House Passes Amendment To Block Funds For Net Neutrality

Charliemopps sends this quote from the National Journal: "The House passed an amendment Thursday that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from using any funding to implement the network-neutrality order it approved in December. The amendment, approved on a 244-181 vote, was offered by Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., to legislation that would fund government agencies for the rest of fiscal year 2011. Walden and other critics of the FCC's net-neutrality order argue it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband. "

Comments

Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank them again if years down the road you have to pay another $50 a month just so you can stream youtube and netflix to your computer.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that has already happened, in the absence of regulation to stop it?

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[HermMunster]

I swear to you, we have a bunch of nutjobs in the House. How on earth could these people know enough to make such a complex decision in such a short period of time? It's not possible. Most of them don't know the slightest thing about the internet, how it works, and what drives it. It baffles me to see them making such a statement.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[commodore6502]

The Democrats did the same thing. How fast was that Bailout Bill passed? 20 days? I think the Stimulus Bill was rammed through even faster, within two weeks of the president taking the oath (in order to beat the Feb 11 Analog TV cutoff). That's 1500 billion spent in less than two months, for legislation none of them had time to read.

It's about time people learn: Both Rep and Dems suck ass.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[kidgenius]

Of course they have an idea.... See, the internet is like a series of tubes

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[poity]

Implying that by not allowing ISPs to charge Google or Netflix for disproportionate use of bandwidth, those ISPs would give up their pursuit and absorb the costs themselves rather than pass it on to subscribers. The "you'll be paying more money if we don't get Network Neutrality right now" is an unrealistic argument, a canard, I'd even call it FUD.

You want a good argument for Network Neutrality, you can talk about providing an even playing field for new small media with little money and old entrenched conglomerates alike.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[QuoteMstr]

The GOP is a monstrosity. As Brad Delong says, they "lie about everything all the time." More than that, though, every single Republican initiative exacerbates inequality, smashes our dignity, and adds to the sum of human misery. There are no exceptions. There are no moderates left in the Republican party. What remains is an organization dedicated to aristocracy, superstition, and the snuffing out of curiosity. This party is a scourge, and to see its members elected against and against forces one to doubt the fundamental goodness of human nature.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Nadaka]

This is true. Democrats are not all that much better in practice, but republicans are unfathomably evil to me.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what we call a Democrat Moderate. The real hard core leftists are even worse.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[sstamps]

The problem is, though, that Google/Netflix aren't the ones "using" (as in "consuming") the bandwidth as those who are complaining about it claim. They are producers. The ones who are "using" (as in "consuming") the bandwidth are the ISPs' USERS, who are requesting the content from Google/Netflix. It doesn't make any sense to bill content providers for bandwidth consumed by users.

Well, it does make sense if you look at it from a competitive angle.. one where the ISPs so complaining have a vested interest in competing content provider services.

Google, Netflix, and everyone else pay for their access to the internet. They pay a LOT already. If every ISP who carries their content at the behest of the ISP's own users/consumers could charge an extra "fee" to carry "popular" content, then there wouldn't be any "popular" content, except from each particular ISP.

This is why I believe that true "Net Neutrality" is where content providers and bandwidth providers should not be allowed to be the same entities -- they are simply an untenable conflict of interests waiting to happen. Indeed, this is why the internet grew explosively and prospered, because, for a long time, the bandwidth providers had little interest in content, and the old "walled garden" combo access/content providers died out like the dinosaurs they became (AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve/etc). That's all changed now. Companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want to go back to that model, which might be lucrative for them, but it impacts the freedom of their customers, and the free market overall.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Not sure why you were modded Troll, but truer words were never spoken. The two party system has failed us yet again.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

As much as I agree with you politically, you are way out of line coming to a tech site and calling the participants "neck bearded dweebs" To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, why not go jack off to some snowboarding videos and let us "dweebs" worry about keeping this whole internet thing up and running for douchebags like you.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[AHuxley]

Re Please find an example of an ISP trying to charge content providers for "preferential" access.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/huge-isps-want-per-gb-payments-from-netflix-youtube.ars
Pay up or risk an "internet brownout"...

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the republican union busting bill that was proposed Friday, and they are trying to get it rammed through today. (In Wisconsin)

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[poetmatt]

Two party hasn't worked for us since Nixon, basically. Maybe even before that. I'm not enough of a history buff to be accurate, but basically regulatory capture and corporate capture fuck us over the most. I remember there being some act in the 70's or 80s that really made it about 100x worse, some law that was repealed, which had originally stated that corporations may not lobby towards getting laws passed.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Adrian Lopez]

"Disproportionate use of bandwidth" by Google and Netflix? What a joke.

The fact is that Google and Netflix each pay their respective ISPs for all the bandwidth they use. What they *don't* pay for is the bandwidth their customers use, nor should they have to. If Google has a contract with ISP A and ISP A in turn has a contract with ISPs B and C, it's really not B and C's place to charge Google for that which is already covered by their contract with ISP A. Otherwise Google would have to sign contracts with the entire alphabet of ISPs to account for what you call their "disproportionate use of bandwidth", which I'm sure you know is bullshit.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't out-meta Godwin's law. Claiming your opponent is about to mention the Nazis is no better than doing it yourself.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[QuoteMstr]

The word "dweeb" is telling. It confirms my theory that the GOP mindset is just aged and distilled schoolyard bullying.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[masshuu]

http://www.google.com/search?q=comcast+netflix+fee

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[tendrousbeastie]

So, we have them trying, but not actually doing.

Surely, anyone who actually did for example impose a $x per GB cost to YouTube would pretty quickly find their network blocked by YouTube. How many customer's would they retain?

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[RightSaidFred99]

I'd consider labeling someone "unfathomably evil" a by-law of Godwin's. Nazism (and other genociders, atrocity commiters) are about the only evil I can't really even fathom.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[tendrousbeastie]

As an Englishman, and therefore part of a different market (ours is dominated fundamentally by the not too long ago privatised British Telecom who own the copper wire infrastructure), does anyone want to play devils advocate and explain the House's argument about acting against broadband investment with impartiality?

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[skids]

Most people already think both parties suck.

It's why they don't vote.

And it's a problem. What people need to learn is that they should pick the better party even if the difference is only marginal, and vote in that party's primaries to make that party better, and then do more than just vote to improve our aggregate level of intelligence when it comes to deciding who to give power to.

Just sitting there and saying "everything sucks" isn't going to get you anywhere.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[tendrousbeastie]

It all seems irrelevant to me: is there any ISP that can afford to say to Google "we wont allow your traffic on our network unless you pay us extra. Unless you pay us none of our customers will be able to access Google". How many customers will they have after 6 months?

Outside of BitTorrent, there are only a very few really high bandwidth sites that an ISP could afford to lose. BBC iPlayer maybe, but not Google, YouTube, FaceBook, etc. User would just move to a different ISP.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[hymie!]

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/comcast-tollbooth/

“We are informed that within a week of Level 3’s announcement on Nov. 11 that it would be primary carrier for Netflix streaming video, Comcast informed Level 3 that Comcast would, for the first time, charge Level 3 a fee to reach Comcast’s customers who had requested any content carried by Level 3,” said Harold Feld, the legal director of Public Knowledge, one of the groups involved.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[commodore6502]

AOL's not dead.

I still use their Netscape-branded dialup for $6 a month - http://isp.netscape.com/

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[geniusj]

Possibly all of them depending on how much competition existed. I wouldn't mind an absence of net neutrality if there was a thriving competitive marketplace for ISPs.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[AJH16]

A huge number will have 100% of their customers because they are functional monopolies. I have precisely one choice for high speed internet access where I live and I live in a city in upstate NY. Giving a monopoly the ability to choose what I can or can't access on the internet can only end badly for anyone other than the monopoly.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[bberens]

If the ISP didn't negotiate a profitable peering agreement I don't see how that's Google or Facebook's fault. Google pays its ISP, the consumer pays their ISP. What we're talking about is the middle-men wanting to charge Youtube or whatever more than their already negotiated per byte peering agreement. Silly.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[517714]

There are plenty of moderates in the Republican party, unfortunately they vote the party line instead of their conscience or that of their constituency. On that point members of both parties are equally guilty. Our two party system has stifled any real dialogue - there can only be two possible views, and of course one of them is the minority view and thus can be ignored. I agree with your basic sentiment, but I think condemning the Republicans without condemning the Democrats is a little like discussing Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy and only citing Ted as evil.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[lazn]

no. vote for anyone other than those two parties.

