I'm not sure how to post this without seeming like a troll, but... is this guy campaigning for or against net neutrality? I can't tell from the article. He wants to protect "our most basic freedoms", right? So... he wants net neutrality? But then he says "no taxpayer dollars [should be] used to fund these net neutrality rules."
I'm sure I'm being either naive, stupid or both right now, but I'm honestly confused.
He thinks (mainly because of ignorance, I guess) that ISPs are competing in a decent approximation of a free market, and that consumers have a choice of providers offering various services at various competitive price points. That's how markets in the USA are intended to work, so I guess it's a reasonable assumption, if you're completely ignorant of the state of telecom in the USA.
Just as an example, Verizon decided that my home state of New Hampshire wasn't a desirable market any more for terrestrial broadband. So they sold their franchise (basically a state-granted monopoly over the region) to FairPoint. The state only agreed to give the franchise to FairPoint after FP promised to extend fiber deployment throughout the state, and meet certain access requirements to poor and hard-to-reach areas. (This is why the monopoly is considered a fair tradeoff: the company makes their money on a captive audience in the higher-margin cities, and the state gets guaranteed service to negative-margin rural areas.) Well, it turns out FP were lying through their teeth, have no fiber capability whatsoever, and don't have enough money to improve the infrastructure at all. Verizon shareholders lost over 1 billion dollars, but the trouble is that there is no competition for residential broadband left in the state. In some places, you can get 1.5 Mb/s DSL (which the FCC admits doesn't count as "broadband"), a few places you can get Comcast cable, but there are a lot of places where there's just nothing available. And since we're not a desirable market, there's no chance of getting any other companies to deploy to those areas. NH is screwed for the foreseeable future.
tl;dr No one on any side who's been paying attention would make those claims. Status quo is state-granted monopolies, so it's up to the state to enforce reasonable rules on the ISPs.
The Georgia dissidents rallied behind the revealing slogan “Liberty and Property without restrictions”—which explicitly linked the liberty of white men to their right to hold blacks as property. Until they could own slaves, the white Georgians considered themselves unfree.
People who oppose net neutrality don't trust the FCC to be a benevolent regulator of the internet. For example, this blog post has links to a number of longer form pieces that make the case against it:
As a libertarian, I would interpret protecting "our most basic freedoms" meaning the right to freely enter into agreements with whichever service providers we choose. If a service provider chooses to limit bandwidth to certain sites I would be free to buy Internet service elsewhere. But, as a libertarian, I also recognize the fact that this will never work as long as government continues to regulate these services in any way. If government gives special favours to big providers there will never be an opportunity for small ISPs to compete.
He thinks (or claims) that we have network neutrality right now, and doesn't want that to change. He thinks (or claims) that since we got to this point without any rules or laws in place, we shouldn't eff that up putting any in place. (Just to be clear, I do not agree with his perspective, just explaining what I think it is.)
'Net neutrality' is a plan for government to regulate ISPs.
Ostensibly, the government will only regulate in the consumers interest --- but the egyptian gov showed the other side of regulation (censorship).
He says he is against net neutrality; he is against government regulation of ISPs.
More interesting than anything he said, is the quote "No man can serve two masters". Currently ISPs serve you, but after net neutrality passes they will serve the government.
All of these stories point to one solution- re-decentralize the Internet. Depending on either corporations or the government for a functioning Internet is a recipe for disaster.
Decentralization depends on standards, infrastructure and property rights. That's all. Bureaucrats and corporations not required. If you want to hook up your network to mine, so your users can share data with mine and vice versa, all we need is power, hardware, ethernet and good 'ol TCP/IP.
Net "Neutrality" advocates would make better use of their time starting their own networks, where anything neutral goes, including equal prioritization of XXX porn and 911 VOIP packets. On my network, if you freely agree to the terms, your porn packets would not be neutral. If you don't like that, you don't have to use my network. Don't like it? Tough. It's called freedom.
There are a number of disturbing aspects of this news, but I find the new "no discussion, no consideration, no compromise" attitude of the Republican party to be extremely frightening.
It works pretty well though. Every issue is framed as a decision whether the country as we know it will be destroyed.
Seems a lot of voters like this style.
Until the mid term elections that's exactly what President Obama did. (He would claim he wants ideas from Republicans, but mention a few things that were no compromise, and it was exactly those things that the Republicans actually wanted a compromise on.)
Basically whoever has a majority talks that way - both parties.
I wish we could have at least 3 (very different) parties so that no one party could ever get an automatic majority.
Failing that I like the current situation where each house has a different party in the majority.
