunch of Nazis given their racial purity fixation and the way they treated every other nationality. It is galling to think some alleged Americans believe in anything like Nazi principles and I'm damned pissed at them for that.
Piss off, race baiting troll (Score:5, Insightful)
An individual in Federal agencies that has broad rule-making powers has unilaterally decided the freedom and business landscape for _the_most_revolutionary_method_of_communication_used_by_humans, and you bring race into this?
Piss off.
Re:Piss off, race baiting troll (Score:4, Insightful)
"_the_most_revolutionary_method_of_communication_used_by_humans,"
I'd present that label to the written word. But yes, the spread of the Internet would be a close second.
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"_the_most_revolutionary_method_of_communication_used_by_humans,"
I'd present that label to the written word. But yes, the spread of the Internet would be a close second.
I'd put the printed word in between the two, but I got you.
I'm not so sure that ISPs become publishers in this context. More like suppliers of paper, and providers of transport (i.e., the mail.)
TL/DR: IMHO, service-providers must not be content-providers. That is all.
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: IMHO, service-providers must not be content-providers. That is all.
It's telecommunication service providers and information service providers are the classifications defined in the law. Problem is, lawyers can argue that ISPs are both which is why the law is in need of an update.
I'd put the printed word in between the two, but I got you.
In order of significance. Spoken word. Written word. Printed word. Electrically transmitted word. The internet is the succession of a long line of "most revolutionary method of communication used by humans". Each one the most revolutionary for the time. Each one dependent on the last.
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That's not what "unilateral" means (Score:2)
An individual in Federal agencies that has broad rule-making powers has unilaterally decided
It was a vote, same as the action that imposed Net Neutrality.
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If your description is correct then maybe we shouldn't allow one individual to unilaterally make that decision. Not Pai and not Wheeler. Congress should've been the one to make that decision.
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and you bring race into this?
Piss off.
Wow. Don't like that BS label thrown back at your side, huh? Think how we felt for the past 8 years when that was thrown at us whenever we disagreed with Obama.
I know you can't see it, but Hall was trying to make that point
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JackieBrown, your comment is interesting, and I appreciate you making it.
You are correct, I did not see Hall's comment as equating Ajit Pai with Trump and party politics that favor corporations over individuals, and with your example of reverse racism that you mentioned with Obama. Hall's comment was simply crass race baiting, and served a harsh response.
You have some interesting preconceived notions about 'my side', and your assumption that I was an avid Obama supporter and that I oppose Trump. It seems
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Yeah. Because Bush's religion, partentage, and intelligence was never criticized or questioned.
I guess it's possible you are subtley making Hals point but I kind of doubt it.
Re: It is you pissing on freedom (Score:2)
Re:It is you pissing on freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
stepped into a system that was working perfectly well with some occasional oversight by the FCC
Bullshit. They were classified as Title II by the pressuring of Verizon in court case after court case that the FCC took major ISPs to court over. Like seriously, the FCC IMHO gave ISPs every single chance they could to clean up their act and they just kept saying, "nope, we'll see you in court."
No, sir. No I will not. I will stand here forever, guarding against your toadying ilk that would destroy true freedom
You have zero clues. You lack so much knowledge on this topic, you literally have no clue what the term "freedom" means. You say these words with conviction and all I can say is that I'm glad you believe every word you speak but you have zero clue as to what you are talking about. There's no point in trying to show you where you are wrong, I've come across several zealots like yourself in this discussion and even when shown the court cases, the actions of the ISPs, and piece of evidence after piece of evidence that this claim that the Internet was "working great" before is purely false. It all falls back on the brain dead argument of "well I don't like the government telling me or companies what to do." To which I say, go fuck yourself and your uneducated arguments that lack any resemblance to actual fact.
In short, you've come to the wrong place on the Internet to spew this fiction that the Internet was "awesome and working perfectly" back in the day. Everyone here is well aware of what went down, we were all there. We all understand that once you peel the layers of your argument back it just reveals itself to be one of subjective matter on how you feel governments should work. No one gives a shit about how you FEEL things should work, we all saw ISPs give middle fingers to operators, protocols, networks, and other end nodes on the Internet that they felt just went against their business priorities. And that is the entire point. ISPs aren't created to make a business they're the gateway to the Internet, they are utilities not companies, but they want to convince folks that underneath they're businesses. They can all go suck a big cock with that idea. And then these companies bitch and moan about not being able to roll out because of regulation and how they welcome competition but when cities actually want to treat the gateway to the Internet like it should be treated "a utility" they start getting up in arms and suing the shit out of everyone, every where. That's the failure, that's the core point that people like you don't understand. Being an ISP is not a business. When you think of it like that, then you might as well privatize cops, fire departments, and the army itself. Because whatever made up line in the sand you want to create for why that isn't so, is just some subjective BS that a population of "just you" in that mindset.
