Posted on 11/08/2010 2:58:24 PM PST by Andrea19
Last week, every single signer of a Net Neutrality Pledge to regulate the Internet lost their election. Then, two days later on November 4, the FCC released their November meeting agenda and Net Neutrality was notably absent. So, where does the FCC’s (and the neo-Marxist left’s) pet project go from here?
Most agree that the FCC’s Title II Internet regulation scheme is dead. For almost a year, the Commission has threatened to reclassify broadband Internet under 1930s laws to enact Net Neutrality regulations, and then some. Yet, over 300 Members of Congress – a vast, bipartisan majority from both the House and Senate – have stated clear opposition to the approach. Further, the Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in January are virtually unanimously opposed to Net Neutrality rules. If the FCC made a move to enact regulations by fiat, Title II would likely wind up in court for the next few years.
Read more: http://www.atr.org/whats-next-internet-regulation-a5616#ixzz14jT7uxoL
(Excerpt) Read more at atr.org ...
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All those techie lefties on slashdot are going to get pissed.
Me?
You guys know that net neutrality is an attempt, whether a good idea or not, to institute some benefits to content providers and consumers in the midst of what is a tight regulatory environment?
I mean, railing about net neutrality as if its some sort of commie plot, while ignoring the role of the Federal govt, the FCC, the various govt backed patent laws, etc, and other encroachments upon REAL capitalism, is just silly.
Not that I think Net neutrality is a good idea, but I don’t think having 2 main providers of voice and data access is a good idea, or something that would occur without substantial govt interference in the first place. I could be wrong, however.
Actually, in part it is a response to the telcos stating their intent to put toll booths on the Internet, destroying the open model it was built on. The advantage to content providers is that they are the ones the telcos were proposing to get more money off of, leveraging their captive consumers to do it.
I find it very dismaying that so many folks here on FR have an immediate knee-jerk reaction to any mention of "government regulation", with the effect that there is a ton of misinformation running around about what net neutrality means and does not mean.
Net neutrality is simply a mechanism for keeping the internet the way it is. Open public access.
Wait until these anti-neutrality people find out that they can't go where they want, because their provider doesn't want them to go there.
For example, I live in a rural area where I have ONE internet provider available. I can't exercise any market pressure by "taking my business elsewhere", like folks in more populated areas. When (not if) my provider decides to start charging me more for access to "FreeRepublic.com", I'm screwed.
One can draw an analogy to the public roads. Most roads and highways are unlimited public-access (some have tolls, like pay-sites); and some roads are private, and the public is blocked or has to pay an access fee.
The internet has always been open public access. The providers now want to make it PRIVATE, such that you pay them additional fees for access to sites that you presently can access for free.
It does not cost the provider any more to provide access to content from sites they don't own. It's about advertising, folks. They just want to restrict your access to other content, so they can force you to view their own ads.
Why conservatives like that escapes me.
The blather about "equal time for liberal ideas" and "having to provide balance of content" is nothing but red herring.
I know I'm gonna get flamed for saying it here, but net neutrality is not the commie plot some well-meaning but misinformed people think it is.
Net neutrality is simply a way to keep the internet open to the public -- the way it is now. It guarantees the same access that we already have -- a freedom that has been part of the internet's design and intent from the beginning.
I was under the impression that "Net Neutrality" is to prevent your access provider from charging FreeRepublic for access to you. Not the other way around. Your ISP already charges you. They are not charging content providers. They would like to charge content providers.
Your ISP is routing traffic from FR to you all the time. They don't see a dime for that (FR pays its own ISP, which doesn't share revenue with other ISPs). They get their money from you. They want to charge both ends of the communication stream.
> I was under the impression that "Net Neutrality" is to prevent your access provider from charging FreeRepublic for access to you. Not the other way around. Your ISP already charges you. They are not charging content providers. They would like to charge content providers.
Hmmm. Frankly that is even more insidious than what I was talking about.
Back around 1995 when the NSF was getting out and commercial support of the 'net was taking over, I was one of those old-timers who railed against the takeover, predicting that it would bite us in the ass eventually. For 10 years, commercial support did great things -- it has made the internet huge and varied, and it has become absolutely essential to modern life.
Now that it's essential, the service providers want to start restricting it and charging more for it. "Surprise!" Here comes the bite in the ass.
What you're describing means that I become nothing but a commodity, a set of eyes, to be sold to the highest bidder. Like TV. I'm a viewer to be "delivered" to the buyer.
Yeah, that's freedom, the way the internet was meant to be. /sarc
I know. That’s why I’m leaning towards the Net Neutrality, even though I despise gov’t intrusion into anything.
