Slashdot Mirror
Oregon Senator Stops Internet Censorship Bill
comforteagle writes "Senator Wyden of Oregon has objected to a bill in committee that if passed would have given the government the ability to censor the Internet. His objection effectively stop its current passing, forcing it to be introduced again if the bill is to continue — which it may not. Oregonians, please send this man pats on the back."
The free world thanks you Senator Wyden of Oregon. Senator Stephen Conroy of Australia, take note.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
trash talk the filibuster now?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I don't trust any politician. So maybe he stopped this one bill but that doesn't mean he's not in support of some other kind of crazy.
This commendable Senator took care of the first half of the problem. The second half of the problem is more institutional in nature. It grants one hell of an advantage to those who view various forms of freedom as an inconvenient hinderence to their goals.
All oppressive laws have this in common: those who push for them view a defeat like this as merely a delay or minor setback. They can keep trying to get them passed, over and over, through defeat after defeat, until finally they find a Congress more willing to be swayed by their arguments. They understand that once they get the law passed, it will stay on the books forever and will never be repealed. Agencies, bureaucracies and contractors will form around it and give it even more inertia. After a generation or two people will grow up knowing no other status quo.
What's a good, simple, robust solution to that?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Neat trick
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Dude, I appreciate that you may want the pageviews, but consider linking to the source next time. It's how it's done in the Big Leagues.
His objection effectively stop its current passing forcing it to be introduced again if the bill is continue.
English, please?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Senator Wyden gets re-elected because he is one of the few who 'get it' in general. Being from the Portland area he is very in tune with the needs and desires of the tech community. Beyond that he is an honorable and decent man... which I cannot say about most politicians. Waking up to this post only validates my vote for him.
Thank you from all of us Senator Wyden... keep up the good work!
This guy is a hero for doing the right thing, but where is the punishment for the people who tried to put this through; there is no deterrent!?
I would like to sponsor a new bill: each time you sponsor a bill and it gets denied you get caned Singapore style by a martial arts master. Frankly this is getting off easy as they should be tried for treason. However, I believe the caning would cut down on significant paperwork. I'll start by taking a caning if this bill fails (unfortunately I know it will). Ahh screw it, I don't want to be caned.
it took a revolution in 1774, and then another in 1789, and then a few more others in 1848s to establish the fundamentals of the modern liberties and freedoms, and all human rights we take granted now. apparently, we need a few more in order to get one step further.
Read radical news here
Give this guy a cookie, and re-elect him please.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
now you can go back to stealing your music & movies kids, it's your right! If you want you can pay for it by going to russian sites and the like that charge, but don't pay the content creators! Thank god this bill was defeated so people can keep paying others for stealing content for them!
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Do the editor stop check for subject verb agreement? Me am curious.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
I usually sway to the Red, however I must say that this Senator has earned my respect by standing up for what do you call it? You know, that thing this country was supposedly built upon and champions, oh yeah Freedom!
Thank you!
Pass a constitutional amendment that strips Congress of civil immunity for their unconstitutional laws. Let them get sued for lost wages, profits, trebble damages and emotional distress and suddenly we'll have 535 originalist legal scholars.
I believe in positive reinforcement. So few politicians take the right stance on these technology, copyright and censorship issues, and when one does they should be told how much it is appreciated.
You can write a quick 2 line note to that effect on his website here:
http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/10291211924/the-19-senators-who-voted-to-censor-the-internet.shtml
* Patrick J. Leahy -- Vermont
* Herb Kohl -- Wisconsin
* Jeff Sessions -- Alabama
* Dianne Feinstein -- California
* Orrin G. Hatch -- Utah
* Russ Feingold -- Wisconsin
* Chuck Grassley -- Iowa
* Arlen Specter -- Pennsylvania
* Jon Kyl -- Arizona
* Chuck Schumer -- New York
* Lindsey Graham -- South Carolina
* Dick Durbin -- Illinois
* John Cornyn -- Texas
* Benjamin L. Cardin -- Maryland
* Tom Coburn -- Oklahoma
* Sheldon Whitehouse -- Rhode Island
* Amy Klobuchar -- Minnesota
* Al Franken -- Minnesota
* Chris Coons -- Delaware
Thanks. But does it really have to come down to one man? This is the same kind of one man action in the Senate that blocks legislation for decades.
Just one senator between us and government censorship of the internet? What do you thing a Palin administration or A Palin/Bush court would do.
Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
I live in New York and plan on sending a letter of thanks to Sen. Wyden (even if I'm not convinced of his reasons for stopping this, it still desperately needed to be stopped) as well as letters to my own Senators. Will it do anything? No, of course not. Will it have an impact if many of us do? Probably not, but it's certainly worth a few minutes of each of our time to at least try.
The decline into an Orwellian state has been slowed down, at least a little.
with the current collaboration and communication tools (internet, mobile) revolutions dont even need to be bloody anymore.
Read radical news here
Gov't keeps trying to commandeer a private and cooperative institution that we are paying for by choice.
If gov't wants to control a network, then it should build a public network. A network that is administered by the gov't, paid for by tax dollars and freely accessible by all citizens.
It's a long overdue, shovel-ready project with enormous military and fiscal implications, but the old farts in Washington won't wake up until one of those implications bites them in the ass.
Rightly or wrongly, the difference that Slashdot perceives is that COICA enables the government to censor, whereas net neutrality enables the government to prevent censorship by others.
Do you eat poop? I already know you ate eggs for breakfast, and both involve eating.
