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Obama & McCain Conflicting On Net Neutrality
longacre writes "For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of 'network neutrality,' until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), 'both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.'"
Typical...article going too far to look "balanced"...unfortunately, our standards for journalistic objectivity now require MSM to throw out all analysis and simply ask dimwitted questions and repeat the candidates talking points.
In this case, the article is really bending over backwards to make the false point that:
by saying that:
That statement is simply false. Of course anyone could quibble over the definition of any word ad infinitum, but the general idea is no tiered service.
This is where everyone who is in favor of John McCain flames me with how my links and definition of 'net neutrality' isn't exactly right..blah blah blah...I used to work in IT, and everyone...I mean everyone I worked with in our rather large company had the exact same basic understanding of 'net neutrality'...the wiki definition is as good as any and represents the general idea as it is understood in common usage
It's blatantly obvious that when it comes to net neutrality issues, Obama is the one who favors an internet unfettered by tiered service "packages" that do nothing more than deliver less for the same or more $$$. Why do we have to pretend that "net neutrality" is some nebulous, undefined thing that the candidates haven't talked about in enough detail...if you want more specifics, just look at the list of laws that have tried to promote net neutrality and failed, then look who voted for or against them
Obama is best for net neutrality by a mile...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Oh, you meant "that one". Or did you mean the other McCain slur, "The One"? More Slashdotty.
We do have to keep our eyes on all these politicians. They will all change their terms after getting power if we can help it. It's pretty clear that with McCain, he doesn't even have to "spend any political capital" to side with the telcos against Net Neutrality: he's already against it, and fully lobbyist compliant.
Obama has made a couple of statements on his website that only support Net Neutrality, which is the position he's taken all the times he's mentioned it in public. If he'd made a simple statement, then changed to the more detailed one, people would say "he's just changing an easily identified opposition to a load of complicated doubletalk so he can weasel out later". That article you linked to is complaining about "changes", when it's the same policy, just stated in under 50 words as the website's traffic grows heavy with the mass of people who tune in late in the campaign to the more easily understood message, rather than the wonky details the earlier audience of more political consumers wanted. The campaign, when asked, confirmed that the policy hasn't changed. The activists for Net Neutrality of course have the earlier rendition of the policy in full detail, and aren't complaining. Because it hasn't changed, it's just being communicated to a wider audience.
By all means keep a close eye on both of them. But with Obama, you can actually watch him support Net Neutrality. Especially if you actually vote for him for president. With McCain, all you'll get is the short end of the stick: he's never even offered anything else.
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make install -not war
This is what it says in his tech policy: "Barack Obama supports the basic principle that network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some web sites and Internet applications over others." Go read it yourself: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/technology/Fact_Sheet_Innovation_and_Technology.pdf
I agree. That link iplayfast has given is basically FUD started by a FUD article here on /. http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/09/22/0526237.shtml. Notice that the original /. story was updated to say that while the main page for Obama's plans has been cut down the original information remains unchanged and is in PDF form.
maybe you should have read the entire article (including the PDF link at the end). i agree that removing the detailed tech plan from the web page was a questionable decision, and supporters were very right to be concerned. however, upon closer inspection it seems that Obama's web staff simply trimmed down on the text displayed directly on the page, but the original tech plan remains available for viewing. and if you look at the Versionista Page comparison and the PDF still linked to on the web page, all of the text discussing Net Neutrality are indeed still intact.
it's more likely that Obama's campaign staff simply decided to cut down on the amount of text on the website while making updates to the content. perhaps it's meant to make the site more accessible to people too impatient to read the entire text, who knows? but even the new page directs people to a PDF link of the full tech plan at the bottom.