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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."
Whenever someone disagrees with you, it must be because they are badly misinformed.
This has nothing to do with right or left, but the green of the money being bribed^H^H^H^H^H^H given for campaigning. This is not something the hill knows a damn thing about, and if we're lucky 10% of them understand the issue at a high level.
Limbaugh
Isn't that a type of inedible, spoiled cheese?
Since when does any political "debate" require any knowledge of the topic?
Jeez; someone simply hasn't been paying attention. (But of course this would fit right into the tradition. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Yeah, like there are only two two kinds of people in this country ... and there are just as many on the "American Left" who will happily and blindly lap up what their "leaders" tell them to.
This appears to be a combined case of blind partisanship ("they support it, so we must oppose it because they're the other side"), stupidity, and "a free market isn't defined by the presence of competition or the ability for all parties to make free, informed choices, but rather whether large corporations have any restrictions on them or not".
I have no love for a lot of the "American Left" as most would think of it, nor for the "Right". But this is just fucking stupid.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
"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."
HA! That will never happen.
Right, Left... what's the difference? Answer: a slight variation in the companies bankrolling them. But many of these companies bankroll both sides at the same time.
It is disingenuous to claim that there is any kind of political ideology involved. Any time a politician talks about ideology, he is just grandstanding in order to justify the position of his employers. The rest of their "differences" are ploys to make them look like they are distinct individuals, instead of all employees of the same interests.
Make no mistake: all national politicians are fully-owned subsidiaries of large corporations. Never be distracted into thinking that they have the slightest interest in doing anything that is actually in your interest except by accident (or occasionally in order to get reelected, if it seems like their owners' money alone isn't doing the trick).
Sadly, it has been my experience that the kind of people that are easily swayed by their favorite entertainers are usually not the kind of people that would be willing to listen to ANY opposing arguments. I have tried to explain the situation to people using all sorts of different analogies but all they hear is "BIG GOVERNMENT IS TAKING OUR INTARWEBS!".
What I don't get is why so many big businesses (not necessarily "internet companies" like Amazon and Google) have remained silent on the issue. You know that massive B2B e-commerce system that connects you to your suppliers and your customers? It uses the internet. Ever think about how the new FCC regulations will affect you?
Daily KOS as a source?
For a moment I thought I typo'd the URL.... slashmao.org.
I agree with the basic premise of net neutrality. But if you look at what the FCC is trying to do, it's not net neutrality any more than an individual mandate is health care. Call a turd a turd.
Mr, Kesuke Miyagi: [sighs] Daniel-san, must talk. [they both kneel] Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, [makes squish gesture] get squish just like grape. Here, Internet, same thing. Either you Internet do "yes", or Internet do "no". You Internet do "guess so", [makes squish gesture] just like grape. Understand?
Daniel LaRusso: Yeah, I understand.
Loading...
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
Is it possible to design net neutrality legislation that still allows ISPs to charge each other for peering agreements, as they have always done?
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
Really?
I like how TFA calls the Democrats opposed to Net Neutrality "ConservaDems"; as if it had much of anything to do with being liberal or conservative, instead of how much money the telcos threw at them to vote on an issue that the American public at large doesn't understand.
Please note I'm quoting this from memory.
The actual videos can be found on google.
When the Democrats issue statements like, "We need a Fairness Doctrine for the internet. For example maybe you'll visit foxnews.com and a popup will ask if you want to read democrat.org too. We need to include that as part of net neutrality and other FCC regulations." Or "We need to pass a law to remove MSNBC and FOXnews from cable television." The latter came from a Congressman Kennedy who is a nobody, but the first came from one of the White House "czars" who directly advises the president and the FCC Chair. i.e. A powerful person.
And then of course there's Obama himself who gave a college speech advising them not to read the internet news sites and only listen to WH press releases as "trustworthy" sources of information. (Please note I am Libertarian, so any comment about how I am a "Bush lover" or whatever would be pointless.)
And the more-recent act where TRUtv was ordered by somebody in the White House to pull Governor Ventura's show about FEMA internment camps off the air. i.e. Censorship of a private channel. So if there's confusion by Republicans, it's because of what they are hearing coming out of the Congress and White House own administrators. The message they are sending sounds like anti-free speech rhetoric. Maybe they should stop doing that.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There were many people in the previous Slashdot thread about Network Neutrality, that complained that they supported the noble goal of "Network Neutrality", but that what the FCC was passing was not "the network neutrality they supported".
So the disconnect is that many people (NOT just Republicans) are warning you about the Network Neutrality you are about to get, not about the fantasy Network Neutrality the Daily Kos wishes to be. The Daily Kos claims it is "lies" because what is being said does not match the definition that the Kos holds for network neutrality - when in reality NONE of us have seen the regulation recently passed - I still cannot find the exact wording, isn't that rather a bad sign that we are not allowed to see what they pass before they pass it?
The Network Neutrality you are about to get was crafted mostly from feedback my media companies and telcos, and large companies like Amazon and Google. Worried about too much corporate control over the internet now? It doesn't get any better when you put the power of regulations into the hands of a small number of companies that have the resources to lobby the FCC on issues.
And all this to stop what EXISTING problem? There's a lot of danger in creating open-ended rules to solve problems that are only imagined, and do not exist. Have we learned nothing from handing over a lot of power to government organizations like the TSA that control to some degree how we travel now? Why would you want similar control over ISP network management on behalf of the FCC?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"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"
You blame the 'right' for being ignorant on your view of net neutrality without understanding theirs. You could have made your point without being blatantly offensive also.
As a conservative, freedom of expression means freedom from government intervention into my everyday life. I do not need government regulation on what TV I choose to watch, what food I wish to eat, and how I wish to use the Internet.
The answer to every problem is *not* more laws and regulation. This should be an absolute last resort, and personally I do not believe we are there yet.
So its OK that the large ISP's no longer have to rent bandwidth to the smaller ones Mom and Pop stores all over again The small local ISPs must carry the large ISPs bandwidth to the home without benefiting from owning ABC CBS & NBC any government action on the internet is a grab for control The FCC was founded to assign frequencies to different media nothing else...... john
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
The talking heads of the American right these days have no interest in being informed. At best they are only capable of using facts like a drunk uses a light post - for support rather than illumination.
Happy people make bad consumers.
The introduction to this topic is as out of touch with reality as all of the coverage of this topic.
- Govt has too much regulation which allowed the ISPs to become "monopolies".
- Instead of removing the regulation to allow competition so the consumer can choose with their wallet.
- Lets have more govt regulation to prevent the ISPs from acting like monopolies.
I want net neutrality, but I want it because I have a choice in ISPs not because big brother allows me to have it.
Fox "News" viewers are the most misinformed people when it comes to pretty much everything, so it's hardly surprising that they have no fucking clue what they're talking about on this either.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
i found two pieces of the puzzle:
one, foxnews make you more misinformed.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/12/16/1615218/Survey-Shows-That-Fox-News-Makes-You-Less-Informed?from=rss
two, given truth, the misinformed believe the lies more.
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/07/14/1235220/Given-Truth-the-Misinformed-Believe-Lies-More
I definitely lean net neutrality and see the benefits of it. BUT, part of the argument for government protecting net neutrality is assuming the worst of a situation without government intervention and expecting only the best from it's involvement. Given the FCC's past behavior with other mediums, I'm not so sure that government involvement is going to give us that "free and open" internet we expect it will be once there is government oversight. Most government programs never accomplish what they promise to do and often come with significant negative consequences.
The problem is that in a lot of areas, Comcast holds a monopoly for broadband internet. You're often given the choice between Comcast Internet or Dialup. You don't have the option to speak with your wallet as i'd hardly consider dialup to be a true alternative to cable.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
There are two ways to stop deep packet inspection: The technical way (encryption) and the political way (net neutrality). What baffles me is why all the geeks have given up on the technical solution and are now pushing for a political solution. The best argument I've yet heard for giving up on the technical solution is that politicians *might* ban encryption, and the best argument I've heard for pursuing the political solution is that we *might* get lucky with a law based on principle instead of one that guarantees that ISPs and governments can do deep packet inspection for "legitimate" reasons. Can someone please enlighten me as to why we continue to give up on the technical solution?
OK, so the only high speed providers in your town are Verizon DSL and Comcast cable. Both have made a business decision to block Fox News. Now what do you do? Go back to dial up? Move to another locality?
moron. talking about things which you dont know zit about.
nasdap was socialist only in name, in order to be able to get votes in the elections from the socialist segment of the society. they had no similarity with anything socialist apart from the wordage in their name. in fact, left was their biggest enemy, even more than the jews.
you are the perfect example of the moron that right likes to manipulate successfully. bask in your morondom.
Read radical news here
Net Neutrality is the government taking over the Internet, while a lack of Net Neutrality is big business taking over the Internet.
This is incorrect. If we have learned anything over the past several years, regulations passed generally favor companies the strongly lobby the government in that field - the health care bill was a boon for insurance companies and drug manufacturers (the drug manufactures were the first to be placated with assurances many prices would not be lowered much).
