Verizon Challenges FCC's Net Neutrality Rules 179
GovTechGuy writes "Verizon filed an appeal on Friday asking a federal court to strike down the FCC's net neutrality rules, which are scheduled to take effect on November 20. A federal judge tossed the FCC's previous attempt at enforcing net neutrality against Comcast last May, and more legal challenges are expected in the coming days."
Evit Cartel Opportunity (Score:2)
Once set up,
Re: (Score:3)
Sites like that seem slightly surreal, almost on the level of "buy your own planet" from the HHGTG or something.
Seems reasonable (Score:2)
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
They ALL assert that they are committed to net neutrality. The problem is, they want to define what neutrality is. When you've cut away all the verbiage, to get to the heart of the matter, the telcos only want their monopoly to remain unchallenged, so that they can continue to rape the consumers. To them, "neutrality" means "anything goes, as long as WE approve of it, and it increases profits".
Re: (Score:3)
Umm... you just described any average company. They all want to maximize profits.
Companies have a commitment to their shareholders/investors to maximize profit... if they don't do that, the investors would be stupid to invest.
We've defeated the old communists so that this system can dominate the world. Don't complain now.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything. Fact is, a lot of that infrastructure, over which the telcos have been given a monopoly, has been paid for by the taxpayers. We paid for a lot of it with taxes, and we're forced to pay again through all the various fees.
Don't get me wrong - yes, I agree that the corporations have an obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. That's fine. But - politicians, judges, and regulators like the FCC have an even greater obli
Re: (Score:3)
Don't get me wrong - yes, I agree that the corporations have an obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. That's fine. But - politicians, judges, and regulators like the FCC have an even greater obligation to represent taxpayers, voters, consumers, and/or citizens. And, those politicians have basically sold out to the corporations under discussion.
So, don't complain about the companies. Instead, complain about the politicians, judges and regulators who sold out to them.
Companies just do their part of the deal: to get as much money as possible for as little effort as possible... and get away with it without losing customers.
Customers should switch to another company if the current internet provider seems a bad deal.
Governments should make sure you have a choice - that there is competition rather than a cartel where all companies basically offer the sa
Re: (Score:3)
So, don't complain about the companies.
So, don't complain about the entity that is actually doing this shit?
Fuck that, they are completely responsible for their actions. If they aren't, then they shouldn't have any rights whatsoever, and should be regulated up the ass.
Companies just do their part of the deal: to get as much money as possible for as little effort as possible... and get away with it without losing customers.
This is NOT a good thing. Not for consumers, and definitely not for employees. And this is NOT an excuse for the behavior they've been exhibiting.
Customers should switch to another company if the current internet provider seems a bad deal.
Hey, that sounds awesome! I'll just look up at what ISPs are in my part of Orange County, CA. Looks like there's Cox, whom I have alread
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Edited for verbosity.
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything.
Yeah, it kinda was. It was designed so that consolidation would happen.
Yeah, we owe the corporations a profit
The fuck we do. We don't owe them shit. They owe us for their continued existence.
And if you think that even for a second, then you must agree that they owe us jobs, and therefore should not be able to fire anyone at will.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything.
The problem is drawing the line between what is private property and what should be controlled by the government. Most of the politicoes try to avoid answering that question, because it sheds a clear light on the issue and exposes the hypocrisy of their political pandering.
If the infrastructure requires the power of eminent domain to implement, it should forever and always remain the property of the government.
Remember that Supreme Court decision that allowed cities to use eminent domain to take poor peopl
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Umm... you just described any average company. They all want to maximize profits.
That doesn't necessarily make it right.
Re: (Score:2)
Umm... you just described any average company. They all want to maximize profits.
Not entirely true. Many companies want to increase marketshare and revenue while growing the company, and keep profits at (or near) zero. Profits can be losses where the magic tax drain kicks in. Think of it like your personal income tax. Declaring equal losses and gains works to your advantage if those losses are actually non-monetary gains.
But anyways, in theory, a company doesn't just have to worry about shareholders, they have to worry about stakeholders. The idea is, when BP vents a trillion g
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps there is a reasonable compromise somewhere between letting telco monopolies completely control all the content on the Internet, and standing in line for my weekly soap and milk ration?