It's just not good for politicians to have too much power, forcing them to compromise and negotiate is very good for them.
The idea of net neutrality comes from the concept of Common Carrier in the Communications Act of 1934: carriers cannot block communications between any two parties (such as favoring their subscribers over those of another carrier). In exchange the carriers are not liable for the content of the communications.
Another thing that seems to totally ignored by Boehner et. al. is that you sometimes need regulation to protect basic rights, the Civil Rights Act for example. Net neutrality (hacker view) is the right to communicate whatever with whomever. The FCC has actually been protecting the Internet, bu ever since Powell the child's term as FCC chairman, the waters have been considerably muddied.
(In order to give my rant some measure of verisimilitude, I attempted to vet it against Common Carrier and Communications Act of 1934 over at Wikipedia. I found two of the worst and most incomplete articles that I have ever encountered. The Act itself is a 333 page PDF. tl;dnr So please be kind. :-)
This looks to be a campaign intentionally designed to confuse with the goal of restricting a truly free Internet in order to benefit big money interests.
Frankly I've had more than enough of mega-corporations corrupting good governance.
Can someone tell me if net neutrality was to fail and big service providers did restrict access as they saw fit - what ways would there be around it without paying extra $ to line their pockets? VPN? Something else? (I don't know much about this stuff so sorry if this is a dumb question)
Do you want corporations to act as unregulated "traffic controllers"? Then you're against net neutrality.
Do you want an accountable government agency with a lackluster track record for citizens' digital rights to act as a "traffic controller"? Then you're for net neutrality.
* Before voting me down, look at the actions the federal government has already taken in regards to traffic control (ala exempting wireless carriers, and kill switch legislation). This smells like traffic control to me.
Then you aren't familiar with network neutrality, which has nothing to do with the FCC dictating what kind of traffic is and is not allowed or controlling traffic.
As I define it: No packet shaping based on what service users are accessing; all packets are created equal.
Wikipedia also has a quite good definition. A key line from it: "The principle advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication."
Sadly, it's a term which is used to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. Political language does horrible things to words.
Now, it's entirely possible that those statements are true 100% of the time, but isn't it much more likely that there are exceptions to them, and if you're intellectually honest, you can acknowledge them? I'm not sure if Google results are a trustworthy source, but look up "corporate donations by party" and you'll see countless examples of corporations taking advantage of whatever party is in power. So you must acknowledge that neither party is completely beholden to "wholesome goodness".
Whichever side wins in the net neutrality debate, some corporations will lose, and others will win. If net neutrality needs to be enforced, it means that politicians will hold more power. Do we really want to keep giving those people more power, especially over something that's pretty free at the moment? Give more power to the same people who just renewed the Patriot Act?!
[+] [-] gammarator|15 years ago|reply
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?type=C...
[+] [-] mcantor|15 years ago|reply
I'm sure I'm being either naive, stupid or both right now, but I'm honestly confused.
[+] [-] sp332|15 years ago|reply
Just as an example, Verizon decided that my home state of New Hampshire wasn't a desirable market any more for terrestrial broadband. So they sold their franchise (basically a state-granted monopoly over the region) to FairPoint. The state only agreed to give the franchise to FairPoint after FP promised to extend fiber deployment throughout the state, and meet certain access requirements to poor and hard-to-reach areas. (This is why the monopoly is considered a fair tradeoff: the company makes their money on a captive audience in the higher-margin cities, and the state gets guaranteed service to negative-margin rural areas.) Well, it turns out FP were lying through their teeth, have no fiber capability whatsoever, and don't have enough money to improve the infrastructure at all. Verizon shareholders lost over 1 billion dollars, but the trouble is that there is no competition for residential broadband left in the state. In some places, you can get 1.5 Mb/s DSL (which the FCC admits doesn't count as "broadband"), a few places you can get Comcast cable, but there are a lot of places where there's just nothing available. And since we're not a desirable market, there's no chance of getting any other companies to deploy to those areas. NH is screwed for the foreseeable future.
tl;dr No one on any side who's been paying attention would make those claims. Status quo is state-granted monopolies, so it's up to the state to enforce reasonable rules on the ISPs.
[+] [-] davidmathers|15 years ago|reply
Matt Yglesias explains: Freedom’s Just Another Word for "I’m An Orthodox Conservative With Orthodox Conservative Views": http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/?p=41091
He also provides an example in: The Freedom to Build: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/02/the-freedom-to-bui...
Where freedom means the freedom to prevent a real estate developer from building what they want, on property they own, because you don't like it.
Also somewhat apropos: Freedom-Talk in Colonial Georgia: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/02/freedom-talk-in-co...
