ROGER STONE: Time For Real Net Neutrality

The Daily Caller ^ | 12/7/17 | Roger Stone

[a little elbow grease]

(snip) - The singular reason why this-so called “Net Neutrality” came to the forefront is because then President Barack Obama ordered it. And who was prodding Obama to do so? Google. Microsoft. Facebook. Twitter. Amazon.

The Tech Left, funded largely by George Soros, had decided to champion under the banner of a benign-sounding “Net Neutrality” campaign and seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grab the moral high ground in their determination to allow the giant edge providers to censor the Internet to suit their ideological preferences — ridding the Internet of conservative and libertarian content.

Google was especially vested, as the tech giant helped write the 2015 net neutrality rules and Google employees had more access to the White House during Barack Obama’s term than did Lois Lerner.

(snip) - If Donald J. Trump had not won the election in 2016, there is little question that the vibrant alternative media that exists today would be but a dim shadow of its current self. Even today, calls for outright censorship of Breitbart, Drudge Report, and Infowars are screeched out of the same mouths that call for “fairness” of content.

[ctdonath2]

Interesting that the term “common carrier” is not used in this discussion.

[a little elbow grease]

What we need desperately is common sense journalism reform that requires so-called journalists to go through training and obtain a license. Too many lives are being destroyed by irresponsible misuse of unverifiable sources and unchecked reporting of rumors.

______

Good idea, but if something like that is done, we must somehow be able to keep an eye on the "direction" of the ones handing out the "licenses", or we may just have the awful end as we see now from all these liberal/LEFT journalism schools.

[a little elbow grease]

Liberals lie. The name "Net Neutrality" is itself a lie.

Think of it as Affirmative Action for the Internet. Of course it will evolve into censorship.

_______

Everything you say is true. This subject is one of the very important ones.

[palmer]

That’s because there is no “common carrier”. The people who claim there is no competition refuse to use wireless while wireless just keeps getting better. Also any monopolies in the last mile are artificial due to local regulations. Even where in the sticks there is cable and DSL and wireless thanks to mostly hands-off by local government.

[Ancesthntr]

“Interesting that the term “common carrier” is not used in this discussion.”

---

Interesting, indeed.

These companies, especially Google and Facebook, are monopolistic operators in the classic sense. But, due to the nature of their business, it isn’t just about locking out competition and raising prices to earn outsized profits, it is also about controlling the content of speech in a critical network. Frankly, the Internet is far more important than the telephone network that AT&T controlled, since it doesn’t just provide communications, but also information. The telephone monopoly was broken up - and should have been - and so should the various Internet monopolies.

[Ancesthntr]

See # 25.

[a little elbow grease]

The telephone monopoly was broken up - and should have been - and so should the various Internet monopolies.

___

I hear you.

[neverevergiveup]

Other than using them very often, I have little knowledge about computers and how the internet works - so my comment is made with that background. It seems to me that if you want to censure the internet and control content, search engines are the place to start. Most of us just type in what we're interested in and sort through the search response. If something important and relevant is not included, we may never know about it. Do all of the different search engines survey the internet independently, or do they use some common mechanism? How is it decided what is filtered and what shows up?

[BurrOh]

Bkmrk

[Jim W N]

The Delusional Lying Left lie about everything especially mislabeling issues to trap and confuse the unwary.

Some of their latest lying examples:

“Net Neutrality = BIASED REGULATION. Unconstitutional government regulation of free speech, especially political speech against unlimited government.

“Tax Reform” = TAX CUTS proposed by Trump and resisted by the Lying Left in both parties.

“Travel Ban” = INVASION BAN. Immigration of illegals and enemies is invasion.

[Ancesthntr]

I am not any kind of expert on the issue, but I think that most use similar techniques. However, many less popular search engines actually use Google as their base search engine, and present the results as their own.

Google, BTW, does filter it’s search results, using very sophisticated software AND a fair amount of human intervention (in the software, not for each search). That filtering and intervention, from a political perspective, ALWAYS favor the Leftist agenda, reflecting Google’s own corporate political bias.

[Sgt_Schultze]

I make this proposal to chide mediots, who uniformly ally with democrats to support limiting a stipulated Constitutional right. There is no reason their industry/Constitutional right should escape the same fate as they deliberately report so-called facts without disclosing the source or motivations of their supposed sources.

