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Internet Firms Raise Profile on Capitol Hill
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Internet companies have long been dwarfed in Washington by the lobbying might of telecoms. But now some firms are beefing up their D.C. operations, the Wall Street Journal reports, partly in an effort to push legislation that would prevent telephone companies from charging Internet companies for guaranteed fast delivery of Internet content. A telecom lawyer hired by Google last summer to build the company's Washington office tells the WSJ, 'Carrier control over Internet activity is bad for consumers. ... We're not worried consumers won't be able to reach Google. The real threat is to the next Google and to the services that are important for consumers.'"
if we want to ever have a decent form of government, we can't have the big corps making all the rules. We are "THE PEOPLE" and when "A COUPLE OF PEOPLE" are making the rules instead of us, then why don't we just bend over for them to save some time. ;(
" A telecom lawyer hired by Google last summer to build the company's Washington office tells the WSJ, 'Carrier control over Internet activity is bad for consumers. "
Oh, so controling the content delivery is bad for consumers, is it Google? This rule doesn't apply in censoring content delivered in China?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Whenever the structure of power and technology changes, there is a brief opening window to actually implement good change. I would advise that people up their efforts of letter writing and such to Capitol Hill, as the newly refashioned, malleable nature of the machine makes it vulnerable to ensuring good.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
"Company shitting all over US law = BAD COMPANY! NO! STAY!
Company shitting all over China law = GO DEMOCRACY!"
I think maybe you misunderstood me. Google is the hypocrite here, they are in the USA saying that carrier control of the Internet will stifle capitalism [which most people equate with democracy]. Yet just this week in China they were willing to censor the world's Internet content that they are [essentially the monoploy] carrier of.
How exactly is my view of this hypocritical, and why isn't Google's as you see it?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I still hope they prevent this from happening. I'd be rather pissed off if I have a personal site from my own server for my resume, pictures, or whatever anyone would use an internet server for (maybe even a site....), and no one can get to it because large companies are hogging bandwidth. And then calling the company that hosts me, and hearing "Do you have $2000 a year to give us? That's what company x gave us, so they get more bandwidth". All I see this as is a way to shift the equal ground on the internet that allows small businesses to have a website to a more restricted and costly advertising/service like TV advertising. If a company has a good product, they can start and market it online (like Google at first). But with this, it would probably be fairly difficult to start up unless you had a lot of cash to guarantee your service will get bandwidth.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
The wording of this post is already allowing "them" to change the terms of the debate to their advantage. Will the carriers really be charging for guaranteed fast delivery, or extorting money from internet companies to avoid artificial delays?
It's not completely different, actually it's just an economic barrier to service instead of a technological or political one like Google is implementing with China's government.
Do you think the average poor sap on AOL is going to invest or even know to invest in premium Internet tiers? A tiered Internet will be as good as a censored one.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
With Congress demanding private information from these companies I suppose someone has to tell them why it is or isn't a good idea to do certain things. Having Google just hand over log data probably looks like a perfectly harmless thing to some of these 50+ year old Senators who know jack about the Internet.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
It is sad that this story doesn't surprise me. In fact, back when Bush stole the election from Al Gore, I explained to my republican friends that its not that I'm so much for Gore, but every ounce of my being is against Bush. The country would have been in good hands with Gore and none of the bullshit we've seen come to pass would have occurred. And I'm not talking about 9/11, I'm talking about our childlessly impotent response to 9/11 and the subsequent sacrifice of 1000's of American lives and countless Iraqi lives by Bush under the guise of a lie.
I gasp when I hear anyone suggest that the Monica Lewinsky "scandal" amounted to more than stealing from a cookie jar and lying about it- when Bush lies to us daily, spies on us, and breaks our laws; setup to keep the government from doing just that.
If you want to argue about this, please don't bother- I'm not hanging around for responses. Like the rest of the country, I'm tired of this guy being in office and I'm ready to split the country in half and move if my half has to have him as president. I'd be happy to give the religious right their own country and leaders because I don't want them in my life. The scary thing is that they'd probably immediately declare war on the other half because the last thing the extreme republicans and the religious right want is freedom of religion and beliefs in the world. I sometimes believe such a war is coming...just like the middle east, we can't escape these morons whose belief in imaginary deities cause them to butt into the lives of others and attempt to legislate their religious edicts into law. Whether you're talking about the Taliban or Bush Administration, both hope to legislate their religious beliefs and both are a threat to freedom.
You know what really bothers me? People will turn their heads the other way when this hits all the papers. "So what if Bush tries to silence scientists...its bad, but what am I going to do about it?" What you can do about it is vote for Democrats in the coming election so we can get enough seats to boot this guy based SOLELY on the countless laws he has broken. Donate money to the DNC. Throw out your politics, just count the number of laws he admits he has broken, but claims authority to break in the name of the American people! No President is above the law. If the president can break the law, then we have no law and he's not the President and we owe no allegiance to him- because the law is the only thing that makes him the President. Once he shows us that the law means nothing to him, he ceases to be the President of the United States. I don't care if he is "protecting the american people". The American people don't need a King who protects us- we had that- and we delcared independance and wrote our own constitution.
We are not going back to a ruler who thinks they know better than our laws. Impeach today.
Russian roulette.
I dont support some actions of major companies, but they are owned by a LOT of people, not just the C*O.