Article concerning net neutrality

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I’ve worked in the telecommunications field for about 20 years, most of those with big players. I’ll say this, we give way too much power to the major corporations out there and telecom is definitely one that is run by a few big companies. I’ve also worked for the company that owns the NYSE and a good part of the financial networks people trade on. We are often made to believe that what is good for Wall St. is good for small businesses, the reality is this is not. Large public companies are mainly driven by immediate stock returns and maximized quarter to quarter profit demanded mainly by large institutional investors. Small business is driven more by relationships with your customers and affects most of the financial decisions the owner makes.

So, off my personal soap box. I care about what’s good for the “little guy”. I don’t care if the “big guys” reduce their expenses a bit. Basic internet connections (e.g. no content delivery from the company providing the connection) are not very profitable in themselves. If you’ve been watching, there have been a large number of telecom / content provider mergers recently. The telecom companies have every reason to promote their content on their pipes so as to maximize their profits. But what if you want to view the content of another company? You may well be locked into one internet provider or have limited choices. It’s no challenge to deprioritize and shape the content traffic from the other company at of the deepest levels of the network. There is nothing the end consumer could do to address this.

I don’t know that there needs to be some big Catholic response, but I think the Church is and should be more on the side of the individual.
 
Leftists claimed that repealing net neutrality would be the end of the world as we know it, that the Internet would load one word at a time, and that everything we know and love about the Internet would be burned to ashes.

Now that we’re more than a year out, it couldn’t be clearer that the doom and gloom rhetoric surrounding the repeal was wrong. The Internet survived the repeal and is thriving because of it.

Repeal didn’t slow down the Internet. One year later, in 2018 the average download speeds increased more than 35 percent and upload speeds went up by 22 percent from the previous year. Unlike what the Left wanted you to believe, repeal clearly did not “break the Internet.”

Most importantly, despite the fuss we saw surrounding the net neutrality debate, following repeal broadband providers didn’t drastically hurt the delivery of content like the Left feared. Consumers continue to be protected by the Federal Trade Commission, an agency with a long history of effective consumer protection.

Clearly the Obama-era FCC’s decision to impose the so-called net neutrality regulations was not designed to spur economic growth. One economist found that all wireline Internet Service Providers’ capital expenditures plummeted an average of 12 percent in the first half of 2015 when the Obama-era regulations were imposed compared to the first half of 2014.
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etc, etc, etc.

Catholics can respond any way they wish. How people feel about technology is up to them. Your Catholic identity influences how you perceive business and commerce, sure, but I’d raise an eyebrow is the USCCB decided to publish a statement on their thoughts about how the FCC needs to run their business.

(Stops. Pauses. Does a Google search. Gahhhh! C’mon, people…) 😛 (link link link link) (Eyebrow duly raised.)

We were discussing the subject back in early 2018 while working on a project. The person I was talking to was absolutely convinced that it was going to be an Internet apocalypse.

But I’m like, “Uh, the internet was just fine before net neutrality… why wouldn’t it be okay to have a little less regulation?” Net neutrality didn’t even come along before 2015, unless I’m mistaken. I’ve only been on the internet since 1996— so that’s almost 20 years’ worth of things being hunky-dory without it.

Honestly, I don’t want a mandate for all content to be treated equally— if I’m live-streaming or VoIP’ing, I’d prefer that to be prioritized, rather than, say, the resources necessary for scrolling through cat memes.
 
Glad you were not asked to put your opinion in 25 words or less. 😆
 
midori said:
I’ve only been on the internet since 1996— so that’s almost 20 years’ worth of things being hunky-dory without it.
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I’ve been in since 1993. 😛 The reality is the internet has changed massively in that time. I actually thought at one point what became the web wouldn’t go anywhere, in my defense it was incredibly crude at the time. 20 years ago would you have believed you’d have connections 100s of times faster in the palm of your hand? Or can watch wide variety of TV over it or send pictures instantly?

We all know (or should) that the internet is central to virtually all aspects of most people’s lives. It informs our opinions, knows an incredible amount about us, entertains us, connects us, lets us buy things, and a million other things.

Some will argue these companies own their equipment and should be completely free to choose how they us it. A fair enough point. However, they have an increasingly important fiduciary responsibility to make sure their actions affect society in positive ways.

