Explain that statement. Because the cable company does indeed control what content you receive on your television - it's in effect a monopoly, with a huge barrier to entry.
They sure do.
https://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/packages/internet
Net neutrality - a case to be made for both sides
- Thread starter vraiblonde
- Start date
Explain that statement. Because the cable company does indeed control what content you receive on your television - it's in effect a monopoly, with a huge barrier to entry.
They sure do.
https://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/packages/internet
awpitt
Main Streeter
Again, DirecTV doesn't offer Internet. They pretend to through "partners" but they don't offier it.
How is it that you don't understand this stuff?
DirecTV does offer internet. They offer it through local dealers. In fact, they offer their dish service through local dealers. Where's the "pretend"?
awpitt
Main Streeter
I understand perfectly. The only way DirecTV can offer Internet is through Hughes Net which sucks or through a deal with another ISP (Metrocast, Verizon DSL, etc). Again, DirectTV does not offer Internet. They resell their partners' Internet.
How is that so hard to understand?
neither did Comcast back in the day ...... they resold @Home
you are spitting hairs
can you PAY Direct TV for Internet ?
terbear1225
Well-Known Member
if the argument is that there are insuficient options for ISPs in the area then paying DirectTv to provide a 3rd party's service (when that 3rd party is one of 2 available providers) doesn't mean there's a 3rd option.
Here’s why the Obama FCC Internet regulations don’t protect net neutrality
It’s becoming clearer why, for six years out of eight, Obama’s appointed FCC chairmen resisted regulating the Internet with Title II of the 1934 Communications Act. Chairman Wheeler famously did not want to go that legal route. It was only after President Obama and the White House called on the FCC in late 2014 to use Title II that Chairman Wheeler relented. If anything, the hastily-drafted 2015 Open Internet rules provide a new incentive to ISPs to curate the Internet in ways they didn’t want to before.
The 2016 court decision upholding the rules was a Pyrrhic victory for the net neutrality movement. In short, the decision revealed that the 2015 Open Internet Order provides no meaningful net neutrality protections–it allows ISPs to block and throttle content. As the judges who upheld the Order said, “The Order…specifies that an ISP remains ‘free to offer ‘edited’ services’ without becoming subject to the rule’s requirements.”
The 2014 White House pressure didn’t occur in a vacuum. It occurred immediately after Democratic losses in the November 2014 midterms. As Public Knowledge president Gene Kimmelman tells it, President Obama needed to give progressives “a clean victory for us to show that we are standing up for our principles.” The slapdash legal finessing that followed was presaged by President Obama’s November 2014 national address urging Title II classification of the Internet, which cites the wrong communications law on the Obama White House website to this day.
The FCC staff did their best with what they were given but the resulting Order was aimed at political symbolism and acquiring jurisdiction to regulate the Internet, not meaningful “net neutrality” protections. As internal FCC emails produced in a Senate majority report show, Wheeler’s reversal that week caught the non-partisan career FCC staff off guard. Literally overnight FCC staff had to scrap the “hybrid” (non-Title II) order they’d been carefully drafting for weeks and scrape together a legal justification for using Title II. This meant calling in advocates to enhance the record and dubious citations to the economics literature. Former FCC chief economist, Prof. Michael Katz, whose work was cited in the Order, later stated to Forbes that he suspected the “FCC cited my papers as an inside joke, because they know how much I think net neutrality is a bad idea.”
It’s becoming clearer why, for six years out of eight, Obama’s appointed FCC chairmen resisted regulating the Internet with Title II of the 1934 Communications Act. Chairman Wheeler famously did not want to go that legal route. It was only after President Obama and the White House called on the FCC in late 2014 to use Title II that Chairman Wheeler relented. If anything, the hastily-drafted 2015 Open Internet rules provide a new incentive to ISPs to curate the Internet in ways they didn’t want to before.
The 2016 court decision upholding the rules was a Pyrrhic victory for the net neutrality movement. In short, the decision revealed that the 2015 Open Internet Order provides no meaningful net neutrality protections–it allows ISPs to block and throttle content. As the judges who upheld the Order said, “The Order…specifies that an ISP remains ‘free to offer ‘edited’ services’ without becoming subject to the rule’s requirements.”
