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Ted Cruz Says Net Neutrality Is 'Obamacare For The Internet'
Business Insider ^ | 10 Nov 14 | Colin Campbell

Posted on 11/10/2014 8:23:23 AM PST by xzins

Sen. Ted Cruz came out swinging after President Barack Obama wholeheartedly endorsed new internet regulations Monday morning.

Cruz, who is mulling a run for president in 2016, compared the entire concept of "net neutrality" — which posits internet companies should not be allowed to speed or slow down their services for certain users — to Obama's much-maligned healthcare reform.

'"Net Neutrality' is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government," Cruz wrote on Twitter.

Cruz's spokeswoman, Amanda Carpenter, added that net neutrality would place the government "in charge of determining pricing, terms of service, and what products can be delivered. Sound like Obamacare much?"

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cruz; netneutrality; obamanet; tedcruz
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To: Theoria

Competition? Lower prices? How do you compete against the government when the gov doesn’t have to turn a profit. Oh, we need more money - OK raise taxes. That will keep the prices low.

You have strange definitions for competition and price.


21 posted on 11/10/2014 9:15:23 AM PST by Henry Hnyellar
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To: xzins

Net neutrality is a must. It has nothing to do with running things “at the speed of government”, and is quite the opposite in fact. You want to pay a microfee for every email you receive? Then by all means get rid of “net neutrality” because that’s going to be the general direction the internet will take.

Cruz is wrong on this.

Net Neutrality means that Providers of internet access cannot restrict content across their vertical connections (to the house). Because their access itself is given by “the regional government” as a franchised monopoly. No net neutrality means less competition, not more.

There is a lot more too it. Suffice it to say, just claiming that natural market forces will regulate the internet once net neutrality is done away with is foolish thinking.

The natural forces of “net neutral” distribution of the internet is what promotes “content competition and variety”. Where the competition should be, not in access and bandwidth which would if “net neutrality” were not enforced.

Technology should drive the access and bandwidth. Better and more advanced equipment and advanced technology rather than letting monopolies control over what we can and can’t get in our content.

These big providers ... they do not own the “horizontal internet” (the coast to coast connections) nor do they own the “vertical internet” (the street to your house connection). They may own a small piece, or lease a small piece or have been given administration responsibilities for a piece or two as part of a franchise monopoly.


22 posted on 11/10/2014 9:17:57 AM PST by Usagi_yo (Criticize, marginalize, demonize, criminalize.)
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To: TADSLOS

“GO TED!!”

On something else, leave net neutrality alone and let the industry work it out.


23 posted on 11/10/2014 9:18:50 AM PST by Usagi_yo (Criticize, marginalize, demonize, criminalize.)
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To: xzins
Seems like the internet is working just fine. Why do we need the government to exercise net neutrality?
24 posted on 11/10/2014 9:21:57 AM PST by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: Henry Hnyellar
The 'profit' is created by the new companies moving and creating jobs and innovation. Not my beliefs, but some localities have done such.

Why a Tennessee town has the fastest internet

Chattanooga's Gig: how one city's super-fast internet is driving a tech boom

25 posted on 11/10/2014 9:22:40 AM PST by Theoria (I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive)
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To: blackdog
Political wordsmithing the American populace is like shooting fish in a barrel. The passage of any legislation in this country relies on deception in title, laziness of media scrutiny, sound bite brains of the masses, and bribery to legislators valued proportionately to the level of deceit

Indeed. First the Affordable Care Act, which made care unaffordable for many people, and now Net Neutrality, which will make the net decidedly non-neutral (gee, what happend to bandwidth for Drudge, FR, Instapundit, PJ Media, etc etc etc. ).

26 posted on 11/10/2014 9:26:50 AM PST by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: TADSLOS

> Obama leftist power grab to choke out freedom of speech via bureaucratic regulation and taxation.

Bingo. If they control the Internet they control free speech, privacy, online commerce, the strongest propaganda / indoctrination tool in the history of man, etc... It would also allow them to do unwarranted searches and seizures of data on your computer because of the anonymity of the Internet. It would put him in a position of having The People’s balls on a plate (had to leave out some choice words here...: )


27 posted on 11/10/2014 9:29:58 AM PST by jsanders2001
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To: xzins

The bass turd is going to keep pushing until he is stopped one way or another.


28 posted on 11/10/2014 9:30:09 AM PST by Old Yeller (D.A.M.N. - Deport All Muslims Now! Starting in the White House.)
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To: Rummyfan
Seems like the internet is working just fine. Why do we need the government to exercise net neutrality?

Net neutrality is not a government program. It is a principle. The Internet is working fine because we have net neutrality now.

