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Senators Call For Hearing On Carrier Content Blocking
HangingChad writes "Two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling communications over the Internet and on cell phones. Now that the Senate is getting into the act, Comcast will probably want to come up with some new talking points as their old ones were leaked."
Shouldn't market forces be allowed to decide whether
or not the public wants their internet and mobile
communications blocked or censored?
btw I know that in some areas carriers have a total
monopoly over internet access, but still...
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
There are intelligent staffers on the hill that understand these issues. They're what helps. If you noticed, it was suggested that the distinguished senator from alaska had folks calling for him to get some tech staffers after the grandpa simpson 'tubes' incident.
The telco execs can lie to congress all day long and they won't get so much as a slap on the wrist for it.
For the same reason, congress ultimately won't do anything about the telcos and cable companies blocking content -- they're paid (bribed, in various forms, most of which are almost certainly not on the record) not to.
Not only are they paid not to by the telcos, they're paid not to by the RIAA, MPAA, and the media corporations. That latter is especially important because without the support of the media, you will not win an election campaign, period.
Big corporations rule the U.S. these days, and there's no stopping it now. There's no way to, even including violent revolution. We're way past the point of no return. And it's not just the U.S., either, but most of the rest of the world as well.
Historically, totalitarianism of one form or another has been by far the preferred form of government, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of the people who have ever lived have lived under it. The experiment with freedom in the world is tiny in comparison.
Well, it was nice while it lasted. I'm going to miss it.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
anyone calling himself HangingChad should know that no significant policy changes in telecommunications - or anything else, for that matter - are going to come out of Congress until after next year's Presidential elections.
I think it is import to distinguish between what we just don't like and what is actually illegal- i.e. unconstitutional.
For example, I just posted something on Apple's support forums about distaste for the fact that they chose not to include Java 6 in Leopard. They deleted the entire thread. I don't like it and I think ti sucks. BUT- it isn't illegal. They own the support forum! They can delete whatever the hell they want. This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment. The 1st Amedement doesn't grant you the right to speak freely in someone else's property. It doesn't even grant you the right to enter their property.
I believe content blocking/filtering/etc is the same type thing. Some ISP will pop up who uses this as marketing material. They'll market themselves as the ones who "don't block anything."
When I'm unsure as to whether something is good or bad, as an American I reach my answer by asking, "What would the Founding Fathers say?"
I know in this case, they'd be completely against censorship of any form. Censorship and content blocking are unacceptable, especially in a nation like the United States, where free expression forms the basis of the national identity.
Although they're not necessarily bound by the Constitution, the carriers, as American companies, should still try their hardest to abide by and uphold those ideals.
I have a business, we use Comcast at home. My business has 2 SMTP servers out on the net, but Comcast blocks outbound port 25 under the guise of limiting spammers. They encourage usage of their SMTP servers, but we routinely send pictures with our emails because we are in the construction business. Comcast simply times out sending large files (5-10Mb). Thus, my business is adversely affected. Complaints have been met with silence. I finally SSH tunneled out to a server to send email. I find that inappropriate at best, down right criminal at worst. Why does Comcast get to decide what SMTP I utilize? I pay for access, not filtered access, to the internet. Utilizing my paid for business servers should not be arbitrarily barred. Bit Torrent is just the tip of the iceberg. We have corporate masters that we must adhere to their version of the net. Please allow true competition in broad band. Comcast just stinks and they are my only option. No DSL or FIOS in my county because the county commissioners have a kickback arrangement with Comcast. Verizon won't touch Frederick County, MD.
My question is this:
If Comcast is blocking, throttling, or in some other way denying traffic, don't they lose their common carrier status? And wouldn't this open them up to lawsuits? After all if they are able to slow X traffic, why can't they stop illegal music/movie/software/etc. downloads?
If you were a copyright holder, and you suspected that individuals were copying your works over the Comcast network - who is throttling specific traffic - wouldn't you sue to get them to stop the flow of traffic containing your works? Why doesn't this action open them up to legal action from the litigious-happy RIAA and others?
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
So a government sanctioned monopoly ( or at least a monopoly the government doesn't hive a shit about trying to break up ) can be allowed to control communications, while simultaneously being obliged to provide information to the government under "National Security" concerns?
/. over and over. We've been told repeatedly that corporations have only one duty: to maximize their profit and thus payouts to shareholders. This is another way of saying that they aren't, and shouldn't be required to follow any laws (aka government regulation). And this argument is usually made in situations where what's being discussed would be illegal if a government agency did it.
...", so it clearly only limits the government. Private corporations are not so limited, and can legally enforce whatever rules they like limiting the information transferred via their hardware.
Yes, this is how things have been going in the US for some time now. You see, the folks in power have figured out something important: Those protections in the Constitution only apply to government organizations. The courts have upheld the idea that private corporations aren't required to obey the Constitution, because they're not government agencies, and the Constitution clearly only limits what government agencies can do.
The idea now is to "privatize" everything. That way, the Constitution's protections will be moot, because everything will be done by corporations, not government agencies, and when dealing with a corporation, you have no rights.
We've seen exactly this point argued here in
The current topic is a case of this. The government has First Amendment limits to how much it can control "speech", which to any rational reader would include information that people transfer electronically by any means, although when the Constitution was written, there was no such thing as electronic transfer of information. You and I clearly have a legal right to download a torrent of an ISO of last week's release of the latest ubuntu. But the First Amendment starts with "Congress shall make no law
So in the US, things like free speech and freedom of the press are essentially irrelevant now. The government can't limit them, but the government no longer much deals with them. It's more and more in the hands of unregulated corporations, and they have the right to do whatever they like with the data being trucked down their tubes. In particular, while the government may have no right to record your use of comm lines, the telecom companies do have this right, and they also have the right to hand over the information they gather to any government agencies that are interested. If they don't like us downloading those ISOs, they have the legal right to interfere with our downloads.
The only way out of this loophole is a constitutional amendment that extends the Bill of Rights to private corporations. This isn't likely to happen any time soon.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.