Me, too. But the way I look at it is, our Defense Department developed the internet in the first place (DARPA), and it's my opinion that it wouldn't have hurt to leave it in the hands of the defense department indefinitely. Sure, it wouldn't have had the meteoric rise to ubiquity that occurred between 1995 and now, it would have been slower.
Frankly, if the damn government is going to take a bunch of my money in taxes, supporting and developing the internet would be a fine use for it compared to what they do with it now.
What worries me the most is that the internet was developed for use in wartime, as a robust, self-healing network for mission-critical communications. That is now going by the wayside. That's not good.
So I don't really see it as "government intrusion". To me it's more like the government re-claiming the rules of the game because the commercial interests the gov't turned it over to a decade ago have forgotten what it was for, and are getting overly greedy.
I hate gov't regulation as much as anybody -- I'm a libertarian by nature. But this is something else -- a national resource.
You dayglored claim that you have access to only 1 ISP. That is wrong or a lie.
Here you dayglored say : “For example, I live in a rural area where I have ONE internet provider available. I can't exercise any market pressure by “taking my business elsewhere”
The FREE Market has already solved your “Problem”:
http://www.high-speed-internet-access-guide.com/satellite/
There are many satellite Internet service providers, such as HughesNet, that offer high speed satellite Internet for those rural areas.
If you live in a remote region or new development and there just isn't cable or DSL access available to your home, then Satellite is going to be your best option for getting high speed Internet.
You REALLY believe that idiotic , clueless,unaccountable, evil government bureaucrats and more government laws and regulations stacked upon the literally rooms of books of these regulations, are the answer to make your imperfect world perfect?
Once government gets it's unaccountable foot in the door then it will keep taking more of our freedoms and cripple private businesses even more.
Sorry if I seem a little angry but it angers me that some that profess or think to be conservative are for more government regulation.
This net neutrality , should be squashed. And the FCC , the EPA,FEC, HHS, HUD , etc. must be repealed. The only way to save the U.S.A is to repeal the mountains of laws that the democrats heaped upon us for the last 100 years. If it takes a constitutional convention then so be it.
Let's take just one example of 1 law the democrats passed, the socialist healthcare law or Obamacare.
The law is almost 3000 pages of government control. Of those 3000 pages government agencies will create 10,000 pages or more of government regulations. Furthermore, unaccountable government bureaucrats will have discretion to RULE on those thousands of pages.And that you think makes insurance or hospitals more efficient or better? This is what liberals believe . I dont’. But the same thing applies to the Internet and this net neutrality.
This is the SAME age old socialist/marxist argument made against private companies.
The left wants people to fear a monopoly, to fear private companies.
There is not 1 or 2 ISPs. There are even many satellite broadband ISPS ,Internet Service providers, that go anywhere in the world. http://www.high-speed-internet-access-guide.com/satellite/
The ONLY way for a private company to limit consumer's choices is with GOVERNMENT help,that is government at the point of a gun forcing other competitors to stay out of the market.
Recently the same leftist/liberal/statist monopoly fear mongering was made against companies in the 1890’s, Microsoft and walmart. Well now we have Google , Amazon, Dollar tree, etc. that walmart nor Microsoft could prevent from competing. And on the Internet we have satelite ISPS.
Marxists used this monopoly argument to impose on us much of this socialist big government that is ruining our prosperity and destroying our freedom and choices.
Well, good morning to you, too. Goodness, you're mighty sure of yourself. Let's see...
> You dayglored claim that you have access to only 1 ISP. That is wrong or a lie. Here you dayglored say : “For example, I live in a rural area where I have ONE internet provider available. I can't exercise any market pressure by “taking my business elsewhere” The FREE Market has already solved your “Problem”: http://www.high-speed-internet-access-guide.com/satellite/
My home office is served by Frontier DSL. Of course, I looked at the available Hughes Satellite offerings -- unfortunately they do not meet my needs for connection. Similarly, while dial-up is available, it is unsuitable.
I am a system administrator of an international business network, use a VPN, and use video conferencing and live presentation daily from home. The available satellite connections have far too much upload speed degradation under load (and VPN), and latency, for this to work effectively, even for the highest available levels of service that cost $200/month. Satellite is almost as useless - to me - as dial-up.
I will grant you that lightweight non-business users who only surf the web lightly and do email could use the satellite service. Those are the users it is designed for. But I was speaking about my own lack of options, not theirs. I suggest you actually read the description of the satellite service before you go around calling names.
So no, I am not wrong, nor am I lying, thank you.