There are also critical public resources such as IP addresses, these are unique numbers required for one computer to reach another. The problem is they are distributed in a very unfair way and have functionally been exhausted. There’s a solution, but the uptake has been very slow.

We are quickly moving into a world where a few virtual monopolies are in control of our lives.
 
A lot of what gives most jurisdictions significant power over telecommunications is the fact that most telcos and cable companies are essentially subsidized because they pay very low (or sometimes no) rent on the public right of ways that their cables traverse. Back in the early 20th century, this deal was offered to telephone companies (much as it had been to railways and telegraph companies before them) because of the drive to bring telephone service as close to “last mile” as possible for the purposes of guaranteeing as wide an adoption of the telephone as possible. The telephone and cable companies gained great advantage from this (and in many cases became monopolies), but in return they had to agree to a significant amount of oversight.

Of course, wireless services also have to abide by separate rules, because radio spectrum is a finite resource, and realistically no one can really own spectrum, but if anyone can, it’s essentially the state. And because radio waves don’t seem to notice that they’ve traversed jurisdictional borders, only a national government can really meaningfully regulate spectrum (to make sure people play within the rules, don’t cause interference by poor equipment or obscenely high signal levels).
 
An interesting fact-- FM radio was patented in 1933, but it was suppressed for decades.

The FCC doesn’t always do the right thing because it’s the right thing…
Seeking to kill FM radio before it could threaten his profits, Sarnoff’s company successfully lobbied the FCC to have the FM spectrum moved from Armstrong’s frequencies to the ones we use today: 88 to 108 MHz. That move, which occurred on 27 June 1945, immediately rendered Armstrong’s Yankee Network obsolete, along with all of the FM radio sets which had been produced. The cost to re-equip the stations for the new frequencies would be enormous. The FCC ruling said that the 40 MHz band was to be used for the new television broadcasts, in which RCA had a heavy stake. RCA also had an ally in AT&T, which actively supported the frequency move because the loss of FM relaying stations forced the Yankee Network stations to buy wired links from AT&T. The deck was stacked against the future of FM broadcasting.

Matters became worse when Armstrong became entangled in a new patent suit with RCA and NBC, who were using FM technology without paying royalties. The cost of the new legal battle compounded the financial burden that the problems with the Yankee Network had caused. His health and temperament deteriorated as the FM lawsuit dominated his life. His wife of thirty-one years, unable to cope with his worsening personality and financial strain, left him in November of 1953. RCA’s greater financial resources crushed Armstrong’s legal defences, and he was left penniless, alone, and distraught.

On February 1, 1954, Armstrong’s body was discovered on the roof of a three-story wing of his apartment building. In despair, he had thrown himself out the window of his thirteenth-floor New York City apartment sometime during the night. He died believing he was a failure, and that FM radio would never become accepted. Through the years Armstrong’s widow would bring twenty-one patent infringement suits against many companies, including RCA. She eventually won a little over $10 million in damages. But it would take further decades for FM radio to reach its potential.
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Old people shouldn’t have the right to vote or social security just a iceberg out to sea.

See I can be feisty too! :cowboy_hat_face:
 
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CCHcolonel said:
I don’t have an opinion. Honestly wouldn’t be bothered if the internet went down completely.
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Old people shouldn’t have the right to vote or social security just a iceberg out to sea.

See I can be feisty too! :cowboy_hat_face:
 
To start off:
Leftists claimed that repealing net neutrality would be the end of the world as we know it, that the Internet would load one word at a time, and that everything we know and love about the Internet would be burned to ashes.
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Now that we’re more than a year out, it couldn’t be clearer that the doom and gloom rhetoric surrounding the repeal was wrong.
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We also have at least two states - Washington and California - keeping the fight going. It’s not exactly like companies are free right now to just go ahead and implement any of what people were concerned about. They’re also unlikely to do so as long as there’s a constant stream of bills going before Congress regarding the matter, which there are.
The Internet survived the repeal and is thriving because of it.
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Yeah, two paragraphs in and already it’s an absolute dumpster fire of galactic proportions. This article is a waste of time reading and responding to. I’m going to watch hockey.
 
Personally, I can’t fathom why anyone would be against net neutrality unless they had a personal investment in the profit of big telecommunication corporations. It was good for the consumer. I honestly feel that some people are against it, just because it was a thing that liberals liked, rather than because of what it actually did.
 
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