The FCC May Decide Not To Regulate Broadband

This morning the Washington Post reported that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is leaning toward letting the telecomms have their way — not asserting greater authority to regulate the Internet by reclassifying broadband as a Title II service. The blogs are atwitter (HuffPo, StopTheCap) that not voting to apply Title II regulation to Internet carriers is tantamount to giving up on net neutrality — which has been a centerpiece of the Obama administration's tech policy. The Post paraphrases its sources, who are reading the chairman's mind, that Genachowski believes "the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy." The FCC will say only that the chairman has made no decision yet.

Comments

Regulation requires upkeep

[Anonymous Coward]

If carrier neutrality won't be regulated then I want all government/carrier deals to be outlawed. I want to be able to sign up with anyone who is willing to toss me a line.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[westlake]

If carrier neutrality won't be regulated then I want all government/carrier deals to be outlawed. I want to be able to sign up with anyone who is willing to toss me a line.

and who would that be where "the last mile" costs are high?

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[arth1]

If you are willing to pay a few hundred or thousand to get a line dug down, you should be permitted to hook up whoever you want. Right now, you can't, because the city council has made deals with certain providers, and others aren't allowed access. Even if you offer to pay for the last mile.
So you have the choice of ONE phone provider and ONE cable company. At five times the price people in less populated countries (like the Scandinavian ones) pay, for a service a tenth the speed.

I don't think the average US consumer knows how much he's getting stiffed. I bet that average Joe and Jane believes the spiel that a 0-1500/0-256 ADSL line that's even further throttled whenever something connects to certain ports is "high speed" and "broadband". Yet they pay up to $80 per month and think they are blessed to be Americans and have the best service in the world.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[KibibyteBrain]

I don't think it makes much sense to allow anyone to dig all the lines they want. To the extreme, it just wouldn't work as it would become an unmanageable mess, and to the norm, it just makes no sense as one or two relatively cheap fibers to every home is all we will need for a decade or two. The current system works, except for the illusion that some company owns the lines connecting your home to the world, which doesn't work and requires oppression by either the provider or the government, neither of which is very desirable.
It should be a common community asset leased to service providers, much like the airwaves.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[quagi]

Google's TiSP is looking better and better every day!

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I don't think it makes much sense to allow anyone to dig all the lines they want. To the extreme, it just wouldn't work as it would become an unmanageable mess, and to the norm,

Actually since "digging a line" in all but the most central locations will quickly cross the $50000 price, I doubt that. And I wouldn't worry about the more central locations : they're already far beyond what a normal person would call a mere mess.

It should be a common community asset leased to service providers, much like the airwaves.

The problem, again, is technology. Most isps (all but the very largest) would like nothing better. But installing the necessary technology for this is prohibitively expensive.

The only real solution is to have a "meta" isp, that does all the last mile connections anywhere. But of course, such an isp would be a government monopoly, and would behave a lot worse than Comcast and AT&T combined. Besides, such an isp would have long decided to cap download speeds (not having to worry about competition, or simply not caring) and we'd be worse off than we are today.

neither of which is very desirable

This is the theme of all "network neutrality" idiocy. The whole argument comes down to "other people need to pay for my free stuff, because I'm entitled". I'm all for cutting AT&T down to size, but I thoroughly hate how it will affect small isps. And in fact I fear it will do the exact opposite.

But that something will destroy a market, or will destroy smaller companies just isn't an argument for the democrat party. Of course, it will mostly force smaller isps to just violate the law, for being "network neutral" is close to lunacy from a network engineering standpoint.

After all, if democrats have proven one thing it's that they think that giving everyone substandard service in a "fair" (decided by politicians instead of by reality) manner is infinitely more preferable than improving service for everyone. That such notions' logical end is obviously everyone except politicians starving to death ... just doesn't matter it seems. (and all the way implementing these extreme short-term free-stuff policies democrats scream about how companies "just don't care about the long term". I don't think these people would enjoy the diagnosis of a psychiatrist)

But since the average slashdotter wants 100 mbit for $5 a month, and Obambi promises them network neutrality will achieve that ... *sigh*. In reality network neutrality will be another weapon for the large telcos to use against everyone else. In reality network neutrality will mean lower quality connections for higher price.

But going against "free stuff*" promises with "reality doesn't work that way" arguments is not a very productive thing to do.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Jurily]

I'd say there is no fundamental difference between power lines and broadband cable, and should be treated almost exactly the same.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Anonymous Coward]

...one or two relatively cheap fibers to every home is all we will need for a decade or two.

"640K should be enough for anybody"

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same idotcracy (the one who spawned the parent post) that begat "pay for recieving Short Text Message on your mobile"?

The out right foolish jump to conclusions that the whole argument comes down to "other people need to pay for my free stuff, because I'm entitled" doesnt take in accoun, that:

* The telecos/cablecos that got govermental monopolies didnt full fill the obligation to continuesly upgrade their infrastructure.
    An obligation that was outright stated in the monopoly grants. They choose rather to pay inflated divends to shareholders and ceos
    and shaft their customers.

* The entitled part is actually a demand by the customers (and with monopolies everyone is a customer) to get the service that the company
    promised at the level it promised and no less.

* And no this stuff isnt free but already paid for. But the companies rather than full fill their obligations decided to abscond with the money.
    I dont know about you but in my books that is called fraud.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Eravnrekaree]

This post shows an amazing ignorance to the nature of telecom. It is a natural monopoly, as it is impractical to build so many independant distribution systems into an area. The capital costs are so high. Thats why net neutrality is critical. If government did not regulate these companies with franchises it would be a monopoly anyway with maybe 2 or 3 players at the most. The best way to do things is to set up a non profit company which will operate the physical infrastructure and allow other companies to use that to provide ISP services for instance, and to regard ISPs as a common carrier that must not discriminate based on source and destination.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Shotgun]

As a dyed in the wool conservative libertarian, I must say that you have no clue what the hell network neutrality is.

Here is a clue: It doesn't have anything to do with bandwidth caps or allocation.

Didn't mean to get you all confused, but you see, cable companies sell cable-TV services as well as internet access. Phone companies sell voice telephone as well as internet access. Both would prefer that I pay them $50/month for a stated amount of bandwidth, and then another $50/month for the other service. But I've found ways of fitting the other service into my alloted bandwidth.

Well, we can't have THAT, now can we? The cable and phone companies have tried to fix their little business plan snafu by blocking my access to these alternate services. They have sold me a connection and now want to tell me what I can do with it. It is tatamount to telling me who I may call, or what television shows I may watch.

Heh, that is all well and good, IFF they put that bullshit in the contract. They don't, because they know people would tell them where to stick it. Instead, they try to slip it in on the backend, or get the service provider to pay them. Plain and simple, this could better be described as fraud or false advertisement.

In any case, I signed a contract for a stated amount of bandwidth for a stated price. It is now my bandwidth. Until contracted otherwise, the provider should be required to be neutral about what I do with MY network bandwith.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Shotgun]

Agreed. Anything that requires the power of eminent domain to implement should remain in the hands of government. If it is so important that government seize property for the common good, then government should remain in control.

BTW, this would also solve the problem of cities using eminent domain to seize poor peoples houses and sell them to developers.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[s73v3r]

If I am willing to pay a few hundred to get the last mile stuff put in going to my house, that equipment should be mine, and I should be able to take that equipment to any other provider.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Anonymous Coward]

Network neutrality is not about capacity but speed.

Imagine you have a blog. Google it, it pops up instantly, click the link, instantly, you get you blog. That is Net Neutrality.

In the non-Net Neutral world: Google your blog again. Instantly, it pops up, click the link, wait five minutes, come back to see it has barely loaded. You move your blog from a private server to a platform like facebook or blogspot.

All hail the megacorps. Once this happens they will be free to abuse this power for profit. Imagine having to pay a license based on what you post most frequently.

"Oh, your blog's content is primarily political? That costs $255.99 a year. No refunds, of course."

Hell on earth.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Anonymous Coward]

So your only beef with this is contract violation? What if they honored the current contract, but at renewal time told you these were the new terms and if you don't like it, don't buy it? What if all of the service provides demanded these terms? Would that make it all ok for you?

It might be, but it does not sit well with most. I would rank internet neutrality with the highway system and national defense in the category of things that should not be governed purely by the market. I suspect I am not alone.

Great

[elrous0]

Now Comcast gets to decide what websites I can visit and at what speed. Or, alternately, I can go to the one other alternative I have (AT&T) and let THEM decide what websites I can visit and at what speed.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the Invisible Hand(TM) will reach down from Heaven and drop off a brand new ISP that doesn't interfere with your connection. Any minute now.

Re:Great

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Hey, at least it's better than the liberal socialist backyard Kumbaya drum circle! It's about time we told those damn hippies with their "free exchange of information" and "open source" and all that communist bilge where to get off -- only good old fashioned American capitalism can produce successes like Netscape!

Re:Great

[MBGMorden]

And be limited to 5GB per month - and likely subject to the same limitations.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

and let THEM decide what websites you can visit and at what speed.

Re:Great

[mysidia]

How about you buy a connection from all 3 and a router with 3 WAN interfaces.

Write a script to measure the latency and throughput you get to each website across all 3 links. Send all your traffic for any particular website over the link with the best performance characteristics.

Re:Great

[Ichijo]

Now Comcast gets to decide what websites I can visit and at what speed. Or, alternately, I can go to the one other alternative I have (AT&T) and let THEM decide what websites I can visit and at what speed.

Or you could get satellite broadband.

Or wireless.

Or form a neighborhood Internet co-op.

Or get your own leased line.

Or VPN past your ISP's traffic shaping.

Re:Great

[GaryOlson]

3G degrades to 0G rather quickly during Midwestern thunderstorms. I'll keep the landline.

Re:Great

[drachenstern]

Remarkably the last three all still suffer the same problem. Somewhere sometime there is going to be a big brother or other provider who will stop you just the same as the local neighborhood ISP. Shame tho. Would be nice to setup a neighborhood co-op and bypass those regs.

Re:Great

[GaryOlson]

Or form a neighborhood Internet co-op.

You mean let my local municipal government build a last mile connection to my house. This has been tried. The regulated profits of the regulated monopolies provide the incumbents with the ability to write off litigation costs -- regardless of the source of those litigation costs. Those of us who would prefer a municipal network are instead forced to pay the legal expenses which prevent municipal networks.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

And weight it by monthly usage, so if you've used up most of your x GB cap on one carrier, it only uses it when it's [i]way[/i] faster.

Seriously, I've thought about doing this sort of thing -- if you need more than one account anyway to circumvent the 5GB limit, may as well mix and match for best results. But the only context I know of that makes this logical is RVing, and I can't afford one, much less an RV, gas, and 3 or 4 wireless accounts.

Re:Great

[Gerzel]

Or more likely it will join AT&T and ComCast into one and leave you with a single "choice" to pay them x for y service that they dictate including their preferences on what you do online.

Re:Great

[Gerzel]

Satilite - blocked by these things called trees and buildings in many areas also many places such as apartments have no were to install the dish.
Wireless - See trees and buildings and clogging up the radio spectrum
Neighborhood Internet Co-Op ...soon to be illegal and "unfair competition" in a state near you! Also it has to exist in your neighborhood.
Leased Line - Ha Ha ha ha ha good joke.
VPN - Yeah that can be blocked too. Don't think they won't charge extra for it.

Finally all of these mean jack and shit with jack on a holiday when you are trying to use the internet for most business purposes and are trying to sell something online. Selling things means you have to be able to get people to come to your site and if the big players are squeezing your site out of their regular customers' view then it doesn't matter how YOU personally can get around the ISPs.

Re:Great

[Ichijo]

Or form a neighborhood Internet co-op.

You mean let my local municipal government build a last mile connection to my house.

No, not a municipal government. A cooperative, a business organization.

Re:Great

[pcfixup4ua]

You will be only allowed to view Government Approved(tm) websites after paying all appropriate Intellectual Property Fees to the almighty content providers. NOTE: Comcast by purchasing NBC, is a content provider as well as a deliverer. Expect more vertical monopolies such as this.

Re:Great

[psychicsword]

For some reason that page took forever to load an had a banner at the top that said

To view this and many other websites faster in the future please upgrade your Service plan to a Platinum level plan at $199.99 per month not including taxes and fees

Re:Great

[dgatwood]

Satellite: 480 msec round trip ping time, minimum, from the equator, unless you're using a satellite constellation in LEO like Iridium, and if you are, expect to pay a very, very pretty penny.

Wireless: sporadic periods of multi-second round trip latency owing to only being able to send and receive data during free time slices.

Neighborhood co-op: no, that's not unfair competition unless the government does it. However, bear in mind that you would likely need a neighborhood of at least 1,000 houses to break even on a line that can compete with peak cable internet performance. Figure that you'll be lucky to get 40% of the people to sign up and that AFAICT, a DS3 will cost you about $12,000 per month. Divide that by 400 households and you're at $30 per month, or break-even with average cable Internet rates. In short, it takes a village to raise a network.

Re:Great

[thatisscary]

Why is government an involvement in a problem created by government always the answer. At&t, Comcast and all other single source providers are legislated Monopolies. Suck it up, socialist. This is what a well regulated society looks like.

Don't worry, the Invisible Hand(TM) will reach down from Heaven and drop off a brand new ISP that doesn't interfere with your connection. Any minute now.

Re:Great

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually both AT&T and Comcast have offers where they do not try to limit you. They're just a bit more expensive (in the comcast case, not even that much more expensive).

How about ... paying them for the service you're demanding ?

Re:Great

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You do realize that HSDPA has 20 mbit shared bandwidth for any "cell" on the network, right ?

Obviously your traffic needs to be limited, with 20 bittorrent clients running on it the 3G cell would be filled to the brim.

Re:Great

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

It's actually coming to the point slashdot users just can't imagine something being done by anything other than the government.

We must have a democrat president again.

Re:Great

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Exactly. We had that with UTOPIA. Qwest sued UTOPIA to stop them from using their telephone poles. Qwest wanted to do discovery on 28,000 telephone poles - one at a time.

Re:Great

[MBGMorden]

The reason why is irrelevant. I'm a consumer. I want services that meet my needs, not things that don't work and a list of excuses as to why. 5GB is a metric I would hit within a few days each and every time, and without any need for bittorrent. The current web has podcasts (both video and audio), streaming sites (eg Hulu and Netflix) and pay download sites (iTunes and the like) that will SWAMP 5GB in a heartbeat. Video games are being distributed in full over the net via Steam & other services - that's several GB per game in most cases. Even traditionally purchased games have patches that can run 1GB plus (ie, a large content patch to WoW for example).

If it was 1998, then sure 5GB would be all I ever needed. Today though it's a very different story.

Re:Great

[Svartalf]

Of the list you mention, only the last three will have any effect as the first two are going to actually be "more of the same" as with Comcast- probably more restrictive, actually.

Re:Great

[Svartalf]

You missed two items there...

Satellite: Usage caps apply during prime-time hours (defined by the company)- if you exceed usage, they throttle your bandwidth to ISDN level speeds or worse for the rest of the prime-time period.

Wireless: Usage caps may apply. If you exceed your caps, they cut you off for violating your TOS.

Re:Great

[elrous0]

I just thank God and Ronald Reagan that we had the common sense to deregulate the banking and finance sectors over the last thirty years. God knows what kind of socialist nightmare we'd be in now if we hadn't done that. We'd probably all be praying to Castro and drinking vodka or something.

Re:Great

[gorzek]

This is exactly why I got off of Sprint and went to DSL. The wireless broadband service was good--pretty quick, usable in most places, and my only gripe about performance would be the relatively high latency. But even watching my usage very closely, I would still hit the cap. I wasn't doing torrents, very rarely did streaming video or audio, and I still managed to hit 5GB. People who are looking to wireless broadband as a solution need to look elsewhere. 5GB might be sufficient for your phone, but it's nowhere near enough for a PC.

Re:Great

[chrish]

Or VPN past your ISP's traffic shaping.

Rogers in Canada was (is?) apparently throttling all encrypted traffic. This has been filling telecommuters with rage.

Re:Great

[elrous0]

"Or you could get satellite broadband."

Apartment doesn't face south, and I don't have a balcony anyway.

"Or wireless."

None in my area.

"Or form a neighborhood Internet co-op."

I suppose that's possible, assuming my apartment is okay with me running new wiring and punching holes in the walls.

"Or get your own leased line."

For only a few hundred $ a month.

"Or VPN past your ISP's traffic shaping."