Slashdot was in favor of net neutrality, but it's against COICA? Both involve the government regulating internet traffic. The only thing I can see that makes Slashdotters against COICA is that it specifically targets piracy.
I can't speak for every Slashdotter, but...
Net Neutrality isn't about the government controlling the internet, it's about preventing corporations using leverage to control the internet and/or hold bandwidth hostage for competitive advantage or to inhibit the flow of free information.
As for being against policies that stop policies, it's not that I'm for piracy. It's just that legislation, policies, and industry practices to reduce piracy have been ineffective, will probably never be effective, hurt legitimate content consumers more than it hurts the pirates, and continuously erode what we can do under Fair Use. That's not to mention that they create ways for corporations to try to financially ruin individuals that are accused of infringing on a rather small scale, even if the evidence that they have done so is shaky. The people are abused, and even content providers of public domain works are often caught in the crossfire. And all of this is done in the name of stopping piracy (whose actual impact is really hard to know) of copyrighted (for way too damn long) works.
I think that these views are entirely consistent. We don't want corporations and governments meddling with our legitimate access to content and information.
Censor the Internet? Unpossible.
The bill, if enacted, might have given the US government authorization to try. Once upon a time A bill was introduced in Indiana attempting to alter the value of pi.
Naturally any such censorship law would run afoul of the first amendment anyway, so a constitutional amendment would be required to make a credible attempt. And of course if enacted it would be as successful as attempting to control the distribution of alcohol or other harmful substances. It would do no more than breed contempt for law.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
by going to http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm. Send the Senator a letter saying thank you.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
http://electronics.costfreehost.com/2010/11/20/web-censorship-bill-appears-dead-for-now-but-will-it-stay-dead/
That sure didn't take them long!
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
When the government makes regulation that censors the Internet, that's bad. When the government makes regulation that keeps corporations from censoring the Internet, that's good. Censorship is evil, freedom is good. It's that simple.
A car analogy: If the government made a law that prevented you from driving to California, that would be very bad. If a toll road operator forced you to tell your destination and charged extra if it was California, and the government would bitchslap them for that, it would be very good.
Good is good, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone, and evil is evil, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone. This is an entirely consistent position.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think I get what you are saying, but I'm still a little bit confused. Which one is the good guy? The government or the corporations?
Yes, but remember that originally the House was elected by popular vote while the Senators were appointed by the legislatures of their respective states. The "cooling" effect had a lot to do with being unconcerned with things like winning campaigns, ensuring that campaign contributions keep flowing, popular trends, and knee-jerk emotional issues (like fear-based security theater). Senators had more of a free hand to do what they personally believed should be done, compared to representatives in the House who always had to wet their finger to see which way the wind was blowing.
That purpose is largely defeated by having the senators elected by popular vote. Now they have to represent their campaign donors and supporters more than they represent their states, same as the House.
Ah but states had more right back then, when state legislatures appointed senators. With senators appointed by states it was supposed to guaranty states rights.
I think one fix is to introduce at the federal level what Texas does. By the Texas Constitution the Texas legislature only meets 140 days every other year.
I've also proposed, and will again, amending the USA Constitution in other ways. For instance Amendment 12 - Choosing the President, Vice-President changed the way the president and vice president were elected. I propose to amend how they are elected again. This tyme though the electoral college is abolished and all candidates run for president. However voting would use a condorcet method wherein the candidates are ranked. Voters would rank their choices, say there are five candidates the voter's first choice would get 5 points, the second choice 4, and so on. The points for each candidate are then added up with the winner, highest score, becoming president and the runner-up the vice president. As an added twist voters might also negatively rank candidates, the voter can give candidate they absolutely oppose a negative score. Say -5 which is subtracted from the candidate's score.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The good guy is always the one who supports a free and open Internet.
Have gnu, will travel.
Having the entire system dependent on campaign strategies and contributions defeats that all by itself (everything is pulling in the same basic direction: getting re-elected).
If you believe gridlock is good, and I agree it is, then with the new congress next year we may have gridlock, see how Republicans gained control of the House? Now how did they do that? By those campaign strategies and contributions you deplore.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Who are the communists ( I say that in the pejorative sense ) who introduced this bill? I'll check for responses after I finish preparing some tar and feathers.
Wow someone from my party in power doing something that I fully agree with and applaud. ...this is a strange feeling.
It isn't THAT the government regulates internet traffic it is HOW.
There are many laws that are bad, illformed and outright corrupt put forth in government but that doesn't mean that the idea of laws and government itself is bad or corrupt.
I emailed him my thanks. I encourage other Oregonians to do the same. I also think it's important to make the distinction that being against this and other poorly written similar bills that restrict freedoms is *not* the same as being pro-piracy. This is a distinction many people (not here, per se, but in other media) seem to be failing to make. Let him know you understand that distinction and you appreciate his paying attention to it. His link is: http://wyden.senate.gov/
Maybe a troll, but it got a very well formed and articulate response. If that is feeding trolls, give me a steak dinner.
Pick one. I need to know who is the good guy and who is the bad guy!
I would, but I already used all of my points. The linked article is a good read.
'“Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires.'
And all of those cool military gadgets we ooh and ahh over will be deployed against citizens aspiring for freedom.
Like so many others, you're making the same mistake believing the US military will fight against it's own citizens. It didn't work for the Chinese during the Tiananmen Square protests and it won't in the US. See the party bosses in Beijing feared local army units would join with the protesters if ordered to fire on them and fight against other army units. There were even reports of some army units shooting at others. So what did the bosses do? They had to order the PLA's, People's Liberation Army, 27th Army into the city from other provinces or parts of China.
