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Congressmen Send Letters, Hope For Net Neutrality Fades
The odds of the FCC implementing net-neutrality rules just got much longer. "A bipartisan group of politicians on Monday told FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in no uncertain terms, to abandon his plans to impose controversial new rules on broadband providers until the US Congress changes the law. Seventy-four House Democrats sent Genachowski ... a letter saying his ideas will 'jeopardize jobs' and 'should not be done without additional direction from Congress.' A separate letter from 37 Senate Republicans, also sent Monday, was more pointed. It accused Genachowski of pushing 'heavy-handed 19th century regulations' that are 'inconceivable' as well as illegal. ... [U]nless something unexpected happens, the fight over Net neutrality will shift a few blocks down Independence Avenue from the FCC to Capitol Hill. (In an editorial Monday, The Washington Post called for just that.)"
What phantom jobs are they talking about? Broadband infrastructure investment in the US is dead dead dead. Verizon was the last company investing in broadband infrastructure with their FiOS deployments. They've already announced that they're stopping. No more FiOS. No more broadband.
How can an industry with a current investment level of ZERO be providing jobs? There are no jobs, because there is no investment. Congress is protecting phantom jobs that don't exist!
The jobs at risk are the congressdroids' - they are fearful their corpocleptocractic campaign donors will support someone else if they don't stop this return to normalcy. Fuckers don't even realize they are acting against their own interests - just wait until they end up having to pay extra to all the ISPs so that the voters can get to their own campaign websites.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The problem is that the approach Genachowski wants to use means adding ISPs into the existing structure used to regulate telcos. While this would insure net neutrality it would also open a giant can of worms in applying the rest of a giant regulatory structure to ISPs.
You won't like that.
The correct approach IS new legislation that narrowly addresses the issue of net neutrality.
The government MUST control the flow of information. Otherwise, the balance of power could rest with the people.
The way I see it, net neutrality needs to be mandated for ISPs using state or federal funds to "modernize" America, if they use substantial portions of public lands they also need to use net neutrality. If they use no public funds or public land, let them do what they will. But since most ISPs use public land or funds, we, the taxpayers have a say in their operations.
This isn't about "regulations" its about getting what you paid for: to "modernize" America with faster internet access, not access to a handful of sites, no non-traditional ways of getting content, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
My how I hate articles which don't reference the main subject. http://netcompetition.org/House_Democrat_Letter.pdf http://netcompetition.org/Senate_Republican_Letter.pdf
Vote for ANYONE but republican or democrat. Anyone. I don't care who. Whatever you do, absolutely do not vote for a republican or democrat. Please?
Bi-partisan only means that the same corporation has bought you both. That is the only thing that word means anymore.
Think Of The Children!
Your Country Needs You!
The War On [Insert Topical Cultural Demon Here] Must Go On
Burn The [Insert Topical Cultural Demon Here]!!
There are of course loads more. Anyway, it all sounds as if no-one has moved on since the 11th century so let's remind those that order soldiers around that you can't always get what you want and usually, you regret what you wish for.
They've bought congressmen. No need to invest any of that profit in infrastructure when you can just pay some lobbyists to ensure that your consumer-raping-business-model doesn't get threatened.
They've bought congressmen.
What happened to the hope, change and a new kind of politics?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It left, you just missed it.
You actually believed that? *snickers*
Circumcision is child abuse.
Cue the unending stream of lobbyists, please. They're on next.
Seriously, how many people ACTUALLY think that this was anything more than Congress muscling the FCC aside to better suckle at the corporate teat?
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I don't see Congress getting territorial over any issue that isn't backed by multi-billion dollar industries.
I say the FCC should license a nice fat chunk of wireless spectrum for high power ad hoc peer to peer networking. Then people can put up their own antennas and run their own community-wide public access points. Then maybe the government can help out by connecting the major cities with the longer haul infrastructure. I have to wonder how big of a mess it would be to start, but I also kind of wonder if it might self-organize into a new internet. It'd be delightful to see Comcast's reaction to something like that.
Kind of like modern IP laws...
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Making a viable third party in this country would require a staggering amount of time, effort, and money. Any such third party would have to have a pretty solid message, with some pretty solid heads on its shoulders, to have a hope of getting anywhere. The rank level of dissatisfaction with the current party structure means that yes, it is probably possible. But if you're going to tell me to vote for and possibly help promote a third party, you'll get a much better reaction if you show me some damned smart people working on some damned smart platforms. Most third parties are not run by the best and the brightest that this nation has to offer.
Adult Role Playing Forum
It accused Genachowski of pushing 'heavy-handed 19th century regulations' that are 'inconceivable'
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I am officially gone from
It's not as if net neutrality really had a chance. The incumbent ISPs were going to buy enough politicians off to get the concept killed.
Clearly he didn't. Anyone who did believe it has either 1) Conveniently 'forgot' about it, or 2) Still believes they are getting it.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
corpocleptocractic
Government by body-snatchers?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
But I couldn't figure out what was going on from either linked articles ? Seeing as net neutrality has become a term that has been so completely trashed by both sides, there is really no way to tell from the information provided. I will say this liberal or conservative, democrat or republican you really don't want these people writing rules to control monopolies. They are the same people that gave us 80 years of overpriced phone service, allowed ATT to use incomprehensible invoices, and had us paying a telephone tax for the spanish american war till after the year 2000, .What we need and there is no way we are getting is laws that allow more companies to become ISPs. More unlicensed wireless spectrum, must carry laws for cable and telco isps, or anything that makes these peoples wires less of a monopoly isn't on the agenda.
it clearly needs government regulation to fix it. :/
The people who pass the DMCA and the Sonny Bono copyright act lose the right to complain about g 'heavy-handed 19th century regulations'. Corruption in the US seems to have reached new lows.
What concerns me even more is that world-wide it seems like politicians are more willing than ever to act against the best interests of the people they are meant to be representing, or pass universally unpopular legislation that a well informed public would never vote for directly. Now THAT is corruption. And there seems to be nothing and no one anywhere with the will or ability to stop the landslide.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Watched a old documentary, Net Neutrality (2006) (PBS NOW). /.ers do not even seem to notice.
It was amazing how different the issues were then, anti net neutrality then is now common practice that even
One of the main reasons that the people back then were given to allow the anti net neutrality was that the ISPs could never go overboard and do anything really bad, since the FCC had the ability and power to stop them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
This site has the letters on the left-hand side.
The Democrats, The Republicans.
Sure wish they'd put the names in these news articles, so people had a better idea of who to vote for or against.
