“The irony here is that it has been the Internet, talk radio and cable news that have provided access to unheard and suppressed voices. News and commentary no longer have to get past the gatekeepers at CBS, ABC, NBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times. And judging from ratings and circulation, they do not deserve to be called mainstream anymore. It is they who are the fringe media.
Bloggers and talk show callers now have a voice. Conservatives have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won. It’s not their fault no one wanted to listen to Air America or that Web sites such as FreeRepublic.com and HotAir.com constantly pull back the curtain on the wizards of this administration.
Net neutrality is not designed to liberate, but to suppress. It’s the Fairness Doctrine of the Internet that, like diversity in talk radio and the war on Fox News, is designed to marginalize and silence those who disagree with those in power.”
This article does little to enlighten us on the subject.
Net Neutrality essentially tells broadband providers that they must let all traffic cross their network at the same speed without discriminating against any particular content. I don’t think that is the same thing as the government controlling content.
If the Obama administration is planning to regulate the internet in a way that it controls content, that is a different matter and is not net neutrality.
Verizon (for example) had a monopoly on local phone service and vastly overcharged for it. Their cash cow is getting killed by independent VOIP providers. There is nothing that Verizon would like more than to provide faster more reliable VOIP and overcharge for it and throttle other VOIP traffic.
It would be like having a car company privately build all the local roads in your area and allowing only their own cars to use the regular lanes and go up to full speed. Other makes and models would need to drive on the shoulder.
For things like local utilities where it isn’t financially feasible to have multiple companies lay wire (especially in rural areas), government regulation demanding neutrality is important.
If the Obama administration is planned to suppress voices on the internet (which wouldn’t surprise me), this article did little to document that and it is a separate issue from net neutrality.