The internet was developed as an open, cooperative network, among mostly non-competitive entities such as the military and research institutions. The necessary assumption was that everyone on the net played by the few rules -- and respected the traditional agreements, such as carrying all traffic.
As I'm sure you know, such arrangements work quite well, until one or a few players decide to take advantage of the cooperative nature, and stop supporting the agreements that make it work. It's a short-term selfish tactic, which rapidly brings the entire thing to its knees; it is self-defeating, but a few outfits make out while pulling it down around themselves.
Today's commercial interests which control the internet do not want to play by the rules and traditions that make the internet work correctly as designed. This was foreseen 15 years ago by those of us who had been working on the internet (DARPAnet) since the mid-1980's and before.
The commercial interests that took over from the government in the mid-1990's agreed to play by the rules. Now they don't want to, and they threaten to reduce the internet to the same level of uselessness as television.
Much as we hate the government enforcing rules over business, in this case they are not new rules -- just an attempt to hold to the status quo necessary to maintain the proper operation of the internet.
I, and I assume ShadowAce, do not support any regulation beyond that, so if your objection is to ADDITIONAL regulation that could piggyback on the basic net neutrality, such as "fairness in content" and other such crap, then I agree with your objection in that regard.
BTW, attempting to throw irrelevant stuff like Obamacare into this discussion only indicates that you can't, or don't want to, argue the actual topic on the basis of its own merits. There is no analogy to government programs like health care. Please stick to net neutrality; it's a rather unique case. Thanks.
Marxists/democrats always try to show some exception : that this “poor” “helpless” person doesn't get Internet Service or Healthcare or some other service. And then democrats get people to shout "Why WE have to do something" . And they then use some exception to justify some 3000 page bill of government control that just cripples freedom ,innovation, wealth creation, efficiency etc.
If what you say is true that you can't get the particular Internet service you want where you live then MOVE, find another job, etc. You and liberals/democrats want to turn the USA into a socialist state because you point to a small percentage of people that supposedly don't have access to some service. The danger is the incremental socialism that democrats have forced upon America under the cover of the liberal media monopoly. It must be stopped not moved forward to reach the tipping point
It's the laws and regulations (government) that are the problem not the solution.
People like Hellen Keller or I have had to overcome supreme obstacles to barely survive. I am not under a single government program but am surviving on my own.
Your government regulations only serve to ruin the wealth and opportunity creation mechanism of free market capitalism. And they ruin freedom.
You really want us to believe that a dept. of motor vehicles zombie or a government school lunch lady can run and or oversee all the technology companies and entrepreneurs at the same time in real time? that is exactly what liberals/democrats believe.
Read Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Rand.Government is the problem not the solution.
Basically democrats and you trust government bureaucrats while I don't.And you think government bureaucrats are actually competent and can have god like abilities to oversee millions of transactions in real time which the free market does effortlessly, when government bureaucrats are incompetent,idiotic, evil, corrupt,unaccountable marxist goons.
I wasn't calling anyone any names. I just said that most people on this thread sound like leftists to me . It was shocking to me that on a conservative site that so many on this thread were for more government regulations. That is my analysis of the opinion on this thread. And even if I had said an individual sounded like a leftist why is that name calling. Sounding like a leftist is expressing a political opinion.And my analysis of that is just my opinion of that opinion.
Ummm, no, I don't. And I'll ask you politely to avoid telling me what I think, or want.
I'm a free-market Goldwater/Reagan libertarian, thank you. Read my profile page if you like.
You and I probably agree on many more points than we disagree on.
I am making an exception to my usual strict anti-government regulation position, with regard to net neutrality, because I believe it will preserve a critical national resource, whose proper functioning is necessary for the continuance of the American economy, maintain our technological advantage in the world markets, and also for the support of our national defense (which was the original reason the internet was developed).
I believe that allowing commercial interests to destroy the underlying principles of the internet is NOT in America's best interests.
You seem to overlook the fact that the US government funded, supported, developed, and ran the internet for a long time, quite successfully. They turned the net over to commercial interests because in the mid-90's the net was getting too big and growing too rapidly for government agencies to continue managing it.
But the agreement was to maintain it with the same rules -- the ones that make it work correctly. That agreement is being broken, and the idea of net neutrality is to repair that break before it destroys the net.
Having no better reasonable alternative, I reluctantly support having the government keep private business from destroying the internet, by enforcing a simple operational principle -- carry all traffic, don't put roadblocks up.
You are of course welcome to see it differently and disagree. But don't tell me what I think.
Thanks.
Telecommunications is highly regulated. To what extent that causes concentration into a small number of providers, only those knowledgeable with the day to day details of legislation and regulation, can really know, altho we can make some guesses as outsiders.
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