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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."
PowerPoint is just like a jack-in-the-box, waiting to popup and reveal secrets. First a war in Afghanistan and now a war against internet users.
This isn't so much about Net Neutrality as it is about them not wanting the government to have control of the situation. It wouldn't matter what the government wanted to do, the Telecoms want to be the ones in charge.
Net Neutrality? more liek net BRUTALITY am i rite?
seriously, who writes this crap?
Dear AT&T,
How much for the Slashdot / Reddit / Gmail / Gaming Bandwidth package? Just planning ahead...
They favor small government when it helps big business. They favor new legislation when it helps big business. They are experts at fooling average hard-working folks into voting against their own best interests.
Web Page Traffic: 200 visitors in 3 days.
/snicker
Oh yeah, we're gaining some real traction here! Better get started installing that OC3...
Okay... so let's say I'm an ISP. I don't shape any traffic. A small percentage of my customers are slamming my transit connection with p2p traffic. What if I setup peering connections to large content providers (google, Netflix, Directv, yahoo, large hosting company networks, voip providers, etc)? Now all non-peered BitTorrent traffic will go through the transit link where is could get clogged up. All the sites the most of my non-peering users are interested in get nice fast connectivity. I also setup an alternate network for my own VoIP services -- no QoS, but traffic gets routed off congested points on my network.
If an ISP does this, are they violating net neutrality? Does the government get to tell me which networks I peer with? Is peering now a *bad* thing if the government has too much control over the "neutrality"?
I wonder what completely wrong definition they'll assign "net neutrality" to?
Given that their first 2 scare lines involved the phrase "government takeover", I think they'll take a similar route...
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Let's see what kind of absurd talking points come out of this, at the end of the day expect outright lies to be gladly paid forward by the "journalists" / stenographers with corporate media. Frankly if they succeed more power to them for exerting that much influence over us proud, "free" people.
It isn't smaller government. The telecoms still use public land and got a -ton- of funding from the government.
All net neutrality should be, is the people who had their money taken from them by the government and given to the telecoms receiving what they paid for essentially.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm taking that as sarcasm. I am wondering though, is net neutrality going to end up a victim of partisan politics? The FCC under Obama says "Net Neutrality good" so the GOP leadership says "Net Neutrality bad" for no reason other than taking the opposite side of Obama seems to be their strategy? While taking a good chunk of telecom money, of course. Combine that with the fact that many elected democrats aren't exactly the staunchest supporters of net neutrality, and obviously also take money from telecoms.
You can't give someone money and then later impose conditions on what you must do with it, that violates rule of law and the very idea of exchange and contracts. Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
They elected GWB twice, it seems they can get plenty done.
The only role the government should have in regards to net neutrality is enforcement power over ISPs which treat any content travelling through their network specially. Simple law, simple way to detect when it occurs, simple enforcement via fines. We have a god given right to freedom, and our government should be a facilitator of that. Considering we dumped billions of dollars into the telcos to build they lines on which they operate I would say by proxy we do indeed have a god given right to the internet, granted payment must be provided to maintain the service of course. Don't trust the government, or anyone, I know. But the legislation to declare net neutrality does not seem in any way to require being complicated to the point of hiding ulterior motives.
I think we should make Internet access available to the poor, in this day and age lifting oneself out of poverty would pretty much require having Internet access.
Stop the Government from taking over the internet!
Umm Hello?! If you Assholes remember, the Government *created* the Intranet, specifically Al Gore did. They then said, Hey All, we're going to turn this really nifty thing, that we created, over for the public good. I know I lived through it. Despite your best efforts to market/rewrite the web's history. I was on BBS's, CompuServe and Prodigy. I had a Accoustic coupler, and was war-dialing open systems before your fucking CEO's had even a wet dream over how much money could be made.
You Telco Asshats have proven over and over and over again that you are incapable of intelligently stewarding teh Intrawebs.
Yes. Just like we had bureaucrats mandate the seat belt, fire alarm, and safety elevator.
...though, I still don't know what the real problem is. The biggest issue I hear people talk about it capping the traffic. Okay, fine, make companies advertise the fact they cap. Do you really think net neutrality will increase or decrease the amount of companies wanting to cap traffic? The government doesn't have to stomp around defining QoS and shaping.
Have there really been issues where ISPs have purposely blocked traffic -- and if they did, I would think it would be found out pretty quickly.
Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently.
And I never said that they should go around telling people what they can do with their property. I'm absolutely opposed to government control, however, if they are going to take my money, I should have a say what it is used for. The internet implies neutrality by definition. When we paid these millions of dollars to telecoms we weren't wanting non-neutral internet connections because such things were nearly impossible with the technology level. However, with deep packet inspection and the like, its becoming a threat.
If a company wants to not use public land and public funding, fine, do whatever you want. However, the moment you use public land or public funding, you should be subjected to the will of the people. The will of the people is pro-net neutrality, and the lack of net neutrality has almost no positives and many negatives.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You sound bootstrappy. Would you like to tell my 87 year old grandmother she needs to get a job?
I know, the poor should be excluded. Hell, they should just die.
Awesome. Perhaps we should deny votes to those who don't pay taxes, or those who get a full refund?
I understand your point, but your argument is so classist and tea-bagger-rific that I can't take it seriously.
so the GOP leadership says "Net Neutrality bad" for no reason other than taking the opposite side of Obama seems to be their strategy?
No, I think the GOP has always come down on the "net neutrality bad" side ever since there was a question of it starting back in 2005 with the SCOTUS ruling in NCTA vs Brand X. For far too long now, the GOP SOP has been "Corps good. Privatize the public commons, better!"
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Hi there! Are you from Freedom Works, or one of those "regular American" grassroots Tea Party folks? Just curious.
to help the widows with children... 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 hear this a lot, but I've never been able to find a lot of evidence that a large portion of Social Security goes to "social leeches" who are just too lazy to work. Do you have data?
Tweet, tweet.
The internet in the US should be under government regulation like the other bandwidth is.
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.
No, but we sure can impose conditions on future money or land use rights. If the telcos want to lease the space for each and every pole let them do what they want. If they want to use right of ways provided by the public they need to learn to deal.
Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning
What are you talking about. Gov't tells you what to do with your property EVERY DAY! Your house required a building permit to build even though you may have already purchased the land. Your car has to be registered and insured, and you have to follow a long list of rules while driving. The government says that you have to have electrical wiring inspected, and that structures built must conform to the building code. I'd like to turn my backyard into a feedlot to increase the efficiency of my income, but I'm sure the gov't would have something to say about that.
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
My point it, watch the other hand.
Were you watching the other hand when the FCC reclassified ISPs as "information services" from their previous categorization of "telecommunications services" back in the 2005 SCOTUS ruling of NCTA vs Brand X Internet Services?
IMNHO that was an absolutely terrible decision. One thing to note is that the SCOTUS ruled that the FCC had the legal right to make such classifications, not which one was the right one, just that the FCC could make the decision itself.
All the FCC is currently doing is returning to that original classification of 5 years ago.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Also, you do not have a god given right to the internet.
No, God specifically told me I have a right to the Internet. He said we all do.
Its more than that, the republicans have hated the internet regulations ever since Clinton burned the RBOCs back in the 90s with open lines. This is the backlash from that. Heck fiber roll outs themselves are backlash from that, not because they want to provide better service, but because they want to be the only ones providing that service.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
I am wondering though, is net neutrality going to end up a victim of partisan politics? The FCC under Obama says "Net Neutrality good" so the GOP leadership says "Net Neutrality bad" for no reason other than taking the opposite side of Obama...
Ya think?
Warning: These links contain dangerously high levels of Glenn Beck.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The FCC under Obama says "Net Neutrality good"
The FCC is playing it's own political game. Broadband Reports has been covering it for quite awhile now. Essentially they plan on ignoring the recommendation of their own study groups. The studies they've done have concluded that "open access" (i.e: Verizon/Time Warner/etc are forced to let competitors use their fiber and copper plants) is the best way to increase competition. They have ignored these studies in favor of moving forward with a "third way" that won't do anything to address the mono/duolopy of ISPs.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
For far too long now, the GOP SOP has been "Corps good. Privatize the public commons, better!"
And that should be a reason for supporting net neutrality. We've given the telecoms tons of money, tons of land, etc. its a myth that all these ISPs got to be so large because of their own work and its the big evil government who is regulating them. That is completely false. It is the big evil government who said "here have a few million dollars, 'modernize' America, give it internet access" and then handed out public land left and right so its citizens could have internet access. However, now the internet access is no longer internet access but rather dumbed-down media portals in essence.
If it was privatized we sure wouldn't have these huge ISPs who can conspire to block net neutrality but instead smaller, regional companies competing for your business.
Really, if arguing from liberal, conservative, libertarian, green or just about any other political ideology, net neutrality in the US makes sense for the majority of ISPs.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
These folks really do think the poor and old should be taken care of by a charity and failing that be left to die in the street. These folks are basically just children that never grew up, not much that can be done about it.
I'm absolutely opposed to government control, however, if they are going to take my money, I should have a say what it is used for.
That kind of tenuous reasoning could lead to people organizing and shutting down big corpulent wastes of money like HEW, the EPA, etc.
And if public money has gone to National Public Radio (a certain amount has and can be documented) where's my open mike?
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.
How are the right of ways provided by 'the public'? I am sure that a certain percentage of it is on publicly owned land. Most of it is on private property however. Perhaps issues of eminent domain enter into it, and the fairness of that needs to be considered. So let's just shut it all down and let the litigation begin, eh?
The fact that this guy can get on TV and have people believe his shit makes me sad for this country. Honestly this will lead to America becoming a "developing" nation in short order.
...the video gamers who are the ones who need net neutrality legislation the most to prevent ISP's from choking off their bandwidth... Clever, and probably very effective, too. No one ever seems to challenge their lies, and the general population is more likely to believe lies than they are the truth (i.e. death panels). Amazing that they can get away with this, but these guys are good. They've been taking away the livelihood of the middle class for a generation and yet people are still cheering them on!
Anybody else notice the slide showing the Facebook page has a tab open titled "How to get a screenshot"? Are these people *that* technically incompetent?
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
1. Create sea of regulation preventing competition from entering telecom business.
2. Achieve government-sanctioned monopoly on said services.
3. Screw over users.
4. Prevent users from regulating against being screwed in the name of freedom.
5. Profit
Should the bandwidth on the thin-net (10Base-5) in your moms basement connecting all your Linux boxes together be under government regulation like the other bandwidth is? How about the wire leading to your doorbell button? And don't get me started on that electric fence out there surrounding that cornfield...
Why should any of it be under government regulation? We're not a socialist State.
Did anyone notice where this story came from? Think Progress, the far-left-liberal group.
Recently a bill was introduced in the House that would provide the FCC the ability to regulate ISPs, it was written by Free Press, a badly misnamed organization dedicated to regulating an over-use of free speech, and, among other things, criminalizing private media ownership in favor of "democratic" collective ownership, regulating bloggers, reporters, instituting government-funded reporting and journalism, and re-introducing the fairness doctrine. Woa! And government doesn't want to regulate ISPs, they just need to? Nothing bad could come of this? Seriously?
Since when were ISPs bad? They provide a great service to many people. Remember what the Internet is. It's a network of privately owned computers, linked together. Each individual has the say as to what happens with their computers and their network, each individual has every right to say how to route their data. Engineering and internal self-regulation has always solved more problems than outside regulation done by force. This is how the Internet has always operated, why are we now criminalizing this idea of Internet freedom?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Never, ever, ever, believe what you hear anybody say about a particular group when they call it 'the teabaggers.' You might as well be talking about the Mario Brothers or Elmer Fudd. They're made-up parodies, too.
On the other, hand if you like teabagging why skirt around the issue. Suck it in, dood.
"Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning"
Its a telco with Tier x network 'rights' and they got tax payer funding and regional competition locks.
If you want to run an ISP or a Bell and offer "internet" services, every packet is equal just as every other ISP or a Bell will treat yours as equal.
No slow downs, caped streaming rates, priority for your big media partners.
If the government was asking private banks, rail, power or other private optical networks to "open" you might have a point about "later impose conditions".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The land owner is not paid for the land that is within X feet of the road being used for these poles.
If they telcos want to act like they own the ball, I say let them pay for it.
That kind of tenuous reasoning could lead to people organizing and shutting down big corpulent wastes of money like HEW, the EPA, etc.
