Our taxes funded the US government invention of the internet. Therefore the internet superhighway belongs to the American People — exactly like the Interstate Highway System.
The People are entitled to have a say in how their internet is run — just like they have a say in how electric companies, gas, and water companies are run. Why is it okay to regulate other things the People own but not the internet? Because Comcast says so?
Comcast says they own the internet because they’ve built some infrastructure. Stop and ask yourself if this is true. Aren’t they just leveraging an asset the US taxpayers own, exactly like the company that sells hot dogs at Yellowstone Park? They own the hot dog cart, not the park — you do. If you don’t like what they’re charging for hot dogs at Yellowstone, you can kick them out and hire another contractor.
I don’t like Comcast, I don’t like what they’re charging, I don’t like that they’re giving fast lane access to people who use their lousy streaming service, Xfinity, and slowing down service to people who use Netflix. There is no law against this, because there is no regulatory agency overseeing them. And I really don’t like the fact that they decided to help themselves to a giant cut of Netflix profits because no one representing the consumer was empowered to stop them.
What are you going to do when Comcast decides to raise basic access to three hundred dollars a week? You will have no recourse. None. You can’t take your business elsewhere, because in large swaths of the country, Comcast is the only internet game in town.
Because Comcast lobbyists keep speciously repeating ‘free speech,’ you just don’t think — you all react like Pavlovian dogs. WHAT?! FREE SPEECH? THEY’RE GONNA TAKE AWAY FREE SPEECH?! And so you’re hell-bent on GIVING UP YOUR RIGHT TO OVERSEE AN ASSET YOU OWN.
Meanwhile, Comcast is hell-bent on taking away your ownership rights to the internet. That’s the only reason they keep screaming “free speech.”
The crazy part of this is that BOTH the leftists AND those of us on the right want the same result. We want a free and open market as it pertains to the internet as a whole. We don’t want one company or agency or cartel being able to dictate who gets to say what, what speeds certain companies serve certain types of data at, how many options for service everyone gets, etc... Pretty much everyone wants it to be open, free-wheeling and lucrative like in the wild west days of the 90’s.
The question is: Do either of the proposals on the table get us from here to there? Does government oversight and regulation get us there? Does ceding control to the telecoms get us there?
Something tells me that whoever “wins” this battle will be sorely disappointed.
Answer me this...Name one federal agency that is not staffed, controlled and funded by the very same industries that it regulates. Sure, stricter government regulation of the telecoms will initially be painful for them but make no mistake, the long term downside of this for them is that they will have to increase their bribery fund to continue getting what they want.