Why Gamers Should Care about Net Neutrality Overreach

I don’t care what the ISP or telco does as long as I there is or can be one that doesn’t. And the only reason why there may not be another one that doesn’t is the government meddling. It’s not the capital, it’s not the technology or anything else.

With net neutrality you can’t pay for better service, because everyone gets the same level of (crappy) service.

You can’t even explain why this alleged rationing or whatever you want to call it is happening.
If some crappy service is paying Verizon $5/mo to provide a better QoS for Verizon users accessing CrappySite ™, that’s fine. I’ll pay Verizon an extra $6/mo. Why would they not prefer to make 20% more from me? So instead of charging me $30/mo, they can charge me $36/mo. They don’t care where they money’s coming from.
Now you’re saying they’re economically insane and they’re choking your access to PornoPanda just because… Economic mystery!

You haven’t told us what other private services you’d like to socialize.

How is the government preventing new ISPs from starting up? And have you looked into how big ISPs are buying out their competition? It’s not like there haven’t been smaller ISPs that have tried to compete against the larger telcos. So please prove that a) The government is responsible (and how) for the telco monopoly/oligarchy and b) prove that without net neutrality, be it government enforced or not, that smaller ISPs could emerge against large telco monopolies.

Uh yeah that’s kind of the point and why we want net neutrality. We all pay the same subscription fee regardless of what we do online. If we want more speed or whatever we upgrade our package but that’s as far as it goes. The ISP shouldn’t know what we do online, granted they do monitor stuff but that’s problem that needs to be fixed. That’s why we need SAFE. If the service is too slow to game why not upgrade the entire network instead of giving out a premium package? The arguement here is that the network will be crappy so people should be able to pay extra to get quality service. I would counter that one should have quality service as the standard rather than as a premium exception that one has to pay extra for. What am I paying my ISP for in the first place if I need to pay EXTRA in order to get quality service? Why shouldn’t I move to a better ISP with higher standards of quality of service? If the quality of service of ISPs is so bad you need to start a bidding war for premium packages and are bitching about net neutrality laws then I’d say that just reflects badly on the extremely low standards of ISPs that are available and not the value of net neutrality.

Reasons for net neutrality

  • Privacy and security of one’s activities online.
  • Non discriminitory access for all subscribers.
  • Raising the standard of QoS.
  • Freedom of association and speech for all subscribers.

Reasons against net neutrality.

  • Catering to special interest groups.
  • Promoting bigotry and prejudice.
  • Raising the standard of QoS of special interests at the expense of QoS and privacy the network.
  • Censoring undesirable political, religious or social interest groups. Pushing propaganda.

Stop being dense and you just contradicted yourself. They don’t care where the money comes from. Ergo they’ll take a bribe from anyone and if they’re allowed to throttle your internet based on your internet activity then they can be paid to slow your internet by someone who doesn’t want you surfing that activity. Think man! Does the government want you learning about say the banking cartel or being an anti-government activist? No. So they’d pay to throttle your internet if you visited sites that promoted that kind of thing or if they found you downloading tons of that stuff. Or Monsanto could pay to have your internet slowed when visiting healthy sites that promote organic food or educate people about the dangers of GMOs. etc etc. It works both ways. Yeah you could pay to make your gaming faster but people can also pay to make your net slower too. And stop assuming everything is about porn… This is not so much of an economic mystery man.

  1. That’s an assumption on your part. 2. Net neutrality is not socializing given it’s all paid for voluntarily.

Every hear of “regulation”?
Try to operate an ISP our of your home and let me know how it goes.

One could get all that from an unregulated ISP.
For example, if you could operate an ISP, you’d probably offer such package to your subscribers.
And you’re not the only one who would want to offer services that reflect their values (in this case, “net neutrality”).
Personally I would offer two packages, one would be called Pay to Play (premium QoS for selected protocols, crap for everything else) and the other would be called Crap (the so called “net neutrality package”).

Somebody help me out here!
For Christ’s sake, would would they accept (say $5/mo) to slow you down if they could charge you $6/mo to speed you up (i.e. to merely not slow you down)?

If that is right, then the solution to the problem is like I said - no government (or at least no regulation), and not “net neutrality”.

Okay, fine. So in your opinion, how much does the average telco get per subscriber per month to engage in this nonsense? $10?
Don’t tell me it’s $30, because that’s how much I pay now; in that case I would fxxxing accept to have all the sites they want blocked be blocked on the ISP level, and enjoy completely free internet access (to the rest of the Internet)!
If it’s $10, I’d gladly pay $40 instead of $30 (if anything bothered me about my ISP).

There’s always a number. $20, $10, $5 per subber. It doesn’t make economic sense to not accept more money in form of an extra payment for the premium service, except if you believe the telcos and the government conspiring against everyone (in which case the only solution would be to remove all regulation, because if they all conspired, how would “net neutrality” help?).
If you’re right, then “net neutrality” is guaranteed to fail. If you’re wrong, it’s guaranteed to fail to bring any benefits to the customers as well.

I agree with you. But as long as government is regulating the creation of new ISPs and preventing competition then there must be net neutrality on the current ISPs to balance that out. You want to get rid of net neutrality laws then please allow for competition and for people to run their own ISP networks out of their homes and/or start small competing businesses. I would also agree with you that ultimately to eliminate the problem of government censorship and information control is to eliminate government. I’m an anarchist. But as I said before UNTIL that happens, until SAFE comes out or until the regulations are eliminated on competing ISPs or until government is eliminated entirely then net neutrality is the best bet to stave off such things.