That was before the election, now it's after the election.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They're not wholly owned by the telcos. They just hold shares of the congresscritters, nobody needs to buy a complete polidroid. You can rent them these days, you just have to pay more than the guy opposed to you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The letter confirms The Corporate Welfare state that replaced the Social Welfare state provides reason to stupidity.
We pay for what we get, what the government gets, what the business C*Os get, and what our government gives to business with privileges, tax breaks, civil rights, kick-backs-by-proxy....
Corporate Institutions are more enfranchised than private citizens in the USA a pure plutocracy of the entitled of Corporate American Governance.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You do realize that ISPs are not and have never been common carriers, right?
Government by employed, thieving, body-snatchers.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
The "Domino Theory" has again proven to be fallacious logic. Politicians are such idiots, I am amazed we won WWII, maybe the other fools politicians were that much worse than ours. Then again, maybe currently our politicians are that much worse than ....
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I thought that was Sarah Palin's thing. Wasn't she supposed to be a Washington Outsider? Too bad we ended up with another corrupt, game-playing politician instead.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
When did the FCC become the Dauntless Defender of the Little Guy?
Give him the +5.
He meant government by corporate thieves and probably didn't give a moment's thought to the Latin deconstruction, which was an even better description.
C'mon, that's a double pun, that's clever shit! You didn't think of it, goddammit!
We were just sayin' that.. A catchy phrase will get 'em every time. The party's still in power. It's all good...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Personally, I think it should be coproclepticratic... Government via the uncontrolled theft of people's shit.
Congressional donation specialists, campaign staff, lobbyists, and many many more. Allowing the FCC to have its way could decimate employment in the Washington D.C. area. This is not the time to endanger the fragile recovery.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I still believe it, but you shouldn't mistake the republican version for the one that Obama actually ran on. See, republicans want you to believe in Obama as some sort of savior, and then be disappointed when that fails. What Obama actually ran on was that the populace should have more hope, and the populace should enact the change. He wanted people to get involved in government again.
So maybe you should quite your partisan wining and actually DO something about net neutrality.
How can we download an entire movie within, say, one minute? Getting the speed up is more important than deciding how to allocate it.
Is it? Who gets to decide how much speed is allocated to the connection between you and the site you're downloading from? Without net neutrality, the answer will be "whoever pays your ISP". In other words, the only sites that will see decent bandwidth are those to which you've subscribed in some way, probably - because it's those sites that will be able to bribe your ISP.
So where are you getting this movie? Also note, since you made the movie example, that in the absence of net neutrality, the MAFIAA will be even stronger - they'll pay your ISP to throttle non-cartel sources of music/movies in favor of their own offerings.
they are fearful their corpocleptocractic campaign donors will support someone else if they don't stop this return to normalcy.
And thanks to a recent supreme court decision uncapping corporate election spending, they're right to be fearful.
they are acting against their own interests - just wait until they end up having to pay extra to all the ISPs so that the voters can get to their own campaign websites.
As long as incumbents are good at falling in line with the interests of people with money, higher expenses for all comers actually give them an advantage, because it's easier for them to raise money than it is for contenders, and they probably have a war chest from past elections.
Tweet, tweet.
That's precisely the problem we're trying to fix. It hasn't been a huge issue until now, because they've historically operated roughly as if they were common carriers.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I am convinced that those of you naive enough to beg the government to regulate the Internet will eventually get exactly what you wish for.
I am amazed we won WWII
There are times I have my doubts.. We seem to be in a new age of appeasement and the love of money
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Of course, the fight for the public's rights belongs in Congress where it can be carefully watched and modified by legislators bought and paid for by the telecommunications industry. It doesn't surprise me that the Post would get on anti-net-neutrality (i.e. the telecommunications industry's) side of this.
The good part is that this is just a letter. The claim that what the FCC may be thinking of doing being illegal may be just the opinion of the senators signing the letter. It would be most interesting to see what corporations dumped money into their most recent re-election coffers. If we learned one thing from the Nixon administration it's: Follow the money.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I work in politics (not in the USA) and this is EXACTLY what is required. The system is a democracy, its just that the lobbyists are getting to more voters than we are. So unless you get off your ass and start telling people about this, and not just the regular crowd of believers but your family and friends about how important net neutrality is then there won't be any change. Obama doesn't have any power of his own, the only power he has is the millions of people who agreed with him and who said they would support those things.
The FCC proposal is to designate ISPs as common carriers which will subject them to net-neutrality regulation.
Technically, ISPs should already be common carriers under the definition in the 1996 Telecom Act, which applies to all persons who engage in "interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio or in interstate or foreign radio transmission of energy..."
It's just that the FCC has been treating them as "information service providers" so now the FCC will have to make a finding that they are, in fact, common carriers and then will make rules governing them.
There's a whole lot of paperwork and public hearings involved, but it's entirely within their authority so any opposition from congress will either have to involve passing a law that changes that authority or (as was previously mentioned) coercing the FCC chair by screwing with his budget.
Imagine if electricity utilities were allowed to put out the wattage level they saw fit. Ya, that'd work well... Same goes for the interwebs.
Are you all ready to have the same thing happen to your internet that happened to the fuel prices when they figured out that the government was in their pockets? It's coming and it's gonna hurt!
just wait until they end up having to pay extra to all the ISPs so that the voters can get to their own campaign websites.
That will never happen. Ever notice how the politicians write themselves nice exemptions from the law that the plebeians have to obey?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
just wait until they end up having to pay extra to all the ISPs so that the voters can get to their own campaign websites.
If only relatively well-off voters can afford to keep tabs on congress, that will suit the congresspeople just fine. They don't even WANT our votes if we're poor; Who wants the burden of representing people you hate?
If the FCC has the authority to classify ISPs as "telecommunications providers" instead of "information providers" it should do so regardless of what Congress says.
I wish more people in Washington had the guts to do what Julius Genachowski is doing and stand up to those "suits" in their fancy leather chairs in the executive offices at Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, Cox, Verizon, Sprint, Qwest and the other ISPs. Those ISPs do NOT have a right to make profit at the expense of consumers and I applaud the FCC for having the guts to do something about it.
Here's a tip for Comcast... Instead of blocking BitTorrent, just charge those customers who use more bandwidth (regardless of what they use it for) more money each month. And implement QoS that shoves BitTorrent packets to the back of the queue to give everything else a chance.
Of course, if they actually did that, people might stop paying for expensive cable channels and start downloading the content instead. Cant have that now can we :P
Are you all ready to have the same thing happen to your internet that happened to the fuel prices when they figured out that the government was in their pockets? It's coming and it's gonna hurt!
