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Net Neutrality Comment Period Ends Friday
FatherBash writes "Friday marks the final day for citizens, corporations, and paid spinmeisters alike to file comments with government regulators on Net Neutrality. Wired has the story with a link to the FCC page where you too can throw in your two cents."
No matter how hard we want to fight against it, net neutrality will eventually fall. The big providers want it to happen and the big content providers are not making a big enough stink about it to really rally the people against it. One of these days legislation will simply slip in, and then everyone on will really regret not taking more action when we had the chance. Kind of like the situation with Global Warming is going to be :)
Just because energy is being focused in one area does not mean that all other areas are being ignored.
In fact, as we all know, neither Iraq nor Africa are being ignored.
I always hate these types of arguments. They rely on the assumption that any person, government, or whatever else can only do one thing at a time and that all energy and monies are poured into that one thing.
In truth, however, this particular issue is one of importance to many Americans, and therefore it seems appropriate that the government would take it up.
Could someone post a link to the place where we can submit a comment (I mean, other than Slashdot. I don't think the government takes official notice of Slashdot comments).
Except when you have no other competing corporation to give your business. Oh well. Who needs the internet anyway?
Except in monopolies when you have no choice to vote with your wallet.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
Airwaves belong to everyone. Although transmission is regulated,
reception is open and unrestricted. And the only purpose of the
regulation is to ensure that the openness of the medium is preserved
and the utility of the radio space is not compromised.
This is as it should be. Everybody benefits when the utility of a
common resource is preserved. Otherwise, the phenomenon of the
"Tragedy of the Commons" rears its ugly head. Here, overly agressive
private consumption of a public resource causes a compromise of the
utility of the common resource, to the detriment of all, including
the private individuals hogging the resource!
The Internet is, by definition, a shared resource. It's a peering
agreement based on communications protocols which enable all of its
parts to cooperate together, seamlessly, for the public benefit. Any
part can access any other part as though all parts were local. It's
the first, truly open, global communications system whose immense
potential for benefiting humankind has barely begun.
It is now up to you, here, to declare for our progeny, that this
shared, common resource shall remain open and free for the benefit of
all, to ensure its use, utility, and power so that everybody can benefit.
Balkanizing this public medium with an "unequal" internet, where the
common carriers of the traffic are free to degrade access to portions
of the network not in their personal interest, serves only to pillage
the utility of the common good. It provides enhanced short-term
profits for the pillager, but degrades the overall utility of the
network.
Please, please please, follow the forefathers before you who have
declared that this land be preserved for the common good, and those
who declared that the roads be preserved for the common good, and
those who have declared that the nation's power grid and telephone
grid be regulated to preserve their utility for the common good.
The utility of the Internet should be preserved. Please, please, keep it neutral.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Fact 1. Telcos rely almost entirely on public easements to run their business.
Fact 2. Lack of public land would destroy almost all current Telcos.
Thus, putting Fact 1 and Fact 2 together, to me, means that the Telcos serve me first before they serve their shareholders. If they want everything deregulated so they can charge more for "premium delivered" bandwidth or whatever their current term-du-jour is, they can alter their business such that they do not rely on public funds or land to build their business.
- No tax breaks or other governemtn guaranteed incentives for telecom providers
- No government granting of exclusionary/preferential franchising of certain areas to telecom providers
- No government-enforced easements or right-of-way for telecom providers
When all of those government intrusions into the business of telecomm are remedied,then we can address the reduction of any net neutrality requirements.
Sound good to you?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I agree with your statement that more government regulation will only lead to more government regulation. But in this type of case, the ISPs are being granted limited monopolies, so regulations (Net Neutrality) must accompany those monopolies in order to prevent abuse.
Unless you are suggesting that the monopoly also be removed, taking the government all the way out, then you could actually "vote with you wallet" as you said, and rely on the marketplace.
I'm sure that will look really important next to the millions of dollars already in there...
Unnecessary? Do large corporations have such a good track record that you trust them implicitly?
Unconstitutional? See the commerce clause.