It's my guess you've never served in the US military either. When I was in the US Army I was in the infantry, you know one of those on the front line shooting at and being shot at by the enemy. I and others I served with would have shot or fragged an officer giving a bad order. I bet my nephew who's a Marine, and has served in Iraq, would not hesitate to do the same.
Oh, and let's look at Iraq. The US military hasn't been able to stop the insurgency and fighting there yet. There is less fighting but partially because the Iraqi and US military negotiated with some of the militia factions there.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I know who the stupid guy is - you.
It is a matter of opinion whether the foundations of USA were built when europeans began moving to the continent (in 16th century), when the nation gained independence (in the 18th century) during the industrialization period or at some other phase... Perhaps all of those. But we must remember how USA oppressed the native americans since the very beginning and then the african american slaves (all the way until 19th century)... And that's before we take into account that women weren't allowed to vote until 1920 and black people got their suffrage even later. Some of the actions of USA during the world wars (rounding up the japanese...) or the cold war don't exactly champion freedom, either. Historically, when americans have spoken about freedom they have spoken about "freedom from the british empire" or other such things that have nothing to do with what we assosciate with the word today (IE: Civil liberties, personal freedom and the like).
This is my pet peeve: Despite everything that Bush administration did (and that Obama administration didn't reverse), we are currently living in a period where people enjoy more freedom than ever before... So it always catches my eye when someone speaks about the things that the country was supposedly built upon.
It is not bribery when one person helps another person get elected. And yes, a pool of low income individuals can help a candidate get elected. Obama was elected relying on many small donations.
Influencing your elected representatives should be a simple matter of writing a letter and nothing else.
And if they do a good job helping them get reelected. But if they don't then help get someone else elected instead of them, even if that someone else is "none of the above".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
... a Senator with a clue and some balls. What a rare combination these days.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
.. especially Franken, Schumer, Kyl, Hatch, and Feinstein.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Rightly or wrongly, the difference that Slashdot perceives is that COICA enables the government to censor, whereas net neutrality enables the government to prevent censorship by others.
Yet the most powerful argument against net neutrality is that it could (and likely would) result in government censorship. Net neutrality is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to put the Internet under the purview of the government, packaged such that it sells to geeks.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
As someone under the new caps being "test marketed" and soon coming to you, let me tell what life without net neutrality is like and what it results in. You have a cap of 36GB residential and 76GB business. Vonage counts against the cap, the cableco VoIP doesn't. Result? I don't use Vonage. MSFT Windows Update doesn't count against the cap, Mac and Linux does. The result? I wouldn't buy a Mac and while I used to like trying new distros I don't mess with Linux anymore. Youtube and Netflix has "made a deal" so that their services don't count against the cap, while other video sites do. Result? It just got a lot harder for a competing video site to gain traction here.
Get the picture? Without some sort of common carrier rules you end up in a situation like I'm in, where the cableco can make THEIR offering attractive while everyone else looks bad because they will cost you extra. It also allows them to "herd you" towards the services they approve of, by punishing you (at $1.50 per GB if you go over) if you don't stick to approved services. It is the walled garden all over again, only thanks to the fact many of us live with either no choice or a duopoly that refuses to compete with one another (my only choice is DSL where they made it clear they have NO intention of upgrading the 40+ year old lines here, which means 200KB max speed) so without some sort of basic rules you have tilted the game even farther against competition.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Both involve the government regulating internet traffic.
Unlike some people, we don't see government regulation as good or evil in and of itself. What matters is how it is used.
Similarly, government controlling the economy by instituting monopolies for the sake of profit is bad; government controlling the economy by breaking up abusive monopolies and preventing new ones from being formed is good.
we have problems choosing ONE president
Nothing changes, only one person will be president. And second place is the VP.
You'll have situations where one candidate will get the majority of "5"s, but another will get more "4"s and when all the numbers are tabulated, the guy with more 4s wins.
Citation needed.
I say we keep the electoral college
The electoral college is not needed. The only reason it was created is because most Founding Fathers didn't think the average person was educated enough to make an informed decision. While I agree that still applies that's because too many voters let others make decisions for themselves. Back when the Constitution was drafted many people weren't very educated.
but eliminate the process by which a candidate can win the whole state, even if he/she only gets 51% of the vote.
This is not needed. If the electoral college is proportionally allocated what difference is there between that and a direct election? They come out the same way.
The way it is now, if you live in a state that votes predominantly toward one party or another, the people from the other party are essentially silenced in the presidential elections.
Direct voting eliminates that. And using a Condorcet method of voting eliminates any need for run-off elections, every voter gets to pick their first and second choice. Now I saved this for last:
And don't even get me started with your idea of negative numbers. Yowzah!
Instead of voting for who I wanted to vote for, in 2000 and again in 2004 I specifically voted against the candidate I opposed. A number of others do the same thing but by ranking and including negative votes, that eliminates any sense of the need to vote for the lesser of two evils. But I suppose that you don't want that.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I noticed that the summary did not mention the senator is a Democrat. Interesting, considering how often slashdot summaries mention the party affiliation of Republicans when they do something that slashdot agrees with, or Democrats when they do something that slashdot opposes. I had to look him up on wikipedia to find his affiliation.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That is exactly what democracy is, people supporting what they like and opposing what they don't like.
If you really believe that is not democracy I don't know what your definition of democracy is.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The free world thanks you Senator Wyden of Oregon. Senator Stephen Conroy of Australia, take note.
