Net Brutality

[Jadedvet]

The best argument against net neutrality is that it introduces more government regulation over the net. This is completely true but that first panel sums it up nicely. Regulation is like the mild satan to the telecom's big satan.

At least the government has to maintain an illusion of being on our side.

 

[Vivi22]

There are advantages to being a small country, I guess. In Israel, every ISP is available everywhere so there's actual competition.

Sadly, the inability of small telecom companies to compete outside of the major metropolitan areas in Canada has less to do with the size of Canada and more to do with our government basically granting and protecting the existing oligopoly.

 

[47_Ronin]

You gotta love Germany when it comes to choices. We got plenty. Beer, Internet, political parties, women... not in that order of course.

 

[Solo-Wing]

Ah, the old choice. Do I bend over for Bell or Rogers for my internet?

Orrrrrr if you are lucky enough to have Shaw then you can get them. They actually have souls.

 

[ryukage_sama]

So, in America muggers are black, but in Canada they're white supremacists. Glad that got cleared up.

The fact that the FCC is allowing municipal broadband over state objections is good, but I doubt it'll mean much for my ISP until I move several hundred miles out of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

You're pretty much spot on about Canada.

You either bend over for Bell, Rogers, or Videotron. All three are shady assholes who charge a lot, and give you really low caps. >_>

Wait, why are we all measuring the sizes of the dicks that screw us over?

"You think you've got it bad? My cable provider has three inches on yours!"

"Yeah, well we get to choose between Sauron with a serrated metal condom, the one with bad odor, and Gary Busey."

Can't we all agree that cable providers are super evil, and be friends?

Because the internet isn't worth surfing if people aren't letting everyone know that they have it much worse than anyone else.

Instead of saying, unifying to the single greatest pro-consumer force in history and declaring with one voice what tactics will be permissible.

That might take work and all. So... yeah, probably not.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

The best argument against net neutrality is that it introduces more government regulation over the net. This is completely true but that first panel sums it up nicely. Regulation is like the mild satan to the telecom's big satan.

At least the government has to maintain an illusion of being on our side.

And of us being able to vote them out if we want to. A private company with a monopoly can do something that literally 100% of their customers believe is pure evil and would be worth swapping them out for any potential competitor over, and it still wouldn't happen. Whereas a politician could at least theoretically lose their job if they managed to piss off their own base so badly that they'd defect to the opposite party. Which will still never happen but is at least conceivable as a hypothetical.

 

[Rituro]

Was not aware the Critical Miss gang was Canadian. That made this strip 100x better.

 

[Doom972]

There are advantages to being a small country, I guess. In Israel, every ISP is available everywhere so there's actual competition.

Sadly, the inability of small telecom companies to compete outside of the major metropolitan areas in Canada has less to do with the size of Canada and more to do with our government basically granting and protecting the existing oligopoly.

We had a very similar problem with cell-phone service providers until a few years back. I know how it feels.

 

[Karma168]

Where I am in the country at the moment (England), I can only get one ISP and that one ISP can provide a maximum of 2.90mbps.

So yeah. Hard to sympathise too much...

Where do you live that has that? All the providers bar virgin use the same BT phone lines, only difference between me and the guy next door is who gets the money every month. If you can get 1 you should be able to get them all (almost).

Though that speed sounds about right for anywhere that's not in a town/city.

 

[Westaway]

I don't know man... Canadians are really nice. Heck, I learned that most leave their doors open without ever locking em.

If someone walked in, chances are they'd greet the stranger. Violence doesn't often happen there, and no doubt crime happens- but in Canada it's way laid back in comparison to most countries to my surprise. I want to visit there someday and see what's up.

I seriously hope you don't actually believe that. Where do fables like this even come from? No one from Canada would say anything like it, and neither would anyone who had visited Canada. Is it Americans who are bored and come up with random lies about countries they know nothing about?

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

Where I am in the country at the moment (England), I can only get one ISP and that one ISP can provide a maximum of 2.90mbps.

So yeah. Hard to sympathise too much...

Where do you live that has that? All the providers bar virgin use the same BT phone lines, only difference between me and the guy next door is who gets the money every month. If you can get 1 you should be able to get them all (almost).

Though that speed sounds about right for anywhere that's not in a town/city.

There are 5600 hundred exchanges the further away from an exchange the worse your connection so if you live in the little villages of a 100 people or so 20 minutes plus away from anyone else your screwed as you only get 1 cabinet for everyone ( I used to live in one such villege of 26 that are served by 1 exchange 30 minutes by car away with only 1 cabinet serving all 250 properties).

Go to SamKnows (https://www.samknows.com/broadband/) for more information and it shows availability of all 5600 UK telephone exchanges and that apart from BT most ISP's who LLU only put there equipment in around the half most profitable

Still at least 'fibre to the cabinet' has reached nearly 3300 exchanges.

