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The Right's War On Net Neutrality
jamie writes "To understand the debate being waged in the United States over Net Neutrality, it's important to understand just how drastically one side has been misled. The leaders of the American Right are spreading the lie that Net Neutrality is a government takeover of the internet, with the intention of silencing conservative voices. (Limbaugh: "All you really have to know about Net Neutrality is that its biggest promoters are George Soros and Google.") This may be hard to believe to those of us who actually know what it's about — reinstating pre-2005 law that ensured internet providers could discriminate on the basis of volume but not content. Since the opposing side is so badly misinformed, those of us who want the internet to remain open to innovation and freedom of expression have to help educate them before the debate can really be held."
I'm pretty right-wing... but I have some awesome arguments about this with other right-wingers.
Some of them can't seem to evaluate the situation for themselves so they just go with whatever their media talking head tells them.
None of them can explain how the Internet is supposed to work, nor how companies are screwing it up, nor what net neutrality means.... but they are pretty sure that gay socialists are going to take over the internet.
I usually paint it like this:
What if ISPs and common carriers started deciding to block FoxNews.com because they didn't like the message? That seems to get thru to some of them.
The right-wingers have one point though:
Liberals usually work incrementally. It starts with simple net neutrality rules. Then later on, they add some more rules. And more. And more. A Killswitch and some hate-crimes legislation later and before you know the government is all up in your intarwebs.
Now before you liberals get all self-congratulatory on your enlightened position.... none of my liberal friends can think for themselves on several liberal bandwaggon issues either.
THL phish sticks
This has been the most infuriating aspect of this debate for me. Every time I'm challenged by people who listen to Limbaugh on the subject of Net Neutrality, they think it's all about keeping porn off the Internet and allowing the Government to censor websites. So yes, my opponents are horribly misinformed on this issue thanks to that bombastic blowhard.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
Companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want to be able to not only charge their customers for internet access, but also charge the companies like Google, Amazon, and Netflix for the traffic that their customers generate when accessing those sites. Look at the recent move Comcast made against Level3, "Hey guys, nice work on getting that Netflix account, oh by the way we're going to charge you more to connect to us because you are supplying connectivity for a company which competes with our OnDemand services, thank you for choosing Comcast". What would have happened if Level3 said "meh....I don't think so" and turned off peering to Comcast. Who would have suffered? Mostly us, the consumers. Awesome.
It's also about being allowed to prioritize network traffic for hosted services over competing third party services, although beating voip providers on price (ala bundling) has pretty much destroyed most of the third party VOIP providers. Being able to provide a better quality hosted product is real easy when you de-prioritize competing services traffic on your network. A few months of poor performance and customers will be switching to hosted services in droves. I think we can all agree that this would fall into the "anti-competitive practices" category. The thing is, they might be doing this already, except that its technically not illegal, or at least its difficult enough to prove that plausible deniability plays a significant role and there is no legal precedent set to file suit on. Net Neutrality laws would make this illegal and at the very least require them to disclose that they are doing it.
Anyone can see that charging Google or Microsoft money whenever a customer accesses the site is wrong. Somehow they have twisted this into them getting a free ride on their network. Nevermind that the customer is paying for access to the internet and that the site being accessed is also paying to be connected to the internet.
I am all for traffic shaping based on volume to ensure equal access to all traffic, but if you are using public funds to prop up your infrastructure, you better have full disclosure available.
THIS is what they are really talking about and it has nothing to do with the government "taking over" the internet. Of course they tend to screw up most things they touch so I have very little faith that even if they do try to regulate things, that they will do a decent job.
On a side note, many people on both "sides" like to blame de-regulation for the banking problems we have had, and then argue against any other forms of regulation on the basis that regulation is bad and against the free market.
First off lets get one thing straight, there is no such thing as a free market. Whether by government hands or private hands, someone will ALWAYS be manipulating the rules in their favor. We are not free, but merely have the illusion of freedom so long as we don't piss the wrong person off.
Being 'against everything the left like' is a pretty goddamn shitty political position.
OTOH, it actually is the Republican position. Just the other day, they were against a bill to attempt to reduce 'child marriage' around the world. ('Child marriage' actually means 40 year old men purchasing 13 year old girls from their parents, 'marrying' them, and then, when their female children are old enough, selling them off to other men.)
A simple bill that uses already existing US development programs to help break the cycle of abuse by simply attempting to educate women, and requires countries that get our aid to explain the status of this practice in them, and was only $108 million dollars. (To compare, we just passed a $858 billion tax cut extension, which is, oh, 800,000x more. The damn 'bridge to nowhere' was $223 million.)
The joke used to be that the Democrats should come out against raping children, and see what the Republicans do. Horrifically, twp weeks ago, they did, and the Republicans, indeed, came in favor of it. Or at least not against it.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
There is one, simple, crucial fact that the right is missing in these debates. There is no free market in broadband access. If you are extremely lucky you can pick between your telephone company and your cable company and they tend to not compete on either price or service and quickly move to adopt the same draconian policies introduced by their "competitors" -- and again, this is if you're lucky, most people are stuck with their cable company. Not even the right will argue against regulating monopolies, we all realize that in the absence of competition monopolies will provide poor service for rates that border on extortion.
If you want to win the net neutrality debate with the right then offer a simple concession: IPSs which open up their network to third party providers can operate without regulation. Those providers that have no competition or only one competitor must put up with regulation.
You can also remind everyone that the government invented the internet (arpnet was a darpa project) so the Internet was never created to be run by businesses anymore than the national interstate system was, but that doesn't resonate nearly as well as shifting this back to a monopoly vs. consumer debate.
I remember when Obama recommended that people check their tire pressure (And maintain their cars.) instead of allowing new offshore drilling during the election.
The Republicans, of course, decided to act like checking your tire pressure was an insanely stupid thing for human beings to do. (Sadly, as Obama was not elected yet, they couldn't act like his suggestion was a government dictate.)
eventually happened with offshore drilling.
Remember my Republican friends, if a Democrat suggests something that would, for the cost of a $10 air pump from Wal-Mart and 5 minutes of your time every month, save you 3% of your gasoline costs, (Which by my math would pay for itself the first time you use it, if you spend at least $33 on gas a month.) why, they're crazy. If they're elected, or even if they're just the spouse of someone elected, they're a fascist.
The government should never attempt to provide information that would make the lives of their citizens better!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?