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This is patently false. The FCC had in fact tried leaving well-enough alone, but, as it turns out, companies were going out of their way to screw their customers no matter how many times that they kept getting caught.
2005 seems packed but only because prior to this there wasn't really much investigating in that field at all. However, major telecoms had spent money they'd been paid for fiber and cable infrastructure - broken promises of fiber in half the homes of America by the early 2000s - on lobbying to d
Re:It is you pissing on freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
"... stepped into a system that was working perfectly well with some occasional oversight by the FCC.."
Working perfectly well for whom??
Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Corporations and their shills, like Mr. Pai, are not individuals. They should _never_ have a say in law or rule-making. That's the domain of flesh and blood humans with checks and balances to prevent a mob rule.
Ajit Pai is the voice of the 3 wolves in the 'democratic' discourse on what to have for dinner. Fortunately we don't live in a pure democracy.
Now, Piss Off and go away, or I shall taunt you a second time [youtube.com].
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Where I come from, rabid dogs are being shot.
Re:More than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Right. Of course. It's all about race.
Give me a break. It wouldn't matter if this guy was red, white and blue - he'd be hated. It has nothing to do with him being a 'brown man'.
It has to do with him being a known and declared tool of the telecom industry, deceitfully ramming through what they wanted, at the expense of us all.
And an abrasive, arrogant asshole on top of that.
Re:More than that (Score:4, Insightful)
But then, we have no real knowledge of why he isn't going to appear. All we have is the opinion of a biased commenter that he "lacks the spine". Nobody on slashdot has ever had a good reason not to do something that had nothing to do with courage, I guess. Someone I know will be missing a few scientific meetings. He lacks, according to this argument, the spine to defend his scientific works. Or maybe it's because he's having open heart surgery and isn't supposed to do anything but recover for a month. I don't know, I'm leaning towards cowardice...
Re:More than that (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the FCC is explicitly authorized by law to pass regulations that govern telecommunications services, including ISPs, and most of that regulation is not created by any legislative body. If the FCC had to wait for Congress to act on every little decision, nothing would ever get done.
Moreover, the FCC is, by its nature, a largely apolitical body, or at least it is supposed to be. The people working at the FCC are hired because they understand the industry, they understand the technology, and therefore, they are in the best position to come up with regulations that make sense. By contrast, most of Congress talk about getting "an Internet" from one of their constituents when they really mean "an email". These people are almost all absolutely incapable of coming up with regulations that make even the slightest bit of sense unless those regulations are written by industry lobbyists, in which case they will be technically correct but devastatingly harmful.
No, I absolutely do not want any congressperson getting within a hundred miles of net neutrality. The best they can do is screw things up beyond all repair, and the most likely outcome is even worse than that. These are people who scratched their heads and said, "Durh, health insurance is really hard." Can you imagine what they're going to do when asked to explain settlement-free peering versus metered interconnections, or explain why video chat requires low latency and low jitter, but Netflix doesn't? They'll gibber more incoherently than a schoolkid who forgot to do his or her homework. Please, keep the mentally incompetent ruling class as far away from this as possible, and make the FCC do their jobs.
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Are your 2 Congressmen Republicans? No? Then Mission Accomplished. Did you Senator approve the appointment of Pai when Obama nominated him? Then I guess you have some work to do to get that Senator out. What party are they?
Why should someone in Montana vote against their congressman? How has any of those 3 not represented their constituents needs and wants for this issue or other more important issues (as seen by their constituents)?
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Do you get upset when a Republican president is required to nominate a Democrat to the FCC?
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lol, if he was so bad Obama should have ignored McConnell's recommendation. Or are you saying that Obama has no ability to choose and his successes and failures are not his own? Sounds kinda racist.
Is not false equivalency when it is the law to keep the commission bipartisan. Pai did exactly what Wheeler did. Just because you agree with one doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. Congress should be the one to act.
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What additional consequences? Thus far, I've seen no evidence that the Title II designation did much of anything other than give the FCC the authority to crack the whip when n
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Yeah, 'cuz there ain't no brown people in tech. Sheesh.
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And for the first time it will be the leftists that beat up the brown man with the alt-right trying to defend him.
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The Democrats only started (slowly) moving to the left in the 1930ies. I never have been in the Americas in the first place, yet I know that. Why don't you?
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He does. But he hopes you don't.
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I've heard the theory the parties switched sides at some point in the 20th century - though the most often claim is that it happened in the 60's not the 30's.
But Ben Shapiro would dispute that :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Guess you've never heard of Woodrow Wilson?
"I hate that guy!" -- Glenn Beck
Seriously, Wilson RE-segregated the US government/military and a whole laundry list of other horrible, racist, bigoted things including internment camps.
He was fucking evil.
