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Republicans Defeat Net Neutrality Proposal
LiquidEdge writes "A Republican controlled committee has defeated a bill that would have guaranteed fair access and stopped companies like AT&T and Verizon from charging high-bandwidth sites for allowing their customers to have priority access to them."
I really love the spin this story has... "EVIL Republicans RUIN the Internets!"
Is this not a good thing... letting people who are on faster connections have priority seems like it will drive companies to provide a better service faster and might also reduce the cost of slower connections... or am I wrong?
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Because the free market economy has done so much for improving the free flow of information. Does it seem redundant to make both the sender and the recipient pay for the same bandwidth? What if other countries ban this type of thing, how could you regulate speed in one area, and not in another?
Republicans less inclined to regulate the market than Democrats. News at 11.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Did anyone RTFA?
They basically did not entirely madate it, but they did not outlaw neutrality either. The article is slanted, and inaccurate. While I wish they had in fact mandated for neutrality, they took a middle of the road step, but that is NOT the article headline.
Saying the republicans broke the net with this is like saying that Bush is a great president, both are wrong, and both have millions of idiots who believe it.
if you want your own stuff to move faster, it should be on a separate parallel network. the ISP connection is where you switch it. and there should be enough router oomph so your great unwashed masses seeking data that wants to be free are not penalized for getting on somebody's internal business deal.
until and unless laws and proposals put that in the legal system, "no" to pay-for-preference.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm not saying that abuses of network access aren't on the horizon. Far from it. It just strikes me that many of the proponents of "network neutrality" are taking the principle too far, aren't looking at the potential benefits of third parties being able to pay for enhanced access, and aren't necessarily that concerned about more important issues fixed first.
It is absolutely right that if I pay for a 1.5Mbps connection to my home, that no external entity should suffer discrimination when trying to get their packets to me (assuming that's my choice - and in some cases, I should be made to make an explicit choice, about letting people access all my ports, for instance. I have no problems with an ISP, by default (but only while the subscriber consents) blocking ports commonly used for hacking.
But at the same time, I don't necessarily see a problem with external entities being able to pay my ISP for better access. If when Apple wants to send me a file, they're able to pay Earthlink such that the data they send isn't part of the 1.5Mbps, but counts as additional bandwidth, then that works to both of our advantages. I can still communicate with Wikipedia, Google, et al, at 1.5Mbps while my family watches a streamed movie from the iTunes Movie Store in the living room. That's not bad at all.
But it's not "network neutrality", or more importantly, it's hard to word a network neutrality law that would allow this kind of flexibility.If you allow this kind of flexibility, then what stops an ISP offering only a basic 256kbps service in an area, without offering better packages, knowing full well this is "fast enough" for basic web browsing, and that it immediately confers an advantage on those third parties that pay the ISP for better access? This would infuriate the network neutrality people, yet neatly bypass the laws that would allow the scenario I gave.
Right now we need better standards and more competition. I would much rather see government pass laws proposing minimum levels of service than try to force ISPs to not provide services that in many cases are in the best interests of everyone.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon spent $230.9 million on politicians from 1998 until the present, while Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo spent only a combined $71.2 million. (Those figures include lobbying expenditures, individual contributions, political action committees and soft money.)
When will people learn that laws will only get passed in this 'K Street Project' Congress if you simply spend enough money to bribe them?
Oh well, I guess people will be happy when I finish my life's work of designing and implementing a totally neutral "Internet 3"
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
No Internet Packet Left Behind?
What the Republicans are doing here is exactly what Republicans ought to be doing, by their charter. They are blocking the Federal government from enacting regulation that would seriously impede the actions of private companies. They are saying, in effect, if AT&T or whomever wants to make available special broadband services at higher data rates or lower cost to certain selected partners, then it is not the government's job to step in and legislate that deal. The limitation sought to force these broadband providers to offer equal or better service to non-partners and affiliates, which would stifle the ability of the providers to generate their own services.
In effect, the law would have put a strict limit on what services the broadband providers could do business-wise. The idea was to keep broadband providers from forming monopolies by keeping other non-partner providers out with high costs or degraded services. However, the Republicans are doing the right thing by their constituents by allowing the maximum freedom to these broadband providers and only seeking legal recourse if there is proof of anti-competitive actions.
If users can't get to their favorite site because the service providers are slowing their access, they will change service providers and the situation will rectify itself. Why regulate access before there is a problem?
From TFA:
A Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday defeated a proposal that would have levied extensive regulations on broadband providers and forcibly prevented them from offering higher-speed video services to partners or affiliates.
By an 8-to-23 margin, the committee members rejected a Democratic-backed "Net neutrality" amendment to a current piece of telecommunications legislation. The amendment had attracted support from companies including Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and their chief executives wrote a last-minute letter to the committee on Wednesday saying such a change to the legislation was "critical."
Any time you start throwing regulations at something, you make it harder for everyone to compete. You also make it much easier for the government to start sliding in taxes here and there.
And I'm sorry but anything that those patent-happy companies want for the internet is probably NOT a good thing to begin with. Microsoft and Amazon would patent the keyboard if they could. Just because Cnet and
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
Here in the United States, we have the best government that money can buy!
Is this similiar to how people compain that Comcast has a lower QoS for VOIP packets and this law says that is OK because they can prioritize how their own network functions?
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
I wrote letters to my damn senators too. Neither one of them seemed to have any grasp what the bill was actually about. It was nice they responded, however the garbage in these emails was intolerable. Neither had any understanding of the implications. It's really sad.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
What's being debated here is if a company like Verizon or Comcast can give a higher priority to content of one provider, probably based on price, or as a way to enforce monopolies. For example, Verizon might slow delivery of packets from Vonage to make the service pretty much unusable; while making sure that their internet phone calls make it through "crystal clear".
This also might prioritize, say delivering movie content from BlockBuster over your SSH connection to your server.... etc.
It is really not a good development. I was hoping that something could be worked out in committee. But, perhaps we'll have to wait for a few red state business people to start complaining before something will get done.
How does "profit" relate to "better service"?
Remember, a business exists solely for the sake of providing profit to its shareholders. If a business has control of a telecommunication service, there is no incentive for them to do ANYTHING that enhances value to you.
Capitalism ONLY works when there's millions of sellers and millions of buyers selling commodity goods. If there's only 1, or 2, or 3 sellers, it becomes monopolistic, and ANTI capitalist. In that case, socialism is best. Regulation and control of the market is needed, since at that point, you can only buy "what you get" instead of "what you want". You do NOT get an infinite variety of choices.
In addition, there is no morality to a monopolistic business model. If a business could buy slaves, they would. If a business could kill you for your money, they would. If a business could cause dangerous blackouts in California for profit, they would.
*NEVER* claim deregulation is a good thing. It IS a fault of the Republican philosophy, since they serve the pro-business agenda. All corporations seek to be Enron, a wholly Republican supported institution. Corporations ONLY serve their shareholder's interests, not the consumer's. Democrats tend to (only slightly) favor the consumers.
If republicans support a bill backed by the largest of corporations, they're evil.
If republicans defeat a bill backed by the largest of corporations, they're evil...
Just making sure I have it right..
For example, let's say you have Verizon DSL and want to use Google. If Google doesn't pay Verizon their 'blood money" that 3000/768 connection you have will CREAW when you try to use Google.
Get it? Verizon waznts to be paid TWICE - once by you (for YOUR service) and again by Google (for sending Googel to YOU).I hope this doesn't get modded (-1, flame) but the article is atrocious. McCullagh's libertarian views are well-known, and obvious to any reader of this article. Lowlights:
"levied extensive regulations" -- why not just levied regulations? it's certainly not an objective fact that the regulations are extensive
"broadband providers will be free to design their networks as they see fit" -- why not "free to charge additional fees to content providers?"
"By 'very large companies,' Markey was not referring to Microsoft, which has a market value of $287 billion, but its much smaller value of $101 billion." Not only is that not a valid metric (market value is a crap metric--Google's market value, for example, is egregiously inflated) but pointless: Microsoft will make the same amount of money regardless of regulation.
The worst one is "the Internet industry is being outspent in Washington by more than a 3-to-1 margin." This ignores the tremendous lobbying the Internet industry does in every state, lobbying public utility commissions to shut out rivals everywhere. In Louisiana, the Internet industry is lobbying the state to shut down the free emergency WiFi mesh network in New Orleans--not only disgusting, but an act that requires money that McCullagh isn't counting.
It's possible to have a rational argument about this, but McCullagh's not-veiled-at-all slant doesn't help. What a moron.
I'd hate the government to force businesses to offer the same product at the same price to everyone. If this was let through, surely it would mean that the ISPs wouldn't be allowed to offer a premium rate video streaming service, unless they also provided Google t the same data rate.
The existing companies are safe. People use their ISP to access them, and if Google and iTunes are too slow, people will start to use a faster ISP.
Seems to me that WE'RE becoming the very same: "Big bad bully" as we claimed the USSR was back in the '60's and '70's.
If you think about it, you might come to the conclusion that this already happens in other domains.
Compare to cable television, for instance. If you subscribe to CATV, you are paying for the bandwidth (all those channels) to access the content, while at the same time, the CATV company is paying (slightly less) to carry those channels, and the network (CNN, Fox, TLC, SF, etc.) are charging advertisers for sending that content to you.
If you don't have subscription television service, the advertiser alone is bearing the cost of assaulting your eyes with their commercials.
