Posted on 04/08/2010 6:34:36 PM PDT by Lexluthor69
It is called “Net Neutrality.” On April 6th, 2010, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Federal Communications Commission has no regulating authority over how any Internet provider manages its network -- period!
So what IS Net Neutrality? There is as good an explanaiona as I have found at the Wise Geek’s website. You’ll fine it HERE.
The importance of this issue is the protection of freedom. Will the Internet remain free, or will the government regulate it? That is the question. Obama’s minions are salivating at the opportunity to regulate the hell out of the Internet and shut up commentators such as “yours truly.”
The courts told the FCC this week to “stand back,” and keep their hands off the Internet. But, do not think, for one second, they are about to allow a little thing like the law to get in the way of a take over of the Internet -- not for one second. Already, they are looking at regulating the Internet as a public utility.
Look, we warned and warned and warned that Obama’s Marxist buddies in the FCC and the Congress would come after free speech on the Internet. Well, here they come!
(Excerpt) Read more at silentmajority09.com ...
So, you favor a “fairness doctrine” for the internet?
I think you joined the wrong site, Bunky.
He ain't "joined" no more...
I'm not new here and I've been saying the same thing for some time now.
Oh for pete's sake... name calling aside... a lack of net neutrality is what would enable a fairness doctrine on the net. Net neutrality means that ISP's have no say over which site get preferential treatment over another. So in other words Comcast couldn't set it so that Dem Underground would get 10 meg service to Comcast customers whereas FreeRepublic would get 56k service unless JimRob worked out an annual contract with Comcast.
IOW, your name calling skills exceed your understanding of the issue.
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Thanks for the ping.
So you do support an internet fairness doctrine. What a moron.
Again, you obviously don't understand what net neutrality refers to, but you also obviously are quite skilled with debate by name calling. Good for you. I guess...
Listen, the only way someone could exercise control over the idealogical content of a website (ala a Fairness Doctrine) is by controlling how content from that site is delivered. Net Neutrality mandates that all content that comes over the pipe that you paid for comes at the speed you paid for. Its meant to stop companies like Comcast requiring that large bandwidth websites, like YouTube and NetFlix and FreeRepublic pay them an additional rate to not throttle the content to their customers. IOW, you get the speed you paid for.
Care to guess how well conservative sites that we frequent would fare in a world where big media companies set rates for transmission speeds to their customers? Hmmm?
EL RUSHBO:
CALLER: USA Today, the 16th, front page, small story, it seems insignificant. The FCC wants more fast lanes to Internet. They basically hit you with a bunch of numbers, blah, blah, blah, by the time you get through it. But when you read through it and you see what the plan — actually what they want to do, today they’re voting on Congress, is to have a sweeping plan, the federal regulators have unveiled an ambitious plan to bring high speed Internet service to millions of people. Here’s their promises, promises, and they go on to say about a nationalized system. Jump way to the bottom of the story, the FCC, the White House or Congress would have to implement the plan, some of which would be controversial, or another way of saying unconstitutional. If you jump around in this story, Rush, it’s a takeover of another industry by “helping us.” And what industry is it? The cable, communications. The FCC, which is the government, wants to take over another industry.
RUSH: Well, it’s actually much more hideous than this. This story that you’re quoting is just talking about the spectrum, the frequency spectrum, and they want more broadband spectrum for higher speed access for everybody that uses the Internet. In getting this, one of the areas they’re looking at is asking over-the-air television stations to stop broadcasting over the air since it’s all cable or satellite now and they want to take that spectrum and apply it to Internet. Now, you can say that they want to take over the Internet, but they already have. I mean they regulate all broadcasting. They don’t regulate cable or satellite but they regular over the air broadcasting, like radio. You have to go through, every five or ten years, whatever it is now, for license renewal, community ascertain, you have to run out and talk to librarians, a bunch of people, ask them what their big issues in the community are, okay, document that, send it in with your license renewal, they say you’re paying attention to local issues, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What’s coming way beyond this, what’s coming in the fall is the deceptively named net neutrality. The easiest way to understand this is to think of a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. Now, how would this work? Let’s say that you want to go Google or Bing, you want to search the mating habits of the Australian rabbit bat. Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about the issue. Yep. And that’s going to happen. That pretty much is going to happen. And the White House is in bed with Google. The White House and Google are bedmates, Google, largest search engine. Already, if you do a search of me on Google and you look at the crap that comes up, it’s by design and on purpose. It’s literal crap, I mean the most obscure places you never knew existed with comments about what happened on this program every day. It took a long time, but we had to really work hard at getting our website to pop up in a search of Google, our own website.
