{"id":2097,"date":"2014-01-16T15:01:58","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T23:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2097"},"modified":"2014-01-16T15:01:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T23:01:58","slug":"well-the-horse-is-gone-and-the-barn-is-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2097","title":{"rendered":"Well, the horse is gone and the barn is on fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FCC\u2019s bluff has been called<\/a> and the courts have basically taken a giant shit on Net Neutrality. The way is paved, at least on paper, for ISPs to revert to a fully cable-TV model of tiered access, speeding up (and slowing down) all manner of services however it suits them. \u00a0The obvious one that everyone goes to: Comcast, but for the consent order forced on them by the NBCU merger, could start their own Netflix-like service and then exempt it from throttling or broadband caps, with the result that Xfinity customers could either struggle with Netflix at 128kbps and three movies\u2019 worth of data per month, or else subscribe to Comflix.<\/p>\n

This is bullshit. \u00a0It\u2019s bullshit that stemmed from the original misdiagnosis that ISPs were \u201cinformation services\u201d rather than \u201ccommunication services.\u201d \u00a0That might have been true for the likes of AOL or Compuserve or Prodigy. but it was never<\/em> true for broadband ISP services. \u00a0Comcast might try to spin their \u201ctriple play\u201d offerings as \u201cinformation services\u201d based on the presence of TV, but as television converges with the Internet, it\u2019s becoming more false with each passing season.<\/p>\n

Right now, there is exactly one surefire way of bringing this back under control: Congress will have to declare broadband ISPs to be common carriers and communication services. \u00a0Good luck with that. \u00a0There\u2019s no more reason for this to pass Congress than anything else, unless somebody comes up with a wiggle that allows the GOP\u2019s mental-defective wing to be separated from its techno-libertarian pretenders so the latter can team up with Democrats on a quick fix. \u00a0And to be blunt, the same thing needs to happen to wireless, because AT&T has already announced a plan for \u201cSponsored Data\u201d that will allow companies to pay for their content not to count against user quotas\u2026which opens the door for wireless data to be used only to access those services willing to pay the freight themselves.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really hard not to be pessimistic about the direction of the country. \u00a0But hell, we don\u2019t have kids, so in fifty years or so it won\u2019t really be our problem anyway. Right? \u00a0It\u2019s a shitty attitude, but then, we have pretty shitty politics.<\/p>\n

Of which etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FCC\u2019s bluff has been called and the courts have basically taken a giant shit on Net Neutrality. The way is paved, at least on paper, for ISPs to revert to a fully cable-TV model of tiered access, speeding up (and slowing down) all manner of services however it suits them. \u00a0The obvious one that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Well, the horse is gone and the barn is on fire”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}