Till we actually throw the bums out they will continue to be the bumholes they are.

Vote libertarian, green, independent, heck communist if you must. Just get everyone to NEVER AGAIN vote for a Rep or Dem and perhaps we can change things.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Barrinmw]

That is why we need a technocracy, right now we have people legislating on things they have no clue about with little care to learn.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[GameboyRMH]

Yes.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-02-01-facebook-inflight-wifi_N.htm

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

I do apologize for jumping off the handle. Dweeb probably was the wrong word, but I should have realized that /. is probably the last place a non-techie person would go. I agree with you on most of your counts. Net neutrality isn't that big of a problem yet, and it should be a bi-partisan issue. The trouble is if we don't get some regulation on it soon, it may end up being decided by the ISPs and I trust an inept government more than multinational corporation. Just my two cents.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Archangel Michael]

Republicrats,. all of them, are evil. Voting for little evil over bigger evil is still voting for evil.

The (D) are just as evil, just ask them how they love taking FREE SPEECH away via Fairness Doctrine and Politically Correct Speech rules. Or when they give a pass to big labor (UNIONS) that they wouldn't give to big Corporations, like excusing them from Obama Care. They happen to be right on this point. It doesn't make them a paragon of virtue in my book.

And don't get me started on the complete lack of understanding by members of both parties, from "we don't have GPS" Harry Reid crafting laws dealing with anything technical.

So, yes, I'd rather have NO law, than one that is horribly crafted by special interest groups on either side. Because there is no way I trust the idiots of either party to have our (citizen's) best interest in mind. The worst laws passed are driven by the mentality "There ought to be a law, this is a law, therefore we have to have it".

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[KhabaLox]

Yes. Please find an example of an ISP trying to charge content providers for "preferential" access.

I hear this argument a lot, and I've supplied examples to other anti-NNers in the past. Here, others have already beaten me to it. It seems that, like those who claim that Global Warming/Climate Change (man-made or otherwise) is not occurring, people who think ISPs don't want to or won't charge for priority traffic will continue to cling to this belief despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

It's only slightly less silly than the "NN is not needed - the market will sort it out" argument.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Alex Belits]

Yes, but those people would not open their mouth without someone paying for it.

It's corporate whoring in its purest form, there is no sane way of defending it.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[ArcherB]

The GOP is a monstrosity. As Brad Delong says, they "lie about everything all the time." More than that, though, every single Republican initiative exacerbates inequality, smashes our dignity, and adds to the sum of human misery. There are no exceptions. There are no moderates left in the Republican party. What remains is an organization dedicated to aristocracy, superstition, and the snuffing out of curiosity. This party is a scourge, and to see its members elected against and against forces one to doubt the fundamental goodness of human nature.

Please allow me to summarize your post:

All who see things differently than I do are evil.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Bacon Bits]

The Democrats at least have the common decency to be ineffective.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Antisyzygy]

The funny thing about your statement is, there are grassroots and smaller parties who would fit 80 percent of Americans more than the Republicans or Democrats do but they seem to be totally unaware of it. For Republicans, there's Libertarian, Patriot Party, the LaRoche followers, Independent, etc. For Democrat there's, Green, Independent, Libertarian (social that is), Socialist, Communist. Theres even more that I am not listing. I don't understand why 99 percent of voters vote for either Republican or Democrat when there are so many choices. Hell, you can write your own name on the freaking ballot.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Alex Belits]

There are plenty of moderates in the Republican party, unfortunately they vote the party line instead of their conscience or that of their constituency.

Then they are by definition not moderates. No one cares what they secretly whisper to their whores or pray to their Jesus -- politician's position is defined entirely by his political actions.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Antisyzygy]

The Republican party is a get rich quick scheme, and the Democratic part is, well, a get rich quick scheme. They just target different markets.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Antisyzygy]

I suspect your great grandfather had more freedom than you, and he probably knew what it was really like.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. The netflix angle is just a distraction and we ae all pretty sick and tired of fools like you who see that as a Net Neutrality issue.

Comcast isnt trying to charge netflix any money. The reality of that story is that Comcast is trying to be treated like a peer with Level 3, asking for a traditional peering arrangement, when they know damn well that they aren't a peer.

See, Level 3 is Comcasts ISP .. thats right, just like you are a customer of your ISP (which may in fact be Comcast) so too is Comcast a customer of Level 3. The arrangements are completely synonymous This isnt about Comcast trying to violate Net Neutrality. Its about Comcast trying to get a discount on the fee's they pay for internet service.

Level 3 says to its customer "We would like to increase the bandwidth you get from us for free" and Comcast replying "No way! We don't want more bandwidth unless we get something in return"

Now imagine the analog. Comcast says to its customer "We would like to increase the bandwidth you get from us" and the customer reply "No way! My shitty assed XFINITY service is way fast enough! You have to give me something in return."

THAT is the absurdity of the Comcast vs Level 3 issue. Thats not a Net Neutrality issue at all, its Comcast refusing better service from its fucking ISP.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[vertinox]

The funny thing about your statement is, there are grassroots and smaller parties who would fit 80 percent of Americans more than the Republicans or Democrats do but they seem to be totally unaware of it.

Time for a history lesson...

In a first past the post two parties will always dominate. Doesn't matter what names or their policies are, but a 3rd party always has math against it.

Oddly enough the two oldest democracies that are still around today went with FFP because voting had never really been tried before (UK and the USA) while the more newer ones have gone with other forms such as proportional representation (like Germany and Israel). This was that as new countries were being formed or overthrowing their old monarchies, they realized that the FFP was flawed in someways as they could see how it was in the countries that had it (usually looking at the UK) and being more modern times (1890 through 1950s) they went with PR, IRV or STV (single transferable vote) in which 3rd parties get a greater voice in government and the change of a 3rd party actually becoming a 1st or 2nd party is greater (like the German Greens or the Israeli lukid).

So if you want change... Real change with 3rd parties, you need to change the constitution. Of course the vested parties won't really be too keen on that but from my understanding a few states passed STV last year in some local elections so you'll start seeing 3rd parties on grassroots levels in some places.

For more info: http://www.fairvote.org/

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[vertinox]

BTW the UK referendum to do away with the US style of voting is happening in May.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Smallpond]

http://www.itvt.com/story/6747/comcast-increases-vod-movie-line-over-450

Comcast wants to sell content, not just access. That way they get it both ways: fees from their customers and they don't have to pay for GBs transferred via other company's wire. Netfix is their competitor, so why not make it hard for them to do business. Slowing down their traffic works too.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[dkleinsc]

Not quite. If you're (for example) a Green, go ahead and vote in the Democratic or Republican primary (whichever is most contested) to get the most Green-like candidate you can, which will encourage candidates in that party to at least sound like a Green and make Green ideas mainstream. Then in the general election, vote Green unless your most Green-like candidate won in the primary.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Archwyrm]

Well, when you get in the ballot box and you don't know who any of those people are, it is much easier just to pick 'all Republican/Democrat'. ;( I think making those choices go away would help some people to at least think about for whom they vote.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[andydread]

The bailout was a product of the Republicans dude. They jumped off that bandwagon when Obama jumped on it. Like many other Republican Ideas that get abandoned by the Republicans as soon as Obama embraces it.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[dkleinsc]

Implying that by not allowing ISPs to charge Google or Netflix for disproportionate use of bandwidth, those ISPs would give up their pursuit and absorb the costs themselves rather than pass it on to subscribers.

A very common misconception that you brought up here:

If the cost to produce a widget increases by $10, you might think that the sellers will increase the consumer price by $10 per widget to compensate. But in most markets an economically rational seller will do no such thing, because raising the prices too much reduces the quantity sold, which reduces profits. So what actually happens depends on how much elasticity there is in the market, but typically what you'll see is a portion of that $10 is covered by, say, a $7 increase in consumer prices while the remainder ($3 in our example) is covered by a reduction in profits for the seller.

The misconception gets trotted out whenever we're talking about taxing or regulating business, because businesses don't want to have that $3 per wdget taken out of their profits. But it's basically nonsense, and been well-understood economics for quite some time.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Peristaltic]

... when it comes to deciding who to give power to.

Democrat and Republican "leadership" represent different appendages of the same beast. The primary differences between the two lay in the different opportunities offered to members for acquiring wealth and power

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[sstamps]

AOL as the walled-garden content provider, like Compuserve and Prodigy IS dead. That's what I am talking about.