Similarly, the FCC network "neutrality" regulation just passed would seem to be informed by large companies like Google and Amazon, in conjunction with ISP and telco feedback. I said "seem" because the public has not been allowed to see the regulation to date, at least not before passage (and I cannot find the exact wording still).
So your choice is really between letting the market dictate what happens to the internet, or a small handful of companies. Which do you prefer? Because realistically those ARE your choices. If you are fine with AT&T, Google and Amazon control the internet then by all means, Network Neutrality ho! Otherwise if you'd like to see the internet kept open, don't impose controls over how it can be run.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"The right" is against NN for the same reason "the right" rejects global warming: the rich and powerful don't want it.
We've got an enormous problem with political ignorance and naivety in this country. The Republicans want to run the country in whatever way helps the rich get richer quicker. (If you don't accept that premise, go back and look at whose interests they consistently looked after when they held the White House and both houses of Congress, vs. whose interests they occasionally threw a bone to. By the time of the 2006 elections the leaders of various socially conservative movements were complaining that they were bringing in a lot of votes and not getting much of anything in return.)
But there's a problem if you want to run a republic for the benefit of the rich: there aren't enough of them to win elections. So you have to find ways to get people to vote against their own best interests. But any decent politician knows that if they can make your knee jerk, they can make your finger twitch in the voting booth. So Republican politicians have offered the country things like the Southern Strategy, and the new Southwestern Strategy that they've been rolling out for the last ~5 years, and of course their association with the religious right. I.e., appeal to people's worst instincts rather than their best.
But now, due to the aforementioned political ignorance and naivety, people think that whatever the Republican politicians want is an inherently conservative position. So we get idiotic ideas such as that global warming and net neutrality are leftist ideologies. People in this country need to wake up and smell the bullshit before they've been fucked beyond the point of no return.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
no, even more so than the democrats. they do not have any hesitation in opposing giving healthcare to 9/11 first responders, even after drumming up the nationalism/patriotism card for a decade.
democrats have at least SOME consideration in regard to principle. they at least try to make whatever filth they are doing seem to fit their ideology, even in appearance. republicans dont even have that concern.
whatever their private backers, corporations want at THAT given moment in time, they drum it. if the corporations want the exact opposite 2 months later, they see no issues reverting back. they even dont care whether someone may notice and make a fool of them in media. and at the end they end up the greatest material for news comedy shows.
Read radical news here
No. The regulation need not be heavy. The idea that it is, is just mindless right wing demagogery.
A minimal amount of regulation is required in order to prevent Comcast from screwing around with your Netflix or Walmart from screwing around with your Amazon orders.
Imagine if your HOA could tax Amazon shipments out of existence?
What people don't understand is that their connection to the outside world is controlled by a corporation that would set up a "company store" if they could.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Best explanation I ever heard was that without Network Neutrality, our home internet could become just like our mobile internet. It would take a while to get there, but given the limited number of providers in each city it is possible. We really can move backwards. I don't buy the "alternate vendor" argument. Most cities have only 1 or 2 viable options.
You want chat with your internet. That's $5/month. You want email, voice mail, VOIP, games, NFL games, Blockbuster Streaming... That's extra. You want Netflix streaming. You can't have it. We don't have an agreement with them.
Most people talk about Network Neutrality as if it is giving preferential speed to one site over another. It can be much worse. We saw what happened when torrents (legal or illegal) were deemed to cause most of their network load. They tried blocking them. My provider blocks the standard SMTP port just in case my computer is a SPAM BOT. How soon before they deem that streaming movies are responsible for 50% of their bandwidth (and are a direct competitor with their own Cable TV offerings) and they block streaming video to "improve quality" for those poor customers who have their bandwidth unjustly stolen from those few who watch TV shows on their computer.
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.
What if ISPs and common carriers started deciding to block FoxNews.com because they didn't like the message?
No ISP has ever done that. Mostly because if they did so they would cease to be a common carrier and be liable for every torrent. Do you see how the system is self-regulating to prevent this issue?
What has happened though, is the government has altered the DNS system to re-direct (not just block) access to sites THEY did not like.
So in arguing the case I'd come way harder down on the side of the bad things happening that derive from what has already happened, vs. theoretical "burning hellfire strawman" issues that simply do not happen in reality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
you tend to frown on any new govt. authority. and, therefore fairies will descend from the sky and protect your freedoms against private interests.
Read radical news here
I'm a conservative. No one represents me in government, no one.
No one in government represents any of my neighbors either, not all of whom are "conservative".
You can even be a (real) conservative and realize that families are important and should be encouraged -- even ones headed up by married gays. Gheesh, how did those idiots let themselves be hijacked by the radicals? (which applies to either left or right as far as I can tell, just different radicals involved -- sometimes)
Why did we let them get to this point, where now there is no way to just vote the bastards out? Some choice we get at the polls -- people selected by the "two heads of the same monster" are our "choice".
This is indistinguishable from a police/fascist state no matter who is in power now.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
That'd solve the issue of ISPs extorting content producers from the other side of the internet.
SInce we do not have that problem today why are you seeking to "solve" it?
I don't have eels in my pants, are you also going to pass a law mandating pants with narrow openings and eel traps to "prevent" that problem too?
When you start trying to solve imaginary problems you can get really bad regulations, really fast.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Karl Marx supports communism.
Steve Wozniak supports net neutrality.
Karl Marx had a beard.
Steve Wozniak has a beard.
Therefore, Steve Wozniak is a communist and net neutrality is communism.
Similarly:
Clowns are have painted white faces and entertain people.
Rush Limbaugh has a white face and entertains people.
Therefore, Rush Limbaugh is a clown.
Here's a sampling of articles from conservatives / libertarians on net neutrality:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/18/kahn_net_neutrality_warning/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rOQpQYQtA0
http://www.onlyrepublican.com/orinsf/2006/06/neutrality_for_.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juw5Ew_fKgs
http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/17/free-press-and-the-art-of-profligate-fudging/
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/28/if-the-fcc-had-regulated-the-internet-from-the-beginning/
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/04/06/net-neutrality-aint-over-til-its-over/
http://www.freetoassemble.com/blog/cincinnatuschili/net-neutrality-comcast-vs-level-3-communications
A few points:
1) Not all conservatives / libertarians oppose net neutrality
2) Most of these writers have a pretty good understanding of the issue
3) Several who oppose it do it on free market principles
4) There is a legitimate distrust of the FCC - some view the net neutrality issue as being used as an excuse for an FCC power grab
[Insert pithy quote here]
Once upon a time it would have been unthinkable to hear swearing on television, but now you hear it all the time. The first time I heard "she's got a nice a**" was when I unplugged that, I do not want that language in my living room. The networks used to have at least some taste, now it is full of smut and sex. Obviously the FCC does not censor at all, what are you talking about?
it seems to me that the poster has given good reason to bolster his claim
Really? How so? Because I cannot find the actual text of the regulation they just passed. All else then is speculation, except for a few leaked tidbits that indicate the regulation is nothing like the idea of network neutrality most people had. So then, it seems more right to be concerned about what it actually is than arguing that a mythical variant of network neutrality that we will never see in practice, is awesome and you should vote for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This seems to be another of those battlegrounds where right and left line up against each other, without much regard to what the real issue is. I think part of the problem is that our society is increasingly technical, and not that many people really understand the technical issues.
Makes some good, salient points.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
despite the best efforts of neoconservatives, the fact still remains: reality has a well known liberal bias.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Arguing for some utopian and non-existent version of legislation is all that is done in politics these days. On the right AND on the left.
Let's take the left's crown jewels : the mandatory national insurance legislation. Take any lefty you know, even a senator if you like. Were they arguing
a) for the actual text of the law, including all it's provisions
b) the theoretical accomplishment that "would surely follow" it's passing
The right is as uninformed as the left. How could it possibly be any other way with the average law spanning 800 pages of text ?
Like always, there's a zillion stories floating around, and hardly any of them actually provide a reader with a link to the actual order. The anti-neutrality arguments take two main themes: That the FCC has no legal right to publish such orders, and that terrible harm will come to the internet if the existing de facto policy of neutrality is codified into law.
The first is a legal issue, and I have no idea whether the FCC has the authority to do this.
Based on the language in the order I've read, every argument I've seen so far in the second category is just full of crap. Any real argument against these specific rules should actually quote a rule, and describe in detail how it's wrong.
Took me less than a minute..... http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db1223/FCC-10-201A1.pdf
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
Why does the gooberment(s) need to be involved at any level. Let the markets dictate the results. If an ISP blocks P2P or heavy FTP you switch ISPs to one that does not. Problem solved, and without the gooberment telling me what I can and can not do.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
The closest thing I can find to the actual regulation is this document:
http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db1221/DOC-303745A1.pdf
Which does not list the whole regulation passed, just excerpts. And parts of them look very bad indeed:
A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is
so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, subject to
reasonable network management.
