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The Telcos' Secret Anti-Net Neutrality Strategy
NoMoreHelio writes "The political blog ThinkProgress lays out big telecom's plan to attack net neutality. The blog obtained a secret PowerPoint presentation from a telecommunications industry front group (PPT) that outlines the industry strategy for defending against regulatory attempts by the FCC. The industry plans to partner with two conservative 'astroturfing' groups, best known for their work seeding the Tea Party movement. Today's revelation from ThinkProgress comes as Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) joined various telecom-funded front groups to unveil an anti-net neutrality bill."
While I am for net-neutrality, and we do need some form of regulation on the internet to keep the providers fair and clean, do not, and I repeat, do not assume that the government is pushing net neutrality for the purpose of helping you. There have been many times in the United States where our government will push something like Social Security, saying "This is to help the widows with children", which, yes, is a noble cause that many can't argue with. But look at it now, it is a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work.
I'm a bit curious who you think receives Social Security checks. You got the survivor and child benefit correct, but the only other two benefits are a retirement benefit available at age 62 (that's a reduced benefit; you don't get the unreduced benefit until age 66 or 67 depending on when you were born) and a total disability benefit which generally requires a year or two worth of paperwork to prove that your disability is severe enough to end your working life.
I think it's somewhat arguable whether or not the survivor benefit is strictly necessary in this day and age. But I'm curious how these social security benefits which you can only get at the end of your working lifetime are "a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work."
Do you think that Social Security is welfare? It isn't.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
The regulation would be to keep things the same. To prevent things from getting worse. Not to change the internet.
Sent from my PDP-11
So far we have seen all manner of attrocities. ISP companies lying to its users and the government about its activities with regards to blocking and tampering with traffic is just part of it. Hijacking DNS and all sorts of other nonsense is just the beginning of what ISPs want to do to make even more money than ever before. They want to regulate what applications you can run and, who knows, maybe even what operating systems you can use.
The push for net neutrality is to stop what they are trying to do and prevent them from doing even worse. Think back to how the phone networks were handled before various regulations were placed on it. You couldn't even own your own phone!! You had to use theirs and it had to be leased! Even now they still charge for stupidity like "tone dialing service" and crap like that. How would you feel about getting charged extra for using https or ftp? It took more than the application of regulations to clean up the mess that was the phone network -- it took the courts system to break up the phone company and then serious regulation. And what did the public "suffer" from this? We suffered regulations like minimum quality of service requirements among others. We all got better service and better flexibility and you could use your own phone! I would expect nothing less from net neutrality regulations.
Except that the internet is not and has never been "the same". If the internet was kept "the same" we'd be having this conversation on Usenet over a period of days while we each waited for the UUCP batch job to run and update the posts.
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one? Regulation tends to protect the status quo. I'm not sure if it's really the way we want to go with regards to the internet. I've maintained for awhile now that it would be better to remove the legal/regulatory barriers that keep new upstarts from entering the ISP market. I would much rather see a multitude of companies competing for my business than a regulated duopoly that buys off regulators to protect it's business model.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Are you old enough to remember how close we came to having several of the Great Lakes become completely dead bodies of water?
Before the EPA stepped in, the Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland actually caught fire. Today, thanks in largest part to the EPA, you can fish for snook, redbreast, sunfish or tarpon. If you've been to Cleveland in the last ten years, you'll find that the river no longer smells like creosote.
Since the EPA, the air in ever major American city, with the possible exception of Huston, has improved considerably. There were days here in Chicago when you could see green, stinking smog hanging over the entire downtown area. The Chicago River was a stinking mess, with factories and mills up and down the river dumping waste into it.
Today, living on the river is highly desirable and there is even sport fishing on the river. People can enjoy eating lunch along the river and you no longer have to hold your nose like you did twenty years ago.
If you want an example of what happens when there is insufficient, weak regulations on industry, you might have seen a little story in the paper sometime last week about an accident in the Gulf of Mexico, which, by the way, is not even in the top ten of oil spills. Yet. At what point do you think the "invisible hand of the free market" would have acted to clean up those environmental disaster?
If you can point to an example of a place where unregulated industry led to a healthy, prosperous, happy society, please do. Otherwise, you are just spouting nonsense.
You are welcome on my lawn.