No, it's not. The internet routes around damage. If internet prices skyrocket (and the U.S.A. is already paying more and getting less than many other countries - go figure), people will just create their own network; either mesh networking, or simply wireless routers configured to bridge with other wireless routers - shouldn't be too hard to bounce the signal up the branch until you find a trunk.
I'm not too concerned about it, anyway; Internet communications are pretty much required to live nowadays. For instance, you can't get a job at a grocery or department store without internet access - they don't have paper applications anymore. The push for paperless has pushed networking onto the stack with the other "basic" utilities. People won't stand for yet another bootheel on the head of the commoners.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Who do we want in control of the infrastructure? Corporations which cannot be held accountable because they are owned by foreigners? Or the government which while still possibly owned by foreigners is at least somewhat accountable.
It's your choice. I think as a libertarian rather than anarchist, you need a government to maintain freedom/liberty for the consumer. Corporations are on their own and in my opinion using the government to promote and support corporations is collectivism.
I'll miss it, when it's gone.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
And do what, vote? Who does he propose we vote for if we want to see change, if not himself?
Are you suggesting that his platform was "I'm not going to bring any positive change, but I think it'd be neat if someone else did"? Like it or not, he was running on a platform of "change", and now that he's president Gitmo is still open, the government still hates the internet and free speech, there is still no end in sight to our little pet wars, and we not only still have the PATRIOT Act, it was fucking renewed. Obama isn't just "not doing things" because he doesn't have the populace to back him up, he's actively maintaining the status quo.
And for your knowledge, I'm anything but partisan, I hate all of these fuckers. My contribution to net neutrality is to, as often as possible, advocate a crypto-anarchist mentality and provide people with the technical ability to enforce their own rights. The government is broken, I'm sick of it. The idea of electing a politician to reign in on government overstepping it's bounds is dead. ...Oh don't worry, I'll still vote in every election I'm able to, but that doesn't mean I have to like the situation, and I'm certainly not going to be naive enough to think I'm going to make a difference this way.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
In case anybody's wondering if their congresscritter signed on to this letter, here's the list. You can get a laugh out of the "threat or danger" propaganda at this site too, if you're amused by that sort of thing.
The thing to pay attention to is that a total of just over 100 congresscritters signed either the blue dog democrat letter or the republican letter. So characterizing this as congress taking a position on what the FCC has done is nonsense, and it's unfortunate that cnet feels they can get away with such a blatant misrepresentation. This doesn't even represent a third of congress, much less a majority.
I used to think Declan McCullough was a reasonably intelligent fellow, but this is just a propaganda piece. Congress didn't do anything, and if hopes for net neutrality fade, it's because we believe this tripe, not because congress has said anything to anyone about anything.
So, Obama's message was:
Have hope! I won't do shit!
Is that what you're saying?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I care more about the freedom to download the content than the speed. The government having regulatory capabilities in this regard is dangerous. Even having a little is dangerous as the federal government has shown repeatedly that when it gets a little power it always seeks more. Even through various iterations of congress, presidents, court justices, etc. things get bigger and bigger (SS, Medicare, IRS, taxes, it never ends).
I care about letting the free market dictate the speed aspect. Yes, I understand collusion and such, but the free market isn't an immediate fix, it is a consistent fix. Give it time and speeds will increase. How do I know? What percentage of people had no internet access just 20 years ago? How about 10 years ago? What percentage had broadband access 10 years ago? How about now? What was the average broadband rate 10 years ago? How about now? I've had Time Warner in several states and noticed speed ups (not just in different states, but even over time in the same cities).
If you all you care about is speed, that is your choice and I wish you well. But, I'd rather have assurance of the freedom to download said content at all!
to say that we shouldn't have "intrusive" net neutrality regs and should "let the market decide" instead.
How's it working out for you guys? What are you going to do when the "free" market, dominated by a few huge players, decides to throttle or block traffic outside of their network? Switch to one of the other huge players that does the same damn thing? This is doubly true given that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people and that said huge players don't have to open up their networks.
So, I put the question to you: Where's this "free" and "open" "competitive" market you guys keep droning on about?
No, it's not. The internet routes around damage. If internet prices skyrocket (and the U.S.A. is already paying more and getting less than many other countries - go figure), people will just create their own network; either mesh networking, or simply wireless routers configured to bridge with other wireless routers - shouldn't be too hard to bounce the signal up the branch until you find a trunk.
And the instant that sort of thing reaches any sort of critical mass, laws will be passed, and the authorities will step on it hard. At best it would turn into the mire that is the current state of anti-"piracy" enforcement, where people get sued into ridiculous settlements for decades while the available hardware is locked down ever more and more... If anything it'd be a sneakernet since shutting that down is a little more involved than driving around scanning for the mesh signals.
If anything is to change, then the powers responsible for the status quo must be broken, along with the culture of acquiescing because it's "their" infrastructure (built on all that public land with all those lovely subsidies, tax breaks, and government-granted monopolies). Given that the vast majority either stands behind the status quo or doesn't give a shit either way, I'm not gonna hold my breath.
People won't stand for yet another bootheel on the head of the commoners.
Hahahahahahahahaha! Hahaha! Hoo. Hah. Heh... Whew... Oh man, that's funny. Tell another one...
You'd need the mesh to self-manage some sort of pseudo-hierarchy.
That's not what I was proposing.
There would be a traditional network infrastructure that is viable in the way you mention it. It provides "free" access to wireless connections made via local mesh networks. So you would not need a direct connection to any part of the "backbone". As long as you were within a reasonable distance and could have a couple of nodes relay your traffic you would be fine.
Obviously the farther away you are, and the more nodes you need to get to a backbone the quality of your connection would diminish. Hence, the need of governments and cities to intelligently expand the backbone as required.
So every mesh node connected straight to the backbone would have a public IP address routed in the traditional way. The value in the mesh network is that anonymity is assured through reasonable doubt. Of course Germany's laws assigning responsibility to that mesh node regardless if they could prove the owner committed the act makes this idea problematic to say the least.
As for the problem you mention, distributed content networks like Freenet go a long way to addressing that. For websites and services that can't work in that kind of environment I would see them hosted in data centers no different than anything else today.
What you would get out of this is the elimination the "last mile". Everything is moving towards the Internet anyways. I think it is only logical that a citizen connect up to a Neutral Network via wireless connections eliminating the costly infrastructure in the streets and the houses. Would be a lot easier in many ways and anonymity is practically assured.
I seriously don't think government operating the backbones could be any worse than private companies, which are trying to also control the content due to a conflict of interest.
No, he said "So maybe you should quit your partisan whining and actually DO something about Net Neutrality".