Bye-Bye torrents; the government has now codified it's perfectly reasonable to block traffic considered "unlawful".
All that remains is for the MPAA to put forth the pipeline to feed ISP's the torrents the ISP's must block.
Remember the word "lawful" did not have to be in there at all, it's used in a few places - and it's not an accidental term.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is another case of false equivalence. Whenever someone criticizes the right, someone always complains that they aren't criticizing the left "because they are exactly the same." But it isn't the case. There really is no left-wing Rush Limbaugh and if there is then this person isn't nearly as powerful and influential as Rush. If you have something to criticize about the left or liberals or progressives, then I welcome that, it will ultimately strengthen the movement. But don't insist that the right shouldn't be criticized because you imagine others have the same problem but you can't be troubled to explain how.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
This article misses the point of the debate, and completely mischaracterizes the reasons why the Right is concerned about the current net neutrality power grab. There are several issues here, which the Daily Kos completely glosses over (which, being the Daily Kos, doesn't surprise me much):
1. The power grab by the FCC is illegal and has already been repudiated in court. The 111th Congress did not implement net neutrality rules (despite a slight push for them by the Obama administration) and so the FCC decided they would just create the regulations out of the blue. The problem is that a federal court shut that down, stating in a decision that the FCC didn't have the authority to regulate the Internet. So, the new stunt is to reclassify the Internet such that it falls under FCC jurisdiction (under a 1930s law designed to regulate monopoly telephone services). This will probably get thrown out in court, but the Right is correct to point out that this is a violation of the rule of law.
2. The argument about blocking political speech is not really part of the issue (asinine comments about Rush Limbaugh notwithstanding). No service provider can block out half of the political speech on the Internet (for either side) and stay in business, so proposing net neutrality as a solution to this non-problem is, well, a solution looking for a problem. We haven't had market failure in this area.
3. Government is notoriously slow and inept at regulating emerging and ever-changing technologies. How many articles have you read on Slashdot that underscore this fact? Laws are static, and the democratic process is reasonably slow (by design) to get things done. Therefore, regulating a fast-changing space is likely to cause more harm than good. This particular administration is likely to cause even more spectacular damage, given its record of accepting only "expert" opinions that line up with its preconceived notions (consensus by tautology) -- see, for instance, the EPA's behavior during the Gulf spill -- and so it's pretty likely that whatever it churns out will be particularly damaging. This doesn't even cover the fact that the FCC isn't going to make the rules public until they're already final. If you want to discourage investment in this market, that's a great way to do it. No wonder unemployment is still 9.8%.
4. Americans are impatient by nature; if companies foolishly and needlessly throttle services that people really want, they'll just drop the company. The only thing that somewhat prevents this is....wait for it, the FCC, which has allowed and encouraged telecoms to have a monopoly within a municipality, which means less competition for consumers. So, this law is government regulation designed to combat the result of a separate government failure.
If you think that the lesson of the housing crash is that the government should have left private industry to its own devices, there's absolutely no hope for you whatsoever.
I still don't understand how saying "you can't discriminate" is the same as a government takeover. Under that logic, every damn lunch counter in the southern U.S. must be the property of the feds.
I searched for your quotes, and could not find anything to corroborate them. They also don't seem like things any politician would plausibly say, at least directly. Based on this, I call bullshit. You made up those quotes, or took them from a source that made them up without verifying them. It is possible that they only said something similar, and that's why I couldn't find them, but you are not allowed to put quote marks around things that are not quotes.
In my neighborhood, its likely that the plug will be pulled on the likes of Limbaugh and Glen Beck first. If there was to be any plug pulling, that is.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, what they opposed was a bill that called for spending $11 billion without any clear explanation of what that dollar amount was chosen, or how it would be specifically spent. And - quite reaonably - many asked why a firefighter who got sick doing his job in NYC at that particular event is any more deserving than a firefighter in San Fransisco who gets sick while doing his job.
no. what they have opposed, was something that would benefit the people who have been at the forefront of their much-touted 'war on terror'.
this is not whether the budget is 11 bil, or this or that.
if, you are drumming nationalism, patriotism, and using various servicemen to that end, you do not come up and oppose aiding them like morons, contradicting your own argument. that was what they did.
with the drum they were beating, a firefighter at the front of the 'patriotic' 'war on terror', would indeed be more deserving than an ordinary firefighter in omaha. ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN RHETORIC. even if the two firefighters should, in logic and rationale, have the same rights, ACCORDING TO THE RHETORIC REPUBLICANS WERE SELLING, they shouldnt have been.
just like how someone serving in actual front, gets more reparations, benefits and resources than someone staying at home front.
Read radical news here
And now
The right screamed nonstop about the inevitability of the first three, none of which actually happened. Now they are screaming that the fourth will happen (either instead, or as well, depending on your take on reality). I'm not holding my breath.
Basically, if someone is claiming the government is about to "takeover" something, and they don't specify a military invasion as a tool in doing so, they have likely been listening to conservative media again. If you actually try to start a serious conservation with them on the issue you will likely find out in less than 30 seconds that they have no factual information to support their claims.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This is boilerplate socialist/communist claptrap. Net neutrality is a cover for censoring non-socialist voices. Period.
The "lefts" crown jewels was single payer and it failed.
Mandatory national insurance was the sweetener to get the congress critters who were in the pockets of the health insurance lobbyists to vote for the bill. I don't think either side was enthusiastic about it but it was necessary to get the whole thing passed.
Isn't compromise fun?
I said nothing about the government controlling the network, nor did I say any of those things happened.
The regulations should be a few sentences simply stating that an ISP can not discriminate based on content nor destination.
Regulation is not necessarily government control.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The issue that most "thinking" conservatives (i.e. not those who simply parrot whatever various talk shows put out) have with the network neutrality concept is not the ideal of keeping an ISP from blocking or throttling competing traffic, but rather the potential side effects from granting authority to the FCC to do that. Currently the FCC has no regulatory authority over the internet and allowing them to simply assume such authority unchecked is rather dangerous. Liberals would not want a conservatively controlled FCC regulating the internet just as conservatives do not want a liberally (modern ideological definition) controlled FCC regulating the internet. A previous poster noted the damage that a Republican controlled FCC with regulatory power over the internet could cause if they blocked all Democrat websites and vice versa. Enforcing internet neutrality between ISPs by introducing total control by an agency of the American government appears to be a bad idea. A well thought out congressional bill to limit ISP interference with traffic is a better idea (although not perfect). Yes, there is a tiny group of liberals who want to use “network neutrality” to control speech on the internet. There is also a tiny group of conservatives who want to do the same thing. I think the majority on both sides agree on this more than they disagree, but as usual that gets lost in the rhetoric. The summary is pretty bad though. How do you encourage an informed, thoughtful debate this way?
This is sadly true. I am a conservative, and am all but banned from sites like red state for my attempts to explain net neutrality. I think it all comes down to the word neutrality, the right feels like this is a fairness doctrine for the internet. I don't know what it will take to convince them otherwise. I have personally emailed Limbaugh about his comments and lack of understanding of the issue. No response to date.
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.
From wikipedia entry:
That indicates that people were trying to do this before 2005. Why, if a law already existed?
The summary is the first I've heard of net neutrality as just "reinstating" a law. That word appears nowhere in the wikipedia entry.
Not only that, but there are many different interpretations and degrees of "net neutrality" legislation. So which one was in effect pre-2005?
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Well said.
Since when has any American government bureaucrat settled for "a minimal amount of regulation"?
People here don't seem to understand, Rush isn't fighting the concept of Net Neutrality, he's fighting what the FCC is doing right now! Just because the regulations being pushed by the FCC are called Net Neutrality, doesn't mean that they are. Either Slashdotters have an extremely short memory about what the FCC has been doing in the past month, or you all hate Rush so much that you'll defend 'fake net neutrality' just so you don't have to agree with him. Hell I don't like Rush but he may be right this time. Remember both the Left and Right are in the pocket of big business.
The right way to make the argument for net neutrality is to compare the Internet properly to other media, such as Television and Radio.
Since the FCC permitted more consolidation of media outlets, we have seen two significant circumstances come to the fore, and one other interesting one.
First, commercial music-oriented radio had consolidated to the point that there seem to be a handful of networks running automated music stations, indistinguishable from one another except for the genre. Interesting, but local flavor is pretty much lost except for perhaps drive-time talkers that mostly interrupt the music. It's all about big advertising contracts and money. Cheap stations, national advertisers, just shovel the money into the bank.
Second, talk radio has never been bigger, and I propose that is because music radio is such a wasteland. Bit talk radio is driven directly by advertisers, and they want ears, so it is dominated by the talk genre that attracts the most listeners. This looks terrible to those who don't feel represented, but it's all about money.
Third, the FCC allowing multimedia companies to expand has brought us Fox News. Whether you like it or not, think of Fox News as the television and radio equivalent of a big-city newspaper. Somehow we don;t seem to mind too much that several major newspapers have easily discernable points of view and biases, but for FNC this is just wrong. Compare this situation to some of the other cable news networks, and very few seem, to me, to be anywheres near fair and balanced. Notice I don't mention the broadcast news networks? They have lost. Who cares?