The HEW and EPA -are- large wastes of money for the most part. History has proven that the largest polluters aren't corporations but rather the government. Pollution is generally caused by inefficiency, when technology catches up pollution ends up resolving itself. The department of health ends up really only working because of economies of scale, and most health care problems are caused by the government (patents, etc). Private firms unencumbered by government-created problems usually end up producing more workable, safe solutions.
And if public money has gone to National Public Radio (a certain amount has and can be documented) where's my open mike?
Radio is no longer as big of a deal. You are much more likely to gain an audience through the internet or TV. You might not be able to get an open mic because it is limited, on the other hand if you and a lot of other members of the public opposed a certain section of NPR or wanted to add in something and NPR refused, you might have a case.
Plus, I don't think NPR is making billions of dollars at taxpayer expense like ISPs are (you don't have to pay to get NPR directly, you do to get internet access)
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
For the same reason as other government regulations.
What does our economic system have to do with rational regulation? Even the father of capitalism favored a regulated market. Before you use that big S word again, how about you go read a book, ok?
Fine, then I'm going to blame Bush for 9/11. Happened when he was president so must be his fault.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
You're wasting your time, they don't believe in society. If someone wants a nuclear waste dump in their backyard then by god they should have one!
"Your car has to be registered and insured, and you have to follow a long list of rules while driving."
Hold on a second there. You don't have to have your car registered or insured or follow any laws if you're on private property. You're free to do whatever the fuck you want in private. But when you bring your car onto PUBLIC roads, you don't have the same rights. That road isn't yours, it's the taxpayers'.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
These idiots buy tea to destroy and you are surprised when they vote for a tool?
These people do not even know what the tea party was. I will say it speaks volumes about our society and education in America.
As AstroTurf goes that's nice. Now how can you say that these providers have some sort of right to do with their service as they please when it is the governament that has provided them the platform they do business on? Ever wonder why there are only two wires that enter into your home (twisted pair and coax)? Is it because these private entities were so ingenious it was their sole brain child to send signals via a conductor? Not even close. Now years after they have been milking their gift from the governament and the people they want to limit the crap out of it to stem competition on telephone and television communications and say if you don't like it we are taking our ball and going home. I would rather rip out the coax and the twisted pair replace them with one set of fibre wires and let them see how long they last. None of these companies have provided anything even marginably valuable but have continued to exist solely because they refuse anyone access to their wiring.
You have to admit from a consumers stand point right now most providers have a vested interest in telephone, Internet and television and right now each is sold seperately and they will lose money if you were able to find another business to supply your services. I could buy one monthly Internet account for approx $50 and the buy a voip line for approx $20 monthly and eventually online cable providers will get on board. Even if you pay the exact same amount for each service you will not in many cases be paying it to them. So as long as they can screw with your Internet connection the can ensure no one else can cash in on these other services. They have so much vested in your connection getting filtered how can you truly believe them?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
You guys seriously want to have a bunch of bureaucrats go in and regulate something that has been so successful and has provided so much information and knowledge...
I've been involved with the internet since the very early days when it was a government project. A big part of why the internet has been so successful is because the military and government did a pretty decent job building it. So you're okay letting government design and build it, but suddenly they can't handle oversight.
Corporations are not the solution, corporations are the problem. Without the government having the ability to enforce fair dealing, corporate interests are going to stomp all over consumers. Maybe you remember what happened when we let the banking industry self-regulate. Or did that little episode not make it on to Fox News? It'll be that on the internet.
What's really interesting is how often corporate interests are lining up with the "grassroots" organizers of the tea party.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
best known for their work seeding the Tea Party movement.
All these retarded terms related to grass are getting annoying.
I'm not astroturf grass roots anything.
No one 'seeded' me to think we should be hanging senators for their crimes.
There's no place like
Look up Common Carrier sometime (how about now? I dare you to learn). Net neutrality is not a new and exotic concept, and it is not unreasonable or out of line with how business is done in other industries right now.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
They are against government doing things for other people. Note that they blaim Obama for the rescue plan, that was enacted by Bush and the result of republican policies, the neo-conservative movement started with Reagan.
First, the name calling makes you sound like a five year old... I know you think you're being funny, but it just comes off as snarky, at best, every time it gets used.
/shock), which, yeah, pissed off fiscally conservative people even further. The last few years of Bush pushed them over the edge, causing them to turn on Bush... but where are the Bush fiscal policy bashers from the left now that Obama is in power? Seems as though they disappeared when their side "won" even though Obama is exacerbating Bush's bad fiscal policies that they supposedly disagreed with. For as much as the left criticizes the Tea Party people for being, uh, late to the party, it seems as though the left has completely abandoned it once they gained the White House.
Second, learn some history. The neo-con movement didn't start with Reagan, it started in the 1950s and 60s, as international interventionalist Democrats split with their own party and joined in with the Republicans. In fact, that's where the whole "neo" part about them being conservatives comes in... they were a "new kind of conservative."
Third, I'm sure you're up on your talking points, but most Tea Party people are as just as opposed to Bush's role in the bailouts as they are Obama's. In fact, many Republicans who voted for TARP are facing a similar backlash to incumbant Democrats (see McCain getting a serious challenge from Hayworth, Bob Bennett getting the boot in the Utah Republican primary last week, Crist leaving the GOP in Florida when it became apparent that Republicans wouldn't support him in the primary, etc).
But also, let's not forget that Obama voted for TARP himself (which makes him as bad as Bush), and then he went on to create even more bailouts and a giant new entitlement that we obviously can't afford (CBO projections continue to increase as of this week
It is like financial regulation, the banks are dead against that, but want very strict laws that enable them to collect on debts. Freedom is me telling you what I can do and you can't.
Big banks are all FOR financial regulation. It raises the bar on new competition trying to get their foot in the door. You don't think the big banks actually suffer, do you? It's kinda like how Microsoft is all for software patents (which are another type of government regulation) - it makes it harder for the little guy to compete and does absolutely nothing to hinder the big guys, whom generally take a Mutally Assured Destruction approach with each other (I won't sue you for violating my software patents if you don't sue me for violating yours).
Look at the SEC and what good their regulation did. They totally ignored Bernie Madoff (under Bush) and Enron (under Clinton), giving regular folks a false sense of security in the market. If there was no SEC, people wouldn't have a default assumption that the market isn't rigged and they would invest more carefully. Likewise, that FDA stamp on your meat doesn't mean the FDA inspected that piece, just that the facillities met requirements the day the FDA showed up. Ditto for your local health departments inspections of restaurants. In fact, "crappy" chain restaurants like McDonalds are FAR more rigorous than your local Dept of Health when it comes to food safety inspections (at least back when I was a manager in the mid 90s, corporate inspects 4 times a year, one of which is a surprise inspection, compared to once a year for the state, which notifies you that you'll be inspected "sometime this month" before showing up). BigChainFood wants to protect its brand from bad franchisees, the Health Department wants to do the minimum to meet their job requirement.
Back to the topic of Net Neutrality, I've never seen a single definition th
Stop Koolaid Politics
You mean like granting the telcos the continuing right to bury their cables under MY yard and to dig for repairs any time they like without even a by your leave?
Good then, they may either agree to net neutrality now or come get their damned cables out of MY yard right now!
And if public money has gone to National Public Radio (a certain amount has and can be documented) where's my open mike?
Same place where you get your own nuclear bomb. (It's in the 2nd Amendment!)
Or alternatively, I'll just start stapling cable to the telephone lines and make my own damn network. If they can enforce private interests on property that doesn't belong to them so can I! Don't want me going to democracynow.org? Ok well at least everyone on my road will have awesome P2P!
The fact that this guy can get on TV and have people believe his shit makes me sad for this country. Honestly this will lead to America becoming a "developing" nation in short order.
First, the GP's links are to uber-partisan sites that exist to attack ideological opponents of Progressiveism, and have their own problems with facts, accuracy, and context.
As far as Glenn Beck, fortunately people don't need to believe what *HE* says, as most of his TV show consists of videos of Progressives stating their plans and goals *in their own words*. Even if you ignore anything except the videos, audio clips, and other sourced & verified facts, those alone should be enough to start numerous Justice Dept. special investigations if there weren't powerful Progressive political forces protecting these people and organizations.
The problem that conservative Republicans (and anyone else that believes in freedom of speech) has with the net neutrality legislation proposed so far is not the actual network operations regulation concerning routing/peering/QoS/etc, it's the other included stuff that effectively hands over control of the internet to the whims of partisan elected officials & their bureaucratic minions. If you think they won't use this to shut down dissent, you haven't been watching what's happened/is happening in Venezuela with Chavez.
Will you feel the same way when a Republican POTUS uses these powers the Progressives are attempting to usurp?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It's not such a secret strategy now is it.
If telco's cant have a secret anti-consumer plan then who can? Next thing you'll be telling me my secret plan to overthrow the US government by placing cyanide into Obama's twinkie and mind controlling Biden and Palin (I've already got Clegg and Cameron) isn't a secret any more.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Corporations are not the solution, corporations are the problem. Without the government having the ability to enforce fair dealing, corporate interests are going to stomp all over consumers.
Corporations + government is the problem. Corporations that can't be in bed with government is the solution. Federal Government that tries to regulate, fails as almost all centralized planning does.
Maybe you remember what happened when we let the banking industry self-regulate.
Funny, I was listening to people talk about the dangers of the federal reserve's policy that would cause the last mess, and watched them get laughed at.
the road to hell is paved with good intentions. net neutrality, will backfire. possible with the government then getting involved in regulating content. possible making it illegal to use SSH. possibly many other ways I can't think of. But it will happen. And that's ignoring the fact net neutrality means less of a free market.
because if the government didn't mandate it, it wouldn't happen.. except that cars were made safer not because of regulations, but because people wanted them. and even if those were perfect regulations (which they're not) there's only thousands upon thousands of others that are so fucked up it's amazing.
Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently
Yay! So I can ban all those filthy niggers nips and spics from my Quikkkie*Mart!
Except no, we know this is wrong and there are laws against it.
For the same reason telcoms shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily throttle traffic based on who is sending it to who and for what purpose.
Telcoms can state that I can connect at 2Mb/s for up to 100GB up, 20GB down a month with bursts of up to 1GB/hour up, 500MB down. (And they better should be serving me that! No excuses.)
They shouldn't be able to say what I can do with that bandwidth, if I want to spend all day watching youtubes video or chatting over skype is my business only.
And don't bring the "free market", most people have no choice of ISP or only 2 ISP that are equally bad.
But... the future refused to change.
History has proven that the largest polluters aren't corporations but rather the government.
When you have any numbers to say that government creates more waste than just the power industry, you might have a point.
However, since we live in a reality where those numbers don't exist....
I think the best point you make is near the end of your post, "While taking a good chunk of telecom money". It seems to me that the divide between Representatives, Senators etc and lobbyists has blurred to the point where US politicians' votes are for sale to the highest bidder. Its time for another Revolution guys. Your Govt needs reform, and the guys cashing in won't do it on your behalf.
[What follows will seem to be flame bait to some. That's because the subject seems to have so warped some people's perspectives that they cannot conceive of any error in their logic.]
This may amaze you, but proponents of the welfare state knew all along that helping 'widows with children' would also help 'social leeches' and 'fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work'. Not only did they know that, but they knew that the system would be wasteful and inefficient. They knew that your hard-earned tax dollars would get thrown away by semi-human middle managers unqualified to work in the private sector. They knew that big, meddlesome government sticking its fat, greasy fingers into every part of the pie would get things wrong just as often as it got them right.
You know what else? We don't fucking care. Well, okay, we do care. We don't care about the shitheads in society, because every society has them; they exist at all stations in life, in every culture. But we do care about the widows with children, the elderly and the indigent. We even care about the lazy, fat-assed ones who won't lift a finger to help themselves.
You know why we care? Because the alternative is a crime- and poverty-ridden society with huge inequities of privilege and power. A society where someone can park their $100,000 car beside a homeless man in rags and never see him. Because the alternative is that the shitheads of the lower class, instead of hanging on the steps and waiting for the pogey check, are coming in through your back window to steal your things and, possibly, terrorise you and your family. A society where the wealthy minority simply run away from the problem, fleeing to gated suburbs and blissful ignorance of just how harsh life in that society can be. (Sound familiar?)