AOL as a dialup internet service is not the AOL of yore, but a vestige of POTS networking equipment that they are clinging to while there are still enough non-broadband customers to justify the cost.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Monchanger]

That would be true if a politician's voters actually voted based on position themselves, rather than being swayed by rhetoric and television commercials.

It doesn't have anything to do with being a moderate. An arch-conservative can just as well be forced to vote for a position more moderate than their own. But since the Republican party was hijacked by the far-right, we've more often seen this happen in the Democratic party, such as when many liberals were forced to abandon their position of single-payer for Obama's far more moderate compromise.

The point is that action doesn't define position, it happens despite personal position, because most politicians' conviction isn't considered important enough to resign over (which is a whole other problem with politics). If politicians were not at the mercy of a political party and special interests to win reelection they would have the freedom to act in accordance with their beliefs. Then they'd only have to worry about committee assignments, but that is often just another aspect of the campaign finance problem.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[residieu]

Yes. Yes it is. The usual metaphor is "pipe", but tubes work just as well.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[residieu]

Google and Netflix pay for their use of bandwidth. They pay THEIR ISP. I pay MY ISP to access google and netflix. The ISPs just have this weird idea that they should be able to charge twice for that data transfer.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh pretty much all since there exists NO competition in a good 80%+ of the USA? I'll use myself for an example: Here I have the "choice" of Cox cable (boy did they choose a perfect name, since they are dicks) AT&T DSL which MAXES at 768k and which I've been told "tough shit, take it or leave it" because they have NO intention of upgrading the lines, or the local WISP that if you are lucky your connection works maybe 6 hours a day and who pulls your plug if you use close to 1Gb a day.

So where EXACTLY would my "choice" come from if Cox decides to fuck me out of Youtrube/Netflix/etc? Because while you may have piles of money in the bank to afford to abandon your place of residence and start over in some other state just for better Internet, most of us frankly can't afford that. We have wives/GFs, family, jobs, etc that simply don't allow us to just walk away and without net neutrality the ISPs know they can do anything they want while sending you a bill that is crazy priced and has a full color Goatse under complaint dept and you can't do shit because you've got nowhere to go.

So while I'm all for the free market the simple fact is there is NO free market for Internet access for the majority of us. Hell look up the broadband report article and see how many were like me complaining the numbers were an outright lie. You simply can't "vote with your dollars" if the choice is take it or enjoy dialup.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[clarkkent09]

Or the Obamacare bill, rammed through a procedural loophole in the middle of the night, during a brief period where Dems were accidentally in control of both houses and the presidency (not because they had mandate to make this kind of huge changes but due to unpopularity of the previous president) and voted in by congressmen who by their own admission did not read it.

Major bills should not be passed without some bipartisan support. Otherwise we are just waiting for Republicans to chance upon an opportunity to undo everything Democrats have done, and round we go again.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[TBBle]

...a bill that is crazy priced and has a full color Goatse under complaint dept...

I'd think the Goatse guy would be a great choice for a customer complaints person. He's obviously wide open and accepting of criticism, can clearly handle anything you throw at him, and you know he can't help but give a shit, whether he wants to or not...

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Phantom of the Opera]

But the two party system is nearly *twice* as good as the one party system.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Alex Belits]

The point is that action doesn't define position, it happens despite personal position, because most politicians' conviction isn't considered important enough to resign over (which is a whole other problem with politics). If politicians were not at the mercy of a political party and special interests to win reelection they would have the freedom to act in accordance with their beliefs. Then they'd only have to worry about committee assignments, but that is often just another aspect of the campaign finance problem.

Whatever Congressmen propose and vote for, is their position. Period. This is their function as politicians, and there are no others. Why do they choose it, or how they come to those decisions, is completely irrelevant, and they are welcome to shut up about that.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[ekgringo]

I think the more "enlightened" approach used now is to raise the price by $11, keep the additional $1 profit, and claim that "the market" is forcing them to raise prices.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[coaxial]

So if you want change... Real change with 3rd parties, you need to change the constitution

No you don't. The constitution makes no reference to how elections are to be carried out. Nor does it dictate how members of congress should be assigned within a state. If Texas wants to have its congressional delegation by proportional representation and party lists, it can. Nothing stops them beyond their own election laws.

The House, Not The House & The Senate

[WrongSizeGlass]

The Senate won't pass this so it's merely symbolic on the part of the House. Way to manage your time well, boys and girls. Now get back to work on real problems!

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

Yeah, no more screwin' around... time to get serious.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Don't be so sure they won't pass it. It's an amendment, not a bill; IIRC, that means they would have to vote specifically to strip the amendment out before they vote on the entire bill, and I'm not at all confident that enough members of the thin (and historically spineless) Democratic majority in the Senate have the will for that fight. Adding riders to "must-pass" bills is a time-honored technique for sneaking all kinds of looniness into law.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Xacid]

"Adding riders to "must-pass" bills is a time-honored technique for sneaking all kinds of looniness into law."

And this nails precisely why this technique needs to be abolished. It's dishonest politicking. Each section of a bill ought to be required to be voted on.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[DarkOx]

Not only that if they amend the bill to remove the amendment it will have to go back to the House. As it stands this morning I doubt the final bill can even get through the House. There is possibility of a Government Shutdown at this point because the Speaker has stated he will not let an temporary extension of current funding bill go to vote. Personally I'd like to see that!

I don't know how I feel about Net Neutrality being forced by government. I am pulled in multiple directions on that but I do know that I don't like an executive agency like FCC deciding to do it on their own, it should be done or not done in the legislative branch. The FCC should just enforce whatever the Congress decides. So I am for Congress preventing the FCC from acting, in the mean time.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Black Parrot]

Adding riders to "must-pass" bills is a time-honored technique for sneaking all kinds of looniness into law.

And this nails precisely why this technique needs to be abolished. It's dishonest politicking. Each section of a bill ought to be required to be voted on.

Then they'd start inserting it into "must-pass" sections of a bill.

Or sub-sections...

Or paragraphs...

Or sentences...

If you think we've got logjam now, wait until they have to vote on every word in a bill.

[Not to imply that logjam isn't sometimes a good thing.]

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Symbha]

Line item veto. One of the few things I think Reagan was right about.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[hondo77]

For better or worse, the Supreme Court thought he was wrong about it.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Barrinmw]

I would support a constitutional amendment to allow that, but I would want each line item vetoed to be overturned by a simple majority in each house,

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[modecx]

What we need is to have a multiple choice test system where questions are generated by universities, individual scholars, and even regular Joes, based on the content of any given bill. Questions will be screened for accuracy, and each politician will be given a unique test populated with questions selected by random distribution from a pool of questions.

There will be a mandatory 60 day review period, when a bill passes the house, where the text of the bill will be available to anyone and everyone, and people will have the option to subscribe to an RSS feed. Questions will be delivered to the house floor on 90th day, and all representatives are required to partake. In other words, you have million monkeys auditing the source code to our republic. If the politician wants to vote yes to the bill, a 60% (D-) grade is required, otherwise his vote is nullified. Rinse and repeat for senate, amendments to the bill are likewise audited when the bill is kicked back to the house to repeat the process again..

This would do several things: 1) it would simplify every bill to the point any single person of moderate intelligence could understand it, in its entirety. 2) it would make it exceedingly difficult to be a stupid politician. 3) it would slow government down so much that they would have to completely ignore the small stuff that they have no business meddling in, if they ever wanted to get anything done. 4) preserve individual liberties.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[clarkkent09]

It will pass in the Senate too, it's just a matter of time. You do realize that Republicans are all but certain to have the Senate majority next year?

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Monchanger]

Let's ignore the fact that there aren't always "right" and "wrong" answers, nor can you assure that the questions being asked are objective, nor could (or should) you keep federal legislation monosyllabic enough for the average Joe. The real problem with this suggestion is that expecting them to submit to testing demeans not just them but us. We must expect more from ourselves first.

We already have tests for our representatives. You can ask them questions directly and through the press and view their voting record yourself before you reelect them. The problem isn't that they aren't tested, but that we grade on a curve by being ultra-partisan, disengaged, or worse- by watching FOX News.

To get rid of stupid politicians, you'll first need smarter voters. Jefferson and Madison told us this two centuries ago.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Anonymous Coward]

dishonest politicking

Department of redundancy department?

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Xacid]

It's kind of tragic that's the current state of things, isn't it?