If you think this consolidation of media companies is a problem, then you can grasp why letting your Internet provider either directly or indirectly filter or manipulate your access to other Internet services may be a problem. If you think the dominance of a few voices in media is a bad thing, you want the opportunity to find others. If your ISP decides to hamper your viewing of movies from, say, Netflix, you should be asking 'why'? The answer is probably nor any further than the on-demand programming your Cable ISP offers, or perhaps the tie-in to a satellite TV company your telco ISP has. And if you want to listen to music via some Internet legal and legitimate service, imagine your ISP thinking they have a music service too. If you want to use Skype, imagine your ISP of either dominant flavor already has a telephone service. Of course they want to sell that to you. Skype is their competitor.
The problem is, we need to define the Internet properly now. If your cable ISP wants to serve you up limited Internet with the competing pieces missing, they really can only be expected to say so, so you can make an informed choice. Same thing with your telco ISP. If we need to make Internet service a common-carrier utility, we'll see prices soar. And we'll see ISPs try and sell another, cheaper service. One they admit they throttle and manipulate, but hey, if you want videos, they got 'em right here! Telephone? they got that too! Want full-on Internet? That's more expensive, but they got that as well.
We are close to seeing segregated Internet services. I'm afraid we cannot stop it short of mandating that all Internet service must be free and unfettered. And that opens the floodgates of price gouging as ISPs claim that an unfettered Internet is so overwhelming that they need to build out even more capacity, and that costs so much more than we're paying now.
Perhaps that is the argument that the FCC (maybe) or local governments (more likely) can use to challenge contracts. As in, if the ISP that has a government-imposed monopoly is claiming they can't provide the service, well, perhaps it's time to open up the bidding to someone who can.
I'm interested in demanding my municipality add an enforcable SLA to the next cable contract. Uptime, latency to known significant destinations, and support for all RFC'd protocols. I imagine I'll get a target on my back for that, but it would be an interesting start. Because all politics is local, you know.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I can't tell you how encouraged I am by hearing these opinions. My wife and I have been telling our Republican friends that there is NO true Republican party any longer just as there is NO true Democratic party. Both political parties are owned. And we have no choice and no representation.
I personally would like to see a third choice on ballots; ie, ABSTAIN. Since it is impossible to have a third party in this country, we still need a way to tell the politicos whether or not we actually approve of them. I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils. If I go to the polls, I want it known that I was there to vote; that I value my vote and took the time to travel to use it. But I think that both candidates suck. Therefore, I abstain.
I would hope that if there are more people that feel like the game is rigged, they also would abstain. So when they tally the vote, they have to show what percentage of the population actually believes in the puppet that has been put in place.
IOW, the abstain option would more clearly define a vote of "no confidence."
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
I don't think of myself as right or left wing.
I'm for as little government regulation and oversight as is necessary to protect citizens from the profit motivated capitalistic forces.
"Net neutrality" is the term that should mean just that in the telecom space, so I'm for the principle.
It's also one of those terms that many different parties want to claim has different meanings, so I'm not always for specific implementations of the policy.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
No, just evil people who grab and increase their power over us because we are dumb enough to let them. We've even let them destroy the language -- liberal used to mean something a lot more like "libertarian"
No it didn't. The libertarian position is one that honestly did not exist in politics until about 50 years ago.
I know, in conservative mythos, the founding fathers were libertarians, but they were not. Liberal, in that day, was basically anti-classism and anti-crown, a position that really doesn't exist anymore in modern politics.
Once the crown was gone, it continued to be anti-special-rules-for-the-ruling class, a position it still holds, at least in theory. (As we don't actually have any liberal political party, it doesn't really hold any position anymore.) All liberal fights, though the entire history of this country and back to John Locke, are to stop one group of withholding power-sharing from another group, with the groups being the crown, nobles, slaveowners, the superrich, the corporate owners, the whites, the straights...and, apparently, the superrich again. Except now the superrich have intelligently bought both parties.
(Please note when I say 'liberals', I am, indeed, aware that liberals used to be on the right, and flopped to the left around when I said 'the whites')
Libertarianism is not classical liberalism, it is neo-classical liberalism. It reinvents the idea that the problem is 'the crown'. Which, frankly, would be a rather strange idea to various classical liberal thinkers, whose biggest problem with the government is the fact that it often failed to enforce laws equally, and not that those laws existed at all!
and "conservative" used to mean, you know, look before you leap, spend less than you make, stuff like that. Or even "not all change is for the better, so examine it first before deciding".
Here, you're right. Conservatives, to paraphrase something David Brin wrote on the topic, used to be the serious guys in suits at NASA who did the math. The guys running around in the background monitoring stuff that seemed entirely pointless (Until it was wrong, then they calmly and efficiently saved everyone's life.), and wasn't glamorous, and they went home to their family and read the paper each evening. Whereas liberals were the astronauts and the sci-fi writers and the dreamers, and got all the credit, but without the guys in suits, wouldn't know how to do what they were trying to do. There's the guys who try to do everything, and the guys who figure out what can and can't happen and managed to get some of it done, while otherwise raining on the parade.
But that ended about two decades ago, when it was decided that the best way to rule the country is not to point out the parts of the left's plans that can't work, and invent better ways...but to simply assert, very loudly, that anything the left wants is wrong. Morally wrong, politically wrong, won't work, every single possible objection.
Even stuff like cap and trade or the public mandate for health insurance, both of which were conservative alternatives to the left's previous plan. Or stuff like bills attempting to stop child 'marriage', which the Republicans shot down for absurd reasons two week ago. (Apparently, educating women that it is not acceptable for them to be sold to older men when they're 13 as his 'wife' is...um...pro-abortion.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
SlashDot, pick up a history book. The original intent of the FCC was to regulate frequencies so broadcasters didn't overlap frequencies. Win/Win, right? Well not exactly. That regulatory authority soon mutated to something hat regulated content. The fears of the "right" are based in reality because it HAS HAPPENED.
Government regulation of the Net takes liberty from large corporations. Yes, it grants that liberty to individuals and to smaller corporations. In doing so it is redistributionist: it redistributes liberty from the larger, more powerful corporate groups who otherwise can easily take it for themselves - and who generally will, when allowed to - to the smaller folks, like some of us.
The truth is, no corporation can guarantee your liberty. Guarantee of liberty only happens two ways: through custom, and through government. When it is old custom involved, that's true conservatism; when it's new custom emerging, and it's a custom of liberty, that's revolution. True revolution is even rarer than true conservatism. Both are generally masks for groups trying in large part to remove liberty from others, not to distribute it more broadly, but to keep it for themselves, as power.
Corporations find their profits limited by the liberties of the people. Recognizing that those liberties are rooted in custom and government, corporations hire shills to oppose both - two birds with one stone: to urge a change in customs, and a diminishment of government. Net neutrality thus is the perfect enemy of the shills who wish to control the currents which bend our customs towards a future of total large-corporate control. If the Net remains neutral, its currents undermine control by particular established corporations. Yet the Net can only remain neutral if government guarantees that liberty. So government, if it does guarantee Net liberty, is undermining the primary goals of the right-wing shills. They are entirely accurate in putting forth the idea that it is their direct enemy, and the enemy of those whose liberty they truly most care about: their corporate sponsors.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The Right taking a misinformed stance on something? I'm shocked. SHOCKED.
The Right likes to live in a fantasy world that never existed. On the other hand, the Left likes to dream about a world that never should exist.
The Right and Left both ignore truth whenever it serves their agendas. The Right has been firmly in the pocket of Big Corp for decades. Big Corp (i.e. telcos, cablecos, and Hollywood) are anti-neutrality, therefore the Right is anti-neutrality. Truth doesn't matter and "educating" the Right isn't going to make a shit of difference.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
I'm a conservative and I think net neutrality is a FANTASTIC idea. I called into a conservative radio talk show that I listen to a lot (Phil Valentine) and tried to explain to him that it is something we need to protect freedom on the internet. He kept saying that "the market will decide" and while I typically agree with him on that, in this case it can't be left to the market since the big telecoms have so much control. They can easily collude on this matter and block content they don't want on their pipes, and I feel that is wrong.
Why would they care if you abstain unless it impacts them in some way. They don't care about non-voters, except to the extent it risks their elections. They'd be happy if 99% didn't vote at all, as long as the 1% voted the way they wanted.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I was watching and listening to FCC-regulated media in the 50s and 60s, and all-in-all it was pretty fucking good. Radio was far better than now (under ownership limitations that prevented anything like Clear Channel). The network newscasts were far more informative and fact-laden (back when networks still owned themselves and viewed quality of news as a public duty). Subversive humorists like the Smothers Brothers had a far larger audience than Jon Stewart today. We had Star Trek in its first run - with a moral sensibility which was a continuation from older shows like Have Gun - Will Travel, which Roddenberry had also written scripts for - arguably a far better and more serious sensibility than can be found in any TV dramas today. Even a few of the sitcoms were good - which is all you can say for TV today, that a few of the sitcoms are still clever and watchable.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
in exactly what ways the final rules differ from your vision of net neutrality, and how those differences might be upsetting to Rush. To simply claim as fact that the FCC's "'fake net neutrality'" isn't "Net Neutrality" (as if your concept is the one and only correct one) is disingenuous.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Freddie and Fannie (gov't insurers), and Gov't threats of more regulation pushed banks to make loans to people who couldn't afford a home is what caused the housing crash.
