FCC Considering Free Internet For USA

jbolden writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is considering a plan to provide free wireless internet. The plan would involve some level of filtering, but might allow adults to opt out. CTIA has argued that this business model has traditionally failed (see Slate magazine's analysis as to why)."

Comments

Tax Dollars

[y86]

WOW! Something that my tax dollars pay for that MIGHT actually benefit me? Neat-o.

I mean welfare and social security is great, but besides the roads and military it would be nice to get some value back.

Re:Tax Dollars

[nurb432]

You ever eat food that didn't kill you ? (FDA), or drink water? How about housing the hard core criminals in prison?

Does it snow in your area? Plows are a nice thing to have.

Sure there is a lot of waste in government, but you get a lot more benefit then you are giving them credit for.

Re:Tax Dollars

[viking099]

Obligatory Monty Python quote:
Reg:
        All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?

Re:Tax Dollars

[qoncept]

Yeah, yeah! I'm with you. And despite all of the tax money allocated for public education, you're still an idiot. When is the government going to help you? Greedy bastards.

Re:Tax Dollars

[omeomi]

Yeah, and then once the FCC has effectively made internet within the US a public resource, they can start censoring it with the same crazy arbitrary rules they use for broadcast TV. No thanks, I think I'd like to stick to the private model.

Re:Tax Dollars

[biryokumaru]

Not to mention that those hardcore cirminals are housed and fed for 7-10 years and sent back out on the street with a nearly 70% rearrest rate. Prisons are clearly an effective means of reforming the criminal population.

(BTW I'm in the military and I can tell you it's pretty hard to imagine how much money SS must waste if they actually spend more than we do)

Re:Tax Dollars

[LandDolphin]

That is pretty much their goal. But, that's fine as long as you still have the option to purchase unfiltered internet from the current ISPs.

Filtered Internet is better then no internet for a lot of people.

Re:Tax Dollars

[Fallingcow]

SS? Social Security? Very low overhead, actually. Tiny. Nearly all of their spending is in the form of checks to citizens, which is the whole point. They even bring in more money than they spend--at least for now.

The problem is that they'll stop bringing in that surplus and start spending from savings in a couple of years, due to demographic shifts (the baby boomers). This means that they'll run out of money around 2040. SS can't spend money that isn't from the special tax that's set aside just for it (FICA) so it's unclear what would happen in such an event.

It's a bit misleading to compare SS spending to other government spending, in fact, since its funding is from that sole source and it does not and cannot take money from the general budget. In fact, the very large surplus from SS is used to as a source to borrow for spending in the general budget, so its presence makes our deficit look artificially lower than it is.

To summarize: SS is among the most efficiently-run government programs, and actually props up the general budget rather than dragging it down, at least for the next 30 years or so.

Re:Tax Dollars

[Hatta]

How about housing the hard core criminals in prison?

Yeah, I'm sure all 2 million of them are way too dangerous to be let out on the street. No, this money is wasted housing petty criminals and drug users, while Bush and his crew, and let's not forget the CEOs of every investment bank in the country are free.

More people are arrested for marijuana possession in this country than EVERY OTHER VIOLENT CRIME COMBINED! Is that what you call a good use of tax payer resources?

Re:Tax Dollars

[NuclearError]

Wine.

Re:Tax Dollars

[jank1887]

well have no fear, the same program guarantees that other people will help pay for your disability or retirement in the event you need it, instead of having you just starve to death. And if you don't need it? great, glad to hear it. be thankful that the program would have supported you if you did.

Re:Tax Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

The reconviction rate is far more relevant because arrests are not indicative of guilt and are subject to sociopolitical factors. Reconviction rate is 46.9%, with most of the reconvictions being non-violent and with "hardcore" criminals most likely to reoffend.

What this tells us is that the majority of criminals are rehabilitated, with those who have _already_ shown a resistance to rehabilitation being those most likely to reconvict. But even among frequent offenders (more than 15 prior arrests) offenders, 17.9% are not rearrested (details not available on conviction rate). That's much better than I would have expected.

