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Net Neutrality Act On the Agenda Again
blue234 writes "On January 9th, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe and Democrat Byron Dorgan reintroduced the bill popularly known as the Net Neutrality Act, and officially called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The bill was killed in the Senate last year in a vote split along party lines (Democrats yea, Republicans no), with the exception of Senator Snowe, who voted with the Democrats. Now that the Democrats have a slight majority in the Senate, the bill certainly has a better chance, but it still needs 60 votes to prevent a Republican filibuster.
the bill survives committee intact. Do not contact your Representative or Senator to ask them to support the bill until after it makes it through committee! Otherwise you could be supporting a bill that's completely different from what you think it is.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
"Internet Freedom Preservation Act"
It's funny. In this day and age I hear a bill title like that and I automatically assume it's some tyrannical euphemistic horror-show and that I should immediately call my representatives and insist they opppose it.
Incidentally this bill really is evil, because apparently all consumers and businesses currently use tremendous bandwidth without paying for it! I for one think it's about time the internet service providers were paid a monthly bill for the courtesies they provide!
Obviously YouTube has a lot to lose if Net Neutrality is not preserved and if teclos start treating consumer's bandwidth in a fashion unfavorable towards the site. You can see videos of Senator Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Senator Dorgan (D-North Dakota) appealing to the YouTube community for support regarding Net Neutrality here:
Kennedy's video (3 min, 22 sec)
Dorgan's video (1 min, 48 sec)
How is this eroding democracy? That is democracy.
Under your ideal government, reform would be impossible, since one could only pass things by consensus - and anything that could not pass a few years earlier would be considered bad.
Change happens in a democracy. We vote in new leaders precisely for the reason that we want them to pass the things that the old ones wouldn't.
"In God we trust, all others we monitor." -- Unofficial NSA motto
You are trusting that your cable IP service won't also have tiered access. Of course, both cable and telephone companies currently provide tiered services (DSL, DSL-Lite, voicemail, premium channels, VOIP, etc) why wouldn't they charge for access to third-party media providers.
It takes more than two sources of broadband to create a free market.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
The invisible hand of the free market has failed left and right. Standard Oil. Carnegie Steel. Ma Bell. Microsoft. No thanks- I'll take a regulated market that guarantees individual rights by taking some away from corporations.
Care about privacy? Read this!
You know, I will blame the marketing and slick advertising. It was designed to play to people's weaknesses, much as propaganda shapes public opinion. Face it: almost all media is owned by a handful of corporations that want us to buy their crap. The only recourse is education --- an increasingly watered down, one-sided education provided by the public schools. And the corporate drivel has infiltrated there too. So, no, the consumers aren't at fault, they are behaving the way they were programmed to --- by market forces and a weak, greedy government.