Yet we name public schools after that monster. What, exactly, is the message we're sending kids with that!?
If there's anyone's statues we as a people should be tearing down, especially racial minorities, it's those of Woodrow Wilson. He is at least as evil and offensive as any of the Confederacy leaders
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Nobody gives a shit about his skin color. He's an asshole, whether his skin is black, white, brown or red-purple polka dotted doesn't matter at all.
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So we now have the first darker skinned person hated by BOTH sides of the political spectrum? Right for skin, left for content?
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Since this is being touted as an economic issue, I'm more right-wing than anything else... and I could also find a few good reasons to abruptly perform a manual realignment of his septum.
Since the issue has arisen, yes, let's follow up with a discussion of why you'd bother bringing politics into a discussion of a hubristic asshole undermining the democratic process that is the foundation of our country. I do, in fact, disagree with the decision to allow government-sanctioned monopolies to add arbitrary fees
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Clearly, you don't understand the Wheeler shift to Title II, its impact, and why the change to a free-for-all model clearly sucks. Local monopolies have zero, nothing, nada, zip, and sweet fuck all to do with the decision and any connection or allusion to municipal utilities is a ruse and facade to carrier domination. This was bought and paid for.
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The older ones here will remember that this scenario is not new. Remember dial-up? In the good ol' days of the internet, landlines used to have flat rates. You could make local calls without being charged by the minute. Why? Because phone companies knew that you wouldn't do that 24/7. Who in their sane mind would be on the phone all the time? Well, except for some old hags who don't have anything better to do, but old hags were few and far between. They could easily oversell 50:1 or even 100:1 (50 phones sh
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Wow, I cite the NY Times (not exactly a right-wing haven) talking about a scholarly book based on actual voting records and your refutation of all that evidence is... well, nothing at all.
Apparently the point is proven.
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Again, nobody gives a shit about his skin color. I honestly have no idea where that idiot comes from and I don't care.
I have a problem with his attitude and his position, not his skin. Skin color is only skin deep, being an asshole is what goes deeper.
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Yep, just judging by his lack non-American accent, he's as American as yer basic Bubba. Just happens to be a home grown asshole.
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"being an asshole is what goes deeper."
I actually goes all the way through and comes out the other side.
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Fun fact: Animals (at least more complex ones) are divided into two clades, Prostostomes [wikipedia.org] and Deuterostomes [wikipedia.org], with the latter being most of the higher animals, including us. The dividing factor is based on which "end" of the digestive tract forms first. In Protostomes, the mouth is formed first, in Deuterostomes, it's the anus.
In other words, at the beginning of our life, we all are, for a time, just assholes.
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And yet I didn't give a shit about the crusade either. I am old. I have to pick my wars, and I tend to pick the ones that make sense.
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actually no we didn't fight a war over eugenics. If you think that, you know scant little about far more recent American History than WWII. We didn't even rally the troops against genocide. We rallied troops because we were attacked, plain and simple.
Mediocrity requires aloofness (Score:3)
now what am I going to do with them? (Score:2)
the market's not very good right now trying to find someplace to unload crates of rotten tomatoes and eggs....
Coward (Score:2)
He can't justify his decisions, they're unjustifiable. He is Verizon's stooge, pure and simple. I wonder if the other telecoms are chipping in.
Calling his appearance a discussion is laughably generous. He was going to get curb-stomped, at least figuratively.
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The problem is this only makes it *more obvious* he's nothing more than a paid for stooge to telecom companies, possibly making the backlash worse. You would think he would need to show some moxie and stand up in public over this a couple of times to make it look more like a genuine policy issue.
This is a good decision (Score:2)
Seems like the only clever thing he's ever done.
Neutral Networking (Score:2)
Of course he's cancelled. He won't be able to do neutral networking amount such a biased crowd.
Gosh, I hope (Score:3)
Chair (Score:2)
What No Mention of the Coffee Cup? (Score:2)
All this commentary about Ajit Pai and not one mention of the giant Reese's candy coffee mug that Pai so ossentatiously flourishes?
Gosh, you'd think that that prop does not establish him as a bona fide "regular guy"! What's a predatory CEO, now fox-in-the-regulatory-henhouse handing out favors to his former (and again future) employer, to do?
Predictable (Score:2)
Re:Most hated? (Score:4, Funny)
Ajit Pai and Martin Shkreli are very similar characters. Pai seems a little more eager to please his masters, whereas Shkreli would unabashedly throw a baby off a bridge for a dollar.
Pai has a family that might miss him, but who knows. Maybe not. Nobody in the world would miss Martin Shkreli. I'll bet his mother has his number blocked and changed her last name.
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Godwin's new corollary says if people are comparing you to Martin Shkreli, you're a horrible person and should reverse what you've done.
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Boy, if you believe that, you're stupid.
Yeah, like I said: stupid.