Because if Network Neutrality goes, the companies get to censor you. They get to censor anyone they feel like, and there's not a damn thing the Constitution will do for you. It only applies to the Government, not private companies. If there's no Network Neutrality, the regional provider will tell you where you can and cannot shop. So you change provider, right? Wrong. There's not much in the way of competition at tier 1 and you don't get to pick what tier 1 your ISP uses. Besides, with much of the redundancy cut out of the Internet as it stands, there IS no way for you to circumvent such restrictions. Oh, and that means that if one backbone provider blocks vendor X, then vendor X will be essentially blocked from ALL backbone vendors downstream of that location. A puritanical backbone provider in one State can impede the commerce in another.
Sure, sure, the providers claim they can't handle the sheer volume of Internet traffic and some small fraction of users use most of it. They can use QoS. ECN, Hierarchical Fair Service Curve and an adaptive packet-dropping scheme like BLACK would be sufficient. (There are a number of schemes, including BLACK, that are designed to prevent packet streaming from clogging up the network. ECN messaging allows the network to tell servers and clients when they need to throttle back. HFSC ensures that nobody can game the system and take unfair advantage of the resources.) This would not be contrary to Network Neutrality, as it ensures that all users are treated absolutely as equals. The networks would be true Common Carriers, rather than Mafia bosses.
Oh, and that reminds me, have you considered that when the RIAA and MPAA started to form and seize power, there were probably people - in all innocence - saying that the industry should take care of itself, that interference would cause problems, that the corporations needed all this extra power for the benefit of the poor, starving artists. Given that the money collected by the RIAA and MPAA never gets seen by said artists, and no serious opposition to this exists, do you seriously expect me to believe that the ISPs and backbone providers will spend the money they rake in through the ultimate protection racket will ever get seen by the poor, starving engineers? Give me a break. You'd have to be insane.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Mod parent up. There are plenty of people out there who buy this BS, and the only way to fix that is to speak out from the opposite direction.
The United States is not a dictatorship and one person cannot, by law, rule unilaterally. Obama tapped Julius Genachowski to head the FCC, and thus had done more than anyone reading this thread to promote network neutrality. When you consider the myriad issues facing the USA, and how intractable most of them are, it's remarkable a single person is expected to fix even a fraction of them.
Indeed, it's a miracle that politicians accomplish anything at all considering the electoral minefield they enter every time they attempt anything of consequence. Many of these people entered politics with dreams of saving the world, then learned that votes come not from sound policies but from hyperbolic promises and expensive ad campaigns. They learn that trying to do their jobs right garners nothing but controversy, disapproval, and well-funded enemies; play-acting for the cameras, pork-barrel projects, screwing the future for short-term gain, and funding their campaigns with corporate-sponsored bills are the secret to staying in office.
And for that, the blame can squarely be laid upon the people. It's called a representative democracy for a reason: The quality of the government reflects the quality of the voters. The voters by and large are ignorant masses that vote for whatever politician promises the world and asks for no sacrifices in return. Later, when the politician fails to deliver on the impossible promises—the ones he had to make to get elected in the first place—the voters toss him out in favor of the next guy with fancy TV commercials and exactly the same promises.
If you want to change the representatives, you need to change the voters. Start a campaign to educate your community about the truth behind important issues. Get them to ask tough questions and to expect real answers instead of sound bites. Get them to vote not for the candidate with the biggest promises but the one who offers detailed policies. Explain the federal budget and where tax monies really go, and how it might be fixed. Explain the issues that matter most to you. And if you can't find anyone to represent your views in congress, run for office yourself.
But if you can't be arsed to do anything but make hollow demands, expect your representatives to do nothing but make hollow promises.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Weren't those promises by the president? These letters are coming from senate and congress, unless they're now deploying mind-control devices in DC those people aren't under control of the president.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Let's not forget that the US voting system robs people of all hope for third party candidates so most vote for a guy they don't like but still don't hate as much as the other.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
More like "Hope and Change!" /fine print/ We Hope you don't wake up and notice that the only Change! is a Democrat cashing the checks and sucking the corporate cock instead of a Republican.
The only nice thing about it is after 8 years of Obama (because the repubs will run a tea party kook) it should finally silence all those fools that say "You can change it by voting!" and get them to finally accept what many of us already know, that short of armed revolution all you can do is take every dime you possibly can get from mommy government and wait for the whole thing to collapse.
It does make me wonder if this is what the Romans felt like during the last decades of their empire, as the wealthy looted while the government tried to keep them passive with bread and circuses. Were they this apathetic? Did they see their empire was falling apart and simply realize it was beyond hope? Of course our empire has a shitload of weapons (pretty much the only thing we are #1 at any more) so it will probably be a whole lot nastier. But Obama should have finally drove a stake through the lie that votes matter, they don't. Only big fat checks and cushy corporate positions after "public service" matter anymore.
As for TFA, did ANYBODY here actually believe the FCC had a chance in hell against an entire congress full of corporate blowing whores? Hell I'm surprised they got as far as they did. In today's climate if it is good for the people but bad for a corporate bottom line the answer will always be NO, period. When was the last time you saw congress pass anything that was truly "for the people"? Can you even remember back that far? And please don't say health care, because that was an insurance company wish list granted by the government. If it was for the people we would have had a single payer option and a cap on drug prices like the sane countries do.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Wow how naive can you be? Obama came to power with an agenda to implement certain things that left had wanted to do for years and finally got their chance (no 1 being the healthcare bill). That's the change he was talking about. According to any poll, majority of people were against the bailouts, majority of people were against the stimulus, majority of people were against Obamacare, majority of people are in favour of Arizona type immigration control. I guess the change the according to you the populace should enact would be very different to the change that he is actually enacting. Dems were elected simply because people were sick of Bush and neo-cons, they never got the mandate or popular support to do any of those things they are doing.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
What happened to the hope, change and a new kind of politics?
We haven't started any new wars for a while. That's a change.
Anyway, are you critiquing Obama with that? You do realize that the guy they're writing to, the guy who wants net neutrality, is an Obama appointee (see the 3rd sentence in TFA). The 74 house democrats and 37 senate republicans? I can't read make out who signed their names to the house dem letter, but I'm going to assume that most of the 111 congressmen and women didn't actually run on the campaign of "hope, change and a new kind of politics."
If you were expecting one election to bring about hope, change, and a new kind of politics immediately without any resistance, you're even more of a delusional liberal loon than I am.
What happened to the hope, change and a new kind of politics?
Well, lessee. The guy that ran based on that slogan is head of the executive branch. So is the guy trying to do the right thing (in our book) that these congressmen are sending letters to.