VPN to what? I suppose there are some open servers out there, but there is nothing to stop my ISP from blocking all the list sites to (they do this at work pretty effectively).

Re:Great

[DJRumpy]

I think a good place to start with these 'Unlimited' 5 GB plans is to ban the use of the word 'Unlimited' when a typical user could easily hit the 5 GB limit. As far as I know, only AT&T offers an 'unlimited' plan, and that is only on the iPhone/iPad. I found one or two that claim true unlimited plans and then go on to say that those who abuse their connections may be throttle.Their 3G Wireless plans are just like everyone else regarding the 5 GB limit, although I don't recall if they label their 'unlimited' as well.

You can't buy the iPhone unlimited data plan from AT&T unless you have one of those Apple devices. Sprint/Verizon/T-Mobile all call their plans 'Unlimited' with a 5 GB limit.

I suspect if they couldn't advertise them as 'Unlimited', it would bring more general awareness of just how crappy their plan offerings are in the year 2010.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

If they had actually deregulated, you might have a point. The problem with the fake conservatives a.k.a. Republicans a.k.a. laissez-faire's primary enemy in America, is that they removed restrictions but still used government force to take money away from the people and give it to those companies via the Federal Reserve.

Their opponents (Democrats) like to call that deregulation in order to make the Republicans sounds like they're somewhere over on the right, so that the Democrats can frame issues as though they're on the other side. But if the laws that require us to use fake currency are still in force, then it's not really deregulation, huh? Every person who uses US Dollars is just as tightly regulated as they were before bank "deregulation." The regulation is that we must all pay, impoverishing ourselves, in order to make political contributors rich.

Back to broadband. If the "deregulation" is accompanied by an abolition of all the special favors that government (that is, We The People) do for these businesses, such as having laws that no one is allowed to compete with them, and giving them easements through other peoples' property, and thousand other little things that legitimize the telecom industry, then people will probably be pretty damned happy with deregulation. Just like they would have been happy with bank regulation, had the government not backed the gamblers and fraudsters at our expense.

Re:Great

[GargamelSpaceman]

Don't like it? Make a video explaining your views, and put it on your website. Of course nobody will watch it because it will take a million years to download. Comcast's propaganda will however load quite speedily, and they will contribute to the incumbent's campaign fund. Net neutrality is a 'minor issue' so few will mind much that their favorite congressperson is taking money from Comcast.

People figure politians need to take money from somewhere right? How else would campaigns be funded? People figure politicians can just take money from the corps whose positions naturally match what their own views were anyway. People think that because companies compete that there must be a campaign contributing company somewhere that will give your politician money no matter what their views are so that politicians are effectively free from influence.

This is false because all the companies in an industry tend to want their industry to be more profitable and tend to bend their influence toward the same goals. While often no one company gets an advantage over another, those with the means to pay for campaigns tend to get served 'as a group'.. Those without such means are less important.

Wait a minute, you might say, business being profitable IS good since it creates jobs and more thneeds for everyone. Jobs and thneeds can cause profitablity, but profitability doesn't imply more jobs and thneeds. Other things besides public prosperity can cause profitablility, for instance if everyone gave me a dollar, then I'd be rich, but it wouldn't increase the public's prosperity a bit. Almost nobody would be against general prosperity, that being a fairly uncontroversial end (though the right to be contrarian should be maintained!) but the tendency is to fallaciously conflate profitablility with general prosperity.

Net neutrality is an easy way to put good ideas on a more equal footing with well funded ones. Often this is impractical, luckily on an net neutral web, it's natural. The audience is completely in charge of who gets their eyes/ears, and who gets play. Net neutrality is REALLY good for democracy. It's just the sort of medicine needed most right now, and should be preserved.

Re:Great

[BreazySpeculation]

Actually I was paying for the services I am demanding. Now all of a sudden I am not (I did not downgrade) but my rates keep on going up! Hmmmm why is that?

Re:Great

[Idiomatick]

Google?

Re:Great

[s73v3r]

How about they stop offering to sell me "unlimited" service which, apparently, isn't "unlimited"?

try to scare the politicos to do the right thing..

[smoothnorman]

Here is a good direct opinion piece to point to your congress critter: "Comcast Can Censor This Blog Post ... With FCC's Permission?" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-ammori/ten-things-comcast-will-b_b_560897.html Try to impress on them the notion of what if Comcast should decide not to be supportive of your their reelection webpage?

Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

People vote based on what they read, see, or hear on the news. The FCC has already abdicated its responsibility regarding broadcast media, no more fairness doctrine and nothing to replace it. Now they want to do the same with the internet. What this means is that the United States will move very solidly toward being even more of a plutocracy than it is today.

I can't say what bad news this is for democracy.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The fairness doctrine is dead as a doornail, and as much as I'd like to see more balance in mainstream media, that's probably a good thing; it's not the government's place to decide how the news is reported. Meanwhile, advocates of net neutrality do themselves no favors by comparing the two. It is the mainly the enemies of net neutrality who keep bringing up the fairness doctrine, because they want to discredit net neutrality, a technical matter, by mixing it up in people's minds with the fairness doctrine, a political matter. Please don't fall into their trap.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

The 'fairness' doctrine is complete BS. It leads to straw man-type arguments and too much liability for broadcasters.

And net neutrality is -completely- different than the fairness doctrine. All net neutrality does it make sure that broadband providers can't give preferential treatment or throttle connections.

What needs to happen is taxpayers must rise against ISPs taking public land without giving the public what it wants. Want to throttle? Don't use public land. If you don't use public land, you don't have to follow what the public wants. But most if not all ISPs do use public land and so the public needs to have a say on what goes on there.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Technical net neutrality is a desirable goal in itself, but not a sufficient one. Just look at the current polarization in congress, which follows the polarization of the electorate, which follows the polarization of news reporting, and tell me that the current way the news is reported is good for the political health of the United States.

Good legislation for fair news reporting has suffered so far because it's confused with freedom of the press. But the constitution doesn't give you the freedom to deliberately lie to the electorate about news they will vote upon - whether you're a news medium or an elected official. We're not going to have a healthy democracy if we can't come up with any way to prosecute that.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

One problem with technical net neutrality is that it is decoupled from the very reasons that make neutrality politically desirable. Not that you have the freedom to run high bandwidth peer-to-peer applications on a connection that isn't really right for them, but that you are presented with a wealth of differing political views, and you should not have to change the channel to hear them.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[zippthorne]

Why should we have Net Neutrality, when we can't even have Tax Neutrality?

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

tell me that the current way the news is reported is good for the political health of the United States

Of course it's not. But that does not mean that for the government to decide what news can be reported, and how it will be reported, is better.

the constitution doesn't give you the freedom to deliberately lie to the electorate about news they will vote upon

Of course it does. The First Amendment doesn't say, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of true speech, or of the press except when they're lying." You have the right to say what you want to say, I have the right to say what I want to say, and Fox News and CNN have the right to say what they want to say even when it's apparent to you and me and a lot of other people that what they're saying is bilge. The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech. There is never a good alternative.

And this is why net neutrality is so damned important: as long as we have the mechanism by which we can speak out -- and I think you'll agree that the internet is one of the greatest such mechanisms in history -- we have a chance to counter all the crap that gets shoveled at us by politicians and massive corporate media. Lose that mechanism, and we lose the best hope we have. By mixing up net neutrality with the fairness doctrine, we increase the chance of losing it all.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Flat taxation is just one of very many things that you'll have a hard time selling politically while the channels of communication to the electorate are controlled by giant corporations that take advantage of special taxation.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

Net Neutrality should be politically desirable because of several reasons.

A) It is fraud to offer 'internet' access and cut off or slow down access to the internet you are paying for.

B) Taxpayers have a fundamental right to be able to control what happens on public land. If it is your own private land you should have the freedom to do whatever the heck you want so long as it doesn't violate the rights of others, but on public land it is every taxpayer's land.

C) Most ISPs have received large tax payer 'donations' to 'modernize' America. And taxpayers have a fundamental right to use their tax dollars, net neutrality allows taxpayers to receive the services they pay for.

As for your point, whenever you confuse it with the 'fairness' doctrine you lose people because many people are smart enough to realize that the fairness doctrine is damaging. Net neutrality is an issue because the ISPs have been messing with public land and public funds and the public has the right to use those funds/land the way they choose.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

tell me that the current way the news is reported is good for the political health of the United States

Of course it's not. But that does not mean that for the government to decide what news can be reported, and how it will be reported, is better.

I think we've established that lassez-faire capitalism isn't the answer. But you seem to be saying that the long tail is the answer, and yet the long tail is mostly disproven.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

Flat taxation is just one of the very many things that will never happen in America because we have a political system that restricts political views. We have two parties who are parties of money, not parties of principle. Can you -really- define a true party-wide stance of the Republicans and Democrats? No. Their stances change based on money. They are not parties of principle. Until we have a true democratic system such as Proportional Representation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation ) such things will be useless unless someone has enough money to buy congress which won't happen because flat taxation among many other issues help the working class and the poor and will help the rich too but they see the loss of special tax breaks, etc. as a net loss when in reality it would be a net gain.

Can you show me just one major example of a (US) ISP restricting political views based solely on political viewpoint without having a simi-valid 'legal' reason?

And whenever you have governmental control over communication (such as the BBC) smaller viewpoints get left out even more than with our current system. Look at the debates that were publicly funded and left out major parties such as the Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Camru.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Eh, not exactly. The "long tail" is a phrase that usually comes up in discussions of financial matters, and I agree that (unfortunately) it hasn't panned out the way we were hoping it would. But ideas are not measurable in dollars. I would argue that the active, constant, and often very healthy (as well as yes, often polarized and idiotic) political debate that takes place across the internet is in fact a success: more people have access to a greater range of facts and opinions than ever before, and more ways to speak out. There is just about nothing said in print or broadcast media that isn't immediately dissected in every possible way, all in public view. It doesn't work perfectly, but it works better than just about anything we've tried before.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

What needs to happen is taxpayers must rise against ISPs taking public land

Now that telecoms can spend unlimited amounts of money in political campaigns, and Americans only find out about national candidates via the media and online, what are the chances that anything like net neutrality will ever be implemented?

The last election cycle will have been the last one in the History of the United States where voters even had a slim chance of making a difference.

From here on out, corporations are the government, and citizens are just customers locked in to long, long contracts..

And it's all thanks to the "conservatives" on the supreme court, who are supposed to be "just calling balls and strikes". They turned out to be the biggest activist judges in our nation's history, literally selling out the entire American experiment for good.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

A) It is fraud to offer 'internet' access and cut off or slow down access to the internet you are paying for.

Only for your private definition of internet service. Now, I might actually like that definition, but there isn't a similar definition in U.S. law where it counts, or this would not be nearly so much of an issue.

B) Taxpayers have a fundamental right to be able to control what happens on public land. If it is your own private land you should have the freedom to do whatever the heck you want so long as it doesn't violate the rights of others, but on public land it is every taxpayer's land.

So, you're talking about the pole plant, and the radio airwaves. But this applies to 1) how the right to build a pole plant or operate on a radio frequency is granted and 2) what right you have to operate a channel on a partially publicly supported pole plant before we get to 3) how a particular private network - and if there's more than one of them they will tend to be treated as private - is operated. I think you might better direct your efforts to 1 and 2.

C) Most ISPs have received large tax payer 'donations' to 'modernize' America. And taxpayers have a fundamental right to use their tax dollars, net neutrality allows taxpayers to receive the services they pay for.

I can't imagine how many trillions of dollars GM has had in subsidies through the construction of the interstate highway system, etc. (Although one of you might be able to come up with an estimate.) And we get to say precious little about GM's operation, even now that we own it temporarily. Although it would be very desirable to see fairness in many things that you spend tax dollars on - private patents driven by public research dollars is another case worthy of reform - you are not going to win any of these arguments while using a plutocratic channel to communicate with the electorate.

As for your point, whenever you confuse it with the 'fairness' doctrine you lose people because many people are smart enough to realize that the fairness doctrine is damaging. Net neutrality is an issue because the ISPs have been messing with public land and public funds and the public has the right to use those funds/land the way they choose.

I just happen to think that how you get information that you will vote upon is a lot more important than your right to distribute an illegitimate copy of American Idiot.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

It's Plaid Cymru as represented for English-language writers :-)

I am sorry that the Beeb did that, but I bet it's nothing next to what happens on Fox every day. What we are discussing here is that ISPs are about to get the right to act like Fox.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[mysidia]

US is not a democracy. I'm not sure what it is -- people run for election to represent the people, they make certain promises, and express what their position is on various issues to appeal to the masses.

They get elected, and then they vote in a manner that is diametrical opposite to the sales pitch they gave to get elected.

Because they have a multi-year term, there's absolutely nothing the people they represent can do to revoke or cancel the benefits of having won the election based on their unfulfilled contract with their constitutents, when they start to go wrong.

Or they 'sell' the choice of how they'll represent their people to the highest bidder. So in exchange for personal favor X, they falsely represent that the people want Y, in order to secure that favor, and they do it on every single vote.

I compare it to a corporate board of directors hiring a candidate with a 2 year non-revokable contract to be CEO, so the new employee can't be removed, limited, or rendered powerless, as long as they don't do anything actually illegal, and very high salary, based on a 5 minute interview, with very limited background information being available (other than their claimed positions on certain governance issues).

Of course the moment the deal is done, they can do whatever they want, including managing the company very badly.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it doesn't. Flat tax RAPES the poor. It's the most regressive system of modern years and it basically give a tax break to rich people that the poor people have to pick up. Flat tax takes someone just about breaking even (income= necessity expenditure) and adds to their tax burden, and someone with lots of money (income necessity expenditure) and reduces their burden. It ignores the basic cost of living, it makes a mockery of any sense of fairness. Flat tax is pushed by loonies as some kind of panacea, but in reality it would cripple those who really have to work for a living.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[MadUndergrad]

Sure, the electorate is polarized now. But you seem to be assuming that without the fairness doctrine that won't change, or that forcing "balance" or something like that would help fix that. Why? For the record, I'm an adamant supporter of net neutrality, but I don't see the two being related.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

But this is all assuming that the voter is willing to change the channel and explore new opinions, rather than stay on the channel that causes the least anxiety because it is closest to the voter's current opinions.

I submit that this is not fulfilling the responsibility of the voter to be sufficiently informed, and if that's all they are willing to do I am not sanguine about their having the right to vote at all. But I don't see how we get to having responsible voters by cultivating irresponsible media.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I think there's a direct causal link between good information and good voting. And I place this at a higher priority than technical net neutrality, which doesn't by itself achieve good information, it just achieves a lot of little media yapping at the big media but unable to change their behavior.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Ethanol-fueled]

Regarding your first paragraph - We should have proportional private taxation along with proportional representation. Breaks and refunds can be dependent on, well, dependents. Tax breaks based on marriages are obsolete. If corporations want tax breaks and other incentives, they should be held to certain requirements such as a ratio of their employees(including contractors and consultants) being U.S. citizens paid a prevailing wage. While I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony.

Can you show me just one major example of a (US) ISP restricting political views based solely on political viewpoint without having a simi-valid 'legal' reason?

Not yet, but soon...
1) If you want internet, you gotta agree to the EULA.
2) Post in favor of unpopular candidate in a forum, have your internet disconnected for "abusive" posting where "abusive" is defined loosely or not at all. And they will find something to use against you.
3) Pay your early termination fee.
4) (ISP) Profits!!!

And whenever you have governmental control over communication (such as the BBC) smaller viewpoints get left out even more than with our current system. Look at the debates that were publicly funded and left out major parties such as the Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Camru.

No difference there. The FCC is basically admitting that they're powerless against the one-two punch of corporate lobbying and litigation. American "debates" have been a joke for a long time.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I agree that in a strictly linear tax system there would have to be a subsidy for the poor to offset the discriminatory effect of the taxation. And anyway I find nonlinear taxation to be fair as long as it increases for the rich rather than the opposite. But taxation with thousands of exceptions doesn't seem fair to anyone.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You can't make people learn. Before the days of cable channels carefully crafted to appeal to specific political groups, TV news viewers would simply turn off the TV, or change the channel to a sitcom, when a reporter they didn't like came on the air. If a debate show came on, they'd do the same -- or watch for the purpose of cheering "their guy" and booing "the other guy" like they were watching a football game. Newspaper readers glance at the headlines before deciding which stories to read, and flip past editorial columnists with whom they disagree. Unless we go with some Orwellian TV-watching-you requirement that people sit down and watch their daily ration of government-mandated news, there's nothing we can do about this ... and the consequences of instituting such a requirement would be much, much worse than any amount of cable "news" propaganda or echo-chamber blogging is ever likely to be.

