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Lessig On McCain's Technology Platform
Agthorr writes "Lawrence Lessig has created a video analyzing John McCain's recently released technology platform (available here). Lessig's video touches on broadband penetration, competition, and network neutrality." Note that while Lessig has come out as a supporter of Barack Obama, this video is not from the Obama campaign.
McCain's has the foresight and intents (and motivations like "faith") of GWB. Not that Obama is a saviour, but let's try to minimize the severe damage the internet will suffer under either candidate (in America).
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Is there a transcript?
What?
Obviously Lessig would prefer to see more competition and open networks.
Personally, I think the broadband penetration number ("our rank has fallen to #22") is a bit of a red herring because the US is far less densely populated than most other countries and thus perfect broadband penetration is not feasible. And while I'm all for net neutrality, that issue alone is not going to determine who I vote for.
Despite the current lack of regulation I think I get a fairly fast, unrestricted Internet connection at a fairly low price. I think that as long as there are at least two providers available in any locality the market will force reasonable prices and net neutrality.
and all the freedom, openness, liberties we enjoy here.
well. who would have thought...
Read radical news here
> McCain will try to solve the broadband penetration "problem" by providing subsidies to the cable and telecom monopolies
Great. So regulation to protect Net Neutrality by preventing people from making an open market closed is bad, but giving tax money to monopolies is good?
As for broadband rank, I would like to point out that the Nordic countries do find in spite of having lower densities than we do. Also, if you look at coverage, it's concentrated in the rich areas.
I'm in the _middle_ of the 5th largest metropolis in the USA, and my choices are:
* Cable (With a pathetic 20 GB/month download limit, but decent speed... usually).
* 144 Kbps DSL (Which costs over $100/month, BTW. Those are kilo BITS per second; so downloads top out at 15-16 KB/s).
* A T1 line (I'm tempted, but it's something like $400/month and I don't have the income to support it).
* A city wireless network that I'm on the far end of the range for (and can't connect to reliably).
* Satellite (laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag).
* Dial-up.
Supposedly there's FIOS to be had, but not in my area. Only over in the high-income areas. If we were smart, the government would set up some major fiber optic backbones and such to the population centers, then lease lines to local businesses. So the public would OWN the infrastructure (and therefore, care for it), while the businesses would innovate in making use of it.
Instead, we've given billions to telecoms and gotten nothing in return, because they want to keep the money and cherry-pick the areas they service without making expensive infrastructure investments.
And you can't do that on the state level, because it becomes "competition" to service people the telecoms *refuse* to.
Was the USA more densely populated eight years ago?
I'll point out that Arizona is more urban than the Netherlands. Almost all of Arizona's population lives in major urban areas; the Netherlands has a higher net population density but a much higher percentage of their population lives in nonurban villages.
This is by way of saying that population density is a red herring, because broadband penetration is measured by people, not square miles. The USA's ranking isn't being driven down by the lack of broadband on the Yuma Proving Grounds or the Plains of St. Augustin.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
In court, we require people to testify in person, and if they cannot for some good reason, we take a video deposition and show that. This is because we want the jury to see the person, to be better able to judge from their demeanor whether or not to believe them. Witnesses often have a strong incentive to lie, so this is important.
What are the chances Lessig is going to lie about his position on McCain's platform? Seems pretty damned low to me--I think we could trust him if a textual form of his analysis were available. So why present this in a cumbersome video format?
"Borrowing" Obama's slogan design notwithstanding, that reads like a lolcat.
I can has internetz?
Of course, he may be targeting the casual youtube viewer who's considering McCain, who is a poor choice in terms of technology and liberty.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Lessig first refers to them as tax cuts; he obviously is not "confused" about the distinction, he quite deliberately equates tax cuts with subsidies, and the end result of a selective tax cut and a subsidy (assuming the subsidy is not larger than the amount taxed) is the same thing, as you well know.
I would have no problem calling a tax reduction on a demographic I don't belong to a "subsidy" rather than a tax cut, especially if the tax cut seems to have been applied arbitrarily. If it applied to myself, I might be able to fool myself into calling it a tax cut, but the only one fooled would be myself; to everyone else who didn't qualify, it would be a subsidy.
...
You seem to be basing your arguments on the notion that the money rightly belongs to the taxpayer, and than it is wrong for the government to take it. However, McCain is not proposing to repeal taxes altogther, but to take tax money from some and not from others. Supposing we were to agree that taxes are a necessary evil in order to support a civil society. Which would you consider in general to be the best policy: tax everyone equally, or tax some people and not others? (And I am aware that current tax policy does not tax equally, but that's an issue for another time.)
John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan that will create millions of good American jobs, ensure our nation's energy security, get the government's budget and spending practices in order, and bring relief to American consumers. Click to learn how the McCain Economic Plan will help bring reform, prosperity and peace to America.
Must you mention Bud Light in every bloody thread?
Sadder still, one of the fleshy kind. Comprehensive economic plan that will create jobs? Yeah, like every other republican of the last century... but, we don't need more low paying service jobs, you stupid fuck.
I lost all respect for Lessig when he described the opposition to telecom immunity as "leftist hysteria". It's like if Richard Stallman suddenly called opposition to DRM the work of "Linux zealots".
Most people are fine with that they have and usually only bitch about it when it's not working. Most of the people in the US who want broadband already have access to it. How difficult is it to get slashdotters heads around the concept that many people are perfectly fine w/o computers or internet. They live their lives like they always have and DGAF about broadband penetration unless some idiot politician wants to raise taxes for it.
Of course, then you have ISPs that are also in the video on demand business on the cable TV side of things. Do you think they are going to do anything but drag their feet when it comes to implementing technology that is going to kill a cash cow? Of course not. so continue whining about how your korean friends can download porn faster than you. If it's that big of a deal: MOVE! you won't be missed.
The distinction between a subsidy and a taxcut amounts to magical thinking. It's what corporations, republicans do to pretend they aren't feathering their own nest with our tax dollars, but are instead being 'pro market' and 'fiscally responsible' when they are actually passing out free money to the people who own them.
A targeted tax cut of any sort serves one purpose. To artificially reduce the cost of doing business for an industry or market segment in order to make investment in that area more attractive.
That *tax break* you get on your mortgage interest is a subsidy designed to encourage home ownership. The accelerated depreciation on capital equipment purchases is a subsidy designed to induce companies to purchase durable goods at an otherwise unfavorable juncture.
They are all simply a means to manipulate the flow of capital through the markets in a hopefully beneficial manner.... though how effective it is often depends on your definition of beneficial.
Apparently another mccain droid got some mod points.
Fuck you, too, parasite cocksucker.
Uh, no, I already have broadband. Just like most of the people that supported (and paid for) the government initiative for rural electrification already had electricity. Now, I think I gain a benefit (and a financial one, in the long term) from the overall economic improvements that increased access would bring, but its not the kind that creates a private profit motive, because the benefit is diffuse and not very large on an individual scale, such that everyone is better off if someone does it, but no individual or corporation has an incentive to fund it themselves, since the net benefit to the funder would be negative.
Obama could give a shit about technology.
He want's nothing more that to pay pennence to his European masters who feel guilt for their part in the slave trade.
Hope