The folks bitching, moaning and sucking the collective dick of their corporate overlords are in the legislative branch. So unless you expect part of the "hope and change" you're so fond of bashing to be the complete overhaul of your constitution, I don't quite see what you expect the POTUS to do about it?
Of course, there is something *you* could do, which is to look beyond the perfect teeth, the immaculately groomed hair and the little pin with the american flag, and try and find a guy/gal who might be worth voting for based on what he stands for, not on what he looks like. Then again, that would have to be a third party candidate, and those don't stand a chance...so I guess you might as well roll over and present your buttcheeks for another 4 years of congressional PMITA pleasure.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Believe it or not, constituent sentiment is taken into account.
If every single constituent sent a nasty letter to their congressman you can bet they would think long and hard before jeopardizing their seats. Unless they *really* strongly believed in it and were willing to sacrifice election chances they will bend in the wind of public opinion.
What's really needed here is something to take as much political influence out of the process as possible, and to eliminate as far as possible the resulting laws'/regulations' ability to be used to control/silence speech.
Many people feel the internet is another world. I'd agree with this basic concept with the exception that at this point the internet is more like another country and deserves it's own Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to grow, prosper for all, and fulfill the promise the internet holds for every human on the planets' future.
We need something along the lines of an Internet Constitution & Bill of Rights amended to the US Constitution setting out specific duties, powers, & limits to what the government, ISPs, and backbone providers may do along with a set of basic individual rights for the internet.
We don't need to re-classify the internet under telco regulations or pass some massive multi-thousand-page monstrosity of a bill that will be a political payoff and power-grab by *somebody* in the end, with very little to address the actual concerns of most here while almost certainly making things worse in multiple ways for most internet users.
Unfortunately, the only way I can see getting something that isn't a power/wealth grab by one political/corporate interest or another is to have it be a grassroots movement of some sort, as anything coming from politicians of any stripe is nearly guaranteed to be corrupt, or at least end up corrupted by the time it's passed. It would have to be a powerful enough popular demand to overcome fierce resistance from the entire political/governmental structure.
Well, one can dream.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
This.
One thousands times this.
I wish I had points to mod you to the sky.
74 corrupted Democrat rats and 37 corrupted Republican scoundrels.
When it comes to "stuff that matters", they are all the same.
One cannot be a decent moral person nowadays and support any of the two animal houses.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Who gives a shit about downloading a movie. They have painted you into a corner now that mpaa and the riaa have allowed the monitoring of the so called open channels of the Internet now they will section off audio and video into seperate billing codes and fnish you off that way. Take it another step and regulators will step into control the video and audio a la FCC once it is regulated as such and all your YouTube swearing will come out as bleeps. Americans made the Internet and the broke it no harm no foul.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
You don't need those last three words.
His tag line during his campaign was incomplete; It should have read "You can bring the Change We Need, but you need to get involved."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
corpo-cleptocractic
I would support you, but your views are too heteroradical.
Wait, hetero-radical... crap.
Google still believes in net neutrality and has more money for lobbyists than the ISPs and communication companies acting in their own interest. It could happen. It IS Google, right?
Personally, I think it should be coproclepticratic... Government via the uncontrolled theft of people's shit.
We already have that.
They are just following standard business procedure in the Corporate States of America!
The sad thing is that I can't see how this changes without bullets. We've had 3rd parties ascend before, but usually because one of the "two" parties did something to fail miserably, and then got branched off of. The steady-state of "two" is returned to very quickly.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Not wholly owned? On Capitol Hill they all know that once the payment is received they are obligated for any requested services.
I'd be surprised if there was anything they wouldn't do short of murder or starring in porn movies. Then again.
I guess you are not familiar with the phrase: "Money talks."
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Unless they *really* strongly believed in it and were willing to sacrifice election chances they will bend in the wind of public opinion.
Then how do you explain the fact that the health care "reform" legislation passed when a large majority of Americans were opposed to it?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
just wait until they end up having to pay extra to all the ISPs so that the voters can get to their own campaign websites.
You obviously don't known anything about how the government works. More than likely, that premium would be paid by tax payers, at a premium. They get a free ride via mail service too. In other words, everyone losses except for ISPs/Telcom/Cable, their CEOs, and the associated lobbyists.
Besides, if it takes an extra two seconds for your congressman's web page to render, who cares. They are already using services such as YouTube and Google Video to disseminate video messages, not to mention Face Book and Twitter. They are already riding on someone else's bandwidth so at the end of the day, they're really not that likely to be negatively affected at all.
'someone thinks of the children'.
"The sad thing is that I can't see how this changes without bullets . . ."
This system is going to collaps under its own weight. We've been printing and borrowing to avoid dealing with recession ever since the beginning of the Bush administration, and it has only accelerated in the last two years. Every day that they continue this nonsense makes the day of reckoning worse. This year alone the Federal government will borrow and spend at least $1.5 trillion. That's almost 10% of GDP. Then, they'll release official BS statistics which claim that the economy "grew" by 2-3%. Remove the unsustainable debt spending, and the economy clearly shrank. Furthermore, if they balanced the budget tomorrow, it's an immediate 9+% drop in GDP.
It won't take bullets to change things, just another few years of the status quo.
When the asshats in D.C. refuse to deal with a glaringly obvious fiscal crisis, why should we have any hope that they're going to do something like network neutrality?
A: Because they can.
No sig today...
Someone mentioned that we need to vote for candidates that have detailed plans for everything rather than voting for those with slick ad campaigns. So put yourself in the situation of someone running for office. Are you expert enough to lay out detailed solutions to issues concerning telecommunications, agriculture, commerce, defense, transportation, welfare, immigration, international relations and all the myriad sub-fields they contain? Nobody can possibly be a competent expert in all of these areas yet congress has to regularly make long-lasting decisions that impact these fields. How can they possibly make an informed decision for every bill? Enter the lobbyist. The lobbyist is an expert in his or her particular field and is more than happy to inform a congressperson what the important issues are regarding House Bill 714.
We don't need "informed" politicians because nobody will ever exist that can make competent decisions on every or even some of the issues he or she will face in their political careers. We need to somehow neutralize the power and influence a lobbyist holds in our government without removing the essential service they provide - access to expertise and the ability to provide a cliff note summary of the topic at hand. What the answer to that is I don't know but it's clear why corporations seem to run the show - because they have all the experts. How did you gain the expertise in whatever vocation you decided to practice? More than likely you gained it by working for someone, maybe even a large corporation or two.
From my point of view (as a European having now lived a lifetime in the US), Obama was elected by the virtue of not being Bush. Then, when people discovered he wasn't Thomas A. Edison, Mahatma Gandhi, George Washington and Jesus Christ all rolled into one person, they became horribly disappointed.