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[modecx]

I disagree that there aren't always right and wrong answers in such a scenario. Is BLAH in the bill, or is BLAH not in the bill?. This is a binary decision. How can that possibly not be objective? It would force our *representatives* to actually read the shit they vote on. Take the Patriot Act, nobody read it, nobody had a clue what was in it. Only one senator voted against it. Here's a patriot act themed multiple choice for you:

"Section XX, Paragraph YY of SB12345 allows the CIA to wiretap without a warrant: (A) Puppies (B) Kittens (C) Terrorists (D) Your Mom (F) All of the Above"

Same with the 3000 odd page healthcare bill. Fact is, we won't know how that mess will be codified, and it probably won't be thoroughly vetted before it comes into action. If they actually had to read bills, maybe we wouldn't have so many junk laws, and intrusions into our basic liberties! Quote Congressman John Conyers, Jr: "We don't read most of the bills. Do you really know what that would entail if we read every bill that we passed?" " It would [sic] slow down the legislative process".

Fuckin right it would. That's exactly what we need, too. It would force our representatives and the federal government to focus only on the large problems, so they wouldn't be so tempted to micromanage our daily lives and give handjobs, err, handouts to corporate interests. This is a problem problem endemic to our current system of politicks. If enough constituents actually cared, or had the slightest idea of how business is conducted in Washington, they'd kick the lot of congress out.

However, even if you removed all of congress, the next batch would do the same exact shit, and there is no way around that, except the threat and follow through of violent retaliation. i.e. Heads on pikes, to warn the next set of folk who would bastardize their elected positions. You're also right in that we should expect more out of ourselves, but so far, the sausage making is largely done behind closed doors. Bring it out in front of the public. Hell, if people can't be expected to be involved, bribe them. How about a significant reduction of your income taxes, if your question is accepted? That would get A LOT of eyeballs on some language, no doubt. It'd be more productive for the individual than any lottery, and it would cost very little. Right now, people don't even know if they're supposed to be enraged, or not, simply because they have not a freaking clue.

The beauty of the test idea is this: if we got a majority of states together, we could slip that right under our representatives and president's controlling little noses, and pass it through a convention of states. Wouldn't that curl their short hairs?

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Monchanger]

How can that possibly not be objective?

Even your silly example isn't objective and you're terribly naive to think the only questions that will be asked are binary and that the people writing the questions will be non-partisan. What's the correct answer to "does the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act establish death panels?" Who's in charge of deciding there aren't? Are these the same people who define the term "death panel", or is that someone else's responsibility? Do we allow for citizens to petition the supreme court to appeal either of these decisions? And since you're basically creating a lottery which costs nothing to enter, when you get a few hundred thousand duplicates of that question who determines it's actually the same question? Who determines whether questions are good ones or a nuisance? Must I keep going?

Same with the 3000 odd page healthcare bill

Yawn. That tired meme again? It was nowhere near 3000, and like all legislation it was also at far less than 200 words-per-page due to double spacing, wide margins, and more reams of whitespace. Then, considering it's written in legalese which takes more than thirty words to say "all", it's not that daunting to people who graduated high school, not to mention law school. Did you even know that nearly 18% was dedicated strictly to American Indian affairs? Insisting on complaining about how long it was despite never looking at the contents just shows how useless voters' opinions are, and how representative government is necessary for getting anything more complicated than picking your nose done. No arbitrary number can be chosen as an upper limit on the length for all bills, and doing that just means they would split up one very large bill into multiple not-quite-so-large bills, which accomplishes nothing other than creating even more paperwork.

Fuckin right it would. That's exactly what we need, too.

No, it's really not. Congress is already incapable of keeping up with the constantly changing world (and lawyers find loopholes as soon as laws are passed). Just look at technology and copyright to see how hopelessly backed up legislative progress is. Sure, there are a lot of junk bills, but the solution isn't to throw a wrench into the lawmaking process which doesn't do anything other than waste their time (and here I thought you didn't like paying taxes...). The answer is to stop special interests from being able to write the excessive legislation and having their pocket congressmen rubber-stamp it into the hopper in the first place.

However, even if you removed all of congress, the next batch would do the same exact shit, and there is no way around that, except the threat and follow through of violent retaliation.

Drama queen much? There's something to be said for precedent. You don't have to jump straight to murder when you haven't bothered to try anything reasonable first. The whole House is removed every two years. Is it their fault you keep voting for congressmen you don't like?

It's also pointless suggesting that you could do better by enacting federal law through state legislatures. All you'd do is make your local legislature more corrupt after filling the power vacuum. How exactly are they any more immune to special interests? And how do you propose keeping the executive branch in check after abolishing the legislative? There's also the minor detail of rewriting the constitution to remove article two. No big deal- I'm sure you've already got a draft which could stand judicial scrutiny, not to mention unanimous ratification by the states. I mean, all these ideas are just that ironclad.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[modecx]

re: loopholes; That's what you get when no other type of profession has a hand in the lawmaking process. It's in the interest of lawyers to write laws which require more lawyers to decipher. more lawyers to litigate, more lawyers to defend, etc. etc. Excessively convoluted and verbose legalese is the result. Surely you'd agree that things could be saner with a few engineers, doctors, financial analysts, architects, teachers etc. on board, to temper the process.

The tens of millions of man hours spent creating, arguing and evading the finer points of any number of obscure laws which can entrap a person, and be used to financially ruin lives (or worse, ruin good people via the criminal system) could be put to better use. Whittling toothpicks, for example. Even though we overwhelmingly have lawyers as representatives, they really don't seem to be too interested in the lawmaking part of their job. I just don't see why people take them as especially good representatives, when so few of them actually follow through.

re: copyright/tech/patent law. The system isn't backed up. Quite the contrary, it's running just as our friendly lawmakers designed. The next time Mickey is in danger of falling into public domain, I'm sure it won't be backed up at all when it's time for yet another copyright extension to be pushed through.

re: the healthcare reform act. When I set about reading it, I gave up about 50 pages in. My time and sanity is better spent elsewhere, and I'm sure 99% of everyone else is in the same boat. Most people are having a hard enough time just keeping a roof over their heads right now, let alone putting aside the substantial time it would take for one to read, understand and form an opinion of legislation of this magnitude. After all, our very own representatives couldn't or wouldn't be bothered to do the same, on this piece of legislation, or ostensibly, on many other bills.

If 18% of it is truly dedicated to tribal issues, I couldn't help to know that. Did you read all 250,000 words of it to come to that conclusion, or are you simply taking someone someone's word? (and, I'm not afraid to admit I was wrong about the page count, even though it is about half the length of Lord of the Rings, and far less entertaining) If you truly did read it, I guess you deserve a cookie or a gold star. As for me, I'm not satisfied to trust someone elses' synopsis. Don't take that to mean I'm against it all together, though. I'm not. I just used that particular piece of legislation as an example of crufty legalwork.

Anyway, I'm not talking about abolishing the legislature. They have a job to do, after all, and they're part of the grand and good trifecta, which in all honesty, has done rather well for a long while; but it would be useful if they'd actually do the job they were elected to do. By the way, unanimous consent amongst the states is not required to amend the constitution. Article Five. Have fun.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Monchanger]

The House actually has quite a few non-lawyers, including doctors and engineers. Republicans paraded a lot of doctors on the House floor during their assault on the healthcare bill. Didn't make their rhetoric any more interesting, or more professional, it was just a convenient appeal to authority.

You're missing the point. When I mentioned copyright I was talking about digital copyrights, which should not be based on physical copyright law- they have yet to figure out why the two are very different. Legislation does suffer from chronic obsolescence and lawmakers are constantly playing catch-up with an ever-evolving world. Financial derivatives, predatory lending, E coli outbreaks, genetically modified food, stem cell research, telemarketing, SPAM, "cyberwarfare" and on and on- they're always too late to introduce legislation and it often takes disaster before something get done. It's nice and populist to go blaming Disney here, but that's the whole other special interest issue which I discussed elsewhere. Focus.