The Georgia dissidents rallied behind the revealing slogan “Liberty and Property without restrictions”—which explicitly linked the liberty of white men to their right to hold blacks as property. Until they could own slaves, the white Georgians considered themselves unfree.
[+] [-] jlv|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacoblyles|15 years ago|reply
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-fcc-should-not-regulate-t...
And here's a post refuting the "money" argument:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/siding-with-the-geeks-on-netw...
[+] [-] reedlaw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moskie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcromartie|15 years ago|reply
"Our" here means media/telecom corporations.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] warrenwilkinson|15 years ago|reply
He says he is against net neutrality; he is against government regulation of ISPs.
More interesting than anything he said, is the quote "No man can serve two masters". Currently ISPs serve you, but after net neutrality passes they will serve the government.
[+] [-] DanI-S|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|15 years ago|reply
A corporation is not a person and does not think. There is an actual human on the other end, and it is that human to whom you are giving that freedom.
People have a tendency to anthropomorphize corporations. A corporation did this, wants that, etc.
[+] [-] beatpanda|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webXL|15 years ago|reply
Net "Neutrality" advocates would make better use of their time starting their own networks, where anything neutral goes, including equal prioritization of XXX porn and 911 VOIP packets. On my network, if you freely agree to the terms, your porn packets would not be neutral. If you don't like that, you don't have to use my network. Don't like it? Tough. It's called freedom.
[+] [-] blueben|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxxxxx|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|15 years ago|reply
Basically whoever has a majority talks that way - both parties.
I wish we could have at least 3 (very different) parties so that no one party could ever get an automatic majority.
Failing that I like the current situation where each house has a different party in the majority.
It's just not good for politicians to have too much power, forcing them to compromise and negotiate is very good for them.
[+] [-] russell|15 years ago|reply
Another thing that seems to totally ignored by Boehner et. al. is that you sometimes need regulation to protect basic rights, the Civil Rights Act for example. Net neutrality (hacker view) is the right to communicate whatever with whomever. The FCC has actually been protecting the Internet, bu ever since Powell the child's term as FCC chairman, the waters have been considerably muddied.
(In order to give my rant some measure of verisimilitude, I attempted to vet it against Common Carrier and Communications Act of 1934 over at Wikipedia. I found two of the worst and most incomplete articles that I have ever encountered. The Act itself is a 333 page PDF. tl;dnr So please be kind. :-)
[+] [-] CulturalNgineer|15 years ago|reply
FCC: Information Superhighway Traffic Cops http://conservativeactionalerts.com/blog_post/show/2120
This looks to be a campaign intentionally designed to confuse with the goal of restricting a truly free Internet in order to benefit big money interests.
Frankly I've had more than enough of mega-corporations corrupting good governance.
[+] [-] Dornkirk|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runjake|15 years ago|reply
Do you want corporations to act as unregulated "traffic controllers"? Then you're against net neutrality.
Do you want an accountable government agency with a lackluster track record for citizens' digital rights to act as a "traffic controller"? Then you're for net neutrality.
* Before voting me down, look at the actions the federal government has already taken in regards to traffic control (ala exempting wireless carriers, and kill switch legislation). This smells like traffic control to me.
[+] [-] blueben|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdizdar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sorbus|15 years ago|reply
Wikipedia also has a quite good definition. A key line from it: "The principle advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication."
Sadly, it's a term which is used to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. Political language does horrible things to words.
[+] [-] webXL|15 years ago|reply
If there's one dominant theme I've seen over the years when politics rears its ugly head in an online discussion, it's that
Now, it's entirely possible that those statements are true 100% of the time, but isn't it much more likely that there are exceptions to them, and if you're intellectually honest, you can acknowledge them? I'm not sure if Google results are a trustworthy source, but look up "corporate donations by party" and you'll see countless examples of corporations taking advantage of whatever party is in power. So you must acknowledge that neither party is completely beholden to "wholesome goodness".Whichever side wins in the net neutrality debate, some corporations will lose, and others will win. If net neutrality needs to be enforced, it means that politicians will hold more power. Do we really want to keep giving those people more power, especially over something that's pretty free at the moment? Give more power to the same people who just renewed the Patriot Act?!
[+] [-] l0c0b0x|15 years ago|reply
Of course, by "our", he mostly means "Corporations" (IMHO, viewed as first-class citizen groups).
Just my opinion.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pohl|15 years ago|reply
"As far as I'm concerned, there is no compromise or middle ground when it comes to protecting our most basic freedoms."
I reckon this is the genesis of the headline.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]