This is analagous, I think, to a Tier {1,2} ISP charging for priority access. If you want the CATV equivalent (millions of channels, digital content, high speed), you're going to pay for it. So is the content provider on the other end of the session (after all, they need a connection to the Internet as well). If you are happy with over-the-air quality (quality, quantity and speed of delivery...not so much), you don't pay.
Essentially, the chains would look like:
CATV subscriber (-$) -> CATV provider (-$) -> Network ($$$) <- Advertiser (-$)
-or-
Local ISP customer (-$) -> Local ISP (-$) -> Backbone provider ($$$) <- Content provider (-$)
--
Just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should do a thing.
THe chairman of AT&T has openly lamented during hearings that he gives websites like Google a "free ride". To his mind, Google is a service that should be paid for. That Google needs to apportion a percentage of its revenue into a general fund, because AT&T doesn't sell bandwidth to Google, but carries a lot of Google traffic. He specifically used Google in his example.
That's called revenue sharing, and you know who does stuff like that? Sports team owners. They divide up the revenue from tv rights equally, despite teams representing unequal market share. You know what the big ISPs want? They want that. They want to see Microsoft and Google, and anyone else THEY deem to provide some essential function to the net to pay into a revenue sharing pool.
You know the only time a free market can allow something like that to happen? When you have a oligarchy. And that's what the big backbones providers want. They want to consolidate the market, and start putting tarriffs in at peering sites. They want to exert influence outside the carrier market, and they see QoS as the first step to getting down the slippery slope. Pretty soon, some carriers decide to de-prioritize packets to Google. Maybe Google works, maybe it's really really slow. The internet routes around failure, but it DOESN'T route around a transit carrier who decides to fuck with the traffic en route.
The Republican mindset has only one edict: Corporate self governance. Regulation, in nearly any form, is bad. THey see liability law and tort reform as key, so airlines can crash and not have to pay the passengers settlements. And they certainly want to reign in the FAA to stop "burdening" the airlines with all those expensive safety checks. Same with ISPs. You watch and see, nobody is stopping the oligarchy and now the carriers like Level 3, AT&T and others are going to collude and force a revenue sharing scheme. Next up: national firewalls. The reason Cisco and Google and others only got a slap on the wrist when censoring the Chinese nets, is that the US republicans want to see how well it works first and then start putting it in here under the guide of the Patriot Act.
But that's not the problem either. If I were requesting a service from Apple and knew that they would be getting my provider to prioritize that traffic over the rest it would still be sort of fair. The point is that my internet connection is going to be slower because OTHER PEOPLE are using video services provided by a company who pays the extortion fee (or more likely, is another branch of the telco giving me access): the free sites which I try to access will be slower because of that.
It's not about MY 1.5MBps on the cable that runs to my home, it's about the unknown amount of bandwidth I am sharing with an unknown number of other subscribers, on a bigger cable somewhere downstream.
Republicans acting so.... liberal. Well, I never actually got the logic of the American liberal-conservative split.
Who are the liberals? Who are the conservatives?
In Europe Republicans would be market-liberals, and the Democrats... just right-wing.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
When was the last time this Republican congress stood up for consumer rights? Hell, when was the last time they didn't vote for the Corporatocracy?
The problem is that while they once in a while do something that falls in line with their "small government, free citizenry" charter, they have been pandering to the Religious Right on social issues for far too long, and lately have taken to seeking national security through regulations that are decidedly not in the spirit of Freedom. The country club Republicans knew they could generate a lot of votes by pandering to the Religious Right, but that seems to have backfired on them as they are now outnumbered by those groups and have lost control of the party.
If you don't like it don't use it, use omething else, build your own - I doubt anyone wants to nationalize the Internet.
This
Seriously though, how is this any different them paying the local criminal gang "Protection money"? I mean we already HAVE the police to "protect us", so why should we have to pay someone else?
Answer: Because if you DON'T pay them, they burn your store down!Therefore, this it NO DIFFERENT then that, simply because Google and I both already PAY our ISP's for Internet service!! Now my ISP literally wants wants: "Protection money" to 'protect' the packets I've already paid for.
If the Mafia or the Bloods and Crips do this, the Govt. busts them. If big business does it the Govt. apparently PROTECTS and ENCOURAGES them!Like I said earlier: "We have the best Govt. that money can buy!
And some of you support these dirtbags.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Don't worry, those practices will assure an end to their businesses. Low cost unlicensed spectrum wireless is going to replace cable and dsl. (think 802.11g mesh networks) Google has a lot of interest in this and I'm pretty sure they'll make their own network if we see troll-like toll practices.
I, for one, want to see companies attempt to charge for their networks. I think it will force the issue and hasten the deployment of mesh networks and WiMax.
It's interesting how whenever politicians want to grab control of something, the claim is to make it "fair and equal". Don't fall for that rhetoric. It wasn't until the government released some control of the Internet that most people even knew what it was, and now they want to start back peddling.
When was the last time the Republicans did anything worth cheering for?
Seriously, look what's going on now. Corporate bribes, outing CIA agents, making up false grounds for war, lying about it, condoning torture, fucking up education with the No Child Left Behind act, offering no bid contracts in conflict-of-interest scenarios, spying on its citizens, giving tax cuts that the country can't afford, manipulation of the media, manipulation of science, etc. etc.
You know, maybe, maybe, and I'm just reaching here, maybe if there's a lot of criticism for the Republicans, maybe it's BECAUSE THEY FUCKING DESERVE IT.
Popular sites are already paying extra to their hosts for the generated traffic.
Now they should pay extra to the physical media providers?
Why don't hosts pay for the extra traffic to ATT from the money popular sites are paying to ISPs?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
to convey my utter shock!
Republicans and corporations working together? In this day and age? Surely my friend, not my republicans.
They want to insert themselves into what we read, what we see on TV or listen to on the radio, our private discussions and/or proceedures between us and our medical care givers and lawyers.
They want to bug our telephone conversations, look at what books we buy or borrow from the library (and also decide what books the library can loan us!), monitor our banking transactions, monitor whate we go (via GPS in our cell phones), issue us a national ID card ("Your PAPERS, pleeeasse!") and on and on ad nauseum!Finally, let's not forget that they want to be able to jail us without charge and/or access to a lawyer.....
Seems to me that the only ones that they want to deregulate are big corporations...the rest of us are already feeling the crush of their black leather boot on our throats!Wasn't google buying up a bunch of dark fiber? Perhaps they think they can enter the provider market? Maybe they foresaw this coming and plan to do an end run around any kind of extortion from Verizon or Comcast.
If they can get into as many places as Verizon and Comcast, they might have a good shot at getting people to jump ship. Still, it's kind of complicated because, at first, I would imagine Verizon and Comcast will make any "GoogleNet" packets as slow as they can to prevent providers and subscribers from jumping ship. Though, in a world where content providers want speed, they may be hosted on several networks. So perhaps it will be complex.
The whole thing is rediculous, though. It's like people forgot what makes TCP/IP cool.
--
"I'm too old to use Emacs." -- Rod MacDonald
Which is precisely why the Republicans are wrong here. The first Republican President warned of corporate power, corporate influence in government, and monopolies. Anti-trust law used to be something Republicans accepted as pro-capitalism, and pro-democracy. Current Republican politicians have been bought, it would seem.
Damn.
disclaimer: this post is in no way an endorsement of any other political party, if you assumed it was, then you're an idiot, and part of the problem.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Let me get this straight:
I paid once for taxes that created the internet and supported most of the phone system infrastructure.
I paid again for phone service and use of the lines.
I paid again for all the people who can't afford access to the lines.
I paid again for dsl.
I paid again for the USF (which gets paid to Verizon so that they can pay themselves for using there own lines, which I already paid to use twice.)
Yet the oposition to this bill wants me to think that someone needs to pay for al this service they're providing.
I'm generaly against government regulation, but something isn't right here. It makes me glad we also paid all that money to brake up AT&T in the first place.
don't believe it
America is broke. America is deeply in debt.
These two are not the same. America is one of a few developed countries not to have an economy driven by exports. Almost all of our competitors - Canada, Japan, and especially China run a large trade deficit with us. The US economy is dominated by household consumption and business growth. The large profits made by our partners have to go somewhere. They can invest in overcapacity, or real estate speculation (China doesn't have a functional stock market), or stick the cash in a matress - or they can buy US treasuries. They love 'em! So we in the US get large investment inflows and low interest rates. The fun will end once these exporters realize they are getting ripped off!
America sells protection. Luckily protection frequently breeds violence which calls for protection.
Yep, and a lot of the world needs it. It isn't a big percentage of GDP (
Unfortunately the tax base in America isn't up to the job.
This suggests otherwise.
The short term policies driving markets that push pollutants and climatic change will be changed, at best surperficially, because alternatives require recognizing that America is broke. And waking from the American dream will be a nightmare.
Why so pessimistic? The climate will change with or without industrial civilization. We are in an interglacial period. It should be warming. This isn't necessarily bad. In much of the world there will be increased crop yields.
an ill wind that blows no good
NOW, my ISP (who AGAIN I remind you, already GETS A CHECK from me every month for 3000/768 Internet service), wants to be PAID EXTRA for my being able to use VOIP or Google at the speed for which I'm ALREADY PAYING FOR?
If that be the case, then WHY should I be charged at all? How is this any different then Verizon changing my friends for calls I make to THEM from my UNLIMITED PHONE SERVICE?If I am a road haulage firm in Europe, can I charge a different price to move a tonne of steel from London to Paris compared to a tonne of copper? What if the two loads are in sealed standard containers?