But you know what? Caring about everyone (including the the shitheads) works. Go to Vancouver's east side some day. It's a hellhole, the end of the line for a lot of people. But it would be so much worse if it weren't for a few national and local policies that reduced crime and public health care costs just by making sure people got clean needles and a bite to eat occasionally. This is one of the worst neighbourhoods in Canada, but you can still walk it end to end in near-complete safety.
Now, to bring things back on topic: Your view that government is innately inefficient, as prone to failure as to success, as likely to benefit those who (according to you) don't deserve others' help... that view isn't entirely inaccurate. But you're dead wrong to think that that point alone is enough reason not to want government to do what it was established to do: In this case, to mandate certain minimum standards of conduct in order to ensure a relatively level playing field that won't be subverted by external influences.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Well yeah, they have to appease the telcos. They have to look after their future employers
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
For the same reason as other government regulations.
along with all the unintended consequences.
If it were "the same" it wouldn't be the internet. You would be on AOL and I would be on CompuServe, and we wouldn't be talking at all. There would be corporate alliances, with some consumer products pushing you to CompuServe, some to AOL, some to GEnie, some to Prodigy, etc. If there were such a thing as Linux or *bsd, they'd be on none-of-the-above - they'd be on a thousand small-scale BBSes all over the world. Many of those BBSes would call each other at night when the rates were low, syncing with each other, and specializing in finding short-hop routes to avoid long-distance charges.
Business never "got it" with the internet, because they were all too busy trying to own the entire pie. WE found the internet and beat them over the head with it, and they came along.
But they still don't get it, because they still want to own the pie. The goose laid the golden egg, and keeps laying them. Yet the business community can't recognize that, and is actively trying its hardest to kill the goose.
This is Slashdot - it's not all young whippersnappers - there are some other grey-hairs around here who remember the good old days at 300 baud - when 1200 baud was blazingly high speed.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Funny, I was listening to people talk about the dangers of the federal reserve's policy that would cause the last mess...
I don't remember the fed coming up in any of the Goldman Sachs emails. Mainly what stuck out for me was the glee they expressed as the housing market cratered.
The fed had a part, but mainly it was corporate greed.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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 agree in principle - except that what is keeping people out of the ISP market (and I'm not talking about subleasing access to lines, but ownership of real lines/fibers) is that it is a multi-billion dollar proposition to enter that market. That's why regulation is necessary - because it is trivial for incumbent companies to protect their market.
If you want a peek at the future of the Internet if ATT and Comcast get their wish, take a look at the sites that are tied to specific providers. nbcolympics had video only for the "right" ISPs, and same for espn360. The reality is that telecom providers have the ability to do anything they want to the packets going through their networks, and only the fear of the public outcry that will come from charging extra for access to Youtube is stopping them from doing so. Hence all their astroturfing campaigns.
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.
Really? The very first Internet transmission was synchronous, and not a batch job.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Google et al already get paid now by their clients.
Network providers already get paid now already by their clients. They're both charging.
This issue is that Networks want to extort more money out of their existing clients and Google et al and Google et al clients, in return for providing nothing positive of value to either customers or content providers (economic rents).
Extortion is the correct word: they want the right to threaten any of the other parties with technical degradation of various forms unless they are paid more money---money to keep things as they are at present.
There are other scummy "business opportunities" this opens up, for instance taking money to substitute B's ad for A's in Google's search results--A pays Google and B pays the networks.
And then the next stage of the pipe will charge Google more money to change it back to the original ad if they outbid B.
The "get a different ISP" argument doesn't work, because the network providers want the right to do any of the above in the middle of the network. (Oh and of course no anti-trust enforcement)
Without building permits how are you going to stop the crazy hillbillies from opening up a junk yard in there backyard. Or stop those people that buy run down houses hire some illegals (or some drunk they know) to do the work on it to save some money then they sell the house and the unlucky new owners loose everything in an electrical fire.
Essentially they plan on ignoring the recommendation of their own study groups. The studies they've done have concluded that "open access" (i.e: Verizon/Time Warner/etc are forced to let competitors use their fiber and copper plants) is the best way to increase competition. They have ignored these studies in favor of moving forward with a "third way" that won't do anything to address the mono/duolopy of ISPs.
Municipal fiber is going to be the future of the internet.
The big cities/suburbs will be stuck with whatever the telecoms are offering,
while everyone else is going to say "FU, we'll build it ourselves and have open access."
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why is it "Activism" and "Community Organizing" when The People We Like do it, but "Propaganda" and "Astroturfing" when The People We Don't Like do it?
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.
There really aren't any legal or regulatory barriers. It's really the whole financial problem that would prevent new lines, and local regulations to exclusively lease current lines to a given company.
is that it is a multi-billion dollar proposition to enter that market
Sure, if you want to build a nationwide network. I live in a city of 50,000. It would not cost billions of dollars to enter this market. The only thing stopping someone is the fact that the local government doles out the right to sell service in the form of exclusive franchise agreements. Good luck outbidding Time Warner when the contract comes up.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Crap like this smear campaign have been going on forever but now the people they are trying to con are a bit smarter than the average bear. I guess this will be an opportunity to see how co-opted our government really is.
I'm amused that LULAC is being lumped in with the "conservative astroturfing" groups.
Also amused that they are being painted as a front for AT&T.
Pretty much, they know that the telcos/republicans would raise utter hell and the current anti-government populace would never accept such a "radical" solution. Its not so much that they're playing politics, they actually want to do that, but they are doing what they can at the moment to make things better, without destroying their ability to do so in the process.
Honestly the right solution is even more radical, (Australia just started it, look it up) but its politically untenable, for many reasons, not least of which the massive numbers of jobs impacted currently working for the incumbent providers (a very large voting base in its own right).
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
The only thing stopping someone is the fact that the local government doles out the right to sell service in the form of exclusive franchise agreements.
Good point. This is free-market distortion as it best. However, remove that, and you still have the market problem of building a network - even a regional one. Finally, it is not tied to Net Neutrality, nor to any regulation around it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Indeed. The problem as I see it is that someone, somewhere, somehow got the idea of net neutrality tangled up with the "fairness doctrine," which really was anything but fair.
It doesn't help that net neutrality as a concept has just started to come to public attention around the same time that Democrats are trying to re-introduce the "fairness doctrine" to wield against their supposed foes, conservatives in "talk radio."
I don't know who's red herring it's supposed to be, either: is it supposed to distract conservative soap box'rs and rope-a-dope them into expending energy making themselves look like fools? Or is it supposed to take advantage of genuine wariness about the "fairness doctrine" as it was applied and prevent net neutrality from taking hold?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Look at the SEC and what good their regulation did. They totally ignored Bernie Madoff (under Bush) and Enron (under Clinton), giving regular folks a false sense of security in the market. If there was no SEC, people wouldn't have a default assumption that the market isn't rigged and they would invest more carefully.
I really don't like comments like this as they are completely unproductive. Why, Fred over there got robbed for all the good the laws and cops did! Guess we shouldn't have any laws or cops at all, giving the folks a false sense of security that they can leave their homes without being armed to the teeth.
*sigh* The idea is not to abolish something when it fails, the idea is to see where something failed and improve upon it.
The answer isn't to regulate the internet, it's to get rid of the whole monopoly provider system. Have a regulated (even non-profit) independent company (can't be owned by an ISP) run and maintain the network, deriving its revenue from the ISPs wishing to use it.
This fails in a number of ways. First of all, you are just replacing a bunch of local monopolies with one big centralized one. With your suggestion of just regulating THEM, you end up really regulating the Internet. Welcome back to square one. Worse yet, your "centralized non-profit" would likely be a Government Sponsored Enterprise. As you say about the Health Department, GSEs don't have a great track record of providing great service, because they have little motivation to do so.
Lastly, the end-point "provider" companies in your scheme would struggle to find some way to differentiate their product from others. Price can only go so far, so then you'll get into network segmentation, walled gardens, "premium content", etc.... Net Neutrality effectively done for.
So, with your scheme you get the worst of both worlds -- you get a huge centralized (and probably government run) monopoly AND no net neutrality to boot.
The
The Internet is not immune from economic principles and forces
I would agree with this argument if ISPs engaged in actual free markets instead of the de jure and de fact monopolies they currently enjoy throughout America. The areas with "competition" are rare, and in reality they are just oligarchies.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Why? Because it was built using taxpayer money and with the expectation that it would be a neutral and uncensored... waitaminute
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
However, remove that, and you still have the market problem of building a network - even a regional one.
So what? That's a perfectly solvable problem, even with a saturated market. The market for grocery stores is mature and well established but new ones still crop up from time to time. They haven't all merged into one mega "Food Store, Inc." The difference of course is that I generally don't need to outbid a national corporation to receive a license to operate a grocery store.
Finally, it is not tied to Net Neutrality, nor to any regulation around it.
I didn't claim it was. All I said was that regulation tends to protect the status quo and that it gets in the way of innovation. Do you dispute either of those claims? Do you think the internet would have grown into what it is today if the entrepreneurs working in garages had to worry about seeking regulatory approval for their activities?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That's a pretty big generalization, and -- at least in some cases -- provably untrue.
When the "telephone industry" was in its infancy, the Federal government decided that telephone service was a "natural monopoly", which could -- and should -- be tightly controlled. As a result, the United States developed a single, nationwide, interoperable telephone service. On the other hand, the countries that allowed "open competition" in the marketplace (parts of Europe for example) ended up with multiple, incompatible phone services operating within the very same smaller country. Sometimes person A could not call person B, even though she was just down the street. Calling between phone systems became a prohibitively expensive nightmare. And the maze of wires was many times the size it was in a comparable area of the U.S.
It was a clear case of a situation in which "open competition" was counterproductive to society.
That is not to say that there were not abuses. Of course there were. That's why Ma Bell got broken up, in the long run. But when the technology was new, and the essential infrastructure was being laid, history shows that a "regulated monopoly" was far and away the right answer.
And many people in the U.S. have been experiencing a very similar situation, when many of what were once tightly regulated utilities became increasingly privatized and less regulated. The prices did not go down, they went up. Way up. Much faster than inflation or expenses would have caused.
History is pretty clear: there are cases in which the idea of a "limited, regulated natural monopoly" works best.
Right now, the U.S. is lagging far behind many other countries in communications infrastructure. Why? Statistically, the answer is equally clear: in nearly every case where another country had, on average, faster and cheaper network communication than the United States, it was correlated with 2 things: (1) "net neutrality". To be clear about that, it meant the telecom industry acts as a simple carrier of bits, like a telephone company, and does not get entangled in content, policing, or tiered pricing structures. (2) Shared backbone: other companies were allowed to lease infrastructure at competitive rates. By law, that is.
Those 2 things drove REAL investment, innovation and competition in the REAL market (bits per second per dollar). The result was both better infrastructure and better service.
Here's the thing about people that hate social security, there's really only one other option. The system that came before it. Your parents move in with you and live with you until they die.
And yes, they will probably wander out into traffic, forget who they are, and occasionally even poop on themselves. You will have to deal with all of this while maintaining your job, social life and raising your own kids. You will be paying for all their expensive medications and doctor visits as well, so you better not let that job thing slip.
All the freedom you enjoy comes at the expense of portion of your paycheck. Deal with it.
Make sure they hear your voice in support of network neutrality.
And when you write them, send your letters in via snail mail. Make sure you point out that, absent provisions for network neutrality, no communications of positions counter to those of the big ISPs are guaranteed of reaching them via the Internet. Or if your representative takes a position not to the liking of these ISPs, their communications are not ensured of reaching us.
Now, if we could find a way to have this mail delivered to their offices via the Pony Express ....
Have gnu, will travel.
They're going to create a Facebook group.
One of the popular Facebook memes is, "I bet X Facebook group can get ##,###,### followers before Y Facebook group does."
Feel free to substitute X and Y for the People and Corporations.
Perhaps X Facebook group can host the leaked PPT file of which Slide #9 is a part of... at least until they get hit with a DCMA notice.
Could they then post said DCMA as part of their group, along with links to relevant media discussions about the subject? Streissand comes to mind.
They favor small government when it helps big business. They favor new legislation when it helps big business. They are experts at fooling average hard-working folks into voting against their own best interests.