Yes banks got greedy in the end, because, hey, the gov't is going to back the loan... thanks for proving his point.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
You're assuming that there actually are two high speed providers in town.
I live in a town with one high speed provider, Windstream, because apparently it's okay for the same company to own both phone and cable.
And, of course, I don't know how 'dialup' would fix anything, considering that, even if there was a third party offering that, they'd end up hooking into, tada, the phone company's internet connection. And, yes, that phone company owns the entire local calling area, and hence any local dialup ISP (If any still exist) would hook into the same internet, so unless I want to make a long distance internet call, dialup is out. (Not that I could functionally watch Hulu over that.)
Alternately, I could get satellite internet, but that has rather serious bandwidth caps so cannot be used to watch Hulu over either.
If I want internet that I can watch Hulu over, if Windstream decides to slow Hulu, I'd literally have to purchase a dedicated 50 mile T1 line to another county and find somewhere to have it hooked up.
(Please note that Hulu is just an example here. Replace with netflix or fox news or whatever.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Frankly when it comes to the Internet, EFF is the most unbiasted organization that I trust. http://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/net-neutrality-fcc-perils-and-promise Basically it shows that Net Neutrality can be used as a trojan horse to control the content and the flow of the information on the Internet. Whenever a good idea comes up and one side of the political isle strongly supports it while other is stronly opposes it, you should never look at it as only "black-and-white" issue.
Voting 3rd party effectively does this.
Eschew Obfuscation
The Logic of Free Market: Obviously, to keep the market free we must regulate it heavily.
Because, you know, monopolies would never take advantage of their customers, and companies would never collude to artificially increase prices.
The Greedy Man wants to use fear and doubt regulate and control access to the internet.
But the Wise Man wants to keep the internet free.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
.
But now that the info's been disseminated more, my biggest personal concern isn't over NN itself, but with the unfortunate timing of the US's 'discomfort' with wikileaks (do I need a link) + the U.N.'s 'concern' with internet not being controlled.
Not that the US could be strong-armed by the third-world countries (and other proponents of UN regulation of internet), but that the U.S. could take advantage of the UN's concern in order to stuff wikileaks or other sites/services considered a threat to national security.
Freddie and Fannie were laggers in the subprime market. The regulation that I think you're referring to said that banks could not use different loan criteria based on where the customer lives -- so if you made the business decision to offer NINJA loans in the suburbs, you had to offer them in the inner city as well. Nobody forced any bank to issue any NINJA loan.
I'd be more likely to believe the fiction that the poor financial institutions were helpless in the face of big government if it weren't for the loan derivatives that were the real cause of the crisis. Wall Street gambled, abetted by the ratings agencies, and left taxpayers on the hook when the scheme ran out of steam.
If you blindly believe one unsupportable fairy tale, you'll be willing to base your entire life and society on fairly tales, never bothering to look behind the curtain. This also explains why intelligence and experience in politicians are now viewed as liabilies.
Why shouldn't ISPs be allowed to block unlawful content? That's just good common sense.
They should be allowed to block whatever they please. However blocking some unlawful content means they are responsible for blocking all of it, which is why it's not done today.
What I am against is the government saying they SHOULD block unlawful content, which this is a short step away from. We've already seen the government alter DNS for sites it does not like, even though some seemed perfectly legal. Well how about not even being able to reach an IP the government deems "illegal" because your iSP has been mandated to block all traffic to it? After all, that site is illegal....
The thing is Neutrality, as used, is classic Orwellian Doublespeak. Any time you mandate what a company can do it's only a matter of time before more mandates are added.
In fact the very aspect of ISP's not being able to block traffic they do deem illegal is because of the Common Carrier laws that would let them be sued if they try to block anything. If you really favor the ISPs ability to block illegal traffic you should be seeking regulatory relief, not doubling up on the dose.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps you were unaware that it is already happening but not the way you might think. Are you familiar with ESPN 3? ESPN has worked deals with certain ISPs to offer the service and if you don't subscribe to an ISP that has signed up with ESPN you can't get access to it. It's the first step in turning the internet into the new cable. Large ISPs like Comcast are also pushing to charge more for high volume sites like Google. The only problem with that is Google is already paying for the bandwidth they are using. Comcast wants to get a cut of the ad revenue Google takes in from their ad sales.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What about three people? Why can't a man have two lawfully wedded wives at the same time? Who appointed you the arbiter of where the line in the sand is drawn once marriage is no longer between one man and one woman (which the overwhelming majority of human cultures have always defined it as)?
To the extent that gay marriage redefines how our society views marriage, it opens up pandora's box because today's "reasonable person" who balks at polygamy today is tomorrow's "reactionary."
Do a Google search yourself for "fairness doctrine" and you will find a number of Democrats calling at various points in the last three years for it. Kerry was one of them.
Actually, in the US it would, since no federal agency has any direct statutory control over the Internet yet. Law enforcement can enforce specific criminal statutes, but no federal agency has the power to get right in there and start messing with the Internet itself in the United States. The FBI can come in with all sorts of orders, but the telecoms can tell them to go f#$% themselves if the law doesn't back them up.
And no net neutrality proposal will address this point because they all just blithely assume that those telecoms are going to lay there and take it up the ass as a federal regulator reviews their network operations on a regular basis.
What is really needed is a good plan to separate ownership of the backbone from ownership of the last mile. If Comcast couldn't legally enter the backbone infrastructure market, and "Mom and Pop Fiber Optics" could get access to Verizon's infrastructure at a "reasonable, non-discriminatory rate" it wouldn't matter if Comcast combined content and ISP services because Comcast would not have any more clout than its smaller competitors.
The FCC is a regulatory agency and as such can draft up all sorts of regulations based on what Congress permits, intentionally or unintentionally. Other executive branch agencies cannot. Homeland Security needed very specific legislation to shut down those sites recently for copyright infringement. The FCC, depending on how Congress acts, could do whatever its leadership wants.
That does include censoring "obscene speech."
Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably
discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.
Which means if Comcast/NBC doesn't like Hulu, you don't get to see it. I don't want the government telling me what I want.
I personally would like to see a third choice on ballots; ie, ABSTAIN.
The answer is simpler than that. Make it so no one may be elected without at least 50% of the popular vote. If no one gets 50%, the top two go into a run-off.
See, the problem is that if I vote for an independent, it's the same as ABSTAIN. I might as well stay home. The winner is either going to be D or R because they get the most votes. They get the most votes because voting for a TEA/Green party candidate is literally taking away a vote from the next best thing, a R or D. If a TEA/Green party candidate takes 30% of the vote, they are taking 30% of the vote from the D or R that these voters are next closest aligned to and end up giving the race to the D or R they do NOT agree with. By demanding at least a 50% popular vote, your vote is not wasted.
For example. Let's say you live in a liberal district, 60% liberal. You have a Green Party member, a Democrat and Republican running. The Democrat and Green Party member split the liberal vote and each candidate gets 30%. The Republican gets 40% and wins. The public knows this and will consistently vote for whoever has the better chance of winning, usually the Democrat, even if they want the Green Party member more. Now, with a majority rule, no one wins and the top Democrat/Green Party winner go up against the Republican and wins 60-40.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The problem is that there is not enough bandwidth in the USA, so people, instead of throwing more bandwidth at the problem, try to define ways to control the current bandwidth.
I'm sure we have already spent more money in Network Neutrality issues than if we had put more bandwidth.
Note this problem is not much felt in other part of the world, because there is sufficient bandwidth for current services. In USA, rural America is still much under dial-up...
If the government wants to help: bring broadband in all corners of the USA.
Franck Martin
Avonsys
The normal and usual tool of the right wing is lies. If it is conservative it is lying. We now have proof that Bush stole his election. The computer programmer who wrote the code that altered the ballot count has testified that he wrote the code and exactly who paid him to do it.
Then there is the trickle down economy lie created by Reagen. Obviously that magical theory of economics was absurd and hatched by lunatics. Now we have right wing congressmen who are trying to revive that nonsense. We even have right wingers who want tax breaks for the rich under the absurd supposition that the rich will somehow create jobs in America if they have more money. Think about that for just a moment. If you were wealthy and wanted a big return on investment why on Earth would you invest it in the US? Why not buy a factory in China and earn some real money like everyone else or perhaps a factory in Mexico where labor is cheap? After all if you want to build yachts wouldn't it be better to pay $10. per day to a highly skilled worker in Mexico than pay $250. per day to a skilled worker in the US? And they'll let you pollute and make a mess of everything with a few bribes here and there.
