Good.

My alma mater sends me papers by staff and students, one was on net neutrality.
The argument of the paper is we should have it as it keeps average speeds up, some analysis is given -if there are a range of plans, more customers will move to the high speed service thus slowing it down. (!).
This misses the point, even if with good logic a performance case could be made for net neutrality, that is not an argument for regulation. On another thread, someone wrote (was it freedomforall?) that regulation may (the correct word is 'will') increase entry costs so it reduces competition. Again, what passes for government intervention 'for the common good' fails that purpose, it is a tax on consumers which pays for regulators and cronies.

Some in this group may not like Mark Cuban, but I certainly do. People either have forgotten or never knew that he was a founder of Compuserve, which later got merged into America Online. I got onto the Internet at the whopping speed of 312 bits per second back in 1985 using Compuserve. As an 18-year-old high schooler, I was the first person in my county on Compuserve. Their service was Gulch-worthy.

Awesome that a successful modern entrepreneur is making such a case leveraging her foundations.

He also is clearly not just a selfish twit, as people assert Ayn Rand advocates are. He is one of the more philanthropic, approachable Shark Tank Sharks.

Great!

Kudos to Mark Cuban. Go with Galt.

In direct response to the original post, Mark Cuban’s parallel to Atlas Shrugged is flawed. Hank Reardon invented his metal. He has all rights to it. Comcast did not invent the internet and bandwidth. The military invented the internet using our tax dollars and then the university system expounded upon it, also largely our tax dollars. Yes, Comcast improved upon the infrastructure and I do not begrudge Comcast protecting and capitalizing on its investment.
This is a complex subject. People seem to view the term ‘net neutrality’ to imply ‘no regulation’. Though in reality it is brought before the government to regulate a provider, in this case Comcast, from restricting bandwidth access based on data type and origin or destination.
My position as a Comcast customer is that I have purchased the bandwidth at a subscribed rate and should have access to any service across it at that subscribed rate no exceptions. Comcast is receiving my fee for the service. Without net neutrality Comcast can decide which data is allowed across the bandwidth and from which source. Additionally, they could throttle speeds to and from destinations effectively holding hostage that bandwidth which is deemed in competition.
My consumer response to that may be to go to a competitive provider, ATT or Direct TV (which is still tangent as they have to get their content from somewhere via overlapping infrastructure(s).

ummmmm....... "[net neutrality] would stop de facto monopolies
like Comcast from creating artificial barriers between
new companies and subscribers"

I thought that Hank Rearden's monopoly on his new
alloy was a good thing, and well deserved. . if a
monopoly exists in a just society (like we had one),
isn't it a transitory thing unless sustained by the
force of government or the mob?

so, the bloggers want the government to trust-bust
Comcast. why? too damned good? -- j

So, Atlas Shrugged is Objectivist "pulp" fiction?

Nice find, AJ.

There are really two aspects of Net Neutrality. One is the role of government. The other is the role of private opportunity in the market. The current Administration - as is typical of progressives - thinks that the only solution involves government control. The problem is that this always leads to cronyism and backroom deals. There are WAY too many examples to list here, but GM, Green Energy, Goldman Sachs, etc. come to mind.

To argue that every packet passing across the Internet is of the same value is ludicrous. The question is should essentially monopolistic providers be allowed to legally extort money from certain content providers under the guise of "prioritization".