Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords (AKA DOOOOOM)
wraith808:
Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords
Advocates of a free and open Internet could see this coming, but today's ruling from a Washington appeals court striking down the FCC's rules protecting the open net was worse than the most dire forecasts. It was "even more emphatic and disastrous than anyone expected," in the words of one veteran advocate for network neutrality.
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit thoroughly eviscerated the Federal Communications Commission's latest lame attempt to prevent Internet service providers from playing favorites among websites--awarding faster speeds to sites that pay a special fee, for example, or slowing or blocking sites and services that compete with favored affiliates.
Big cable operators like Comcast and telecommunications firms like Verizon, which brought the lawsuit on which the court ruled, will be free to pick winners and losers among websites and services. Their judgment will most likely be based on cold hard cash--Netflix wants to keep your Internet provider from slowing its data so its films look like hash? It will have to pay your provider the big bucks. But the governing factor need not be money. (Comcast remains committed to adhere to the net neutrality rules overturned today until January 2018, a condition placed on its 2011 merger with NBC Universal; after that, all bets are off.)
"AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will be able to deliver some sites and services more quickly and reliably than others for any reason," telecommunications lawyer Marvin Ammori (he's the man quoted above) observed even before the ruling came down. "Whim. Envy. Ignorance. Competition. Vengeance. Whatever. Or, no reason at all."
--- End quote ---
More at link.
rgdot:
Should I say something basement worthy? :P
wraith808:
Maybe we should replicate this thread there... there's quite a few basement worthy words that I'd say about this...
rgdot:
Well let's just say delivery and production/content are distinct and only one entity can force it to remain that way.
wraith808:
Which is why I found that picture I added quite telling as to the problems with this whole thing.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version