I keep hearing that the GOP = Big Business, when big business have given more to the Democratic Party over time than to the GOP. While there is certainly support in business for the Republicans, there is certainly no shortage of support for Democrats in the halls of commerce, either. Goldman Sachs is practically the in-house fundraiser for the DNC. Each of the largest megabanks... Citi, Bank of America, etc.. has very close ties to major Democratic politicians like Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd, and ... I think you get the picture.
While your narrative plays well at Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, etc, those Wascawy Demokwats are even more deeply buried in the bosom of "big business". The RIAA is big business. As is Google. As is Apple. As is HP. The quintessential "big business" is GM, and guess who was eager to have government buy them? Hmm?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I wish I had a mod point for you today my friend. You posted exactly what I would have said.
I can see the fnords!
Strictly speaking, that's the way it used to be (and, I would argue, should still be). But in my state, the law has "evolved" (to be less intelligent, IMHO): you are only allowed to drive or do whatever you want to on private property IF you do not reasonably expect other people to be there and impacted by your actions. Then it is considered public.
For example, if you get in a wreck in the parking lot of a supermarket, they consider you to be in a public right-of-way, even though you are not. And you can get the same kind of ticket as you would get on the street. Even D.U.I. But if you were off on somebody's ranch, and there's nobody around, they can't get you for it.
I think it's a bullshit way to do things, but I am not a state legislator.
Personally, I think there are plenty of laws that cover actions on private property already. If you get in an accident on private property, and the other party doesn't pay, you can always sue. I don't think putting private property under the same laws as public roads is the answer.
Remember that the companies that are whining about this are companies that have a long history of government support to allow them to lay the copper, cable or fiber. From the day that Alexander Graham Bell won a questionable patent, telephony, cable and internet have always relied on government help to get what they wanted. Minor levels of regulation are not oppression, nor would they interfere with the companies' abilities to exploit the market. Until the providers show that they are being hurt by net neutrality, they need to offer it.
I really don't like comments like this as they are completely unproductive. Why, Fred over there got robbed for all the good the laws and cops did! Guess we shouldn't have any laws or cops at all, giving the folks a false sense of security that they can leave their homes without being armed to the teeth.
Point is, we should consider the possible side effects before enacting new legislation. Look at the way government corrupt almost everything they touch and keep that in mind as you ask for them to regulate what amounts to free speech in a public accommodation (ie, telling you that if you run a restaurant and you allow one of your friends who is running for office to campaign there, you must be neutral in allowing his opponents to also use your space).
Lyndon Johnson, once said, "One should not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered." Mind you, he also gave us welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and the law that began siphoning off the Social Security Trust Fund because the US already couldn't pay for his social programs nor the escalation in Vietnam just a couple years in.
*sigh* The idea is not to abolish something when it fails, the idea is to see where something failed and improve upon it.
As of yet, the internet hasn't failed. How about we wait until it does before we start getting all paranoid about what may or may not happen and then stepping in with the heavy hand of government. How often to bad laws get repealed? How often do they even get adequately fixed?
This fails in a number of ways. First of all, you are just replacing a bunch of local monopolies with one big centralized one. With your suggestion of just regulating THEM, you end up really regulating the Internet. Welcome back to square one. Worse yet, your "centralized non-profit" would likely be a Government Sponsored Enterprise. As you say about the Health Department, GSEs don't have a great track record of providing great service, because they have little motivation to do so.
Who says it has to be one centralized one? There can be competing ones in regions that can support them, community cooperatives can be started, etc. It's a starting point for a practical solution, not a fully fledged out plan.
Lastly, the end-point "provider" companies in your scheme would struggle to find some way to differentiate their product from others. Price can only go so far, so then you'll get into network segmentation, walled gardens, "premium content", etc.... Net Neutrality effectively done for.
I want an ISP that gives me some static IP addresses, prioritizes latency over bandwidth, and I'll run all of my own services, thank you. Someone else may want an ISP that priotizes bandwidth, peers directly with Hulu/Netflix/whatever. Someone else may want an ISP that provides USENET and web space for them to share pictures with their friends but doesn't really care about the sustained bandwidth or latency. The options are virtually unlimited and if you don't like your provider, there are dozens of others out there because the barriers to entry have been significantly lowered.
The solution to speech (service) you don't like isn't regulated speech, it's more free speech (competition).
So, with your scheme you get the worst of both worlds -- you get a huge centralized (and probably government run) monopoly AND no net neutrality to boot.
So what's your definition of Net Neutrality? Because the independently operated network provider in my example is totally neutral - they don't care who is using their pipe because everyone pays the same rates for different types of connections (a connection fee based on max bandwidth, desired maximum latency, guaranteed bandwidth, etc that the subscriber desires). If you don't like your service provider's options and peering arrangements, pick another one that you do like and your network provider isn't going to give a hoot since they're making the same money.
Stop Koolaid Politics
The results of ignoring problems have been even messier in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. Government is hardly ever a perfect solution, but it often has done a good job of cleaning up messes that private enterprise has created. Since the major players in internet service provision have all sucked at the teat of government from time to time and are in dominant positions because of that, there's no reason to worry that government regulation that forbids discrimination by private enterprises is going to be a burden on free enterprise.
The rules were in place. The monopolies were traded for certain standards of service and public service when regulation first went into place. AT&T was happy to be regulated and block out local competitors. The (partial) deregulation of telcos and cable companies was a windfall to these companies. What did we get for it? A pocketful of mumbles -- empty promise from the telcos that we would all have fiber to the door by now.
Ford Pinto
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Your grocery store doesn't have to run wires through other people's property.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
On telephone poles that are already erected. There's no reason other than collusion to say that only three companies (electric/telco/cable) are allowed to access them. They are placed on public property (utility easements) after all and should not be used for the exclusive benefit of the telecommunications duopoly and power monopoly.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There really aren't any legal or regulatory barriers. It's really the whole financial problem that would prevent new lines, and local regulations to exclusively lease current lines to a given company.
I guess I don't have to point out that you are wrong when you already did it for me.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
A lot of us know a friend or a friend of a relative who collects SSI benefits for 'disability' and could do a hell of a lot more with their life than they do.
Or we have nephews or nieces whose parents (divorced from our family-in-law members) collect SSI benefits in their name 'for the children' that pay for extra stuff, because they've got a pretty viable family income as it is.
There are a substantial number of 'injured on the job' types out there collecting benefits when they could easily be working at a new position that might, shocking as it seems, not have the physical requirements of their old job. But they get SSI. Why should they exert themselves?
I know, I know, anecdotal evidence. Why there aren't throngs of social scientists out doing the needed 'studies' is beyond me. It couldn't be because they make more money serving 'clients.' Not a chance of that.
Except for the ones in states where that is restricted or outlawed at the behest of the telcos.
the current anti-government populace would never accept such a "radical" solution
If the populace is truly opposed to it then the FCC has no business doing it. I don't think they are opposed to it, I think they are just skeptical that the Government will make it better. Historically it has a mixed track record in this regard.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
EXACTLY!!!!
(btw: nice to see another old hat around, I was part of the TN stuff with the Uni(s) / Oak Ridge)
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
This is why...
No one wants that in their neighborhoods / cities.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/4248715/2/istockphoto_4248715-phone-line-mess-in-shanghai-china.jpg
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
telcos are against net neutality. oil cos against unconventional fuel technologies. *sigh*
A pretty high percentage of people who get government aid here, and this is primarily a retirement community, are people who are fine, and very smart who game the system to get disability checks for not working. I think for a few years there I was one of the maybe 10% who actually worked for a living. Sure some were legit, but a good fat percent (near double digit) had simply learned how to throw various symptoms of mental problems, having read the books and so on to get a free ride. This is not from some jerk talk show, this is observation in the flesh, with names attached. Reality. I'm sure it's different in other places and all that, but it was quite out of hand. Thing is, free money with no discipline has its own limits and these people tend to self destruct too. As far as I could see that was the only thing setting the equilibrium.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
So you would prefer drunk drivers be allowed to tool around in supermarket parking lots?
It sounds like they extended the current law to apply in areas which may be private property, technically, but are in fact still a public space.
If you are out of a vehicle and do something which is legal in private but illegal in public (say, intercourse) in one of those places, you are arrested for whatever you did rather than trespassing... should being in a car change that?
Heck, if you walk in the front door and steal something from a store, it's called larceny and for items below a certain value it is a misdemeanor... if you do the same to somebody's home it is a B&E and burglary, and typically a felony regardless of the item's value.
There is long standing-precedent, most of which is hardly considered to be controversial, for treating some private properties differently than others with regard to which laws still apply and how.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
and I've spent the last 12 years (from 21-33 and going) of my life doing just that after my dad had a series of brain injuries... Is it easy? Hell no. But I do it because it is the right thing to do. It's rather sad that we've lost all respect for our elders in much of western society. When someone ceases to be productive, we throw them in a nursing home where they wait to die, so we can selfishly do all of the things we want without the bother of, you know, actually caring for other people. The same is true when it comes to spouses (they grow apart because they never do anything together anymore, so they tend to abandon the marriage), kids (sorry, gotta work overtime to pay for our lavish lifestyle, can't teach you to read tonight!), etc.
Sure, you get freedom, but you lose your humanity in the process. The typical state of mind these days is to put ourselves first at the expense of everyone else because, you know, "the government" will take care of them anyway. Hey, who needs to feel guilty that your parent sits alone drooling on themselves in chronic pain, tortured and remembering the days when they felt like they were loved, you paid your share!
Stop Koolaid Politics
Anecdotal my ass.
I know at least 15 people who 'leach' off SSI and medicare. I know 15 sounds 'high' but that was just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. They get pills and sell them on the local drug market. They get 100-300 pill bottles for free and sell them for 3 dollars a pill, or they grow/buy/sell weed. Know why they get the pills? Because they are disabled. I asked them about it. Know what they said? 'I teach my kids how to do this too its a good living'. There is a whole class of leaches out there (and doctors to support it). They exist in larger numbers than people really want to know. Do not doubt it for a second. Hell they are up front about it too if you act like their friend. 'Where/how did you learn how to do this?' 'Oh my aunt and neighbors taught me.' There is like a step by step guide how to do it if you ask the right people.
They have no incentive to do better. Why not? They can sit at home and watch direct tv all day. They have a decent amount of food. Also the apartment they live in is paid for. Then the extra money comes from taking advantage of drug users who will do anything for those drugs.
These people are leaches on society in every sense of the word. Oh and dont call them drug dealers (as they are just helping you out).
The funny thing is I worked out one dudes 'finances' he was making about 120k a year (from ssi/medicare/medicade/drugs/etc). Yet he lived like a beggar. I tried to show him that he was 'rich' but he just couldnt even comprehend the idea. He literally just squandered the money on stupid things that would last a day or so. He would do things like buy all his groceries at the local gas station instead of a real grocery store. Why? Because it was an extra 3 blocks. But who cares more money is coming in a couple of days....
I used to feel sorry for them. I dont any longer. These people are taking advantage of everyones generosity. If this doesnt anger you it should...
The road to hell is also paved with standing by and doing nothing when they take your freedom away from you. If the companies have say over what does and doesn't go over their network, what do you think they're gonna do? They'll happily let customers gab about how they such? Ha, right. How about letting their customers offer a competing service? Ha. What about letting anyone else offer a competing service? Uh no.
Look, sometimes government is there for a good reason. It is *HARD* to go and get rights to lay cable, not even counting the expense of doing it. Look at the companies that have been suing local gov'ts when they've been laying their own cable (and *WINNING* the argument, if not the case, by out-spending the local gov'ts).
Pull your head out of the sand and look around.
Yes, private companies without government regulation do great at safety and protecting public health.
Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle at some point. It's a glowing testimonial as to how well that worked in the food industry.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
http://www.wndu.com/indiana/headlines/42712897.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPqdRqacpFk&playnext_from=TL&videos=o4wSFEuWQfY
but even still, nothing like that compares to how many people governments have killed.
OK, I'll read The Jungle if you'll read The Gulag Archipelago.
Gee. That really proved a lot, didn't it?
History has proven that the largest polluters aren't corporations but rather the government.
Citation fucking needed. I'm pretty sure this past month BP has polluted more than the US government ever has. A bunch of the Superfund sites come to mind, too. I'm pretty sure those were caused by people in the private sector being gigantic douche nozzles.
when they take your freedom away from you
which is what net neutrality does.
if the companies have say over what does and doesn't go over their network, what do you think they're gonna do? They'll happily let customers gab about how they such? Ha, right. How about letting their customers offer a competing service? Ha. What about letting anyone else offer a competing service? Uh no.
