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.
How is that different from utilities?
I know most markets have some internet competition--but not all. Utilities are the same way.
That's precisely what it is. This article is astroturf BS written by the real socailists: cable and telco companies who have a sweet government monopoly and want to use it to block free-market competition (exactly as your example describes).
What the Misguided Have Missed Regarding Network NeutralityThe concept of Network Neutrality has unfortunately been misunderstood by many conservatives, libertarians, and other champions of the free market. That's too bad, because the free market essence of the Internet is exactly what would be lost without Network Neutrality.
The large telecoms, some politicians and a number of conservative pundits have characterized the push for Network Neutrality as a left-wing attempt to stifle innovation and put government bureaucrats in control of the Internet. Well, it's not. Through my work with Gun Owners of America, I am demonstratively a lot further to the right than they are.
It is true that the largest member of the coalition looking to regain Network Neutrality is MoveOn.org -- and they are usually my political enemies. But Gun Owners and groups like Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council have done did what many on the right don't seem to have: our homework.
One of the most telling points is that what the coalition is trying to get codified is what we have had all along as the Internet was developed. In all of those years, Network Neutrality was policy; until August of 2005, when the FCC changed the rules. How can this policy stifle innovation and competition when the Internet has been a roaring success in those areas for decades?
The real problem is that we are under a distorted market from the get-go. Government is setting the rules. The result has been a government-supported oligopoly. We are lucky that those controlling physical access to the Internet have been forced to give every purchaser of bandwidth equal access -- it doesn't matter whether Gun Owners or the Brady Center is purchasing a T-1: all T-1 purchasers pay the same for the same level of service. And moreover, the phone company has to tough it if they don't like what is being done with that bandwidth (such as this column).
This goes all the way back to Ma Bell -- after all, the physical infrastructure of the Internet is the nation's phone lines. And just as I-95 is the only Interstate we have between Richmond and the Beltway, no one is going to build a competing physical Internet.
But people are going to build new Burger Kings along the highways. Suppose, however, that AT&T owned I-95. And that they inked an exclusive deal with Wendy's. Or bowed to pressure from food Nazis and said no burgers at all from Florida to Maine.
What we think of as the free market nature of the Internet is only possible because the oligopoly has been forced to keep its hands off of what actually gets done with the infrastructure they control.
In a truly free market, Network Neutrality would not be necessary, as good old American competition would drive the very best service up the ladder of success. But as long as government is setting the rules for a handful of companies, the rules have to include statutory Network Neutrality to ensure those companies can't unilaterally shut down what the innovators are doing. If they had any choice, telephone companies would not have allowed Instant Messaging or Voice over Internet -- those things directly compete with their largest moneymaking service!
But it can be worse than that. Large telecoms have internal anti-gun policies. If they were allowed to, what's to stop them from slowing or blocking content they disagree with?
Another wrong argument made by the misguided is that the leftists are trying to institute price controls, forcing companies to charge the same for high bandwidth video as for quick-flying e-mail. Or as one writer put it, charge the same for a golf ball and a marble being sent through garden hoses. Nope. That bigger, more expensive hose required to deliver the golf ball? Network Neutrality merely means that all who buy that particular hose get the same hose at the same price and can't be denied the chance to lawfully use it.
It's a funny way to have to think of it, true, but as long as Congress is making the rules for a handful of major companies in providing the infrastructure, it has to make certain those companies give equal access to all comers. That's the way it has been for the very lifetime of the free and open Internet we're all interested in maintaining.
--Craig Fields, director of Internet operations, Gun Owners of America
Yes.
If so why????
Because they, like the Gun Owners of America, like the Parents Television Council, and like all the other pro-Net-Neutrality groups, actually did their homework instead of parrotting astroturf BS from the telcos (who are entangled with the government like an octopus orgy).
James G. Lakely ought to be ashamed for prostituting himself and publishing this tripe under his byline.
This is why the mainstream establishment holds us in such contempt, you know.
We know that they're a gang of crooks... but all they have to do is toss out some of this astroturf BS (e.g. the article at the top of this very thread) and many of us (again, see this very thread for examples) will swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
Nope. They saw through the bull... while you go shopping for bigger pants and a longer belt.
There are no “privately owned” cable or telco lines connected to people’s houses — they’re government monopolies established by franchise.
An Charles Manson's followers only murdered people that one time.
So you concede that you’re wrong. The existence of franchise monopolies is incompatible with a free market.
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?
When you answer your own question, you're supposed to put the question first and the answer below it.
Come back when you know what you're talking about.
You're not confused, but some FReepers who swallowed the telco Kool-Aid are.
The "last mile" is a government franchise monopoly of the local cable company and the local telephone company. Hence, there is no real free market.
People who genuinely value the idea of government recognizing copyrights and patents need to stop undermining them by perpetuating the lie that these are property rights. There is no such thing as intellectual property. They are real rights recognized by the Constitution, but violation of them is not theft.
Sorry when it comes to the internet THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BUTT OUT!!
I have to admit that I am out of my element but I think an example of what I mean is when all Canadian ISPs purposefully slow traffic to/from P2P sites.
If the bandwidth is the same why should ISPs be allowed to slow or block you from accessing sites they don't like?
That's been the deal for awhile, now. Remember, I only agree to battle it with you for one second after you quit. You go first.
Post a link that actually contradicts what I said.
And if you think common carrier is a good thing, you've got nothing to say. Essentially you're a freeloader who believes you're entitled to use my equipment for free. You aren't. Go back to DU.
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