Well I guess that now the elections are over, it's back to no business as usual. When the politicians stop fearing the voters, it's time for the voters to fear the politicians.
Slap, slap Mr. Rangle, slap, slap Mr. Delay.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
When the government makes regulation that censors the Internet, that's bad. When the government makes regulation that keeps corporations from censoring the Internet, that's good. Censorship is evil, freedom is good. It's that simple.
A car analogy: If the government made a law that prevented you from driving to California, that would be very bad. If a toll road operator forced you to tell your destination and charged extra if it was California, and the government would bitchslap them for that, it would be very good.
Good is good, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone, and evil is evil, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone. This is an entirely consistent position.
Your analogy for COICA isn't really on all fours; it's more as if the government were able to say "There have been reports that your car was seen to be speeding; no one has presented any proof of this, but just to make sure you aren't going to violate the speed limit, we're confiscating your car."
The entirely depends on how many. Some internet activism organisations most notably avaaz have demonstrated in the last year or so that mass letter writing can give a website the power to change government policy.
People in most of the world haven't had 'unlimited' internet because US carriers have always charged for external connections. We pay to access US websites and we pay to have US customers access our websites.
36GB is a heck of a lot of data. People in Australia were getting by with 5-10GB per month, and only recently have 50-100GB plans become available. I have 130GB, with 60GB to be used between 0800 and 0100, and 50GB to be used between 0100 and 0800. People watch ABC iView (unmetered on some, but not all), use VoIP services and play with Linux. Not having Netflix and Hulu probably keeps data down, but we still catch up on missed TV episodes using video on demand from the TV station (Ten are very good for this).
If you are going to choose your OS on the basis of your internet connection then you well and truly have your cranium implanted in your rectum. Cut out the bit torrent and streaming video and then try to justify legal consumption of more than 5GB of traffic a month ...
...silly mods, that's not offtopic. It's just somone trying to pretend that laws are used for what they claim they're for, and don't get abused at every turn. On it's face, the purpose of the law is to stop online counterfeit goods, it just claims that the way to do that is to give the feds the abilitiy to arbitrarily shut down any website at any time, without even the need for a proper injunction against them first, or even a copyright claim (I would have thought DMCA letters would be sufficient for the "shut down a website at any time on request" thing, but I'm guessing some people fight them?)
Really, net neutrality is about preventing corporations from using their leverage to prevent you from making using their competitors. For example, say degrading Vonage traffic to the point it's unusable so you'll use you cable company's VOIP instead, or making Google unreachable because Microsoft is paying your ISP to give them a good connection and Google isn't. Or even better for this crowd, causing all connections to download the ISOs of the dozen or so largest linux distros to simply drop out 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the file because Microsoft is paying them to not let you download Linux (and letting you get most of the file means you use more bandwidth towards your cap).
In many areas, you don't have a real choice as far as a broadband internet connection.
I've always thought that there's a simple solution to net neutrality that doesn't involve too much possibility of government interference -- give each ISP a choice.
You can choose to be a common carrier and have the same protections that the phone company does regarding content -- being content agnostic (aside from basic QoS) makes you immune to concerns over what that content is.
If you choose not to be a common carrier you get to do all the "evil" types of filtering that people use as examples of why we need net neutrality, however since you are filtering in a content/destination-sensitive way, you are also assuming legal responsibility for all content going across the line, and are a distributor of such. As in that makes you a target for all the **AA lawsuits and distribution of child pornography investigations, as because you are filtering for content, you are aware of content and thus responsible for content.
Any sane ISP would of course choose the common carrier option, but then that's rather the point, isn't it?.
In the spirit of telling our public officials when they do right, please pass on some "thanks, keep up the good work" to Ron Wyden: http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/ The name of the bill is the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act"
GO Sen. Wyden - Makes me proud to be an Oregonian -- Kudos sent via web at: http://wyden.senate.gov/
-- BearGriz72
Seriously, Oregonians or not, I suggest contacting this man and praising him for his position. We tend to write our elected officials when we're angry with what they're doing, but we also need to let them know when we're happy that they've done something we like.
http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/
OK - I'm in a band. We record our parts for our current album at our individual homes, and share them with each other, at full quality (24bit, 88.2KHz is what we are recording at) - and my drum set is oh, lets see, in some tracks upwards of 15 tracks at that sample/bit rate. Hey look! Lots of legal bandwidth usage!
Is it common for people to do this where you are? It still is only 0.252Mbyte/sec, so to go through 5GB would require 5.6 hours of tracks.
By 15 tracks, do you mean there are 15 drum tracks on each song, or that there are 15 songs on the album? How many hours of playing would you get from your other band members in a month?
Why use the word "communist" as a pejorative when it has no real relationship to issue at hand? What kind of a carpetbagger would do that?
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Very well-said. I applaud you, sir.
He was touring my facility, when he walked into my office, noticed I had multiple ssh sessions going on, had a mapping problem, and piles of hardware about. He shook my hand, and made a comment about IT running the organization. Yep.
Paper mail scores a lot higher. Write him a hand written letter to let him know you care enough to put in more time then clicking a link. I would if I was an American.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
And that is exactly the crux of the issue. The internet wasn't designed for any particular purpose. It was designed for any purpose anyone could dream up. It is ridiculous for anyone to think they had enumerated all the uses of the internet, or believe anyone ought to 'justify' their consumption.
That's indeed a problem : regulation or no regulation .
The idea of net neutrality on it's own is good , but it is a form of regulation by the government . There's always a danger that it can be used/altered to feature a certain agenda.