If I run a toll bridge somewhere en route, can I charge a different price for the same weight?
I beleive Common Market rules say such differential pricing is barred, and the situation should be the same for the Internet.
In the real world the only way that a haulier (or toll bridge owner) could get away with such differential pricing is if they have a monopoly and that is exactly the case where rules are required to prevent abuses.
Sounds like google needs to just light some of their dark fiber and say good bye to all of these old-school monopoly telephone companies.
I wonder who will be hurt more by google running their own network. I know i don't use AT&T or Verizon, but I do use google many, many times each day. I CHOOSE to use google. If I use AT&T or Verizon, it's only because i have to (there's no other option).
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I wouldn't equate predictability with "making sense".
It hardly makes sense to allow an ISP to charge other companies to allow their companies to access the other company's website, when the ISP's customers are already paying for that privilege.
It only makes sense in that it is predictable that Republicans would go for this.
Republicans always vote for big businesses above small businesses and individuals. After all, that's where their bread is buttered. But in any substantive sense, it doesn't make sense at all.
I have seen on many occasions the wonderful folks here at Slashdot completely butcher the facts and place into an article's title or summary certain statements that just don't mesh with reality. In some cases, they don't even mesh with the actual article that's been linked. This is a case where the article's authors suffer from a guilty conscience about trying to paint with a very broad political brush. Of course, no one here who would be responsible for submitting a summary of the story seemed to care that it was not "Republicans" who defeated the proposal.
Some of the more logical among us, who do not as often subscribe to political stereotypes, might have asked themselves whether or not the "House Energy and Commerce subcommittee," which is actually called the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee (but why do research?), would be distributed along 23-8 partisan lines. After all, that's the vote count for the proposal, and both the article title, the post title, and the article summary are quite confident in their claims that Republicans defeated the net neutrality proposal. So it was 23 Republicans versus 8 Democrats, right?
Not really, If you bothered to read on (I know, I know--I'm asking too much), you'd see that one Republican voted for the amendment. Three Democrats voted against it. But just the Republicans defeated the proposal, according to the folks here. Sure, if those three Democrats voted for it, you would have had a 20-11 vote, and then Republicans would have defeated the proposal. But that didn't happen.
And those Democrats, who apparently feel so strongly about this proposal and are so deserving of the support of the Internet community, had no problem going along for the ride and voting 27-4 in favor of the final bill without the Markey net neutrality amendment. Wow! So principled!
Markey, who is clearly an expert on such topics, declared, "We're about to break with the entire history of the Internet. Everyone should understand that." Indeed, because the entire history of the Internet has been based around the ability of broadband providers to offer high-speed video services. What?
Let's go even more abstract: the entire history of the Internet has been one that prohibited the prioritization of network traffic. What what?
It also would have been nice if the people at CNet News would have gotten an interview with Fred Upton, the chairman of the actual subcommittee that did all of this, instead of going to the full committee chairman Joe Barton. In many cases, the full committee chair doesn't have nearly the same kind of expertise on the issue as the subcommittee chairman does. Though with the way CNet News framed this whole thing, maybe they did interview Upton, but he made too good of a point, so they just trashed it and went instead with "Republicans Defeat Net Neutrality Proposal." Alright, got my mini conspiracy theory of the day out.
"What the Republicans are doing here is exactly what Republicans ought to be doing, by their charter. They are blocking the Federal government from enacting regulation that would seriously impede the actions of private companies."
Yet, when Republicans want government to interfere on social issues - it's fine?
You expect the government (who paid for the R&D of the internet through DARPA, who paid to have fiber optic laid, who allowed these companies to be sole-service providers for laying the fiber-optic) to allow these large private companies to essentially de-value what the citizen customer (taxpayer) is paying them for access, while simultaneously stifling innovation that drives economic and technological gain (to other, smaller companies and the public at large?).
Some of these "private companies" got a substantial chunk of the 200 billion dollars from the federal government for fiber optic. Yet, I don't see you bitching about that. Interesting.
Another thing, wake up. The republicans are about as anti-governmental interference as democrats are. They both interfere, just in different areas for different stated reasons.
Whether the outcome would be good or bad, Libertarians are the only ones who are _truly_ against government interference.
The internet is like no other animal we as a society have ever dealt with. By its very nature, it should be neutral. Let it evolve on its own. If it is allowed to be sold to the highest bidder, smaller innovations will never be seen. It will simply become another cable tv - full of crap and mostly useless.
You're assuming that there will be enough customers that a) understand the issue and why it's important to them, and b) that are motivated enough to do anything about it. Typically, neither is true. Just look at the whole RIAA mess...a problem that could have been handily resolved years ago.
I wish moderators would get a clue.
Rven so, I disagree with the premise. In light of the recent right-wing corruptian issues (Tom Delay), neutrality doesn't mean jack right now. It could easily be a step on the way to something more isidious.
This is what we will have if we don't have Net Neutrality: Possible ad: Introducing BellWest's new Internet service tiers.
Heh. That works if the content you have is on the same network.
Now, even if I don't host your content, I will expect you to pay me because I control an intermediate pipe. You don't have to like it, you just have to pay. Keep in mind that this is over and above any deal that I make with your provider.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
The idea was to keep broadband providers from forming monopolies by keeping other non-partner providers out with high costs or degraded services. However, the Republicans are doing the right thing by their constituents by allowing the maximum freedom to these broadband providers and only seeking legal recourse if there is proof of anti-competitive actions.
Yes, and that has worked so well with Microsoft hasn't it? We all know how MS has been regularly and severely punished by the legal system for its monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive actions over the last 25 years or so. Why, they just got slapped into submission by the legal system every damn time they tried to drive their competitors out of business and set up a monopoly.... or did they? I am all for a free market but like it or not, there are times when Governments, (and by that I mean the Govt. of any country not just the USA), have to grow a spine and legislate with the aim of setting big corporations straight on how far they can go. I'm not so sure the Republicans are doing their constituents any favors with this if it means that all abuses and anti-competetive actions have to be reversed after the fact via the courts. Justice in a Democracy is a very expensive luxury when you are dealing with large corporations.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Still alive: Senator wants to ban 'fast lane' for Web.
guaranteed fair access and stopped companies like AT&T and Verizon from charging high-bandwidth sites for allowing their customers to have priority access to them.
Fair means preventing people from having the chance to pay more and receive better service?
What the hell is going on in Congress? The REPUBLICANS are voting down a measure that the Democrats and Big Business are in favor of?
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Except there's already proof of anti-competitive practices when they blackball vonage. Apparently you missed the part where they're hurting far more private companies than they're helping. DO a quick count on how many sites there are on the internet today, then do a quick count of how many ISP's you have providing your area, do you want to reconsider whether they're helping or hurting private business. You also missed the part where they're supposed to be looking out for consituents... how many small business owners have websites? How many small businesses are affected by this?
This is yet another transfer of wealth from the little guys to the big corporations. The republicans haven't been looking out for their constituents for years, please stop trying to kid yourself.
In London, we now pay for access to the roads. If I want to drive into Central London I have to pay for 'bandwidth' in the congested area [if I use low bandwidth access, like a motorcycle, I don't pay]. This is directly analogous to the fact that I pay for my broadband access at home. [some commentators might discuss other road charges, such as road tax and petrol tax too] The idea of service providers paying the ISP's for preferential access to customers is a bit like charging shops for my car usage. It would be like having a toll booth at the entry points to the City, asking me where I'll be shopping, then charging the shops for my access [potentially allowing me to go on faster roads if I'm visiting high paying shops]. At the very periphery of the real world this might just work [a shop are so keen for your custom that they will send a limo to collect you] but if this policy were applied wholesale, it'd lead to the death of the City's commercial centre. The logistics are simpler in the case of the internet, but the principle applies. Economic dynamism is achieved by having plenty of vendors vying for business. Economies which restrict this stagnate. The internet will stagnate if middlemen [ISP's] try to choose which sites we can visit [they may profit, but the consumer will not]. As ISP's enjoy a degree of natural monopoly, it behoves governments to prevent this potential abuse.
I think you've nailed it on the head -- only I don't think you realize what it means.
Congress shall pass no laws which protect the consumer, because the Republicans are all about letting big business do whatever they want. Unless it's ensuring the companies are doing what THEY want.
In my opinion, any company who wishes to be able to charge certain sites for reliable bandwidth should immediately lose any and all common carrier status afforded to them. They are now liable for every single packet which travels over their networks; since they clearly need to identify the source of every packet for specific billing purposes.
If kiddie porn goes over their wires, they get fined -- if they can track it close enough to know Google's traffic, they are now obligated to identify and block all child porn, left-wing political content, and, um, vegan recipes so we can support the beef industry. All references to b00bies, Islam, and all things not sanctioned by the Republicans will be supressed -- the only place where Republicans DO pass laws that restrict the behaviour of businesses -- forcing their own moral standards on others.
Oh wait, the Republicans already want to make it the job of having ISPs be fully responsible for monitoring the content. So maybe they'd be perfectly happy to see all of that happen. Then, they can be sure that only content approved by the MiniTruth and MiniPac will be allowed to be transmitted. This just lets the companies start asking for it first, and when they realize the implications, it's too late for all of us.
Nope, you've convinced me -- bring on the thought police, and let's continue unbridled, so-called unregulated capitalism. I, for one, welcome our new Big Brother overlords.
