Posted on 10/20/2009 1:51:47 PM PDT by Jean S
House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee member Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Tuesday took a swipe at an ongoing push by the Obama administration and high-tech companies to beef up so-called network neutrality rules at the FCC, describing effort as "the fairness doctrine for the Internet." The Commission rescinded that doctrine, which required TV and radio broadcasters to air opposing political viewpoints, in 1987.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in September that he does not intend to revive the fairness doctrine amid concerns raised by Republicans and conservative talk radio hosts. He is, however, championing a controversial plan to consider new rules aimed at preserving and promoting consumers' unfettered access to Web content. The FCC will begin its work on that topic Thursday.
Blackburn said her constituents, particularly business owners, fully understand the fairness doctrine and similarly reject the federal government's "policing of how people deploy their content over the Internet." "They want [Internet service providers] to be able to manage those networks. They want to make certain they have the ability to deploy content in a manner negotiated with ISPs," she told a high-tech briefing on Capitol Hill.
She went on to say that Web users "do not want a czar of the Internet" telling them how and when they are able to deploy content or what broadband speeds are available to them.
The FCC is making a power grab for which they have no constitutional authority.
WWGWD?
(What Would George Washington Do?)
Thank you for the link! You deserve credit for this find.
Democrats might very well ask themselves why it is that liberal thinking seems to always require protection and subsidies. Is it because nobody wants to buy their ideas? “Fairness”, to them, means the imposition of rules so that liberal-leftist views must be heard, even if no one is interested in them.
NP, I have Blackburn on my alerts. If she makes a statement, it is usually pretty powerful or important.
In this case it's apparently at least one Republican who wants the content of the WWW controlled by free enterprise.
It’s a federal level form of Nazi “Child Protective Services” which will push “fairness doctrine” in your household.
Out with the strong man inside, in comes the wolves.
What happens when Rev. Al parks his goon squad outside Comcast HQ and refuses to leave until they blacklist the “racist” FR and outspoken conservative blogs?
Most large corporations, including ISPs, sign on to the PC agenda to keep the peace. They don’t have our backs here.
This is my thought too. I mean I try to work up my libertarian rage about this, but just can’t.
I realize in some respects some people should have to pay more if they are using more internet.
At the same time, doesn’t this also protect against ISP’s throttling access to certain sites?
Being that most people don’t have meaningful choice in ISPs it seems like a good idea to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Having the ISPs & interconnect companies being neutral to the content that the paying subcribers to their services care to send or receive seems a simple enough concept.
But bending this to having the government make sure that the content is 'balanced' deserves both an IgNobel award for chutzpah and a swift smack to the cerebellum for stupidity.
I know you can't cure stupidity, but that swift smack might slow it down.
It is a damned if you do, damned if you dont scenario. I dont want nanny govt telling anyone what to do, especially business. At the same time, I dont want monopolizing behemoths like Bell charging me 50 bucks a month for 30 gigs of downloads. Or for that matter, At&t.
And no, I cant go anywhere else.
So here is hoping for the impossible..that govt actually lays the smackdown on the bastards at Bell for throttling, choking and capping my $50 connection, but actually does so without huring the end users.
Well, you got one thing right. You’re hoping for the impossible by asking govt to cure the problem. Consider this, with govt funding access they can also control content since the net would then be a public trust. You’ll be much better off being pissed at those bastards at AT&T choking off and capping your $50 connection than having the govt dictate the content.
Charging based on the amount of usage is fine in my book, but I don’t want the ISPs touching the content itself. That’s not what I’m paying them to do.
Common carrier status worked out OK for the telephone network.
Washington would have only used open source software like Linux, eschewing Windows. Duh.
The only Republicans with balls seem to be the woman.
Blackburn, Cheney, Palin, and Bachmann. Add in Jeri Thompson too.
What happens when Comcast realizes that they don’t own the Free Republic and then decides that you need to pay triple rates to access it (or any website not owned by them)?
If you’re a current customer, you hit them, hard, and then leave. If you sign up under those terms, sucks to be you.
Yeah go figure! With the men we get misguided RINO clowns like Lindsey Grahamnesty and McLame. No wonder the GOP is in such a shambles!
And if you don’t live in a metropolitan area... so only have one high-speed internet provider?
