Rachel Maddow: Sen John McCain vs. Net Neutrality

[Joanne98]

Run time: 06:12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJKtSp2_kQ4   Posted on YouTube: October 24, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 24, 2009 By DU Member: Joanne98 Views on DU: 1027

 

[rurallib]

1. Serious question - how would we know if the telecoms just

decided to impose their own controls? Would there be anyway we could tell?

[izquierdista]

2. Your computer acts like it's got a virus

It would require looking at the performance of your computer as you tried to do different things, some of which were "blocked" and some which were unfettered. Comcast is currently doing some things to slow down or block Limewire, because they don't like peer to peer file sharing, er make that they are "concerned about copyright protections". These corporate cretins rely on the fact that the vast majority of people take what they are given and don't bother to optimize their own systems and won't pick up on how to evade their controls.

[wroberts189]

6. Verizon blocked all our customers from sending email through us on Cape Cod.

I have spent over 48 hours working on helping clients around it ....finally setting up a different outgoing port for our customers to use. Since Verizon is dictating how we should be setup... ignoring 15+ years of precedent and standardized smtp port 25 outgoing email protocols. they now say we should all run smtp on 587.

It will take spammers days to adjust their software to try 587 as well as 25.

They cost me over 4k in damages. 48+ hours of labor. 24 hours of phone tech support. 36 hours of email support.

Any lawyer out there want a good class action case? I have a lot of angry clients who are on my side.

[raystorm7]

3. Ad banners :)

[FormerDittoHead]

8. Things would stop working, esp Skype and video streaming.

The problem with discussing any of this is because a good chunk of decision makers don't care about this thing or another thing.

Take Skype, the internet phone service. I don't use it. If it were rendered useless by my ISP (Comcast) I wouldn't miss it.

Because you don't use Skype, or Youtube, or something else, does it make it right for a company who enjoys a given monopoly (as most broadband ISPs are) to leverage that monopoly to gain an unfair advantage in another business? Think of Standard Oil getting better freight rates than their competitors because they shipped more oil.

Skype is a direct competitor to a for-fee business of Comcast.

Now, if Comcast wanted to make Skype unusable, all it would have to do is to hold things up for 1-2 seconds, killing any conversational quality.

Video streaming is another direct competitor to broadband ISPs, all of whom also provide telephony and video on demand services.

Here's a relevant podcast but on (edit 2) please note it's not that informative:
http://whyy.org/cms/news/arts-entertainment-sports/2009/09/23/net-neutrality-may-be-a-blow-to-comcast/18405

LASTLY, I have to say ignorant, hypocritical, sell-out blow hards like John McCain continue to give me hope for the Democratic party. At least we're not as bad as THEY are...

on edit:

Lastly (edit 1), for your computer literacy, understand the issue is NOT if Comcast (eg) will BLOCK a given website.

BE PREPARED for this. They would NOT *BLOCK* any website and they will BOAST that they won't block any traffic.

They would just slow it down to the point of uselessness, esp those services mentioned above which it competes with as listed above.

[newmac]

4. Imagine the Internet controlled by companies like WellPoint or Enron

Don't mess with the Holy Grail; McCain is making a critical error.....

[wroberts189]

5. knr

[wroberts189]

7. If they do not enforce neutrality ... DU will die.

Along with my own small business.