Do you really think that people were better informed in the days of the fairness doctrine? Remember, it was Reagan who got rid of it -- and in order to do that, he had to get elected in the first place, which says to me that it didn't really do a whole lot of good.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

Only for your private definition of internet service. Now, I might actually like that definition, but there isn't a similar definition in U.S. law where it counts, or this would not be nearly so much of an issue.

True, however, since fraud is the misrepresentation of services, one needs to use the commonly accepted definition since I don't think that the US provides a specific definition (however, I'm not a lawyer)

So, you're talking about the pole plant, and the radio airwaves. But this applies to 1) how the right to build a pole plant or operate on a radio frequency is granted and 2) what right you have to operate a channel on a partially publicly supported pole plant before we get to 3) how a particular private network - and if there's more than one of them they will tend to be treated as private - is operated. I think you might better direct your efforts to 1 and 2.

I'm a bit confused about your use of pole plant, all Google comes up with is references to skiing...

However, my basic stance is that if you use public funds, you are accountable to the public. If you use solely private funds you are accountable simply to not to violate the rights of others. While it is true that we have a limited amount of frequencies, we have a large enough selection of them for use of all different forms of data use that it shouldn't be a huge problem who has what just as long as the FCC does its primary (and should be only) job of making sure signals don't interfere with others.

If there are too many people wanting a specific frequency that hasn't been leased by the FCC yet, the different companies or individuals would just bid and the highest bidder would win.

However, if frequencies are very limited, the FCC should allow for reasonable caps of frequencies aquired. If they want to exceed the number of frequencies they must submit to the public will in regards to what they use it for.

I can't imagine how many trillions of dollars GM has had in subsidies through the construction of the interstate highway system, etc.

The answer to that would be $0 from the highway system (unless GM was one of the contractors...) because GM along with any other car manufacturer can use them. If the government gives $500 million to AT&T, only AT&T can make use of that. If the government spends $500 million on roads it benefits GM, Ford, Toyota, Audi, BMW, Dodge, Harley-Davidson, UPS, Fed-Ex, you and me.

And we get to say precious little about GM's operation, even now that we own it temporarily.

True, and I believe that we should be able to control GM's operation because of the bail-out until they pay it back. (not that I agree with the bail-outs...)

you are not going to win any of these arguments while using a plutocratic channel to communicate with the electorate.

The problem isn't really the communication with the electorate it is the fact we have a lack of competition in US politics and few parties of principle who win seats. And until we have party-list proportional representation, that is not going to change no matter if we have net neutrality or not.

I just happen to think that how you get information that you will vote upon is a lot more important than your right to distribute an illegitimate copy of American Idiot.

Yes, and that is a valid opinion. However, it confuses the two issues so much the tech-illiterate public will not be able to tell the difference and will think it is the fairness doctrine and be against it. Just look at Rush Limbaugh who confused the two and mislead the public. Separating the two issues let people see that net neutrality is a -good thing- even if they opposed the fairness doctrine.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

Flat tax RAPES the poor.

No it doesn't. If you look at how much government people use, it is the poor who end up sapping the most. It only makes sense for people to pay for what they use. A flat tax does that in a fair way because the poor still get to have taxpayer funded breaks and the rich don't have to pay for people who make stupid decisions. Why are the poor in poverty? Most of the time they made bad decisions (when the economy is relativity healthy, today a lot of the poor are victims of bad luck, but once the economy improves they will get jobs).

it makes a mockery of any sense of fairness.

Fair is paying what you use. The only fair form of government is that which you pay a small fee for the maintenance of the army per household (after all, in this day and age if you have a household of 1 or 10 the same ICBM or drone will protect you), you pay a fee for the police, fire service, etc. If you have school age kids in public schooling you pay a fee for schools, pay a fee when you get your drivers license for road use, etc. Such things are fair.

If you look at the rich, they generally use less government, so why are they paying more? It is the poor that drain our tax dollars not the rich (individuals that is, corporations are different story...)

Re:Bad news for democracy

[s1ashd0twh0r3]

For most people:

Good information == information that supports their views

&&

Good voting == voting with an outcome they favor

That's why the "fairness doctrine" is so Orwellian. By definition, it requires some person or entity to decide what is a fair mix of opinion and what is good information.

"Experts" usually love that sort of arrangement, usually because they envision themselves to be the arbiter.

Would you favor it, though, if someone you disagreed with politically had the power to make such determinations?

Re:Bad news for democracy

[sexybomber]

Because they have a multi-year term, there's absolutely nothing the people they represent can do to revoke or cancel the benefits of having won the election based on their unfulfilled contract with their constitutents, when they start to go wrong.

Actually, such a revocation exists; it's called a recall election. Unfortunately, they're available only by constitutional amendment, exist in only a handful of states, and the last time we tried one the incumbent got Terminated.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Kirijini]

The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech. There is never a good alternative.

The fairness doctrine promotes more speech. More accurately, it promotes availability of more viewpoints.

The fairness doctrine doesn't suppress speech - its a mechanism for forcing people/corporations with a megaphone to hand the megaphone over to to the people they talk about. Since the megaphone is government sponsored, this is entirely reasonable.

In a world where people's voices are equally strong, you can't just ignore what your enemies say. You have to actually engage them if you want to win an argument. In this world, broadcasters can just say whatever they want and ignore the response. Nobody (or at least, very few people) hears the response, so broadcasters don't have to engage it. This is not healthy for democracy.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I'm a bit confused about your use of pole plant, all Google comes up with is references to skiing...

The poles, trenches and other means of passing a wire from place to place, and the system of wiring built upon them. Although it's generally the case that one "utility" predominantly owns the poles and trenches - even though they are on public land - and may lease them to the others, the wiring and/or optical fiber and its infrastructure are a separate property for power, telephone, cable, etc.

However, my basic stance is that if you use public funds, you are accountable to the public.

Go tell Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and Crocker, and every such business since. Yes, it should have been the law that the railroad right-of-way remained the public property, and they didn't get incredibly large grants of land and mining rights as well. And so on for pole plants, etc. Great thing to achieve but you have to start working on the politics now, because today it isn't the case.

Regarding GM and the public highway, consider that it has been a much larger give-away than the train folks got, and it didn't benefit the trains, and you and I lost the viable mass transit network of the time.

IMO you don't get more parties and a parliamentary system without a fair media voice.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Alex Belits]

By redefining "free speech" as to exclude blatant overwhelming streams of commercial speech and propaganda.

If you (Americans) can't do that, I am afraid, you will have to abandon "free speech" or accept that the whole role of speech -- be it political or otherwise is hopelessly subverted.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[mysidia]

Actually, such a revocation exists; it's called a recall election. Unfortunately, they're available only by constitutional amendment, exist in only a handful of states, and the last time we tried one the incumbent got Terminated.

That is OK for state officials maybe; the burden in terms of number of voters wanting a recall for anything to happen is way too high, much more than 51%.

Like it's in a representatitve's interests to vote for a bill to allow themselves to be recalled anyways?

It also won't work for federal government officials.

For example, you won't be recalling the vice president or members of US congress, no matter what horrible things they might do.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Wildclaw]

No it doesn't. If you look at how much government people use, it is the poor who end up sapping the most.

Are you kidding me. 95% of the benefits that government provide is so that rich can make more money.

* Law & Order/Military - protect the resources of the rich
* Social Security - proactive law & order
* Infrastructure - pooling resources on infrastructure so those with property (the rich) can make more money.
* Education - create low level employees that can make money for the rich.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

Law & Order/Military - protect the resources of the rich

...No, they protect everyone. Our country is pretty much safe from attack. Any major threat would affect -everyone- rich and poor. As for law and order, they again protect everyone. However, generally you've screwed something up in your life if you need to use lots and lots of police force.

Social Security - proactive law & order

How does social security benefit the rich at all? They don't use the money. Heck, I don't think many of them can get the money they just pay it and it goes into oblivion. The rich have better plans than crappy government sponsorships.

Infrastructure - pooling resources on infrastructure so those with property (the rich) can make more money.

No, infrastructure helps the poor far more often than the rich. The rich can afford their own infrastructure and generally do. It is the poor and middle class that need public infrastructure.

Education - create low level employees that can make money for the rich.

Our current education helps no one and harms everyone. Because GEDs mean nothing, public education is not a qualification and thus someone reasonably bright graduates with the same qualifications as a complete moron. Which means that university-level degrees are the only thing that matters.

Our education system needs to flunk out those not bright enough so a high school education counts. This will help the poor because they get free paperwork for a decent job if they are qualified.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[clarkkent09]

I agree with the first half of your comment but your approach has a slight problem that everybody uses public land. Say if you have a business would you like the government to control who you can sell your products to because you deliver them using public roads? At least cables are underground.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'fairness' doctrine is complete BS. It leads to straw man-type arguments and too much liability for broadcasters.

And net neutrality is -completely- different than the fairness doctrine. All net neutrality does it make sure that broadband providers can't give preferential treatment or throttle connections.

What needs to happen is taxpayers must rise against ISPs taking public land without giving the public what it wants. Want to throttle? Don't use public land. If you don't use public land, you don't have to follow what the public wants. But most if not all ISPs do use public land and so the public needs to have a say on what goes on there.

And the fairness doctrine was all about not giving preferential treatment to certain packets. Oh wait, I confused the two.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[joocemann]

Yeah... and the world is perfect.

Get your head out of your free market ass and wake up.

Get real: Very few people cooperate to control very many people. Acting like this isn't real is your own problem; and I'm sorry you may be too naive to see it.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

And just how does it do that? It says who can broadcast. Say there are 10 conservative talk radio shows and 1 liberal talk radio show. How are the 10 conservative talk radio shows hurting the 1 liberal show? If the same market was there for liberal talk radio that's there for conservative talk radio don't you think it would exist already? There have been a lot of efforts at liberal talk radio and they have all failed. None of them had enough listeners to make the money needed to stay on the air. Whose fault is that? Conservatives? Don't make me laugh.

Same with TV. It's the number of viewers who decide what the most popular talking head shows are. If the liberal news shows were the most popular then they would have the most viewers.

What's been shown over and over again is that the conservative talk radio shows and conservative news/opinion channels make the most money because they have the largest audience. The vast majority of people like them better.

How is the fairness doctrine going to change that? Run the conservative shows off the air because the liberal ones don't have a large enough audience? Try to force people to watch/listen-to shows they have no interest in? Yeah, like that's fair or will work. That's limiting political speech under the guise of "fairness". If the liberal/progressive viewpoint was actually the majority opinion progressive talk radio and tv talking-head shows would dominate the airwaves. They don't.

Making a law just to enforce your own political viewpoints to have "equal time", as in equal audience, is anti-American at best. We are free to choose to listen to what we want to. You limit the number of conservative shows and all that will happen is that the audience for the remaining shows will grow tremendously. Conservatives aren't going to listen to progressive political commentary. They disagree with it and aren't going to support it. That's their right as Americans. You might disagree with them and not like their political philosophy, but so what? They disagree with you and don't like your political philosophy. Seems fair enough to me.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[clarkkent09]

Apart from the fact that Fox is not funded by the government imposed license fees like BBC is, that's a poor analogy. You don't like Fox, push a button on your remote. If it was that easy to change your ISP there wouldn't be a problem.

What we are discussing here is that ISPs are about to get the right to act like Fox.

ISPs already have that right and they generally didn't abuse it so far. What we are discussing here is whether it should be taken away from them.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[slick7]

The bad news is that the FIX is in, the bought dogs of avarice voted their conscience ($$$$).
Politicians should serve three terms, 2 in office and 1 life sentence in prison.
Another reason for the separation of Business and State.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[arth1]

But taxation with thousands of exceptions doesn't seem fair to anyone.

Except tax lawyers.

When a state or country has more than 10% of the workforce employed in the legal "industry", you know something is fundamentally wrong. The answer then is to look at the fundament, and not to argue over minuscule bits and pieces that can be turned into even more lawyer food.
I'd say we're due for a revolution, but that would be seditious, and I haven't paid my registration fee to Oklahoma, so I can't say that.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Why are the poor in poverty? Most of the time they made bad decisions

Yeah, like being born with too much melanin in their skin. Terrible decision.

A large number of the poor people around where I live are from families that were enticed by the U.S. government to move off of the farm to the city so that they could build ships during World War II. Then when the war construction effort ended, their jobs were taken away (along with those of the women) and if anyone got a job, it was a returning GI.

They didn't make a bad decision so much as they were cheated by their own nation.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Fox has a very big government subsidy in that they don't pay what their per-city allocations of 6-Megahertz channels at up to half a million watts of effective radiated power are worth.

The UK at least charges something (although to the receiver) for that channel and uses it to fund one program source that actively tries to be fair in its reporting.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yeah... and the world is perfect.

Get your head out of your free market ass and wake up.

Wow. It's been a while since anyone so dramatically misread what I wrote -- and on Slashdot, that's saying something. If you think my posts are "everything is fine" la-la, or pushing free market fundamentalism, then I'm not sure there's anything I can say that will help you understand my actual position.

Get real: Very few people cooperate to control very many people.

Which is pretty much the way it's always been, everywhere, under every political and economic system ever devised. I don't like it any better than you do, and I believe that we should do what we can to change it -- which is why I'm a fan of net neutrality. I also believe that there are certain attempts at changing the situation, such as pushing the fairness doctrine, which are counterproductive to this goal. Or to put it more simply: if we tie net neutrality to the fairness doctrine, we lose.

Acting like this isn't real is your own problem; and I'm sorry you may be too naive to see it.

The naivete comes in believing that there is any possible way that the American political system will enforce anything that could reasonably be called "fairness" within a single media outlet. Look around. It can't and won't be done. Choose the battles you have a prayer of winning.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

If the same market was there for liberal talk radio that's there for conservative talk radio don't you think it would exist already?

Using the market to determine the availability of political programming builds hysteresis into the system, and perhaps oscillation too. The more you sell a viewpoint, the more demand there will be for it, until all those who can be converted are converted by the overwhelming statement of that viewpoint over its opposition. Then perhaps at some point they become disenchanted enough with the status quo that they oscillate to the other pole. And this continues.

It's not a terribly good way to govern.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Nathan Boley]

I can't imagine how many trillions of dollars GM has had in subsidies through the construction of the interstate highway system, etc. (Although one of you might be able to come up with an estimate.) And we get to say precious little about GM's operation, even now that we own it temporarily.

I dont think that your analogy applies. If only GM cars could run on public highways, then it would make more sense.

Conversely, if there was a law that forced telecoms to lease access to telecom infrastructure, ( or telecom infrastructure was publically owned and maintained ) then net neutrality legislation would not seem necessary to me. Not that I am advocating for either, but let's try and keep our arguments consistent.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[joocemann]

So what is your take on what has changed in the level of realistic understanding of information since Reagan got the FAIR Act removed from television?

I'll tell you what has changed if you don't know or will pretend its all good. Nearly all available media on television is now clearly pushing a corporate bias, which overall is driving the trusting populous further and further into being controlled by information for corporate (or big private money) benefit.

The reason I said the world isn't perfect is that people who usually cry out against things like the FAIR Act usually contend that 'the people are choosing it, and so beit'. The people DEFAULT to it for lack of effort, education, or capacity to discern truth from rhetoric.

Regulations such as the FAIR act are supported by those of us who understand that many people deserve to know something closer to truth, but lack the capacity to seek it by means other than commonplace conventional practice.

Simply put, the ignorant trust what appears as 'normal', but deserve to receive something that *IS* normal.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[iamhigh]

First, let me state I am still on the fence for NN. But your car analogy is backwards; if you had got it right it seems like a good one *for* NN.

Car companies would be like websites.
Each state would be like an ISP.
Net Neutrality would/should be the act of preventing each state from creating their own crazy laws and regulations. That would prevent things like making automakers pass state specific safety test that cost $x million a year. In this case GM is actually the one that would benefit; Tesla would be the one that is screwed.
Frankly I think I am glad the roads are built by the taxpayers and we let just about anyone use them in accordance with just regulations.

To bring it home, perens.com couldn't afford the fees and administrative costs, but a Microsoft blog about the advantages of software patents and how closed source code improves security could easily afford the extra costs.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[sonicmerlin]

The last time we reduced the progressivity of income-tax rates we were told "we'll all benefit." I.e., "trickle-down" economics. The result has been vastly different.