The Party is Mother, and Father.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
anyone else feel that the "Net Neutrality Proposal" sunds too much like "Equalization of Opportunity Act". Yeah, i know they arent the same thing.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Considering AT&T is ultimately now owned by SBC .. whos current head is a friend of MR Bush, this doesnt surprise me in the least.
I must say I'm fairly disappointed. When I first read this, I thought it said they defeated a bill which would have allowed it. Imagine my surprise (well, not really surprise) when I realized I read it wrong.
America is a wonderful country. *sigh*
And Democrats too. No big surprise here but this is just more proof that at least at the national level the Republicans are totally controlled by big corperate interests. Anyone who votes believing otherwise is a fool.
Is there any way we can have articles with more spin please? Maybe: "Republicans kill bill that saves cute ponies from slaughter"!
Thanks!
~nate
Agreed but is household consumption, for the most part, kept keen by easy credit and usurious rates? And if personal, conspicuous consumption is driven by easy credit and usurious rates then isn't the American Dream just another historical lie destined to become a nightmare.
"'History," Stephen said, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.'" James Joyce.
We have entered the Domain of the Red Queen, we must run ever faster to remain in the same place. The middle class must be inflated and enfranchised with easy, expensive credit no matter the absolute cost. The marriage of big government and big business calls for new markets and new tax bases. These new markets are being enfranchised by the intellectual property rights hardened by patents and DRM. My concern is that America, having taken direction from it's Puritan, patriarchical founders, will entrench political and economic control in the hands of fascists.
I suppose when faced with the runaway of positive systems like weather systems and the burgeoning realization that many raw resources are too limited to enable countries like India and China equal our standard of living, it might be wise to see the benefits of the military complex and the proped up infrasturcture in the west.
In an effort to accumulate enough resources I might even start attending Church, smiling into the eyes of God's chosen and voting His dogs into power. Although I've always thought the Devil was God's bred sheep dog.
cheers
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Everytime I hear politician (or bidnizman) say "let the market decide" or "let the market sort things out", what he means is "Give some more time for my corporate leashholder to put a complete lock on this, and then we'll come up with a law to make it permanent forever and ever amen."
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I agree... but this philosophy only works when there is competition. The reason this thing is so bad, isn't because AT&T is going to go off and do something dumb... its because AT&T is going to go off and do something dumb, and the market can't punish them by allowing their customers to switch. For 99% of broadband customers, they only have one high-speed choice.
This is something, sadly, today's Republicans forget. They believe the solution to every problem is "the free market" when they forget that includes "competition".
I thought he was more concerned with slavery and who was standing behind him at the theater. Now I'm impressed he warned of corporate influence too.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Next, Google puts up a page that Verizon DSL customers see if they try to access any Google resources at all which says something like "Verizon is deliberatly degrading your connection to our pages. We cannot assure reasonable response to any requests you may have. Please contact Verizon DSL customer service at XXX-XXX-XXXX if you find you cannot access Google, or alternatively switch to provider Y ".
Now imagine that Google teams up with Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and a few other biggies to do the same. (I assume MS would pay, seeing it as a chance to overtake Google) How long do you think Verizon could stand up to this? Nobody gives a damn who carries the packets, but take away their eBay access and people will scream bloody murder
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
A Republican committee votes a certain way in opposition to a Democratic position. ./'ers will agree with the Democrats, are suggesting that hiding inconvienent ppositions taken by the Republican majority is NON-biased? Seems to me, deliberately obscuring who supports which side on this to avoid hurting the perception of Republicans is what would be biased. If you think the Republicans are right, defend their reasoning against the ./ default.
What's biased about stating who's on which side of this issue? If what you mean is that it's wrong to state this fact when you think the overwhelming majority of
From what I have read, they seem to think that the solution is for companies to buy bigger data pipes. That's not what this net neutrality is about! As I understand it, it's preventing what amounts to "data access surcharges" from being applied in lieu of not having your service downgraded.
Simply buying a bigger pipe isn't going to do anything as far as I can tell when some other party is artificially decreasing the performance of the service you provide because you don't pay the troll! They can do nothing to improve your potential service based on what you currently have... they can only degrade your service and allow you to pay to have the roadblocks removed.
Yes, this is bad news for regular users, but its also bad for the big telcos. That's because if they start trying to sell traffic prioritization to people, they'll end up with egg on their face due to the very nature of the Internet, and everyone will lose. Regular customers will just lose first, but I think telcos will lose later.
The reason is that telcos think only in terms of their own networks, not in terms of the internet as a whole. For example, suppose I want to go to google video and so does Joe in Iowa. If Joe and I are both are customers AT&T, for example, and we both purchase some kind of fast streaming (steaming ?) video service from AT&T, and Google has direct uplink to AT&T, then we both will get faster video downloads. However, if Joe's traffic ever traverses another network like UUNet, then the fast steaming video service Joe paid for won't be so fast. Unless, that is, AT&T and Verizon/MCI (UUNet) have an agreement to honor each other's traffic prioritization.
Here's where it gets interesting. What if Verizon sells the same traffic prioritation to its customers? Are we to believe that Verizon will treat AT&T's 'prioritized' traffic with the same expediency as their own high-priority steaming video traffic? I think not. The interesting thing is that it doesn't matter if Joe is an AT&T customer or not - the chances of his traffic traversing non-AT&T link somewhere on the internet are pretty good, since there are steaming video providers all over the place, not just on AT&T's network.
The end result is that telcos may sell something to customers that they can't deliver, due to the nature of the Internet. What will happen in time, without 'net neutrality', is that telcos will try to re-engineer their networks to reduce the chances that their customers' traffic will ever traverse other provider's networks out on the internet.
Who will scream first will be business customers. They'll insist on SLAs when paying extra for 'prioritized' traffic, and SLAs nearly always include rebate clauses when things go wrong, and things will go wrong until the internet gets all partitioned up (and functionaly broken). My place of work hosts many hundreds of large commercial web sites, and I'll for sure enforce rebate clauses when the content we pay to have 'prioritized' doesn't move with the specified urgency. And, yes there are ways to determine how to measure whether or not traffic like steaming video is getting the performance promised in SLAs. I think what will happen is that big telcos will be at each other's throats for failure to honor each other's traffic prioritizations.
The Internet is an ocean, not a bunch of lakes. The telcos want to sell good weather and calm seas.
The only thing a 'tiered' internet will result in is poorer service to people who don't pay for 'prioritized' traffic - that you can bet on. Once that becomes apparent, of course people will start coughing up extra dough, and telcos will get a temporary boost to their bottom line. Of course, that is, until the internet starts to break down as telcos start to partition up the ocean into nice, managable lakes.
Well, it was interesting while it lasted.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Reading deeper into the comments that the committee made, it does appear to leave the FCC some retort power on carriers who abuse this, and 'slap-on-the-wrist' level fines as well. Like anyone will believe that it is going to help any small company to give AT&T and any Bell Telco a fine months or years later for unfairly denying them access, after that small outfit is already been bankrupted and litigated into the ground....
But it is quite definitely a very, very sad feeling to wake up and read this, as if this marvelous, quasi-magical tool we all had come to know, use everyday and love will now become yet another contentious point in multi-national corporate wars, and one that was definitely brought on by what must have been the most intense behind-the-scenes lobbying and arm-twisting efforts by the Telcos. (innit funny how we never hear about THAT part of things...?)
After all, most of the innovations we are enjoying today were distinctly made possible because of this concept of free and equal access to peering points, and although one probably could backtrack to some comments that people like Tim Berner-Lee or Vint Cerf might have made about foreseeing the end of neutrality, the very core of the Internet is that (please correct me if I am mistaken) we US taxpayers already paid for laying its foundations and core architecture, and it was then decided that it be made available for everyone to use since we already paid for it. Granted the Telcos did add prodigious amounts of swtiching, routing, bandwidth and so on, but only because this instantly enabled them to make a profit from it, which I am fairly confident they have already recouped long ago.
To me, it feels like now comes what the French refer to as "La Curée", that ugly moment where the hunting dogs surround its mortally wounded prey, finally letting loose and gnawing it to death while the hunters just watch, basking in the glee of a future trophy on their mantle.
I guess in the end, Skype was just too good of a thing to be permitted. But maybe, just maybe, as the p2p and darknet creators have foreseen, all of this will only give rise to 'stealth protocols' that will be 'shifted' across multiple layers and encrypted in such a way that filtering is no longer even possible? If so, Philip K. Dick would be proud.
Forgive me for sounding melodramatic, as after all the Net has become so very important to my everyday life, but it really feels like today marks the end of "The Age Of Innocence". (...and feel free to sarcastically flame this all you want to, if I am anywhere near right, we'll all suffer equally, only those who didn't foresee it a bit more perhaps, as it might actually come to them as a very rude awakening.)
Z.
And generally that would be a good thing. But note the word "generally", aka not always.
With certain markets, especially markets with only a small number of "players" that require huge investment for new entrys thus making it unlikely that other groups will be able to break into the market if the current players are overcharging/underperforming, strict regulation is not only nice but necessary.
A good example would be the UK and British Telecom.
Until circa the mid 80's BT was the government controlled monopoly on telecoms in the UK, it was then privatised (aka put on the stock market) as a single entity and it's legal monopoly "removed"
Problem was because it was so established and the only company with infrastructure in place (paid for in large portion by tax payers before it was sold off) it pretty much still kept that monopoly in fact if not in law for another 15 odd years. During all that time the British have been overpaying by a huge amount for a subpar and out of date services
This is now slowly changing, why? because the telecoms regulator finally grew some balls and actually started to regulate the industry or more accurately BT, to create a fair playing field where other companies can come in and compete with BT.