If it is right wing it is lying and if you don't stomp them out they will bite you or steal the food off of your table.
We have to "educate them before the debate can really be held"? No, you morons. THIS IS THE DEBATE. IT'S THE THING HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
Here's a better idea: Put the pro-Net Neutrality megaphone solidly in the hands of Google*, and the rest of the Valley. Then get out the way. Yes, Rush, will jump at this and make it a Google vs. Me debate, because Rush is a fanatical self promoter, and would love to be as important as Google. But the thing is... people USE Google. They LIKE Google. They TRUST Google. So Google needs to get out there and make this about innovation and jobs, and make the opponent position that Comcast can jack up rates whenever they like. Limbaugh can get shoved next to Comcast, which just happens to be the most hated company in the world. Just sayin'.
If it's business vs. fanatics, the businesses will always win. Ain't America great? So we fanatics need to get businesses that support neutrality -- and data portability and open standards and all the other aspects of Open Stewardship -- at the front of the room for a while.
* I recognize the problems with the Google/Verizon statement, but we work with what we have.
Which is why this is not a left/right issue.
The right currently doesn't want to regulate the internet, we should all want that.
The left currently wants to regulate the internet and impose restrictions on it, do not want!
The fact that people trust the FCC to regulate the internet when the same people don't want the FCC regulating TV/Radio is what makes this whole issue so hillarious.
The fact is that once the government gets to regulate the internet, they get to regulate it more and more.
Rarely have we seen the case where regulations ever go away, so we should avoid it like the plague.
Imagine the imposition of taxes on the internet, thats been a meme/troll for years, yet this could make it happen.
Imagine the FCC imposing content restrictions because it maybe "violates US interests", that would have people up in arms.
If you want to avoid the problem, don't have the government in the business of regulating the internet, period.
If there are problems with content/eyeball providers, the courts should be used to sort that out, it'll be much more effective than any
governmental relief ever could be.
If we go Net Neutrality, it must be coupled with large public investment in major net infrastructure enhancements.
In a Net Neutrality world, telcos can't afford to roll out major infrastructure enhancements to support 1080p video and similar mass market content, because even if they could charge consumers more directly, which they realistically can't, that infrastructure will just go to support more bittorrent use for the top 5% of users.
In a Net Neutrality world, telcos can't go to Google and Netflix and Hulu and Apple and get funding for major infrastructure enhancements based on deals to ensure QoS of delivery of those providers' content. And consumers and the rest of providers won't get the downstream benefits of those major infrastructure enhancements, because they won't happen.
In a Net Neutrality world, these major infrastructure enhancements will only happen on this schedule if the government funds them directly. Unfortunately this has been something governments have been unwilling to do explicitly. We should just agree that internet infrastructure is like roads and highways inasmuch as it should be publicly funded and owned. Of course that means that the government controls it and monitors it, but the government already does this, and since it's private and not public, they do it with telcos directly without oversight and restriction.
...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.
To debate, you first need people who are open to debate and rational argument. The bribed people on both sides are neither. They don't want to debate, they want to have their way. Debating, in this case, is only a distraction. Thinking you can educate them is either misguided or hubris of the highest order.
That is all.
The left didn't care that we couldn't afford it as long as they got what they wanted by passing the healthcare bill.
Except that health care reform is intended to reduce the deficit over the long term, by curbing the rapid growth of health care costs over the long term.
Remember, there are all sorts of tax deductions and credits for health care. This means that the government sees comparatively little revenue from dollars that get spent on healthcare, which gets more and more expensive much faster than inflation. Also, sick people produce less, and growing numbers of uninsured or underinsured people means less revenue for the government.
The Congressional Budget Office says that health care reform increases the deficit over the next 10 years, but reduces it dramatically over the next 20. They're not necessarily right, but they're analyzing this deeper than the critics.
Are you adequate?
NN is designed to prevent anyone (government or corporate) telling you what content you can access.
Oh by the way isn't nice that the government tells that nice farmer that he can't dump all his cow shit in your drinking water. Oh no that's government regulation so that is wrong.
I think you're not represented in Government because you're not a corporation or lobby group with lots of campaign funds to dole out. Neither are your neighbours. The whole liberal/conservative thing is just a smokescreen as you point out in the first part of your post.
In http://rmf.vc/FCCPerspective?z=sdt I observe that the Internet is a larger concept then telecommunications. Both "sides' seem be accepting the idea that the Internet is just another telecommunications service and that is simply wrong.
Neutrality is a good principle but it doesn't address the inherent conflict of interest that comes from having service providers owning the physical infrastructure. I use the term "Broadband Internet" to distinguish the sliver of telecommunications capacity used for exchanging bits from the larger concept of a "Generative Internet".
The first step is to break free of the 19th century business model of selling services to pay for providers' private infrastructure. We need to own our local physical infrastructure and fund it as a commons. That is a sustainable model that generates the hypergrowth we elsewhere in computing and connectivity. For more see the essay and others such as http://rmf.vc/Demystify?z=sdt which go into the detail.
Try educating yourself first. Let me provide a historical example of why people do not want FCC regulation over the Internet. The original goal of the FCC was to regulated frequencies so that radio/tv stations didn't overlap. This was a good thing. Soon the FCC started regulating content on those airwaves. Was that their original mission? Nope. Did that stop them? Nope. (And if you want to be technical, it was the "progressives" who imposed this censorship. Many of the problems in this country today are the result of "progressive" policies during the FDR administration. Then again, we can ignore history and bash republicans with baseless arguments.)
The entire article is a troll's post. "The Republicans are lying, they're badly misinformed, and we the enlightened have the correct answer and must re-educate them." Then the commenters jump on and say, "Why yes! I understand the Republican position -- it's because they're anarchists who love anything done by a big corporation, and it's on this basis that I judge everything they say!" If you want to have a serious debate about Net neutrality, this kind of article isn't the way to do it. Then again, the actual politicians these days have been dismissing the ruling party's critics as stupid, ignorant, and irrational -- in nearly that exact language -- so it's no surprise that their supporters would also talk that way.
Revive the Constitution.
Like I said, it's healthcare reform all over again, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the government take-over talking points that have emerged on the Right are coming straight from the telcos, just like the government take-over talking point on the public option came directly from the insurance industry.
This is actually cuttingly salient, even though the author doesn't realize it. Remember how we were told that there would be no government take-over of healthcare due to the reform bill? Remember how that turned out to be a lie? As a matter of fact, only government-approved healthcare plans are presently available. You cannot get child-only coverage at all in many places. You did not get to 'keep your doctor' nor 'keep your current plan' because your employer makes those choices and simply would never, ever have paid those increased costs out of pocket. Note, too, how the major employers will SAVE MONEY by DROPPING COVERAGE altogether once the exchanges come up.
I just find it ironic that even now, after we can see everything that's going wrong with the newly-minted power of the Federal government to ration out health insurance - even NOW do we yearn to give them more power over the internet. What could possibly go wrong???
You pro-government guys are probably certifiable at this point, and yet you call us anti-government guys crazy. Go figure.
I am decidedly on the right politically, with the caveat I don't discriminate on personal freedoms as to what should be protected and what should have hob-nailed boots trounce it. So maybe neither "side" really wants me. But I strongly favor net neutrality. I also think the best way to combat the fight against it is to add language that loses carriers "common carrier" status when they start filtering based on content. Because truly they are then filtering the content so damaging content they deliver (viruses, SPAM, unwanted content in general or psychic damaging who-ha, or whatever other thing one perceives as damaging content) can land them in a court case. It is one thing to say we provide a connection to the Internet, and if you suck too much on the pipe, we'll slow you down. It is quite another to say that we will allow you full access to XYZZY site but access to PLUGH will be at 20Kbps or we won't allow access to HULACADABRA without an additional fee. It is even worse when they say, cool to connect with your Doors Phone 23 Phone, but that iPineapple is going to cost you more!
In my opinion once they do more than sell me a rate of bits (that may be volume restricted) then they lose common carrier status. And they open the door to a multitude of legitimate (and of course spurious) lawsuits thay will be defending against. My phone service does not stop people from calling me if the phone company doesn't make money from them too. My phone doesn't prevent me from calling other people. (Notice the blocking services offered by the phone company are in the control of the consumer!) The main flaw to the phone argument is 800 numbers but there the 800 provider is receiving a special service (ANI-caller ID that can't be blocked, so be careful calling those anonymous 800 number tip lines) in exchange for what they pay so you don't have too. The internet "pipe" to a consumer is different though. It is dumped into the Internet without consideration as to what the packet contains. It gets routed the same whether part of an email, VOIP call, or DNS request.
If net neutrality is ever defeated I urge everyone affected to file using their jurisdictions anti-spam laws immediately in small claims court or to lodge a complaint with their state's AG if possible on each piece of SPAM, naming not only the spammer but the provider that services their Internet connection as well since they now control content.