The only thing needed in this case is avoid monopolies on the ISP market . That way , competition can play a role in the decisions made by the ISP's . If my ISP then introduces a tiered internet , i can simply go with a provider that doesn't .
Slipping shoelaces ?
Slashdot is staffed by, and read by many people who want to be free to make their own decisions. They don't want either the government or some large corporate trust removing those possibilities.
I think this is called 'tiered access' in the US. While bits themselves are free, more use results in more congestion and providers need to build out more network to cope. I think this is why I get a chunk of data to use at night when there is less demand (just like off-peak power pricing).
If use more electricity or water then I pay for it. Why not the same for the internet? At least the internet is flexible and slows down rather than just stopping (as an overloaded power grid does).
A dirty cheap ISP that has too much congestion and squeezes too many people onto its uplink will loose some customers, but not all. People that are reading email and news online might not notice, but gamers and online video viewers will, and are likely to go elsewhere. Of course this depends on competition which from the sound of it is sorely laking with US ISPs. Here in Australia the copper network is mostly owned by Telstra who lease the ADSL spectrum to ISPs to communicate with the ISPs' equipment at the exchange. The ISPs are then responsible for getting data to the internet. This means that two neighbours can be sharing the same multicore cable back to the exchange, but have dramatically different performance. The same applies with resellers of 3G/UMTS internet. It is common spectrum to the carrier's switch and then the ISPs' responsibility to get it to the internet. I think the UK and NZ (and probably the rest of the world except the US) operates similarly.
A bullet sounds the same in every language. I know how to make Conroy listen.
We're in a situation where 1GB of data costs more than 1kW of energy, in some cases it can be drastically more. If grandma is paying $55/mn for internet and only uses 2GB that's about $22.50 per GB which is pretty outrageous. She uses less, she still pays the same. Even someone maxing out their 250GB Comcast cap is paying $0.22 per GB, which is still quite expensive.
Frankly all utilities need to be monitored and broken up when needed to ensure there are multiple competitors. Also there should be huge efforts towards preventing carriers from also producing content as well. For example Comcast owns Comcast Sports Net and has been trying to extort higher than average fees from other non-comcast providers to carry it. Also Comcast's merger with NBC should raise huge flags. They'll own the line, the TV service & the content on that service... How does that not sound like a monopoly?
The comparison with energy isn't all that valid because the capacity of the powerlines & generation is much much more than what someone can consume from home, but a neighbourhood running ADSL2+ flat out would saturate the upstream link of an ISP.
Some background on what's happening here and why he won't take note.
In Australia we have Telstra. It's a bizzare beast that was created when a government owned monopoly was told to go out and make money on it's own and then years later a bit over half of it was sold off, but the Government still owns enough in the "Future Fund" that it's difficult for to do anything involving Telstra without it looking like a conflict of interest or a kick in the teeth to people that bought Telstra shares. It has the worst aspects of Government and some of the worst aspects of private enterprise and is full of people that are experts at gaming both systems. That turns the Communications portfolio in the Australian Government into a punishment post where whoever sits in that chair can get almost nothing done. That means that the utter bastard that all the other bastards in Government hate but has enough factional power to get a minister's job gets put in Communications. That's Conroy, the man that blamed the delays of due process on a lesbian cabal that was out to get him.
Net Neutrality isn't about the government controlling the internet, it's about preventing corporations using leverage to control the internet and/or hold bandwidth hostage for competitive advantage or to inhibit the flow of free information.
So it's about the government controlling the internet. Or is the government telling corporations what they can or cannot do with their property, not control?
But anyways, it might not be so bad now, but just wait til the some new threat comes up on the internet and BAM FCC needs more authority, and whatever else. It's already happening, and you want them to have more power, because you're worried about a situation that could have happened for the last 10 years, but has not.
That's not to mention that they create ways for corporations to try to financially ruin individuals that are accused of infringing on a rather small scale, even if the evidence that they have done so is shaky.
which all goes through the court system which is run by what again? the government.
Afraid not friend, as I was told the minimum pricing under this "new" plan is $107 per month and that is ONLY if you take the phone and TV (which BTW there is NO WAY NOT to take the TV, as they refuse to sell you anything without it) and there is NO tiered pricing or ala carte or anything but bend over baby, yeah! It should be pretty obvious that this is NOT about bandwidth, it is about having an Apple style walled garden. The corps has seens it, they wants it, they will has it! My choices are $106 for a lousy 36GB with TV I don't want or $200 for business...with TV I don't want. Notice a common thread there? The "TV I don't want" part? They are making sure that THEIR entertainment package is THE way you will get shows , and you will take it and like it!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Cool use for the internet -- wasn't aware of that use.
You weren't aware that the Internet is used to transfer data? Please turn in your Slashdot ID card on the way out.
Seriously, though, with picture and video sharing with friends and relatives, online backup services, VoIP phones, and a host of other types of use that don't even start to touch some of the real hogs (Netflix downloads, etc.), just about any cap set by an ISP becomes too small very quickly.
I don't want my tax dollars being used to support a war I don't agree with.
Neither do I. I opposed the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. I opposed them when Dubya ordered them, I opposed them when his father sent troops to evict Saddam's army from Kuwait, and I opposed Clinton ordering airstrikes in both nations too. Most of all I oppose it when both Reagan and Bush Sr supported Saddam and hated when Bush and Clinton left Afghanistan to fester after the Soviet withdrew.
