Pay to Use MFP? What?

fatcity66

I'm guessing if you are on a store's website there is a good chance you are going to buy something and an unlikely chance you will want to if they make you pay to enter the site so they will eat the cost and/or pay for it through advertising on their website.

Or they will just raise the prices of the items they are trying to sell...

fatcity66

People aren't grasping the full scope of what the net neutrality issue covers. Imagine that you want to start a business. You have this amazing idea/product/service and you want to promote it on the web. Suddenly, you can't because a larger company that sells a competing idea/product/service has paid the ISP (who has a limited amount of throughput and bandwidth) for the largest chunk. Given that the smaller amount available is divided between all other customers in an area, suddenly, your target customers have a harder time getting to your business' website because the lines are choked off. The larger competitor however, has no trouble at all. It's not merely about paying for the Internet. We all pay for the Internet (unless we steal it...tricksy Hobbitses). It's about the ability of corporations and governments to essentially cut out access to information for all but the richest.

It's like if WalMart didn't merely move into an area, and subsequently, smaller stores shut down (victims of fair market capitalism, which I'm fine with for the most part), but they also paid the government* to either not allow or to make it more difficult (by restricting resource access) for any competing business to open up at all.

ETA: *or major resource management

Excellent explanation. Spot on.

fatcity66

so everything should be free?

Thank you for completely missing the point.

so explain it.

If I own a road and let ppl drive on it for free, but 5 people drive gigantic cars and slow everyone else down....id charge them a premium.

But what happens when one company, say RoadCast, owns all the roads in a state? They build crummy roads and only let trucks with lousy merchandise reach the grocery stores. Or they force certain merchants and producers out of business. So you pay a lot for poor quality meats and vegetables, and get poor customer service, because--where else are you going to get your groceries?. That's what's happened to cable and Comcast...

And it's why Internet cable, like roads and electric transmission lines, should largely be public utilities subject to certain rules, such as bandwith charges, the same way most of our roads are public, and the same way electric companies charge power plants for ferrying certain amounts of power over transmission lines, and so on. Bust up Comcast and allow some competition between public utilities to build the roads, and of course keep intact the healthy competition between content providers.

The only problem with this is economics. We know that it is not wise, nor feasible, to bust up, say, power companies. It is cheaper and more efficient for one power company to provide for a large area. At some point, free-market doesn't work. This is where the government comes in handy. They can dictate prices. The company, therefore, has incentive, to cut costs and be inventive in providing the service at said price. This way, there is a monopoly, but it is controlled. It's not ideal, but it's better than any other alternatives that actually work, in real life situations.

You can allow some competition, but the problem here is who owns the lines? Someone has to own all that infrastructure. Maybe it can be shared, but that's messy. Remember phone bills back in the 1980's when you'd call long distance, and have 20 different charges from all the different lines you crossed over. From a customer point of view, that's ridiculous. Then we yelled at them, so then the biggest one said, fine, we'll fix it by buying all the lines. Now everyone has the same issue, but in reverse.

What we all probably want, is not going to be feasible in any foreseeable future, IMO. What we get is going to suck for a while. But, new emerging technologies will provide work-arounds, which will spur future technologies...probably things we haven't even thought of yet, and cant even imagine.

YES, and eventually there will be NO lines. No infrastructure. We will develop technologies that simply send information through the ether.

I can't wait, I hope I get to see it happen, in this life, or the next.

chivalryder

so everything should be free?

Thank you for completely missing the point.

so explain it.

If I own a road and let ppl drive on it for free, but 5 people drive gigantic cars and slow everyone else down....id charge them a premium.

Are you kidding me? charge for larger cars??? wow dude makes no sense whatsoever.

I take it you don't drive on toll roads? The more axles you have, the more you pay. I still don't think it applies to net neutrality though.

Big difference here though: the vehicles driving on the toll roads are consumers. Us, who pay the ISP a fee to browse the internet are consumers. The tech companies who send the information that we browse on the internet are not consumers to the ISP.

Big difference.

No_Finish_Line

Comcast already does have data limits. If you go over you end up paying an extra fee.

i read an article a few years ago saying that eventually cable ISP will have data limits just like cell phone providers for the reasons mentioned in my post above.

if/when that happens your all going to want to cry in your cornflakes

someone mentioned that there was a 300gb data limit. if thats the limit you speak of, then boo hoo. have you ever hit the limit or known anyone who has? i coudn't hit that if i sat there for a month and tried.

still, no limit would be better.

No_Finish_Line

YES, and eventually there will be NO lines. No infrastructure. We will develop technologies that simply send information through the ether.

I can't wait, I hope I get to see it happen, in this life, or the next.

i dare say they will still invent some way of limiting, charging you for time/data or at least a monthly fee

avalonms

I think it's adorable that we all act like we have any say on what happens.

Large companies will figure out what will best serve their bottom line, and they'll persuade the Senators and Congressmen they pay off to vote the way they want them to.

Nobody in power gives a crap if consumers get screwed. 20,000 names on a petitions means nothing compared to a $20 million dollar campaign contribution.

Yet, who elects the Senators and Congressmen?

fatcity66

YES, and eventually there will be NO lines. No infrastructure. We will develop technologies that simply send information through the ether.

I can't wait, I hope I get to see it happen, in this life, or the next.

i dare say they will still invent some way of limiting, charging you for time/data or at least a monthly fee

Of course. Until "money" is eliminated, there will always be greed.

No_Finish_Line

YES, and eventually there will be NO lines. No infrastructure. We will develop technologies that simply send information through the ether.

I can't wait, I hope I get to see it happen, in this life, or the next.

i dare say they will still invent some way of limiting, charging you for time/data or at least a monthly fee

Of course. Until "money" is eliminated, there will always be greed.

clearly we have a trekkie here lol, or a trekker? lol

fatcity66

YES, and eventually there will be NO lines. No infrastructure. We will develop technologies that simply send information through the ether.

I can't wait, I hope I get to see it happen, in this life, or the next.

i dare say they will still invent some way of limiting, charging you for time/data or at least a monthly fee

Of course. Until "money" is eliminated, there will always be greed.

clearly we have a trekkie here lol, or a trekker? lol

"We work to better ourselves..."



:bigsmile:

evilrobert

Couldn't make it past the first page. lol. Someone trying to compare the Internet to "owning a road" is ridiculous.

It's like having an interstate system that's fully functional and paid for, but a bunch of people want the right to put up toll booths to make more money off of it. If you're willing to pay top dollar for a speedpass, then you're good to go. But if you can't afford the speedpass, you get to get stuck stopped at the toll booth waiting for the guy in front of you to find 50 cent in pennies in his ashtray.

When really, it's bigger than the US, and the US government has no right to turn the internet into a profit system for companies that are already taking massive tax breaks and profits without hesitation.