In around 5 years the UK has gone from about 99% pay by the minute dial up connections to the internet to majority now using broadband (which has jumped from max of 512kbs to 24mb in same period) and call charges slashed by, at least for me, 80%. And BT has fought these changes every inch of the way because each one was brought about regulation that allowed other companys into the market and to compeat
Regulation in a truly free and open market is a bad thing
Regulation in a market that is not truly open and free (and telecoms is one of these and always will be) is a very good thing, actually would go so far as to say it is absolutely necessary and anyone who thinks "market forces" alone is enough probably also thinks Santa Claus is real.
As to this particular scenario, I find it laughable that anyone could not see something wrong with it, from what I understand it is akin to
Jonny is with telco X and pays a service charge of $20 per month and makes (and pays for) about $40 in calls per month
Jane is with telco Y and pays a service charge of $20 per month and makes (and pays for) about $200 in calls per month
Jonny calls Jane: Cost of call £0.03 per min to Jonny, Jane also pays £0.03 to receive the call (already nuts at this point as clear double charging for same service)
But because Jane is a high usage person (aka telco already makes more off her) unless she up's her basic service charge to $40 per month she will get routed though a crappy, static filled line
Hello? How can anyone not see something wrong with this?
End user already pays for his bandwidth
Transmitter (google,itunes so forth) already pay for theirs to the end user (double charging for same service)
How can anyone justify charging google and other websites more on top of that because they are "popular"? They already pay though the nose for their popularity in bandwidth charges
In a truly free and open market no company would contemplate something like this as it would be corporate suicide, that the telco's think they can is the clearest case in the world that telecoms is not an open market and that regulation is needed.
Just goes to show you have no idea how bad Saddam was.. read a bit of history before making idiotic generalizations
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
from the Heritage Foundation. Interesting read:
6 .cfm
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Regulation/wm102
Net Neutrality
"Network neutrality" is the principle that Internet network providers, such as telephone and cable- television companies, should not discriminate between types of Internet traffic transmitted over their networks. The exact definition of neutrality, however, varies substantially.[3] Last August, the FCC adopted a policy statement on the issue, spelling out what providers should offer their customers:
1.
Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice;
2.
Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
3.
Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and
4.
Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.[4]
This was a non-binding statement of principles because the FCC has no legal authority to enforce such rules on Internet access. The House bill, however, would give the FCC this authority and direct it to enforce these principles.
The grant of authority is limited. The FCC would not be authorized to write rules but only to respond to specific complaints. This is intended to keep the commission from imposing a comprehensive regulatory scheme on Internet access and instead to focus on specific disputes.
The bill's authors specifically declined to give the FCC that kind of comprehensive power. For instance, a recent bill by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) states that network operators shall not "interfere with, degrade, alter, modify, impair or change" any content. The bill also bans discrimination in the carriage of traffic or charging service providers any fees. This language would prohibit "hot lanes" for priority transmissions and require all Internet traffic to be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.[5] The House bill rightly rejects this approach.
However, there still is room for mischief in the House's language, due to vagueness and ambiguity. What does it mean, for example, to say that consumers are "entitled to competition"? Does that give the FCC authority to review business practices that may injure competitors? If so, does that mean the FCC can review pricing?
In effect, this provision gives the FCC a vaguely-defined mandate to regulate Internet service providers. How that mandate would be used is unclear.
The network neutrality provision should be eliminated. If that is not possible, the commission's authority should be constrained and more specifically defined. For example, Congress could require the commission to apply standard "unfair competition," or antitrust, rules when investigating complaints. These rules, while not perfect, have long been used by the Federal Trade Commission to evaluate market conduct and incorporate factors such as the amount of competition in the marketplace. Using such a relatively well-tested standard would be far better than leaving the FCC create its own rules from scratch.[6]
If Republicans do nothing, but make it appear as if they've done something, they're Democrats (but still evil)
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Warming means more energy in the system. More energy means more violent weather. The rest of the world will be dealing with either less rain or more. Not neccessarily something conducive to bigger crops.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This article could have been titled: "Republicans defeat amendment that would allow the FCC the authority to make new rules on Net neutrality."
...every regulation creates a cartel of businesses who can afford to comply, a bureaucracy who decide when to apply it (usually "captured" by the cartel), and a lobby of vested interests. All of whom have far more personal incentive to defend a harmful regulation than anyone else has to repeal it. All of whom have selfish incentives to make the regulatory regime more complex and burdensome.
There is no such thing as a good or harmless regulation.
Any time you start throwing regulations at something, you make it harder for everyone to compete.
This is the dumbest thing I've seen on slashdot in quite a while.
Skype threatens the telecomm oligarchy. Solution: oligarchs petition government for the right to tax VoIP.
The US is becoming an aristocratic society, and the aristocrats are getting what they want: the right to collect fees from the populace, and to pay none themselves.
Investing in politicians pays better returns than investing in technology.
FTA: "A network of conservative and free-market groups has begun warning Congress that Net neutrality regulations are not consistent with Republican laissez-faire principles and protection of private-property rights."
In reality it means: A network of conservative and free-market groups has begun warning Congress that Net neutrality regulations are not consistent with Republican laissez-faire principles and protection of private citizen's rights.
Of ocourse the democrats share the same attitude. (clipper chip, DMCA, expanded death penality, patriot act) Just so you all understand there's no need to single anybody out.
What?
Only 4 people voted against the final bill. Net Neutrality must not have been that important to either side.
except if you RTFA, (oh wow, new concept!) you will see Microsoft is on the side of Yahoo, Google, Amazon, etc...
Further more, Republican leaders of the committe have offered some minor changes that would allow the FCC a review period of 90 days to review possible net neutrality violations, and fines of up to $500,000 per incident.
Of course the Democrats what more control because they would like to drown buisness in taxes and regulations, look at the obligitory EU to see a sluggish economy (high unemployment) to see how such socialistic princibles behave.
Further more, the congressional republicans said that they don't feel they need to address the problem of net neutrality because, as of yet, it has not come up. (Actually it has, can't remember what telcome (Verizon?) but they where told by the FCC to stop degrading connections to Vonage, but then agian, the new provisions added by the republicans would increase fines for that sort of thing).
Agreed but is household consumption, for the most part, kept keen by easy credit and usurious rates? And if personal, conspicuous consumption is driven by easy credit and usurious rates then isn't the American Dream just another historical lie destined to become a nightmare.
The current historically low interest rates are a phenomenon of the last 10 years. As I said the easy credit is the result of large export economies willingness to support it through their purchase of treasuries and their manipulated currencies. Full employment seems to be more important with them that maximal growth. I don't think the American dream is a lie, but I agree the current situation cannot last for ever. The housing market could suffer badly. Asset deflation is a possibility. On the bright side, when rates do rise US exports should improve. In the end it is the US ability to efficiently flow capital to new businesses (read greed!) that sustains our prosperty. The Chinese have a hell of a job ahead to imitate that.
will entrench political and economic control in the hands of fascists.
Political control is very much in the hands or corporatists (democrat and republican), not facists. Corporations must have price and political stability to function best. This best explains the US monetary policy and hard line on terror. In my opinion there is a long cycle between political control of the business elite and labor. What makes it so difficult to dislodge the corporatists today is they provide a high standard of living for many people. To them we are mindless consuming entities sitting slackjawed in front of a big screen TV, credit card at the ready! In return ofcourse they take a disproportionate share of wealth. Also the huge excess of labor in the developing world has reduced the political power of traditional labor in US and Europe considerably. I don't see an end to the current cycle.
an ill wind that blows no good
That is a lie. I remember when that was on the media (worldwide, or at least here at Brazil too), some american "researches" made (very unreliable) simulations and came to this conclusion. Well, they where lying. They where confusing highter temperatures with highter amount of energy comming from the Sun. Since that is a so obvious mistake, I can tell that they where willfuly liyng to us.
By their calculations, you can expect that crop yelds wil increase on areas that are covered with ice (some of the time and all of it). But it will go down on the hotter areas, since plants don't like hot weather (they do like hight solar radiation, although). Since the areas that are now frozen receive so little solar radiation, they can't yeld so much to compensate (and the area is also not that big). And, yes, I happen to know a bit about the subject.
Also, those other developped countries export more, but they have a smaller population, so that is expected. To think about the american debt, you should only considerate how much they export to the United States. And your country also have a growing fiscal debit (since the current administration), telling us that you are spending less with the military than you used to do at the Cold War doesn't change this fact.
Rethinking email
What the Republicans are doing here is exactly what Republicans ought to be doing, by their charter. They are blocking the Federal government from enacting regulation that would seriously impede the actions of private companies.
Hey guy, BAD ANALOGY. You know why? Because these are NOT simply private companies - they are public utilities. They enjoy government granted monopoly markets.
Thus they are not operating in a free market and have no fucking business trying to claim the right to operate in an unregulated free market. They want their monopoly with none of the responsibilities that go with it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
In short they're shooting the messenger rather than phoning up their Congressman and saying "Hey, you goddamn whore!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...is "Republican."
the Republicans are doing the right thing by their constituents
wrong. The Republicans are currently the majority. That means their constituents are pretty much all of us. Yet they continue to do what is best for a small portion of us. That is NOT representing the constituency, but special-interests instead.
