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GOP Senators Move To Block FCC On Net Neutrality
suraj.sun writes "Seven Republican senators have announced a plan to curb the Obama administration's push to impose controversial Net neutrality regulations on the Internet."
"The FCC's rush to take over the Internet is just the latest example of the need for fundamental reform to protect consumers," says Sen. Jim DeMint, who I'm sure truly only has the consumer's needs at heart — since his campaign contributions list AT&T in his top five donating organizations.
The FCC's rush to takeover the Internet is just the latest example of the need for fundamental reform to protect consumers.
The FCC is trying to protect consumers, you fuck. Honestly, do these people believe that anyone will swallow lies like that?
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
That's what happens when you put Clemson grads in the Senate. :-)
I like that the FCC is trying to ensure net neutrality but I have two problems with it.
First and foremost, if you're being honest with yourself, these kinds of decisions are too important to leave up to people in non-elected positions. Just because I agree with the decision they made doesn't make it right to try and do an end run around the politicos to get their way. Imagine if the FCC were doing the opposite, and trying to encourage a non-neutral net.
Secondly, this wouldn't be a law on the books. All it would take for this policy to change would be a new management at the FCC. That means both that businesses couldn't count on it staying the same for any kind of long term and that the next election cycle could see it thrown out the window without so much as a vote in congress.
Put it through congress the way these kinds of policies were always meant to be. At least give the American people the chance to pretend that they can still influence their congressmen and make it a bit more difficult for the policy to be overturned when the political winds change.
huh ? especially when these and 2 other companies hold almost all american backbone infrastructure in their own hands ? and for some reason, they are acting in unison. gee. i wonder why that is.
really. who will protect the consumer from their stranglehold ? 'invisible hand' of the market ? fairies ? what do you do when 4 companies hold an entire nation hostage, act together ? wait for 4-5 years for a new backbone provider to come up ? do you have that time ? and dont bullshit me about 'competition' by the way - it has never been a reality in between mega companies at the very top. they always act in conjunction.
Read radical news here
"Freedom of Consumer Choice" implies that most consumers have a choice when selecting a broadband provider. Lots of folks are stuck with good ol' Comcast because they're the only provider in the area.
"The FCC's rush to takeover the Internet is just the latest example of the need for fundamental reform to protect big cable companies".
There, fixed that for you Jim (Sen. Jim DeMint)
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Oh yes, they believe that people will swallow them. I'm making a kind of personal anthropological study of the changes to the US right (which, to most of the Western world, is becoming the "far right", or possibly "So far right, it's in danger of wrap around"). These people truly seem believe that *any* kind of government is an evil threat to liberty (how these people can draw a salary as a government employee is an excellent example of living with cognitive dissonance - *my* government job is OK, *my* farm subsidy is an exception to the rule of free markets). There seems to be a growing group who would prefer that the sum total role of government would be to issue all newborns with a bible and a gun, then vanish for all eternity.
I caricature, of course. Not all republicans are this far gone. Unfortunately, It's getting hard to find any vocal examples who are not.
I imagine that this is why Obama is trying to do this with the FCC (and not congress).
That said, I'm fairly convinced that Julius Genachowski and his crack squad of broadband-all-the-time lawyers and business types have no friggin' clue how the technology works or how to address problems of scale.
Net Neutrality, yes, good. Massive hand-over of wireless spectrum to private wireless providers instead of building up a national infrastructure? Dumb.
If you look at the "major political campaign donations" lists, I believe telecoms have overwhelmingly given to Democrats as well... as have most tech companies. For AT&T specifically, they favor Republicans by 2% at the moment. It has shifted back and forth.
This is regulation of the companies so they can't regulate the internet, so to speak. Slashdot has always been for net neutrality.
And READ THE -~=*FRIENDLY*=~- ARTICLE. All of it.
DeMint's received contributions from ATT: $37,500. Total Funding Received: $6.33M
As far as Candidates receiving funds from Computer and Internet Industries: DeMint ranks #35.
Telecom Services & Equipment: #20.
Both of those rankings are WELL below several names of Democrats.
If DeMint's in anybody's back pocket it's Old People. Retirement. Insurance. Real Estate. Securities and Investment.
Quoted:
"In theory, many Democrats favor Net neutrality. President Obama recently reiterated through a spokesman that he remains "committed" to the idea, as have some Democratic committee chairmen.
But theory doesn't always mesh with political practice. More than 70 House Democrats sent a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski instructing him to abandon his Net neutrality plans. A majority of Congress now opposes Genachowski's proposals. "
I'm sorry, what were we talking about again?
in the united states, you have people who will vociferously fight even legislation that is good for them and increases their rights, like common sense healthcare reform, because they would rather believe demagogues on the radio and propaganda outlets on the television that report "the news"
behind these demagogues and propaganda outlets are big business concerns, who have realized they can pay to have opinion swayed in their direction by demonizing brain dead obvious common good legislation that costs corporations money. they have convinced the idiots to fight for the reduction of their own rights. they call legislation in the name of the common good "socialism," "liberalism," or any number of demonized words whom those who oppose "socialism" or "liberalism" don't even really understand
all they know is "socialism is a bad word." well, what does socialism mean? "its means bad stuff." could you define it ideologically please? "it's anti-american." would you like to know the 19th century american history of labor rights- "shut up you communist fascist terrorist"
this is what intelligent americans are up against: corporations whipping up the low end of the iq curve into a rabid hysteria
americans: go to europe. ask a european about socialism. you will find out the word is boring and just common sense. europeans have a much higher standard of living then you, dear propagandized low iq americans. they also have much higher taxes... but they DON'T PAY FOR SERVICES YOU PAY A LOT MORE FOR
truth, idiots: you're still taxed, whether for health care or oil or broadband, but by corporate boardrooms instead of uncle sam, and you are taxed a heck of a lot more! idiots: you are being manipulated by trolls in the employ of big business to think things against your own self-interest, and you are too stupid to see it. wake the fuck up
rest of the world: i apologize that the american experiment in democracy has been warped by corporate influence. there are still americans who recognize the threat and would like nothing more than to remove that corporate financial influence from our democracy. unfortunately, it is very difficult to fight billions of dollars in lobbyists and media buys. but we're trying. wish us luck. if we fail, then the usa becomes nothing more than a slave state to corporate interests, and any slave who dare suggests big business should pay more for the care of their slaves is "unamerican." unbelievable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is the Geek way of defining it: "No filtering, blocking, or censoring of content going across the wire." (simplified, but you get my point)
The other is the politician way of defining it: "all speech on the Internet must be neutral and balanced". Essentially, the equivalent of the "Fairness Doctrine" that was imposed (and revoked) on the visual and audio media years and years ago.
Unfortunately, this distinction is lost in a lot of these discussions. Do not assume that just because it says "Net Neutrality", that it is defined as you think it is.
For the record, I am for the former and against the latter.
Does the FCC censor your telephone calls? No.
Because making ISP's common carriers would give consumers the same protections to the internet that the FCC gives for telephony.
Learn what the fuck you are talking about before you post, please.
Called my Senator's office and gave my opinion. I keep their numbers in my phone so this kind of thing is easy to do.
Everybody (US Citizens) should call theirs to shoot this bill down. The FCC has been doing a good job so far to protect consumers. There's no need to limit them like this. You can find your senator's contact information here: http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
When you call the number, just tell the person who answers that you'd like to give your opinion. They will ask for your name and address and what message you wish to pass along to the senator. You might get a letter back in the mail concerning your opinions and what actually happened with the bill. You can hang these letters on your fridge and any ladies passing by will be impressed with your official correspondence with the government.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
This issue of who AT&T donates to is really really easy to settle. All we need to do is go to research that looks directly at who's giving what to whom, which is thankfully available right here.
As you can see, the general story is:
1. AT&T has given more to Republicans since 1994, but gives huge amounts of cash to candidates of both major parties.
2. AT&T has handed out more cash than any other organization in the country since 1990.
I am officially gone from
Summary: The US private sector has already proven itself incapable of creating the internet. What makes ANYONE thing that in managing it they won't make the same type of mistakes that prevented them from creating it? What makes anyone thing that given a free hand, they won't simply destroy it, or at the very least cripple future growth.
There are certainly some grey-haired ones here on Slashdot. Think back a bit... a bit further. Go back to those prehistoric days before 1995, for a moment. Better yet, back a bit further still.
There was an internet. It existed in some universities, DOD installations, and DARPA contractors. It had email and ftp. To exchange information there was this thing called Usenet, which was actually useful before Green Card and AOL opened the floodgates. To publish information there was this nifty thing called gopher. Something called a web might have just barely been starting. Oh yeah, bang-paths, too. I almost forgot about those.
Then there was the private sector. Compuserve, AOL, GEnie, Prodigy, TheSource, home-grown BBSes. People on Compuserve talked to people on Compuserve and accessed information Compuserve made available or partnered for. Ditto for AOL, GEnie, Prodigy, TheSource, etc. NONE OF THEM WERE ANYTHING LIKE THE INTERNET!! ALL OF THEM WERE VYING FOR THE WHOLE PIE!! Now I'll quit shouting. In the private sector, many of those home-grown BBSes networked with each other. Modems dialed modems late at night when rates were low, and moved information from island to island.
My point is simply this in the US the corporate sector plays a winner-take-all game, cooperating only when necessary. They had several years in which they could have bridged their networks together, (peering?) and they didn't. They all wanted to be the Winner, they all wanted to take all.
It's even worse than this, because NONE of those prior networks were terribly versatile. They all fielded what the corporate business plans called for. They supported applications, they supported functions.
This is also really key. The corporate networks were essentially fixed-function - they didn't support simple transport.
The internet came along, and not only was it built on cooperation, so EVERYONE could play, it was built on transport, not function. Who thinks that when they sent the first email from node to node, they were thinking about p2p, streaming video, TOR, bittorrent, MMORPG, skype, SETI and Folding @Home, clouds, grids and the like? They were thinking ahead though, and realized that things could come beyond their current imagination.
From what I can see, business interests haven't learned SPIT in the intervening 15-20 years. They want to erect walls so they can extract more money from under any rock they can turn to find it. They want to give preference to their content over any other. They know what they like, and make sure it can happen, they know what they don't like and hinder it as they can get away with it, and they neglect what they don't or can't imagine, or perhaps hinder it out of caution.
In the US, the government has no monopoly on stupidity.
In the US, the marketplace is so messed up as to be virtually incapable of addressing corporate stupidity.
In the US, the campaign process is so messed up as to be virtually incapable of addressing government stupidity.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.