Re:Tax Dollars

[Insightfill]

Granted, if there was a federally operated internet, tampering with data online could be as much of a federal crime as tampering with the mail...

Yeah, or intercepting/tapping phone calls without a warrant, or...

Re:Tax Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

As a town supervisor (basically a mayor for a smaller town) I must say that the bloat in the government is ENORMOUS! In the same bill that paid the plowing trucks was pork in the form of money that lined the pockets of the individuals who owned land next to state land, people who "adopted" roads (yeah, not exactly legal) and that's leaving alone the unnecessary bills that increased my towns spending by over 250% in the previous 16 years. Yes, this was due to a shitty administration (sound familiar?) but I've managed to cut taxes in 5 years by 40% and give MORE money to the local school district AND renovate 2 of our 3 biggest parks WITHOUT affecting the bills that were actually helping people.

What we need are people who are RESPONSIBLE with money in government, not just people who like to spend because it's there. Not to toot my own horn but if the government ran more like I've shaped our town up to be, we'd be a much healthier country.

-Upstate NY Town Supervisor

Re:Tax Dollars

[Pharmboy]

Don't forget that in America, the minimum sentence someone can get for a SINGLE pot plant is 5 years federal time, which is much longer than the average crack dealer gets for his first offense.

Nothing more dangerous than a pothead with a green thumb.

Re:Tax Dollars

[gehrehmee]

Who's going to pay a premium price for unfiltered network access when they get something they perceive to be virtually identical in value? (Not to mention the "oh, only the rich people get freedom of speech"-angle)

Re:Tax Dollars

[Belial6]

SSI - Stands for Social Security INSURANCE. We have no SSR or Social Security RETIREMENT fund. So, you are correct that SSI should not be used as a retirement plan. It wasn't designed to be one. It was designed to be an insurance plan to deal with the people that were to decrepit to work. When it was created, people generally died before they would collect, died soon after they would collect, or were decrepit enough that they only needed enough money to pay for heat and food.

It was not created to fund cruises and trips to casinos. For it to work properly as a retirement plan, it would require far more funding than we currently pay into it.

Re:Tax Dollars

[geobeck]

Who thinks it would be a good idea to have a public wireless internet managed by a division of the US Postal service...?

Oh, great. That's just what we need. If the USPS takes over Internet access...

• E-mail will take 7-10 days to reach you
• You'll have to go to the nearest postal outlet to pick up any attachment larger than 64k
• I'll have to spend hours convincing my (blonde) secretary not to stick stamps on her monitor--AGAIN!

Re:Tax Dollars

[Mister Whirly]

One of my friend's grandparents did this. Didn't trust banks so they literally hid their entire life savings in the walls of their house. Then one day it burned to the ground, with their entire life savings. No way insurance would cover huge sums of cash left in the house. When is the last time you heard of a bank burning to the ground???

Re:Tax Dollars

[sakonofie]

More people are arrested for marijuana possession in this country than EVERY OTHER VIOLENT CRIME COMBINED!

Minor point, but possession of marijuana isn't a violent crime. That said, I am still fairly confident that you are wrong.
Some quotes from the FBI (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/):

Nationwide, an estimated 1,408,337 violent crimes occurred in 2007.

Law enforcement made more arrests for drug abuse violations (an estimated 1.8 million arrests**, or 13.0 percent of the total number of arrests) than for any other offense in 2007.

According to this http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/arrests/index.html:
#42.1% percent of drug related arrests are for marijuana possession and
#5.3% marijauna sale/manufacture.
Some simple math from these numbers (by me) puts the # of total marijuana related arrests at ~853,200. This is substantially less than the number of arrests for violent crimes.

Those pesky facts out of the way, 800K marijuana related arrests is a ridiculous waste of resources.

* All of these facts are about arrests, not convictions, not number of crimes, and not the number of people in prison for the offense.
**This does not include alcohol related offenses. There were 1,427,494 drunk driving arrests alone.

Re:Tax Dollars

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Wrong. Social Security was always an Old-Age Survivor and Disability program. It also used to cover unemployment benefits.

