Net Neutrality

[Ebowed]

Yes (D)

[Person Man]

The Fairness Doctrine, or any other federally mandated administrative or statutory regulation  should not apply to the internet....and because of the nature of the internet, the First Amendment should be more protected on the internet than even regular speech.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The Fairness Doctrine, or any other federally mandated administrative or statutory regulation  should not apply to the internet....and because of the nature of the internet, the First Amendment should be more protected on the internet than even regular speech.

That has nothing to do with net neutrality.

[Person Man]

yes, but net neutrality is about keeping the government out of deciding what appears on the internet, is it not ?

[tik 🪀✨]

yes, but net neutrality is about keeping the government out of deciding what appears on the internet, is it not ?

It's more about not letting the telecom industries regulate what information can be received and sent and the speed at which you can get or send it. Currently online traffic is largely unregulated (neutral). Think of it like the highway system with toll roads that you pay extra money for in order to get somewhere faster. Except there are no big trucks.

[Person Man]

So, basically it about banning private, not public censorship?

[tik 🪀✨]

The providers wouldn't exactly be censoring information, just prioritizing which information is easier to access based on a hierarchical pay system. For example, say you have two competing web sites that offer book sales - one is very large and popular and one is currently very small. Currently the ISP's don't prioritize which of these websites is easier to access, but perhaps they could make it so that the large popular site is easier to access than the smaller competitor by paying your ISP some money. This gives them an advantage in convenience.

Such is my understanding, perhaps I am off.

[John Dibble]

So, basically it about banning private, not public censorship?

No - it has absolutely nothing to do with censorship. Net neutrality has to do with how internet traffic is handled, though that's a bit of a simplification. Right now all internet traffic is considered equal, so the net is 'neutral'. If this was changed and certain types of traffic or traffic coming from certain addresses were made to be considered a higher priority and thusly would go through faster then the net wouldn't be neutral.

Right now packets enqueue in routers as they arrive, going by a first in first out rules. If non-neutrality was allowed, routers could be set to allow packets from certain locations to skip ahead in the queue and go out faster.

[Person Man]

Then the question goes to how can congress give ownership of a right that doesn't yet exist to a specific group? - Is this the crux of the debate? If not, tell me more. I mean, I understand wanting to maximize profits versus wanting to see what you want to see, but are there principled interests in which would be consistent to what has happened in the past?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Not a single no vote. Interesting.

[True Democrat]

Not a single no vote. Interesting.

Probably because we're all on the internet.

[2952-0-0]

Does not having net neutrality mean that people will stop treating the series of tubes like a truck they can dump data on?

[John Dibble]

For those wanting an example of a net neutrality issue, here's a couple links to something Comcast has been doing on their network:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/comcast-were-delaying-not-blocking-bittorrent-traffic/
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2007/10/net_neutrality_the_plot_thicke.html

For those not wanting to read the articles, Comcast is occassionaly blocking traffic from peer-to-peer applications like Bittorrent. They aren't totally blocking them, just sometimes, which ultimately results in slower downloads for peer-to-peer users - you should eventually get what you're trying to download, content regardless, it's just slower than it would be in a neutral network that considers all packets as equal.

[Person Man]

I understand our personal interest as internet users, but how would we be able to show that what we believe in is for the common good. I am still hung on the existence of the common good, but do appreciate it as a well to make your case strong enough to get the 218 votes in the house and 60 votes in the senate that you need....and perhaps the 30 to 38 states, or at least the proper combination of states that hold the majority of the U.S. population you need to make an effective net nuetrality policy.

[bullmoose88]

Not a single no vote. Interesting.

Probably because we're all on the internet.

The internet is some set of tubes!