I'm not saying anyone else is any better, just that Repub's are currently the ones not doing their jobs of reperesenting THE PEOPLE.
man, I feel like mold.
They are blocking the Federal government from enacting regulation that would seriously impede the actions of private companies.
Yeah! Not being able to murder "problematic" customers is seriously impeding the actions of my private corporation. Also, for some reason I can see to pay my employees less than $5.15 per hour and make the work 80 hour work weeks and then physical beat them when they question my authority.
And don't let me get started about not being able dump all used nuclear fuel rods and corpses of our test subjects in the local neighborhood's playground right. (Don't ask what my company does for a living)
Damn this government regulation! Damn those dirty apes!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
...ARE part of the total story. No escaping it, when issue after issue are breaking down pretty much along party lines. It DOES help to stay informed about these distinctions. Would you have a hardware story that failed to mention the manufacturer/vendor? "In todays news, videocard x did such and such and video card y did such and such, but you'll have to guess which brands we are referring to because it wouldn't be fair or balanced to actually name them".
If this story had been "dems squash net neutrality debate", don't you think the writer would have said that?
It IS part of the story. When you have an executive branch, and both houses in the legislature controlled by one party, what they do is an issue, and who they are is an issue, no escaping it.
Now guess who is blocking the abrahof investigations/scandalsand just recently voted to not investigate corruption in the congress? the R's. That is part of the story. Now which party is bending over backwards to try to minimize the obvious massive illegal immigrant problem? That's the Dems right now, and the Rs are about evenly split going by the straw polls. Those are just data points, and it's cool to say it, because it is part of the story. Pick an issue, reporting on WHO thinks what is part of it.
... do you people not have a Monopolies Commission like we do in Britain to stop this sort of thing?
A block of code, sufficiently well-written, is indistinguishable from magick.
I, for one will use dial-up. Video has no particular value to me but quick response and download time does.
I remember in the late '90s when the Internet was just getting going for real, bottlenecks were common and it was hard to saturate a dial-up line because sites were so slow. Prioritized video will return us to those wonderful days of yesteryear.
Maybe the market forces will work as people abandon their high speed last mile because why pay for speed you can't use?
Funny...I read the article and I saw this:
Democrats but forward a suggestion to protect certain companies from those that control the access to the internet. Block AT&T from giving Microsoft.com 50% of its bandwidth, for example, while all of AT&Ts smaller customers share the other 50%.
Republicans block suggestion, stating it is bad for the economy to stifle competition and cronyism. If MS wants to pay for that much bandwidth, let them. Otherwise AT&T isn't making the profits it might.
My conclusion: What the Republicans have done is essentially deregulated the Internet and allowed big business to take over. If you don't include clauses like the one the Democrats suggested, companies will think, "How can I make more money?" and you'll get ideas like, "I can throttle bandwidth to all but the highest bidders, regardless of how much the consumers pay to get like service between content providers!"
If "stifling the economy" means throwing consumer rights in the toilet and flushing twice, I'm very excited about the 2006 Republican sweep in the congressional elections (not).
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
So the Republicans defeated the measure 8 to 23, but then the Democrats went on to accept the overall amendment 27 to 4. How many committee members are Democrats? Probably more than 7, defintely not 4. No, it's not that the Republicans defeated this mesaure, it's that Congress is defeating this measure. Anytime the Democrats refuse to take a stand on an issue they are in fact endorsing the issue, and doing their real job of reinforcing the antidemocratic capitalist system of government.
"Last night, the Republican faithful were angry. After four years of being in charge of the House, Senate, Supreme Court and Executive branch, they were not gonna take it anymore. Yeah! Down with the people who are already down!"
and
"[Dick Cheney blames the defeat of an energy bill on the absence of Kerry and Edwards to vote on it] So let me get this straight, you control the White House, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court, and your administration has closer ties to the energy industry than any administration in history, and those two blockheads stopped you?"
Besides, if the media simply reports both sides of a question when one side is taking bribes and quoting lobbyists as neutral contenders, then the media is clearly not being neutral. They'd be slanted towards the side of the bribetakers and mouthpeices.
Warming means more energy in the system. More energy means more violent weather. The rest of the world will be dealing with either less rain or more. Not neccessarily something conducive to bigger crops.
Warmer equals more violent. That is the thinking that prevails. But energy *differences* drive weather. If you raise the ambient temperature do you enhance spacial differences as well? Does warming decrease air stability? Increase or decrease cloud cover, precipitation, desertification? It is not at all clear.
an ill wind that blows no good
FTA: It also contained explicit language denying the FCC the authority to make new rules on Net neutrality. Democrats charged that lack of enforcement power would mean the FCC would be unable to deal with the topic flexibly.
So they can charge companies, just not make up fake rules and blame it on "net neutralitY". Maybe some of this restriction will port over to other things the FCC Censors... one can wish.
- My uid ends in 69...
What you have missed is that the press IS our Stalin.
Whatever misleading our government does is trivial next to the manipulation going on by the press.
I've yet to see anyone seriously address the real reason telcos want this, and it's quite unfortunate. Right now the telcos face something they have never had to really face before - competition! From who? Vonage, Skype, etc. The telcos want to marginalize them because they offer competing services to the telcos main business... telecommunications! This becomes a win-win for telcos because they can now charge the likes of Vonage and Skype, making those services less attractive to customers who already have to pay the telcos for their internet connectivity... and if Vonage/Skype don't want to pay, well that's okay too because they can degrade the quality of those services enough to effectivly make them unattractive to customers.
There was an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal last week from the CEO of Qwest who used the analogy of LL Bean and FedEx saying that a customer pays for the standard shipping to FexEd to receive a package from LL Bean - if LL Bean decided to offer an upgrade to overnight shipping to it's customers for no additional charge, there's no problem with that. I'm disappointed that WSJ did not print any reactions to that because the analogy was clearly flawed.
A better analogy would be if FedEx charged the customer for shipping and then turned around and charged LL Bean again in order for the customer to receive the package telling them "we already got the money from your customer (already paid for DSL/Cable/etc) and if you don't pay us more than the initial cost of shipping (pay for priority/quality of service), packages from you will be put in the back of the line behind all your competitors and we won't even guarantee it will be delivered at all."
Personally, I am insulted. I pay for my bandwidth already. If I want to use that bandwidth to use Google or Vonage or anything else, it's my bandwidth which the telco has already made money from.
They claim it offers more variety to customers - I already have variety! If 1.5mb is not enough, I can pay more and get more bandwidth, so their claim that this adds choice to customers is bunk - we already have choice. This serves no other purpose than to limit our choices to services they can extort or whom they prefer and to help marginalize their competitors at our expense.
Now, this legislation comes. To be sure, a two-tiered internet just plain sounds like a bad idea to me. If I understand aright what I have read here, that would seem to be a common sentiment among those of us with technical expertise in this area. Well and good - the implication is that the market forces which we can bring to bear should eventually cause an equilibrium, wherein the businesses which most effectively meet consumer needs will be more successful than those which don't.
All those in favor of more government regulation, please raise your hands? And, yes - I'm a firm advocate of the Laissez Faire principal of governance - "Let the market bear what it will" (put another way, "That government which governs the least, governs best").
Oh, a sidebar question - how 'bout setting up a 'net which circumvents the cable/telephone companies? Any HAM operators out there got any ideas how we can do this? I'd really love to see big business supplanted by a grassroots activity such as this. Imaging the CEO of AT&T/Charter/Verizon/etc. when he learns that people can communicate without all his copper! I'll bet he'd be mad enough to chew raw neutronium!
The committee vote was 27-4 and it's "The Republicans" that are defeating Net Neutrality? What a ridiculous headline. Both of the major political parties suck, but playing the blame game only perpetuates this horrendous duopolisitc control of our nation. The Republicans get blamed . . . so we must vote Democrat next time!(even though the majority of them endorse the same policies as those evil Republicans. It's just like the Patriot Act . . . it passes 98-1 and is somehow the fault of GWB and the Republicans. Get a clue. The only wasted vote is the one cast for either of these two parties.
If anyone had bothered to read the proposed ammendment, they would have seen it needed to be defeated. As is typical of Congress, the naming was exactly the opposite of its actual pupose. It would have made it easy for the big telcos to blackmail^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H charge fees to companies for better connectivity. Thus, companies like Amazon could be guaranteed the best possible connection, while small startups without the big pockets would have been screwed. It would have also forbidden the FCC from setting policies and regulations (which is supposed to be their job) and only deal with situations on a case by case basis - thus guaranteeing they wouldn't do anything since they do not have the manpower or the budget to do so.
-- Will program for bandwidth
That is a lie. I remember when that was on the media (worldwide, or at least here at Brazil too), some american "researches" made (very unreliable) simulations and came to this conclusion. Well, they where lying. They where confusing highter temperatures with highter amount of energy comming from the Sun. Since that is a so obvious mistake, I can tell that they where willfuly liyng to us.
That is untestable accusation, even though I am an imperialist yankee gringo pig.
By their calculations, you can expect that crop yelds wil increase on areas that are covered with ice (some of the time and all of it). But it will go down on the hotter areas, since plants don't like hot weather (they do like hight solar radiation, although). Since the areas that are now frozen receive so little solar radiation, they can't yeld so much to compensate (and the area is also not that big). And, yes, I happen to know a bit about the subject.