Now it only covers O.A.S. (Retirement) and Disability. Unemployment is handled elsewhere.

Nice soapbox, too bad it's wrong.

Any person who paid into Social Security should be able to receive the benefits that they paid for when they retire.

Now giving out disability benefits to people not vested in the "insurance" program seems a more fair place to cut..

Re:Tax Dollars

[RalphBNumbers]

No, it really isn't.

Free filtered internet means that all the people paying for a broadband line to read email, and occasionally browse the web, can now do so for free. Without the ~95% of customers who underuse their connections subsiding the cost of the ~5% who actually need broadband, ISPs will have to increase prices dramatically.

The end result is that only the financially well off will have access to anything the government feels like censoring on their network. And that's making the optimistic assumption that the censorship stops with government networks, and isn't extended, voluntarily or not, to the big ISPs.

What will happen to political speech when that happens? Given what we've seen of these kinds of filters thus far, they tend to pick up on key words, block entire sites for single pages, and generate a lot of what a reasonable person viewing a site would consider false positives. Will any site the agitates for the rights of sex workers, or transsexuals, or gays risk being marked as sexual content, and blocked from the vast majority of american voters? Will any site that discusses a hate crime risk being labeled as hate-speech, and excluded as well? How much harder will it be to get a major party to take up such causes in that kind of environment?

I think that free ubiquitous basic internet access is a great idea, that could do a lot of good for a lot of people and the economy overall.
But I'd gladly forgo it, if the cost is freedom of speech on the internet.
Any government supported network needs to be an unfiltered. Even forcing people to register with the government as adults to receive an unfiltered connection is far too burdensome, in that it destroys users' privacy and any potential anonymity for whistleblowers and the like. Any parents who want to restrict their kids' browsing have plenty of options to do so on their own devices, without unconstitutionally and unduly compromising adults' freedom of speech.

Re:Tax Dollars

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Try using a real source, like The Constitution, not some propaganda farm.

Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Article 1, Section 8:

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Its supported just like the US Military is. Now please take your fascist BS to someplace more appropriate; if you don't like China, try Iran, or Saudi Arabia. They're all more to suited to you.

Re:Tax Dollars

[jank1887]

But luckily the scheme is in place to prevent the "all my money for me" aspect. The point of SS is that the greater good is served by supporting those who can't afford to sufficiently save for retirement. hence the unambiguous name 'social' security. It's not about you achieving the best possible retirement. It's about trying to accept a minimally acceptable support for those who could significantly suffer after retirement otherwise.

Yes, it goes against 'survival of the fittest'. It's about recognition that public support of certain things may reduce overall efficiency, but the benefits gained outweigh holding back some of the peak performers.

Sure, we could go back to a situation with those who can afford to save enjoy a comfortable retirement while those who can't work until they die or end in the poorhouse even if they worked steadily for 50 years. But the people recognized that there are some places that social programs make sense. It's not the place of those that feel they don't need it to decide the one's who do can't have it.

Re:Tax Dollars

[squiggleslash]

Geez, it was two thousand years ago! Will you let it go already?

Re:Tax Dollars

[edmicman]

When is the last time you heard of a bank burning to the ground???

Haven't they metaphorically been doing this for the past few months?

Re:Tax Dollars

[loafula]

You sure about that? A friend of mine got busted for running from the cops on his motorcycle- when they came to his apartment to arrest him, they found a plant. He did less than a year state time.

Re:Tax Dollars

[ZosX]

Interesting how the average sentences are 7-8 years for violent offenders and 6-7 years for drug offenders. It would be a better composite to take a whole year into account.....and what's that....Obama wants to double the tax on the rich? And what's with the bracket in the middle between 2-300k that only has to pay $12......???

Gotta love this stat...

"With less than 5% of world population; USA has over 2.3 million of 9 million world prisoners!"

"The U.S. incarceration rate is over 5 times higher than in 1971 when the impeached arch-criminal, "law-and-order" President Richard Nixon declared an evil "war on drugs" as a substitute for the good "war on poverty.""

