Wave goodbye to Internet freedom

The Washington Times ^ | 12-2-10 | The Washington Times

[Graneros]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is poised to add the Internet to its portfolio of regulated industries. The agency's chairman, Julius Genachowski, announced Wednesday that he circulated draft rules he says will "preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet." No statement could better reflect the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality of Obama administration policies.

With a straight face, Mr. Genachowski suggested that government red tape will increase the "freedom" of online services that have flourished because bureaucratic busybodies have been blocked from tinkering with the Web. Ordinarily, it would be appropriate at this point to supply an example from the proposed regulations illustrating the problem. Mr. Genachowski's draft document has over 550 footnotes and is stamped "non-public, for internal use only" to ensure nobody outside the agency sees it until the rules are approved in a scheduled Dec. 21 vote. So much for "openness."

[MWS]

Does anyone know of any planned protests of this for the day it will be done?

It’d be a shame if they get away with this without a scene of some sort being made.

[Graneros]

I’m with you Brother. Another typical Democrat/Progressive/Commie Sh*tbird. Julius Genachowski was nominated by President Barack Obama to a seat on the Federal Communications Commission on March 23, 2009. He is also the Chairman of that commission. He was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on June 25, 2009, and sworn in as FCC Commissioner on June 29, 2009.

Here is another interesting article on this subject you may like.

http://biggovernment.com/ldrummer/2010/08/17/fcc-takes-another-step-to-regulating-the-internet/

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Yes, it seems Assange is becoming more of an ally than an enemy.

After all, the government thinks that you can't have average American citizens seeing their masters' plans before they're implemented.

To paraphrase Nancy Peloozer, let's just pass the thing so that people can see what's in it.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

The FCC is poised to unilaterally claim privately-run networks into
its regulatory and monitoring purview.

Of particular interest will be the enforcement angle of all this.
ISPs will be prohibited from throttling bandwidth hogging applications
and streams, even in times of high demand. Now how will that rule be
enforced? By monitoring, of course. ISPs already must surrender to
governmental demands for wiretaps, Magic Lantern snoop installations,
email and browsing history records, etc. This is just another layer.

Don’t think this will be limited to ISPs. Private networks, VPNs,
VOIP services, mobile-phone data links and home WiFi networks will
soon need monitoring and policing too. After all, terrorists and drug
dealers could be using them! What, you don’t agree? You must be
racist.

[MichiganConservative]

I’m sure they’re doing it for the children. The useful idiot common “liberals” won’t mind if it is for the children.

Just tell “conservatives” that they’re doing it to catch terrorists or “Bad people” and they’ll get behind it.

Sheep.

[MichiganConservative]

What exactly are you saying?

From my experience, all the libertarians I know want the government to keep its dirty hands off the internet and not regulate it at all if they don’t want the FCC abolished outright.

The ones who want regulation regarding traffic volume and rates are Google and the google sycophants you find in university computer science departments.

[MichiganConservative]

Good thing you can still get to Wikileaks. At least, for now.

[Strk321]

“To paraphrase Nancy Peloozer, let’s just pass the thing so that people can see what’s in it.”

That sort of behavior actually isn’t new to American politics. Used to be that in the early years of the US, all Congressional meetings were kept secret. IIRC, it was this way up to about the middle of the 19th century.

[Graneros]

You bring up a good point with your statement “None of FR, Fox, Rush have gone and spied out classified or secret diplomatic documents...” So true but neither has Wikileaks or Julian Assange.

Think of Assange and Wikileaks as you would of Woodward and Bernstein reporting for the Washington Post back in the Watergate scandal days. With Assange being Woodward and Bernstein and Wikileaks the Washington Post. I’m pretty sure Woodward and Bernstein won Pulitzer prizes for that. At the time more than a few conservatives wished that story would have disappeared. There was no love for those 2 but they didn’t break any laws and neither has Assange or Wikileaks. In fact Woodward and Bernstein won Pulitzer prizes for their reporting.

My main point of the original post was to shine a light on the problems of having the internet fall under the jurisdiction of the FCC. I used the Wikileaks current events story to press home the point. In retrospect I should have used something else so as to keep the conversation on point.

[Graneros]

Kackicat says “Wickileaks is already down, and Assauge has an arrest warrant issued by Interpol.”

Wickileaks is not down. Go here:

http://213.251.145.96/

Interpol has issued their warrant against Assange for a charge that has nothing to do with Wikileaks. Well it probably does in a devious and scary way. But I won’t go there.

So what exactly is your point?

[bd476]

Graneros wrote: "I believe the internet as we know it will disappear within 5 years, maybe sooner, when the FCC gets control. The FCC is one of the absolute worst Government agencies in existence.

Freepers howling for Julian Assange's head and the dismantling of Wikileaks had better think again. If the FCC or any other agency brings down Wikileaks for printing the truth they'll have no problem getting rid of Rush, Fox News, or any website they deem subversive and yes that will include Free Republic.

Herr Goebbels' spirit is alive and well in the USA."

Supporters of sabotage against the United States are no different than the American Communists who were quietly enacting the Communist Manifesto until Senator Joe McCarthy stood up to stop it.

If Senator Joe McCarthy were alive today, he would be right in including you as an ally of George Soros and his puppet Assange.

[Kackikat]

http://times.am/2010/12/03/wikileaks-is-closed-assange-is-to-be-arrested/

It was closed yesterday according to this article?

[Kackikat]

Anyone going to that website now could put their computer at risk for viruses or cyber attacks, and I would not go there, it might be a fake.

http://times.am/2010/12/03/wikileaks-is-closed-assange-is-to-be-arrested/

[Kackikat]

Are you sure that is where the link is actually taking you now?

http://times.am/2010/12/03/wikileaks-is-closed-assange-is-to-be-arrested/....read this:

[mnehring]

Hopefully The Jester will slap this new location around a little.

[FourPeas]

The FCC was going to take this step even without Assange. He’s just a convenient poster boy for this administration.

The internet is a big, big thing, and techies are alive and well throughout this great country. The government can’t keep kiddie porn, spam or conservative view points off the web (not, by the way, that the first two are something for which I’m advocating). Once the government plugs one hole, another opens up. It’s the nature of technology. The government can’t come up with anything that some ingenious (or “lucky”) geek can’t work his way around. The government may like to think of itself as all powerful, but in the realm of technology they’re wildly outclassed. Geeks the world around are an independent bunch who like a challenge, AND don’t much like being told what they can or can’t read/hear.

As for Rush, I’d guess he already has a contingency plan in place. There are several routes he could go, and I expect that he has more than one back-up in the event that plying his craft in the USA becomes too cumbersome.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Has ANY law give the FCC the authority to do what they are proposing to do? Or is this an outright coupe and seizure of power?

[Gene Eric]

>> Yes, it seems Assange is becoming more of an ally than an enemy.

Judge Napolatino agrees.

[wildbill]

Arbeit macht frei!

Government Slogans and government statements can be duplicitous as the Jews found out when they went docilely into the extermination camps.

Control of the internet is absolutely necessary to stop the worldwide spread of individual thought and exchange of information.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

[Blood of Tyrants]

A federal court already has ruled that the FCC does not have authority to do this. The new Congress should reverse this ASAP and start budget cuts with the FCC.

Then nothing more needs to be done. When the FCC issues their new illegal ruling, the leaders in Congress just need to call a press conference and announce that the rules have already been deemed to be illegal by the SC and for everyone to simply ignore them. If the FCC tries to enforce these illegal rules, the head of the FCC will be arrested.