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I'm not going to be very popular for saying this however to be honest net neutrality is not currently a problem. So why fix it? Even if John McCain's stated rea

I'm not going to be very popular for saying this however to be honest net neutrality is not currently a problem. So why fix it? Even if John McCain's stated reasons for introducing this bill are completely idiotic and ignorant, to me what the FCC is introducing seems like unnecessary legislation. If net neutrality becomes a problem, the market will react people will stop using ISP X, if all the ISPs do it then the government should intervene but it is not currently a problem. I don't live in the US though so if I'm missing something please tell me.

txxxxd 17y ago
"If net neutrality becomes a problem, the market will react people will stop using ISP X" Any of the networks your information travels through may decide to de-prioritize traffic to a site you visit. Your ISP is probably only in control of the first few hops.
- efaith 17y ago
  But that does not negate the competitive principle that he articulated. Many, perhaps most of the products we buy involve a chain (or tree) of producers, all keeping each other honest by the competitive principle. In the making and selling of the pencil, one company mines the graphite, another shapes it into the final form, a third makes it immediately available to the public, and there may be many in between. Similarly for the other components of the pencil - the wood, the rubber, the metal, the paint. It's a vast cooperative effort, and most of it is not directly connected to the final customer.
camccann 17y ago
One thing you're missing is that for the most part there is no substantial competitive market for broadband internet in the USA. For many people, their choices are "put up with what the ISP offers" or "use dial-up". As for the necessity, the whole thing was sparked because of stuff that telecom executives actually talked about, so it's not completely speculative, just somewhat preemptive.
- efaith 17y ago
  People will talk about all sorts of things. If they talk about it but don't do it, then that's evidence that the talk is impotent, and that's even more reason not to regulate. The relative lack of competition introduces many problems aside from net nonneutrality (which is currently a "vaporware" problem, like Duke Nukem Forever). One problem is relatively high prices and relatively low bandwidth compared to what appears technically feasible (judging by other countries). Net neutrality regulation will not kill this bird, but one stone stands a good chance of killing many birds: de-regulating the cable providers, ending their local monopolies. Provision of cable television is one of the many examples of a non-free market in the US. Other examples are medicine and banking, and in America today our major crises are in... yup, medicine and banking. Computer manufacturing is highly deregulated, as I think is clothing and (for the most part) food (though there are some subsidies and protection for certain items, like sugar and corn). There isn't, so far as I know, a computer crisis, or a clothing crisis, or a famine. The main computer crisis I remember was the Y2K bug, and that is famous for being a non-spectacular crisis, if it was a real crisis at all.

txxxxd 17y ago

"If net neutrality becomes a problem, the market will react people will stop using ISP X" Any of the networks your information travels through may decide to de-prioritize traffic to a site you visit. Your ISP is probably only in control of the first few hops.

efaith 17y ago
But that does not negate the competitive principle that he articulated. Many, perhaps most of the products we buy involve a chain (or tree) of producers, all keeping each other honest by the competitive principle. In the making and selling of the pencil, one company mines the graphite, another shapes it into the final form, a third makes it immediately available to the public, and there may be many in between. Similarly for the other components of the pencil - the wood, the rubber, the metal, the paint. It's a vast cooperative effort, and most of it is not directly connected to the final customer.

camccann 17y ago

One thing you're missing is that for the most part there is no substantial competitive market for broadband internet in the USA. For many people, their choices are "put up with what the ISP offers" or "use dial-up". As for the necessity, the whole thing was sparked because of stuff that telecom executives actually talked about, so it's not completely speculative, just somewhat preemptive.

efaith 17y ago
People will talk about all sorts of things. If they talk about it but don't do it, then that's evidence that the talk is impotent, and that's even more reason not to regulate. The relative lack of competition introduces many problems aside from net nonneutrality (which is currently a "vaporware" problem, like Duke Nukem Forever). One problem is relatively high prices and relatively low bandwidth compared to what appears technically feasible (judging by other countries). Net neutrality regulation will not kill this bird, but one stone stands a good chance of killing many birds: de-regulating the cable providers, ending their local monopolies. Provision of cable television is one of the many examples of a non-free market in the US. Other examples are medicine and banking, and in America today our major crises are in... yup, medicine and banking. Computer manufacturing is highly deregulated, as I think is clothing and (for the most part) food (though there are some subsidies and protection for certain items, like sugar and corn). There isn't, so far as I know, a computer crisis, or a clothing crisis, or a famine. The main computer crisis I remember was the Y2K bug, and that is famous for being a non-spectacular crisis, if it was a real crisis at all.