"At midyear 2005, nearly 4.7 percent of black males were in prison or jail, compared to 1.9 percent of Hispanic males, and 0.7 percent of white males. Among males in their late 20s, nearly 12 percent of black males, compared to 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males, were incarcerated"

Oh he links to this great story too...

"CHICAGO -- The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which displayed those statistics on large banners in cities nationwide Thursday and Friday.

0923 05The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.

The estimates made by the group, which opposes the conflict, include not only the immediate costs of war but also ongoing factors such as long-term health care for veterans, interest on debt and replacement of military hardware.

"The wounded are coming home, and many of them have severe brain and spinal injuries, which will require round-the-clock care for the rest of their lives," said Michael McConnell, Great Lakes regional director of the AFSC, a peace group affiliated with the Quaker church.

The $720 million figure breaks down into $280 million a day from Iraq war supplementary funding bills passed by Congress, plus $440 million daily in incurred, but unpaid, long-term costs."

Of course he is also claiming that 1.2 million iraqis have died. I've heard the figures near the couple hundred thousand mark, but million?

Thanks for the zany link =)

So when it is illegal...

[Skinkie]

So when site owners can make their own rules/laws on their website, you are unable to browse anonymously we are going to make internet free. What a great coincidence.

Free internet?

[neokushan]

Two entries down on the front page, there's an article speculating that the internet will meltdown due to some change an application is about to make, yet here's an article proposing FREE wireless internet to everyone?

If the infrastructure can't handle what people are paying for, how on earth do they plan to give it away for free?
Even with severe bandwidth restrictions, it's going to cause a hell of a lot more usage.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this kind of thing and I'd love to see Free Wireless internet for everyone, I just wish people would make up their minds - is the internet ready to expand or collapse on top of itself?

Re:Free internet?

[neokushan]

Nobody actually needs to use a phone 24/7, it's physically impossible to do so, but the internet is a different kettle of fish. When you say "Home internet service is designed to be used on-demand, not maxed out 24/7", I can happily say "Well it's been designed wrong".
At the very least, the advertised service plans are a disgrace, don't advertise what you can't provide, it's as simple as that. Why would it be so difficult for an ISP to advertise a truly unlimited 4Mbit connection instead of a severely oversold 15Mbit connection?
I believe some ISPs sell a certain speed connection (lets say it's 10Mbit), but what they do is throttle each connection after a few seconds. So for maybe 30s, you do get the full 10Mbit, then the speed drops down considerably, to like 2Mbit. I have no problem with this, except that they'll advertise it as a 10Mbit connection rather than a 2Mbit connection that occasionally jumps to 10Mbit. This needs to change and the sooner, the better.

Ideally, I'd like ISPs to use a system like this, but advertise the sustained speeds you're likely to get. So for "Mum & Dad" users that only need basic browsing and email, they'll get nice, fast, speedy connections and for those who want to constantly download, they'll get slower sustained speeds (Without compromising day-to-day browsing since each new connection gets full speed for a few seconds) but without the "fair use" crap that we've been forced to deal with, lately.

Or, better yet, have ISP's better regulated so if they offer you that 10Mbit connection, you GET that 10Mbit connection for however much and however long you like.

The system is broken and it needs fixed, the internet has evolved beyond the bandwidth necessities of the 90's, now we're in the multi-GB era and thanks to the likes of On-demand streaming, even "average joe" users are going to need more and more bandwidth - enforcing caps will only delay the inevitable, ISPs need to seriously upgrade the entire infrastructure or the whole country will fall behind.

Re:Free internet?

[bladesjester]

You can't use your home phone to talk 24/7

You have clearly never seen a house full of teenage girls. lol

Could be a great idea!

[rotide]

Obviously you can't be looking for 10mbps connections to watch streaming video and download isos. But think about a simple internet connection that allows for basic web browsing, email use, IM texting, etc.

Out on the road? Can't find an open WiFi hotspot to check google maps? Solved.

Out on the road? Want to download the newest HD episode of your show? Ya, you're going to want to get a connection from a paid-for ISP.

"Free" is relative

[tripdizzle]

The plan would involve some level of filtering...