 

[Elfgore]

If you're anywhere near upper management in an ISP company, you instantly go into my "asshole" and "human scum" category. Fucking ISPs are assholes no matter where you go I guess. I do find it sad how hard it is to get decent internet speeds with unlimited or decent cap in this day in age.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I prefer burnt umber myself.

More like burrrrrrrn! UMBRAGE! Am I right?

[small](Spoiler: I'm not right.)[/small]

Anyway, it's odd how the US brags so hard about how open competition and capitalism make things so much better, and any sort of government control is one step away from flying a hammer-and-sickle flag over the Alamo... but then we have so much of the country under control of a monopoly or duopoly (who often collude rather than compete), and we even have companies writing laws for legislatures to pass in order to outlaw things like community broadband- even in areas those companies don't serve.

 

[StreamerDarkly]

What's more, with the brutal quotas and overage fees Canadian ISPs refuse to let go of, the mugger closely monitors the consumption of goods by the household and skims of anything deemed excessive. Sure you can have a late night snack, but it will cost you lunch the next day. I even caught the bastard making eyes at the wife.

 

[Vigormortis]

Where I live, my choice of high-speed ISP is Comcast or....Comcast. I quite literally have no other choice.

Worse still, it's as if Comcast knows this is the case and has seemingly decided it can dick around with the quality of my service while continuing to increase the monthly costs.

 

[Foehunter82]

Anyway, it's odd how the US brags so hard about how open competition and capitalism make things so much better, and any sort of government control is one step away from flying a hammer-and-sickle flag over the Alamo... but then we have so much of the country under control of a monopoly or duopoly (who often collude rather than compete), and we even have companies writing laws for legislatures to pass in order to outlaw things like community broadband- even in areas those companies don't serve.

That's because the so-called "capitalists" in America are actually "monopolists," and yet no one here in America seems to have the balls to challenge them. Frankly, I think that Title II's a good thing, but I think we need to break up these monopolies.

Where I live, my choice of high-speed ISP is Comcast or....Comcast. I quite literally have no other choice.

Worse still, it's as if Comcast knows this is the case and has seemingly decided it can dick around with the quality of my service while continuing to increase the monthly costs.

That's because they can. There need to be laws on the books that keep these companies from having laws passed to prevent competition and/or municipal internet service. They need to be reinforced with actual punitive fines (the type that would take these companies years to recover from).

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I live in Southern Alberta and my 2 choices are Telus or Shaw. I'm currently bending over for Shaw.

 

[rosac]

I live in rural Yorkshire. Know all that fancy "fibre optic" companies like to brag about? Yeah it's not happening. They even dug up the road, had a prime opportunity to put it in, and didn't. The rural North is worlds away from the rest of the country, it's getting a bit silly.

 

[Bix96]

Wow I must live in some bizarro world or something because all I have been seeing is people heralding this as the new SOPA And this is just giving control of the internet to a tyrannical government. Here are some qoutes I have seen from my walks around the net...

"Net neutrality actually gives the government the power to censor the internet so well done you fucking idiots, the internet is going to die."

"The government can now censor the internet so any views that the government doesn't agree with, for instance police brutality, will be removed. The government now has complete power over anything you see or hear so that you can just become sheep to their words. I'm not an anarchist, I'm just against everything the british and american governments have been doing to control our views."

"It is a big mistake to let any government authority to step in, because trust me...they will not play fair and they will never let go."

"The people you just handed complete comtrol over the Internet to are the same ones that wanted SOPA and PIPA does that ring a bell dumbfucks? I seriously think that popularity and misinformation is the reson for this... You can't even read the 332 pages until days after this was passed. Why because none of you assholes bothered to look into it and fight for your right to knowledge... COME ON!"

"It doesn't really matter who's against it or for it. You just gave the internet to the biggest monopoly out there, one that's been trying to control the internet forever! Hello! SOPA and PIPA. Do you not understand Article II and what means? They put the internet under 'utility', instead of 'information'. Which means it can be controlled because it's no longer a News Source. If this society would understand economics and competition between businesses. We wouldn't have to worry about ISP's blocking stuff, because there would be a better ISP that you could switch too! Have you learned noting the past administrations? The ONLY thing the government knows how to do is declaring war or control! How in the hell does that or this, (you couldn't read the 332 page "bill" until it was passed) not bother you?" 

"Everyone can be like all "yay" about the dcc taking over the Internet. But just remember the government now decides what is "lawful content" in the Internet, that means news that might tell the truth about our government lying to us. Would and could be pulled. As "hate speech" and sites like BitTorrent and filing sharing can now be taken away from us for illegal sharing. This was a well packaged lie to us, just like healthcare."

"you know who else has cenorship over their internet? CHINA!!! great going morons"

"ObamaNet"