Of course, just my opinion, you are as always personally responsible for your actions in these matters.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
It is one way of doing it. I believe the single payer system was another and a few other ideas were on the table as well. The mandatory insurance was the only one that the insurance companies would support and the only one that would get enough votes.
Break a leg and see if you can get insurance before it falls off...
Don't be ridiculous. As far as your average American voter is concerned, any budgeting beyond oh, the next two years or so might as well not exist. If you can't translate this into either increased services or decreased taxes for somebody right now, they are going to be against it. Oh, and the services have to be so easily understandable that some media talking head can't spin it easily into a negative and so obvious that the beneficiaries can't easily ignore it. For your average mouth breather spouting off about the issue, increasing the deficit over the next 10 years is the same thing as saying you are increasing the deficit for the rest of eternity.
Government is your responsibility and a democratic representative government like the USA has is even MORE tied to its public. If it sucks it is your fault.
Government run by and for the corporations is no longer the same form of government and it is also your fault for giving up to their influence -- and its those forces who have incentive to break government so they can clean up the messes they create while blaming government for their actions and demotivating people from taking back control.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Your 'bot has malfunctioned: there is an unbalanced parenthesis in the fourth paragraph; I'm guessing trying to squeeze Al Gore into the frankly nonsensical diatribe/parody threw off the parser. There will be another Turing test next week. In the meantime, you fail.
Tony.
-- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- Juvenal
If you care about this subject read the proposed legislation. There are liars on both sides and the only way to see the truth is to go to the source.
JoeR
The Declaration of Independence held that the just purpose of government is to secure our rights.
That's about as small-l libertarian as you'll find anywhere. Classical Liberals such as Madison, Jefferson, and Paine really were libertarians.
Where Libertarians of today often diverge from Jefferson and Paine is a tendency to view government granted monopolies in copyright, patent, and even land, as absolute natural rights instead of limited grants by government to "promote the useful arts" or find a way to peacefully coexist while exploiting natural resources.
The flaw in your argument is that if the government does nothing, then your ISP will use its monopoly / near monopoly to provide poor service to any web services (like Netflix) that compete against what the ISP is also selling (cable tv). This is already occurring, and the only way for us citizens to fight back is to pass laws preventing their schemes.
All I ask for is a concrete link proving what you say, and then an explanation of why you think network neutrality solves the problem you see.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Declaration of Independence held that the just purpose of government is to secure our rights.
Sigh.
I know libertarians have decided that 'taxes' are infringement our rights, but that's something that libertarians invented. That is not actually an infringement of rights, and no one pre-1950 or so would have ever thought it was.
That's about as small-l libertarian as you'll find anywhere. Classical Liberals such as Madison, Jefferson, and Paine really were libertarians.
No, they were liberals. They promoted equal justice before the law, and they wanted inalienable rights that all men had and couldn't be removed.
They didn't give a flying fuck about taxes, or even 'less laws'.
You read the Declaration of Independence, notice how many complaints there are about taxes (two, one of which is complaining about the fact they were basically paying taxes to a country that is functionally at war with them) and how many complaints about the fact the US cannot create laws it needs because England refuses to let it (eight).
Complaining about the lack of laws is right up there with complaining about the fact England isn't following the laws that do exist. The only complaints about taxes, the only complaints about actually enforced laws, are mere afterthoughts.
The founders of the US wanted a 'government of laws, not man'. They did not want a government of 'less laws'.
I don't care what sort of absurd revisionism you've managed to internalized, read the damn Declaration of the Independence, actually look at the complaints listed as reasons the US was founded.
The only 'small government' stuff WRT to the founding of the US that existed was the idea that the states would be a lot more powerful, and the US a lot less. But while a lot of people on the right think that would mean 'less government', that wasn't the reason they 'wanted' that, nor is there any particular reason that state governments would be less intrusive.
They 'wanted' states to have more power, because they figured it was the only way the states would agree, and because turning everything over to the Federal government couldn't work at that time anyway.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
They didn't care about taxes?
Wasn't there some party in Boston about taxes?
Did you notice that we needed a constitutional amendment to have an income tax?
But I'm not so concerned about how you got your knickers in a twist over taxes.
If you don't understand that they believed in limited government, with specific and enumerated delegated powers, you just didn't pay attention.
"All you really have to know about Net Neutrality is that its biggest promoters are George Soros and Google."
To begin with, the article linked is at www.dailykos.com, which is run by Markos Moulitsas. He is American born of a Salvadoran (a country with long standing socialist influences) mother and a Greek (more socialism) father, and grew up both in El Salvador and Chicago. Now I am from Indiana, not all that far from Chicago and know that a Republican in Chicago is regarded a Liberal in Indiana. He backed, and campaigned for Liberal Democrats throughout. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Moulitsas]. He is a Leftist, and his web site reflects that.
The DailyKos article links to an article at thinkprogress.org, from which google tells us that Soros funds Thinkprogress and following the money, behind Net Neutrality, just as Rush alleged. And for that matter, reading the entire list of inter-networked organizations covered at http://discoverthenetworks.org/ finds George Soros deeply involved in funding a vast network of anti USA, anti-freedom, anti-capitalism, anti-Business organizations of the progressive Left. That includes the attack on the Chamber of Commerce.
George Soros, a statist Socialist who wants to control the world, is behind “Net Neutrality” [link here]
All of these individuals and organizations are committed Socialists and Progressives. The problem with that here is the USA, is that it is the diametric opposite of the US Constitution, Liberty, Capitalism (which is just people saving their money and investing it), and all else this country stands for. It is nothing new that Socialism has been infiltrating the USA for over 100 years. And it is nothing new that Socialism has never, ever, not one time, worked for an extended period of time. It seems to work, until it runs out of other peoples money. It will then die as it has always in the past, and with a fair share of suffering and violence as the throes of death proceed.
In short, Net Neutrality, especially done by the FCC, is un-Constitutional
The problem of the FCC “regulating” the internet is that they have NO governmental right to do so.
They were denied that right previously in court.
They were denied that right by Congress regardless of how many times it was tried.
Briefy, the Executive branch (President, and *his* FCC) cannot make law. Congress makes law, which when passed must be approved by the President. And that can be revoked in the Courts. The case here is that the President through the FCC is making law.
Obama, long before he was elected President, Obama lamented that the "Constitution is a charter of negative liberties". [audio]. The problem here is that the Constitution in every point, limits government and gives it NO right to do anything TO its citizens. That was done by design of the Founders. Obama laments that because he wants to impose Socialism and wealth re-distribution. These two, Socialism and the US Constitution, are incompatible.
I also cannot understand why people here ca
You can take my internet porn away when you can pry it from my cold, dead, hand grip!
What is really needed is a good plan to separate ownership of the backbone from ownership of the last mile. If Comcast couldn't legally enter the backbone infrastructure market, and "Mom and Pop Fiber Optics" could get access to Verizon's infrastructure at a "reasonable, non-discriminatory rate" it wouldn't matter if Comcast combined content and ISP services because Comcast would not have any more clout than its smaller competitors.
And I'd like a pony too.
Don't kid yourself that Congresspeople and sundry interest groups are fighting Net Neutrality for anything approaching the idealistic reasons you name. They're opposing it --- solely, simply, absolutely --- because it might separate large ISPs from their profits. The world where this happens is not a world where anyone's going to lift a finger to separate Comcast from its infrastructure.
When Congress decides to fully regulate the Internet --- and they will, regardless of what happens to this bill --- they'll use something splashy like terrorism or kiddie porn, not something esoteric like packet delivery rules.
Since most of the discussion I've seen here is somewhat devoid of facts, I've just taken a few moments to review the first section of the document that details the recent vote of the FCC on Net Neutrality rules.
I encourage anyone to read through at least this first section from the following link:
FCC Report and Order on Net Neutrality
It is troubling from the outset.
Section I.1: "Today the Commission takes an important step to preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression."
Anyone notice where free expression falls in that list? This should give any American, left or right, something to worry about.
What follows is taken from the "three basic rules" which are said to govern the FCC's philosophy on net neutrality:
Section I.1.iii: "No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic."
The previous two rules of Section I.1 apply in part to both "Fixed" and "mobile" providers. Mobile providers are clearly, glaringly absent from the third rule. The unspoken message is this: "Mobile broadband providers may unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic." Is this an unfair understanding that one might take from Section I.1.iii?
It does not take any party affiliation to feel worry about the implications of even the first few words present in this document.
So I was driving through a rural area, where the only station was broadcasting the Limbaugh show, and he had some guest host on talking about "net neutrality." The guest host was just as good at ad-hominems and straw-men as is Limbaugh, then the host opined that the FCC should be abolished as an unnecessary, unelected government regulatory agency. Why, one of the commissioners is the child of an African-American politician!
There's something Limbaugh and I can agree upon.
I think people who don't agree with Limbaugh should be able to set up their own radio transmitters across the street from whatever local station carries Limbaugh, on the same frequency, and whoever can pump out the most wattage, wins!