“If she makes a statement, it is usually pretty powerful or important.”
IMHO, she’s one of the very few good ones.
She needs more exposure. : )
Oh well, then why stop here, let’s nationalize the internet provider so the rural areas never have to suffer.
(/ do I have to?)
If there’s only one company in the area, and they start selling not-internet (it is, “internet” where the only real service is “intranet”) you simply don’t have an internet provider anymore. The state forcing them back to be internet providers isn’t really going to solve things.
Marsha Blackburn is my Rep and I am very proud of her
The government already has a decent solution in the current FCC guidelines, which basically says providers should be content-neutral. This is a very good idea. In addition, all I ask for is full disclosure of all terms and restrictions up front, not buried in a 60 page legaleze contract, no changes posted to an obscure corner of their web site unannounced (you know, you're expected to find and read that huge legaleze document every day and continue to comply with its terms).
My only fear is that the Democrats will use the Net Neutrality issue to push some kind of fairness doctrine.
You really didn’t answer the question, but diverted to a different, but not discussed issue of nationalization.
This is no different than the environmental movement. The environmental movement in the early days was mostly people that had a genuine concern about the environment. As the movement grew, the Left saw an opportunity and essentially hijacked it for their own purposes, turning it into the Socialist mess that it has become. They are doing the same thing with Net Neutrality. The concept itself sounds very high-minded, and those that started it may well have the best of intentions. But the Leftists in (and above) the Obama Administration now see the opportunity to regulate speech on the Internet, i.e. shutdown dissent, using New Neutrality as their entre to go well beyond what was intended with this concept. And don't kid yourself - by the time this bunch is done with it, you won't recognize NN. Do you really trust these people? I sure don't.
Am trying to understsnd this “Net Neutrality” issue.
If the Obamunists are for it, I know it’s not good, it is about control, and censorship no doubt of anti-Obama news.
But still not got my arms around the issue so thanks for the post.
When all of this began, the big national broadband ISPs who used monopoly protected pipes into the home (e.g., Comcast, Time Warner, RBOCs, etc.), were floating the idea of charging content providers (i.e., websites) for the bandwidth used by the ISP’s users when viewing the websites. If the website didn’t pay the ISP, the ISP would block the site to its users.
Net neutrality originally meant that the ISPs, which enjoy monopoly protection, couldn’t block sites. If the ISP wanted to charge users for use, they could. However, the original net neutrality proponents didn’t want the ISPs to enact tolls (taxes) on the Internet.
Unfortunately, MoveOn.org got concerned that someone might charge them for their hack ads, so they jumped in, in support of net neutrality. Thus, every conservative and conservative group automatically opposed it.
Today, the original issue seems to have died and net neutrality has morphed into something else. I’m not sure what it’s become. I quit paying attention after the original effort appeared to be little more than a series of trial balloons floated by ISP execs who subsequently backed off.
I diverted nothing, but if you want it blunt, that’s the answer: nothing. You do nothing. You don’t have an internet company to go to anymore, so you do nothing. A better answer would be “you set up your own” or “you wait until some other company gets in to take your money”, but for now that’s it. You do nothing.
Kiddie porn
Torrent trackers
Bomb making instructions
Nazi sites
"Hate speech"
Obscure conservative blogs
Free Republic
In approximately that order.
Nice deployment of that bastardized phrase.
B
.H
LOL
BTTT!
Does this whole net neutrality thing have something to do with WiMax? I think the libs want to do the same thing with internet access as they are trying to do with health care. They believe high speed broadband is some kind of right that everyone should have. So they demonize the big corporations that control the ISP’s and try to figure out some way to tax or fine them. Then use that money to build free WiMax networks that they can control. Once it's free, people will dump their paid internet for the free govt. controlled internet. Then it will be easy for them to track you and have control over what you can access. Am I way out in left field on this or not?
They never can. No natural monopoly can exist for very long. Eventually those high prices attract competition. The problem is legislation/regulation blocking the natural market process - aka liberty.
RUMOR!!! Susan Crawford, internet czar, leaving the White House.
She is taking job where my co-workers son works: Mantech
I could say the same about tyranny, high taxes, fascism, etc. They all have a breaking point. Obama/Biden will eventually get theirs after the people have had enough.
I think it will last a bit longer than the Obama Administration.
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