Dude you’re talking about the government and BILLIONAIRE corporations. You bid $6 and they bid $600. You bid $650 and they bid $1,000, then $1,000,000 etc etc until you run out of money or until it’s not cost effective to try and shut you up. But odds are the average citizen will run out of money faster than the whales. I don’t know how much exactly the price would be but I do know that we’d lose at a bidding war. In the case of the government they could just pass a law saying it’s illegal NOT to throttle x content and not have to pay a dime.

I don’t know but I’d imagine there’d be 3 or 4 trailing zeroes at least if not more given it’s probably motivated by advertising, propaganda, intelligence agencies and political campaigns. Or the ISP could just set up a bidding war and have customers compete against one another for the ability to slow or speed up speeds. But we all know who that would favor.

If? There’s still a question of if? They are. Patriot Act in the states. Know Your Buyer laws. ACTA. TPP. Bloody IP protection laws that insist ISPs contact owners to “notify” them that someone has pirated something. There’s actually an if here?

No ultimately net neutrality isn’t going to do any good if all the government needs to do to interfere or censor is block or takedown a website. Yes the answer is to ultimately remove all regulations and government. Net neutrality is more like a stop gap measure than a final solution.

[quote=“Blindsite2k, post:18, topic:8585”]

Ah I see where you’re going with this. The right of a business owner to be a bigot regardless of whether it’s popular or not. [snip rant][/quote]

Well, I asked a simple question, and your response was mere name-calling, which is no argument.

I’ll try to simplify it to a simple yes/no:

Does “freedom of association” mean that no-one is forced to associate with anyone else, or not?

Or does it mean you forcing people to associate with those people they don’t want to associate with?

Note that I wasn’t referring to any particular groups. You evidently made that connection, and your conditioned reflexes were triggered.

Excuse me what? Where did I start name calling? At what point did I start insulting you or do anything of the sort?

Yes this would fall under freedom of association however it doesn’t mean that it’s good for business or well tolerated by customers. Yes one should be free to associate with whomever they wish. But refusing to associate with a group based on a racial or sexual bias is not taken kindly too and results in customers excercising THEIR right to disassociate from the business or individual expressing that bias. Same goes for net neutrality. Yeah sure an ISP could set up a pay to play program but that would cause serious consumer backlash from customers causing them to want to disassociate from the ISP and take their money elsewhere. And given the lack of diversity in ISPs and the regulations against creating ISPs in one’s home this poses a problem. The argument that one should be able to refuse service to anyone has been used before. A bias is a bias.

You used the word “bigot”, expecting that I would be intimidated, as means of shutting down discussion. It’s just an epithet like any other, arbitrary in its application, that says nothing more than that you don’t like someone. And it isn’t an argument (i.e., a rational justification).

Your second paragraph is a dodge used by libertarians to neutralize the implication that some principle that they advocate (such as “freedom of association”) implies the free action of people that they don’t like, so they get to be liberals without the state - so “the free market” does what their state would otherwise have done, and all’s well with their world. It’s wishful thinking, nothing more.

Again what? I did nothing of the kind. I cited an EXAMPLE of where freedom of association and freedom to do business with whom one consented conflicted with majority social values. Most people like net neutrality. Most people are not racists. Most people would not support a business that supported racism. Most people would not support an ISP that did not support net neutrality standards. Does that mean that the business or ISP should not be allowed to associate or do business with whomever they wish or how they wish despite what the majority would like? No but it would mean that if they deviated from the norm they would be subject to negetive public opinion. How on earth do you come to the conclusion that I was trying to intimidate you by using the word bigot? Why on earth would anyone expect one to be intimidated for using the word “bigot”? It makes no sense.

Okay again what? You’re making no sense. What are you on about saying that Libertarians “get to be liberals” just because they’re advocating that people they don’t like get the same freedoms as people they do like? First clarify your position and second prove it.

Well soft radio seems to be able to cut the telcos and cable out of the loop so no more reason to pay them to come up with artificial scarcity excuses.

Those reasons against net neutrality don’t seem to apply. No way to consture NN as aiding censorship or conflict of interest.

You know what? Let me spell it out: I’m not interested in your religion, of political correctness. I know you think it is simply a part of the natural order, as all religionists believe their particular beliefs are. I know it is the state religion in most western countries, which simply means that you have guns on your side to force your religious beliefs down other peoples throats. I get it. Not interested, and I have much work to do.

You know you’re making less and less sense with every post. When did this start being about political correctness? In fact I’m actually advocating for the OPPOSITE of political correctness, that is to NOT censor people even if they do offend one’s sensibilities. Install some filters if people bother you that much. Seriously you are making all kinds of assumptions, inferring intentions that simply aren’t there and getting worked up about nothing. I have no idea what you’re on about and frankly you’re coming off as a bit insulting. If I’ve offended you I’d apologize but I’d have no idea what I’d be apologizing for because you’re making zero sense and making all these assumptions about me that are simply not true and stating them as if they are true which is what I am finding offensive. Get a grip man, stop with the ad homenum and simply explain yourself.