The 2014 White House pressure didn’t occur in a vacuum. It occurred immediately after Democratic losses in the November 2014 midterms. As Public Knowledge president Gene Kimmelman tells it, President Obama needed to give progressives “a clean victory for us to show that we are standing up for our principles.” The slapdash legal finessing that followed was presaged by President Obama’s November 2014 national address urging Title II classification of the Internet, which cites the wrong communications law on the Obama White House website to this day.
The FCC staff did their best with what they were given but the resulting Order was aimed at political symbolism and acquiring jurisdiction to regulate the Internet, not meaningful “net neutrality” protections. As internal FCC emails produced in a Senate majority report show, Wheeler’s reversal that week caught the non-partisan career FCC staff off guard. Literally overnight FCC staff had to scrap the “hybrid” (non-Title II) order they’d been carefully drafting for weeks and scrape together a legal justification for using Title II. This meant calling in advocates to enhance the record and dubious citations to the economics literature. Former FCC chief economist, Prof. Michael Katz, whose work was cited in the Order, later stated to Forbes that he suspected the “FCC cited my papers as an inside joke, because they know how much I think net neutrality is a bad idea.”
not really, if one knows anything about 'I'm for the little guy I own 3 Houses' Sanders ...
it is a safe bet if Sanders stands for something, and you are NOT a progressive, you can take the opposite position comfortably
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Your belief in the free market doesn't mean that this market is or can be made free. Local governments granted monopolies (and giant tax breaks) decades ago to companies willing to put in infrastructure, later after those companies grew into some of the largest and most powerful in the country despite routinely being listed among the most customer unfriendly they leveraged their monoplies on the physical infrastructure to take over a new market without ever having to compete.
Or to put it bluntly, the reason we need to fight over net neutrality today is because local municipals gave indefinite right-of-way for phone and cable-tv providers in the 60s/70s/80s ensuring there could never be a free market because other companies fully willing and able are not allowed access.
awpitt
Main Streeter
And yet, that still has nothing to do with Net Neutrality.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Technically, they don't.
Not in the original EE sense of the word (using a broad spectrum of RF frequency) nor in the more recent vernacular of 25Mbit or greater throughput Internet connection (as defined by the FCC). Unless you are talking about the discount they get to bundle a "partners" cable connection. In which case that isn't their product.
And most satellite internet is unusable for many purposes due to the 600ms latency of getting to geosync orbit and back (no gaming, no skype, pretty much just web browsing and file downloads). Newer low earth orbit satellite internet options will be coming online in the next few years that will drastically reduce the latency (down to around 25-50ms).
awpitt
Main Streeter
Again, Net Neutrality does not deal with content. It deals with data packets and how they're treated. Restrictions on IP ranges, protocols, TCP ports, etc.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Eh, that's splitting hairs though. If your provider decides to block Netflix (because they want you to use Hulu, or whatever the new Disney video service will be called) then they have effectively blocked your legal access to the show "House of Cards".
glhs837
Power with Control
And how does restricting certain data not control what content you receive through their service? If your ISP blocks Netflix or foxnews.com or politico.com or whatever, how does that not restrict your content?
Monopolies are only as good as the technology behind them. We've seen how this works: a service gets too big for its britches, and several enterprising young studs and studettes rush in to provide an alternative, and fat cat monopolist goes the way of the dinosaur.
awpitt
Main Streeter
That's my whole point. It does control the content we have access to and ISPs should not be doing that. If one purchases a certain amount of bandwidth, they should be able to use it as they wish. The same way one purchases electricity. SMECO doesn't tell us which brand or type of appliance we can use. They sell us electricity and we use it for what we want. Now, if Maytag doesn't offer the appliance we want, we can choose Whirlpool or Hotpoint. If Metrocast doesn't offer the programming (content) we want, we can cancel cable tv (and keep Internet) and go for Sling or Netfix and stream over the Internet connection. But if Metrocast is allowed to restrict or throttle down the throughput for those services (thus making them unusable) because they feel it competes with their cable tv offering, that's where the problem comes in and where Net Neutrality came in. Net Neutrality didn't govern content providers such as Metrocast (TV), Sling, CNN, FOX, Google, Youtube, etc. Net Neutrality governed ISPs (bandwidth providers).