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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."
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.
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.
They elected GWB twice, it seems they can get plenty done.
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.
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.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
- George Orwell
With each passing year, he becomes more the prophet.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
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.
You don't remember comcast forging reset packets?
I still do not understand why they were never charged with anything criminal. At the very least some sort of fraud or wire tampering.
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.
...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!
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
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.
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.
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!
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....
[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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Except for the ones in states where that is restricted or outlawed at the behest of the telcos.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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