Posted on 10/20/2009 4:09:02 PM PDT by yoe
Advocates of imposing "network neutrality" say it's necessary to ensure a "free" and "open" Internet and rescue the public from nefarious corporations that "control" technology.
Few proposals in Washington have been sold employing such deceptive language -- and that's saying something. But few public policy ideas can boast the unashamedly socialist pedigree of net neutrality.
The modern Internet is a creation of the free market, which has brought about a revolution in communication, free speech, education, and commerce. New Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski apparently doesn't like that. He stated last month the way Internet service providers manage their networks -- in response to millions of individual consumer choices -- is not sufficiently "fair," "open" or "free."
The chairman's remedy is to claim for the FCC the power to decide how every bit of data is transferred from the Web to every personal computer and handheld device in the nation. This is exactly what the radical founders of the net neutrality movement had in mind.
The concept can be traced to an iconoclastic figure, Richard Stallman, a self-described software freedom activist who introduced the term "copyleft" in the mid-1980s. In his 2002 essay "Free Software, Free Society," Stallman fiercely attacks the idea that intellectual property rights are one of the keystones of individual liberty, so important that patents and copyrights are affirmatively protected in the body of the Constitution.
According to Stallman, "we are not required to agree with the Constitution or the Supreme Court. [At one time, they both condoned slavery.]" Like slavery, he says, copyright law is "a radical right-wing assumption rather than a traditionally recognized one." Rebuking those who might find a Marxist flavor in his call for a "digital commons," Stallman turns the tables, writing: "If we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists."
Eben Moglen's 2003 treatise The dotCommunist Manifesto is more honest about the thinking behind net neutrality -- it's sprinkled throughout with the language of communism's great and bloody revolutionaries. The people must "struggle" to "wrest from the bourgeoisie, by degrees, the shared patrimony of humankind" that has been "stolen from us under the guise of 'intellectual property.' "
How does one bring this about? The professor of law and legal history at Columbia University would start with the "abolition of all forms of private property in ideas."
Most bold and radical of the neutralists is Robert W. McChesney, founder of Free Press -- the leading advocacy group in Washington pushing for net neutrality. In an August interview with a Canadian Marxist online publication called the Bullet, McChesney rejoices that net neutrality can finally bring about the Marxist "revolution."
"At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies," McChesney said. "We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."
He's right: Net neutrality divests control over the Internet from the private sector to the government. And in typical Marxist fashion, innocuous words -- the language of neutralism and liberty -- cloak an agenda that would crush freedom.
That's the agenda President Obama's FCC is pushing.
James G. Lakely is co-director of the Center on the Digital Economy for the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank. His policy study, "Neutralism: The Strange Philosophy Behind the Movement for Net Neutrality," can be found at www.heartland.org.
“A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism….” So began the Communist Manifesto so many years ago. A manifesto driven by the darkest side of human nature, expressed in an unappeasable appetite to control mankind.
That same specter is now haunting the White House.
The same ideas that have animated the 20th century’s mass murderers now have a happy home in the White House. Say that again: The same ideas that have animated the 20th century’s mass murderers now have a happy home in the White House.
Prove me wrong. You can't.
Obama is merely another worshipper at the altar of statism, sharing the same pew as Stalin, Castro, Mao, Chavez and Pol Pot. They bow before the same god of human sacrifice and power for power’s sake. And as the sad, bloody history of the twentieth century, and as the first decade of the 21st has shown, demons dance on their empty altars.
These monsters would rather rule in hell as barbarians sitting on top of a stinking heap of rubble and corpses than leave the rest of us alone to live in peace. I believe that enough patriots still remain to prevent this from happening. But it will come at a terrible cost.
Titus Livy, in his introduction to his monumental history of Rome remarked that his purpose in writing was "to trace the progress of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them."
Now we must face the remedies needed to cure ourselves of the Marxist totalitarian rot that has overtaken us. That we have allowed to overtake us. Livy's cure will not take place in the voting both nor will it come from the forums of public debate.
Those forums have been lost to us, as any observant individual well knows.
The honest answers to the following questions won’t be pleasant to contemplate.
When your opponents lack the price of admission to civilized debate: a respect for reason, belief in objective truth, and a willingness to admit they’re wrong when the facts prove it so - what then?
When your opponents' goals are to destroy the very foundation of your culture and your society - and to offer nothing in return but the howling nightmare of a society of cannibals and looters - what then?