I don't want them used on entitlement programs that I consider to be straight-up vote-buying. I don't want them used to build a "bridge to nowhere" as part of typical pork-barrel politics. I don't want them used to support drug prohibition or any other victimless-crime enforcement because I oppose those on principle. I don't want them used to perpetually extend copyright. I don't want them used to pay a salary to people who spend even one picosecond looking for a way to censor the Internet.
Obviously you haven't read many of my posts dealing with politics and government. I oppose all these too, so don't say I do. No, for years and years I've posted right here on Slashdot how I hate big government and want the small government the USA Constitution authorizes.
I'd be glad to fund politicians I dislike. This would serve a crucial function. It would mean that other voters can choose to vote for those candidates even if I personally wouldn't. I want them to have that choice and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Come on, the lack of public funding does not prevent a person from running for office. If it were required no candidate would ever run, no one can simply decide to run and have public funds handed to them.
Right now it's a contest of who can raise the most money and if you don't believe that, do the research yourself. Organizations (incl. corporations) wouldn't be able to support candidates for the same good reasons that organizations don't get to vote -- they're not human beings.
I suggest you do your own research, the candidate with the most money does not always win. This tyme Obama, who had the most money, did win. And where did the money come from? Millions of voters.
And just like so many other imbeciles you concluded, without asking me or reading what I said elsewhere, that I support corporate donations to candidates or supporting one side of an issue or another. Nowhere did I say I did, but I have repeatedly said a corporation is not a person and does not have the same rights.
Now if you want an intelligent conversation we can have one, but do not make things up about me.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I can think of so many ways to justify > 5GB per month that I really can't list them all here, but here are just a few that I have personally done:
1. Offsite backups.
I've done frequent rsync backups of my cohosted webservers. This alone can take WAY more than 5GB. I've also backed up local files to offsite servers.
2. I work on robotic systems and have sometimes worked at home. This can involve working with HUGE amounts of recorded data (this could be something like four 60fps HD video streams, hyperspectral video, FLIR, RADAR, 3D LADAR, etc... and lossy compression is not acceptable). Typically, I'd only download a small sample data set to work on, but that could be easily WAY more than 5GB.
3. Photo uploads
I do photography as a hobby. Sometimes I get > 5GB of photos I want to upload at one time.
4. Web design
I do a bit of freelance web design on the side. Typically this involves modifying an existing site. I will typically set up a testing server at home and download the entire site to it, do my changes and testing there, then upload the final product. This can consume more than 5GB easily.
In practice I am currently averaging 160GB down, 80 up in a month.
This is beside the point though. If I had a 5GB cap, I'd probably not do these things. The fact that I don't is what allows me do do them.
If I had a 5GB cap, I might not even complain too much about it. After all, I wouldn't be doing anything that needed more bandwidth.
Sure, I don't need to use more than 5GB/month. I also don't need the internet at all. For that matter, I could probably just get rid of all my home computers since I don't really need them. I didn't always have them for that matter. Yet having them allows me to do things I could do otherwise.
My point is that deciding what people are allowed to use based on what they need right now is a bad idea. If we do that, we discourage additional development, we end up stuck with the internet as it is now. If we do that, in 20 years people will still be satisfied with their 5GB limits and they won't even know about all the great things that could have existed otherwise.
The excess bandwidth allows for innovation. The internet isn't just about E-Mail and web browsing. It is a general purpose communications network that can be used for whatever people need it for, including things that haven't even been thought of yet. That's what makes it so powerful.
I guess when you're used to 'unlimited' data you do come up with interesting ways of using the internet that do require large amounts of traffic. I also put photos on the net, manage/mirror a couple of websites, but the volumes are not huge.
When I first got on the net the connection our country had to the US was sponsored by the NSF and was a 128kbit/s satellite link. Later on it went to a few Mbit/s. When I was at university traffic outside of the country was charged at $25/Mbyte, which made browsing with Mosaic expensive, but iPhone was worth it. I think that the conditions faced when you start using something affect your usage long term, so younger people are probably using the internet in more interesting ways than us older-farts.
Ohh, someone has learnt how to post out of context. News Corp just called -- they want you on staff NOW!
Telstra is fairly wierd in that it is the incumbent phone company and the part-owner of a cable TV network. Australia is wierd in that we have two cable networks in the capital cities. I have Optus cable and Telstra cable strung from the same power poles outside my house.
Sounds like the US needs a competition/fair play department.
Why would he not choose his OS based on the internet connection? One is free to update while the others cost money. Are you too fucking thick to see this? Some people are born morons due to an accident of birth, but you, sir, are a self made man.
Your analogy for COICA isn't really on all fours;
An analogy that isn't on its hands and knees? What?
He's talking about 15 tracks as in 15 different recording streams in one session - this could be for one music track.
Basically, each drum, cymbal, hat, tom etc has it's own microphone and stream during recording - this allows the 'track' for each part of the kit to be panned and equalised and dimmed separately, which makes production of the finished track a whole lot easier. So, 1 minute of recording is 3(bytes)x88200(samples/sec)x15(tracks)x60(seconds) -> 227.1 Megabytes. In other words, a gig for a single 4 minute song - and that's just covering one take.
It shouldn't be hard to see how quickly you'll hit a cap doing that, and with a 76GB 'cap' he can't even expect to use a business service to get around the problem.
round here, you just have to pay an arm and a leg to be capless but they still have some small print 'fair use' policy that lets them disconnect you if you use double the average of every user with the same account of yours, it stinks, its way too expensive, but its all we have, so please ask your president to come free us from our two Isp's, its not like you're getting a lot of results in afghanistan, is it ?