[loveliberty2]

"What we need desperately is common sense journalism reform that requires so-called journalists to go through training and obtain a license. Too many lives are being destroyed by irresponsible misuse of unverifiable sources and unchecked reporting of rumors."

What we need is "common sense," authentic and accurate textbooks, teaching and learning in K-12, undergraduate and graduate schools (including journalism schools) about the real history surrounding America's founding and framing of a Constitution for a free people!

Journalists cannot fully appreciate what a privilege they enjoy in America because of the Founders' insistence on a "free press," even if its made up of individuals whose opinions may not agree with then-current Administrations, Congressional and Senate officials!

Many journalists appear to be Constitutionally illiterate as they exercise their protection under the umbrella of the Bill of Rights--the same Bill of Rights which protects those who disagree with them.

One of the amendments to the Constitution [* * *] expressly declares, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"; thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech and of the press; insomuch, that whatever violates either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others. - Thomas Jefferson, TITLE: Kentucky Resolutions. EDITION: Washington ed. ix, 466. EDITION: Ford ed., vii, 295. PLACE: [none given] DATE: 1798

[a little elbow grease]

of rumors." What we need is "common sense," authentic and accurate textbooks, teaching and learning in K-12, undergraduate and graduate schools (including journalism schools) about the real history surrounding America's founding and framing of a Constitution for a free people!

Journalists cannot fully appreciate what a privilege they enjoy in America because of the Founders' insistence on a "free press," even if its made up of individuals whose opinions may not agree with then-current Administrations, Congressional and Senate officials!

_________

Great points.

[loveliberty2]

Thank you. All credit to America's hero generations who gave us our Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States of America--the two greatest testaments to liberty ever conceived and produced--and within 11 (eleven) years of each other.

The almost immediate explosion of freedom, opportunity, productivity and sharing of wealth which resulted benefitted the entire world!

[Monorprise]

A better solution is simply to break up google , Facebook, and Amazon using antitrust laws.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, and even Microsoft will always control the government employees regulating them and everyone else as to turn that to their atvantage and suppress new competition.

These are not well run companies. They are discriminatory and extrodarly wastfully. The only thing keeping them afloat is they happen to own a lot of very valuable intellectual property develuped during past openness, and currently employ illegal monopolistic practices.

Dont forget until the last handfull of years theses companites were fair and open.
Now they are lefist tyrants seeking to shut down ideoligical opposition and purify themselves of disagreeable ideas. This makes them very volenerablity and weak in the long run.

Leftist ideoligy will kill them like it’s killed every other indistry only faster once you strip them of their Monopoly practices and ip rights as we did at&t in the early 80s.

They simply don’t have the freedom to think outside their very intolerant box. That is the worse limitation possible for a technology company.

[a little elbow grease]

You make some good points, but try "spell check/spell" every now and then.

Your thoughts and your writing will be more highly respected.

Be well.

[Bones75]

I support any rule that says that all internet traffic should be treated the same. If you call it “net neutrality” or anything else. I think the technical term is “dumb pipe” if I remember correctly, ISP’s should be a “dumb pipe”. The government should not have control over the content we have access too, and neither should a corporate entity.

Should Google or even AT&T or Verizon have control over what opinions we are able to express or read?

If AT&T has a deal with Home Depot, for example, should they be able to block access to the Lowe’s website?

Does net neutrality give certain people control over the internet, or does it prevent anyone from having that type of control?

I think all internet traffic should be treated equally, regardless of content, in that whatever parts of it we the people want access to, we should have that.

That’s just my opinion. Maybe a broken clock is right twice a day, or maybe I’m misunderstanding what net neutrality is, but I absolutely think that nobody, be it the government or an ISP, should have control over what we can access on the internet.

[a little elbow grease]

Your thoughts are appreciated. You obviously have given the subject much intelligent consideration.

Let's hope things with the internet work out for the better.

[Bones75]

“Let’s hope things with the internet work out for the better.”

Thank you for the kind words, and yes, lets hope for the best indeed. I think some of the dire predictions might be overblown. But let’s remember, a lot of the folks controlling tech companies are lefties.