Posted on 10/21/2009 5:43:57 PM PDT by Kaslin
First Amendment: Diversity czar Mark Lloyd's FCC votes Thursday on the issue of net neutrality. Advertised as providing access to all, it will do to the information superhighway what Lloyd proposed for talk radio.
Not much was said when $7.2 billion was included in the stimulus bill "to accelerate broadband deployment in unserved and underserved areas and to strategic institutions that are likely to create jobs or provide significant public benefits." The administration has big plans for the Internet — like controlling it.
Susan Crawford, the so-called Internet czar, told the Wall Street Journal in April that the broadband billions are a "down payment on future government investments in the Internet." Like in the auto industry?
Speaking to the Brookings Institution on Sept. 21, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski stressed in Orwellian newspeak the need for net neutrality rules: "I am convinced that there are few goals more essential in the communications landscape than preserving and maintaining an open and robust Internet."
In the name of providing access to the downtrodden victims of corporate greed, the FCC proposes to take unto itself the power to regulate how Internet providers manage their networks and serve their customers. The FCC would decide how and what information could flow through the Internet.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Getting despondent here.
Dont cap your customers at 60gigs per month or throttle/choke their downloads.
That is all we ask.
Evil.
There is no other word for it.
I guess I demand more: Keep your gd a$$e$ far away from the Internet. It works fine. I know of NO dissatisfied user. We have plenty of choices. We don't need you f***ers to limit us to one.
ML/NJ
What worries me the most is that this administration is acting like they will be in power indefinately. Previous administrations would never go to these lengths because when they no longer are in power the other side gets to have this power. This Administrations doesn’t seem to be concerned. That is what worries me the most.
Exactly.
BTTT
Translation: "Underserved" = The Moocher Class.
This is just more stealth reparations/wealth redistribution.
I wouldn't be surprised if "accelerate broadband deployment" also includes free computers for the moochers and freeloaders.
After all, how can the "underserved" among us use the expanded broadband availability if they don't have new computers to surf the net?
Yep, free computers to the parasites. We, the taxpayers,
already provide FREE cell phones WITH 80 minutes per month
to the parasite class.
I truly believe that is the intent.
"No, surely, No! they meant to drive us into what they termed rebellion, that they might be furnished with a pretext to disarm and then strip us of the rights and privileges of Englishmen and Citizens."-- George Washington, March 1, 1778 letter to Bryan Fairfax, Valley forge.
Rogue, renegade government out of control.
What aspect of our lives do they not want to control?
The time is way past due for us to take back our country from these Marxists.
Yeah WTH is with the free cell phones? When did cell phones become a necessity?
Did I miss something?
Of course up here in Mass they're being advertised on TV. Cable channels. So if you've got enough dough to buy cable go buy your own phone!
Net neutrality is the early internet version of The Fairness Doctrine.
“So count me in on the pro-neutrality side. I like that a site like this gets treated the same as MSNBC.com rather than crowded out by it. “
Agreed. Its like with the mail. I’m glad that postage costs the same for The Nation as they do for the Limbaugh Letter. Take away net neutrality and you’ll see powerful interests gaining a lot of new ways to suppress speech they dislike or to stamp out the competition. For instance a cable internet provider slowing down access to streaming netflix or a phone based provider slowing down skype. Or a company associated with liberal interests crippling FR for their users.
When I say “dont cap us at 60gigs” I’m not talking Obama, but the mega-corporations that want to charge more for high bandwidth sites like YouTube. When I pay 15 bucks a month for premium newsgroup access from Giganews, or whereever..the corporations need to SHUT THE HELL UP and stop throttling my connection.
Now, at the other end of this debate is Obama. What Obama wants to do is have everyone authenticate their identities on the internet (you can guess how this will be accomplished) since millions will just go off the grid and become self-employed..underground. They will stop paying taxes to His Royal Assnessness when his healthcare scam kicks in, and they will homeschool their children for 9 months a year instead of being indoctrinated in the public schools for 12 months out of the year.
It is all much, much bigger than simple “net neutrality”. The Devil is in the details.
BTTT! Glenn Beck has been covering this during this week!
bttt
“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.”
Its amazing how our founding fathers and we have so much in common. Their words , even today, provide guidance for us. I just hope it doesn’t go that far.
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.
Disagree.
Umm...where has there been a problem with this that needs ‘solving’ by the government? What makes you think that the government will make things ‘fair’?
Why would you give the Obama administration or any administration the power to decide what was ‘neutral’?
Are they doing this? Is ANYONE doing this? Why are we 'solving' a problem before it's become a problem?
Let's stop beating around the bush here. What people really want here and why they support this crap is because they want their p2p file sharing to be as fast as possible.
In actuality, what will happen here is the same with all government regulations. Unintended consequences. This time, they will be diminished levels of service for everyone across the board and higher costs for that service.
Why the hell anyone would advocate for this claptrap is beyond me.
As far as I know it is true this is not based on them already having done it. This is based on the CEOs of some of these ISPs seriously talking about putting up toll booths on the Internet, degrading service unless the provider (VOIP, video, etc.) pays extra.
The other half of net neutrality is basically honesty in advertising, not quietly degrading the advertised service because a user has exceeded some unknown traffic cap. Put it all up front and charge for high traffic if necessary. They're doing this because they still want to be able to offer "unlimited" high-speed Internet, but not actually provide that service.
Sure, they all want to protect dying business models. But they know they can't get away with stuff like that.
Put it all up front and charge for high traffic if necessary. They're doing this because they still want to be able to offer "unlimited" high-speed Internet, but not actually provide that service.