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You're right. If I had them both in a room and only one bullet in a gun...
I'd start looking for rope.
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Which is what they did. That has now be undone. There was only a brief window of 2014-2015 where ISPs weren't regulated. There is an extensive history of ISPs doing sketchy shit and getting taken to court by the FCC sinc
Re:Ad Hominem Much? (Score:4, Informative)
"Ajit Pai, the most hated person in tech since Darl McBride"
Evidence for this assertion? None.
No evidence? Millions of citizens voiced their disdain and advocated for him NOT to do the very thing he arrogantly went off and did after ignoring every damn one of them.
And then he rubbed it in by making an it's-all-good promotional video so vapidly stupid it makes reality TV look like a Nat Geo documentary.
If you can't see how he earned his moniker, you're as ignorant as he is.
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Millions of citizens
Means nothing. Most people are idiots.
And yet they vote. Does that mean nothing? For better or for worse, I don't.
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I don't know a single tech person (I live in the bay area) who likes that fuck-wad.
yes, I truly do agree that he's the most hated guy in tech; maybe next to the orange one.
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I'm just curious what the difference between a "fiat decision" and a "non-fiat decision" might be.
In this context, roughly fiat = authoritative.
Parsing it more carefully, I suppose it means a command or decree based merely on authority, without further obligation or justification.
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I know what "fiat" means; I just don't know what the poster thinks it means.
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I'm just curious what the difference between a "fiat decision" and a "non-fiat decision" might be.
"Fiat", like "communism", means "something I don't like".
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Something *I've been told* I don't like.
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Re: "Lacks Spine" (Score:4, Informative)
There not gone yet (Score:2)
The rules are still in effect until some time after the changed rules are published, and they haven't yet done that - despite voting them into effect, they are still editing them. Don't know how that works.
And for how this will effect us - take a look at the very important promises that have been recently removed from the ISPs websites. It is a clear promise to make the life of any current provider of a service on the internet hard, and anyone creating a new service, impossible.
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I suggest you wait 6 years. It's going to take a few years for the current backbone infrastructure to adjust to the new regulatory status. Then expect to see far more siloed services., and far more pernicious monitoring built into the systems that are doing throttling, as part of the package. I'd estimate 3 years as the half life oof the most powerful backbone routers to really see traffic alter.
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> The internet was going along quite well WAY over six years before network neutrality regulation passed.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." (From John Philpot Curran, often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson,)
The difficulty with the loss of network neutrality is not an immediate collapse of infrastructure. It's the economic and social bars to new speech and new endeavors. We can expect throttling of content on a massive scale, and preferential treatment of "preferred partners" to favor the
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The internet was going along quite well WAY over six years before network neutrality regulation passed.
Six years before the first court case that established the basic principle, nearly everyone at home was still on dialup.
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Mind if I bookmark this for later use?
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Or maybe he doesn't want to be assassinated by the loony people you find here on Slashdot in droves, that have blown the Network Neutrality regulations vastly out of proportion.
And maybe you need to supply some examples of "the loony people you find here on Slashdot" who have committed assassinations.
None? Thought so.
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He's one of those people that are still alive for the sole reason that he's just not worth a second of jail time.
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All goods need not be allocated in response to the human-choice-driven price mechanism of the marketplace. Goods and services can also be allocated by political means. That is, states, employing coercive means can seize goods and services and allocate them according to certain political goals and the goals of people in positions of political power. There is nothing “neutral” about this method of allocating resources.
In the net neutrality debate, it’s almost risible that some are suggesting
Re:I would be afraid too, if I were him. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing to think that this towering edifice of words is something you find genuinely convincing. I've got some really bad news for you: the vast majority of humanity prefer to live in societies where the goods we purchase are regulated. You go ahead and tell yourself that's because we're all dupes, if you like. Whatever gets you through the day.
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the vast majority of humanity prefer to live in societies where the goods we purchase are regulated.
You don't buy a good, you buy a service. That's a fundamental difference: if you buy a good, you spent your money and are stuck with that decision for the rest of your life unless you can find a good reason to return it, and the merchant accepts the return.
As for internet broadband services, you are effectively leasing bandwidth on a network owned and operated by someone else. If you are no longer happy with the value of the service you receive in exchange for your hard-earned dollars, euros, rupees or ru
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That's a distinction without a difference. FMCG doesn't work the way you describe, and food is regulated for safety and quality reasons, for example. By contrast, there are plenty of one-time services where there comes a point where you can't change your mind until it's too late -- an operation, for example.
And many services of the type you describe have exit penalties, to discourage switching. And switching itself is not cost-free (time and effort, if not money). And notoriously, there's no point in attemp
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There's an easy fix for that: Don't be an asshole. You'll notice that a lot less people want you dead that way.
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Burning an effigy just ain't the same as the real deal.