So in the era of net neutrality — and this is where the Google-White House partnership comes into play — the results of any search, let’s say you want to search abortion, or you want to search the health care bill, they want to control what you see. They want to control what your options are. They can’t really control the content, it’s too massive and it’s too big. What they want to try to do is limit your access to it and have that access flavored toward whatever particular point of view the administration wants supported. Now, that is coming. That’s why they want all this new broadband. That’s why they want all this new speed. That’s why they want all this new access. It’s not to own it; it’s to control the content as best they can. Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. I’m not making this up. I guarantee you that’s what’s coming. I think this is a fait accompli. I think it practically has been voted on, done deal.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: George in Philadelphia. I have about a minute and a half here, but I wanted to get to you. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. The real issue with these net neutrality is that Google is looking for the bandwidth, not so much for searches for information but what they want to do is go into the Voice Over IP telephone business. That’s why they need the bandwidth and without net neutrality there would be preference given to like packets being sent by Comcast or by the AT&T networks or something like that. So they have to flatten that out in order to make their VOIP phones work properly.
RUSH: Yeah, that’s true. The Voice Over IP, like Vonage.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Google wants to do that with their phones. There’s also a cost component to net neutrality, too. And it’s kind of complicated to explain, but if a website wants to start charging for its content, it’s all gotta be equal, and they have to make content to other websites available as well. It’s so convoluted. It’s all rooted in this corrupted notion of “fairness” that liberal Democrats have. But the VOIP stuff is probably relevant, too. One thing you can probably rest assured of: Google and this administration, they’re very, very tight. Very tight.
BYTE ME.
(We don't need no steenkin’ license fees!)
Just make sure you're well-stocked up on aural ammunition.
"mandates"
Therein lies the problem. Mandates (government regulation) ALWAYS leads to more and more mandates (government tyranny), and it is a short hop from the mandate you describe to "fairness doctrine"-style mandates. In the end I suppose I trust Comcast more than I trust government.
By the way, I only called you a moron because you had previously (and inaccurately) accused me of name-calling. So I figured I'd catch up.
FRegards,
LH
Ok, now see? There you're actually approaching a valid argument against net neutrality in that government regulation of private industry is, in your view, always a bad thing. I am sympathetic to that view. However in my view its warranted, cautiously, as circumstances dictate. ie. We have tons of governmental regulations regarding building codes in this country, specifically requiring the use of inspections and re-bar in new buildings. Haiti? Not so much. They seemed to have trusted the invisible hand of the market just a wee too much.
You don't trust government's laws at all, ie. "ALWAYS leads to more and more mandates (government tyranny)" I think they have a place where warranted. Cable companies, and specifically Comcast have shown that they are willing to step on their customers (ie. mandated yet unnecessary equipment, channel package selections, internet bandwidth caps) because they have effective geographic monopolies in tv and especially internet service. Anyone that says differently, pointing to satellite operators is being willfully obtuse given support in rural areas (my buddy has one choice, cable, and 1 meg service at that) and ISP speeds.
You trust the corporations not to screw us like Obama would IF he could figure out a way to screen sites for content and require each of them to change their content. Fair enough. I don't trust Comcast to not continue doing what they've already tried to do by using their effective monopoly to extort money from sites that don't want their content throttled. And certainly I don't trust Time/Warner's ISPs to not price JimRob out of the market when negotiating the price at which his site's content would be served.
By the way, I only called you a moron because you had previously (and inaccurately) accused me of name-calling.
Inaccurately only if you can prove that netneutrality's name is actually Bunky.
PING
Yes, thank goodness the government is here to save me from that crooked butcher and everybody else who is always trying to take advantage of helpless little me!
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