When your opponents use the public education system to indoctrinate your children's' minds in the politics of victimization and the nobility of human servitude and sacrifice - what then?
When the institutions of higher learning are occupied by Marxist multiculturalists who despise the very philosophical foundation upon which the architecture of liberty and human dignity have been constructed and seek to destroy it - what then?
We know the answer - as historian Samuel P. Huntington said in his Clash of Civilizations, "History shows that no country so constituted can long endure as a coherent society."
And now we must pay the price for Livy’s cure. You all know that there is only one way this can end.
Aparently yes. They seem to have been fed a line of bull and chowed down. Somehing to do with private enterprise shutting down Christian sites. Just BS but they are late comers to this fray and have been taken for a one way ride.
I'm assuming the FCC hasn't changed the definition, though.
Does Net “Neutrality” give the government the ability to block servers, providers and websites?
Sad... I wonder if they think that Government is going to bad porn sites also..
So what?
Two [patents and copyrights] are supposed to be limited to only certain types of information and granted for only certain periods of time.
And what patents or copyrights are you aware of that are unlimited in duration?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with "net neutrality" on principle;
Sure there is. On principle, those parts of the Internet that are privately owned should on principle be allowed to charge whatever customers whatever they like for whatever traffic they pass at whatever volume, time of day, or other sales consideration they may come up with. Or do you disagree "on principle" with the idea of volume discounts or other kinds of sales devices? If so, under what "principle" of capitalism do you oppose them?
And what's to stop the leftists who run some of the major ISPs from throttling FR traffic (or blocking it outright) until FR pays a huge amount to them?
Nothing!
At my house, there is only one cable provider and only one telco.
The big ISPs have state-granted monopolies on access.
If you want a free market, fine. But don't give us some bastardized mutant hybrid of capitalism and Socialism and call it a "free market" and "capitalist" system.
Please. The only thing ISPs have ever done that comes even remotely close to blocking access to sites is Comcast’s throttling of Bittorrent traffic at peak hours.
The argument that government needs to step in now to correct a situation that has never happened is false on its face.
have fun. Hope you don’t mind drinking Coffee with aspartame and cream.
What you don’t drink coffee?
Sounds like a personal problem.
Next!.... calling number 46th million in line. Have a seat, you can get on the internet in an hour.
Here's a clue for you FRiend: when you find yourself in agreement with Richard Stallman, there's a greater than 99.99999% likelihood that you're wrong. I'll let FReepers have a look at http://www.stallman.org/, his personal web page to decide for themselves. The government didn't pay Comcast to drag cable to my house or Verizon to pull fibre to my door. They have no right to tell them what to charge.
Even if you don’t know what “Net Neutality” is... the fact that every Socialist, Marxist, Maoist connected to the Obama Administration is behind this should show you that it is not a good thing and a backdoor into government control of the internet and what you are able to get on it. Make no mistake, these people are Hyper-Radicals who will do anything to destroy this great country of ours.
No, what I'm saying is that if the two broadband providers sell me unfiltered access for my network traffic to transit through their network, I want them to actually deliver.
The government didn't pay Comcast to drag cable to my house or Verizon to pull fibre to my door.
Try getting cable from another provider. You can't. Or maybe telephone service from another provider. Nope, you can't.
Absent the principles of "net neutrality" in how traffic is passed from network to network, if Verizon wants to sell me a $200/month VoIP plan, they can just degrade or outright block Skype traffic originating from my home.
As I said earlier, "if you want a free market, fine." No government-mandated "net neutrality," and allow for full competition in cable and telco access to homes and businesses instead of the government-granted monopoly status that is the situation today.
It is all getting past the point of return. I guess there is no tipping point until all is lost.
I am sick of it.
Net Neutrality is not bad: it made the internet what it is. That the FCC is getting involved is the only bad part.
Very good analysis. I have always been for net neutrality but I get very suspicious when Obama’s FCC stooges come out for it now
Who is stopping anyone from pulling cable to your house? [Hint: No one].
What's now called "net neutrality" is not fundamentally different from the common carrier requirements enforced on the telcos in the 1980's.
What was the result?
The infrastructure degraded rapidly, or was simply left to attrition, because it was in no one's interest to upgrade their hardware for the benefit of their freeloading "competition."
I repeat: there is NOTHING stopping 90 different access providers from serving you. Now, ask yourself the question why don't they?
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