The top 10% of income earners have increased their share of every dollar of taxable income from 34% to 46%. Within that 10%, the results are even more startling. The increase went largely to the top 1% who doubled their share from 9% to 19%. And, the gain was even more greatly concentrated with the top one-tenth of 1% who tripled their income to about 9%.

The top 100th of 1% (about 15,000 individuals) quadrupled their share of the national income to 3.6%.

Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top 10 percent got 48.5 cents. That was the top tent's greatest share of the income pie since 1929, just before the Roaring Twenties collapsed into the Great Depression. In 2005, the 300,000 men, women and children who comprised the top tenth of 1% had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of our population.

I would be very cautious that further reduction in progressive taxation would lead to even greater wealth disparity, causing us to have even more in common with countries like Mexico, Brazil and Russia -- countries that are democratic, but real political power is wielded by a privileged elite who have nothing in common with 99% of the population.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Obviously you don't enforce fairness by placing one viewpoint in charge of its enforcement.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[sonicmerlin]

Those who enjoy happiness (even to excess) depend upon the existence of this society for their ability to enjoy that state, and preserve it.

Things don't exist in a vacuum. It exists through "consent of the governed." And that's why we consider things such as "essentials" of living, and ensuring all Americans have at least a basic level of "the Dream."

If you want to see how it works under your ideal system (where each individual has what they have in opposition to everyone else), look no further than Mexico. Disparity of wealth has led to widespread corruption, a population that doesn't feel society benefits them, and the wealthy immigrating here because they can't trust their own society to protect what they have.

That's why the "it's mine, you can't have it" attitude is a Pyrrhic victory. What good is it if you have it, and are able to keep it, but the society (social norms) you depend upon break down and you lose everything?

Re:Bad news for democracy

[sonicmerlin]

The issue is how the rich's share of income tax intersects with their share of the national income, and how those two have diverged over the past 30 years as progressive taxation was reduced, and "trickle down" (deregulatory) politics increased.

When the top tenth of 1% of the population receives half of every available dollar of income (almost as much as the bottom 50%) you'd expect them to pay more in income taxes. The question is whether they are paying "more" like they were 30 years ago, prior to income taxes becoming more regressive, before their share of the national income quadrupled while the average American lost ground.

I mean, is it a good thing that 300,000 Americans quadrupled their incomes, and pay less tax on that money today than they would have 30 years ago? To the "less tax" crowd that may sound like an ideal world. But, is that ideal when, at the same time, average income dropped 10%?

In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" He got elected and proceeded to make income taxation less progressive. The result has been as described above.

But, if the average American asks the same question Reagan did, he's accused of being a "deadbeat," "wanting something for nothing."

Re:Bad news for democracy

[clarkkent09]

Well from your previous post regarding Fox bias, I assume that by Fox you mean Fox News which is a cable channel? The Fox itself that I get broadcasts some news programs that are almost entirely local and don't have particularly pronounced bias like Fox News has. In any case, we don't know the market value of spectrum allocations because they are controlled by the FCC. If you want to put them out on the market I am fine with that. But government collecting fees from viewers to fund one particular government approved channel seems very wrong and dangerous however "fair" (according to whom) it may be. Not even to mention the fact that they have to pay for it even if they don't watch it, as long as they own a TV set.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[sonicmerlin]

That's a lovely libertarian mantra. But, in reality it could never exist. When individuals in a state of nature join together for their mutual benefit (forming a society under Lockean political philosophy) their definition of "mutual" will never be the same.

Consider the founding generation. They revolted to promote their mutual goal of liberty. After 12 years of living under the relatively libertarian Articles of Confederation they ditched it for a relatively *colossal* new federal/constitutional government of 1789. They traded liberty for security (a more powerful government to which states would be more greatly subordinated).

From there it gets more complicated. Some joined together to protect their property rights. Others joined together to strip others of their property rights (the right to own slaves). Colorado became a state to control its source of water. Arizona became a state to use the federal government to get its "fair" share of that water. Competing goals. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness often dependent upon public law -- which creates winners and losers.

When enough people feel they're consistently losing (such as, the top 1/10th of 1% quadruple their incomes as average income declines 10%, all under the auspices of "trickle down" economics), that's something to be concerned about.

You can't dismiss it with quaint depictions of liberty and happiness being exactly what you say it is.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[hokeyru]

Government isn't a business, and shouldn't be run like one. We call ourselves citizens, and not (yet) consumers, because the relationship between citizens and their government is different than the company/client model you are trying to advocate. Put down the Rand and pick up some Rawls (or Plato even).

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I dont think that your analogy applies. If only GM cars could run on public highways, then it would make more sense.

It's worth looking at The Great American Streetcar Scandal just to see the photo.

There are a lot of independent sources on the web. They are all united in pointing the finger mainly at GM.

Challenge to U.S. auto manufacturers wasn't significant until the 1970's, and GM was always the big fish here.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[mike1210]

The FCC has already abdicated its responsibility regarding broadcast media, no more fairness doctrine and nothing to replace it.

Good. We don't want censorship.

Now they want to do the same with the internet.

I can't say that I care much about the government deciding not to regulate ISPs.

I can't say what bad news this is for democracy.

I don't care about democracy. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

I prefer liberty.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[grcumb]

I think we've established that lassez-faire capitalism isn't the answer.

I don't think that's entirely correct. Well, I don't think its entirely wrong, either, but there's an important point to be made about market freedom that often gets thrown out when we start talking about the need for intervention.

The prime motivation behind Network Neutrality is to allow free market forces to manifest themselves on the Internet without being constrained by those who control the physical networks. Network Neutrality actually enforces a laissez faire environment -from the perspective of the information services. It does so, however, by constraining the network owners from using their control over bandwidth/QoS/etc. to subvert the flow of information from particular sources.

As I've written elsewhere:

Absent Net Neutrality, the potential for abuse of control over traffic by carriers is far too great. No compromise is possible in this regard, because degradation of Net Neutrality is a degradation of the market itself.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[coaxial]

Come back when the rich aren't dictating the government agenda and while getting huge for tax breaks both personally, and for their private interests.

You have no understanding of the causes of poverty. The single biggest predictor of whether you'll die in poverty is if you were born into poverty. That's just the sad truth. By your logic, the "bad choice" was being born.

The real world is far more complicated than your simple preconceptions. I suggest you break out of your epistemic closure.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

But they have to control our country, they're too big to fail! :-)

Fine having a nonlinear tax, then. The most rich would pay more with a straight nonlinear tax than they do with a tax code which embodies 1000 exceptions. They have the money to game those 1000 exceptions, while the rest of us don't.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

Talk radio governs? Don't make me laugh.

What you're suggesting is an even worse way to govern. Limiting political speech is against our constitution. It's against everything we, as American's, stand for, and have always stood for. It's the ultimate in government intrusion. It's an attempt at thought control by the government.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I wasn't really making a car analogy to net neutrality, I was commenting that other tremendous allocations of public land and money acted to benefit a specific party more than others, and did not have provisions that created fairness over the long term.

This is something that can be improved for all public allocation, not just the net.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem lies in the delayed invocation of this power. Once all competition is narrowed down into a few providers, making the cost of entry way to high for smaller companies, they can then use this power to manipulate what you see to their benefit. We see this approach constantly. Self regulation never works because the only goal of a corporation is to make a profit, and screwing the public is a great way to make a profit.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Barrinmw]

Flat Taxation unjustly punishes the poor, say what?
Lets say that the poverty line is $18000 for a single person.
Said person makes $20,000. Current system, maybe pays like $800 in taxes? So 4%.

Assume 10% Flat Tax. That is $2000. Now a person who was above the poverty line, is now at it or below.

The reason we have a progressive Tax system is because, you can tax rich people more, and not hurt them. So that means the government can do more without punishing the poor people.

I understand that the rich would have you believe that taxes hurt them, but they don't. Also, poor people are needed, they are the ones who work for the rich people.

Lastly, a progressive tax never makes people want to work less like so many people believe. It only taxes the money in that tax bracket at that amount. If you go $1 over into a tax bracket, only that $1 is taxed at the higher rate. Since there is never a tax bracket that is 100%, there is always incentive to make more money.

Progressive Taxes are fine, stop bringing up Flat Taxes as a somehow save all of everything.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

In a true lassiez faire system of political discourse, the big content producing companies would be able to shove the smaller ones off of the network entirely without facing any legal consequence. They would probably achieve this by owning the network. The goal of network neutrality is that the large content companies not have that power.

Lassiez faire in economics means free from state intervention. Whereas an absence of intervention by network carriers is closer to the paradigm of a common carrier rather than a contract carrier. Although the "carriers" originally transported objects (including the mail and political handbills - so they were data networks of a sort) the terms are more frequently applied to telecoms today.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I don't care about democracy. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. I prefer liberty.

Liberty is two wolves getting together to pick off the sheep one by one, because the sheep are so conscious of their own liberty that none of them will make common cause with the others.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Yep. Glenn Beck governs. Can you think of someone less qualified?

I am not talking about limiting political speech at all. I'm talking about how to make sure everybody gets a fair chance at the podium.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[coaxial]

How does social security benefit the rich at all? They don't use the money. Heck, I don't think many of them can get the money they just pay it and it goes into oblivion. The rich have better plans than crappy government sponsorships.

First, everyone gets a social security check, because those that don't need the money refuse to allow means testing so that the limited benefit can be directed towards those that need it most. Second, due to increasing lifespans, the vast majority of those receiving social security benefits receive much more than they ever paid in.

Infrastructure - pooling resources on infrastructure so those with property (the rich) can make more money.

No, infrastructure helps the poor far more often than the rich. The rich can afford their own infrastructure and generally do.

This has simply NEVER been the case. 'Lest we forget the days of rampant laissez faire in the 19th century, where the the rugged self-relliant individualist had the government round up the natives, and then give them subsidies so that they could make a profit on a railroad.

Even today, the rich receive their subsidies to exploit public land for private gain.

Our current education helps no one and harms everyone.

You've failed to support either statement. Furthermore, you seem to be lamenting the fact that the world is much more complicated than it was 50 years ago. Before that, an elementary education was enough for most people to earn a living. Before that, no formal education was required. Today's world is no different.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

,p>Sure, it can be abused. But it seems to me that BBC and PBS are pretty good investments in terms of the programming they make which we just don't get elsewhere. I like NASA Direct, too, and that's as close to a government PR channel as we have.

On the other hand I'm sure the North Korean broadcasting system is a problem.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

You can help the people learn by educating them better. I have taught college in Norway from time to time. I get to see how various Europeans and Asians come equipped. Lots of the Europeans have very good primary education compared to ours. The Chinese don't, for the most part. Their engineering education is subperb, but their civics education seems to have been programming them to be faceless workers to an even greater extent than people in the U.S.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[grcumb]

In a true lassiez faire system of political discourse, the big content producing companies would be able to shove the smaller ones off of the network entirely without facing any legal consequence. They would probably achieve this by owning the network. The goal of network neutrality is that the large content companies not have that power.

Yes, that's perfectly obvious. 8^)

What I'm suggesting is that there's a rhetorical point to be made that Network Neutrality allows competition to happen within the information market by barring the network operators from imposing arbitrary constraints upon that market.

In other words, the essence of Network Neutrality is freedom, not constraint. Constraint is the means, not the end.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[thatisscary]

I find it hard so see how railing against stringently regulated industries, such as broadcast TV (either Cable or Network) proves that lassez-faire capitalism is not the answer.

Please tell me one, just one, media empire that does not benefit from government legislation and government regulation.

Or you can tell me how you wish the government would regulate in your favor and for your benefit.

Either way, it is the same answer. Pigs at the trough. You are just looking over the railing at the other pigs, and thinking how disgusting they are. Or perhaps, someone snuck in a mirror and you just haven't figured it out yet.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem with technical net neutrality is that it is decoupled from the very reasons that make neutrality politically desirable. Not that you have the freedom to run high bandwidth peer-to-peer applications on a connection that isn't really right for them, but that you are presented with a wealth of differing political views, and you should not have to change the channel to hear them.

Technical net neutrality may not strictly be sufficient, but it is undeniably necessary. Attempting to decry P2P is half the problem: P2P is the only way anyone can distribute anything without corporate censorship. If you have to rely on YouTube or Facebook to reach an audience, you have to rely on them not deciding that criticizing the wrong people violates their terms of service, or that some news network won't issue a malicious takedown notice to silence you because you made fair use of some news clip.

The real problem is that P2P gets demonized into a vicious cycle: If they tell everybody that P2P is only used for piracy then people wanting to do legitimate things won't want to be associated with it, so they can continue to tell everybody that P2P is only used for piracy. P2P isn't supposed to be some pirates-only black market for warez and porn, it's supposed to be the tool of the masses to communicate with one another without corporate gatekeepers. The whole original internet was designed as P2P: email, usenet, even IP itself is decentralized. The more we legitimize the notion that every service needs to route all traffic through a major corporation's server farm where it can be tracked and censored, the more we abandon any hope that the internet will be anything more than the next generation of cable TV.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I'm still having trouble accepting it as lassiez faire. You aren't just barring the network operators. You're barring the content providers from creating barriers to entry through the network providers. And thus to some extent the content providers are regulated.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

I think both Darkness and Wildclaw make valid points - the rich (generalization) do take advantage of education, social security, infrastructure, and the legal system in order to subsidize their profiteering - but the solution isn't to introduce more government for the rich to take advantage of. People act as if a free market in broadband infrastructure is foreseeable in the near future despite the government subsidizing the growth of privileged corporations. The free market works but dissolving the sort of monopolistic structures the government has created could take many decades. The government - as a service to the people - should attempt to sort out its own mess.

Rolling back the extravagant tax structure used to milk the poor through inflation and externalizing costs is another issue altogether. I am not against a minority having a lot of money, I am against the government subsidy of the economic engines making some people rich at the expense of others.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[thatisscary]

Speech isn't governance.

The purpose of speech is to hold in check governance. If the government can claim that any independent operator must provide a government favorable viewpoint, then you have destroyed free speech. It now becomes government talk.

It is very interesting to hear people who suppose they have a radical viewpoint, staunchly support what can only be termed Fascist economics and a sort of 1984 doublespeak. Although, fascism is a very radical ideology. So I guess no conflict there.

And you are quite right, allowing individuals their freedoms is not a good way to govern. It is merely a preferable way -- for those who are governed -- to live.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[levicivita]

Merely making bold statements forcefully does not render your arguments correct... You have stated, yet failed to prove, that the polarisation of news reporting is indeed responsible for the polarisation of the political system. It could just as well be an effect, or a corollary, rather than a cause.

Furthermore, who is to decide what 'fair' news reporting is? I, as a reader, can adjust my interpretation of Fox News or New York Times editorials and news pieces based on years of experience with those media sources, and my assessment of their veracity and objectivity. Why would I want to outsource that job to some faceless bureaucrat? The risks in my view far outweigh the benefits. A government controlled media yearns for an ambitious political leader and organisation to wield it as a powerful tool of propaganda.

I submit to you that an apparently unbiased source of news which in fact has often times a agenda (possible examples NPR and the CNN) is substantially more pernicious and dangerous than an openly partisan one. The former is much more likely to manipulate and sway public opinion than the latter.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Well, in this case one man's stringent is another man's laissez faire.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

If the government can claim that any independent operator must provide a government favorable viewpoint

You're distorting that quite a bit. Given a pro-government viewpoint, the obligation would be to provide an anti-government one.

Fascist economics is the wrong phrase here - it's a form of government control of the means of production for the sake (they say) of efficiency. I think you really mean fascist political doctrine, but that's wrong here too: Fascism views pluralism as dysfunctional and attempts to justify a single party state as representative of the nation in its entirety. The fairness doctrine requires pluralism, and thus is opposite of that element of fascist political doctrine.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[MadUndergrad]

So who gets to decide what is "good" information? Even the foremost experts may disagree (and surely they do, at least on the details). I agree that good information=good voting, but unless you have a concrete way to decide on what is "good" information you're going to have a corruptible system.

Furthermore, how many viewpoints get to be aired? 2? 3? Maybe the leaders will decide what the x viewpoints are, thus completely deciding what the people get to hear. How do you prevent that?

Re:Bad news for democracy

[gink1]

Not to contradict your post, but the Government we have in this country only vaguely resembles Democracy.