29 posted on 11/10/2014 10:08:13 AM PST by wideminded
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To: Usagi_yo

I agree, but good luck getting a critical mass of people on this site to agree with you. If Obama is for it, it must be bad. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The last-mile monopoly that Comcast/Time-Warner/etc have effectively guts the argument of “letting the market decide”. If I want high speed internet service to my house, I have no choice - I must use Comcast and I have to pay the price they charge.


30 posted on 11/10/2014 10:11:54 AM PST by Sirloin (Whoosh!)
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To: xzins
If customers aren’t satisfied with the speed, they’ll go to providers who offer more speed.

You'd think that would work but it's not your local ISP that's going to be slowing you down.  It would most likely be a downstream provider that's trying to shake down google or some other company that would be doing it.

31 posted on 11/10/2014 10:13:22 AM PST by zeugma (The act of observing disturbs the observed.)
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To: Usagi_yo

Yep. TimeWarner, Comcast et at can purchase as many congress-critters (Ds and Rs) as they need to maintain their monopoly powers. Anyone thinking there’s a free and open market at work here is delusional...


32 posted on 11/10/2014 10:22:48 AM PST by blowfish
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To: Usagi_yo
These big providers ... they do not own the “horizontal internet” (the coast to coast connections) nor do they own the “vertical internet” (the street to your house connection). They may own a small piece, or lease a small piece or have been given administration responsibilities for a piece or two as part of a franchise monopoly.

Not only that, but they entered into peering agreements with the other providers.

There is a lot of misinformation about 'net neutrality' because too many people do not really understand how the internet works.

To the people who say that Netflix should be paying for the bandwidth used to deliver their content, they already do. Do you think some ISP let's Netflix tie their OC48 pipes into their backbone without being compensated for it? I'd hate to think about paying the interconnect charges for a company like Netflix or Google. It aint cheap, because they do pay for their internet access the same as everyone else.

What 'net neutrality' is really all about is the various companies between them and you wanting to get an additional 'piece of the action' because they aren't smart enough (or lucky enough) to have content that you want delivered. If they were on the other side of this equation, you bet they'd be singing different tunes. You can be sure that companies like time/warner want to be the ones generating the traffic to get the advertizer dollars that netflix does. Rather than creating a compelling product that generates customers who want their product, they want to just skim additional revenue from companies who did.

 

33 posted on 11/10/2014 10:27:23 AM PST by zeugma (The act of observing disturbs the observed.)
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To: xzins; Kale; Jarhead9297; COUNTrecount; notaliberal; DoughtyOne; RitaOK; MountainDad; ...
Ted Cruz Ping!

If you want on/off this ping list, please let me know.

Please beware, this is a high-volume ping list!
34 posted on 11/10/2014 10:42:38 AM PST by SoConPubbie (Mitt and Obama: They're the same poison, just a different potency)
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To: xzins

Slight problem with that.

For geographic areas, competition is inconsistent at best to nonexistent at worst.

Try to run your own ISP and you’ll find yourself in a situation not unlike Netflix - where they’re being specifically targeted and made slower.


35 posted on 11/10/2014 11:08:51 AM PST by setha (It is past time for the United States to take back what the world took away.)
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To: xzins

The government is charged with protecting our borders, let them get that right and then stick to what they are empowered to do. Oh, that would mean that most of what they now do would be left to the states, local governments and much of it to business.


36 posted on 11/10/2014 11:31:28 AM PST by duffee (Dump the Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, joe nosef.)
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To: Usagi_yo

Net neutrality is daft. That micro fee thing is what you get with *more*regulation, when they have to comply with little limits here and there so they have to categorize more.

To even argue net neutrality in the form the government is doing so is to not have even trivial understanding of the way that the internet works. Learn a bit about differentiated services, Cos, and Qos! as well as real-time and non-real-time services.


37 posted on 11/10/2014 11:33:31 AM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Sirloin

That’s a gods argument...about a completely different subject. That’s not what ‘net neutrality’ is about.


38 posted on 11/10/2014 11:36:46 AM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Sirloin

That’s a good argument...about a completely different subject. That’s not what ‘net neutrality’ is about.


39 posted on 11/10/2014 11:39:41 AM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Sirloin; Usagi_yo
The last-mile monopoly that Comcast/Time-Warner/etc have effectively guts the argument of “letting the market decide”. If I want high speed internet service to my house, I have no choice - I must use Comcast and I have to pay the price they charge.

I don't see the need for this "Net Neutrality" legislation.

In my community, we have a choice of at least a dozen providers: cable, phone line, cellular network A, cellular network B, satellite service of the phone company, plus several other satellite services. Even in a remote rural area, you would have several of those options.

I don't see the need to tie down the providers, except, of course, to achieve state control over the Internet.

40 posted on 11/10/2014 3:51:47 PM PST by Praxeologue
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