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Obama Picks Net Neutrality Backer As FCC Chief
Ripit writes "President Obama on Tuesday nominated Julius Genachowski as the nation's top telecommunications regulator, picking a campaign adviser who has divided his career between Washington, D.C., political jobs and working as an Internet executive.
Genachowski is likely to continue the Democratic push for more Net neutrality regulations, which are opposed by some conservatives and telecommunications providers. He was a top Obama technology adviser and aided in crafting a technology platform that supported Net neutrality rules."
Being against neutrality is like being against equality. It's the internet equivalent of racism and discrimination. There are man many laws and regulations against discrimination, as there should be for net neutrality.
Well, they ARE "competing" now, yet net neutrality is gradually becoming an even more important issue despite that. There are a few problems with competition. For one, there isn't truly competition in a lot of areas. In many cities, franchise agreement restrict other competitors from coming in. Even if there are competitors, you might find that the competition works backward from how you hope. When one company starts charging extra for certain services, that gives them a financial advantage, and others may have to adopt the same policies just to stay competitive.
While that is a particularly emotional analogy, it's far from a perfect fit. In the naive case, proponents of tiered service argue that the internet is just a bunch of roads (sorry, not pipes in this case). And while we all get to ride cars, some people are in fire engines and ambulances. Voice traffic gets to be so blessed because it can be used for 911 calls.
Implementation is, of course, another matter entirely, and I do not pretend that it will only be restricted to voice or 'necessary' services. But calling tiered service 'discriminatory' or 'racist' is fallacious and needlessly confuses the issue.
There's enough room under the streets, that we don't need monopolies. There's no reason why every urban home can't have access to Comcast, Cox, Time-Warner, et cetera and simply choose which provider they like best. I have two cable companies serving my home - Comcast and Suburban. If it can be done here, and can be done elsewhere.
Let's have REAL competition, not government fiat monopoly. As for rural homes, i.e. the midwest and west, the focus should be mandating that everyone who has a phoneline must also have the option to upgrade to DSL. No more "we don't offer DSL" allowed. Upgrading existing phonelines is the fastest and cheapest way to get everyone above 56k.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Why does anyone think a Net Neutrality bill wouldn't come with a couple of hundred billion more in spending for special interests, some new regulations mandating national content filtering, maybe even taxing E-mail and so on...just sayin'..
With this bailout Obama set in motion, our government is set to become the biggest monopoly.
As far as getting a standard telecom company started (cable,dsl), I don't think we will see many more of those. The company I work for started up as a wireless internet provider. I think we may begin to see more and more non-standard approches to providing internet such as wireless, as these solutions do not require as much capital to get started.
That was before our litigious society and the internet. Society has changed a lot since those days. I like to think that a self-regulating body would come about if we abolished the FDA. Much like the ESRB came about because they didn't want government interference - and they now are arguably stricter than the gov would have been with their ratings.
Don't get me wrong, I think plenty of people would try to circumvent the private 'FDA' association and buy non-label products... but I think they would be hard to find with such high chance of litigation. Stores wouldn't carry them. People should have the freedom to use unsafe products if they really want to. I wouldn't deny people a proven safe channel, either, though.
Additionally, with so much information at one's fingertips nowadays, there's no reason why people shouldn't be researching drugs they put into themselves. Doctors often don't know what they're talking about - they just care about getting you out of their office. It's really the pharmacists who know their shit, and even then I wouldn't trust them 100%.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
The internet is not and never has been a bunch of "roads". The internet is a series of interconnected post offices. Sure, there are "roads", the fibre and wires and cables that carry signals. But that's not what the internet is, just like the roads and the warehouses and the green vans are not what the post office is. The post office is a service that delivers post.
When I subscribe to an ISP, I am not paying to drive on their "information superhighway". I am paying them to deliver packets from to other IP addresses, and to deliver packets from other IP addresses to me. This is the internet. This is the way it has always been and this is the way it is as it scales upwards from users to ISPs, to Telcos.
Now big Telcos want to turn around to companies like Google and Twitter who are making money and charge them more for deliveries simply because they are deemed able to afford it. In addition, they also want to charge you more for delivering your packets to and from these companies sites. This is bullshit and everyone with half a brain knows that it cannot be allowed to stand.
When I pay for a stamp and post my letter, I don't expect the post office to turn around and say; "Oh, you're sending correspondence to your great uncle? Suit you sir. But I'm afraid that will cost you a bit extra owing to the fact that your great uncle is a man of some means. You'll have to buy a special stamp." Or "Hmmm sir. It seems your business made quite a lot of money last year, and management feels you can afford to pay an extra few pence for deliveries." Is this acceptable? Can anyone justify that?
And don't give me bullshit about "international stamps, etc". That's not what this is about. True, bandwidth corresponds to charging by weight, but on the internet, there are no foreign countries. Every computer is a local one. If you want to separate sites in Europe from one in the States then you may as well just shut the whole network down altogether, because you will have irreparably broken it.
Can anyone give one morsel of justification for why delivering my packets to google.com should cost more or less than delivering to slashdot.org? Do I give a flying fiddlers what kind of "tubes" were used to send them? Do I weep for the packets waiting milliseconds in the queue while mine is processed? Do I contemplate the strain on networks caused by shameless charlatans like myself who actually use the bandwidth they paid for? No, because the whole point of a post office is that I don't have to care how you get my letter there, I just pay you to do it.
Packets are packets are packets. IPs are IPS are IPs. Data is Data is Data. There are no tubes, no roads, no cars, no tiers, no premium IPs or domain names. Net neutrality is the only sane answer.
May the Maths Be with you!
