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Reply to "FCC loses Comcast's court challenge"

Net Neutrality has some good points, like not allowing ISP's to block content or throttle certain protocols (like bittorrent). But, on the other side, there are people who want to use it as a sort of equalizer -- a "fairness doctrine" for the Internet. I don't agree with the latter.

I want my ISP to be a dumb pipe. I don't want it throttling, advertising to me, or blocking video content from rivals (such as Netflix or Hulu). Make no mistake about it, Comcast and the other big ISP's want to block content from rivals. This is why Comcast spent over $9 million lobbying Congress about this issue. They have plenty of bandwidth -- it's not about bandwidth. They want to make sure you don't cancel your TV account, and the way they do that is by throttling Netflix and other video rivals. They wont just come out and block such sites, but rather they will charge extra for it and claim it's a "load on the system" and you need to pay a premium for it. Their ultimate goal is "billing by the byte," which means basically they want to implement a cell phone billing plan (you pay by the minute on cell phones and you pay by the gigabyte with ISP's). Both plans are big rip-offs (cell phone billing practices should have been outlawed years ago -- it's highway robbery).

I am not a leftist at all, but I also don't trust monopolies. The American broadband system is screwed up because of all the sweetheart deals these massive telcos/cable companies have gotten over the decades which give them virtual monopolies in most markets. What we need is more competition -- this would solve every problem, including the sky-rocketing costs. In Japan you can get a 100Mbps connection for $30 a month. Here in Florence, an 8Mbps Comcast connection is $70.

Also keep in mind that the RIAA/MPAA (aka the MAFIAA) is lobbying Congress to pass laws which dictate that ISP's must police their networks for pirates. This will do a couple of things: 1)hurt privacy 2) slow everyone down and 3) increase rates.

There are some huge Internet issues that will continue to get bigger and bigger as the years go by. It will get interesting as all sides scramble to make their case. I suspect the court case between Comcast and the FCC will be only one of many when it comes to these issues. I suspect we will even see a Supreme Court case or two.

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