Why hasn't it happened yet? comcast has tried and it gets a lot of shit, and has lost customers over it. You're trying to solve a problem that maybe could exist.
It is *HARD* to go and get rights to lay cable, not even counting the expense of doing it.
It's hard to build an airplane too. or a car. or even an operating system. That's 1 reason why businesses exist.
Pull your head out of the sand and look around.
I did, and I see no reason to regulate a system, that has served so many people so well.
The fed had a part, but mainly it was corporate greed.
the fed was quite key. low interest rates = free money = mal investments. And hey, look how many people from goldman sachs are in the government. Quite a few.
But then they gamble with free money, and we bail them out..
Your open mike is with several call in shows that NPR hosts.
I'm pretty sure this past month BP has polluted more than the US government ever has.
Are you sure about that?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Maybe we shouldn't allow two companies to monopolize the utility easement?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
> You can't give someone money and then later impose conditions on what you must do with it, that violates rule of law and the very idea of exchange and contracts.
You're on crack. The very idea of expecting something in return for your consideration is exactly what contract law is about.
If you want to base this situation on "contract law" then you really have no leg to stand on.
Although you're on crack for equating corporate welfare with contracts anyways.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It proved you're a moron. The Jungle demonstrated with clear examples from our own history
the need to prevent companies from running amok. The Gulag Archipelago is about what happens
when governments run amok. You have to be really quite dishonest (or stupid) to connect one
with the other.
It takes a really long slippery slope to turn a somewhat free market economy to a total command economy.
You could equally as well use Gulag as an excuse for anarchy in general rather than just anarchy for Robber Barons.
See how that works... someone will be coming over to harvest your organ momentarily.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes, because there's no possible way to have more than two telecommunications/tv offerings without it looking like that. I don't agree with the notion that the last mile has to be a natural monopoly. If you think it is, try to build municipal fiber networks. I'm opposed to the laws that prevent communities from doing that. If they want to build it with local resources and money then all the power to them.
I just have a problem with the notion that we should compel the existing carriers to lease out the networks that they built. I doubt we'll see eye to eye on that point though.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
1. crooksandliars.com and mediamatters.org are sites whose main purpose is to document the outrageous behavior of the right so we don't have to rely on hearsay and wacky conspiracy theories. They actually do what you claim Glenn Beck does.
2. Glenn Beck is one seriously troubled and paranoid man. Or else he's morally bankrupt and just acting nuts so he can make truckloads of money by whipping people into a frenzy.
3. You've got the "hands over control of the internet" idea exactly backwards. Net neutrality is about preventing any entity from having control of the Internet - whether that is the government or corporations. It's the opposite of shutting down dissent - it makes it illegal to shut down dissent. And that's a good idea under any administration.
> because if the government didn't mandate it, it wouldn't happen.
Yup. At the very same time the Tea Baggers are trying to dismantle any regulation and any sort
of Law-and-Order be imposed on Corporations they are simultaneously being conned into astroturfing
for "tort reform". So now not only do the Corporations get off the hook for statutory requirements
but they also get off the hook for any sort of "personal responsibility".
People need to be shown the relevant bits of Fight Club in Clockwork Orange style.
It's really no exaggeration.
Corps would grind your grandma into crackers if they thought they could make a buck and get away with it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one?
It has been. However, there is no rules or regulations stipulating that a company cannot deliberately filter information it doesn't like/want over public lines. Up to this point, it's been an unspoken "rule" the companies don't fuck with the data going across the network. In search for ever greater profits companies are seriously considering going back to the walled garden again and charging you every time you want to leave it. I wouldn't have a problem with this if this were private networks with private backbones. But it isn't.
Do you think all that innovation and evolution of the internet would have happened if the telecos weren't given a metric assload of public land and dollars? Sorry, but if your taking the public dime then you're going to fucking listen to the public. You don't like it, go roll out your own internet.
Regulation tends to protect the status quo.
Bullshit. Regulations are for preventing Big Fucking Rich Co. from ass raping Joe Public. Anyone who has looked at the history of corporations in this country quickly comes to the conclusion that Big Fucking Rich Co. certainly DOES NOT have the public interest in mind. Corporations are not altruistic, nor are they moral.
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
And what regulations would those be? ISP upstarts get swallowed or crushed by the oligopoly. Big Fucking Rich Co. can always under-price Itty Bitty Upstart.
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.
And I'd like a ton of gold bars dropped off at my house tomorrow morning. It isn't going to happen though. But that's neither here nor there.
Main point: The public paid for the internet. Like public airwaves, we grant certain companies the ability to run it and in the course of providing that service they can make a profit. However, companies now want to start treating it like it's their own private network where they can do whatever the hell they want. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
~X~
~X~
Should the bandwidth on the thin-net (10Base-5) in your moms basement connecting all your Linux boxes together be under government regulation like the other bandwidth is? How about the wire leading to your doorbell button? And don't get me started on that electric fence out there surrounding that cornfield...
Why should any of it be under government regulation? We're not a socialist State.
Uhm, they all are under Government regulation... ... it must be approved by the FCC to not interfere with the wireless communication of other products except on certain spectrum (such as 2.4 GHz)
As for socialism -- social programs are the way to keep a competitive market open. The point of an open market is to have the lowest possible barrier of entry. Public Education and Antitrust laws are two examples of programs designed to lower the barrier of entry into the market.
If the market's barrier of entry is too high, it doesn't matter what type of Government you have -- the market overpowers it and your liberty as a citizen is just as gone.
The debate has been over with political scientists for YEARS now -- Laisez-Faire and Command Economies don't work. You need the market open, and you need government control to keep it open. *Neither* can overthrow the other.
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.
That wikipedia story cannot be true, since you have told us so many times that nuclear energy is completely safe.
And this BP spill is going to make the Hanford Site look like misdemeanor littering.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't know. There have been AT&T trucks blocking my alley for the past week and all their work seems to take place on poles standing in the alley, not on people's property.
And to me it has less to do with the public property that the telcos have appropriated than the fact that they have glommed onto an internet that was developed entirely with public money and turned it into their own private playground.
Just remember, private industry would have never created the Internet that we use today. Can you even imagine for a second how that conversation would have gone? "How much will we charge per email? You want to use an open source what?"
It's a shame so many people seem to have forgotten where the Internet came from. They think it's some great gift that AT&T has given us so we can subscribe to U-Verse and play World of Warcraft.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Your subtle message will be lost on the those that most need to hear it, like pearls before swine.
They've made their mind up that the American government is just a horrible thing and nothing's going to change their mind, except maturity.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Conservative Republicans believe in THEIR right to free speech. They could care less whether anyone else has it, let alone what they are saying. It takes one heck of a persecution complex to say that the government is trying to censor you, ON YOUR OWN NATIONALLY BROADCAST SHOW!
And for you to try to make a comparison between Venezuela and here, by saying you have been 'watching' whats happening, well thats just completely laughable. Unless by watching, you mean reading web sites and watching documentaries. I highly doubt you have ever set foot in that country, lived or worked in the community. I doubt you have ever talked to a resident there in their native tongue. Until you have done that, you haven't watched anything, you just read someone elses opinion or presentation of it and latched on to it because thats easier than getting the experience yourself and forming your own thoughts on the situation.
You dont seem to understand how simplistic you sound to those with other experiences than yourself. I would bet a substantial amount of money that you cant name the leader that was in power in Venezuela before Hugo Chavez, without looking it up.
Whether you like it or not, Chavez was democratically elected, twice. I imagine if your way of thinking matched the way of thinking of a native Venezuelan, he wouldnt have been elected again 4 years ago. Which brings us right back to conservative republicans only caring about their own freedom of speech and not about the rights of anyone else.
In a funny way, that's whats great about the thoughts you just presented. When push comes to shove, all you are going to do is sit back and let someone else take care of it and tell you what to think, just like you always have. Just go back to watching the teevee, that way you can keep out of the way of those people who are actually being productive.
In a way, I feel sorry for you. The world is so much larger than you will probably ever experience.
As of yet, the internet hasn't failed. How about we wait until it does before we start getting all paranoid
Point well taken, even if it conflicts with the rest of your post. You say that you want to wait here.. but then propose a bunch of changes, most of which would require new laws. You can't have it both ways.
Who says it has to be one centralized one?
You did: Have A regulated (even non-profit) independent company (can't be owned by an ISP) run and maintain the network. I can understand if that is not what you meant, but it is what you implied.
The
Yawn...
The government can not provide solutions in this regard. The government structure, regarding communication, is the problem that solutions will be invented for. Some of them already exist, and Im sure in about 10 years you might be exposed to them.
Until then, dont worry, you'll see... see you there!
The Hanford site was a plutonium processing site. It created the plutonium used by our nuclear weapons. It had little to do with nuclear power.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The prior administration had such great names for less than stellar legislation. "Patriot Act" "No Child Left Behind" etc. Things you could vote for and feel good about without looking too closely. Why is it that truly good legislation actually is hobbled with terrible names?
Whoever thought of the name "Net Neutrality"? Is there a better one? Like "Open Networks" or something like that? Omg, it's almost as if the opponents of the idea picked out the name. Is there a way to change the name?
Btw, Net Neutrality is quite desirable *until* we have more choices of Internet Providers. Here we only have Verizon and Comcast, and I feel very very lucky there is any choice at all, as it used to only be Comcast a year ago. If there were actually a choice of several ISP's, then Net Neutrality regulation would be superfluous. There would always be some far-sighted ISP competitor that offered full access to google, facebook, etc, without an extra surcharge or a kickback. When there are few or no choices, the ISP should definitely be regulated, as they are effectively in a monopoly or oligopoly position.
Are you old enough to remember how close we came to having several of the Great Lakes become completely dead bodies of water?
Are you old enough to remember when it didn't take nine years of lawsuits and reviews by an alphabet soup of state, local and federal governmental agencies to get approval to build something?
Take a good look at that. A wind energy project. Something that's a win win for everybody. Carbon free electricity for the green crowd. Jobs for the area that it's going to be built in. Energy for nearby homes and businesses. It took nine years just to get approval to break ground and there will probably be more lawsuits before that happens. This type of excessive regulation discourages private investment -- why put your money up for something that may not happen when you can invest it in these nice safe packaged up mortgages instead?
I don't want to see the Great Lakes on fire again. But I also want to see us able to move forward as a country. Could it just be that there's some healthy middle ground that would do that and still keep our air and water clean?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Just to clarify, NPR relies on the listeners to pay the majority of the tab for operating expenses. Yes, they have gotten grants from the government. But grants are not equal to subsidies. Furthermore, they are a non-profit charity acting for the good of the people whereas ISPs, as you said, are for-profit. I don't like certain for-profit companies getting an unfair advantage from the government, unless it's something we're really falling behind the world in. As of now, we're doing pretty good with broadband, and the companies are making money finally. At this point, they need to expand access and make it faster. Otherwise the government (we, the people) WILL have to step in and say "what are you doing with this money, even though it was no-strings money, we can make your life hell with taxes and such?" or collectively boycott their services, which is difficult even after deregulation since only a few companies control the copper..
Cool! Amazing Toys.
If only there was a way to send information through.....the air.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
i don't see any Federal mandates about which brands of cars I can drive on the public roads, or how much I can drive, or what (legal) things I can carry in my car, or where I am coming from or going to. As long as a vehicle is declared safe (standards compliant you might say?) I can register it and take it for a drive.
Natural monopoly is not the regulated one, its when the market itself lends to a monopoly, which connecting infrastructure *absolutely does*
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
What about wireless? If we could get a few GHZ of bandwidth that the FCC has been hoarding for years, use IPv6, mesh networking, etc. we could probably get there. They reserved all that spectrum back when they knew it would be valuable but didn't know what for. The time has arrived. Digital standardized communications with standard protocols (IP) is here and we need the bandwidth back, please. We the people need to referendum that back.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I'll second you on a lot of people gaming the system. In my work I run across a large variety of people. I can think of far too many people offhand on SS disability that do a damn fine job of shoveling their driveways clear in wintertime, but can't work because of a bad back. I know one lady in town who nursed her child until 5 because of some program that gave money while any child was nursing.
These programs were started with good intentions, there are people on them that have a legit need, but far too many leeches make the whole system corrupt.
