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Obama FCC Caves On Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "...the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet. The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it's become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users."
Money rules this world...
No clue. yesterday, I was advocating Net Neutrality in a discussion here on Slashdot, and I continue to advocate for it. What the FCC is showing here, however, is not what I and other like-minded folks are advocating. I think the first post has it right...money runs things.
PS: Sincere apologies to those who told me to read up yesterday...now that I have, I can see why you're calling bullshit. Please note that my support of Net Neutrality stands, but not this version of it.
Living With a Nerd
The "all packets must be treated equally, no exceptions" version. You know...what Net Neutrality actually means.
Living With a Nerd
I've been reading Matt Taibbi's book, "Griftopia" (http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953), and having worked in finance for ~10 years, I'm coming to realize more and more that the powers that be -- corporations, CEOs, and everybody that's basically not *you* are the people who are going to run the US for the coming future. A leaked memo from Citigroup (http://www.scribd.com/doc/36059255/23321255-Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Leaked-Citigroup-Memo-Part1) has already declared the US a Plutocracy (rule by the wealthy).
This is just another shot in the arm against a citizenry whose arms are already falling off from the shots before. The FCC coming up with a plan to (surprise surprise) support the plutocracy that we've already been labelled by Wall Street is not even a stretch any more. And while the Tea Party clamors about how government is trying to socialize everything, they miss that problem that the government has been co-opted in stealing America as a whole from the citizens themselves, and they are happy to have the folks in the Tea Party carry their banner without realizing what damage they are doing.
I am a bit demoralized nowadays about all this -- and I'd love to take action but I don't know how. So while we as nerds who normally argue, bitch, and complain can actually stand up and figure a way to do something about this (short of something 4chan would do), then I'd be all for it. Let's strategize. Let's plan. And let's execute in the perfect ways I know that we can do thousands of lines of code, deploying hundreds of servers, or anything else "IT" that we do.
I'm here to start the call to arms, I just don't know what to do after that.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The election went the way it did because Obama never puts up a fight over anything.
Some packets are more equal than others.
Two words... Dumb pipe... That's what we're supposed to be demanding here.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The FCC was bought, sold, and paid for long ago. That's why the vast majority of our spectrum 'belongs' to megacorps, and only the thinnest little slivers are given back to us.
Can you imagine how much more useful WiFi would be if we had more than 3 non-conflicting channels that are completely trampled by microwave ovens? (OK, so there's also the 5GHz band, but I mean a nice big block, all in one clean band.) Cordless phones wouldn't conflict, wireless in-house TV distribution would have happened long ago, and more. Imagine if there was a decently sized band of relatively long-wavelength (sub-GHz), spectrum available that allowed a couple watts total / a few tens EIRP in a narrow beam. We could very easily set up private point to point links everywhere, instead of just barely getting them to work as it is now.
Or standards... The rest of the world uses DVB. The US gets ATSC, which is a mess of patents. Same deal with HD radio.
I'm not the least surprised that the FCC isn't protecting your interests, and is doing everything that keeps huge corporations in control of communications. It's what they do best.
Government doesn't exist to protect the rights of citizens who are consuming over those who are producing.
This is absurd. The government should exist to serve only the needs of people. Treating a corporation like any other citizen is ridiculous, especially when you promote the interests of a corporation over those of the actual people.
I hate to break it to the corporatist crowd, but the ISPs built those networks with our money, from government subsidies. They received those subsidies to enhance our national infrastructure. If monopolists have the same property rights as everyone else, the free market dies. And if monopolists control infrastructure without oversight to ensure equal access, democracy dies.
Former US House candidate, TN-5