Which behavior? Um, both Comcast and Verizon throttling Netflix unless Netflix paid a bribe, i mean, extra fee? And Verizon even kept right on throttling after being paid said 'bribe'.

I already paid Verizon to give me access to the internet (up AND down) at set speeds, they don't get to then charge the content provider that I have specifically requested content from another fee.

If there were any competition, people who were having their Netflix traffic throttled would switch to another ISP, but there aren't any other ISPs for most consumers.

So it's not 'free' then right? There aren't laws governing the behavior of the ISPs so it can't be free.

'Freedom' is the express lack of restrictions, i.e. 'freedom of movement'. 'rule of law' specifically limits what is allowed and/or acceptable to society for the benefit of said society.

FCC regulation of UTILITIES is a restriction of the utility operator's activity for the benefit of society. You don't have 4 water systems in your town, you don't have 4 electric grids. Why should we have to have 4 sets of internet infrastructure to have competition?

ISPs, through franchising, have become defacto monopolies in entire areas and are behaving as such. Unless you build entirely separate infrastructure (i.e. 4 water systems) there is no competition and thus no free market. That is ALL the FCC is enforcing here - as a defacto monopoly you can't favor or disfavor traffic on your infrastructure.

Economies that balance free market with regulations are the ones that do the best.

Full scale anarchy is the only truly 'free' market. I.e. whatever I want to do is justified since I want to do it.

Too many libertarians and other supposedly 'free market' proponents conveniently forget the role regulations play in creating a level playing field...like net neutrality.

Then said libertarian is naive.

The 'monopoly' of ISPs has resulted in many many many MORE people having actual access to the service than if a true monopoly were in place. Nobody would build out to everybody because it simply isn't cost effective to charge $100/month for where you had to put in a $50K line extension over a few miles just for them. Even the suburbs wouldn't have had service until relatively recently. Monopolies only go where there is profit.


The problem is that there wasn't a term limit on these franchises saying that after 20 years or whatever, the networks became open and would be entirely separate from the CONTENT running on the networks.

It's old news but in PA they ruled setting auto insurance rates by gender wasn't 'fair' so PA made starting insurance rates the same for everybody.

linky

End result? Women's rates when up and men's went down...totally what they were going for I'm sure

Actually most things can be negotiated for. What determines it is the relative price. If it's 5 bucks, they aren't likely to negotiate because they have very little profit margin.

If it's $100K, there's going to be multiple 1000s in wiggle room.

But mostly, you list examples of buying 'goods' and not services. Services are inherently more negotiable since it's time vs money instead of stuff vs money. (basically the same as above)

That's cute. You believe government with no oversight is competent?

And your proof that these LOVEINT 'self-reporting' incidents were the result of periodic reinvestigation is....what?

Self reporting != admitting it to people already looking into something.

There wasn't any investigation even started with most of them...until they came forward.

That does not bode well since *most* people aren't going to self-report.

because in an electric car, changing the setting on the radio can actually change the setting on your brakes.

When connections are made via code, you have NO idea what changing one setting is going to do because it's writing to a common location that multiple things are reading from.

Is that scenario realistic? Of course not, but any one who programs has experience changing setting A and watching B, C and Q go haywire just because somebody didn't document what they were doing.

yeah but this would become actual reality

"Would you want a car that would crash twice a day for no reason?"

I can fully agree with this statement. However it's not the point I was making. What about someone worse than a minimum wage greasemonkey....like me? Perfectly legal today....

Is there a source for this? I know things like ultra-light aircraft have very low regulatory hurdles, but cars on the open road? I thought there were minimums in place that get stricter every year. Like how all new cars need a tire pressure monitoring system?

Genuinely curious :)

flamebait, really? just wow.

The large percentage of people who have been 'disciplined' over misuse have self-reported their offenses...i.e. they have no idea of the scope.