Re: (Score:2)
As I see it, net neutrality doesn't preclude some throttling. In my house, we have a router, with Tomato installed, using Toastman's QOS rules. I can understand, and support, the very same throttling at the ISP level.
But, what I see is, the big telcos aren't interested in fair sharing, so much as they are interested in maximizing profits. How 'bout those SMS messages? They can be, and often are, more expensive than an entire data plan. Why? It's been shown many times that those messages use an insigni
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can understand, and support, the very same throttling at the ISP level.
I can't. That is them saying they should have more control over MY traffic than I do. If I want to prioritize shit, I'll get Tomato and do it my own damn self.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually - some limited throttling makes sense, out there in the infrastructure. Not so much for the purpose of limiting stuff, but for the purpose of prioritizing important stuff.
Some things really ARE more important than finishing a 4 gig movie download 3 minutes sooner. I mean, you'll get your movie. The difference between finishing the download at 12:15 or 12:18 means nothing, really. But, even if/when the ISP isn't over subscribed, it makes sense that interactive stuff gets priority. VoIP is usele
Re: (Score:2)
Funny what actually happens is if Bittorrent is open for mere SECONDS, my WoW connection shoots to at LEAST 1.8 seconds of latency. 1.8 SECONDS. A good latency is 50ms, and normal is around 150ms.
Obviously, I can't torrent while in game- it is unplayable. Why is that? Is it because my torrents have a lower priority, which I would be fine with? No, it's because the moment that I get a torrent going, it flags me as some third rate customer, and my whole connection chokes up like an asthmatic in Pollutio
Re: (Score:3)
It's the outbound queues. Your torrent client floods your own router with outbound packets, and your game packets can't get out. As I mentioned above, I use Toastman's QOS rules, which are rather - complicated I guess is the right term.
I can be gaming, and all three of my sons can start a torrent, or any other kind of download, but they don't affect me. In effect, I've cut the top 5% of my own bandwidth, then the QOS rules put everything into classes. ANYTHING that exceeds 512k is put into "bulk", and t
Re: (Score:2)
You know, if they actually delivered what they sold you, then you wouldn't have to worry about that.
Detestable wording (Score:3)
New companies see the consumers broadband connection as a free resource to exploit. The ISPs would like these companies to share in the burden they are placing on their networks.
That, my friend, is a detestable rewording of the issues intended to evoke sympathy from the masses.
Share the burden? Exploit resources for free? That's called framing [wikimedia.org]. Was that your intent?
New companies see the consumers broadband connection as a resource the consumers have paid for.
New companies see the consumers broadband connection as a resource the consumers will use to get goods and services.
People thinking about starting new companies see an opportunity to start new business using the consumers broad
Re: (Score:2)
See, the thing is... I already paid for that broadband connection. So, it really is free for me to exploit to my heart's content, since it's mine. And if the ISPs sold something they don't have, they don't get to ask more money when they're unable to deliver - they should face charges instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Right but my ISP sold me a 6Mbps connection, they never said there was cap and they never said there would be restrictions during prime time. If they can't deliver the performance their customers want and the prices they charge, they need to raise prices. There is a reason after all business class 10Mbps Ethernet hand off will run minimally $300 per month in the least expensive US markets. That is what it costs. If consumers want something better then best effort, where best effort is not very good at a
Re: (Score:2)
The ISP sold me a pipe with a rated upload and download speed. Therefore, I should be able to use at least 80% of that speed at any given time, for as long as I want. Anything less, and they have deceived me.
Re: (Score:2)
Once again the consumers come in last.
On their own, if they must (Score:2)
Let them filter and throttle their private network, but if so connection to the public one is prohibited.
Re: (Score:2)
What "public one"? The vast majority of the internet is private networks and backbones - not government owned, not public owned, private networks.
Re: (Score:3)
You have a horrible misunderstanding of the public internet.
They participate with the public internet, and in exchange for that participation, they get to charge people to access it. Charging people for access is all they should be allowed to do. Instead, they want to throttle, re-route, re-direct, inspect, block and all manner of things which is contradiction to their participation in the public internet.