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
15 tracks for percussion does sound like a lot, but I'm no musician. Good use for unlimited internet, but I can't see that application taking off here. Maybe 48k 24b would be more suitable?
Someone wrote: Yet the most powerful argument against net neutrality is that it could (and likely would) result in government censorship. Net neutrality is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to put the Internet under the purview of the government, packaged such that it sells to geeks.
How do you equate non-discrimination with government censorship?
As for the government seeking to put the Internet under the purview of the government: the US constitution already gives the government control over interstate commerce and traffic - so it constitutionally already has "purview"... i.e. that's a moot point. The issue is, always, what they do with that control -- just like the job market. There, they implement non-discrimination policies which people also rally against, because it limits their right to discriminate.
Gee, really sad.
Those that provide services will continue to want to have unethical control for the purpose of exploiting and gouging customers in a non-competitive market. The only thing stopping them are governments "by and for the people". Corporations will continue to lie and deceive people by telling them that complete nonsense like: non-discrimination=censorship! It's obvious propaganda, attempting to deceive people into supporting policies that are really very harmful to those people.
The Constitution rarely minces words. The simplest way of reading it is "when in doubt, don't." That's the way the 10th amendment was written. There are grey areas like "implied powers" such as being able to create the CIA to do civilian intelligence or the Air Force (as they are implied by the ability to raise military forces for military purposes), but on many things, there is no grey at all. Federal law enforcement, for example, has no jurisdiction to actually enforce any crime that happens only inside one state's borders unless that crime is enumerated in the Constitution as federal jurisdiction (like counterfeiting or treason). The DEA cannot constitutionally raid a medical marijuana dispensary in California unless that dispensary is doing a side business that crosses California's borders.
Liberals and many types on the right just happen to hate the limits the US Constitution imposes on their social agendas because they want to remake all of America in their image. It creates a very limited federal government. Congress was never intended to be where America did most of its legislative business. We'd be better off with very strict originalism, if for no other reason than it'd cripple the ability of lobbyists to use Congress to force their agenda on the whole country.
Montana's state legislature is 90 days every two years.
Really? Yeap! That's even better.
As one of the Founders pointed out, people make different (hopefully better!) decisions when they have to return home and work for a living, alongside the people whose lives their lawmaking affects.
I agree compeatly. Where before there were citizen legislatures where those elected to office had other jobs today politics has become a career. Congress has a better pension than most people working for private employers do.
While I hate the idea of politics as a career, I also hate term limits. So congressional sessions need to be limited in length. Ninety days every other year would do wonders. Another step would be if the Constitution of the USA authorizes the law require most laws to have a sunset provision of say 5 years. If after 5 years the law was good then it could be reinstated for another 5 years.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
First, there is a difference between being educated and being informed.
See my reply to riverat1 above yours.
Second, you request a "Citation" in reference to my assertion that a person with lots of "4"s would end up being president. Allow me to illustrate.
That is not a citation. At most it is a theoretical hypothesis. I can make up my own.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think our current two-party system is very good, but I wouldn't rush to solve the problems by throwing our entire system.
I didn't throw the whole system out. I didn't suggest a dictatorship or king, or getting rid of all government. All I suggested was changing how the president and vice president were elected. Well not all, I have proposed other amendments, such as limiting congressional sessions to 90 days every other year. Politics should not be a career, unlike how it is now.
Actually Thomas Jefferson once said something about there being a revolution every generation or something like that. Unless people have to fight for freedom freedom loses it's meaning to them. They take it for granted, even when there's subterfuge or mission creep wearing freedom away.
Falcon
Oh, and in case I haven't already told you, I fear government far more than any corporation or terrorist. Neither Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster nor Bangalore's terrorist attack killed or maimed as many people as governments have.
Should there be a Law?
There is a very large difference between a regulation saying that "Corporations may not take this action" and a regulation that states "the government may legally take this action".
So it's about the government controlling the internet. Or is the government telling corporations what they can or cannot do with their property, not control?
That 'property' was built with the taxpayers money (given to the telecoms to build out infrastructure) thus it is technically public property.
because you're worried about a situation that could have happened for the last 10 years, but has not.
Because the incentive wasn't there and the legality of doing it wasn't certain due to people not knowing whether common carrier rules applied or not. Then the FCC reclassified broadband to NOT be title II, and things started to clarify and the incentives showed up. Now many ISPs have explicitly stated that they want to do this. Look at the recent situation with Comcast and Netflix. Or the previous situation with Comcast and torrents. AT&T and Verizon have both explicitly stated they want to be able to offer their services and make them faster than other services on the network. So the 'solution in search of a problem' rebuttal is just bullshit.
which all goes through the court system which is run by what again? the government.
Actually, it's partially run by the people by way of juries. Not to mention it is only due to the laws that the courts can allow this sort of thing to happen. Thereby stopping a law that would do just that is a good thing. Net neutrality goes against corporations, not for them. It says what ISPs are not allowed to do, not what the government is allowed to do.
Not all regulation is equal. There is good regulation and bad regulation.
That 'property' was built with the taxpayers money (given to the telecoms to build out infrastructure) thus it is technically public property.
So the government should be running the internet then? or wait, you say they gave it to the telecoms, thus it's the telecoms property, not public.