I see both the Obama administration and the current house as fairly conservative, with their hands and hearts in the deep pockets of corporations and lobby organizations. I don't think the US has had a non-bought government or house since the 19th century, but this period is worse than most.
Why this is allowed not only to continue but become more entrenched with time? Beats me. Perhaps the nation-wide irrational fear of government and trust of corporations might have something to do with it. My perception may be wrong, but I think the typical American has a deep rooted fear bordering on a taboo that governments are dangerous and after his hard earned money, while he harbors no such feelings for corporations, no matter what the track record is. Or it might just be that the average voters are so gullible that they believe advertising campaigns without stopping to think of who actually paid for those campaigns... Who knows. One thing is certain, however: A company won't plonk down millions on politicians without expecting anything back. So don't be surprised when the vote arrives and the politicians give something back.
Internet campaigns can cost far less (maybe just volunteers), and may "Virtually" negate TV/Radio time and location appearances.
This would be a good reason for the status-quoe plutocrats to advocate net-nepotism and end net neutrality.
It could be the only nails in the US Democracy and Freedoms coffin.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Yes.
But on the "meh" side, I simply just pay a small premium for my ISP's alternative "Business" package, which unblocks ports 25 and 80 so I can run my own mail and web server, and maybe does a few other things in a more net neutral manner.
On the community wifi mesh thing, still hoping OLSRD makes it big or something... But I do what I can to just leave an open AP.
havent these same people used the same word for preventing regulations into wall street ?
what happened after that ? or was it a parallel reality ?
Read radical news here
I care equally about net neutrality. What good is all that speed if you can only utilize it when downloading an entire movie from your ISP's media arm and downloading from anyone else results in the download taking ages?
We need net neutrality, sadly Congress has once again shown their lack of understanding when it comes to technology and the public good.
these posts as such are being made in order to derail discussions. just observe how long the bullshit went on for pages after you started responding to this troll post. its premeditated, planned trolling. do NOT respond to such trolls that post in the first posts of a discussion.
Read radical news here
The part that disheartens me most is that the opposition has already framed this as "Government takeover of the Internet" and because of that they will probably win out.
but votes talk louder. If they aren't reelected they can't keep doing bullshit. New bullshit is better than old bullshit, the smell is newer.
The internet routes around damage.
I think your assumption is mistaken, as is the article writer when (s)he says
This ignores the fact that for most Americans, internet service is a natural monopoly like electrical power. Look what happened to California when power there was deregulated and customers were thrown to the Enron wolves -- brownouts and blackouts. Thinking that there is any meaningful oversight provided provided by consumers and Internet watchdog groups is laughably naive.
people will just create their own network; either mesh networking, or simply wireless routers configured to bridge with other wireless routers
I think that's way too optimistic. How many wi-fi hotspots are there where you live? I pick up between none and five at my house, and not a single one of them is open. And it's our fault, warning the non-nerd public of the dangers of leaving the wifi unprotected.
People won't stand for yet another bootheel on the head of the commoners.
If only that were true. We'll take whatever garbage they want to feed us, and we'll like it.
Free Martian Whores!
I used to think Declan McCullough was a reasonably intelligent fellow, but this is just a propaganda piece.
You really need to do a little background check on Mr. McCullough. Google his name in relation to LiViD (the earliest attempt at getting DVDs to play on Linux. He was single handedly responsible for getting the MPAA riled up against the free software world, and the legal troubles of several developers at that time.
They weren't the last free software developers that jerk shit on, by a long shot.
He is obviuosly still butt-buddies with one or more of the editors at slashdot since they still seem to give his appalling tripe preference over more intelligent and balanced news stories (I won't use the term 'reporting' for McCullough's form of yellow 'journalism')...must be some nice kickbacks in there for the slashdot people.
Honestly, I've been posting on this site for many years (as you can probably see by my relatively low /. id), but this love affair between /. and that particular piece of excrement makes me want to reconsider. Replacing links in submissions as happened with yesterday's "tabnapping" story just reinforces the notion that a better portal than slashdot is sorely needed, and soon. (No, I don't mean digg, much as I enjoy it at times)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The news never says "US citizens" unless it's a kidnapping or a plane crash in foreign lands.
Nope, the news says "US consumers".... US consumers this, US consumers that...it's all you are to the politicians.
No sig today...
[Obama] wanted people to get involved in government again.
And do what, vote?
No, he wants people to apply government jobs and/or government cheese.
We've had 3rd parties ascend before, but usually because one of the "two" parties did something to fail miserably, and then got branched off of. The steady-state of "two" is returned to very quickly.
We're seeing that right now - the question is - will the Republican party split or not?
Maybe we can get a party of moderates going? /false hope
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
What have ISPs done over the years? I don't know all the details, but I've got 20mbit DSL to my house and 50mbit cable to my office, both for what I feel are very reasonable prices. A dozen years ago, the best I could get was a 384k DSL connection and no cable modem option. It may not be South Korea here, but my family can watch streaming video on multiple TVs in my house. I've got more bandwidth than I know what to do with. I've got a buddy that works for the local phone company and they're rolling out FTTN about as fast as they can. What am I supposed to be complaining about? We're in this big uproar over net neutrality, only we've already got that. Other than some bigwigs testing the waters with public comments (and getting a lot of backlash), nothing appears likely to change anytime soon.
Sorry, what you said is more bullshit. Companies can pay for propaganda, votes can't. Propaganda wins votes. This has been scientifically proven. Therefore, the smart money is on the companies, not the individuals.
The way to prevent this is radical election and finance reform, but lord knows you won't see any Congresspeople or Senators putting that idea forward.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Is it feasible to setup a "Whole Internet" Coop with WiFi in an area? Or are there regulations making it illegal to bypass the monopolies?
It's possible but it's hard to get good results. You need a lot of subscribers and a good mix of subscribers (i.e. with sufficiently low average demand) to make the numbers work out. I pay $50/mo for 512k down and 128k up from a local WISP, and they're barely staying afloat, and are in need of more customers to make the numbers work./p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wow how naive can you be? Obama came to power with an agenda to implement certain things that left had wanted to do for years and finally got their chance (no 1 being the healthcare bill). That's the change he was talking about. According to any poll, majority of people were against the bailouts, majority of people were against the stimulus, majority of people were against Obamacare, majority of people are in favour of Arizona type immigration control. I guess the change the according to you the populace should enact would be very different to the change that he is actually enacting. Dems were elected simply because people were sick of Bush and neo-cons, they never got the mandate or popular support to do any of those things they are doing.
Actually, if you look at the polls, a majority of people had no fucking idea what they were talking about on any of those subjects. Not the first clue. We have got to have one of the least informed electorates in existence.