You didn't even get 5 pages in if you missed the table of contents. You see, a "table of contents" is a section at the beginning of long texts which contains a bullet list of each topic discussed later on in detail. It's very organized and understandable and it makes very clear what's in the bill, not that that stops idiots from parroting the nonsense Republicans made up, such as "the bill is 3000 pages long!!!! (and mandates death panels!!!)". It's even in the same order as the text itself(!) so you can use the TOC to jump from place to place in the bill (and not need to read 250,000 words), which then lets you calculate the percent of tribal matter (of which I have no interest, so no- of course I didn't bother reading anything in the last 300+ pages in the bill). I can see how it would be beyond your grasp, but I personally don't happen to need someone else to perform the calculation. I did it in two minutes by downloading the bill's PDF, searching for "Division D", then doing some really fancy fourth-grade arithmetic. That thing you're doing with your ignorance is called 'projection', by the way.

Make all the excuses you want about why you refuse to take responsibility to know what you're voting on- I'm not impressed by how "valuable" your time or *snort* "sanity" are (apparently not enough to stop wasting both here). If you really want to help people keep a roof over their head, you should abstain from political activity until you can spare a few minutes to form a proper opinion so you don't cheap the voice of actually-valuable members of society.

I didn't suggest you need unanimous consent in a convention, which was yet another hair-brained idea considering how often those things happen (that would be a big fat "never", so good luck with that). I was actually making fun of you, pointing out that you're overestimating the value of your ideas . It's called "reading comprehension"- try it.

PS- I did notice you've abandoned your little "test" idea. Good show. It may have been more classy to concede the point, rather than just spouting a bunch of irrelevant nonsense in an attempt to salvage what I can only assume you think is "dignity".

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[modecx]

Oh, so you didn't actually read it. You read the table of contents and piddled around with acrobat reader, and of course, that's just as good. Well, I just finished perusing the ToC for some graduate level physics books, and I feel pretty good about it; I think I'll go have a meaningful and productive chat with Stephen Hawking, we're certain to hash out all sorts of problems. You know, it may have been more classy to concede the point... LOL

Explain to me why 'digital copyrights' should be treated different than 'physical copyright'? Digital copyright? What does that even mean? This is like saying crime (i.e. theft, not copyright infringement) committed using a computer is any different than physical theft--and the prevailing theory in Washington echos the idea that it's somehow different (usually worse) to somehow deprive a person of $100 via the internet, than it is to pickpocket the same $100, or that online grifting is any different than a scam in the physical world; or that murder with one tool is somehow more grave than when it's committed with any other tool. None of these cases are all that different, yet these false distinctions persist.

Yeah, I know. IHBTBIWHAND

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Monchanger]

Oh, so you didn't actually read it.

No, that's just your failure to comprehend what I wrote yet again and assuming everyone is as lazy as you.

Sorry, I'm out of time trying to get anything through that thick skull of yours.

Fact is, politicians like power

[Anonymous Coward]

Now why would politicians do something that makes corporations more powerful at the expense of individuals?

I thought this was a democracy. (Taaaa haaaa ha.)

Politicians thrive on anything that gives them more power. Here is just example #724,249,196 this month.

Re:Fact is, politicians like power

[Frosty Piss]

Now why would politicians do something that makes corporations more powerful at the expense of individuals?

Dunno - Maybe it's a Republican thing...

But that's not all they have been up to...

* Passed a bill stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood
* Rejected a bill cutting funding to the DoD NASCAR team...

Re:Fact is, politicians like power

[Antisyzygy]

We are a Republic. There are no real Democracy's in the entire world.

Re:Fact is, politicians like power

[Eunuchswear]

You are a fruitcake.

The usual.

[SuricouRaven]

Sneaking an amendment into an appropriations bill. Everyone says it's an underhanded cheat, but it's just too *useful* to prohibit.

Re:The usual.

[Black Parrot]

Sneaking an amendment into an appropriations bill. Everyone says it's an underhanded cheat, but it's just too *useful* to prohibit.

It's only an underhanded cheat when the other party does it.

Re:The usual.

[phantomcircuit]

That's not at all what they're doing here. The article is intentionally misleading.

This is a bill HR. 68 "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. "

Further they didn't even pass this yet, they merely referred it to committee. Indeed there isn't even any pork in it. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.68:

Re:The usual.

[Dredd13]

You're right. It's crazy talk, sneaking an amendment that addresses "whether or not to spend money on PROJECT_X" into an appropriations bill. Because if there's one thing that shouldn't be part of an appropriations bill, it's decisions about what we do and do not spend money on.

Er, wait a minute....

Re:The usual.

[skids]

Not as simple as that.

It's generally considered poor form to de-fund things that the last congress funded last year, in this year's budget. Also it's poor form to tell an executive branch agency what it can and cannot do by placing restrictions on their general funding. Congress can change the mission scope of the agency, or pass laws that the agency must adhere to, rather than resorting to this sort of quackery.

As it is, big R's have a problem on their hands because the small-r's and teabaggers seem to think everything will just roll along fine if they gut funding (for everything but the bloated defense industry and tax cuts, of course.) The big R's know what damage this will cause, but they can't even really say so publicly without losing their next primary. They also know the Dems will have no incentive to get on board since voting for these types of cuts is a vote loser for people elected from Democratic strongholds. So unless the big R's can convince the teabaggers that we really don't need to shoot the economy in the head right now by cutting social and research spending, they are going to have a total fail on their hands in the form of a government shutdown.

Last time that happened the big R's lost control of the house and helped get Clinton re-elected.

Rock meet hard place.

Re:The usual.

[interkin3tic]

It's only an underhanded cheat when the other party does it.

I'm not sure whether it's optimistic or pessimistic, but I think most members of congress probably realize how underhanded and cheating it is while they themselves do it. Maybe with a little "Eh, the other guy would have done more" or "Eh, voters should have voted for someone else" or "When I was younger, this would have bothered me, but after those protests about me not wearing a flag pin nearly cost me reelection, I don't give a fuck."

Congress people at the national level don't really seem to be -stupid- or deluded, I think it's more that you don't get there without a certain willingness to compromise some of your principles.

Effect is still the same, but there's a subtle difference.

Re:The usual.

[CyprusBlue113]

Well, they did it to themselves if that is how it goes. Every actual crazy right winger was elected specifically because of the crazy right wing propoganda they were tossing around to make the centrists look like left wing nutjobs.

Re:The usual.

[Dredd13]

Well, first off, I'm not sure I agree with you about them not being willing to cut defense (note the recent defunding of the F-35 project). Second, the legislative branch was given appropriations power for precisely the reason of having the ability to ensure which things got funded during tough times.

There's a lot of folks (myself included) who actually wouldn't consider a "government shutdown" to be a bad thing. There's plenty of people who think the government is way too big, has its fingers way too deep into every aspect of American life, and that shutting down the government is a forcible extraction of those fingers.

The sentiment today is a whole lot different than it was the last time around. Sure, there was some small-government opining, but it was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today.

Re:The usual.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

This is a bill HR. 68 [loc.gov] "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. "

That seems unconstitutional. It seeks to strip the 2014 (and beyond) house of representatives of an ability that is specifically mentioned in Section 8 and clause 1 of the constitution which states "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States" not to mention clause 3 which states To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"

What I'm trying to say is how can the current house of representatives take away a future's house of representatives ability to fund anything (which in this case being the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) which is described as one of the functions of that body by the constitution without a constitutional amendment?

I suspect they can't.

It's well within their power to allocate the government's money during this session, but trying to dictate what a future congress can do seems like a stretch.

Funny how the party that sells themselves as adhering to the constitution always seems to be the ones that do everything possible outside the bounds of the constitution...

Re:The usual.

[ArcherB]

As it is, big R's have a problem on their hands because the small-r's and teabaggers seem to think everything will just roll along fine if they gut funding (for everything but the bloated defense industry and tax cuts, of course.) The big R's know what damage this will cause, but they can't even really say so publicly without losing their next primary. They also know the Dems will have no incentive to get on board since voting for these types of cuts is a vote loser for people elected from Democratic strongholds. So unless the big R's can convince the teabaggers that we really don't need to shoot the economy in the head right now by cutting social and research spending, they are going to have a total fail on their hands in the form of a government shutdown.

If something absolutely necessary is cut, then it should be up to the states to provide, per the 10th Amendment. Don't like the cuts? Pester your state legislators to make up for them. In the mean time, stop taking MY money to fund projects I care nothing about.

Re:The usual.

[funkify]

Funny how the party that sells themselves as adhering to the constitution always seems to be the ones that do everything possible outside the bounds of the constitution...

It's not funny. It's sickening.

Re:The usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

You read too much into it. Anytime a law is passed it, by its very nature, is speaking of the now and future. The bill does not ban a future Congress from changing the law to allow federal funding again.