Because the incentive wasn't there and the legality of doing it wasn't certain due to people not knowing whether common carrier rules applied or not. Then the FCC reclassified broadband to NOT be title II, and things started to clarify and the incentives showed up. Now many ISPs have explicitly stated that they want to do this. Look at the recent situation with Comcast and Netflix. Or the previous situation with Comcast and torrents. AT&T and Verizon have both explicitly stated they want to be able to offer their services and make them faster than other services on the network. So the 'solution in search of a problem' rebuttal is just bullshit.
You know, it's perfectly legal for X company to charge you more for Y service. But you can make endless excuses as to why it hasn't happened. Yes I'm sure some will/have tried it.
Net neutrality goes against corporations, not for them. It says what ISPs are not allowed to do, not what the government is allowed to do.
That'll be ineffective and will stiffle potential innovation. And in 10 years, it will get more power. I mean the FDA is getting more power.. for nothing really. that can't happen with net neutrality, HAH.
Not all regulation is equal. There is good regulation and bad regulation.
Is there good regulation? yes, but it's few and far between. mostly it's regulation that jsut adds costs and slows people and progress down. Some of it is down right evil.
But don't worry, you will get your way. I have no doubt. And you'll regret it, when they demand your private keys or your passwords or instant access to your private data or whatever else is deemed necessary to protect people, or whatever stupid excuse there is.
You know it's perfectly legal for X company to charge you more for Y service.
But it's wrong for a company to use their control of one industry (ISPs providing internet service) to leverage themselves in another industry (ISPs providing for example, streaming video). You even admit that "some will/have tried it" so the question is that you don't find it wrong for an ISP to intentionally slow down or charge extra money from a company that provides a streaming service that competes with their own?
That'll be ineffective and will stiffle[sic] potential innovation.
Actually, the lack of neutrality will stifle innovation. The internet has only prospered until now due to neutrality. As long as the content producer pays for their own bandwidth they can supply to whoever wants to download. Now ISPs want to, in addition to what the content companies will be paying for their own bandwidth, charge them for the privilege of being on their network? Or simply just slow down a competing service so that their service is used more? Give me a break. It will prevent developers from wanting to develop internet applications that may overlap with something provided by an ISP. Ideas like Netflix would go wasted because people will only use what the ISP provides because it would cost much more to use the competing services.
Is there good regulation? yes, but it's few and far between. mostly it's regulation that just adds costs and slows people and progress down. Some of it is down right evil.
I'm sure you also don't like the regulations that enforce clean water and clean air, or maybe the health regulations that help ensure you won't get food poisoning from a restaurant you decide to go to. The original common carrier regulation that was passed in the Telecommunications Act is the reason that the phone industry prospered and grew and innovated.
Net neutrality, in context of what most here on Slashdot speak of it as, is about preventing discrimination and disallowing censorship. Please explain to me how a law or power that effectively says corporations cannot block content from a service and that they cannot discriminate based on the source of said content could possibly be used by the government to control the internet? It would be like saying that the government controls the private sector because of the anti-discrimination regulations for hiring for business. Or the government runs the food industry due to regulations enforcing clean food that is safe to consume.
Your entire argument is predicated on all regulation that you don't like is evil and you should fear anything the government wants to do. In addition you believe the ISPs who claim that net neutrality will stifle innovation (when in fact it will foster it).
But don't worry, you will get your way. I have no doubt. And you'll regret it, when they demand your private keys or your passwords or instant access to your private data or whatever else is deemed necessary to protect people, or whatever stupid excuse there is.
I hope we do get Net Neutrality, when even the "Father of the Internet" Tim Berners-Lee supports it, you have to realize there is credibility in the concept. As for demanding private keys, passwords, instant access to data, etc. That has nothing to do with net neutrality nor could a net neutrality policy be turned into that. It would have to be something entirely separate added in which I would of course object to, as would many people. You are afraid of possible abuse of the regulation. I understand that, I do. Right now, I'm afraid of abuse without the regulation. The difference is your fear is "possible" and may or may not happen. The abuse by ISPs of the market without neutrality is already happening and certain to continue. A properly constructed Network Neutrality policy will address only Net Neutrality and abuses can be watched for and dealt with by the people. Just as anything else.
Besides, as evidenced by the COICA bill, net neutrality is not needed for the government to try to take control of the internet. We don't want government control of the internet, we want preventions against corporate control of the internet.
This past election cycle over $400 million was spent on independent expenditures.
Are you sure that's all? In the California governor's race alone Meg Whitman spent more than $140 million of her own money in the campaign. All together she spent more than $160 million. Her opponent Jerry Brown's spending topped $50 million. Now according to those who claim money buys political offices she should have won, spending 3 tymes as much as he did, but he won.
On Anthony Kennedy's decision on the Citizens United case:
It sounds to me like he naively believed that there would be automatic disclosure. I think given that there is a good chance a full disclosure law would be found constitutional.
It was naive of him. However if a law were proposed that addressed full disclosure, and only that, then it may pass USSC scrutiny. Now if that was his thinking I don't know how the government's lawyers overlooked that thinking. A quick google returns results saying that corporations do not have to disclose them. The first two results, Why Don’t Corporations Have To Disclose Their Campaign Contributions Like Unions? and again Why don't corporations have to disclose their campaign contributions like unions? answer the question.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
unless they are so inept that they actually commit a felony that the rest of the members of their chamber or legislative body thinks is blatantly wrong.
And what does that have to do with Ted Steven's conviction? He was convicted in an Alaska court room far away from Washington, DC.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
How does this NOT have our government written all over it? By your very definition you seem to give weight to his argument.
You need to learn the definition of "bribe" too. The post I replied to said nothing about campaign donations being illegal or dishonest. And they are not illegal or dishonest.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?