All that's going to do is drive the price up and cap levels lower than the 'invisible' cap is now. They'll now have a hard cap and several different service levels, with the lowest level being the exact same price as the one we have now. So, we'll have degraded service across the board.
So, instead of habitual high bandwidth users having some of their traffic (torrents) throttled, we'll all be throttled by default. But at least everyone will feel better about themselves for sticking it to the man...
Then the answer is, open up competition so that you can tell any company that does this, "Buh-Bye."
I hate the Net Neutrality Bill, but on the other hand, I love the Net Neutrality Bill ...
I’m already in compliance...
Just remember, there is no problem so great that the government can’t make it even worse.
Having the Gub'mint enter here to solve a problem that doesn't yet exist (torrent/bandwidth stomping) guarantees that the Gub'mint is now moved in.
Part of providing net access the "under served population" will be to monitor/control content through control of the ISP's.
after all, 'they' already rulled over the ISP's in the first place.
The question is whether they're doing it already and we just don't know.
They'll now have a hard cap and several different service levels, with the lowest level being the exact same price as the one we have now. So, we'll have degraded service across the board.
Why? They say less than five percent of users are responsible, so find out what they're using and charge them more. We already have tiers of service with low, medium and high speed, so all that needs to get added is a traffic factor. Currently they have no right to complain when somebody uses all of the bandwidth they pay for, yet such users are summarily cut off. That is fraud, but the average user doesn't have the resources to fight it.
Come on. Really?
Why? They say less than five percent of users are responsible, so find out what they're using and charge them more.
We need the government to regulate that? Why? If they wanted to provide those users with more or charge them more, they can certainly do that now. There's nothing stopping them. But they'd rather throttle their traffic. If less than 5% are doing this and they're limiting the traffic for those users, then what the heck do we care about it to make a law for? We're going to change what 95% of people have just to regulate the way companies treat 5% of their customers? Why?
As for the pricing and the business model, none of these companies are going to lower the price of their current lowest priced offering. (I work in the industry, strangely in a sector that really would be adversely affected if these kinds of 'problems' that we are trying to 'solve' actually did exist.) They can't lower that price, as it would cut into the bottom line. A service provider will never do that. So, the lowest cost offering they have now will be capped.
The humorous thing is that when capping everyone, they will make the caps low, which will stop people on the lowest tier plans from watching all the youtube videos and downloading stuff that we're so righteously trying to protect now. That is, unless they pony up the dough to get a better plan. Funny how that works, eh? By putting these 'evil corporations' in line, we're actually empowering them to charge us a lot more for the basic services we are used to.
Why would they do this? Why the hell wouldn't they? It opens up a whole new revenue stream and cuts their expansion costs on updating their network. It's win-win for them.
And all this to solve an imaginary problem that doesn't exist. Or maybe might somehow exist now, but we don't know about it, which begs the question: if we haven't noticed it, is it really a problem even if they are doing it?
If less than 5% are doing this and they're limiting the traffic for those users, then what the heck do we care about it to make a law for?
Because of their often monopoly position in an area they can arbitrarily violate user contracts and engage in false advertising. When they say 7 Mb/s that means 7 Mb/s. They try to hide the fact that they'll penalize you if you actually use what they advertise. Remember, what we know now about capping is only because people discovered the undisclosed caps, not because the companies freely admitted they were doing it.
The humorous thing is that when capping everyone, they will make the caps low, which will stop people on the lowest tier plans from watching all the youtube videos and downloading stuff that we're so righteously trying to protect now
Most people will never get close to the proposed caps I've seen. It would take a serious P2P downloader to go that far.
And as far as government regulation, there's the fact that the government has been in this from the beginning. The government started the Internet. The government granted these monopolies. The government gave billions in money, tax breaks and other considerations to these companies on the promise of 40 Mb/s to the curb years ago, and it hasn't materialized. So when they complain "these downloaders are taxing the system" I wonder what happened to all that upgrade money, remember their promises, and feel no pity.
There is no connection whatsoever. A radio station has a fixed number of broadcast hours and decides which content will be broadcast according to the desires of the listeners. The fairness doctrine changes that and gives viewers what they don't want.
And ISP is supposed to blindly flow ALL traffic. There is no such thing as "fairness" when you don't even know what the content is. Free Republic traffic gets the same priority as the PMSNBC not because that's mandated that our views be broadcast, but because the Internet doesn't care, it's neutral.
Famous last words. They're not going to give up a possible revenue stream. In a few years, you'll be screaming for more government regulation to stop these companies from raping you for more and more money.
I wonder what happened to all that upgrade money, remember their promises, and feel no pity.
You'll feel plenty of something when you look at your internet bill after all is said and done. All to solve something that isn't even a real problem...
And you think Big Government control is going to provide that?
Can you provide ANY historical context for such a conclusion?
BUT these days there is a lot of mistrust and deservedly so. Any kind of sweeping change proposed by this administration I'm going to be against by default.
Finally, today, we have the actual draft NPRM that is before the commission.
Yes, but both sides do not agree. Going to Rulemaking means Public Hearings, and Public exposure, and most of all, Public Comment. Going to Rulemaking means the only chance for public exposure. Embrace it and grab a bullhorn.
Not provide that, keep it that way.
Big Government will just keep things the way they are?
Welcome to FR. In time you'll find that most of us know better.
There is NO historical precedence for such a thing.
Ain’t that the truth.
From my perspective Net Neutrality is a solution where no problem exists. Bandwidth on the Internet has done nothing but increase for many years now. It is much like the power of computer chips increasing in power at an exponential rate.
Net Neutrality is the government getting involved in "fairness". Nothing but bad can come from it. Less bandwidth, less innovation, taxes!!!
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