I would concur with that. I was rather pissed when we had to shut off our analog TV, supposedly to receive a "third pipe", then all the recovered bandwidth was auctioned off to the major wireless players (AT&T and Verizon) whom have no interest in seeing that pipe become a reality.
Unfortunately the unholy marriage between big business and big government is a bipartisan affair. The Republicans feed defense contractors and energy companies. The Democrats feed media outfits and big pharma. Both parties feed the financial sector.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
RIght on!
I would mod you up for this but I don't get points anymore.
Thank you for calling the telcos robber barons, that is exactly what they are. Net neutrality isn't about government regulation, it's about not ceding power to regulate the internet to corporations.
If the government cannot be trusted to regulate the internet, how can we possibly trust a handful of corporate giants? It's ridiculous to argue that the interests of the telcos are in line with the interests of everybody else.
A free internet is just as important as a free market. Without net neutrality, innovation on the internet will be crippled once only the incumbent giants can afford to pay premium for the fast lane.
I'm no fan of big government, but I cannot understand why so many advocates of small government are not also afraid of the big business trampling all over their rights and freedoms. The reality is that the Fortune 500 are integral part of how the world is "governed", whether they fall under the category of government or not. Where is the Tea Bagger uprising against the corporate establishment?
Honestly? If George Bush supported his FCC bringing ISPs under the control of title II as common carriers (which is now being proposed), I wouldn't have cared, or at least not for partisan reasons.
Can you explain how classifying ISPs under Title II will lead towards partisan government control of the internet? I don't see your point here.
They are synonymous in the minds of many libertarian types. Any form of collective wealth redistribution, even when done effectively, equitably, and for good reasons, is inherently evil in their view. My grandfather honestly believes stuff like this so I have a lot of experience talking with people like that. He told me, and this is nearly verbatim from memory because it stuck out as so absurd to me, "These scum living off the government, getting checks for social security, welfare, medicare are living better than me and I worked all my life." Disregarding the fact that he's living off a government and military pension, and anyone receiving those services also had to work all their lives, there are people who truly believe welfare affords people high levels of comfort. The truth is, it's almost always just barely enough to get by, if even that. Are there cases of fraud and abuse? Absolutely, but I'd sooner tolerate a small amount of funds going to people who don't need it than the vast majority of those who do need it going without the necessities of life. It's been well and truly proven that charity isn't ever going to be enough, and letting those people die is unacceptable. I like to think society has moved passed that mindset, unfortunately I see there are still people who don't see that we're all in this together, that we succeed or fail as a nation together, and society can be measured by how it treats its lowest members.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
What about expecting them to give you what you paid for in the first place? we gave the cablecos/telecos tax breaks and incentives to the tune of 200 billion (yes with a B) under the promise that in return we would have nationwide high speed, what we got was the finger.
Personally I think we need to seize the last mile and open it up to true competition not this duopoly farce we have now. As it is the duopoly has cherry picked the places they want to compete, the rest? Go fuck yourselves as far as they are concerned. Add into that the "fuck everything but the quarterly report!" attitude that infects our publicly traded companies like a cancer, and you have many local thiefdoms that haven't spent a penny in years on upgrades, merely raising prices ever higher to pad their pockets. In my own area dialup runs around $70, DSL $100, and cable $156, which means the poor can't afford access at all, and everyone else gets squeezed harder every year.
I think we can all agree this shit has to change, as more and more interaction and commerce requires Internet those without will be much worse off, especially with regards to local and state governments which are increasingly switching everything online. Net neutrality is just a baby step, a way to keep the ISP from gouging at both ends or turning the net into a walled garden so they don't have to compete with regards to their services. But ultimately I don't believe the situation we have now is sustainable. The prices keep going up, the quality keeps going down, the only "healthy" thing about our networks now is the profits of the duopolies.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That's what I wrote, more-or-less: that you CAN get a DUI, under some circumstances, on private property.
However, the Indiana Supreme Court's ruling does not apply in my state. I do in fact know what my state law is, and how it is applied. And if you are on private property when other vehicles are not around (or rather, where and when you would not reasonably expect them to be around), then the laws of public roads do NOT apply.
In my state. Or in that other state next door. But I won't speak for others.
Yeah how about that, it's almost as if the Network of roadways has some sort of legal Neutrality...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
That's a false proposition. Currently the laws state that there is net neutrality. The laws are merely instating that situation. And even if it WERE new regulation, it wouldn't be "government control of the telecoms", it would be "government enforcing nobody controls it".
Tell me: is the constitution's proposition to have no law proposing and enforcing a state religion "government control of religion"?
No?
Then why is a law proposing nobody control the internet government control of it?
Government body ignoring study results which don't support their agenda! Corporation-backed corrupt politicians ignoring anti-competitive behaviour in exchange for large "campaign fund" donations across the two main parties in the US!
More at 7, 8, 8.30, 9, 9.15, 9.25, in fact all the time, as this is nothing new.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Saying that you want to vote the bastards out of office is reasonable.
The Republicans and the Democrats do not follow the laws of this nation, period. They spend their days harassing 'we the people' with new laws and regulations. They do it for bribes, money, and power. Who gave them the right to break the laws and harass individuals?
Who gave you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner? If these people are breaking the law, they can be prosecuted and jailed. Unfortunatley, by and large they aren't. What they're doing is passing laws you don't like (and therefor take as 'personal harrassment'), and you don't like the motivation you assume (perhaps rightly) they have. Too bad. If they're breaking the law, prove it and have them prosecuted. If they're not, and you don't like what they're doing, then work to reform the law so that the campaign contributions (bribes) they're taking are no longer legal.
Saying that you want to see criminal prosecutions against those who you believe have acted illegally is reasonable.
Really? How reasonable is it when the judicial branch of our government doesn't even follow the laws?
What you mean is: they don't follow your specific, dogmatic, and fringe interpretation of the laws and constitution.
Threatening violence is not.
George Washington and friends didn't get rid of Big British Government by threatening legal action, writing petitions, and holding meetings. George Washington and friends got rid of Big British Government through the killing of thousands of British Government employees.
OK, nevermind, I'm wasting my time talking to a nutball.
You sir are a fucking menace to civilized people everywhere. Please stay the fuck out of my neighborhood. In fact, stay the fuck out of my state.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I've been involved with the internet since the very early days when it was a government project. A big part of why the internet has been so successful is because the military and government did a pretty decent job building it. So you're okay letting government design and build it, but suddenly they can't handle oversight.
Government hasn't been building it lately and I doubt they've had undue (well, more influence than you'd expect for a very large organization which uses the internet) input into its construction and operation since the early 80s. For example, the hardware is mostly private, the standards are done by NGOs like the IETF and W3C, and the users of the internet are mostly not government employees.
Corporations are not the solution, corporations are the problem. Without the government having the ability to enforce fair dealing, corporate interests are going to stomp all over consumers. Maybe you remember what happened when we let the banking industry self-regulate. Or did that little episode not make it on to Fox News? It'll be that on the internet.
You mean "businesses" since corporations are only one of many legal forms of doing business and there are other tricks for getting the same liability protection that a corporation provides. Second, when you give government the ability to enforce "fair" dealing, whatever that means, you also give the government the power to enforce unfair dealing (things like rent-seeking, subsidies, and other opportunities to bribe politicians for an edge).
As to the recent financial crisis, you ignore that the circumstances will happen again. Government agencies, no matter what powers you give them, will again choose not to regulate their wards (or more accurately, selectively regulate their wards so the "too big to fail" firms get a huge competitive advantage). And the cycle of boom and bust will continue. But obviously the problem is too little regulation.
What's really interesting is how often corporate interests are lining up with the "grassroots" organizers of the tea party.
What's really interesting here is how a large portion of the US political landscape found common ground just a bit over a year since Obama took charge. I think the whole opportunity will be squandered on a weak "anything but Obama" candidate in 2012, but it's possible that the US could return to a fiscally sound government (just as other governments in Europe are discovering the benefits of a fiscally conservative government). We'll still have boom and bust cycles, but at least government doesn't need to contribute to them.
And if we don't? There's nothing a good bout of stagflation can't cure. Too high standards of living? Too many people working? Too much wealth? We'll fix that.
If the crazy hillbillies open a junk yard in their back yard, and they're near me... good. I could use a good junkyard that's closer to me.
As for the illegals... this is why you do your due diligence before buying a house. Hire someone to inspect it beforehand.
Still needs backhaul, and the more customers you serve off one tower, the more spectrum is used.
Wireless is a great idea in remote areas, but in denser areas, it breaks down due to the spectrum usage.
Look at the SEC and what good their regulation did. They totally ignored Bernie Madoff (under Bush) and Enron (under Clinton), giving regular folks a false sense of security in the market. If there was no SEC, people wouldn't have a default assumption that the market isn't rigged and they would invest more carefully.
I really don't like comments like this as they are completely unproductive. Why, Fred over there got robbed for all the good the laws and cops did! Guess we shouldn't have any laws or cops at all, giving the folks a false sense of security that they can leave their homes without being armed to the teeth.
If the cops and laws aren't really helping keep you alive (which is the proper analogy, I might add), then all they are doing is providing a false sense of security that goes away when you end up dead in a gutter. Moral hazard may be as you put it "completely unproductive", but it is a real issue that harms people every day.
*sigh* The idea is not to abolish something when it fails, the idea is to see where something failed and improve upon it.
The original poster was doing just that. But what makes you think regulation "failed"? Looks to me like the transfer of wealth from taxpayer and innocent investor to other parties worked just fine.
This fails in a number of ways. First of all, you are just replacing a bunch of local monopolies with one big centralized one. With your suggestion of just regulating THEM, you end up really regulating the Internet. Welcome back to square one. Worse yet, your "centralized non-profit" would likely be a Government Sponsored Enterprise. As you say about the Health Department, GSEs don't have a great track record of providing great service, because they have little motivation to do so.
I agree.
Lastly, the end-point "provider" companies in your scheme would struggle to find some way to differentiate their product from others. Price can only go so far, so then you'll get into network segmentation, walled gardens, "premium content", etc.... Net Neutrality effectively done for.
One of the reasons I oppose net neutrality laws is precisely this. So that ISPs have more room to differentiate their products.
What I think is that LOCAL (city, village, township) governments should install one infrastructure for last mile network connectivity.
They can contract with a company to install and maintain that infrastructure, but the infrastructure should be owned by the local government. At any time, the local government can give the contract to other companies for maintenance.
In the center of the network, have a connectivity center. In that connectivity center, any provider that wants to provide bandwidth to users can hook into the local last mile.
The local scale prevents "big government" from being too much of an issue, and injects rather more direct democracy into the process. Also, it shouldn't be an undue burden on local governments, as they should be able to charge ISPs for the access, so that it's self-sufficient (or even a profit center for local government.)
Could it just be that there's some healthy middle ground that would do that and still keep our air and water clean?
Given that we're talking about America here, land of the "left wing, right wing, what the fuck is the middle," probably not. All we can hope for is that there's enough of a pissing contest between opposing sides of an issue for them to have to compromise begrudgingly. It's slow doing things that way but at least it works...mostly.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
That's not even close to good enough.
When it comes to the environment, there is no "E" for Effort. There are no mulligans, no do-overs, no breakfast balls.
If it turns out that there was a safety system that was no put in place on this rig because it was an "exploration" well instead of a "production" well, or to save money, every single goddamn BP asset, every Haliburton asset, every TransOceana asset, in the US ought to be nationalized until every penny of the cleanup is paid for and every dollar of economic loss is compensated.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't disagree with you, but sponsoring a bunch of people in research design a project, and letting a bunch of bozzos in the government oversee it are two very different things.
The government is a huge set of different people, with different priorities. And to be honest, the technical problems are a lot easier to solve than sorting out this mess.
Got any citations? Back in the 1980's I wrote some papers on the socio-economic and political factors affecting cross-national variations in television and radio penetration rates. I've considered returning to this question with regard to the Internet. So I'd love to see some decent academic research on this question if it exists.
As opposed to the Democrats who say "Corporations Bad. Now, what did you want Mr. Big Business Man? Oh don't worry about the plebes, we'll just tell them how evil you are and how this regulation that prevents anyone from competing with you will keep you in line."