Solar radiation is not the problem for crop production at the poles. The incidence angle is low, but the length of the day in spring and summer compensate. Given the right conditions polar regions can be productive. The main problem is low ambient temperature.
Also, those other developped countries export more, but they have a smaller population, so that is expected. To think about the american debt, you should only considerate how much they export to the United States. And your country also have a growing fiscal debit (since the current administration), telling us that you are spending less with the military than you used to do at the Cold War doesn't change this fact.
No. Fair trade suggests that inflows and outflows are equal, period. Many developing countries use a cheap labor model in greatly increase employment and placate their populations. They are not maximizing their wealth. The governments of such countries are not comfortable with workers becoming powerful, demanding consumers owning pickup trucks, bass boats, and shotguns, so they discourage imports. The US debt has little to do with the military. That is
an ill wind that blows no good
Google replies to ATT, "If you want ATT subscribers to be able to access Google.com, you have to pay us $X,000".
If everyone used end to end encryption then no one in the middle would be able to do any form of QoS or other prioritization. Sure, backbone ISPs could fiddle with rates for packets originating from Google or other companies, but they would not be able to vary the rates by type of service. Yes, encryption would create overhead, but as time and technology march on, the bandwidth available will increase. Yes, QoS is highly desired for many applications, but QoS support across the Internet currently limited, and we are getting by now.
If competition existed then I would agree with you. But this move towards 'de-regulation' (that has been going on since the Clinton years) is happening in an environment where the market is already out of whack.
The telecom companies have government sanctioned monopolies, and they defend those monopolies. In my area I have exactly one choice for broadband: Charter Cable. I've called and asked SBC nee AT&T when they plan to offer DSL in my neighborhood, answer: never (or not in the foreseeable future in their words).
When these telecom companies want to protect their government sanctioned monopolies and block access to competitors over their wires (that were built with government granted rights of way), and then decry any 'regulation' which promotes competition, it stinks of hypocrisy.
In a perfect world I could use Speakeasy (or any other broadband provider) over my cable line, or my phone line. THEN I would say sure, go ahead Speakeasy, limit my access to content outside of your network, because I'll just switch to another provider which doesn't have such restrictions. When I only have one choice, all I can do is bend over.
The reference to Gore is related exactly to what in regards to this post?
Contemptible Contemporary Conservatives offer nothing of value in current political discussion. They debate with non sequitur logic and ad hominem attack. They expose the sad truth that their morality was stunted at the age of twelve with their rationales for egregious actions:
and America grows nostalgic for those days when our president's lies were only about sex and stained blue dresses...
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
The news looks a lot different after it stops spinning. Despite the Democrats' initial votes in support of their buddy's amendment, after that failed, the majority of them voted to pass the bill without any further modification.
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means...
So, you are saying that, because Saddam killed Iraqis, it is okay for the U.S. government to kill Iraqis?
The U.S. government has killed many more Iraqis than Saddam. The U.S. government has increased the violence in Iraq, not diminished it.
Here's some history for you: History surrounding the U.S. wars with Iraq: Four short stories.
"A Republican controlled committee has defeated a bill... "
Aren't all congressional committees Republican controlled these days whether they do good or bad?
And shame on them.
Speaking in absolutes, some people just dont get it. and no the US has not killed more Iraqis than Saddam, he was brutally torturing, then murdering people (like making them drink gasoline, then shooting them) at a rate of 200 a day for over 2 decades. so
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I am curious, why is it that you feel market cap is a poor metric for measuring value?
What would be a more Ideal metric to use?
There is no way that the lenght of the day can grow to compensate the reduced (with a sin function) solar radiation. At most, a day can have 24 hours, what is not enough. But, of course, they can produce something, just not as much as tropical areas.
This says otherwise. The lighting conditions would make such a place very interesting. Solar intensity does vary as the cosine of the incidence angle. But remember that the incidence angle must factor in earth's inclination angle of 23 deg. At midsummer at the north pole the sun is surprisingly high in the sky, and stays that way for months.
Modern economics imply that the more variety of people (and natural resources, but that is not the case here) a country have, the less it needs external commerce. That is why the United States have small exports (and imports too). It is just natural to the other developped countries to trade more. And I'm talking about developped countries here, so the rest doesn't apply.
The US is the world leader in aggregate global trade (imports + exports) by far. It is natural for rich countries to want to trade. Throughout history, it is what has made them rich. I will agree that less developed countries attract disproportionate (but fair) levels of investment. I don't mean to criticize trade surpluses achieved by fair means. That is competition. What I do critize are trade surpluses supported by currency manipulation (China) or direct state support.
an ill wind that blows no good
I think this comment had it right:
"Let's go even more abstract: the entire history of the Internet has been one that prohibited the prioritization of network traffic. What what?"
Is tiered service really so awful we need laws against it? I don't see that as justified; my Vonage phone works great (I know, small sample).
I'll go abstract too. Which is more likely to kill the Internet, too much regulation or not enough?
I was looking forward to building a little hut in the middle of the forest in the boondocks and make AT&T pay the $30 million+ to wire it with ethernet so I can pay then $40 bucks a month for broadband.
CEOs don't write or edit stories.
By your Chomskyish logic, the unions are all Republican too. (They work for corporations, don't they??? QED)
You're right. They read them, and then they reassign, fire, demote, and harrass people who write something the CEO doesn't like.
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
Its management that is in control... So, your argument of the personal views of the people at the very bottom of the organization aren't really valid.
Precisely! And that's why unions like the UAW are so pro-Republican!
just watch some john stewart
Hey, doesn't Jon work for one of those evil corporations too?? Why don't they fire him?
Liberal media in an of itself is a neo-con talking point.
Yeah, just like gravity and the speed of light. The GOP wants you to be slow and not realize they are making the Earth suck!
A. Any company that harms it's own customers access to sites they visit is stupid. The only thing they would accomplish is driving their customers to another provider that provides a fast connection to all websites.
B. Accessing websites hosted on your provider's network is intuitively faster. The less traffic you have to fight to get your data, the faster it arrives. Making a web host provide the same quality of service to everyone on the internet is like expecting Pizza Hut to deliver to anyone in the world in 30 minutes or less.
C. If ISPs really want to leverage their brand, they would offer additional content through selected sites that currently offer subscription tier service at relatively low pricing. The sites could auto-detect the user's ISP and deliver premium content automatically.
I'll bet as soon as any ISP starts cutting off it's subscribers from their favorite websites, they'll leave in droves. Most people are as dedicated to their ISP as they are to the brand of gas they put in their car.
In fact, you are quite correct. I meant oligopoly, which is entirely different. An oligarchy refers to a form of government.
So, pray tell, what is the name of the american union of journalists? Funny, we don't have one. Maybe if we had one, you would have a point. "Yeah, just like gravity and the speed of light. The GOP wants you to be slow and not realize they are making the Earth suck!"
Actually, these are just *theories*, and as any good republican will tell you, scientific theories (like evolution) cannot be trusted.
John works for comedy central. Comedy central makes money by making people laugh. Jon makes people laugh. Ergo, his job his safe.
In contrast, news outlets are meant to tell people stories. Stories that people A)want to hear and B)someone wants the people to want to hear. So as long as someone is paying the companies more to tell the stories they want, thats what happens. So, say, Corporation F tells the stories that Politician B wants, and Politician B makes it so Corporation F's owner can own more media so, giving Corp F's owner more money and Poli B more sheeple. Its a win-win for the big players, and a lose for society. But who cares about soceity, right? As long as society shuts up and does what the few tell them to, they'll get their trickle-down.
Check out Independent world television for some upcoming TV that isn't biased. Its good stuff.
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
I'm not seeing an issue here. Looks like Democrats just invented a word "Net Neutrality"? Essentally, you do want segment networks, so text comes across faster and images right behind.
And if you buy into the whole corporations-are-evil dogma, then read the amendment, imagining that the FCC has exercised their power to declare you as an ISP. Here's a couple of gems from that amendment, which would presumably become law if the Democrats ever controlled Congress:
An exception is provided later for stopping malware and spam, but on its face, this law would prohibit ISPs from offering customers email accounts, since standards require email servers to add headers to the email content being transmitted."[An ISP shall] not interfere with, block, degrade, alter, modify, impair, or change any bits, content, application or service transmitted over [its network]."
"[An ISP shall] not discriminate in favor of itself or any other person, including any affiliate or company with which such operator has a business relationship in A) allocating bandwidth; and B) transmitting content or applications or services to or from a subscriber."
Since I am trying to run my own business based from a server colocated with an ISP, and that ISP therefore provides bandwidth to and from my server according to how much money I pay them, if the Democrats had their way, I, and thousands of others, would be legislated out of business.And their crowning achievment:
Section 4.a.6: "[An ISP shall] treat all data traveling over or on communications in a non-discriminatory way."
Yes, that's right, by the plain meaning of the law, ISPs would be prohibited from operating routers, switches, or firewalls. Equitable treatment for all data packets! Sure, communism brings disaster for economic systems, but for information systems it wil bring UTOPIA! PACKETS OF THE WORLD UNITE!!!Take a look at what the government actually tries to do, and you too can become a Republican. (...illustrating that, besides Lincoln, the Republican party is also the party of Jefferson.)
Republicans on ./ ./ editorial
and the
don't mean to flame but, so, what, it's called "dotslash" now?
> In fact, you are quite correct. I meant oligopoly, which is entirely different. An oligarchy refers to a form of government.
So you were right, after all...
FUNNY!