Where's the list of Senators? I want to send a letter of my own. Why doesn't the linked story include it? Fail, Declan.
My stupid web site
Body-snatching corpocleptocractic congressdroids...
Well now I've got a villain for my next D&D game.
Of course the ISPs are against net neutrality. The money is in the content business not in the utility side of it. The anti net neutrality FUD right now comes from "Americans for prosperity", funded by cable providers and AT&T.
If you remember the "CO2 is live"-slogan, that's where it's going. Net neutrality= governement regulation = net brutality. Keep the government of my internet, Growth is only possible in an unregulated market. The government took over banking, auto mobile industry, and health care, now they want to steal your internet.
I am looking at changing to a local ISP right now.
Forget health care reform (at least lots of people supported it in principle even if they didn't like the specific bill) - how about the bailouts at the end of the Bush presidency?
Congressmen reported that their phones were ringing off the hooks with opposition. The first vote on the bill resulted in a defeat. Then the various powers that be told the representatives who they really served, and they fixed it on the next ballot.
I won't point at any particular party - they were both complicit. The first-past-the-post system we have really results in a state of competition between parties not unlike the competition between your DSL and Cable ISPs. No wonder they get along so well...
Paraphrased from the American President:
Obama "I've made no secret of the fact that the [health care] bill was my top priority."
Everyone: "Well then, congratulations. It's only taken you [15 months] to put together [health care] legislation that has no hope of [providing health care]."
Seriously, all Obama did was set up a crisis that will push us to one extreme or the other in 10 years. Maybe a full government takeover of healthcare is necessary, but can we honestly talk about it as opposed to making a bad situation worse?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You haven't payed attention to any elections in the past... forever, have you? Bullshit is what wins elections. Money buys higher quality bullshit. To win an election you must purchase high quality bullshit, that is where companies come in.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I don't think as many people were opposed to it as made to appear on Big Media infotainment outlets.
Polls showed differing numbers, depending on how the questions were asked (even more deviant than normal) and the big "NO" polls were asking in a more or less roundabout way about a government takeover of healthcare, which Obamacare is most certainly not, so the Democrats went for it.
The people that are screaming about government taking over healthcare are/were already going to vote against Democrats out of ideology, it's why they so readily believe the lie that anything this President or this Congress has done so far is "socialist" or even more hilarious "communist".
Personally, I think Obamacare is a joke, but for pretty much the exact opposite reasons that people were railing against it. It's uber-capitalism (well, uber-modern-capitalism anyway, we all know it's different than Adam Smith's vision) in an area where I believe a more social touch is needed.
I would love a government that had "I won't do shit!" as their main motto. The trouble with Obama is the same as Bush... they keep on doing shit. Give me a stalled, gridlocked, ineffectual government anyday over what we've got now.
You can already download an HD movie in real-time. It's called "on demand". Oh, you want that speed to all the content providers? Maybe I can introduce you to my friend "Net Neutrality".
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Q: How many people with rifles does it take to down one B2 bomber?
A: Every last one of them, and the McGovernment won't be as kind about letting the citizenry pretend to be able to defend itself anymore.
Here is how net Neutrality will help-harm and why what you care about relies on it.
Without net Neutrality, your ISP can arrange it so that the only movies you can download (legitimate or otherwise) can take 5 days unless you purchase the movie from their specific service or whomever you are downloading it from pays an extortion fee. Don't doubt me, we have already seen the head of SBC/ATT claim that Google should pay them if they want their sites to work in a timely fashion on their networks. Comcast, I believe it was, already started spoofing bit torrent traffic packets sending packet resets in order to prevent your downloads from completing.
Here is how it really effects you. When you purchased your internet, your ISP made statements regarding the speeds and access. If they are allowed to purposely restrict that, then it's the same as buying a a 1967 mustang car for $50k only to find out it's a glue together model any 7 year old could assemble, or that your car isn't the car that was advertised. If you are paying for something, then the ISP should not have the right to not deliver that service based on some third party payment to them because the site is on another network and they shouldn't be able to purposely and deliberately take steps to provide less then their offerings to you on account of you purchasing or using something from a third party instead of purchasing it through them.
In all other areas of business, if they advertise one level of service then purposely provide a lower one, it's illegal and called bait and switch or fraudulent advertising. For some reason, people think that the ISP's and larger network providers are exempt from that and you seem to only superficially care about what you want without realizing that you may not be able to get it without that(net Neutrality) being in place. As we have seen with actual actions in the past by ISPs as well as stated intents by other ISPs, your ability to get what you paid for or what you were led to believe you were paying for, is the essence of the problem. A 300 meg connection capable of downloading a full movie in 1 minute does you no good if you can only get that speed when accessing specially approved sites- even when others are more then capable of keeping up.
You do realize that ISPs are not and have never been common carriers, right?
That is ridiculous. The entire purpose of the Internet (as a network) is to be a common carrier of data packets. When the FCC previously decided that Internet access providers should not be considered common carriers, it only demonstrated their prior regulatory incompetence.
a government takeover of healthcare, which Obamacare is most certainly not
Sure it was. The Government will control what kinds of coverages insurance companies can offer and will mandate that we purchase it. It's actually worse than a pure government takeover -- it's a government takeover via for-profit middlemen.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You make it sound like Obam's done nothing wrong.
Obama's broken promises:
1 - He said we'd stop snatching people off streets. Provide a Right to fair trial. (Reality: No longer have Miranda rights even for U.S. citizens.) (Can be held indefinitely w/o trial)
2 - Right to Privacy (They now spy on us via warrantless wiretaps and track our cellphones) (Patriot Act renewed by Obama.)
3 - No interrogation. Close Guantanamo. (Revoked - it's still open and now they interrogate American citizens there too, so they can be held without trial.)
4 - End the war. (Reality: Now it's been extended two more years.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You point is sort of muted by the fact that not only did it pass, but more of the same was done in the next administration with a congress controlled by the same parties. However, they decried that was necessary and we simply didn't understand the intricate composition of the banking/finance system. Then the government took over GM, rammed health care through, did more bailouts and so on. All of which seemed to be against public opinion. In fact, public opinion was so bad, it appears the most democrat congress critters were expecting to lose their seats in the upcoming election. In fact, it was so bad that Saturday Night Live broke for the tradition of bashing only republicans and joking with democrats and did a skit parodying it. Well, actually, SNL has been doing quite a bit of Obama bashing which is strange seeing how they publicly admitted to favoring Obama and trashing Palin in order to hamper republican chances.
Anyways, I agree with your first past the post comment. I just do not think things should change. All of the purposed solutions seem to be either superficial or make things worse.