You wanted to take a stab at the Republicans, so you see what you wanted to see.

Re:The usual.

[Monchanger]

...Second, the legislative branch was given appropriations power for precisely the reason of having the ability to ensure which things got funded during tough times.

Bullshit. There's nothing about "tough times" in the Constitution. You made that up to make it sound like the Republicans are acting responsibly by going the wrong way about using Congress' power of the purse. Which idiot Fox News contributor fed you that "fact" ?

There's a lot of folks (myself included) who actually wouldn't consider a "government shutdown" to be a bad thing. There's plenty of people who think the government is way too big, has its fingers way too deep into every aspect of American life, and that shutting down the government is a forcible extraction of those fingers.

I sure hope you're ready to house and feed a few military families for the duration, because I can't afford to at the moment. Shutdowns mean they won't get paychecks, nor will people on Social Security. You want to reduce the size of government, fine- Mr. Boehner has the power to repeal laws establishing government programs and he should work to do just that. Avoiding passing the whole budget isn't a reasonable way to change small parts of it. Shutdowns are the act of a selfish child shirking responsibility.

The sentiment today is a whole lot different than it was the last time around. Sure, there was some small-government opining, but it was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today.

I'm with you there. The fervor pitch of the crazies in the Tea Party who make unreasonable demands ending with "or else", is simply undemocratic. Again, disagreement is not a good reason for a shutdown either. Having control of only half of Congress doesn't give you much power- they need to reread the Article 1, Section 7 and abandon this infantile fantasy that they should be able to do whatever they want because they have a majority the House for two years.

Re:The usual.

[Starcub]

That's not at all what they're doing here. The article is intentionally misleading.

No, you are the one who is being misleading. The article refers to an ammendment to HR 1, the FY 2011 appropriations bill. It's an earmark plain and simple. They know this is the only chance they will get with the current senate/president to pass this. I'll note that the last time repubs tried this, the pres vetoed the CR and made the repubs look bad.

whores.

[unity100]

"it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband"
wait. it did NOT. it was de facto rule of internet up till this day, until you corporate whores had been instructed to kill it.

land of the !free! *rich ... give me !freedom! *dollars or give me death ...

Re:whores.

[Anubis IV]

Know what you're talking about.

Re:whores.

[Spykk]

Is "freedom dollars" what they call francs in the US?

Re:whores.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Not just whores: temple whores. It is an article of their faith that the free market is always more innovative than the government and no government program has ever done anything good for the economy. The fact that this belief serves the interest of the people lining their pockets is a nice bonus. In other words, they're whores, but they'd be happy to do it for free, because God in His form of the Invisible Hand told them to. I'm not exactly sure how this dogma fits in with the Christianity so many of them so loudly profess, but apparently enough money buys indulgence for a multitude of sins.

Re:whores.

[commodore6502]

>>>it was de facto rule of internet up till this day,

Since when was net neutrality the defacto rule? I don't recall that ever being the case - in fact I remember the earliest ISPs like AOL, Compuserve, Genie, and so on used to put the internet behind a wall and charge extra. Then they opened the wall, but filtered which websites or newsgroups you could visit.

Re:whores.

[commodore6502]

>>>It is an article of their faith that the free market is always more innovative than the government

YES competition is always more innovative than a government monopoly. That is a self-evident truth, because the many produce more ideas than the one. Problem: ISPs are not a free market and never were (except during the brief dialup era). ISPs are monopolies and just like the utility monopolies, need to be regulated. (Or even price fixed.)

Re:whores.

[dave562]

The internet has never been open if you're a tool. On the other hand, back when AOL et al were walling off "the internet", anyone with half a brain and a modem could setup a SLIP connection and do whatever they wanted on the net.

Re:whores.

[Dredd13]

Or, alternatively, we need to banish the idea of allowing municipalities to bestow monopolies on last-mile providers and say that "anyone can be a cable provider" or "anyone can be a telco provider" in any given town. And that where towns have bestowed monopolies in the past, those incumbent folks must provide wholesale-cost use of their outside plant for the next, say, 25 years, enough time for other folks to invest and deploy parallel infrastructure to support their own business.

Re:whores.

[ichthus]

Your "faith" starts looking a lot more like science when you have the entire history of the internet to present as proof. Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem. Additionally, it is a power grab for an unelected (yet demonstrably partisan) entity.

BTW, *golf claps* to you for, somehow, making this a Christianity issue. ?? _The_ most retarded thing I've read all week, and it's Friday.

Re:whores.

[commodore6502]

>>>That was in the days when you used the POTS system and dialed into some provider. There was actually a ton of choices for this access.

Then that's what we need to recreate.
- Is it true that on DSL I can choose any provider I want, and I'm not stuck with Verizon? Is the same true with FiOS?

Re:whores.

[msauve]

Same to you, bub. Where are all these "loopholes" in the FCC rules? If they were created "with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists," then why are those same ISPs trying to block its implementation?

Rule 1: Transparency
A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service shall publicly disclose accurate information regarding the network management practices, performance, and commercial terms of its broadband Internet access services sufficient for consumers to make informed choices regarding use of such services and for content, application, service, and device providers to develop, market, and maintain Internet offerings.
Rule 2: No Blocking
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. A person engaged in the provision of mobile broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block consumers from accessing lawful websites, subject to reasonable network management; nor shall such person block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services, subject to reasonable network management.
Rule 3: No Unreasonable Discrimination
A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service. Reasonable network management shall not constitute unreasonable discrimination.

Re:whores.

[elashish14]

Yeah, that was the funniest quote FTS. Who's really investing or innovating in broadband? There's no real investment seeing as America's internet service is embarrassingly slow and the only innovation is taking services away and then adding them back for a fee to improve profits.

I say it's time to strip the ISPs of their ownership of the broadband lines and give it to someone who's actually going to invest in them. I'm sure it'll happen in America, right?

Re:whores.

[TheStatsMan]

How does the government count as one person, and "the free market" count as some number more than this? As if there isn't competition within the government...

Re:whores.

[TubeSteak]

YES competition is always more innovative than a government monopoly. That is a self-evident truth, because the many produce more ideas than the one.

Was the steel industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
Was the oil industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
Was the railroad industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
I could go on and on.

Most of the giant corporations competing with one another are left over from the trust busting era in the early 1900s.
Maybe you meant to say that "regulated competition is always more innovative than a government monopoly"?
Because, while it may not be self evident, history has shown that truly free markets will lead us directly to monopolies.

Re:whores.

[Remus Shepherd]

YES competition is always more innovative than a government monopoly. That is a self-evident truth, because the many produce more ideas than the one.

I don't buy that. Competition is very, very good at incremental improvements that retain the power structure of their markets, but very bad at revolutionary innovation that creates new markets.

The internet is a prime example; corporations have added on to it, but we are still using the same TCP/IP and HTTP protocols that were developed by government research grants 15 or 25 years ago. The landline phone companies still give twisted pair copper lines to a majority of customers in the US, because they can't be arsed to make expensive innovations for a tiny improvement in their profit.

Automobiles are another example. Auto manufacturers have been scared to break out of the gasoline model. Electric cars were economically viable in 1910, and were tried again in 1990, but only today are the manufacturers desperate enough to put them out in quantity.

You can see this in every industry. Power generation. Pharmaceuticals. Toys. Hollywood movies. All of them make small, incremental improvements to their product in an attempt to perfect their formula, but god help anyone who tries to revolutionize their industry with something truly innovative and new.

Competitive improvement is masturbation for capitalists. It makes them feel good, but it doesn't really make the world better. We need real innovation from a non-profit entity that's willing to throw aside traditional power structures and create a better future.

Re:whores.

[Jonner]

While I totally agree that the neutrality of routing on Internet has been one of the essential principles behind its success, I don't think it's clear what the best way is to ensure it stays that way. It's entirely possible that the FCC would make things worse rather than better. However, I don't think that's the concern of the lawmakers in this case. I'm sure you're right that they're just parroting their corporate masters.

Re:whores.

[zeroshade]

Until 2005, the internet was covered under Title II of the telecommunications provisions and thus was subject to Common Carrier rules. As a result, Neutrality was the de facto rule of the internet. In addition until recently (with the last couple years) ISPs more or less were pretty neutral (with many notable exceptions). In 2005, the FCC reclassified broadband out from the Title II restrictions and thus eliminated Common Carrier rules on the internet.

As for "waiting until there is a real problem":

William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

Former AT&T Cheif Ed Whitacre:

Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

So, do you really want to wait until they do what they said they want to do?

Re:whores.

[RightSaidFred99]

I don't see anything about the ISPs being legally common carriers. Do you have a source?

Yes, I really do want to wait until they do what they said they want to do. Again, I'm not some "privatize the rooooaaadssss!" Libertarian, but I do think our government has proved itself inept in a multitude of ways and don't think they need to get involved until there's really a problem. And a fake picture depicting a tiered internet being passed around by nerds is not a real problem (I assume you've seen that picture, right?).

Let Corporation A and Corporation B fight it out. If it becomes a real problem then have the FCC step in.

Re:whores.

[parlancex]

Why do we keep hearing this word innovation applied in this context? ISPs don't innovate. They carry fucking bits. The innovators are the ones who are doing something useful with those bits, which is ironically what they are trying to prevent.

Re:whores.

[Jay L]

AOL, Compuserve, Genie, and so on used to put the internet behind a wall and charge extra.

Wait, what? AOL never charged extra for Internet access; it was part and parcel of the AOL client. ("AOL is the Internet and so much more!") I don't believe the others charged extra either.

Then they opened the wall, but filtered which websites or newsgroups you could visit.

You have your history reversed. First AOL offered newsgroup access without any client changes, via a server gateway; once it was technically feasible, we built a browser and then a sockets library into the client so you could do whatever you wanted (short of connecting to port 25, which we redirected for spam filtering). I don't remember if we filtered out the porn newsgroups from our server gateway, though it wouldn't surprise me - we thought at the time that it was important for us to remain a "family service", though we were simultaneously developing automatic newsgroup-to-binary download capabilities, and of course you could use your own newsreader and a commercial news spool like giganews if you wanted full newsgroup access. We didn't filter any web access that I recall.

Jay Levitt, AOLer, 1989-2001

Re:whores.

[Coren22]

Because there is a real problem? Comcast is throttling their main internet pipes to make Netflix unable to compete with their own offering. Also, many ISPs have been making noises about charging Youtube and Netflix to carry their services over their internet, which is a direct violation of what an ISP is.

Re:whores.

[Alt_Cognito]

What you're asking for is silly. Corporations aim to eliminate free markets. That's what they do.

Free markets != Perfect markets, but corporations seek to eliminate the major components of free markets:

* Freedom of Information - Fraudulent Marketing (do you really get 5mb/s at any time?), Confusing pricing schemes (more common in retail), elimination of product information (what is you bandwidth cap, are certain services restricted?)
* Freedom to Price - Comcast wants to make it more difficult for Netflix to sell content cheaply, so it is effectively using it's monopoly status over users to cause netflix to raise prices
* Few Barriers to Entry - Starting a cable company is obviously a non-trivial task - many regulations (we'll give communications companies a pass here)
* Equal Access to Production Technology - One result of the comcast/nbc merger is now other cable companies and content companies will have to come to them for their product.

Re:whores.

[kilfarsnar]

Not just whores: temple whores. It is an article of their faith that the free market is always more innovative than the government and no government program has ever done anything good for the economy. The fact that this belief serves the interest of the people lining their pockets is a nice bonus.

The fact that this belief serves the interests of those lining their pockets is the reason this belief is so widely encouraged. It's not just a nice bonus at this point; it's a driver of the propaganda.

Re:whores.

[Qzukk]

Amtrak may be a poorly run government service, screwed over by stupid decisions like not building its own rails and having to yield the right of way to every freight train ever while stopping at least twice in every representative's district, but the only reason Amtrak is a "monopoly" is because for the vast majority of the country, nobody else wants to waste their money providing passenger rail cross-country. If the government cancelled it, nothing at all would take its place on a national scale.

Anybody else who is willing to spend their money buying a long line of land between A and B, laying down track, buying cars, and marketing and selling tickets is more than welcome to try. And when they go bankrupt, banks and investors will make it that much harder to borrow money to try again. But if you don't want to play capitalist rail baron, the 1997 Amtrak reforms allowed states to partner together to create state-run interstate rail lines. And these do exist, and do compete with Amtrak. In New England, anyway. Nobody else cares.

Re:whores.

[Qzukk]

Is it true that on DSL I can choose any provider I want

It used to be, but then the FCC "deregulated" it and phone companies pretty much immediately stopped allowing other companies to have access once the government stopped telling them they had to. In Canada there are still resellers, but they're at the mercy of the telco (see Bell Canada's throttling of reseller connections), so it's likely that even if we hadn't had "deregulation" here in the US, we'd still be having the same issues, with the added bonus that no matter which competitor you chose, all of them would be getting throttled.

Re:whores.

[roman_mir]

Was the steel industry more innovative than a government monopoly?

- I don't know about this in USA, however I bet it was.

Was the oil industry more innovative than a government monopoly?

- absolutely.

Was the railroad industry more innovative than a government monopoly?

- absolutely.

Multiple players within industries are always more innovative if they are not government oligopolies/monopolies. Most of the rail industry always had government in it, and I assume so was most of steel (at least this was true in Russia since the times of Petr and Demidov)

It is possible that one player takes over a market segment for a while and as long as this player was providing the market with a product of a quality/price that market accepted this domination could continue, until some new improvement in technology came along that reduced the cost of entry for new players in the market.

(Standard Oil)

However sometimes the monopoly in question is very efficient for a very long time, the way it was with Alcoa Aluminum and it could provide the product at very low prices that nobody could really compete on price with and then the competition did the bad thing - used government intervention to break up the monopoly and decrease efficiency and start providing the same product for higher price!

Re:whores.

[commodore6502]

>>>nothing at all would take its place on a national scale.

That's not true. Several of the freight companies are now profitable enough that they want to extend into Passenger lines, but the government monopoly outlaws them from doing so. (Just as the government monopoly outlaws FedEx or UPS from delivering letters.)

From my viewpoint ANY monopoly is bad, whether it's private or government.

Re:whores.

[RightSaidFred99]

Bull. Why are you spreading disinformation? Comcast is not throttling Netflix.

Re:whores.

[Coren22]

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1335235/Comcast-Accused-of-Congestion-By-Choice?from=rss

Try again.

Re:whores.

[RightSaidFred99]

Wow, some guy on the internet posting some shit! That is solid evidence if ever _I've_ seen it.

I found lots of people claiming the same shit, most of them came back and said "oh, nevermind" later.

Sometimes my netflix slows down, sometimes my Xbox, sometimes my web browsing. Oh teh noes, they're throtttttllllinnnnnggg!

Re:whores.

[guyminuslife]

Interesting theory, when for much of that history the Internet was a government research program.

Re:whores.

[cpt kangarooski]

You seem to forget that the reason that Amtrak was created in the first place is because the private passenger rail industry collapsed. Pullman went bankrupt. Penn went bankrupt. No one else was making money at passenger rail, and in fact, passenger rail had been a money loser for decades.

Amtrak was set up as an optional program; the railroads did not have to sell their passenger operations to it, but virtually all of them did. Of those that did not, they either did later, shut down, or were very small (or became so).

If we had not had Amtrak passenger rail in the US would have basically vanished 40 years ago. Amtrak doesn't do a great job, hobbled as it is in many respects, but at least it has been serving as a pilot light.

Now, if you want to discuss how the government interfered with rail by doing things like subsidizing automotive and air transport, or taking away their mail contracts, or imposing overly strict safety standards without assisting railroads in modernizing so as to lessen their negative impact, etc., that's fine.

Or if you'd like to discuss how the government could spur a renaissance in private passenger rail by, e.g. building a high speed passenger rail network, seizing and improving existing rail networks and rights-of-way so as to build regional and local passenger rail that can operate at higher speeds than today, and coexist with freight, and licensing anyone who meets standards to operate passenger and freight trains over the national network, that would be fine too.

But just getting rid of Amtrak would be unproductive. You'd kill off the last bit of passenger service, in an era when people are clamoring for it, and you'd do nothing to see that void filled or that service provided.

Markets can and do fail, and this one has.

(And freight is not as deregulated as you seem to imagine, either)

Re:whores.

[clarkkent09]

It is an article of their faith that the free market is always more innovative than the government.