The only time the people are involved in the process in a significant way is at elections, when they vote in candidates based on their image. After that almost all of the politicians take their orders from large Corporations who pay them for their services.

We saw recently that even the US Supreme Court can be bought and owned. It that is true where is our Democracy now?

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

that the polarisation of news reporting is indeed responsible for the polarisation of the political system. It could just as well be an effect, or a corollary, rather than a cause.

Garbage-in, garbage-out is accepted as a truism these days due to its obvious applicability in computer science. I could sit down and scientifically prove this case with some significant effort, but it would probably only serve to remove the last prop of someone who was deliberately acting dumb. Thus, I refuse to be baited.

Furthermore, who is to decide what 'fair' news reporting is?

Obviously, a set of persons with widely divergent viewpoints. Who, indeed, is to decide on guilt in the court room, when life or death is at stake? We do manage as a society to select a jury.

So you think that CNN or NPR are worse than a deliberate liar because you know the liar is lying. But remember the woman who asked Obama to meet with Stephen Colbert? She really didn't get the joke.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I think you're trying to call it a dysfunctional representative democracy. Sure, obviously. Without the corporate influence it would be called "representative democracy" if the electorate's main participation was to elect their representatives. Here in California we have initiative and referendum, which is a non-representative voting system and also leaves much to be desired.

One science fictional society in which people vote on everything, all of the time, is called a "demarchy".

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Richard_at_work]

And whenever you have governmental control over communication (such as the BBC) smaller viewpoints get left out even more than with our current system. Look at the debates that were publicly funded and left out major parties such as the Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Camru.

When the Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Cymru enter the national race, then they should be considered for inclusion in those debates - but they are not, so having their views aired to the nation when they only apply to 5% of the voting public is a little pointless. They get to kick the major party leaders for little risk in return - thats typically called grandstanding.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

"You have to actually engage them if you want to win an argument."

No. You have to engage them if you want to seek the factual truth. If you seek to win an argument, then the last thing you want to do is let your opponents speak. Far better to speak on their behalf, so you can misrepresent their views.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

Can I think of anyone less qualified to govern than Glenn Beck? Yeah. Obama.

Every political idea has its fair chance at the podium now. If what its proponents have to say isn't something most people want to listen to, they fail to stay on the air. The government subsidizing political thought of one stripe or another is a scary thought. Be it conservative thought, progressive thought, Socialistic, Capitalistic, etc... the government has no business subsidizing it. That has no place in America.

I guess you would be for the fairness doctrine making sure the fascists, Nazis, anarchists, and all the white power groups get a "fair" hearing too. These political movements need to be subsidized to make sure they get free advertising to spread their message too, if you're really going to be "fair". If you're not in favor of that, given the position you've taken, then what you really want is the government to subsidize your personal political philosophy.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Wildclaw]

It is the paradox of the free market. A free market requires an even playing field, but a free market inevitably leads to an uneven playing field.

The solution is to introduce factors that works against the creation of an uneven playing field. One of the main factors is the progressive taxing. Of course, in the last years there has been a huge anti progressive taxing movement in western countries, and the result is what we see today.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Rockoon]

In a true lassiez faire system of political discourse, the big content producing companies would be able to shove the smaller ones off of the network entirely without facing any legal consequence.

Correct, but they would not enjoy a monopoly mandated by the local governments like they do today.

They might have a monopoly in some or even many instances, but if there is money to be made then someone should be allowed to come in and compete with them.

Remember that the cable network was accidental. The coax the cable company is using was layed down decades ago, but even still coincentally supports a much greater speed than the company is willing to provide me. The last mile cost argument is obviouslly bullshit.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Rockoon]

I am not talking about limiting political speech at all. I'm talking about how to make sure everybody gets a fair chance at the podium.

The problem here is that you just don't like that YOUR views arent representative of what the media is talking about, not that you want ALL views to have a shot, and I further declare that fair chances are alive and well.

FOX News is balanced by the existence of MSNBC. Sure, MSNBC doesnt get the ratings that FOX does, but their message is just as extreme on the other end.

Do the NAMBLA's of the world deserve a "fair chance at the podium" through a government mandate that GIVES them a podium?

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Xyrus]

No it doesn't. If you look at how much government people use, it is the poor who end up sapping the most.

Yeah. That's right. However, this statement shows the clear lack of depth in your reasoning.

The social programs that help support the 20 million or so poor in this country aren't there to help the poor. Those programs exist to help ensure the rich. How? Social order. Without those programs we would have a 20 million+ group of starving desperate citizens looking at all those haves and wondering why they have to go hungry. People who have nothing left to lose are often the most dangerous.

It only makes sense for people to pay for what they use.

Again, you're showing your lack of depth. If everyone paid for only what they used our social structure would implode. You don't just pay for what you use, you pay for what keeps society running. This also includes ways (even if illusory) of vertical mobility so that at least those that are underpriviliged have the hope of changing their prospects.

A flat tax does that in a fair way...

No it doesn't. There have been several analysis done on the subject.

because the poor still get to have taxpayer funded breaks and the rich don't have to pay for people who make stupid decisions. Why are the poor in poverty? Most of the time they made bad decisions (when the economy is relativity healthy, today a lot of the poor are victims of bad luck, but once the economy improves they will get jobs).

Ah, and now your true colors show through. Poor people are stupid. That's a big brush and your ignorant jackass with the critical thinking skills of a slug for using it.

Grow up. Poor people are poor mainly because they have few if any means of vertical mobility. When you start off poor, you're already starting out at a big disadvantage. If you're really lucky and work hard you can eventually break out of being poor, but it is not "easy" nor is it a matter of just "working harder".

I just love the shallow view of society the well off have.

~X~

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Svartalf]

Bruce, you're missing the point, I think.

What they're trying to bar isn't the content providers (that'd be Google, Yahoo!, etc...)- that's kind of what Comcast and others are doing right now. What they're trying to bar is the people providing the transportation.

A bad car analogy would be one of the roads and highways going from a home to a shopping center or mall. What is going on is more of someone trying to prevent the person who built the roads defining an easy path and a hard path to get to varying places. If the mall doesn't have a relationship with your road provider, your car may encounter lights, traffic, etc. such that it takes HOURS to get there. But, at the same time, this little shopping center HAS a relationship with the road provider, and when the road provider detects that you're driving to the little shopping center, they automagically turn all the lights green, clear the traffic as best as they can, and you get there in minutes- even though they're equidistant from your house.

If you have a situation like this, you don't really HAVE a free market. Lassiez Faire doesn't mean you don't control things. It means you apply the absolute minimum of interference and let the market sort it out. You honestly don't have much of a market for the ISP space, else they wouldn't be playing games like they are- as the customers would bolt from them, in large, if they had credible competition that wouldn't do the same thing Comcast is doing. As it is, their virtual monopoly on things is impairing the real free market- and it's a situation that needs a modicum of control from something other than the market because it won't be coming from the market at this point. Unless you know of something that I don't about the ISP situation... ;-)

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why are the poor in poverty? Most of the time they made bad decisions"

Like the decision to be born into a poor family. I'm certainly glad you didn't make that mistake, tough luck for the poor people though.

I would just like to put everything into perspective for the parent poster, to go to a decent college in the US will cost approximately $15k a year in tuition alone. Poor people aren't able to afford that expense, and so it is necessary for them to take out loans. Most kids, poor or rich, have little to no credit coming out of high school and so must often rely on their parents as their guarantor. Government grants and loans are often offered to students from poor family's, but seldom cover the entire tuition let alone the necessary amount for shelter, food, books, and other incidental costs.

THERE ARE VERY FEW JOBS THAT PAY WELL THAT A DEGREE ISN'T NECESSARY!

Even low skill office positions such as assistants demand a degree. Low skill positions are often also the first ones to be cut by a CFO in hard times. So our poor, high school graduate, who can't find a high paying job because he's been excluded from getting a higher education because he was born into a poor family is laid off and now has to make "bad decisions" because there's very little he can do without an enormous amount of luck.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[tomthepom]

Where on earth do you think that money comes from?
How much do you think your stocks will be worth if the workers in those companies are sick or can't get to their offices because the roads are in disrepair and the police can't protect them from robbers? How long do you think your land will stay yours when the mob come to take it from you? And just how much do you think your nice pile of shiny dollar bills wil be worth if you don't have a strong economy and government - paid for by taxes - to back it up?
So yeh, you might never meet a policeman in your life, your mansion might be totally self sufficient and you might travel around in your own private helicopter, but the richer you are the more you've benefitted from the society that tax has paid for and the more you have to lose if you try to weasel your way out of paying some back.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Attila Dimedici]

I believe that the problem with our curret democracy is that we have said that it is good to make it easy to vote, the easier the better. This means that I can vote whether or not I am willing to take the trouble to find out where I have to go to register to vote (just check that box when I renew my driver's license). This means that I get to vote with no effort. What makes you think I am going to bother to be an informed voter if I can only be bothered to register if I don't have to take nay additional time out of my life to do so?
Once upon a time, imposing difficulties to registering to vote were used selectively to discourage particular groups from voting and that was legitimately viewed as a negative. However, now we have a mindset that voting should be easy. Doing a good job as a voter is not easy and we need to dispel the myth that it is.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[butlerm]

I can't imagine how many trillions of dollars GM has had in subsidies through the construction of the interstate highway system, etc.

The Interstate highway system was constructed with overwhelming public support, with full knowledge of the costs involved. So it can't really be considered a subsidy to GM, let alone a multi-trillion dollar subsidy.

It can't even really be considered a subsidy to automobile drivers. The reason is that the federal gasoline tax only impinges on the taxed activity, and rather proportionally at that. It is about the fairest tax ever devised, and is more than adequate to finance the federal government's road construction and maintenance activities.

The local telephone company is different, primarily because it has historically had a government protected monopoly. That (natural) monopoly power is why it is subject to unusual levels of government regulation at both local and federal levels.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[sexybomber]

the burden in terms of number of voters wanting a recall for anything to happen is way too high, much more than 51%.

I was under the impression that it was much lower than that. California law, for example, requires that a recall petition be circulated and gain a number of signatures equal to 12% of total votes cast for that office the last time around. (Cal. Constitution, Art II, Sec. 14b) I'm pretty sure other state recall provisions have similar signature requirements, though I'd have to research it to be sure.

However, that's just to get the question, "Should Assemblyman X be recalled?" on the ballot. You still need 51% voting "Yes" to actually kick the person out, which seems fair.

You correctly note that no sitting Representative is ever going to vote for a bill that might allow them to be recalled ... which means you need the popular initiative to be available to even start the process (i.e. circulating a petition to place a constitutional amendment allowing for the recall on the ballot, so that the recall can then be conducted under those terms.)

It's easier to shame and ostracize your representatives so mercilessly that they resign of their own accord.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

Fascist economics is the wrong phrase here - it's a form of government control of the means of production for the sake (they say) of efficiency.

And Socialistic philosophy is the government control of the means of production for the sake (they say) of fairness.

Glenn Beck is correct when he says the socialists, communists, fascists, etc... belong at the same end of the political spectrum as they all advocate complete government control of everything. The total opposite of their political philosophy is anarchy, the absence of any government.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Attila Dimedici]

The fairness doctrine does not promote the availability of more viewpoints. When the fairness doctrine was enforced, broadcast shows fell into two categories. Those that avoided all divisive issues at all cost and those that presented caricatures of viewpoints opposed to that held by the producers of the show.
As a result people were left with the impression that everyone who disagreed with the view favored by those who controlled the media were nutjobs.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[2obvious4u]

I am scared of the government enforcing net neutrality. For starters the FCC does a horrible job managing television (Janet Jackson debacle, Carlin's 7 words, etc). The last thing we want is the internet being policed by the FCC and having government morality shoved down our throats. You may be asking for the government to step in and keep corporations from throttling the networks, but that would just how the FCC gets in the door. Once they get in there would be no getting rid of them and you'll regret handing over the networks to their authority. The internet has been working just fine for over twenty years without direct intervention from governments and now that the value of the internet is clear all the governments of the world are struggling to control it. And spare me the DARPA birth place of why government was necessary for the internet, it may have been ill conceived but the internet formed a life of its own away from rules and regulation. It was the ultimate repository of information, then something happened, someone clued in goody two shoes government officials who started talking about the evils of what can be found online and a wave of censorship has been sweeping the internet ever since. We built the worlds first completely free society and it was good, then someone clued in religious radicals and government idealists and they have started killing the internet. Net neutrality isn't a threat to the internet, censorship is and allowing the FCC control over the internet is going to be what kills it.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[2obvious4u]

tell me that the current way the news is reported is good for the political health of the United States

Of course it's not. But that does not mean that for the government to decide what news can be reported, and how it will be reported, is better.

I think we've established that lassez-faire capitalism isn't the answer. But you seem to be saying that the long tail is the answer, and yet the long tail is mostly disproven.

We haven't established laissez-fair capitalism isn't the answer; it has never been tried. Had laissez-fair capitalism been tried when the big banks defaulted there would have been no government bailout. Property prices would have plummeted and the true value would have stabilized as prices reached an equilibrium people would have started buying foreclosed properties on their own. I bought several pieces of foreclosed property because I wasn't a dumb-ass who over-leveraged myself like so many other American's and the financial crises was actually a financial boom to me. My job was in more demand, I had more cash on hand to buy everyone else's dirt cheap shit and came out ahead while everyone else suffered.

Now what is happening is that instead of wealth increasing to those who are responsible, more money is being dumped into the economy devaluing the dollar to those who didn't make mistakes; then on top of that people who actually saw what was happening and didn't over leverage themselves are now being taxed six ways from Sunday. So we're getting hit twice, once through inflation (more dollars in the system means my dollars are worth less) and two higher taxes to pay for the additional dollars.

So to say laissez-fair capitalism isn't the answer is total shit, laissez-fair capitalism has never been tried. And the intervention by the government(hence not laissez-fair) may have saved us in the short term to keep all the over-leveraged people afloat, but they are just digging a deeper hole which one day someone is going to have to fill.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the market to determine the availability of political programming builds hysteresis into the system,

I just can't help but read that as "using democracy to determine the availability of.." and then slip into imagining a 1770s scenario, where we were talking about people handing out pamphlets, instead of broadcasting audiovideo.

Suppose we were talking about Thomas Payne versus one of King George's stooges, and one of them happened to be handing out a shitload more pamphlets than the other one. Wouldn't this have the same effect as what's happening today? And doesn't this "problem" have the same solution (liberty)? Do we limit Payne or force him to hand out a copy of King George's pamphlet with every copy of his own? (Or vice versa, depending on who is printing more than whom.)

People complain that advertisers have prefered to spend their money on "conservative" media, so that it has a higher marketshare, but I'm really skeptical that it really biases public opinion much. There might be 10 conservative talk shows for every liberal talk show, but you sure as hell don't see anything like that in the voting booth.

I think liberals feel threatened by the idea that there might be conservative political candidates some day. But whenever it actually happens that a conservative runs for office, it' a pretty novel thing, and the conservative is cast as a weirdo. There's only one Ron Paul, and while he may inspire some people, it's not like that one person actually has a lot of influence in Congress when the roll is called. Conservativism will always be a fringe, and there's no way the media can ever change this, even the most perverted media.

I think conservativism is self-correcting. People who are passionate about reducing government power, mostly don't want to become part of the government. They might have fantasies about doing a lot of hard work, kissing a lot of asses, and debasing themselves in order to acquire the political power to then use their new authority to give up that power, but few actually waste their lives to do it. It's just not human nature. That keeps it in the realm of fantasy and entertainment. We need to stop thinking about it as some kind of political reality. Remember that Palin ended up leaving government for a job in the entertainment business. That's just how these kind of things go, in real life.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Shotgun]

Who gets to decide what is "blatant overwhelming streams of commercial speech and propaganda"?

It is arrogance to think that you are smarter and more knowledgeable than the rest of humanity. It falls into the "I could fix all the worlds problems if they would just make me king for a day."

Re:Bad news for democracy

[thatisscary]

No sorry, it is fascism. It is the usurpation of private property rights by the government without edict. Happened in Germany, Italy, Spain and France.

What you are saying is I, the private individual have a right to speak, but if the Arbiter (the government) decides what I say is "Unfair" then I (the individual) must give over my property or its use to a third party (or the government itself) to correct an imbalance.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Shotgun]

You ignore the point that sheople can actually be coerced by a minor voice that happens to be right. If the liberal didn't so often ignore reality, they might get more people to listen to them.