Look at the facts, big corporations give more money to Democrats than to Republicans by a wide margin. Of the top 20 per capita income counties in the U.S., 19 vote overwhelmingly Democrat (the 20th is close to evenly split). The Rich love the Democrats.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It worked in the 90s, for the most part. We just have to kick the Democrats out of Congress and make sure we don't go and do something stupid like also kick them out of the White House and return the Republicans to one party control.
My ideal outcome for the next two elections would be to see the Democrats lose the House and Senate this November but President Obama to just eek out re-election in 2012.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If you think the telecoms are a problem and government management would be an improvement, you need to find a friend who'll lend you a few grey cells.
Yes, that is exactly the problem - the lack of competition and the corporate influence in the American internet market has gotten so bad that government regulation looks better by comparison.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Because "astroturfing" is by definition not "community organizing." An astroturf campaign is an organization that has been set up to appear independent and supported by a base of concerned people when in fact it was created by and overwhelmingly supported by the corporations that most stand to benefit from the activism. If the ISPs are directly funding these groups to solicit on their behalf, then that is rightly defined as astroturfing. It doesn't matter what partisan side it falls on.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
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.
The Internet
If that doesn't meet all your requirements nothing will.
Now if you want a list of failed government projects:
Social Security
Postal Service - which should just be converted into an indexing service maintaining addresses and zip codes, while privatizing deliveries
Amtrack
Prohibition
War on Drugs
Prison System
Education System
Medicare
Medicaid
Don't get me wrong, government does do some things well and we should improve on those, but it really has a hard time admitting when something sucks and trying to fix it.
Some things it does right:
Interstate Highway System
Building Codes - although there should be some way to get exemptions if you want to try new technology or have a valid use case that is against existing code
90% of traffic regulations (interstate speed limits could be raised, seat belts do save lives but does it really need to be regulated?)
CDC
FAA
NASA - would be nice if it had the war budget
"So that ISPs have more room to differentiate their products." Yeah for all that competition between ISPs. Why, I'm just flabbergasted at all the choice I have!
There IS no competition, the market is not large enough to make 'differentiating their products" even a ghost of a necessity. All the anti neutrality arguments boil down to is supporting the ability to siphon profits off of successful businesses by charging them multiple times for using 'pipes' (EVERY ISP can do this, every 'hop' on the 'Net, that is your GOAL), controlling content available to consumers (who have NO choice), limiting how consumers may use bandwidth they pay for and killing competition with products the ISPs control. Period. You are, therefore, about as pro-monopoly as you can get; but I am used to that from anti-neutrality proponents - you dismiss reality with a wave of your hand, a puff of smoke, and a couple of mirrors.
Get back to me when both the 'last mile' AND backbone providers have rigorous competition.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
We're not talking about regulating the content creators - we're talking about regulating the access providers. Exactly how much "innovation" has come out of Comcast and Verizon for internet service as a result of the lack of regulation we've granted them?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Google already pays for a portion of their bandwidth. I seem to recall reading somewhere, in fact, that instead of paying for a lot of their bandwidth, they trade with some ISPs to allow those ISPs to route their traffic over Google's fiber to save on their own bandwidth. So this is partially a strawman - you're talking about a situation in which an ISP is trying to shake Google down for more money.
More than that, on the off-chance that an ISP somehow pulls this off and blocks Google, it will be a while before you see alternate ISPs in your area. And by "area," I mean "your house," because you would have to wait for another ISP to run last mile service up to your building before you could have any competition. And even then, you run into the danger of the oligarchy - if Comcast, Verizon, and TWC all decide to shake down Google in this same way, then who is going to be your alternative exactly?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
using namespace united_states;
Let's not forget that ISP monopoly status is granted at the municipal level, leading to much of our woes.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Somehow, in that rant, you managed to gloss over the fact that Chavez was elected, twice. Did any of your 'friends' participate in the national strike? I imagine they didnt, because that kind of greed is exactly what you are trying to pin on being caused by progressive ideals, and that would just be embarrassing. Or are you saying Mousolini was progressive? or Pol Pot? The Azaku? In other words, you are associating those horrible things with progressive ideals, because thats what you have been told. And any narrative can be pushed forward seemingly based on facts, when you selectively pick the facts, and present them to an ignorant and angry populace.
That aside, your view of why countries like Greece are failing is obviously skewed by what you have heard others say, instead of attempting to understand it on your own.
Greece is getting its bailout, for the same reason that the US did under the Bush administration. You remember TARP right? The one that passed under secretary Paulson? That pushed the US debt over the $10 trillion mark under the previous administration. The German banks hold almost 2/3 of the capital in Greece right now, and if they were allowed to take the losses, the contagion would spread to every other country in Europe. And Ill give you just one guess which company would fail(again) should those German banks fail. (All our AIGs really are in one basket here)
The federal reserve of the US reopened their swap lines with Greece over this past weekend to help bolster this failed attempt at capitalism(better described as the combination of government and finance- a.k.a Fascism). You remember who first appointed the chairman of the Fed, right? Was it a progressive? Granted his recent re-appointment was the height of absurdity, although that lines up with the fact that there is no political difference in the US. Opening the swap lines is just another way for the US taxpayer(YOU) to bailout the banks, but this time its global,instead of within the US. And it wont work, its Portugal you should be most concerned with. Because right now, there is no more money to bail them out. There is no more dry powder. The world used it to pay the big bankers bonuses.
I agree with you, that there is a collapse coming, but see different reasons for its cause. You see a bicameral political aspect to it, where as I see a solitary plutocracy that uses a narrative of us vs. them to distract the populace from what really goes on behind the scenes economically. All of your examples start with the assumption that current events are ex nihlo, or that they just came out of nowhere in the current time, without any regard to the history of events. You think Chavez is a monster, because that's what you have been told to think. Whether you like it or not, he was elected by the people, twice. Is it because he openly supports torture, or the revocation of habeus corpus? Oh, no thats us. Funny how none of the likes of Glenn Beck were screaming about that when their 'side' was the one doing it, but once its not their guy, its the end of the world as we know it. Give me a break.
Our ideals are probably very similar, however Im not interested in laying blame or finger pointing. Im interested in my life and those I care about, and the ways I can make that better. If some nutter is running around yelling in anger and blame, Ill do my best to put as much distance between us as possible. A person like that is disconnected from his own power to control his well being, as its always someone elses 'fault'. That kind of anger based on hindsight is useless for those moving forward. Ironically, thats the type of person that most needs government to interfere in their life, as they are not able to accurately comprehend social responsibility.
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
Ahh, I remember as an adolescent, whenever crossing the Chicago River on the way to the neighborhood park, we used to pause at the middle of the bridge and gaze at the flowing water, timing how long it would take until a used rubber floated by. Usually took less than a minute.
Now, billions of tax dollars later, storms wash the sanitary waste from Chicago's old combined sewers into the Deep Tunnel instead of overflowing directly into the river, and gets treated before being pumped into the waterways. So, rubbers in the river are now rare.
I use Qwest DSL and have used several other ISP's over the years with it you can look at the list yourself if you want. Though that just makes billing weird with half going to the DSL provider and half to the ISP.
In my state (IL), I was hit by a cement truck (at low speed) in a private parking lot. The cop gave us forms to fill out for insurance, but specifically said he couldn't issue any tickets, or really do anything, since it was on private property.
That wouldn't apply if there were criminal conduct, though.
Don't forget:
Love Canal disaster in Niagra Falls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal)
Valley of the Drums in Kentucky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Drums)
Portland Harbor superfund site (http://www.oregonbusiness.com/articles/78-january-2010/2765-supermess)
DOE Hanford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site#Environmental_concerns) Nothing like several TBq of radiation being released into the Columbia River on a daily basis for 40 years, with a nice govt. cover-up...
The EPA is hardly a giant waste of money.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
there will probably be more lawsuits
excessive regulation
Do you even read what you're writing? Regulation had zero to do with the vast majority of the fight over the Cape Wind project. Private citizens and advocacy groups have been fighting it tooth and nail since the plans were drawn up, and those lawsuits are the primary cause of the delays.
Ironically, it is people like the damn Kenedys that have held up construction. As a Massachusetts progressive, it makes me want to choke someone, but it sure as hell isn't Government regulation.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
It says a lot about you that you took what I wrote as endorsement of the democrats rather than disappointment with the republicans.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
the first few feet of land from the road is normally called an easement - while it is shown as part of your private lot it is actually government owned land - and gives them the ability to allow the power company and telecoms to put poles up and provide service without having to have each and every land owner sign off on it.
in very rare instances do people actually own the easement.. a few months ago found out that on one of my houses i actually did own it.. and the local township had to pay me to allow them to put a sidewalk in..
but it is very rare for people to own that few feet that the poles and lines are run on.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I live in a city of 50,000. It would not cost billions of dollars to enter this market
As long as you only want an "internet" of 50,000 people, sure. Eventually, some of your customers are going to want to watch youtube, and when you go to hook up your little network to a competitor's network to get their packets there, what are you going to do if the other company says "NO"?
Don't worry though, your work won't be in vain. I'm sure the national ISP will buy your carefully laid network at pennies on the dollar at your bankruptcy auction.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The telcos own the fiber, just like you own your house or iPod. So the government forcing a telco to manage the fiber data in a certain way is no different than the gov't forcing you to use certain colors of paint in your house or certain songs on your iPod.
If you're for gov't regulating something belonging to some one else, then you've got to be OK with them regulating something belonging to YOU.
If telcos start restricting content, and lots of people absolutely hate it, then there will be a lot of money to be made in building an open network, and business people will flock to create such open networks. Even before restrictions started, sentiment of the idea alone would create profit opportunities.
Nearly all things in life and politics have imperfect answers that lie somewhere in the area between black and white.
Total lack of regulation, as you rightly pointed out, is a fast track to disaster. On the other hand tight regulation can stifle economies altogether. In addition, at least here in the US, we're pretty sensitive when it comes to the idea of "freedom". Hell, we (somewhat falsely)[1] used it as an argument to form an independent nation in the first place. While that fervor has eroded somewhat, I think we're unusually open to the idea of suffering some of the negative consequences in exchange for less government regulation. I am not qualified to suggest what degree of this is sane. ;)
[1] We were unusually independent to begin with. See "The Radicalism of the American Revolution", Wood
How about the wire leading to your doorbell button?
Already under government regulation, unless you live in one of the few areas without building codes and electrical codes.
And don't get me started on that electric fence out there surrounding that cornfield...
Damn straight I want electric fences regulated. Almost by definition, they're on the border of the property, and therefore are not isolated from others. I don't want my dog or my kid (or yours) to get electrocuted because some idiot didn't know how to build that electric fence correctly.
Why should any of it be under government regulation? We're not a socialist State.
There's a big difference between the government owning the means of production (a socialist state) and the government regulating commercial conduct to protect the public from conscience-free private interests.
Absolutely - I would love to have 50 competing companies digging up my yard, and "accidentally" cutting each other's cables in the process...brilliant!
You and the GP are both right, we should nether have private monopolies on telecom nor 50 companies trying to run wires through every easement. Monopolies are too frequently abused, and having multiple connections to each home is wasteful - duplication of effort + the inevitable human error/sabotage possibilities are both obvious wastes there.
What we should do instead is to have a single fiber run to each house and maintained as a public utility. The ISPs and cable companies could then lease time on the lines and sell their services to the various homes, competing on a cost/value basis rather than an "I have a wire there and you don't" basis. This is already being done in some communities, and is an elegant solution to the twin problems of needing market competition and efficient use of resources.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
what are you going to do if the other company says "NO [boingboing.net]"?
Go to another company? There isn't a monopoly on IP transit providers. You can also peer directly with the content distribution networks. They want to get their content to your customers and would have no reason to say no.
Comparing the United States to Canada is rather absurd in this context.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Think Progess either got suckered, or is trying to pull a fast one.
The PPT document was created by six students as a class project in Florida last month. From the CNET article:
The GP presented a fairly accurate representation of the history of the internet's development, but seems to overlook the fact that the modems that formed the internet operated over a publicly regulated infrastructure of telcoms for which net neutrality was the rule. That changed with the advent of the new telcom rules in '96. Now the fight is over broadband, which traditonally has not been regulated as the telco's have and which most people connect to the internet through.
Corps would grind your grandma into crackers if they thought they could make a buck and get away with it.
well some companies do offer cremation. the problem with everything you said, is that, for corp to get money from me.. i have to give them money.
