Net neutrality :(
 

So..if you're a fellow states dweller this should hit home for you.


Net neutrality just got shit canned.
(Could be potentially very bad news for gd )

Thoughts ?

Ultimately, someone has the ability to decide how the internet works. Who would you rather have that ability? The big corporations? Or the government who gave us the NSA?

We're screwed either way. :P

GD was around before 2015 when the NN rules went into effect. It will still be fine now.

I feel that 2015 was a much different time, I do understand the point though.

Personally I'd rather have regulation in the form of equal access.
Instead of the risk of one day having paid premium access.

I would prefer that as well. I don't trust that the FCC would do that (long term) much more than I trust the ISPs. So... meh. I'm not sure we have a good option either way.

In other words, let's say down the road the US says "sorry, bitcoin isn't a valid currency, it's illegal, and that traffic is no longer allowed." With the FCC in charge, they'd have a mechanism to do that without even having to pass a law.

I usually want to keep my politics separate from this space, but you asked, so I will answer.

People act like Net Neutrality is too big, and too important, for a group of 5 people to vote 3-2 to void it. The problem is, it was established by a group of 5 people, who assumed power they really didn't have, to establish it.
There are good arguments to be made for Net Neutrality, but if you want something as a law, you need to go through the legislative process, and this didn't. It honestly NEEDED to be shut down, as it is, and then, if needed, be reintroduced properly.

Secondly? The internet existed for 23 years in the public domain before Net Neutrality. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Tumblr, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and even GetDare, ALL existed prior to it being in place, and all were already growing. There is no good reason to believe that entities that existed, successfully, PRIOR to Net Neutrality, will suddenly suffer under it's loss, as we return to a system that they had already existed under.

I see this as a big to-do about nothing, by people, largely, who don't really understand the issue and want something to be upset about. Not everyone who wants it, of course. As I already admitted, there are valid issues it deals with. But most people who treat this like it is the "end of the internet," especially the lunatics who fill Twitter and Tumblr with death threats aimed at the family of the Chairman of the FCC?
They have no idea what it even is. All they know is "It came to be under Obama. Obama good. It is ending under Trump. Trump bad. We should riot!"

I get that the internet was around way before net neutrality. However, net neutrality was always an underlying assumption, that made internet in to what it is today (and not a patchwork of private networks, each demanding a toll). This is how the global internet coalesced out of AOL, Compuserve and a dozen other private networks.

When discussions began on whether internet is a basic human need a few years ago, net neutrality was established as a policy and legislation. And now, that protection is gone.

So here's the difference - in the years that internet became what it was, net neutrality didn't exist as a legislation, but it was an underlying unwritten rule that was respected. Now, we are told that net neutrality is not expected. In essence the "gentleman's agreement" that was later converted to legislature is now gone. Corporations are free to break internet down to modern day AOLs. If a coalition of Evangelical Christian Taliban buys up Verizon, don't expect to be able to access GD in your area anymore.

You are about to find out how internet works in China. It's not pretty.