I'm very conservative, but I can't stand to listen to Glen Beck. The guy is an idiot, in MY opinion. I tried to listen to Rachel Maddow. She takes idiocy to a new level, in MY opinion. Forcing either one to have more airtime is an even worse way to govern.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The rich are only rich BECAUSE of the poor. Why can't you people get that? There is a certain class of people in the population that can create wealth and are very valuable to society...these people are to be encouraged but they do not do this IN A VACUUM.

Entrepenurs need people to BUY their products and most of them need other people to work for them. Setting up policies that favor the rich as if they somehow deserved it is tantamount to setting up a government or society that favors athletes or the hyper intelligent instead.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you think of someone less likely to actually run for an office? People like Glenn Beck will always stick to the entertainment business. Nobody with such a huge ego is going to go to the effort of raising the funds, PR management, debate with someone who might have fact references, etc in order to get into office, where he finally has the authority to make decisions, and then say, "I have an opinion on this issue, but I think I'll forego that and leave it to the will of the people / the market / another branch of government / another level of government." If Glenn Beck governed, he wouldn't be Glenn Beck.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Idiomatick]

I think Fox news getting a ruling saying that they are allowed to lie about whatever they want is kinda shitty. I wouldn't force them to give both sides or anything like that. But if you can demonstrate that a person lied factually on something being able to shut them down would be helpful. Or force a public apology for the error.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

they make certain promises, and express what their position is on various issues to appeal to the masses.

They get elected, and then they vote in a manner that is diametrical opposite to the sales pitch they gave to get elected.

I think the real problem is that people are too god damn lazy to look at the important stuff. Assuming it isn't the politico's first trip around the school yard their voting record will either back up or contradict the promises they make.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[jwhitener]

Setting aside for the moment the issue of news deliberately lying (which I think could be enforced if libel and slander laws were strengthened), your comment:

"The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech"

Is correct. And the reason that the issues being reported by media has diminished to a few talking points a day, is because of the concentration of media ownership. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

And that is a clear area that the government can regulate. Break up the media giants. Stop allowing these huge mergers with obvious conflicts of interest for the public good.

In addtion, similar to the BBC, the government could also provide a stronger public funded news organization.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[jwhitener]

"What's been shown over and over again is that the conservative talk radio shows and conservative news/opinion channels make the most money because they have the largest audience. The vast majority of people like them better."

It might also have something to do media ownership being increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few large corporations.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well lying has its uses from time to time. If you said, "no lying," on news programs, then news programs couldn't really comment on or even mention any military operations or classified data. I am not saying they leak such data already. They actually don't. However, they do mention that the American military is planning to move into this country and such and such etc. It's possible that some of that info they have is, in fact, lies. However, by even mentioning it, it gives active observers the opportunity to do more digging on the topic mentioned and, maybe, find out some more reliable information. Without the ability to mention such things, the active observer may not have noticed the operation or what have you in the first place thus preventing any further research. I guess what I am getting at is that, while being dishonest is mostly detestable, at the very least it gives a person the ability to say, "No, operation falcon-ford-thunderbird is NOT being conducted... *wink wink.*" Which may be a lie, but most certainly is a good thing is operation falcon-ford-thunderbird is something that the public should know about.

Lying isn't always completely evil in my opinion.

P.S. I am not saying that Fox News, or any other news currently fulfills this role. I am just saying that making lying on public broadcasts illegal seems like short-sighted absolutionism to me.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[BJ_Covert_Action]

American Idiot poses a particular political viewpoint that is, interestingly enough, very relevant to the particular discussion you are having. (Seriously, read the lyrics). More importantly, it expresses said viewpoint in a very popular, accessible manner that rings relevant in young kids who are a few years to hitting 18, the legal voting age. That said, American Idiot (along with many other popularly distributed songs) actually does give you information regarding what you will vote upon. Now, it doesn't give you any hard data, but it does give you an opinion and philosophy which you may not have had access to before. I'm not a Greenday fan myself, but I am just saying, you're drawing a line between political information and information stored in popular cultures seems arbitrary.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Okay, so their familes got screwed 50 - 60 years ago. In the last five decades they have been absolutely incapable of doing anything with themselves? My dad grew up as a member of the poor lower class in the 50's and 60's. He busted his chops to go to community college, which he paid for, so he could get into the middle class. Once there, he decided to raise a family, and invest his money on furthering the prospects for his family. As such, my sister and I were taught to work our asses off and were afforded the opportunity to attend four year schools and earn our degrees. We are both paying off that debt now and my sister has started a family. Currently, I am investing my assets in my nieces' futures. So while the vast majority of poor people in your area came from families that lost all of their money during the 50's and 60's, I don't think you can blame their current lifestyle on those particular years. Frankly, the most successful middle class kids I know today grew up in the same backwards town that I did and their families went through very similar periods of poverty and growth. Fifty years is a long time, full of a lot of opportunity. Capable people tend to find ways to capitalize on those opportunities in my experience.

It's fine and dandy if you want to say that a lot of poor folk have been given the short end of the stick. I think that's probably true. But don't sit there and pretend that just because they got the short end of the stick, they are completely incapable of doing anything with that stick. Back in the 50's and 60's, possibly more than any other time in history, if you wanted to work hard, you could make something of yourself. Countless members of the generation before mine did that. So I don't know how you can argue that the poor folk that you know were completely incapable of doing that themselves.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

This has simply NEVER been the case. 'Lest we forget the days of rampant laissez faire in the 19th century, where the the rugged self-relliant individualist had the government round up the natives, and then give them subsidies so that they could make a profit on a railroad.

How can you call that Laissez Faire? The government was handing out land left and right. It was the -government- who created railroad monopolies, not the people. It was -government- regulation and such that created the railroad. It wasn't the free market.

Don't look at the railroad companies and see a flaw in unregulated markets, see it as a major flaw in government regulation of the economy. The more the regulate it the more monopolies start popping up.

You've failed to support either statement. Furthermore, you seem to be lamenting the fact that the world is much more complicated than it was 50 years ago. Before that, an elementary education was enough for most people to earn a living. Before that, no formal education was required. Today's world is no different.

Ok, look at it this way. If 80% of the people in the US have a GED or high school diploma does it really mean anything? No. If we increased education standards, made it harder for students to pass high school and say now 60% of people in the US have a GED or high school diploma, it becomes a qualification. Because high school is free for everyone, this helps the poor because now they can work hard in school and get free qualifications.

You have to pay for college unless you are good at absolutely everything and can get very high scores on the ACT/SAT. GPAs don't hardly even matter anymore because, again, standards are so lax that it gives no qualifications. Someone who is poor is more likely to do well in high school where they can specialize on what they are good at. Someone might be absolute crap in math but great in English, however their test scores won't reflect that because of the low scores in Math and science. While they will probably get -some- scholarships, if your choice is between eating a meal every night or going off to college, many of the poor are content to simply work minimum wage and stay poor to stay fed.

The problem isn't that things have changed, it is the fact we seem to think that everyone 'deserves' a high school diploma or GED. While it is true that every reasonably intelligent human out there should be able to earn a GED/High School Diploma, if they don't apply themselves or do poorly, they should not receive it because if they do it cheapens the diploma.

Also, your job and education are completely different. Many of the things requiring a college degree really only should require a high school education and some on the job training. University level education is quite honestly useless for many jobs. However, again it is the qualifications and if you get a degree from a university generally you are reasonably intelligent because a high school diploma or GED doesn't prove that anymore since it is cheapened.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

Baloney. It's based on audience size. If the audience is small the show doesn't attract, or keep, sponsors. If the audience is large, it attracts, and keeps, sponsors because the sponsors want to sell their product to the largest possible audience.

The fact that the conservative shows make money means they have a large enough audience to attract and keep sponsors. No sponsor is going to support show A when they can support(advertise on) show B that has an audience 15 to 20 times larger. Thus show A gets canceled as it doesn't create enough revenue, and show B prospers and stays on the air.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

Well, actually, what the fairness doctrine does is say that if there are no profitable liberal/progressive shows to broadcast then the conservative shows can't be broadcast either, or the liberal shows must be run at a loss to the station.

It's designed to keep conservative thought out of the airwaves.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

I think liberals feel threatened by the idea that there might be conservative political candidates some day. But whenever it actually happens that a conservative runs for office, it' a pretty novel thing, and the conservative is cast as a weirdo.

Well, what your point shows, and it's a valid point, is that the mainstream TV news has a very liberal bias. There's no other reason the conservative candidates would be cast as weirdos on a consistent basis. Only those politically opposed to them would cast them as weirdos.

Talk radio is the last bastion of conservative thought and the progressives want to shut it down so that they would then control all the media. That's why they push a "fairness" doctrine that's anything but fair.

I do think you're going to see a big change in voting habits. Many conservatives are going to get voted into office this next election. The silent majority has been jarred into alertness with what has been happening to our country. They are going to vote, and vote in very large numbers. This is why the mainstream media is painting the tea party as racist, inciting violence, etc.... They oppose, and fear, the message and power of the political right so they slander its most visible representatives as much as possible.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

You ignore the point that sheople can actually be coerced by a minor voice that happens to be right.

I have a question for you. How do you "coerce" someone by being right and convincing them that you are? That sounds like healthy debate/discussion in which people are open to actually listen and think about what's being said.

If you're right what you're saying is true. Why is it "coercion" to convince someone to believe truth?

Re:Bad news for democracy

[jwhitener]

http://mediamatters.org/research/200410290004

Phil Donahue was cancelled when his show had more viewers than any other show on the network.

The link above is Sean Hannity interviewing Phil.

While this was pretty much blatant cancelling of a show because it was 'too liberal', I'm sure there are many ways a show could be forced out just by stuffing it in crappy time slots, or failing to promote it well.

But I do agree that the conservative shows tend to be very 'Jerry Springer like', and outrageous does sell very well.

It is a combination of factors driving media of course, but one thing is certain: America is not made up of 20 conservatives for every one liberal.

To be honest, as a liberal, I find it hard to listen to liberal radio talk shows. I find that the level of conversation is usually very low on the intelligence ladder. Same goes with conservative talk radio. But my point, is that I bet most liberals would rather read higher quality news sites than listen to two people argue.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[mike1210]

The fairness doctrine promotes more speech. More accurately, it promotes availability of more viewpoints.

Except when radio stations change formats instead of adding the logistical overhead to make sure that Democrat-mandated socialist, communist and jihadist "viewpoints" are heard.

The fairness doctrine doesn't suppress speech

Yes it does; any host deemed to be "conservative" will have Democrat-mandated "balance" added to their show, thereby taking away from the host's airtime.

Since the megaphone is government sponsored, this is entirely reasonable.

No, it is not reasonable. The government arbitrarily claimed exclusive ownership over the airwaves, something that never needed to happen, as common law would have sorted out disputes (this was starting to happen in 1926, with an Illinois court case, Tribune Co. v. Oak Leaves Broadcasting Station).

As a result of government ownership and regulation, broadcast over the airwaves is the most censored, restricted, and unfree of any medium.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[mike1210]

Liberty is two wolves getting together to pick off the sheep one by one, because the sheep are so conscious of their own liberty that none of them will make common cause with the others.

Finding common cause with others in a voluntary manner is perfectly consistent with liberty. In any case, an individual with maybe two good personal firearms is in a better position than even several others trying to attack him.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[magus_melchior]

There have been a lot of efforts at liberal talk radio and they have all failed. None of them had enough listeners to make the money needed to stay on the air. Whose fault is that? Conservatives? Don't make me laugh.

Same with TV. It's the number of viewers who decide what the most popular talking head shows are. If the liberal news shows were the most popular then they would have the most viewers.

The greatest irony (and I agree with Bill Moyer that this is one of the greatest lies ever embedded in the American consciousness) of this is, conservatives will still claim that their viewpoint is a minority in the media, despite complete domination of talk radio, the most successful cable news channel (though IMO that's an affront to the practice of journalism), and numerous conservative publications, blogs, and think tanks.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it seems as though the Right wants complete domination of all information sources.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[thatisscary]

The fact is that cable companies enjoy monopoly privileges in any municipality they are located in.

That is stringent.

I am saying that any one should be allowed to run a line, dig under the ground -- with property owner's consent (not the city, since oddly enough, if you need to replace your sidewalk, it is the homeowners affair. Hence, he owns the walk.) Then anyone should have the privilege of doing so.

Since almost everyone would gain -- indeed, the digger could pay a fee to each homeowner for the right and the inconvenience, fostering competition, but also allowing the owner to capture some profits.

The fact is regulation -- whether net neutrality or cable regulation generally is constructed to favor those in power.

It is, after all, why you wish governments to mandate open source. You stand to profit, as an open source strategy consultant.

You should be allowed your self interest, but the moment you wish the government to mandate toward your advantage, then the spirit of democracy and equality before the law is completely usurped.

Regulations are never constructed to aid the powerless -- since those governing have nothing to gain and little to fear from the powerless.

It is all about self-interest. If you are not an atheistic mendicant, then you merely prove my point.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Alex Belits]

Who gets to decide what is "blatant overwhelming streams of commercial speech and propaganda"?

Who decides that a country needs military? Who gets to decide that a person can no longer be owned by another person? Your own society redefines things mentioned in your Constitution all the time without bothering to scribble on its fragile pages.

It is arrogance to think that you are smarter and more knowledgeable than the rest of humanity. It falls into the "I could fix all the worlds problems if they would just make me king for a day."

No, it's arrogance to present a current version of political system of one, nearly universally hated country as something backed by "the rest of humanity".

In particular matter of things you have in your Constitution, this is the reason why most countries do not guarantee absolute supremacy of some narrowly set of rules over all laws and actions of the government -- because people do not want to become victims of a tiny loophole that grows into an all-overriding rule few hundred years after being written. Basically, "this is why we can't have nice things" on the scale of a political system.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Shotgun]

Turn your sarcasm detector up one notch, or use SarcasmDetector v3.02.

Who do I call?

[boondaburrah]

I'm wondering who I have to write to in hopes of keeping Net Neutrality (or something like it) afloat.

A friend of mine lives in an area that is entirely served by Charter Cable. If they get to do whatever they want, it's not like he can drop them and move somewhere else if they start messing with his internet.

Well, I suppose there's dialup (shudder).

Re:Who do I call?

[Gr33nJ3ll0]

Exactly! Please mod parent up, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!

Oh Yeah Lets Go

[Will Call Again]

Lets deregulate everything.....that way we can all get taken for a ride....You'd think they would learn after the power and telephone...they deregulate...the price goes up and they do what they want....Hmmm...Let me see...Now my comcast speed will just go to 10 kbps just so they can add 3D TV with their Hi Def... Yeah...I'm happy now!!

Re:Oh Yeah Lets Go

[Agarax]

True deregulation combined with the wonder of fiber would be that anyone with enough capital could start laying down lines and start their own ISP.

Sadly, most places have a government encouraged monopoly.

Re:Oh Yeah Lets Go

[zippthorne]

Yeah, I absolutely hate my cell phone, and miss renting my forty pound land-line handset in their choice of three "stylish" colors...

Re:Oh Yeah Lets Go

[orthicviper]

True deregulation combined with the wonder of fiber would be that anyone with enough capital could start laying down lines and start their own ISP.

Sadly, most places have a government encouraged monopoly.

sounds like a good idea to me

So?

[Chunky Kibbles]

"the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy."

And... so?

"Something's good for consumers but unpopular with service providers; because the service providers might be bitchy let's not do it."

What? The *point* of the FCC is *exactly* to suffer being that middle man.

Gary (-;

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

The legal system has told FCC that is no rights be there.

Why would it use all it's budget in a lost battle?

Re:So?

[QuantumLeaper]

Tell Congress to change the laws. What I mean is write a REAL paper letter to your Congress person, and not email them.

Re:So?

[jimbolauski]

The FCC shouldn't have the right to make laws and enforce them too, that is why comcast won and will continue to win. So instead of trying to pass regulation the legal way the current administration has decided to give up or start taking donations from telecoms.

Re:So?

[interkin3tic]

"the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy."

And... so?

Speaking as an extremely annoyed liberal, the point would be obvious if you were an elected democrat. It's a fight...WE SURRENDER OH GOOD GOD WE SURRENDER DON'T HURT MEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, if its REAL the bloated horrible interface will make their brains explode within seconds!

be careful what you wish for

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but think of the taxes and fees on your phone bills, would you really want that on your internet bill too? Also to the people that constantly bitch about Comcast so much, grow a pair and cancel your service if it's really that bad.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Can't wait...