But let's look at it this way.
There is no public telephone system either. There is a public telephon
Re: (Score:2)
No, I don't have a "horrible misunderstanding" at all - its (pretty much) all private infrastructure, which various people pay to access and carry their traffic over through voluntary agreements.
There is no "public internet", there is merely the "internet" which is nothing more than a lot of people connecting their networks together - and you are suggesting that one network should not be able to connect to another network purely because of the management of the network...
I don't "fail to see" anything, I ju
Re: (Score:2)
The public internet goes over public infrastructure which is granted right-of-way by the representatives of "we the people." There is no private infrastructure -- only the infrastructure they are LEASED.
Please provide an example of infrastructure they own where it does not require using government guaranteed and protected resources including wires, cables, fibers or radio frequencies?
Re: (Score:2)
You have a horrible misunderstanding of the public internet.
They participate with the public internet, and in exchange for that participation, they get to charge people to access it. Charging people for access is all they should be allowed to do. Instead, they want to throttle, re-route, re-direct, inspect, block and all manner of things which is contradiction to their participation in the public internet.
But let's look at it this way.
There is no public telephone system either. There is a public telephone network. How pissed would you be to find that when you want to call your bank or your grocery store that your call quality was intentionally decreased or that your calls were blocked or redirected to the competitors of the parties you wanted to call? It's all the same damned thing. How you fail to see it amazes me.
Dude, you have a horrible misunderstanding of reality. On a tiered internet, and none of the dire things you outline can ever happen. In fact, it becomes in the best interest of the service providers on a tiered internet to not let any of that happen. How you fail to see this is because you believe governments and corporations exist to benefit you, the citizen or consumer. I can assure you that you are living in cloud cuckoo land, if you are that ignorant of economic and political reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Two questions for you then:
1. Do you believe the restrictions and limitations placed on the Telcos are appropriate? I speak of the ones where they can't route people through poor quality channels when they don't like one or both parties, where they can't block connections to parties they don't like and so on.
2. Assuming you support these limitations on Telcos, why do you support the opposite for "data telcos"? And assuming you don't support limitations on Telcos, why do you think they should be allowed to
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why the hell aren't they paying me for having their equipment on my property and why then as a private property owner am I legally prevented from going out and renting a ditch witch and digging up all of their equipment on my property and selling it as scrap since obviously they have abandoned it.
Because your local government decided that these companies could do these things.
They seem to get an awful lot of government granted benefits, but unlike the power or gas company they are not a regulated monopoly.
They are regulated locally, by either utility commissions and/or town/city/state representatives. Probably its both.
Dont ask the federal government to fix your locally fucked up shit with federal laws that apply to people outside of the influence of your locally fucked up shit. The problem is your locally fucked up shit and the solution is fixing it locally.
Get involved in your local government and stop looking to the fed
Re: (Score:2)
Get involved in your local government and stop looking to the federal government to micro-manage your local situation.
Uh, does it really make sense to govern the internet at the local municipality level?
Should I be able to petition the local government so that google.com resolves to Fred's Search Engine in Stillwater, PA - population 202? And, then what if the big national telco that runs the lines just tells the mayor of Stillwater that they'll simply cut off their connection? To a company like verizon ANY municipality is expendable if it furthers their interests. We can applaud that when it means keeping DNS consisten
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about your area, dude, but the the cable and telphone infrastructure (along with the roads, sewer, and airport facilities) in my location were bought and paid for by the tax payers via construction bonds and tax write-offs for the cable and telcos. They lease the lines from we the people. Those lines belong to the community; selling them off as scrap would be just as criminal as scrapping a fire station or police station and selling the bits to a junkyard.
Your naivete would be stunning if it
Glass Half Empty (Score:3)
Wow (Score:3)
The fact that Verizon's unhappy with the very weak net neutrality legislation that has loopholes big enough to drive an aircraft carrier through sideways tells me Verizon has some SERIOUSLY evil plans in store...
What net neutrality boils down to (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if your power provider wanted to charge different prices for your power based on whether you used it for toasting bread or watching TV; even further, what if it charged more for your toaster power if you used a brand of toaster that has not paid the power company for 'better' rates. The courts would never allow such a business practice.