I predicted this before I read it. Anything a government is going to provide you will also be completely controlled by them.

...but might allow adults to opt out.

That's the same thing they said about parents who want to home school their kids rather than sending them to public schools, but is not the case, they still have to pay for other peoples kids via taxes to get the worthless education currently being provided.

Re:"Free" is relative

[tripdizzle]

Worthless, LOL -- it's subpar and possibly terrible, but worthless?

I suppose worthless was a bit harsh. It does function as a form of daycare.

I graduated from high school in 04 and I have a brother who will graduate this year. Outside of math classes (which are electives after sophomore year) nothing of use was taught to me passed elementary school. More choice needs to be enabled, so we aren't being held hostage until 18, 16, or 15 depending on the state you are in. It should have been up to me and my parents to get the hell out of there and start some post secondary much earlier in life. There is so much waste (more of time than money) within these institutions and something needs to be done.

Re:"Free" is relative

[jamesmcm]

I don't get the whole private school love. I live in the UK and go to one of the worst schools in the county. But I work hard and am doing well (interview at Cambridge tomorrow :O ) It is certainly NOT worthless. I think money should be spent on making state schools much better to provide good education for all - that is what propels a nation forward. They could get some more money by removing the charity status from private schools.

Re:"Free" is relative

[LandDolphin]

But that invovled people actually doing something. It is much easier for them to sit back and complain about other people/Government.

Re:"Free" is relative

[TheRaven64]

They could get some more money by removing the charity status from private schools.

Private schools do not have charity status. Public schools do. They are run by an educational trust and do not run at a profit. Private schools are privately owned and (aim to) run at a profit.

USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn't

[MosesJones]

Seriously folks, can't the greatest power in the world today do some form of prioritisation? Free internet access, brilliant a free utility, a basic fundamental right of every american guaranteed by the constitution and our founding fathers.

Free Healthcare of course is a communist plot to subvert the country and destroy everything America stands for.

Free Healthcare should be a right, the internet should be a utility just like power and water... something that you pay for.

ISP

[Drakin020]

Yes I'm sure the ISP's will let this one go through....

internet should be cheap, not free

[Anonymous Coward]

Health Care should be a right.
Internet access should just be affordable with reasonable performance.

Try getting old and/or sick sometime and you'll get the perspective.

Some level of filtering

[nurb432]

And a hell of a lot of monitoring...

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[Anonymous Coward]

Since water and food are necessary for health, are you advocating that those two commodities are free to all?

Wireless Philadelphia

[snarfies]

I am a resident of the city of Philadelphia. Maybe you've heard of our cities wireless initiative over the years. It began, as the Slate article mentions with Earthlink putting up access points all over the city, and charging $20/month for access. The main problem was that the service rarely actually WORKED. I tried it for a week when I was unemployed and looking to save money. They gave me a box to connect to my computer with an antenna the length of my arm, and even so the signal would fluctuate wildly from minute to minute, from full strength to zero strength, no matter where I put the box or aimed the antenna.

The network is still there after Earthlink abandoned it. It shows up on my celphone (sometimes) as something I can connect to. Only I don't think I've ever once successfully loaded a web page using in on my celphone, and not for lack of trying in all different parts of the city. In other words, now that its free its more useless than ever.

Re:Wireless Philadelphia

[Jeff DeMaagd]

WiFi isn't a very good technology to use for a city wide mesh anyway. I'm sure it can be done, but number of failed citywide WiFi networks vs. the few that are said to be effective reinforces my opinion on this. It looks to me that by and large, the people that set them up didn't understand and compensate for the weaknesses of such a network.

Government-run communications

[Adrian Lopez]

I don't want the government to be my ISP, and I really don't like the implications of having a net connection that is so directly controlled by the government. The fact that filtering is even mentioned at all suggests what a potentially bad idea this really is. Filtering, surveillance and the displacement of unfiltered commercial alternatives? No thanks.

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[hey]

It seems a whole lot easier to provide free wifi.
Maybe some day medical stuff can carry connected PDAs for accessing patient info.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

panopticon

[globaljustin]

from TFA:

a plan to offer free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to all Americans

To address concerns about the filter, the FCC is proposing that adults could opt out and access all Internet sites.

Yeah, just type in your social security number and your password...

Age verification = no privacy...on a government network at least...

I really can't imagine a more effective way for the government to track and monitor the activities of its citizens. Which is bad. Normally I would love the idea, even if it had to be offered at slower speeds, but unless we make it open, with NO AGE VERIFICATION or anything of that sort we're just asking for 1984...

Re:And while I highly doubt this...

[Adrian Lopez]

Once they start filtering content they believe children shouldn't see, why would they not also filter -- and perhaps monitor -- adult access to gambling websites, The Pirate Bay, Al-Qaeda websites, etc.?

This isn't the Internet - it's filter data access

[yourpusher]

The free service could be slower and would be required to filter out pornography and other material not suitable for children.

Right, the same FCC that is fining stations hundreds of thousands of dollars because they didn't bleep out Bono's "fucking brilliant" in time will determine what is and isn't suitable content accessible through this service.

Fuck that.

Wishful thinking...

[Joce640k]

People will absorb ANY amount of bandwidth if it's free. This thing will ALWAYS be overloaded and unusable. Period.

Re:Wishful thinking...

[ShieldW0lf]

People will absorb ANY amount of bandwidth if it's free. This thing will ALWAYS be overloaded and unusable. Period.

A properly designed mesh will have more bandwidth the more users it has. Bittorrent is a virtual mesh network, and it works so well that the legacy network can't handle the simulation.

Re:Wishful thinking...

[Glenstorm]

Like most of the highways in major American cities, during rush hour. However people still use those.

Re:Wishful thinking...

[ShieldW0lf]

"pretty close to free" --- Well, it's mandatory government service. Not conscription for war, but something similar nonetheless (in many persons' opinions). Of course, there are places in the world where part of your duties as a citizen include a few years of mandatory military service. If you could get a 20% discount on your taxes by doing non-combat government work for one month out of every year, would you? 70% discount?

Personally, I think all taxation should be paid strictly in labour, that it should be mandatory to work in and develop a familiarity with each discrete industry, and that any industry that is essential for human life should be excluded from the private sector with no exceptions. The way things are run now, the vast majority of people are so highly specialized that their right to vote is rendered meaningless because they are functionally ignorant, and they are engaging in arbitrary and unnecessary tasks and hoping that somehow that will translate into the stuff they need to live. This is functionally equivalent to slavery, and those who are responsible for the maintaining this situation should be held accountable.

A great opportunity to push IPv6

[Nicolas MONNET]

There wouldn't be enough IPv4 to provide such a large scale service.
Just make the all thing IPv6, possibly with proxies to access the IPv4; that would instantly provide a massive incentive for third parties to start supporting IPv6.

Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing of use was taught to me passed elementary school

It shows :)

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[Jaeph]

Government screws up everything it touches. Roads, military (talk to someone in the military and you'll get a million stories), mail, everything.

I'm not advocating zero government here, but we need to be wary about giving the government more work to do on such basic services. The opportunities for corruption (intentional or due to negligence) are immense here. Right now I fail to see the pros outweighing the cons when it comes to both govt-controlled internet and health care.

-Jeff

Not Free

[TonyXL]

Whether you use it or not, you will pay for it via taxes, debt, or inflation.

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[characterZer0]

Most of us agree that the federal government, which generally overspends and either under-delivers or flat out fails on nearly every project it undertakes due to a variety of reasons including red tape, accountability, nepotism, corruption, power seekers, over-regulation, and plain old mismanagement, would do a lousy job providing internet access.

And some of you want to this same bureaucracy to provide health care?!

Re:And while I highly doubt this...

[mrsteveman1]

The effectiveness or lack thereof, is not the problem. The bigger problem is as follows:

First, They intend this thing to be available to the majority of the population, that means it will be a significant market force and not just some kind of low income, rural internet access for those who don't have one now. That means even if i choose not to use it, i will be affected by it in some way.

Second, these people, M2Z (the company) and the ones pushing for this behind the scenes, jumped right to porn when the question of blocking came up. Why porn? That question must be asked. Why not violence? Why not hate speech? Why not unhealthy recipes for sweets? Are we protecting children, or imposing a social agenda on the population? If you are going to block something, other things should be higher on your priority list if your excuse is protecting the children. Something tells me protecting children isn't the goal, or rather the idiots involved think porn is the most harmful thing children (or anyone?) could see on the internet.

Next, it isn't free either, it's ad-supported. No matter what, i am funding your censorship of me by using this network. They are either going to be altering traffic transparently, or forcing users to use a proxy, or run a desktop client (substantially limiting its usefulness) to show you those ads. And they are going to be selectively blocking one type of content unless you pay more as the summary states (maybe).

Those 2 things, altering traffic to show ads, and selective content delivery or prioritization (network neutrality etc), are things the FCC has been railing against for a long time. It is a conflict of interest for the FCC to be encouraging these things in one situation while profiting from the thing, while blasting other ISPs for doing the same thing.

I can only hope this entire thing fails at this point, it's a somewhat good idea, being hampered and fucked with through government interference and mandate (which might even be unconstitutional), and behind the scenes influence.

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[gad_zuki!]

Obviously you've never received care in a wealthy European nation. After spending some time overseas coming back to the US's healthcare system is like going back in time to the middle ages. "Oh, you wont cover that? You say its pre-existing? You wont pay for that test by doctor wants? Oh only $800 deductible? Oh, another bill from another readjustment? Oh, I lost my job and wont have insurance for two months and COBRA is 800 a month?"

>Government screws up everything it touches.

Bullshit. Certain people in power want you to believe competent government cant exist, but it does all over the world. Republicans love to sell you on this line because it helps their corporate masters make more money and provides an excuse for their corruption in office. Perhaps you should be voting in the guy who is willing to do things right as opposed to resigning yourself to shitty government run by shitty people.

Public WiFi vs. public roads

[mi]

WOW! Something that my tax dollars pay for that MIGHT actually benefit me? Neat-o.

You are, certainly, correct, that public roads are enough of a disaster, that you may not benefit from them. But what makes you think, the free WiFi will be any better?

At least, with the roads, the excuse for government's involvement is that there can't really be competing private roads for the same destinations, and thus free market (which requires competition) can't be used to build and maintain them efficiently.

There is no such justification for WiFi.

Re:Like the post office

[loafula]

I actually thought they should give control over this to the USPS. This would guarantee everybody an email address, and we can all use less and less paper mail.

Re:And while I highly doubt this...

[level_headed_midwest]

...and how long do you think that the restrictions will be limited to just porn and you can opt out? We have things like the "fairness doctrine" being kicked around in Congress to censor political speech on radio and **AA legislation for physical media. Once you give the government control, the cat is out of the bag and not going back in. Why do you think this will be one iota different?

Funny interpretation of FREE

[Phizzle]

So this is going to be a service that I didn't ask for and will not use, paid for with my Tax Dollars, regulated by a government agency that I didn't vote for (FCC thugs are appointed not voted). They only let you to opt out of using it, not paying for it.

You idiots, it's not FREE!

[k1e0x]

Government doesn't have anything it didn't get from someone else. There is NOTHING they provide that is free.

It is an absolutely horrible idea to have the government become your ISP. Think of the danger this presents to free speech when the method of communication you use is controlled by the government. Would you have free speech if government controlled all the TV Networks or Newspapers? What if they said they will preform "some filtering" on them?

Now I know that they did not say they would be getting rid of traditional ISP's (who suck because they are usually government "provided" duopolies in most places) however if people feel they *already* pay through taxes for a service why pay extra again? Would that not make the government the dominant ISP?

Government has TERRIBLE customer service, it can't fix the roads, it can't do anything on budget, it can't fix our schools, it can't take care of the veterans, it can't make the poor wealthy, it can't solve the economic cries, it can't make you safe, and it can't make you happy... yet you idiots continue to turn to it to solve your every problem.. Why? What is wrong with you people?

Social Security doesn't *have* any savings

[billstewart]

Yes, there's a Social Security Trust Fund that's invested in T-bills. That just means that they've taken any surplus they had in the past and lent it to the Government, which spent it, and which promises to tax people in the future to pay it back. So when all of us Boomers start retiring and not dying off quickly enough, not only will the Social Security Tax on working people not be enough to cover the costs, but the Feds will have to start running a budget surplus to pay off the debt, instead of continually borrowing more like they did while we were working. So it's going to suck to be young and working, or old and collecting taxable interest on our savings.

Before Bush took power, we had a $5T national debt, because previous administrations didn't have the financial discipline to not run deficits even during boom years. Bush's Fiscally Responsible Small Government Republicans doubled that before the Crisis, and it looks like they're spending another $5T-10T on bailouts (though ostensibly they'll get some of that back.) The current total debt is about 1 US GDP, or about $50K/American.

And to the extent that us older people saved money in forms other than houses (oops), we'll be getting lower interest rates on what we saved than what I'd been planning on, because more of us will be competing to invest it in whatever businesses the younger people who are working are running. So it's going to suck to be old and not working. And because it's also going to suck to be young and working, those people aren't going to be buying $5 coffees that much, and Walmart only needs so many greeters, so obvious old-people jobs are going to be scarce.

Free*

[mosb1000]

*For extremely high values of free.

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[Hatta]

Government screws up everything it touches. Roads, military (talk to someone in the military and you'll get a million stories), mail

Right, because that privately funded interstate highway system has been so successful. Also, what's wrong with the USPS? AFAICT, it's cheap, convenient, fairly reliable, and definitely more secure than the private alternatives.

Right now I fail to see the pros outweighing the cons when it comes to both govt-controlled internet and health care.

You sound like someone without a pre-existing condition.

You're Misinterpreting the Constitution

[OakLEE]

First, IAAL, take it for what it's worth. Second, by saying the following, I am in no way attempting to disparage the welfare state, or suggest that it is unconstitutional. In fact, there is plenty of case law suggesting it is. (Google "Lochner Era" and "economic substantive due process" if you want to find it.

That said, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.

The Preamble neither limits or grants any power to any branch of the Federal government. The Supreme Court has read it that way for the last hundred years. Source.

Article I Section 8 only gives the Federal government power to tax and spend for the general welfare:

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

The clause is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power. Any taxing and spending must be consistent with the rest of the Constitution. The clause does not give Congress any power to legislate any law it wants for the common welfare. Source.

Misinterpreting the efficacy of the preamble is understandable, even I had to look that up. But as for Art. I Sec. 8, if you are going to try to interpret the Constitution, at least read it! The limitations of the power are right in the text.

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[Planesdragon]

Certain people in power want you to believe competent government cant exist, but it does all over the world. Republicans love to sell you on this line because it helps their corporate masters make more money and provides an excuse for their corruption in office

Oddly, they're right in everything but the pivotal subject.

A bureaucracy invariably makes things more complex, and has an innate ability to screw things up. This is true if the bureau is public (see: DMV, INS, CIA, NASA) or private (see: Microsoft, GM, Ford, Citibank).

The pivotal question is "is this something best done by a single actor" -- such as, oh, licensing drivers on the road or deciding who's a lawyer and who isn't. If so, then it should be government. If not, then it should be private -- because you can always compete with a private entity, but you can rarely compete with the government.

("Rarely"? Yep. See: USPS v. FedEx/UPS)

Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn

[gacl]

Health care is indeed a right. You can go to other countries and get treatment for anything without paying a cent. My aunt's ex-husband moved to Venezuela for that very reason. After developing some strange condition here in the US he realized that it was actually impossible to pay for the treatment. In this country if you have no money it is expected that you'll just lay down and die. He's well now, by the way. And i think he's staying there for good. . . for obvious reasons.

Re:Social (in)Security and retirement

[jcnnghm]

Given that the sea level is only projected to rise by 9 to 88 cm before 2100, I'm not holding my breath. Don't believe the propaganda, especially when the guy that's pushing at it has a ton to gain trading carbon credits.