By Vin Armani
In this video, Vin Armani explains why you’ve been tricked into supporting net neutrality. Some big corporations don’t want a free market. They want a protected market with barriers. Lawmakers seem hungry to regulate the Internet. It’s a dangerous combination that infects most industries. Don’t let it happen to the Internet.
Watch the full broadcast here
Live free and succeed outside the rigged system at Counter Markets
Vin Armani is the host of The Vin Armani Show on Activist Post, agorist entrepreneur and co-founder of Counter Markets. Follow Vin on Twitter and subscribe on YouTube. Get the weekly podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. Vin is available for interviews at email – Vin (at) VinArmani.com.
Wow this entire video is complete bulls–t. I’m a network administrator so I understand a thing or two about the internet. First of all the FCC privacy rules that were voted down by the Republican congress & signed by Trump were not opposed by the FTC, the FTC staff comment submitted to the FCC as seen here https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/advocacy_documents/comment-staff-bureau-consumer-protection-federal-trade-commission-federal-communications-commission/160527fcccomment.pdf is in fact providing clarifying language on how to ensure strong protections. The one & only issue they had with the FCC rules dealt with the fact that the rules would only be applicable to ISPs, since it was only the Title II classification that gave the FCC authority to create them, so other participants in the market would not be subject to the same rules, which the FTC described as “not optimal” since there would not be uniform rules across the board. Literally the next sentence mentions how they have “repeatedly called for Congress to pass additional laws to strengthen the privacy and security protections provided by all companies…” Also, the reason why this repeal matters is because of the Title II classification the FTC does not have regulatory authority over this anymore, so know the FTC will not be protecting our privacy rights & in fact no one will because since the repeal as things stand there are officially no regulatory bodies with authority to regulate what internet providers do with private information they collect on people.
Also, Title II classification is not some recent change that Obama enacted. The internet was classified under Title II until 2005 when Bush’s FCC chairman changed that classification using all the same bulls–t arguments being used now about investment will increase, service quality will go up, competition will increase, etc… & best of all the companies don’t want to throttle bandwidth to this or that site so there will be no downsides. Well what do you know, investments in infrastructure in the sector fell something like 3%-5%, they did throttle bandwidth to high bandwidth sites/applications, monopolies still existed (since federal regulation has literally nothing to do with why they exist in the first place,) & quality fell. All of which is exactly what will happen again if it is removed from Title II classification. The reason Obama’s FCC was forced to put it back under Title II (he didn’t want to, but public pressure forced him to,) was because when the FCC tried to force Comcast to not throttle their customers data after they had been caught doing that. When taken to court the FCC lost that case explicitly due to the fact that they no longer had ISPs under Title II authority so they did not have the power to do what they were trying to do. https://www.eff.org/files/comcast_v_fcc_dc_cir_2010.pdf
Monopolies by cable/broadband providers are not FCC-created monopolies, in fact they are the result of a lack of federal regulation. Up until 1992 with the passage of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act cable companies were allowed to negotiate exclusive rights with municipalities around the country which would prevent competitors from entering the local market. After 1992 all these little monopoly fiefdoms had already been established & the cost of entry into the market make it effectively impossible for anyone to enter the market which in economics by the way is called a natural monopoly.
People seem to be missing a big part of this story. The American taxpayer payed for most (if not all) of the high speed lines in the U.S. The big boys now want control of that investment to produce yet another revenue stream.
This article is fake news. Net neutrality PREVENTS a rigged system by giving EVERYONE access. Net neutrality prevents corporations from deciding your page will load slower than others. Activist Post should be ashamed of publishing this fake news.
The difference between “open” or “neutral” in this debate.
The Internet has always been “open,” because anyone can use it for any application. The ISPs are the Internet gatekeepers facing possible regulation, and that’s about remaining “neutral.”
The term “network neutrality” was coined by Columbia law professor Tim Wu in 2003. The basic concept was that all Internet traffic should be allowed to flow freely regardless of what it is or where it comes from.
The Internet was a simpler place a decade ago, however. Now, in an age when consumers surf the web, Skype and watch Netflix simultaneously, ISPs face a demand for more bandwidth—and naturally, they want to be paid for providing it. Net neutrality proponents say a pay-to-play fast lane won’t be neutral, and may be considered less open, because it will hamper companies that can’t afford faster service.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2851979/net-neutrality-five-myths-and-the-real-facts.html
A widely-cited example of a violation of net neutrality principles was when the Internet service provider Comcast was secretly slowing (a.k.a. “throttling”) uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) applications by using forged packets.[6]
Comcast didn’t stop blocking these protocols like BitTorrent until the FCC ordered them to do so.[7]
In 2004, The Madison River Communications company was fined $15,000 by the FCC for restricting their customer’s access to Vonage which was rivaling their own services.[8]
AT&T was also caught limiting access to FaceTime, so only those users who paid for the new shared data plans could access the application.[9]
In April 2017, an attempt to compromise net neutrality in the United States is being considered by the newly appointed FCC chairman, Ajit Varadaraj Pai.[10][11]
On May 16, 2017, a process began to roll back Open Internet rules, in place since 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
I am the reluctant activist at TheReluctantActivist.org. I have been following the Activist Post, Vin Armani and Counter Markets as viable alternative media outlets for myself and my followers for months.
This article is a huge game changer for me and indicative of some very questionable thinking. To claim that there is anything that comes close to an open market economy or a government that gives a rats ass for the public is total BS IMO.
This is a battle of monopolistic giants and a government and a media whose job it is — is to cover up what these giants do. It is all theater. There is no question that government is systemically corrupt however they at least try to pretend otherwise. The legal goal of corporations is profit not ethical behavior — profits. To think that left unregulated that corporations will do the right think is a total joke.
Google, Facebook, YouTube and Amazon have all been caught in censorship and blacklisting. Jeff Bozo (misspelled on purpose) from Amazon bought the Washington Post for 250 million in 2013 and recently received a $600 million contract from the CIA. But we all know he will not hesitate to cover corruption scandals that stick to the CIA like skin.
He knocked Wikileaks off from Amazon when Joe Lieberman complained. Oh ya we can trust this guy to do the right thing. However government and media work for these same scum bags – attempting to keep the truth hidden from the public. This time we have multibillion dollar monopolies on both sides of the issue.
Wow the Activist Post, Vin Armani and Counter Markets simply unbelievable
Regardless of the outcome the PR firms will win and the pubic will lose.
TheReluctantActivist
The FCC doesn’t decide which cable companies get the local “monopoly”, it’s up to local municipalities for the right of way to install the lines. What’s happened is, the cable industry received a big boost because they already had the cable when the Internet came along. In some areas, like the one where I live here in SoCal, we DO have the choice of either cable or fiber.
Back at the turn of the century, 2001 or so, the FCC was considering ways to give consumers more choice by forcing cable providers to allow non-cable (i.e. dial-up at that point) ISP’s access to their headends in order to provide fast service to their subscribers. I know about this because I was a VP at a national ISP at the time, and I wrote comments to the FCC on this to no avail.