Tech at Night: Zombie Net Neutrality just won’t die.

Red State ^ | May 3 2014 | Neil Stevens

[PoloSec]

Even though repeated losses in court are making the Net Neutrality folks have to compromise with reality, the fact is they’re still freaking out about the ability to charge more for better service, which is a good thing to have. The facts are though that we don’t need new laws, and the laws they do want would just pick winners and losers, which is why Netflix is pushing so hard. If the roles are reversed they’d be screaming that I was being paid by Netflix.

Picking winners and losers is a theme in fights happening in cities across the country as entrenched incumbent taxi services fight Uber innovation.

There are a few things we need FCC for though, phone jamming is one of them. If only they’d content themselves with that, instead of trying to meddle.

From where I sit, there’s not much difference between the bundling Microsoft did that led to antitrust suits, and the bundling Google does with Android. It was garbage then and it’s garbage now, but the meddlers will meddle.

[Age of Reason]

All I know is if it’s bad for the internet and good for brick and mortar, I’m for it.

[JohnInSoCal]

the death of net neutrality just means higher prices for internet access. It would be fine if there was true competition for internet access but there isn’t. Essentially in the US a handful of companies are monopolies that provide internet access. Your options are telephone monopoly, or cable monopoly and that’s about it. So the monopolies who are not satisfied with a locked in customer base that has little to no choice on their provider now want to charge the companies that their customers visit on the web. Next up TWC and other monopolies will probably want to charge banks for allowing internet access to online banking accounts.

I’m all for a truly free market but pretending that companies like TWC, ATT, Verizon are all about preserving the free market system is laughable.