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Vote with your dollars, they will get the message.
Vote with technical solutions that defeat your ISPs interferance.
Given the lack of success and the unintended consequence risk of government interferance there has got to be an overriding need. I don't see it.
Whatever you do, don't add any federal employees. That's a very bad outcome.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The OP presents some very nice arguments against both government regulation of ISP carriers and this act in particular. It sucks when legislators start making rules in areas they do not understand.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Management doesn't get to appoint union leaders; they do however get to choose their employees--including their reporters, writers, political pundits, editors (who in turn decides what news gets reported and what doesn't). Unions are set up to create leverage for workers against management, they aren't part of the corporate infrastructure. If anything, they are a counterbalance to corporate power when the union works as it should.
I find it hard to believe that you honestly believe that the media has a conservative bias. I have a name for you; Dan Rather. He was praised by executives of all media corps. as being 'fair and balanced' in his reporting, and you think they are conservative?
granted there is corruption everywhere and conservative bias does exist, but I have yet to see any mainstream news corporation that suffers so.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
Oh I get it! Dotslash is what you get when you read from the right!
this bill doesnt mean much. They dont care much about the internet and dont really get it. And you can be sure the Media wont cover this very much or go into detail about it. They are more interested in who is sleeping with who in Hollywood, the funniest dog trick in the nation and how the latest junk food can cause cancer. I really dont see how anyone can even watch Corporate news anymore, it doesnt even mention anything worthwhile to us. They dont ask the hard questions, they arent concerned with the implications of current events in Washington and the average American wont get this piece of news and will never know it even passed by. Its like they just feed us a bunch of garbage while all the important stuff just gets ignored on purpose, because they dont want us to know.
Sounds like in ancient times with irrigation if someone upriver gets greedy. "If you don't do what I say, I'll divert this water into the desert instead of your fields!"
Have you ever even read anything by Chomsky in your life? Do you even understand what he has done for the field of linguistics and computational analysis in particular? Saying "Chomskian logic" like a perjorative for "damn pinko liberals" is about as logical as Intelligent Design.
No but some, like that DHS secretary did try to find kids online to molest.
just the other day ed whitacre (at&t chairman) and the fcc got together in texas to unviel his fiber optic setup - whitacre then makes a statement to buisness weekly about not abiding by net neutrality - the fcc somewhat agrees - now the repblicans turn down this proposal - is it me or do the rich keep getting richer and the poor keeping getting screwed - were is Joseph McCarthy when you need him
The World Is Yours ~ Tony Montana
If you truly believe that's the reason for the Republican decisions on this matter, then you're a naive fool. Seriously.
This is not something we forget. We just want to look at the appropriate solution to the problem. The solution is answering the question "How do we encourage competition?"
Enacting legislation to restrict business is not the answer.
i greatly respect the man. his brilliance influences multiple worlds. he has been called the most quoted man ever, ahead of shakespear...
the main two worlds involving chomsky:
1) politics
2) linguistics
they don't mix.
in world number one, i've read plenty of chomsky, my favorite being Manufacturing Consent, which lays out in a very logical manner how Mass Media has become an extremely efficient propaganda machine since WWII. i don't recall him ever saying that the leftish Democrats (or any major political power in the US) are not just as bloodthirsty and warmongering as any other group that currently controls the goverment. what he says is that our politicians AND the media both are controlled by the richest of the rich -- that is, that the "Government" is just a front, and the media helps make the "medicine" they shove down our throats go down better.
concerning world #2, most research into neural networks and other bottom up approaches to AI have shown Chomsky's linguistic theories to be off base. but as someone else has said, it is OK for scientists to be wrong, that is part of the scientific method, and certainly he loses no respect in the scientific world.
i disable sigs
they reassign, fire, demote, and harrass people who write something the CEO doesn't like
You are correct. The CEOs hire Democrat party sympathizers. And fire editors and writers that don't bash Republicans. Hell, back in 2000, I saw some top guy from News Corp at a big, public Democratic Party rally, and he was promoting Kerry.
You're pretty ignorant of the technical merits of the amendments you provided. :)
I can see how you may think that adding SMTP headers is a breach of this amendment, but legalese doesn't have many mechanisms to deal with technical interpretations. You try to write an amendment that deals with high-technology, network/telecom specificaly, that has provisions in place for adding routing data, SMTP headers, and modifying the TTL of a packet
You're interpretation is a very ignorant one, at best. The amendments are trying to prevent an ISP from unfair practices, such as prioritizing NBC traffic over say, MSN.
I is not literaly telling you, that each person can pay a flat rate, and get unlimited bandwidth, for the same price as someone who just uses 1Mbit.
Current incarnations of "tiered bandwidth" are very fair.
You want a 10Mbit, commit? You pay $35/Mbit plus loop fees.
Comparing equal treatment of packets to communism/socialism is rediculous.
I dearly hope your post is a troll, as I wrote this treating you as such.
Any sane or intelligent person would understand the amendments as written.
Brent Jones
"Well, that, and you know... ELECTIONS!!!"
You mean the ones that happen Every four years? (Well, every two... sort of)
We all know Bush's approval rating, and yet he's still in office. Power to the people, indeed.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
"The answer is moderate regulation that doesn't get too much in the way, but is only applied where necessary."
We have to regulate the amount of regula... *gets shot*
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Just block all google access at Verizon's corporate headquaters. They'll need to pay a fee to have those services re-instated. I wonder how much google could charge?
Fixing copyright
I wasn't commenting on the intended effect of the amendment, I was commenting on amendment itself. If that amendment was law, and that law was followed as it was written, the effect would be just what I said. The realistic scenario, considering that the would-be law is ridiculously restrictive, is that the FCC/courts would disregard it where they pleased, and enforce it were they please, thereby moving us yet further away from a society governed by laws.
Never heard of Limousine Liberals? The uber-wealthy are often very left-wing. Could be evidence that the rare air at the C-level in the mega corp is about as intoxicating as the stuff Hollywood is blowing.
The tell is that dems page through Fortune, Republicans read Forbes.
You're still in the wrong, then.
/. policy is to keep all quoted material in italics, which would have clarified just who doesn't know how to use an apostrophe - but let's not get into that.
Also, common
LOL The point, which I will put in caps since you missed the other three times, is that EMPLOYEES DON'T FOLLOW THE POLITICAL AGENDAS OF THE COMPANY'S OWNERSHIP.
John works for comedy central. Comedy central makes money by making people laugh. Jon makes people laugh. Ergo, his job his safe.
Apparently it never occurred to you that same theory applies to newspeople.
So, say, Corporation F tells the stories that Politician B wants, and Politician B makes it so Corporation F's owner can own more media so, giving Corp F's owner more money and Poli B more sheeple.
Yes, that would be true if the corporation had control over the day-to-day choice of what gets published and what slant gets put on it. They don't, as anyone who has worked in a newsroom can tell you. If they did, they wouldn't hire all those Democrats! Use your head, man.
Do you really think a 90% Democrat press corps is going to report things with a GOP slant? Sheesh.
Well, then the CEOs must be Democrats, because it's the conservatives who are fired, demoted, and harassed to the point that they're outnumbered 5:1 in newsrooms.
Much better word, except for the fact that you apply it to the ISP market, which has, in the US, at least 300 national providers (not including regional ISPs). And if any ISP were to start restricting bandwidth to Google, all the ISPs with lower numbers would jump for joy as their numbers increased. Any ISP foolish enough to collude with such a scheme, would meet the same sad fate.
As for the backbone providers, there are over 30 of them. AT&T is a very distant third, and Level3 is 4th. And Level3 is probably overjoyed about the published comments from the AT&T chairman, because competition is even stronger at that level, as huge amounts of bandwidth can be bought and sold quickly if ISPs start losing faith in AT&T.
But as Democrats are wont, you charge that all these companies should be under all sorts of government control, because otherwise they will probably collude with each other to bad things to us, and that Republicans don't want that because they're also bad. The most glaring flaw in your argument is that collusion is already illegal. So whatever the intent of Democrats, it's not to prevent collusion.
My theory concerning the thinking of Democrats is this: They distrust corporations, and they trust government -- perhaps because they think that money makes people bad, but power doesn't necessarily. However one would have to be a fool to trust either a corporation or government. Therefore a well-run society keeps its government in check and in balance through competition between executive, legislative and judicial, competition between federal and state, and copetition, as it were, between the elected and the electors. And it must similarly keep its economy in check and in balance through competition between sellers and other sellers, and between buyers and other buyers, and it falls to the government to enforce that balance so that no one buyer or seller can operate without competition or compete in inherently dishonest ways. And it therefore also falls to the government to restrain itself in its regulation of the market, so that it doesn't destroy the independence and competition which is its duty to preserve.
Some people, indeed, have only one (or zero) cable or DSL provider in their area. And while that's too bad for those, it doesn't free that ISP from competition. And in the US economy, any company vulnerable to competition, gets competition -- except where the government forbids it (thanks Democrats). It would be extremely difficult -- probably imposible -- for any corporation to acheive an ISP monopoly in the US. It would, however, be exeedingly easy for the government to establish an ISP monopoly through regulation. If this is the first time you're hearing of these strange concepts, then chances are you're living outside the US, and perhaps still paying hourly for your Internet access, at a rate negotiated between your ISP and your government. Perhaps one day we'll send Republican missionaries to your country, and they will teach you about limited government and free markets. Until then, see if you can find an uncensored copy of the Federalist Papers. It's a great place to start.