[rennerik]

This is disastrous. I don't even know where to begin...

While there will undoubtedly be some competition by way of cable companies vs. DSL/fiber providers (pushing video/television and what-not), on both sides there will be hefty opposition against bandwidth sinks like like Hulu and Youtube. I can see it now: "Comcast Cable is now offering unlimited bandwidth! Experience our 6mbps* high-speed Internet for a low fee of only $45.00/month! Some restrictions apply! *Certain content may not be available at full speed, such as YouTube, Hulu, and non-Comcast partners. YouTube is available at full-speed for an additional fee of $1.99/month; Hulu is available for $3.49/month; non-Comcast partners are available for a low monthly fee per site. Please see full price list for details. Comcast partners include sports sites such as NHL.com and NFL.com, as well as networks such as Comedy Central and Syfy. Switch to Comcast today to see these sites at full-speed! (Television network sites are available for $1.99/month)"

And really, nothing can stop them from doing that. They can throttle BitTorrent traffic, slow down competitors' sites, or even detect streaming media and throttle it down.

Plus, micropayments via web games such as Farmville and MMOs have proven to be a good source of income. Maybe they'll offer to unthrottle BitTorrent traffic for a "low low price of $1.99/week".

Yeah, net neutrality is a bunch of bull. If you want fast sites, you need to *pay* for fast sites, you communist. Don't expect handouts like "unlimited internet"; hell, even roads have tolls!

Re:Can't wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats been going on for a while already. If you can access ESPN.com, your paying for this kinda BS. But with them, it's paid mostly to ESPN.com. If your ISP doesn't pay them, you don't get access. I wanna know personally how I can OPT OUT of that so I can stop subsidizing my hick neighbors ability to watch stupid crap.

Re:Can't wait...

[Captivated]

It's more than companies just offering undesirable services; customers have to accept and pay for those services. If they're willing to pay, why not offer it to them?

Re:Can't wait...

[mirix]

Oh even better. You can't just get youtube for $1.99 (which is absurd), but you'll have to get the "fun video package" for $5, which includes some rather unrelated sites.

You want to read the BBC's site? oh! you need the "news package". Now you can see Fox news too.

Re:Can't wait...

[mapkinase]

"even roads have tolls". It's more like I have to pay federal government a fee to be able to enter Germantown from 270.

Re:Can't wait...

[2obvious4u]

So what are you going to do when the FCC decides that porn is immoral and removes it from the internet? I can't wait till the 7 forbidden words grows and expands on the internet.

I'm sorry I'll take profit driven corporations over popularity politics pressured by religious zealots.

Re:Can't wait...

[kenp2002]

This is disastrous. I don't even know where to begin...

While there will undoubtedly be some competition by way of cable companies vs. DSL/fiber providers (pushing video/television and what-not), on both sides there will be hefty opposition against bandwidth sinks like like Hulu and Youtube. I can see it now: "Comcast Cable is now offering unlimited bandwidth! Experience our 6mbps* high-speed Internet for a low fee of only $45.00/month! Some restrictions apply! *Certain content may not be available at full speed, such as YouTube, Hulu, and non-Comcast partners. YouTube is available at full-speed for an additional fee of $1.99/month; Hulu is available for $3.49/month; non-Comcast partners are available for a low monthly fee per site. Please see full price list for details. Comcast partners include sports sites such as NHL.com and NFL.com, as well as networks such as Comedy Central and Syfy. Switch to Comcast today to see these sites at full-speed! (Television network sites are available for $1.99/month)"

And really, nothing can stop them from doing that. They can throttle BitTorrent traffic, slow down competitors' sites, or even detect streaming media and throttle it down.

Plus, micropayments via web games such as Farmville and MMOs have proven to be a good source of income. Maybe they'll offer to unthrottle BitTorrent traffic for a "low low price of $1.99/week".

Yeah, net neutrality is a bunch of bull. If you want fast sites, you need to *pay* for fast sites, you communist. Don't expect handouts like "unlimited internet"; hell, even roads have tolls!

You are more correct then you could ever possible know. Comcast has already had meetings where they discussed "Bundling Domains into Service Tiers" just like cable TV packages. .EDU's and .GOV would be un-regulated. .COMs would be broken up by owner pools (Top 5 content providers, other) .ORGs, foreign domains .cn, .ru, etc.

They already have been researching this. In fact here is a quote:

"The AAA websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Hulu, Google, and YouTube are basically the HBO, Cinamax, and Stars of the Internet. We are missing an opportunity for Premium content pricing and tiered service options...."

Because lack of regulation is ALWAYS good.

[Infirmo]

I mean, just look at the banks.

(Or forestry in the 1980s. Or the savings and loan arena in the 1980s. Or AT&T in the 19th Century...)

Re:Because lack of regulation is ALWAYS good.

[jimbolauski]

Most people won't argue that the lines the telecoms use were purchased by the taxpayers and should be open. what many do object to is a government entity that can write and enforce it's own laws side stepping checks an balances. If net-neutrality is going to happen a law must be written by congress passed in both the house and senate then approved by the president, not the FCC declaring that it can regulate the telecoms and then imposing new rules and fining any company that breaks them. So contact the democrats and ask them why they have chosen not to pass this law they have a majority in both house and senate and should easily find votes from republicans in the senate to stop a filibuster as long as that is all that is in the law.

Re:Because lack of regulation is ALWAYS good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, the FCC has the legal power to change the telecom's "classification", and can regulate "Class 2" services. So this "the FCC should step aside" line of thought has been dealt with by Congress and the President, already.

Re:Because lack of regulation is ALWAYS good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, just look at the banks.

(Or forestry in the 1980s. Or the savings and loan arena in the 1980s. Or AT&T in the 19th Century...)

Its the free market people who hate the centralized banks. I also think that economics is dynamic on such a large scale that its not fair to evaluate the influence of one economic policy or another economic policy without considering the decades before and after. Furthermore, the 1980s didn't happen during some sort of free market utopian era. Enacting a policy and then assuming a good economic turnout is a "proof" of the validity of the policy is like assuming praying to god cured your cancer.

Oh, and the 19th century didn't have telephones.

Great.

[unity100]

Now isps will be able to screw americans using the lines they built on public land with government subsidies, saying 'our network'.

only in america. no really, only in america. there is no other example of this being let happen in any place around the world. this includes turkey. when the isps here tried to bullshit by saying 'these networks are ours', regulatory agency bitchslapped them into submission.

Re:Great.

[anarche]

Bullshit!

Telstra in Australia still screws Aussies with "their" network they built while being a Government company 100 years ago! They refuse to sell "their" network back to the Government cheap enough that we can get round to building decent broadband infrastructure, despite said network being installed - and for all bar the past 10 years maintained - by the taxpayer!

Re:Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia: The Godwin for any discussion on internet access.

Re:Great.

[pipedwho]

Not quite. No one's brought up Stephen Conroy yet.

Oops ... I see your point.

Re:Great.

[shitdrummer]

That's only because the previous Australian Federal Government stupidly decided to sell off the whole of Telstra. It really should have been split into wholesale and retail, wholesale remaining government owned. Once it was sold off, the infrastructure was sold off with it. Telstra has always been difficult to deal with, completely privatising it just made it near impossible.

The Australian National Broadband Network will finally rectify decades of poor telecommunications and infrastructure policy by successive Federal Governments.

Re:Great.

[sonicmerlin]

Except Telstra has now been divided into separate retail and wholesale companies. Not to mention you have a National Broadband Plan to bring super-fast FTTH to nearly every Australian in the country.

Re:Great.

[Idiomatick]

Canada too. Bell got all our lines and since the people paid for them they were forced to resell the lines so competition would happen. Recently the gov decided that bell doesn't HAVE to resell.... which is pretty clearly fucking evil and retarded.

Great !

[aepervius]

FCC "Let us do nothing and the market will regulate itself, and we won't be sued !" (what market ? The local monopoly ? The same telecom which tooks billion and gave nothing back ?) and really what is the frigging mandate from the FCC if it is not to regulate telecommunication "interstate communication" (wire cable etc...) ? And what's up with the fear of being sued ?

Analogy:
EPA "Let us do nothing and the market will regulate itself, we won't be sued by people dumping dioxine in the river"


Oh well, it is not my country, why the fuck I should care if it goes to the drain.

Deregulation, a good thing?

[portnux]

You don't suppose this is all part of a plot to provide Google with the perfect opportunity to enter the ISP market and take it over?

sigh

[Presto Vivace]

we will continue to pay the most and get the least.

Roll over?

[DoofusOfDeath]

The Post paraphrases their sources, who are reading the Chairman's mind, that Genachowski believes "the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy."

So if they're right, the federal govt. can basically be badgered into not doing it's job? Awesome.

Re:Roll over?

[interkin3tic]

So if they're right, the federal govt. can basically be badgered into not doing it's job? Awesome.

Wow, where have you been living?

Yay for the rule of law

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Do you REALLY want government bureaucrats making up what's legal and what's not in a legal vacuum?

REALLY!?!?!?!

This is Good News

[jeko]

Seriously. It's better to have an open, above-board policy that says "We do not regulate this," than an agency that supposedly regulates it but doesn't.

We haven't had effective government regulation of anything since Ronald Reagan. As I sit here, Exxon has yet to pay for or clean up the Valdez oil spill, and BP just destroyed the Gulf of Mexico from Houston to Pensacola because a standard emergency valve was "too expensive."

I'd just as soon drop the pretense. There's no such thing as "government regulation" any more.

Re:This is Good News

[interkin3tic]

We haven't had effective government regulation of anything since Ronald Reagan.

[can't resist]

The fact that we had it before a republican president to me indicates that it works in principle, we just need to figure out how the republican broke it.

[/can't resist]

Sorry for that. In seriousness, I'm not going to argue in general that government regulation is good, since obviously that's not true. In this area though, I think there are plenty of obvious harms and bad scenarios where regulation -would- be a good thing and in fact essential. Even a minimalist regulatory authority against the evil telecoms is better than nothing. Sure, we won't get an FCC or any government agency that actually effectively promotes competition in this area, but a "No, you can't block access to all news sites but 'comcastnews.com'" is more than we'd get without any government oversight.

Re:This is Good News

[Bruce Perens]

At least this convinced the Governator that offshore drilling was not a good way to shore up California's state budget deficit.

Re:This is Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

That's some serious insight right there.

Re:This is Good News

[jeko]

Yeah, Schwarzenegger's a lot of things, but outright stupid was never one of them. :-)

Re:This is Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

"Government doesn't work, elect us and we'll prove it!"

Re:This is Good News

[ratnerstar]

I'm sorry, but that's just flat out incorrect. And worse, it's counterproductive.

Do our regulatory structures need serious reform? Are there areas we are extremely ineffective at regulating? Do companies often find ways to wiggle around stringent regulations? Have politicians gutted good regulations for ideological or fund-raising reasons? Yes yes yes and yes. But to argue that there is "no such thing" as government regulation anymore is to deny evidence all around us. Look at our environment, specifically air and drinking water quality. Look at workplace safety, medical procedures and drugs, automobiles, construction, fishery management, etc etc etc. Now compare them to countries that really don't have any enforced regulations or periods in history where the US didn't; the difference is profound. If you want to see what "no regulations" looks like, go live in Africa or southeast Asia for a while. Then come back and we'll talk.

To say that regulation is dead is to just give up on the idea that we can improve our regulatory systems. It's the same cynical bullshit we see all the time on slashdot. If there's one reason we don't have perfect regulation, it's that people sat around moaning about how it's impossible.

Re:This is Good News

[Bruce Perens]

You can't be serious.

This is sort of like saying that since some country doesn't really have democracy, we should drop the pretense of democracy and be a straight dictatorship.

Dictatorship of the rich is exactly what a plutocracy is.

Re:This is Good News

[jeko]

See my reply to Bruce below. :-)

Re:This is Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying, as a reward for companies destroying everything for a quick buck, we should drop the last bit of regulation?

Yea that sounds like a great idea. Let the "Free Market"(TM) sort it out, right? Heh.

government "regulation"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's government regulation that caused the mess of the current state of broadband.

Monopolies can only exist when government regulates who can and can't offer services.

Today, the FCC ...

[PPH]

... tommorow, the IRS!

Re:Today, the FCC ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... tommorow, the IRS!ga erg aergarfrvgaer gaergear gaerg aergaer g

NEXT THE AUSTRALIAN PIRATE PARTY!

Re:Invisible Hand(TM) from the heavens

[drachenstern]

No it looks like Google is still six months out from being productive on this one. thanks tho.

Disillusioned

[Bob9113]

"...not voting to apply Title II regulation to Internet carriers is tantamount to giving up on net neutrality -- which has been a centerpiece of the Obama administration's tech policy."

As one who bought the hype and strongly advocated for Obama, let me say I think this sentence is under-broad. From Gitmo to torture to open government to bringing everyone to the table on health care, the story has been the same.

The author mentions giving up on netneut, a centerpiece of tech policy. I think giving up on things has been a centerpiece all Obama policy.

Re:Disillusioned

[517714]

Giving up would be okay. Politicians don't give up; they do the opposite of what they promise.

Re:Disillusioned

[Techman83]

Sounds like the Same situation we are in over here in Australia. Kevin Rudd, promising much, delivering very little.

Re:Disillusioned

[randyleepublic]

What do you think they tell the new President on "No-shit day?" ("No-shit day" is what Merle Haggard calls it - when "they" tell the new President how things really work.)
I figure that it goes something like this: "Sir, here are the official CIA projections on the result of a shut down of Saudi oil shipments."
The new President scans the report, muttering to himself, "No shit?" "Oh crap!".
When he looks up, and hands back the report, hand slightly shaking, "Sir, we understand that you have a lot of very admirable goals for your administration." "We want to help you reach those goals." "But we have to operate in the real world, and as you have just read, the real world can be a very brutal place." "I think the best thing is that you help us to prevent the scenario in the report, and we'll help you to accomplish your goals." "OK?"
The new President, knowing that the next thing he says will damn him to hell, "OK."

Re:Disillusioned

[alexo]

What do you think they tell the new President on "No-shit day?" ("No-shit day" is what Merle Haggard calls it - when "they" tell the new President how things really work.)

Do you believe that presidential candidates make campaign promises without knowing "how things really work"? If so, what does it say about the system (both the politicos and the voters)?

Let's take it one step further.
Do you believe that incumbents seeking re-elections still don't know "how things really work" when they make campaign promises?

Re:Disillusioned

[Idiomatick]

He's worked on open government. And he did seriously everything you could ask of him on the healthcare bill. He's done OK overall at making the change he promised happen. GITMO obviously isn't closed which sucks but he is still working on it at least, originally he got shot down by the senate when he tried to shut it down. Anyways, the options were Obama who has shown some progress in the right direction or McCain who promised to keep things the same or go in the wrong direction. I'm not sure how that would have been better... I know it is a a bit of "I voted for Kodos" moment. But you have a two party system in the States, what do you expect.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

Re:Disillusioned

[randyleepublic]

I think that in the past, even the fairly recent past, candidates were somewhat sincere, at least at first. I think they really had a no-shit day. I think that now though, candidates are much less so, as their failure to keep even a semblance of their promises certainly doesn't seem to mean much one way or the other. Still, though, I think that they have a no-shit day. There is stuff that they all know, but then there is the stuff that they don't get to know until they get elected.

Can't we just ban bogus billing?

[swb]

This isn't unique to cable or any other industry (although telecomm has long had a corner on it), but can't we ban the annoying billing/advertising technique of advertising some good or service for $19.99 and then running it up another $20 in tack-ons, even if half of them are for government taxes and fees?

Can't we require a service/good provider to advertise the service/goods AT THE PRICE THEY WOULD ACTUALLY COST instead of some fake low number that you can't actually pay?

Can't the FCC give us ala carte pricing at least?

[swb]

REAL ala carte pricing, where I can pick and choose the channels I want? I know there's some lame version of it available now, if you call your cable company between 4:30 and 4:35 and get that one girl who smokes a lot and actually knows they can do this even though it's like $29.99 per channel when purchased ala carte?

I know there's some bullshit reason they don't do this, something along the lines of the way they "buy" channels from the networks/content producers who insist they take 10 really lame channels to get one good one, and wouldn't you know, they pass the fruits of that bad deal right on down to the viewer.

May I introduce you to the bucket of crazy...

