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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.
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.
corpocleptocractic
Government by body-snatchers?
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.
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?
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)
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!
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!
Personally, I think it should be coproclepticratic... Government via the uncontrolled theft of people's shit.
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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?
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Most of the immigrants that I know came to the US legally, even the ones that came from real holes. The rest made a concerted effort to learn English and make their way through the citizenship process. All of my known ancestors came across legally too (although back then the process was completely different).
For any government interaction, nobody "loved the process." I didn't love getting my drivers license, passport, or fighting with the IRS to get them to fix their errors and get me my money back. In fact, I'd say I rather despised the processes. But I didn't throw my hands up in the air and work outside the law.
Immigration law, like many other laws, is in dire need of fixing, and I fully support legislation to simplify it and streamline the process. But that doesn't excuse people from breaking it for 40 years straight.
And this isn't about some obscure law that you accidentally broke. This is about immigration, something that all countries take seriously. If you're caught being an illegal immigrant in Mexico, they throw you in jail. By comparison, deportation is peanuts.