Except someone not voting, isn't a vote that someone is losing.
I'd like to find a way to make votes not cast by living registered voters count as negative votes against the candidates.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's talking about those people. You know, the unwashed masses that are in a shithole and want a better life. And they can get it if they come here. Kind of like our great grandparents.
Also, I've yet to meet anyone going through the legal immigration system that just loved the process. They'd probably ask for the right to competent paper pushers.
Also also, wanna bet how many federal crimes you've broke in the last year? The answer: you don't know, and neither do the feds, but if they wanted to they'd find something.
That's only 54 reps. Where's the full list?
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
The people who brought you open access to the Internet were startups. People who bought bandwidth from bandwidth providers (Sprint/MCI were kings back in the early 90's, at least in the Northeast). The big guys, Verizon, Comcast? These people got their Internet capabilities by buying them from local and regional startups, much of which was fostered by telecom deregulation in '96 that said backhaul companies had to make their backbones available to all at "market prices."
Now the backhaul companies are content companies, and have bought up all the startups and competition, and are closing up the backbone by virtue of just being too big to compete with. Now you have your content companies controlling the bandwidth and backbone. This is the danger of not enforcing net neutrality - deregulation created rules, and now the telco industry wants to simply disregard the rules. They want their cake, and they don't want to share.
about voter registration?
The problem is, it worked and the corporate machine publicized a made-up scandal as if it were true. Now ACORN is defunct.
Any citizen-involvement drive in government will receive the same malevolent treatment, unless that drive is working to put more power into the hands of corporations and the wealthy few (e.g. teabaggers).
I think if the populace were more keen to do word-of-mouth campaigns for protest votes, we could have a lot of people -- who otherwise wouldn't vote -- making their voices heard via write-in candidates.
AFAIK the 'rerouting around damage' process may only work in a net culture where most users are technically savvy. But it isn't 1997 or even 2001 anymore. Internet communications are driven by herd mentality, which I fear will result in a situation where anyone wishing to re-route around the damage will have to cut themselves off from now-essential services unless they want to foot the bill for both the megacorp and re-rerouted versions of the net at the same time.
Dammit, you're right. Sorry about that. I found a PDF of the actual letter in this much better article. I've typed in the names, but I make no promises about accuracy other than that I tried. And of course if the PDF was wrong, what I typed would also be wrong.
Gregory W. Meeks, Joseph Crowley, Charlie Gonzalez,
Gene Green, John Tanner, Travis Childers,
Michael McMahon, Loretta Sanchez, Ed Towns,
Chaka Fattah, Eddie Bernice Johnson, G. K. Butterfield,
John Barrow, Alcee L. Hastings, Walt Minnick,
Dan Boren, Suzanne Kosmas, Tim Holden,
Albio Sires, Dennis Moore, Joe Baca,
Solomon Ortiz, Henry Cueller, Tim Bishop,
Bobby Bright, Russ Carnahan, Silvestre Reyes,
Frank Kratovil, Jr., Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., Allyson Schwartz,
Lincoln Davis, Allen Boyd, William Lacy Clay,
Hank Johnson, Dennis A. Cardoza, Paul Tonko,
David Scot, Ed Perlmutter, Bennie G. Thompson,
Zachary T. Space, Baron P. Hill, Robert A. Brady,
Parker Griffith, Debbie L. Halvorson, Donna M. Christensen,
Charlie A. Wilson, Bill Foster, Jared Polis,
David B. Maffei, Steve Driehaus, Elijah E. Cummings,
Kathleen A. Dahlkemper, Marcia L. Fudge, Jim Costa,
Leonard L. Boswell, Mike Ross, Sheila Jackson-Lee,
John Spratt, Jr., Charlie Melancon, Peter Welch,
Michael Michaud, Al Green, Kurt Schrader,
Ed Pastor, Danny K. Davis, Michael Arcuri,
Glenn Nye, Heath Shuler, Rick Larsen,
Nick Rahall, Christopher P. Carney, Emanuel Cleaver
The USA looks like a bus heading towards a cliff. And the guy driving just stomped on the gas. The sad part is all the rest of the world is following his tail lights. Hopefully we're far enough behind to hit the breaks when we see you go over.
Yes I would, that's what being elected to a position means: you are given the mandate to use the power the position brings.
Now, it turns out that it was unwise to elect Republicans - or right-wingers in general - since their politics led the country to ruin, but they certainly had the mandate to use their positions to implement their politics.
LOL, it's not a strawman but an Epic Straw Golem :).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
We've got two fucking parties of "moderates" already. Moderates are how we keep getting into this mess, because moderates don't care about any higher principle than "getting along" and "playing the game."
F the moderates. How about honest men (and women) instead.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
good, they all signed their own retirement papers when we vote them out of office in november.
WTF!
What d!ck with mod points calls a request for political activism trolling?!!
Bankruptcy won't overhaul the voting system, it'll cause all kinds of damage to society and the economy but it won't suddenly force a total rewrite of every bit of the law.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
What? Guns are part of the bread and circuses in the US, it's that illusion of being able to revolt "if we wanted to". Take that away and you get actual revolts (and during a revolt the laws don't matter anymore, people will fight with anything they can get their hands on), leave it in place and people will stay in their lull.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I just read your comments on http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/03/1322240/The-Short-Arm-of-the-Law?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+(Slashdot)&utm_content=Google+Reader , where comments are closed - And my god you are a fucking idiot. You have no reading comprehension whatsoever. That guy was right, you were wrong. YOu provided links, and you failed to comprehend your own links you've provided. I haven't seen such idiocy in months.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
The adminstration and Democratic congressmen have received enormous amounts of $$$ from Google, Amazon and other anti-net neut corporations. It is either extremely ignorant or extremely dishonest to make the arguments you just made. So - are you idiots or crooks? Just asking.
This is not a self-referential sig.
This is the truest thing said in this discussion.
This is not a self-referential sig.
Once Net Neutrality is gone, everything will be tolled. Until the USA finds itself so far behind the rest of the world, that it will be to late. With Net Neutrality gone, the ISPs will have enough clout to prevent new businesses (in Telecom) from forming, as the ISP clubers will control that new business's access to bandwidth. The government established the nations highways, it is time they established the nations telecom highway. Do we need another President Eisenhower to build this nation's telecom industry. Yes, highways have speed limits, and the global network should allow every user to travel at the posted limit. If not so allowed, the impact will be quite serious on technology and industry. My son lived in Riga Latvia, a former Soviet bloc, and his termination at his apartment was fibre, at 8+x the speed of dsl or 3x the speed of cable. This same termination should be available to every household.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada