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Al Franken's Warning On Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "Democratic Sen. Al Franken weighed in on Net Neutrality over the weekend at the Netroots Nation conference of liberal activists in Las Vegas, calling it 'the First Amendment issue of our time,' and warning against Republican plans for less regulation. More from a blog post on CBSNews.com: 'Speculating on what the Internet could morph into under the Republicans' preferred lack of regulation, Franken asked the audience of bloggers how long it would take before the Fox News website loads significantly more quickly than the Daily Kos website. "If you want to protect the free flow of information in this country, you have to help me fight this," he said.'"
Yea your analogy sucks big fat donkey dick and highlights your lack of understanding of this issue.
Try again when you're not a fucking moron.
If the two events were to be truly compared, then the First Amendment should have made anyone with a printing press unable to refuse to print and distribute whatever someone else wants based on content, and that includes the major newspapers of the time - the First Amendment did no such thing, but network neutrality will do if it were to be implemented as trumpeted on Slashdot.
You are correct that it isn't a very good analogy.
The first amendment was about giving the press the right to produce whatever (basically factual) content they wanted.
Network Neutrality is about giving all data traversing your network equal treatment, regardless of content.
But your counter-analogy is equally flawed.
ISPs do not, generally produce content. They simply transmit what others have produced. The Internet is not a single entity, it is a collective. When I sign up with an ISP it isn't because I want to be able to get to Google specifically, but because I want access to the collection of inter-connected networks that is The Internet. I expect to be able to view stuff on pretty much any random website. I expect to be able to get to my wife's blog just as easily as Google or Facebook.
I do not expect to have to wait twice as long to load my sister's wedding pictures because she happened to post them on Facebook instead of Flickr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Why do ISPs not have the right to run their networks however they want? Internet access isn't a constitutional right. Please, please stop expanding government's role in absolutely everything.
> Yes, Franken started out as a comedian, but he's now an elected United States Senator...
Yes, I'm posting two replies to yours. Had more thoughts..
First, there IS no Al Franken. He doesn't exist as anything other than a stage name. The man's legal name is Stuart Smalley. That makes him Senator Stuart Smalley. It is only because the House is under the misrule of a congenital idiot that he was allowed to be seated under a stage name. If we allow this new custom to get established don't come bitchin' in a generation when half of Congress is operating under made up names. After all they have the same reasons as Hollywood types plus even more nutjobs who would like to blow them or their family away. Yup, Senator Awesome will be debating Captain Wonderful.
And yes, he started off as middling quality comedian but has 'graduated' to full blown national joke.
Democrat delenda est
The man is very real, not of straw.
The problem I see is that legislators cause a problem in the free market through legislation
Can you see that if legislators are able to cause problems through legislation, then the market is not free?
In a free market, a monopoly would mean the entire market has chosen a single provider. What's wrong with that?
If that provider decided to 'abuse' the monopoly by raising prices or decreasing service, customers would be free to move to another provider or even to start providing the service themselves!
I don't know what they teach in econ 101 these days, but in truth a free market would almost never result in a monopoly.