Internet is a white male. I am better than Internet, as wise latina.
Posted on 09/22/2009 10:59:07 AM PDT by thouworm
There was a time, not so long ago, when the term "Internet Freedom" actually meant what it implied: a cyberspace free from over-zealous legislators and bureaucrats....
Those days are now gone; the presumption of online liberty is giving way to a presumption of regulation. A massive assault on real Internet freedom has been gathering steam for years and has finally come to a head. Ironically, victory for those who carry the banner of "Internet Freedom" would mean nothing less than the death of that freedom....
Here is the reality: Because of the steps being taken in Washington right now, real Internet Freedom--for all Internet operators and consumers, and for economic and speech rights alike--is about to start dying a death by a thousand regulatory cuts. Policymakers and activists groups are ramping up the FCC's regulatory machine for a massive assault on cyber liberty. This assault rests on the supposed superiority of common carriage regulation and "public interest" mandates over not just free markets and property rights, but over general individual liberties and freedom of speech in particular....
Over the last decade, a cabal of activist-minded cyber-law professors have successfully turned the world of Internet policy upside down by persuading an entire generation of law students, policymakers and a number of large Internet companies that "Internet Freedom" means the very opposite of what it used to mean. Borrowing tactics that would have made Orwell proud, they have convinced many in the public and the policymaking community that the old Internet Freedom is slavery, in that we are all just tools of Corporate Big Brother. Thus, they offer us a new Internet Freedom: Neutrality über alles! Their freedom, as in Orwell's Oceania, is not a freedom from the State, but a gleaming utopia that can only be created by the State.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
“if you have Verizon as your ISP, they could not screw with your access to Skype (which competes with Verizon phone service)”
(a) That’s always the kind of argument they use for more regulation, than once the bill’s in, it’s more & more, you should know that.
(b) why shouldn’t they give whatever service they like, and disallow Skype as long as they are upfront about it? They could make it a cheaper service because it helps their phone business. Why the hell shouldn’t they be allowed to do that in America?
It didn't get any better. There is something we are supposed to be afraid of but it is either a secret or the writers are unable to communicate well enough to explain it.
>> The FCC is WAY out of its jurisdiction...
Astonishing is the audacity of Communism.
However, the internet seems to be a self-regulating type of beast and if it isn't, the people who keep it humming are doing just fine thank you very much.
The FCC and Gubmint in general needs to be told to shut up and sit down when it starts to flex its muscle in order to squash free speech they don't happen to like. A very slippery slope here folks. The Net Neutrality crap has GOT to go.
Just my 2¢
There may be an assault on internet freedom but that article did not explain how. All I got from it is that one single regulation is disasterous because it will lead to many regulations.
The article was a waste of time - a space filler.
Articles from Brit Hume used to be like this. Nothing new, sometimes even a week behind the news, but what was new was that the issues were being promoted from a quasi-mainstream pulpit.
Especially considering he wrote that book in 2003. I guess dissent is no longer needed....
“A very slippery slope here folks. The Net Neutrality crap has GOT to go.”
- I dont think so. There is nothing wrong with Net Neutrality. There IS something wrong with my overpriced ISP capping my PREMIUM (i.e. PRIVATE) Usenet provider, throttling my bandwidth, and shoving a 60gig cap down my throat every month. ANd the thing is..I have no other choices of ISPs because they ALL cap at 60gigs (30 gigs upload, 30 gigs download).
Net Neutrality is here to stay. Get used to it.
I pitched my Model 15 teletype with typing reperf in 1981 and upgraded to a Heathkit H8. An Epson MX80 printer soon graced the desktop. That was the end of typewriters for me. I had a Selectric in the closet at the time, but the accuracy of editing with a full screen word processor beat the pants off the Selectric. It has been 28 years since I ditched type writer. By 1983, I was telecommuting using a 103 modem at 110 baud to save a 30 mile drive to the office to fix a trivial software problem on a UNIVAC mainframe.
Where are all liberal ‘geeks’ now?
Hey, Leo Laporte, your leftist leaders are ready to shackle your internet. Do you care? You useful idiot!
What about all the other 0bama-lovin’ nerds? Why so silent?
They’re just a bunch of brainwashed nutjobs now.
Who needs freedom? Judging by the actions of Americans lately they just don’t want to be bothered with fighting freedom. They have forgotten, or were never taught, that you fight for freedom, or you end up fighting for your life.
Stupid, stupid people. What a ship of fools we’ve become.
Can we make our own internet?
We had portable computers from Compaq
Remember those portables!
Conservatives are getting rope-a-doped on this issue. Net neutrality is a positive - keeping local ISP monopolies from roadblocking and/or throttling traffic.
Also applies to the iphone/ATT partnerships of the world, keeping them from tolling and/or blocking use of data in ways that threaten monopolies - think vonage, skype or Gtalk over the Iphone/ATT data connection — which still costs $70-100 or more per month.
Corporate greed is a misused and overused rant by the lefties of the world - but consumer protection is at play here.
Any wonder Google has been building a dark fiber network / parallel internet for years? Visionary.
“The monthly bill will be proportional to use.”
- Already experience this with the monthly caps. 30 gigs download for 40 bucks a month.
“All that spam in your mailbox will make you exceedingly angry as you pay to transfer crap you didn’t want in the first place.”
- Bell already does this and has for some time now. Comcast can also get stuffed. And so can every other capping, throttling, choking, cesspool who rips off, lies, and cheats their customers out of their hard earned money.
If I had somewhere else to go, I’d have gone by now. In any event I hope they get what is coming to them. If I pay 15 bucks a month for unlimited premium Usenet access, then by God I want what I paid for.
Aaaaarrrrrghhh. How can this be happening and no one is challenging it in court?
What are you talking about?
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