I was wondering what you all thought of this idea and what the feasibility of it would be:
If I can see my neighbor's wireless hub, and he can see the next neighbor's down the street, and he can see the next neighbor's further down, aren't we getting to the point where we can begin decentralizing the internet from the handful of ISPs? IIRC, the early internet was basically a system of interconnected switches. By interconnecting our own personal wireless hubs, we can begin recreating the internet at a grassroots level. While not perfectly protected from government interference, it helps isolate it more. International communications would be compromised, but perhaps someone could come up with a similar solution therefor. Its not perfect yet, as not everyone is within range of their neighbor's system, so we would still need regional wireless providers in rural areas.
But it seems that we're almost getting to a point where, if we approach it correctly, we can completely get around ISPs or at least drastically reduce their control over OUR internet.
I am not sure that your 'facts' are really facts!!!
> On top of my point, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have been encouraged to lend to lower credit families, but the crisis would have happened even if they didn't exist because the other unregulated institutions went about it with much more gusto.
This is a big IF. It is not a fact! The fact is that F/F lowered their credit requirement so much that enables others to pursue the aggressive lending practice.
> Fannie and Freddie's subprime loans were shown to be on the more respectable end as opposed to the other banks who pushed their mortgage brokers to get loans no matter what the risk.
This is another myth but not fact.
> The only thing Fannie and Freddie really shows is that the government endorsed the practice, but the fat cats of Wall Street made Fannie and Freddie's bad loans look likes child's play.
Please update your information. Stop being brainwashed by media. The bailout for F/F will be 400b. It is a big mess larger than all the money to C, BAC, AIG, ... combined.
http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2009/02/16/daily26.html
^(oo)^pig~
There's no reason why every urban home can't have access to Comcast, Cox, Time-Warner, et cetera and simply choose which provider they like best.
Yes there is: why lay 2 sets of fiber when you can have only 1? Communications is a natural monopoly, in that really the cheapest possible phone service (in terms of real costs, not price charged to consumers) is a single phone company.
I am officially gone from
Regardless of what ANY presidential candidate campaigns on, he IS restricted to the Constitutionally delineated duties and privileges of the Presidency.
I just KNEW someone was going to call me out on that... If and when Obama, or any president, were to do something unconstitutional, I can guarantee to you that I will either be calling for their impeachment or arguing for an amendment to the Constitution. That's the beauty of the living document, after all.
Which means that making fundamental change in our society (such as altering the economy and political system from a Capitalistic Representative Republic to a Socialistic Single Party System.) is literally prohibited from even attempting. Not that "The One" won't try it. The "stimulus" package is one such totally unconstitutional example.
Also, reading the Constitution right here, I note that it has these mechanisms for change built right into it. On the other hand, I don't see anything referring to how many parties there should be, or one single reference to capitalism being the One True American Way. I also don't see any way to hold the President responsible for said fundamental changes, when any change he makes has to be at least approved, if not written, by the Congress. (And at least the way I read Article 1, Section 8, Congress can go as socialistic as the people want it to... good old "general Welfare") I can see disagreeing with the stimulus package. I am very curious to know which elements of it you see conflicting with what words in the Constitution?
For the sake of continuing the argument, I'll pick an obviously unconstitutional act: the suspension of Habeas Corpus. It's right there, Article 1 Section 9. Only in cases of rebellion or invasion. (You'll have to join me in the reasonable assumption that the Founders didn't mean "when we invade another country.") I do not blame Bush for this. I blame him for ratifying it. I blame every single person in Congress who voted to make it possible. I assume from your position, you would have to agree?
The movie rating system does NOT have "zero" government intervention. It is the result of government saying, "Either you regulate yourself, or we will do it for you." That happened in the 1930s, again in the 1960s, and again in the 1990s with games - you can blame government interference. Without people like Bob Dole & Joe Lieberman standing-up in Congress and demanding ratings, those TV-14, Rated M, and PG labels would probably never exist.
>>>On the contrary, regulation is what keeps capitalism from destroying itself. Crises at the turn of the twentieth century and now, at the turn of the twenty-first, have confirmed this.
>
Regulation is what CREATED this crisis. The government used regulation (i.e. constantly lowering interest rates) to create a humongous bubble. If government had not done that, the housing/credit bubble would have burst back in 2000-1, and it would have been painful, but it would have only been a minor flooding not a tidal wave (in terms of impact).
The government makes the exact same mistake with forest management and rivers. They stop small fires, which would naturally burn-off excess brush, and it builds and builds and builds until there's a firestorm that literally turns the ground into glass. And nothing can grow there. Same with rivers. Damming blocks the river from flooding, which releases energy, so instead you have a river that roars through the levees at unbelievable speeds until finally it bursts with a tremendous force.
We need to stop acting like we can control things.
We need to let nature takes it course & release energy in small amounts,
else it will release the energy in one huge burst of destruction.
Yes this applies to markets, because they too follow natural rhythms. What would have been a minor recession in 2000-1 is now turning into a depression, because the government propped-up failing businesses with artificially-low rates. And now they are making the some foolish mistake with bailouts and stimulus money. Propping-up bad businesses. Enough is enough. Let those businesses die, so we can clear their carcasses out of the way, and get back to rebuilding.
Regulation is not the answer.
Regulation is the cause.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Actually they may not be able to... I believe the 96 TeleCommunication Act 30 percent limit still exists. Basically it states that no cable media provider can own more then 30 percent of the cable market. Thus Comcast, TimeWarner, RCN etc routinely trade eachother's territories, or pick and choose which ones will give the most profit.
Telcos have long claimed non-responsibility for content because they're just providing the information and that they have no way of filtering it. It seems, then, that to promote tiered service breaks down this legal defense. After all, if they can pick and choose between types of traffic based on origin, it erodes their ability to say they can't filter on other criteria.