hey all,
if you care about keeping the internet open, uncensored and free, equal for all users, do us all a favor and boycott google and verizon. the google part is pretty easy, just change your search engine preference to yahoo or bing or whatever. obviously, if you have phone or internet service with verizon already, that is a little more difficult. call or email them and tell them they will LOSE YOUR BUSINESS TO ANOTHER PROVIDER if this deal with google goes thru. it's the best way to get these mega corporations to hear you - thru your conscientious control of how you spend your money.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/google-verizon-pact-it-ge_b_676194.html

Somehow, the official filing to the FCC didn't sound as bad as the doomsayers you pointed to.

Official Report

The problem is that in many areas, there are few choices of ISP.

Wow.

What a classic example of really every single person talking about this getting it completely wrong. 100% WRONG.

1) That Huffington Post article that Michael linked to gets pretty much every single detail completely wrong - like, Comcast's blocking of BitTorrent was not "widely denounced," there is absolutely NO portion of the proposal to "effectively split the Internet into 'two pipes' -- one of which would be reserved for 'managed services,'" or many of the other suggestions.

Seriously, that reporter should be fired for filing that report.

2) The link to the "Official report" that Joe provided is almost a year old and is only to the joint comments filed in response to the initial FCC inquiry on the Net Neutrality standard.

3) Everyone in here, as copyright owners/people who make their living off of the distribution and monetization of copyrighted content - and MUSIC, at that - had better think long and hard about how much you want to defend the ability of sites like Demonoid and Pirate Bay to go unchecked.***

And finally, I have to point out that the internet was NEVER "free or open" or "equal for all users." It's a sophisticated, expensive network that was BUILT, by COMPANIES, who ALWAYS expected to be able to PROFIT from their INVESTMENT in it. Your internet was not built out by your town, State or Federal Government. It's not a public utility. It's a business investment, undertaken and built by private, profit-seeking businesses.

People should recognize that fact.





***If the irony that the Huffington Post article appears on a commercial website and links to a locked Scribd version of a freaking PUBLIC DOCUMENT that Google and Verizon issued is lost on you, you have NO BUSINESS even discussing these issues.

i'd just like to know when the anti-trust laws became completely beside the point...
google & verizon, rupprt murdock with newspapers, tv networks, etc., what does it take for these laws to actually prevent monopolies with clear conflicts of interest that make the competition unfair?
i'm sure anti-trust laws are also subjectively mis-interpreted by me and millions of others, and actually aren't even anti-trust with some explanation of superior knowledge...

please educate (and no doubt cut) me oh learned knife...

Wow ... I know January feels like a long way off (considering it almost hit 100 degrees here today), but my calendar says it is not nearly a year.

Yes - I think maybe the government should start filtering all the content on the web to help protect your copyrights. While they're at it, they should watch for anything that might be "linked" to terrorism. And maybe the stuff that kids shouldn't see either (they already tried that once).

Then again, I guess as long as you pay someone you should be able to see that copyrighted movie. And maybe buy that copyrighted song. And isn't the porn business one of the most profitable things on the Internet? I guess it would really kill some ISPs if we cut that out...

Every company / ISP is being paid for their investment in the Internet, and is making a profit off it, whether by direct subscriber billing, advertising revenue, or value added to their business. The problem comes in when one of them wants to try to unfairly kill their competition by restricting access to it.

Considering the backbone of the Internet is still owned by a very small handful of telecom companies ... can you imagine what happens when one wants to eliminate traffic that helps one of their competitors? This has never been allowed in the past, and should not be allowed in the future.

The twist of adding the mobile broadband into this mix IS a new variation. They are providing the entire connection, and have a history of modifying the data they provide (such as using proxy servers and compressing graphics) to try to reduce the amount of data on their networks. I would think the correct answer for that is they can do what they want for their internal phone data service, but if you're paying the extra for a tethering service, it should be unfiltered/unmodified data.

Just as we have learned what happens when we let the big government regulate business, e.g., Fannie and Freddie.

Actually the problem is what happens when we let big business regulate government. And (closely related to that) what happens when the income inequality gets as extreme as it did in 1928 and 2007.

Fannie and Freddie were doing what they all were doing: packaging bad loans.

Google and Verizon are making plenty of money without this crap, I think.

And this government is making things worse - just as FDR's policies caused the Great Depression to drag on for almost 15 years.


... more like pushing bad loans.

BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT.


Please. Not that stupid argument again.