[jeko]

...that was James Gaius Watt, U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Watt

"He suggested that all 80 million acres (320,000 km) of undeveloped land in the United States be opened for drilling and mining in the year 2000.[6] The area leased to coal mining companies quintupled during his term as Secretary of the Interior.[6] Watt proudly boasted that he leased "a billion acres" (4 million km) of U.S. coastal waters, even though only a small portion of that area would ever be drilled.[6] Watt once stated, "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber."[7]

Watt periodically mentioned his Christian faith when discussing his approach to environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."[8]"

Now, I am a Christian -- God loves you, Jesus died for your sins, believe and be saved -- but to suggest that the impending Rapture will eliminate the need for environmental protection is ... a big burlap sack of insanity.

And it got worse:

"During a March 1991 dinner event organized by the Green River Cattlemen's Association in Wyoming, Watt said, "If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used."[25][26]"

And finally got indicted:

"In 1995, Watt was indicted on 25 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand jury.[23] The indictments were due to false statements made to a grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which he had lobbied in the mid to late 1980s."

Of course, Watt was just echoing his boss's views:

"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981.

And Bush just dusted off the old ideas:

"In a 2001 interview, Watt applauded the Bush administration energy strategy and said its prioritization of oil drilling and coal mining above conservation is just what he recommended in the early 1980s.[27] "Everything Cheney's saying, everything the president's saying - they're saying exactly what we were saying 20 years ago, precisely ... Twenty years later, it sounds like they've just dusted off the old work."[27"

Hmm. Have you noticed any issues with our coal mining and off-shore drilling lately?

Re:try to scare the politicos to do the right thin

[Sir_Lewk]

Try to impress on them the notion of what if Comcast should decide not to be supportive of your their reelection webpage?

Unlikely, my politician is already in Comcast's pocket. Why would comcast censor their own politician? :(

no surprise money has its way.

[malbosher]

No surprise corporations have their way and the commons suffers.

If the 1st Internet goes to shit

[presidenteloco]

we'll have to figure out a way to make a second one that retains net neutrality.

Maybe this can be done both bottom up, through open-standards organizations,
and ad-hoc technical committees,
and top-down, with funding and support from the likes of Google and legions
of other would-be information exchangers on the Internet.

We will need a giant "route around the problem" type of solution, involving
new fiber backbones, with different ownership arrangements than presently,
and high-speed wireless for the last mile.

If the telcos start filtering the pipes, we need to render them irrelevant through
collective will to build a better net with more geodesic rather than hub spoke topology.

Re:If the 1st Internet goes to shit

[L4t3r4lu5]

Freenet

Re:If the 1st Internet goes to shit

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be opposition. Financial and legal. Your proposed second internet might become the pirate internet: A place unregulated, where those with the technological skill go for those activities deemed forbidden by the governmental or corporate authorities. Built out of encrypted VPNs, shared storage pools and hacked-together wireless links. Slow, unreliable, difficult... but free.

Re:If the 1st Internet goes to shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure but maybe this will help you: Wireless Leiden project (wikipedia), W.L. network architecture (in Dutch)

Re:If the 1st Internet goes to shit

[Idiomatick]

Nice ideal, but amongst the average person there is not the will. If there was, why haven't ... pretty much all cellphone companies been burned to the ground?

Too big to remain 'free'

[NicknamesAreStupid]

The Internet is a huge opportunity to grab enormous power, like the railroads in the 19th Century. No government is going to stop the rich and powerful from taking it over. Just the thought of controlling the discourse and commerce of society will drive powerful men to do anything -- lie, cheat, steal, kill. People will be damned, of course,

Re:Too big to remain 'free'

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the thought of controlling the discourse and commerce of society will drive powerful men to do anything -- lie, cheat, steal, kill.

Maybe it's time for some good old-fashioned "death to tyrants" then. This scum deserves it.

we should drop the pretense

[jeko]

Hyperbole

Irony

No, I'm not serious.

*BEGIN EMOTIONAL AND FRUSTRATED RANT*

No, scratch that, I think I actually am. If admitting you have a problem is the first step, then let's go ahead and just admit that the FCC is utterly useless. I've got a few dozen dead miners' ghosts who'd like to talk about the uselessness of OSHA, and the line of people who would like to talk about the toothlessness of the EPA begins in Galveston and is expected to run through Pensacola.

The plutocracy we currently have is exactly a dictatorship of the rich. I've been fighting the good fight since before Reagan and it has been a flood of crap from James Watt through Glenn Beck. It has been one long slide down and back.

The Bill of Rights stands in tatters. We measure our national debt in trillions. We're so deeply in bed with various murderous dictators around the world I can't even say the words "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" with a straight face any more. We're torturing prisoners. Our cops are shooting unarmed, handcuffed, face-down pleading men in the back. Texas has disappeared Thomas Jefferson from their civics curriculum. We're so afraid of terrorists we think strip-searching everyone is a good idea. I routinely, day in and day out, hear my fellow citizens argue that women with terminal breast cancer should be left to die in the street, and that only children who can afford it should have access to health care.

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave? I don't even recognize my country any more. We've become a small, cowardly people with no heart, and the justifiable laughingstock of the civilized world.

So in my darker moments, Bruce, yeah, every so often I'm tempted to say "Frack it. Give 'em what they want." America didn't quit smoking until pretty much everyone knew at least one close friend or family member who died hacking up bloody bits of lung cancer in the 70s. Maybe that's what it's gonna take for us to learn. Maybe when someone in every family has been left to die of a curable disease in the gutter, maybe when real unemployment hits 50 percent and stays there, maybe when we go back to the bad old days of Dickens' worst dream, maybe then we'll wake up and start to deal with these issues.

And then I see my kids, and I see their future, and I ease off the "Lethal Weapon" Martin Riggs crazy throttle.

*END RANT*

No, Bruce, I'm not serious. Yes, Bruce, I would dearly love to see the FCC rediscover their mandate and begin fighting the good fight. But if the choice is the FCC as a telco sock puppet, or no FCC at all...

I can't say I'd miss them.

Re:we should drop the pretense

[Bruce Perens]

Tone

We've become a small, cowardly people with no heart

Yes. Here in Berkeley, it's really sad to look at the city behind the free speech movement and how, during two wars, the biggest protest it's managed to mount was to save six trees. And that was driven by a group of rich homeowners in Strawberry Canyon who manipulated a handful of naivé protesters for their own purposes.

Re:we should drop the pretense

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Regulatory Capture

Did anyone READ their plans?

[Anonymous Coward]

I first heard of net-neutrality and thought it was a great idea. Then I read about their plans.

The ONLY thing the FCC's idea of net-neutrality and yours have in common is the name. I'm all for all of your technical definition of it, and 100% against the FCC's version of it.

Here is a hint, just like the "healthcare bill" what you are told is in it and what is actually in it are two different things.

What have we come to

[presidenteloco]

How is it even conceivable that a corporation, which exists at the whim of democratic government, can sue a democratic government that wants to build its own infrastructure. That's like GM or Caterpillar suing the municipal government for having its own works department to build and fix roads.

Utter insanity. Yes Virginia, democracy IS a sham in our current corporate oligarchy.

Re:What have we come to

[gink1]

How is it even conceivable that the government which exists at the whims of our large Corporations could choose to do otherwise than their bidding?

No mystery at all that Big Telecom got what they wanted. And it might be informative to check the officials bank accounts and other assets for signs of huge payments. After all that's how business is done in the Corporate States of America.

If this is true of almost every congressman, why wouldn't it be true of government officials?

Gentlemen, we have been sold down the river!

Re:What have we come to

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Heh, you're joking right ?

The reason they can sue is that the government (that would be you, in case you don't know this) demanded they'd build a huge telecom infrastructure for free, and signed a contract with these companies.

Of course, now that you have the infrastructure, you don't want to hold up your end of the bargain. That's called theft, of course. Or fraud, if you deny it.

Re:What have we come to

[Nick_13ro]

How is it even conceivable that a corporation, which exists at the whim of democratic government, can sue a democratic government that wants to build its own infrastructure. That's like GM or Caterpillar suing the municipal government for having its own works department to build and fix roads.

Utter insanity. Yes Virginia, democracy IS a sham in our current corporate oligarchy.

That's because the world doesn't run on principles, laws or constitutions. It runs according to who is the strongest and prepared to impose their will. Always has. "Democracy" is just propaganda to get the sheeple to believe otherwise and think they're "free".

Am I missing something?

[tpstigers]

Personally, I'd rather not see control over bandwidth put into anyone's hands. But if it is going to be controlled, is there some reason I should prefer to have my government controlling it rather than my ISP?

Re:Invisible Hand(TM) from the heavens

[uncqual]

It's true that Google will let you go wherever you want...

Unfortunately they will track everywhere you go and add that info into their galactic databases. Then they will use that info to help sell you crap. But it will be convenient, you won't even have to bother to actually order stuff - Google will just know what you want and order it for you (conveniently debiting your bank account and adding a nominal Google Product Procurement Fee to the charge). Google will even know when you will be home to receive it (since, of course, you SHALL use Google calendar) when it's delivered by Google Parcel Service.

And

[mahadiga]

"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagon

This is NOT giving up.

[pavon]

Contrary to the Huffington Post blogger hyperbole this is not "tantamount to giving up on net neutrality". It is deferring to Congress to define laws on net neutrality, rather than asserting wide regulatory powers by reclassifying broadband as a Title II telecommunication service. There are some good aspects to this approach.

While it is true that Title II includes sections non-discriminatory behavior, allowing some sort of net neutrality regulations, it goes far beyond that and also includes things like universal service, mandated rural subsidies, pricing structures and a whole bunch of reporting requirements. Even if you agree with applying these sorts of regulations to broadband, it should also be considered that they were written with the telephone/telegraph industries in mind, and many details of them may not be the best approach for broadband.

Finally, no aspect of cable has ever been classified as a Title II service, and you can bet there would be huge opposition by the cable companies. While a majority could be secured in congress to support a net neutrality law, when you throw in all the other baggage that Title II entails, I don't think there is as much support. If the FCC attempted this reclassification without congressional support, they could find new knee-jerk legislation heading their way.

I think the best approach is to work with congress to develop net neutrality laws.

Re:This is NOT giving up.

[petrus4]

Contrary to the Huffington Post blogger hyperbole this is not "tantamount to giving up on net neutrality". It is deferring to Congress to define laws on net neutrality, rather than asserting wide regulatory powers by reclassifying broadband as a Title II telecommunication service. There are some good aspects to this approach.

Wide regulatory powers are exactly what is needed. Anyone who supports, in any way, the right of corporations like Verizon to even exist, is a suicidal, ignorant fool, who does not deserve to continue to survive, and who very possibly will not. Corporations must be given nothing. They must be starved, driven back, and ultimately destroyed.

They do not truly serve human beings. They do not serve life in any form. The only purpose of their existence is the accumulation of fiat currency, and if they are permitted to continue to exist, eventually, *no* form of carbon-based life will.

The net neutrality issue is only one aspect of the subjugation, tyranny, and ultimately, total desolation that they create.

Re:try to scare the politicos to do the right thin

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely, my politician is already in Comcast's pocket. Why would comcast censor their own politician? :(

Even if your politician is in Comcast's pocket, are you sure he wants to reinforce that situation? I get the feeling most politicians would like to be doing the right thing except that doing the right thing isn't what gets them elected. That still doesn't mean they're up for making things worse for themselves.

Re:Invisible Hand(TM) from the heavens

[soundguy]

I'll only be going to one /24 that they'll know about - my colocated servers, where I'll proxy out to any damned place I want to over my multi-homed connection.

Links.

[jeko]

Tone

Apologies
 

Re:Great, Great Profits

[gink1]

I keep expecting the other shoe to drop - pay as you go internet.

It's simple, the ISP keeps track of your website access and what you do there (bandwidth, downloads, etc).
Then they bill you based on each and every site you use.

Think of all the profits!

Re:Invisible Hand(TM) from the heavens

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Do you guys seriously think google doesn't use QoS for their own services ?

We're talking about guys who are voice service providers here. Do you know of any one company that delivers voice service without using QoS over their own network ?

Google violates network neutrality in exactly the same way as AT&T and Comcast do : google's own services are massively preffed above any external site.

Re:So? Hit em hard - break away clean.

[Bob_Who]

The art of war between bureaucracy and plutocracy is to stay the hell out of court. The Com-cos who bill everyone for bandwidth have an edge where courts are involved. Justice loves issues controlling large piles of cash and power while indulging in their judicial self righteousness, which they adamantly deny. And they love wasting a few years to be sure that the coast is clear by the time they render a decision. It seems to me the FCC's calculation may be the preliminary groundwork to winning the edge against greedy evil scum shareholders. If authority is low, wait them out, retreat, regroup, and then come back after them later with both barrels loaded - A brand new bureaucracy: Homeland Neutrality - and instead of Coast Guard, they will be in the USPS and patrol in fleets of U.S. Mail jeeps and the pony express. It will resurrect the US Postal service. Also, anytime a politician lies on the wire or sells penis pills, its mail fraud. Lets be committed to results, and not dwell in protracted legal disputes. Lets back off the FCC, and them kick them in the balls with a surprise pseudo agency concoctions, and take back our entitlement to free swag for the masses, toll-free highways and superhighways, and free radio and cellular and wireless and satellite. If it moves through the air invisibly then its should not appear on a bill. Free electrons for an illuminated democracy

Negotiating ploy...

[bwcbwc]

This isn't giving up. It's to force congress to write proper legislation to define the level of authority the FCC has over broadband. Why should the agency foot the bill for endless lawsuits when a law giving them the authority would let them use their budget for more effective purposes.

Of course, the drawback to this technique is that it puts the net neutrality debate into the hands of congress.

net neutrality has nothing to do with QoS

[Anonymous Coward]

net neutrality has nothing to do with QoS. That is a lie passed around by ISPs who do not want Net Neutrality to take place. And you swallowed it like the corporate bitch you are.

If by free you mean "200Billion"

[Anonymous Coward]

If by free you mean "200Billion" and by "your end of the bargain" you mean "they failed to build the network you paid for", then you're right.

Though this does change your assertion 180 degrees...

Re:If by free you mean "200Billion"

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

How did they fail ? Please illuminate me.

I ask, because all those agreements were written before the internet even existed, so if you're going to complain that your $ubercheap internet account does not give you unlimited kiddie porn downloading rights, you'll find me less than understanding.

And incidentally, where does the 200 billion figure come from ?

Re:Invisible Hand(TM) from the heavens

[Svartalf]

Ah... But you do realize that the backbone provider your CoLo is using could just as easily be blocking your traffic unless you pay your protection racket money (Remember that Verizon talked about billing Google for their traffic...).

Re:Invisible Hand(TM) from the heavens

[Svartalf]

QoS has nothing to do with "net neutrality" although it is part of the tools used to violate the same.

Net neutrality has to do with applying things like QoS to traffic types for the sole purpose of extracting higher fees out of places like Google or hindering if they don't, hindering competitor traffic, and the like.

Don't confuse the tools with their usage. There IS a distinct difference within the two.

MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Informative, insightful, whatever floats your boat. More people need to realize how important the various unelected government posts are, and how their long-term mismanagement has hurt America.

Never Worked That Way Before!

[Anonymous Coward]

It never worked that way before, so you working with an ideal that would never happen in reality. Please wake up to humanity's flaws before we repeat history!

A Simple Solution...seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

If the government really wanted to solve this problem, and do it quickly, then the FCC could simply define (in a legal manner) the term "internet" to mean equal and unfiltered access to any point on any publicly connected computer network. This would prevent the telecoms from selling "internet service" and then screwing with our access.

Problem solved.

So what can we do?

[clo1_2000]

This is a serious question, what can we do? What can I do to start turning the tide on this. What organization would help us fight this? I'm not being facetious here, if we don't do something now, we will all suffer the consequences. So what can a geek we do?

Re:Invisible Hand(TM) from the heavens

[drachenstern]

How the hell was that flamebait? Offtopic or unfunny perhaps, but did I criticize Google or something? I'ld take even troll for that one.

Anyways, not like the ole karma will take a hit off this one, but I'm just curious who the hell thought I was flamebaiting...

Keep the FCC out of it as long as possible!

[Shompol]

Today they want to protect "net neutrality",
Tomorrow THEY will tell you what to surf and what not to surf, all the while charging YOU insane FCC surcharge for using the internets. We know this will happen, because FCC is a branch of government, and the latter has been corrupted by Big Media money. Oh, and don't you dare to surf pr0n on FCC-net while the CommunicAtions DecencY Act is in force.