Abolishing the FCC would enable Limbaugh wannabes to set up on any frequency they want. Who cares if the frequency belongs to the control tower at O'Hare?
it doesnt misrepresent anything. the corporations which are the sponsors of republican party and american right are annoyed with the level of freedom you have on the internet. they see it damaging to themselves. also there are rogue companies like google, which do not comply with the existing corporate hierarchy and bow to them like others do. so, internet is the enemy.
they use their media monopoly (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1867262&cid=34218862) (80% of american news are owned by parents of 4 movie studios) in order to fool and deceive the gullible. then, these come up to you and yell about their freedoms.
its no different than catholic church sending people to die in middle east by yelling 'deus vult'.
Read radical news here
All you need to know at this point is the fact that Congress (yes, with Democrats in control of it) told the FCC that they don't have the authority to do what they're doing and the FCC told Congress "Screw you, we're doing it anyway." This is not Venezuela, boys and girls, this is America and we have a representative government here.
Beyond that, if you haven't read the nearly 200 pages the FCC put out, and I mean ALL of it, you can't talk intelligently about it. Same thing with AZ SB 1070 except that people were too effing lazy to read 16 pages which was really only 8 pages because the same language was duplicated with the words "knowingly" and "willfully". You may think Net Neutrality is great because the only thing that's been promoted in the media are things you want to hear which really amounts to about a page of text. So what the hell is in the rest of it?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: business never bends over and takes government regulation up the a$$. The consumer gets the sh*t end of the regulation stick. Always.
"If only those poor dim-witted neanderthals knew what they were talking about, then we could actually make progress!"
Boy, I haven't ever heard this sort of elitist condescension in politics before! Shall I kneel and give praise before or after you enlighten us unwashed masses?
Since when has any American government bureaucrat settled for "a minimal amount of regulation"?
Exactly. Every time we give them an inch they take a mile.
Wasn't there some party in Boston about taxes?
No, you moron.
There was a tax involved, but not the way you think. Originally, colonists were taxed to pay their own (English) governors, an arrangement they had no problem at all. However, the English crown decided that this might make the governors loyal to the colonists, not the crown, so changed the arrangement...the colonists would pay the crown, and the crown would pay the governors.
As English citizens, they could only be taxed by the crown with the consent of the their parliamentary representatives...and they had none. Before, the taxation to pay for governors was arguably also illegal, but everyone seemed okay with it.
The English, however, had a plan to make the colonies pay as much in taxes as they cost, so started taxing imports, and creating monopoly importers to assure taxes were paid. By the time of the Boston Tea Party, however, this had gone so hilariously wrong that all the taxes had essentially gone away due to political pressure, and the only thing left was the monopoly shipping.
And now the major problem was smuggling of tea. Legal tea was a) actually cheaper, and b) had no taxes on it. Please read that sentence again. In fact, England was subsiding the shipment of the tea...via the pockets of people in England, as they couldn't manage to collect any tax revenue from the colonies.
However, the tea monopoly was seen as the last remnant of the previously illegal taxes, and a heck of a lot of people made their living off smuggling tea.
So people interested in getting representation in parliament (As English people were granted the right to under English law) continued to not purchase the tea. Or even allow it to be offloaded, which would allow the shipping company to collect their rebate back in England.
A large portion of the people participating in the Boston tea party, in fact, were smugglers who would be put out of a job by the tea.
No one in American was being taxed for the tea. It did not cost any extra due to taxes. The monopoly of the East India Company was simply a reminded that England thought it could tax colonists without representation in parliament. (Please note that while I called it 'illegal', in actuality, imports could be taxes like that, just not taxes on specific people. The colonists, however, pointed out that it was only tea to them that was originally taxed, thus making it a tax on them in practice.)
Did you notice that we needed a constitutional amendment to have an income tax?
No we did not. That amendment does not do what people think it does.
Taxing the income of people has, under the constitution, always been legal. Period. It is an indirect tax, it is, and always has been, legal.
For 100 years or so, so was taxing property and real estate and rent. Then, in 1985, the Supreme Court decided those were direct taxes, and hence could not be made without being appropriated between the states equally. Then, the 16th amendment undid that ruling. It allowed the Federal government to tax money produced from ownership of stuff, and to tax the actual ownership too.
In other words, the 16th amendment allows Federal property tax, Federal income tax was already allowed. I point you to The Revenue Act of 1861.
Please read this for more information.
Also note that, later, the Supreme Court changed its position on property taxes, stating that they never were direct taxes, that was a mistake, and thus the 16th amendment wasn't needed at all.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Even stuff like cap and trade or the public mandate for health insurance, both of which were conservative alternatives to the left's previous plan.
Shoot me in the foot or shoot me in the head and I'll always choose my foot--either way, I still won't think it's the right thing to do.
I read your reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional_law_sense I believe it is the same disingenuous bullshit that has the SCOTUS using regulation of interstate trade as de facto permission to regulate anything.
Most of the US Constitution is clearly written language that puts strong restrictions and obligations on the federal government. The reading of "direct tax" that was taken by the US government 70+ years after the constitution was written waters the taxation clause down to the point of being no restriction at all. While my reading may well be far different from the founders, I doubt very much that the wishy washy reading exemplified in your reference bears much relationship to what the founders meant.
Also, calling people morons for a difference of opinion, or even a mistake about the facts, only makes your argument look weaker.
Teaching the right about what Net Neutrality means is pointless. Conservatives don't make decisions based on facts. They make decisions based on their guts. And there's considerable behavioral research that indicates that when confronted with the fact that their existing views are contradicted by actual facts, those holding the views will actually become more convinced of their erroneous viewpoints (see climate change, Obama's birth, health care death panels, WMDs in Iraq, etc.) . So, in reality, the best thing you could do is just ignore them, and hope that their opposition remains at a relatively low energy intensity.
This is a sad statement about human nature, but if liberals and intellectuals don't come to terms with this simple reality, they will continue to be frustrated by the knuckle draggers among us.
The reading of "direct tax" that was taken by the US government 70+ years after the constitution was written waters the taxation clause down to the point of being no restriction at all.
The US government always taxing things throughout its history. Please google 'Whiskey Rebellion', which was about a tax in 1791, which is two years after the constitution was signed.
But I'm sure it was all 'watered down' by that point, and none of the founding fathers were around. I mean, it's not like Washington wasn't still in his first term or anything.
Oh, but that must only apply to taxes on 'things'. Surely no one one back then would try to tax 'income'...and they didn't. No one suggested taxing income until the war of 1812. Wow, that's more than two decades after the constitution was signed.
But person in power was President James Madison, who didn't know anything about the Constitution. Yeah, yeah, sure, he wrote the Constitution, but that was 20+ years ago, I don't know how he's supposed to remember what he put down. So he had his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Dallas draft and propose an income tax modeled on the British, in clear violation of his own intent when he penned the clause forbidding direct taxes. (The reason we didn't get that tax, BTW, was because the war ended, not because there were any hypothetical constitutional problems with it.)
I know that fools teach that the Federal government couldn't tax income until the 16th amendment, and thus when it's pointed out that incomes clearly were taxed before then, that magically is somehow unconstitutional and no one noticed, but that is an utterly incorrect reading of the constitution, period.
What the constitution bans are 'Capitation, or other direct, Taxes' that aren't appropriated equally. Capitation is a head tax, a tax per person, and 'direct taxes' are taxes on mere ownership of stuff. That's it. That's what that means.
The clauses has never included the taxation of monetary transactions, which the Federal government can tax however it wants, and has taxed its entire history. The Supreme Court confusingly once said that 'direct tax' might sorta include income from property, but quickly backed away from that, and have never even slightly indicated that an income tax was a 'direct tax'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Single payer works. See Canada, the UK or just about every other first world medical system. Mandatory national insurance also works in theory, and it keeps the health insurance companies in business as well. There were also other ideas on the table that would have probably worked as well. You accuse others of being ideologically entrenched. Look in the mirror. There is usually more than one working answer, compromise chooses which one is used.
As I neither stated my political convictions nor gave a value judgment on compromise, I must ask: who is this imaginary person you seem to be arguing with?
...sadly, you are incorrect. While you may view "Network Neutrality" this way (and most hackers, including me, would agree with you, by the way), the sad fact is, Democrats in general and Liberals in particular do not. Limbaugh is correct, "Network Neutrality" has become a trojan horse to try to silence conservatives by forcing "equal time" laws to apply to the web. "Net neutrality" as most technical types understand it has been, as I have stated before, entirely subverted to serve a different objective, one that is equally discriminating as network non-neutrality would be.
I'm sorry, but it's a fact: when a politician latches onto your favorite catchphrase you must understand what they really mean by it. Right now there are three different definitions of "net neutrality" - ours, the Democrats, and the Republicans. If you use the phrase you must understand not only your own meaning, but the meaning it will imply to anyone you speak to.
And somewhere among the yelling crowd, nobody could hear the Constitution whimper...
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.