[lifeofgrace]

The net has been a pull technology where I decide what I want as opposed to push technologies like newspapers, radio and TV where the media companies decide what I get to see. The ISPs who get paid to limit bandwidth to the payers competitors are trying to turn the net into another push technology.

The ISPs can limit my bandwidth based on the plan I pay for. They can decide to limit total throughput to make people who sit and watch movies all day to pay for their usage. But picking and chosing which sites I can visit at full speed is unacceptable.

You're buying in to the lies. The Internet is NOT a pull technology where the ISP is selling you an onramp onto some "superhighway"--it's a group of PRIVATE NETWORKS interconnected using a number of international standards. ISPs serve content providers as well as individuals and businesses. If a large content provider who has users across all network backbones wants to best serve their users, they will make interchange agreements with the major ISPs who serve those users. Period.

Nobody is "picking and choosing" which sites you get. Your ISP does, however, have an interest in serving their customers, and having (Netflix for example) using all the bandwidth to the detriment of other services is not necessarily in their interest. Now, it's very possible that your ISP is reserving priority bandwidth for their own services like VOIP. But if they are not meeting your needs, you are free to change to another ISP.

[Rusty0604]

Ted Cruz fires back at Al Franken with net neutrality explainer

Cruz used a video that he uploaded to YouTube and social media that shows the senator explaining what net neutrality is and how it works.

“What happens when government starts regulating a service as a public utility? It calcifies everything. It freezes it in place,” Cruz says, in a clip from a speech he delivered Friday in Texas.

“Let’s give a simple contrast. The Telecommunications Act of 1934 was adopted to regulate these,” Cruz says holding up a landline phone. “To put regulations in place and what happened? It froze everything in place. This (Cruz puts his hand on the landline phone) is regulated by Title II. This (Cruz holds up a cell phone) is not.”

Why you should care about net neutrality

“Your smartphone, the Internet, the apps — all of this is outside of Title II,” Cruz continues. “The innovation is happening without having to go to government regulators and say, ‘Mother, may I?’ We want a whole lot more of this (Cruz holds up a cell phone) and a whole lot less of this (Cruz points at the landline phone).”

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/17/politics/franken-net-neutrality/index.html

Video at link