U.S. Appeals Court kills net neutrality

[Nickdfresh]

Did John Oliver save Net Neutrality?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU

[FORD]

Question to the US people.

I get the impression you don't have much choice when it comes to internet providers is that true or is it just a problem in rural areas?

I have a choice of 6 here and the competition has to help.

The cable companies are essentially a monopoly. You either have Comcast, or Time Warner, or Cox or whatever. They don't compete in each other's market.

Some areas have a DSL connection available that's fast enough to compete with the cable. Unfortunately, I don't live in one of them, ironic as that sounds being in the capitol city of one of the most tech-savvy states in the US. Century Link (regional telco monopoly) sends my advertising spam claiming they have 1gigabyte internet available, but when I check on their claims, it's still the old 1.5 mbps (barely beats dial up) connection that's available here.

Sadly, the net neutrality rules wouldn't even address that situation. It would merely prevent Comcast from raping me further by charging me based on whether they like the websites I visit. And being the right wing corporation that they are, they might really hit me up for left wing political sitesm for example.

The only way to increase competition among internet providers (and thereby promote competition, lower prices and innovation) would be to enforce existing anti-trust laws that haven't been deployed since the 80s, and restore others that the corporations have removed since then.

And for the love of all that's holy, keep Comcast from swallowing up Time Warner or any other corporation, and getting any bigger.

[Seshmeister]

That's what I thought, that's really shameful.

I was sitting there tonight wondering about whether I should try and do something about my speed which is 17MB down 12MB/s up which I think is a bit shitty in this day in age because I'm stuck with ADSL as the house was never cabled for whatever reason. The supplier is charging me on their 'up to 152MB' tariff? A dial up modem falls into the realm of 'up to 152MB'.

We seem to all be falling behind places like Japan and Scandinavia, mine is below the world average according to this site and you are in the stone age.

http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

[DONNIEP]

My business partner called me two weeks ago, all excited because Century Link was out installing his new super duper fiber optic mega speed interwebz connection. Yeah, they've been out at least 3 times since then and all he does is bitch about how bad it sucks ass. Shockingly, the super fast speed never materialized. At least not for him.

I have no idea what my speeds are and really don't care. I have Time Warner Sucksacock Hi Speed Interwebz - I even pay for something called Turbo, I think it's supposed to make it super fast. Beats the shit out of me. I do a lot of business online but super fast speeds don't really matter to me, so long as I can watch Archer and Blacklist and whatever else and it works like it should.

[Kristy]

Question to the US people.

I get the impression you don't have much choice when it comes to internet providers is that true or is it just a problem in rural areas?

Basically, two here. One is Concast now calling themselves "Xfinity" and CentryLink. For the two years I lived in Colorado Springs I think the service there was "Roadrunner" but not sure since that was a campus service. I can remember Roadrunner being lighting fast and worry free which is strange considering the other two are the most unreliable pieces of corporate internet shit on the planet. Think while I was in Boulder, the CU campus had Roadrunner as well. Worked great.

Loads of changes when Concast was first Jones Intracable then TCI, the AT&T (who fucked everything up), then Time Warner, then Concast and Xfinity. CentryLink was first Mountain Bell, then US West (based out of Arizona), then Qwest and now the joke they are today.

Where I live is semi-rural but not really. Meaning I live between the Platte River, a county mental institution, a whacky Christian reeducation camp and something called "Hudson Gardens" which is what...some sort of a rip off for parents to bring their children. I do remember one summer where the band Heart played there - for $75 a ticket. Anyhoo, there is a lot of wildlife that runs around in my backyard - both human and animal and many of them love to chew on the cable lines and I cannot tell you how many times services just stops (especially in the summer) and when you call Xfinity they claim service will be restored anywhere from 9 to 18 days. I'm not kidding. Also, they do not give you as a customer any reduction in your bill even though about 1/3 of the month you are without service. This is why I can't have nice things.

What is stranger is about 3/4 mile down the Platte from me lies EchoStar who I thinks runs Dish Network. Huge fucking building, too with a street named after them. Yet, in my inner circle there are zero satellite dishes which leads me to believe their service is absolute shit as well.

[Seshmeister]

Wow if I am offline for more than 90 minutes I start to get a bit panicky.

Again I'm surprised at the US www infrastructure - maybe the Bill Gates foundation should be doing something about that?

[Kristy]

Only if the internet was full of mosquitoes.

[Kristy]

I guess after a Google search Roadrunner is now Time Warner.

[FORD]

Mush Limpdick is STILL lying about Net Neutrality. And Sam Seder caught him live and immediately debunked his Oxycontin-fueled delusions....

[twonabomber]

Question to the US people.

I get the impression you don't have much choice when it comes to internet providers is that true or is it just a problem in rural areas?

I have a choice of 6 here and the competition has to help.

Two choices. AT&T DSL, or Time Warner Cable. Time Warner has always sucked here in the village, back in the 90's the cable would go out when the wind blew over 15 mph. I would never use them.

Maybe three choices, if one were to get HughesNet satellite, but they suck harder than TWC.

AT&T has their Uverse service but I don't know when the village will get wired for it. There's a lot of retirees on fixed incomes here and I don't think that AT&T thinks they will get the buy rate they need to make it a worthwhile investment.

I'm in the burbs, half hour out of Cleveland proper, one county east.

[Seshmeister]

FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules For 'Open Internet' 3-2

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/26/389259382/net-neutrality-up-for-vote-today-by-fcc-board

I think John Oliver may have swung this - wow. Vested interests and big big business beaten by a smurf, maybe the world isn't that bad after all.

[Kristy]

3-2 is surprising. Makes one wonder just how much corporate lobbying from the likes of Concast went on behind closed doors. By closed doors I mean handjobs with silk mittens.

[FORD]

One of the two anti's was this assclown named Ajit Pai. Technically, he's an Obama appointee, but the vacancy required a Republican, so he was "reccomended" by Bitch McTurtle. Pai's entire career has basically been a prostitute for the cable & wireless oligopolies, and he's been the one out there pushing the fear propaganda against neutrality, so that vote was hardly surprising. Forget the name of the other anti, but they were a holdover from the Chimp years, so that wasn't really a surprise either.

Wheeler's turn around was the key to this thing, considering he also had a past as an industry whore. Apparently the John Oliver "dingo" assault on him, and the massive public commentary in favor of Net Neutrality helped persuade him.

Good to know the voice of the people still occasionally counts for something in this country.

[Kristy]

You have to admire the self-victimization here:
""The FCC's decision to impose obsolete telephone-era regulations on the high-speed Internet is one giant step backwards for America's broadband networks and everyone who depends upon them. These 'Title II' rules go far beyond protecting the Open Internet, launching a costly and destructive era of government micromanagement that will discourage private investment in new networks and slow down the breakneck innovation that is the soul of the Internet today."

Vague and nondescript language. "Private investment" is code for internet monopoly. As for "breakneck innovation" being the "soul" of the internet, did I mention Concast sloth tactics on repairing service?

[Seshmeister]

Wheeler's turn around was the key to this thing, considering he also had a past as an industry whore. Apparently the John Oliver "dingo" assault on him, and the massive public commentary in favor of Net Neutrality helped persuade him.

Persuaded or shamed the end result is good.