Because it does, over and over, and people like you just make up excuses as to why it doesn't count. ISPs using Sandvine to disconnect Lotus, VPN and bittorrent users and then lying about it, Bell Canada throttling OTHER ISPs' users' internet connections.
I see so some isolated incidents are reasons for regulating it? But hey, all we really need are fraud laws, you know, that prevent companies from lying..
Oh wait, a handful of people who had another choice for internet access that didn't do the exact same shit switched, so it's all good, right? It's everyone else's fault for not moving somewhere where the ISP couldn't take advantage of them like that.
there are no perfect options. however a free market will lead to improvement. it will probably be slow and steady. You and everyone else wants to put the same basic people who couldn't catch bernie madoff, in charge of the internet. it will not work. it will not have the desired effects. it will backfire.
Somehow, in that rant, you managed to gloss over the fact that Chavez was elected, twice. Did any of your 'friends' participate in the national strike?
Yes, they did. Two friends were killed by Chavez' thugs. Chavez was "elected, twice" because Chavez' thugs made sure of the outcome through vote fraud, intimidation, and murder. Basically the same sort of thing we saw with the Obama campaign on steroids, like the video of those armed Black Panthers standing at the entrance to the polls, threatening & intimidating voters.
Or are you saying Mousolini was progressive? or Pol Pot? The Azaku? In other words, you are associating those horrible things with progressive ideals, because thats what you have been told.
Fascism, Communism, Socialism, and Progressiveism are all forms of central control/central planning government structures based around the idea of a large, all-powerful government. They are all forms of the same basic thing. They all put the welfare of the State over the Citizen. So, they all share certain characteristics like little or no personal freedom, no protections from government abuses, and high levels of corruption.
Greece is getting its bailout, for the same reason that the US did under the Bush administration. You remember TARP right? The one that passed under secretary Paulson? That pushed the US debt over the $10 trillion mark under the previous administration. The German banks hold almost 2/3 of the capital in Greece right now, and if they were allowed to take the losses, the contagion would spread to every other country in Europe. And Ill give you just one guess which company would fail(again) should those German banks fail. (All our AIGs really are in one basket here)
All the bailouts, rescues, takeovers, etc etc are only delaying, by a short time, the collapse while at the same time making the inevitable collapse even worse when it comes. I was against Bush's TARP and I'm against the current nonsense. The bailout of Greece has only temporarily slowed things for a few months, a year at most. Meanwhile, now Germany is on shaky ground and *when* (not "if") Greece defaults, Germany will need a bailout, maybe from France, and the chain of collapse will continue. Meanwhile, Progressives in both parties push to have the US follow the exact same path that led Greece to collapse.
The federal reserve of the US reopened their swap lines with Greece over this past weekend to help bolster this failed attempt at capitalism
No, this was not capitalism, Greece was not capitalist it was Progressive/Socialist, and that is *precisely* what led to it's failure. The Federal Reserve was a bad idea and still is, and needs to be opened up, audited, and then dismantled. The lack of political differences between the Republicans and the Democrats is largely due to Progressives in both parties. John McCain is an example of a Republican/Progressive.
Chavez is a monster, because that's what you have been told to think.
Apparently, reading comprehension is a problem for you? If you'd bothered to read my posts you'd see that I clearly stated that I lived and worked over 4 years in Venezuela. I saw with my own eyes the kind of monster Chavez is. I knew the kind of monster Chavez was long before I'd even heard the name "Glenn Beck". He killed friends of mine because they peacefully opposed him. Your comparing Chavez to the US is absurd. I wasn't aware that Bush sent out military/paramilitary/organized civilian "brown-shirt" death squads to kill those that opposed his election or policies like Chavez has done.
That kind of anger based on hindsight is useless for those moving forward. Ironically, thats the type of person that most needs government to interfere in their life, as they are not able to accurately comprehend social responsibility.
That right there is the kind of thinking that allows the Chavez's, Pol Pots, Stalins, and Mao's of the world to seize & hold power. If you're unable to win the ideological argumen
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Declan McCullagh's CNET article
It was an MBA class project to create a marketing campaign for a think tank to SELL to a telecom company on a $100 budget, and it wasn't even the winning entry for the class.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Declan McCullagh's CNET article
It was an MBA class project to create a marketing campaign for a think tank to SELL to a telecom company on a $100 budget, and it wasn't even the winning entry for the class. So yeah, it's a Powerpoint that's just waiting to cause trouble.
So it's meta-Astroturf , not genuine Astroturf(tm) fake grass product as-seen-on-TV. And these meddling liberals have just burned it (without even filing an Environmental Impact Report about the effects of flame on Astroturf!)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's not just those companies at fault. It's also, once again, failure on the part of the federal government to even follow their own plans.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
we're pretty sensitive when it comes to the idea of "freedom". Hell, we (somewhat falsely)[1] used it as an argument to form an independent nation in the first place.
So you're saying that declaring Independence was a mistake? It was the wrong thing to do? Too radical? We should have stayed under Britain's rule?
I haven't read "The Radicalism of the American Revolution". Is it an indictment of the founding of the US as an evil empire?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Your subtle message will be lost on the those that most need to hear it, like pearls before swine.
They've made their mind up that the American government is just a horrible thing and nothing's going to change their mind, except maturity.
Not a "horrible thing" - a "necessary evil". One that has broken it's Constitutional leash and needs to be brought back under the constraints in law that the People put it in when they gave it some of their authority.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yeah how about that, it's almost as if the Network of roadways has some sort of legal Neutrality...
Sure. As long as your papers are in order, you are properly tagged every where you go, and they can identify you easily with the traffic cameras.
And that's how they plan to fix the Internet.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Honestly the right solution is even more radical, (Australia just started it, look it up)
Yea, that's radical, but it's far from the "right" solution. I don't want secret, national-level Internet filters blocking my access.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Bullshit. Regulations are for preventing Big Fucking Rich Co. from ass raping Joe Public.
No shit. That's the government's job. And they hate competition.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I really don't like comments like this as they are completely unproductive. Why, Fred over there got robbed for all the good the laws and cops did! Guess we shouldn't have any laws or cops at all, giving the folks a false sense of security that they can leave their homes without being armed to the teeth. *sigh* The idea is not to abolish something when it fails, the idea is to see where something failed and improve upon it.
Funny how some people's view of any failed government program is not that it should be abolished or changed, but just that there should be more of it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
We have that now, it just doesn't block anything
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
You do not even seem to be aware that the opinions you have against the Fed are shared by the progressive movement, in fact the recent Paul-Sanders bill to audit the Fed is a perfect example. Yes, Bernie Sanders is a progressive.
He killed friends of mine because they peacefully opposed him.
Doubtful. Its also trying to win an argument by evoking emotion, and that is a bad idea. And rings rather hollow as the leading party against Chavez right now is a socialist/progressive party. It also rings hollow because the previous opposition, led by conservative business leaders and military, attempted to usurp the constitution of the state instead of taking the correct route. In doing that, they lost most of the support they should have had when the referendum to remove him finally came up when presented by the progressive side. That movement to remove him was forever tainted by the failed military coup brought about by the business leaders a few years earlier with the help of the military, not the progressive movement in that country. Most of the populace remembered the non-democratic means that the previous opposition originally took against Chavez, and because of that, considered any further opposition worse than keeping Chavez. That is why he won, and you should know that having supposedly lived there. Instead, you are repeating what Ive heard dozens of times from the conservative movement in the US. I can understand why though, most of the private media ownership in that country were the ones behind the first failed coup, and you and your business associates(if true) more than likely got your version of events from that media.
John McCain is an example of a Republican/Progressive.
So when John McCain recently attempted to separate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the control of the US govt and off the books, he was acting as a progressive? No wait, earlier you claimed that those types organizations were tools of the progressive movement to socially control the populace. Im sure there is a reason that your opinions conflict so much from situation to situation other than you just repeating what someone told you, but Im not seeing it.
With thinking like that you, sir, are your own (and everyone else) freedoms' worst enemy.
No, its quite the opposite... but you don't know why yet.
No. I didn't suggest any of that.
What I said was that the idea that the colonies were unusually servile to the crown was blown out of proportion for propaganda reasons.
It's all very well to point out that some people abuse the system. But the solution to that is not to abolish a system that is there for a very real reason - the solution is to tackle the abuse.
As with Social Security and benefits, so with regulation of communications. Some regulation is needed to stop abuses like... well I'm sure you can think of some... but bad regulations (like the bizzaro US local telecomms monopolies) are an argument for BETTER regulations, not for none at all.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Competition does not necessarily cause the saintliness you hope for...
...There are plenty of examples throughout the world where there is good competition at the ISP level, with consumers benefiting from better infrastructure, services, and prices. And the great majority of it is from introducing competition, not allowing monopolies to get larger and larger. Net Neutrality probably wouldn't even be on the radar if infrastructure and services were not tied together in government granted monopolies.
In the UK there is plenty of competition, but the ISPs understandably want to increase profitability. Thus they cloud the market with "unlimited [with "fair" usage limits]" deals and offers of "up to" XYZ - note that free market theology assumes a perfectly informed customer base, and its benefits don't necessarily follow where that doesn't happen.
More seriously, they want to move away from being "dumb pipes" to entities that can "monetize" (read "charge for") everything. Just the same as the USA's local monopolies do.
So competition will not necessarily guarantee good behaviour - especially where customers don't understand the market, and where providers collude in a race to the bottom.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
The telcos own fibre, whose value has been artificially inflated by a government-granted monopoly, so it is perfectly reasonable for the government (or "the People") to demand in return certain standards of behaviour with that monopoly fibre. Behaviour which is in the public interest, rather than the short term economic interest of the Fibre company. Otherwise that would be government welfare, and that's just evil, right?
And even if someone else builds an open network to compete with the local monopolists' highly monetised, high-cost, not-dumb-pipe access network, they still need to connect it to actual customers, right? If you keep the current US local-monopoly regulatory framework, what makes you think that the monopolist will provide a fast and unthrottled connection to their competitors, at a reasonable price? After all, they are not just dumb pipes...
I don't see how things are supposed to get better (for consumers), in the world you advocate.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
What a law tries to accomplish, and what it actually accomplishes, are not always the same things.
I was simply saying that I do not always agree with what the law considers a "public" space. Sometimes I do agree.
I doubt you have ever talked to a resident there in their native tongue. Until you have done that, you haven't watched anything, you just read someone elses opinion or presentation of it and latched on to it because thats easier than getting the experience yourself and forming your own thoughts on the situation.
Besides apparently being an apologist for the murdering Socialist thug Chavez, you also stepped in it with this one. I lived and worked for 4-plus years alongside Venezuelans in Venezuela at an aircraft/avionics maintenance FBO, still have good friends there, so you can stick that fake concern for the "will of the Venezuelan people" and the holier-than-thou, elitist superior attitude in your network port. Chavez is a monster of the worst sort.
Progressiveism/Socialism doesn't work, never has, never will. There would need to exist perfectly moral people with no faults like greed or power-lust for any Progressive/Socialist centrally-controlled government not to devolve into the stuff of nightmares like genocide, police-state hell, dictatorships, civil war, revolts, etc. History is full of such. Almost every time, for a few decades and/or a generation or two or three, people are alert and aware. Then, they forget and the Socialist Ponzi scheme of power & greed starts all over.
Right now, the Progressive/Socialist-run European countries like Greece, Spain, France, Germany, etc are sliding into economic collapse because of Progressive/Socialist policies, and yet this administration and Congress are hellbent on implementing the same failed policies & reforms here that are collapsing those countries from within and causing widespread violence in the streets.
The Progressives/Socialists know this is coming and are setting up a framework of control that will take over once the collapse has weakened the Federal government. The ability to control both the mainstream media and the internet is crucial to suppress opposition. This initial establishment of the governments' power to regulate & control the internet is just a start.
Then it won't be just BP that will get a "boot on the throat", to quote Whitehouse Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at a recent Whitehouse press briefing. Because, as another Obama administration lackey was quoted as saying in a speech; "We understand that political power comes mostly from the barrel of a gun". That should scare the crap out of anyone who is paying attention.
"It's all Progressive fun and games until people get their lives and their freedom taken away."-BlueStrat
Strat
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I must be hitting close to home. Typical Progressive reaction to challenges...silence the challenger. I suppose they don't have much choice though when history and the facts are clearly not on their side.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.