Re:What net neutrality boils down to (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if your power provider wanted to charge different prices for your power based on whether you used it for toasting bread or watching TV; even further, what if it charged more for your toaster power if you used a brand of toaster that has not paid the power company for 'better' rates. The courts would never allow such a business practice.
That doesn't mean that the FCC has the authority to "fix" this.
I Think That It's Stupid... (Score:2)
Would be stupid, except that its not true (Score:2)
Verizon has already sued over them, and the rules go into effect on November 20, so its obvious that Verizon did not have to wait until the rules went into effect before they could sue.
What they had to do was wait until the rules were published in the Federal Register which is the thing that makes them an official rule.
Re: (Score:2)
Now it may be the FCC under competent leadership could enforce net neutrality.
Re: (Score:3)
The customer is limited by design. It's either play by their [ever changing] rules in order to engage with society and business or don't play at all.
These people are operating vital utilities. They require regulation. It is every bit as simple as that. When the internet was "novel" it was one thing, but now it is as important as the telephone network and will be more important than the telephone network in a short while.
History has shown the telcos required regulation after the DoJ and the courts system
Re:If the FCC can't enforce net neutrality... (Score:4, Informative)
Where I live, I can use landline DSL that's too far from the DSLAM so I'm capped at 384/384 on a perfect day, often less.
Or I can pay through the nose for a 7.2 mbps mobile connection with a 5GB cap that throttles to 40 kbps after the cap is reached, effectively making any modern website time out.
Considering that nothing seems to get cached anymore, ie. Youtube videos, videos on newspaper and TV websites etc. those 5 GB are spent awfully fast through normal surfing and gaming.
Those are my options. Short of paying for a company to come out and lay fiberoptic cables all the way to the nearest large city I'm screwed. Tell me again how I have options to play by other rules?
Re: (Score:2)
Caching screws up their usage counters, and thus ad-money.
Re: (Score:3)
Keep thinking that. I live in the heart of Silicon Valley. Granted, it's probably the cheapest place within a 5 mile radius, but it is the fucking center of Silicon Valley. No cable, too far from the DSLAM to get anything more than 1.5 Mbit down. And that's after ATT fixed their noise problem that had me throttled to half that. Yes, I could move to a more expensive place. I don't want to. I can afford it, but I don't see the point. The Internet is now a utility like water and electricity. If corporations ca
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
failure to provide a necessary service to a population b/c it is unprofitable to do so.
It's not their responsibility to provide you with a "necessity". It's not government's responsibility to force them to provide you with an unprofitable service. Instead, it is your responsibility to get what you think you need and pay appropriately for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even assuming that wireless bandwidth magically expands to accommodate every American using it, a 5GB per month cap is pretty much nothing. I go through that for work in about a week. Less if I have to do some installs or backups. And satellite is only an option for consuming content very slowly. And you still need at least dial-up to issue requests.
So no, there is no competition in the Internet connection space.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I tried, actually. The reply was that there ARE no bigger plans than the 5 GB one. Try again to be condescending, please.
Re: (Score:3)
Being two miles from the nearest town is too far from civilization now? Sure, I live two miles to the wrong side, towards the coast, but come on, it's not like you drive for hours through Nothing to get here. Can make a round trip to the nearest McD's in under half an hour on a busy day.
Re: (Score:2)
Boycotts only work against monopolies when you'd rather suffer going without than put up with the monopoly.
This is why water barons in the wild west get so rich. You either cough up the dough or you die thirsty.
Re: (Score:2)
The vast majority have cable.... (Score:2)
Re:If the FCC can't enforce net neutrality... (Score:4, Insightful)
The free market works well in MOST situations but not every single one. For starters, this type of industry is nearly impossible to enter into unless you have billions of dollars to invest or you have government help. Guess what all the telcos had? Both (hah) but they got government help. You know what that means? That means WE own those lines. The telcos don't get to decide what we get to do with the lines that we paid for. This isn't the free market...sometimes you are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Seriously though, why do people keep saying this? Is it this libertarian movement thing where people think that every single thing can be decided by the market? I really feel as if people that say this are honestly not even thinking about what they're saying and just repeating something they saw someone else say. I have to be honest...I'm definitely starting to see this a lot here. I feel strange not being a zealot to some cause sometimes...like is it that hard for some of you people to stand back and think harder on these situations? Are you so completely bound to your idealism that it like...warps reality? Some of the shit I see people say on here is honestly just brain dead. Really. They don't think about what they're saying or consider actual situations so much as they have a knee jerk reaction that suits whatever mantra they hold. It's irritating and quite frankly makes for shitty discussion. I mean there is a difference between my having a different opinion on a matter and someone just like...I don't know...not even paying attention to facts? It's like watching politicians debate. We get mad at them for this kind of retarded shit and then do it ourselves. Do you really think this or were you trying to score some free karma?
Re: (Score:2)
Stop using this argument. Now. This argument is fucking stupid (excuse my cursing but this irritates me). You apparently live in a different reality than the rest of us. Let's not even address the fact that most people have a choice between dial up or one provider (hell I'm not even sure I can get DSL and I live near one of the biggest cities in the country...Phoenix) and just look at the plain and simple fact that a choice between DSL or Cable internet is not a choice. This has been discussed so many times here it is ridiculous and I see this same dumb ass line parroted over and over again and it infuriates me. They have GOVERNMENT MANDATED MONOPOLIES. By DEFINITION you do not have a choice. It's a FUCKING MONOPOLY.
Except, of course, it's not a monopoly when you have multiple providers. By definition. You also ignore cell phone modems, satellite, and even dial up (I assume your "dial up" is DSL). There's a lot of competitors out there. You just have to look for them first.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
No. Some people have dial up that is not DSL. Do you think the entire country has access to multiple broadband providers because you do?
That's pretty funny. I don't have access to DSL, but I naturally gathered you didn't understand what DSL was. It's still not clear to me whether you have DSL or not.
As to your question about what do the small number of people who don't happen to be on DSL or cable, even if they can't get cell phone, they probably can get satellite.
Re: (Score:2)
(I assume your "dial up" is DSL).
I'm surprised no one has beaten you to death with a router for uttering something so moronic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Does the phrase "too big to fail" sound familiar?
If you buy their services and make no attempt to correct policies you don't like, then you implicitly approve of their policies. This sort of helplessness isn't interesting to me because it indicates a complaint without a serious attempt to fix the problem, ie, a whiner.
Re: (Score:2)
What you are 'expecting' is unreasonable. A select few people [read: consumers] will vote with their dollars and such, but the vast majority of people are literally too busy or too stupid to understand what is going on. You might have thoughts that "they deserve what they get" except that what THEY get WE also get and it doesn't matter how we vote with our dollars in the slightest. THIS is how and why big industry screws the masses and precisely why regulation is needed.
Puppies and kittens are defenseles
Re: (Score:2)
Going without internet is easy...until you find that you need it.
Internet service, with its tie-ins to keeping contact and getting jobs and doing business with the government, is fast becoming a utility as indispensable as water and electricity are not.
Re: (Score:2)
You might have thoughts that "they deserve what they get" except that what THEY get WE also get and it doesn't matter how we vote with our dollars in the slightest.
I bet you haven't even tried.
Puppies and kittens are defenseless against big giant boots trampling on them. Does that then mean they deserve to be trampled?
So you're now appealing to my tender, jack-booted side? Sure, I'm willing to rule the US with a modestly iron fist (and adequate compensation, of course), but maybe that's not the appropriate solution here?
Re: (Score:2)
1. Satellite? Seriously? Have you ever looked at what satellite ISPs offer? Expensive, slower, high latency, and with capping and throttling worse than any terestrial ISP.
2. Yes, and both DSL and cable ISPs operate on near-identical capping and throttling polices.
3. Dial up? Have you used dial up in the past decade? I used dial up until 4 years ago. It is not an acceptable option.
We are making an attempt to correct policies we don't like via regulation, but apparently that is not an acceptable course
Re: (Score:2)
How?
Perhaps like this! [occupywallst.org]
I don't know what these guys actually stand for but I know they are definitely standing up. and their numbers are growing.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the fault of a government that holds the reign of industry. If they couldn't make or break companies depending on the regulation they passed, they wouldn't be a target for bribes. If we give them MORE regulatory capacity, they will act in a MORE corrupt manner.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
In which case the FCC will recategorize the ISPs in a way that makes it clearly within their powers. It's personally surprising that they didn't just do it in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
They can't just arbitrarily do that. If they try, the courts have remedies. "Yes, Mister Vice President, I realize we were advised not to do this, but, like, the President told us to, now we have to pay billions to Verizon, AT&T, and Time-Warner. You told us to do this."
"Really."
"Yep. I'm just glad that @$$ judge didn't hold us in contempt."
"We would have come and bailed you out."
Re: (Score:3)
Who can?
The usual song-and-dance from these folks is that the market will regulate it, because those customers who are unhappy with non-neutral service will go to another vendor. There are two major problems with this argument:
1. If there are only a few vendors, and new vendors can't get into the market (which they basically can't due to network effects, economies of scale, relationships with phone manufacturers, etc), then the various vendors can all provide non-neutral service and the customers have nowhere to go
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only if Congress has granted them the authority to do so and only for the reasons that Congress specified as grounds to do so.
Again congress has not given the FCC authority to regulate the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the henhouses are perfectly safe with the foxes standing guard outside.
Moron.
Re: (Score:2)
The henhouses are fine. I do however fear for the hens' lives.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they use the public right of way and are heavily subsidised by government dollars? Or the fact that they've set themselves up as an anti-competitive cartel preventing prices from dropping and quality from increasing. Around here the speeds haven't gotten any better in a decade while the price is still quite expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Any proof for anything you have claimed?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the burden of proof here is on you to prove that the FCC can't regulate the ISPs.
As for the subsidies the system was designed by the US government in the beginning and it still gets subsidized by tax dollars. Here's one example. http://wireless.fcc.gov/outreach/index.htm?job=funding [fcc.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
That's very backwards. The default assumption (thank God) is that they don't have the power to regulate unless they've specifically been given that power.
Re: (Score:2)
speak for yourself
in civilization in the last 4 years we went form 256kbps mobile speeds to 20-50mbps speeds depending on carrier. and i get a lot more minutes than i did just 8 years ago
Re: (Score:2)
Those speeds aren't typical. Also, if you're talking about carrier, you're talking about cell phones and those are heavily capped, I think that T-Mobile and Sprint are the only ones left that don't cap and T-Mobile throttles it back significantly after 5gb.
For household internet connections with a more generous cap, I have a hard time believing that the kinds of speeds your citing are common in the US.
Re: (Score:2)
The government in theory needs to allow the market to work by preventing monopolies.
However, two problems prevent this in practice:
One, corporations are big bruisers with beefy legal departments and they HAVE and WILL AGAIN sue the crap out of anyone that tries to force them to compete. For this I cite TDS vs. Monticello, a renowned case where a city begged for municipal fiber and got turned down, but then they got sued by TDS and got an injunction slapped against them. TDS built the network out under the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
You have to understand that Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the 24hour corporate spin machine has told them that NN is all about limiting what you can say on the internet. They liken it to the Fairness Doctrine, the now-dead bill that once required broadcasters to give equal time to liberal and conservative viewpoints and, ironically. the same law Limbaugh used to get on the air, a law that once made sense when there was a scarcity of broadcasting outlets.
Net Neutrality works the other way. We now have limitle
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd just blame it on their pathological hate of any form of regulation. I'm sure a few of them would abolish the police and just give everyone guns for self-defence if they could.
please...would that it were so. An armed society is a *polite* society.
Re: (Score:2)
How did that Wild West society work out? There were a lot of guns out there, too, weren't there?
Re: (Score:2)
You have to enforce politeness at gunpoint in the US?
Re: (Score:2)
The internet is an amazing tool, but I think it needs discipline and will to use it efficiently; under the current net neutrality paradigm, it can achieve neither, so its potential can't be realized. I think a tiered internet means a controllable internet, one that would be more useful (and profitable) than the media chaos that reigns there now. Absent attribution and consequences, [wikipedia.org] the internet is an obstacle to control, in much the same way equal access and fairness doctrines impeded the usefulness of b
Re: (Score:2)