 
It is not an article of faith, it is evidently true, not only by simple use of reason (which is clouded by your irrational collectivist instincts) but by experience in every society in history. Compare every country where the economy is centrally planned with every country where there is free market (economic liberty plus rule of law). Now, saying that "no government program has ever done anything good for the economy" is disingenuous on your part. Nobody really claims that, just that in vast majority of the cases government intervention has not done anything good and that in most of those cases it has actively done harm (e.g. housing subsidies, farming subsidies, minimum wage laws, drug prohibition, variety of pro-union laws, etc etc)

Re:whores.

[Coren22]

Ok, so it doesn't bother you that Comcast allows their links to be maxed out most of the time...good to know, while I hapily download at 25 Mbit on my Fios connection (the speed I signed up for)

Considering that Comcast was trying to extort money from Level3 publicly for the connection on that link being the same way should have no bearing on the validity of the public post though.

Re:whores.

[Coren22]

That is exactly what I was saying, the dispute between Comcast and L3 is quite public, the one between Comcast and TATA is the one I posted about which indicates the exact same thing. Comcast is perfectly happy to over sell their bandwidth to their customers in such extreme amounts that it overwhelms their upstream links, L3 offers to upgrade them to handle their needs better, and Comcast tries to extort money from L3, crazyness!

Re:whores.

[AK Marc]

Standard Oil. Laizsez faire was about the closest to a "free market" the world has ever seen, and it resulted in massive monopolies.

Re:whores.

[AK Marc]

So free markets both encourage monopolies and break them as well?

Free markets break monopolies.

Oops. You lied, just like you always do. "By 1890, Standard Oil controlled 88% of the refined oil flows in the United States. The state of Ohio successfully sued Standard, compelling the dissolution of the trust in 1892." Standard Oil was broken by the government and not any competition. Government intervention breaks monopolies - competitors don't. Monopoly is the natural evolution of a free market, otherwise we wouldn't need so much anti-trust legislation to break up the monopolies that form and would otherwise never end.

Re:whores.

[marco.antonio.costa]

Dude, Standard Oil had 64% market share 4 years before it got broken up by the Feds. Hardly a monopoly, let alone massive.

That's a myth. Try again.

Re:whores.

[AK Marc]

How is net neutrality a power grab? It's a law that would say "You don't screw over your customers based on what they are doing now, so don't do it in the future." Who gets the power out of that? There isn't some net czar that gets to determine everyone's packet priority. It's essentially just a specific piece of anti-trust legislation.

As for Christianity, Republicans align themselves with Christianity, but the move (using monopolies to screw people out of money) seems very anti-Christian. And so there's the question of how they reconcile that. Though it's a silly question. Those who profess their faith in public are much more likely to be hypocritical liars, so anyone that campaigns as a champion of Christian values is more likely to be getting blowjobs from underage boys than those that don't. So anti-Christian behavior should be expected in the party that publicly claims an association. Note the party that pushes government charity and whether they claim association with a religion that pushes charity for one...

Re:whores.

[AK Marc]

They charged extra in that the cost for AOL was greater than the cost for a regular ISP dial-up line.

Re:whores.

[TheStatsMan]

But it's not as if things aren't negotiated on WITHIN the government itself. You suppose it is a monolith when it is anything but. There are many factions and competing interests that directly alter the "government" perspective all the time. How is this not the same than competition in the marketplace?

Re:whores.

[AK Marc]

So, are you arguing that you could buy an oil product in, say New York City at that time that didn't give Standard Oil some cut?

Re:whores.

[Eunuchswear]

Francs? What millennium are you in?

Re:whores.

[marco.antonio.costa]

I'm arguing that Standard Oil was not a monopoly. Period.

There cannot be a monopoly in a free market and there has never been a monopoly anywhere in the real world with a good measure of laissez-faire.

Re:whores.

[AK Marc]

Then you are wrong. There were millions of people who had no practical access to any oil that didn't pass through Standard Oil.

Re:whores.

[Jay L]

Back then it was purely a Commodore BBS with full graphics

Q-Link didn't have full graphics, other than in the games; the service itself was text-based, and the menus weren't even graphic (they were split-screen, if you remember, and the divider would wiggle when the modem was in use, a side-effect of interrupt handling routines). A roomful of Q-Link users burst into applause when they saw this innovation in Super-Q: graphic emoticons in People Connection. Oooh!

Then when the web came-along in 1993 they offered access to it, but it cost extra

It didn't. Didn't happen. Dig up your old bills and check.

couldn't access playboy.com unless you first proved you're an adult

I'm pretty sure, though not positive, that this is also wrong. We had Parental Controls that would lock out the entire web from your childrens' screen names, but the master account was presumed to be an adult (we had your credit card), and I don't remember any domain whitelists or anything like that. I've asked around and I'll post back the answer.

Re:whores.

[commodore6502]

This menu is not graphical? Hell it's even animated!
http://www.qlinklives.org/

Re:whores.

[zeroshade]

In the U.S., DSL and cable Internet access were formerly regulated by the FCC according to different rules, but in 2005 the FCC re-classified DSL according to the more permissive cable rules -- Wikipedia

So I apologize, it was only DSL and other phone-line based internet that was regulated under common carrier laws under the telecommunications act. However, it still stands that these are not new regulations. The desire of proponents of Net Neutrality is to reclassify all internet access under the telecommunications rules for Common Carriers and unbundling etc.

I've seen the fake picture you mention. However, I've also seen this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/carriers-net-neutrality-tiers/ which is not fake at all. In fact, it looks remarkably similar to the satirical image you were referring to.

Not only that, but the UK is starting to warm up to tiered internet like this http://www.telecoms.com/23428/uk-warms-to-tiered-internet/ so of course we'll start seeing ISPs in the US clambering to do the same thing.

Let Corporation A and Corporation B fight it out

You're under the mistaken impression that there is competition in the ISP industry. Corporation A and Corporation B aren't going to fight at all. They are going to agree not to poach each other's customers by being in different areas and do the exact same thing, allow companies to pay for priority service. This is a horrible thing for consumers and once we let the ISPs follow through and get entrenched doing this, not only would we have to fight the ISPs to implement Net Neutrality, but we'd have to fight all the companies paying for priority service so they don't lose the advantage they gain by paying exorbitant sums of money to ISPs.

I'm also sure that when the ISPs follow through with what they want to do, everyone who said that Net Neutrality should wait until they actually do something, will come up with some other reason why not to implement Net Neutrality.

Re:whores.

[Qzukk]

You're going to have to show me some citations to convince me that the government is keeping anyone other than Amtrak from opening an interstate passenger railroad, especially in the face of state/metro-run non-Amtrak interstate lines in New England. The closest thing I can find are the ICC rate controls, but they predated Amtrak by 60-some-odd years, and the ICC ceased to exist in 1995, 15 years after the Staggers Rail Act removed its power to set rates. Entirely privately owned interstate passenger rail existed until 1983 when the Rio Grande Zephyr was sold to Amtrak because the company that was running it was losing money trying to serve the wrong coast even though for its last three years, they could have charged whatever they wanted (though at some point, the "end of the line" in Utah was a bus stop, so maybe it was too far gone to save by the time the rate controls were eliminated).

Searching for amtrak monopoly just tells me that it is a de facto monopoly (outside of the new england corridor) but I can't find anything to suggest that it's a de jure monopoly. Did I mention that Obama is apparently unaware of this law banning interstate rail and thinks other railroads can run passenger rail too (I guess the government handouts are to convince them to break the law)?

BTW, I've used fedex to deliver letters. The only thing they can't do is deliver to a post office box. Or get enough junk mail delivered through their system to make "fedex ground" for a flat "package" cost half a dollar.

Seems Legit

[Flyerman]

Remember, these are some of the smartest people in the country. They have evaluated the issue from all angles and determined that "net neutrality" as regulated by the FCC is not in the interest of their constituents.

They know exactly how it works and what it means for various businesses and especially in terms of the First Amendment. They have been completely unbiased in their review and I applaud them for their actions.

Re:Seems Legit

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Ahahaha oh man, I can't believe you kept a straight face.

Re:Seems Legit

[19thNervousBreakdown]

I'm pretty good at Internet.

Re:Seems Legit

[WrongSizeGlass]

You could see his face?

Can you say Chatroulette?

Re:Seems Legit

[Osgeld]

jeez the op was so ripe with sarcasm that I think I got some of its juice on my desk, and yet somehow, someone had a woosh, good job

Re:Seems Legit

[iluvcapra]

You laugh.

But of course, lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the simple possibility that it might not be possible to pay for a non-tiered, flat-rate, uniform quality-of-service internet of sufficient capacity to deliver on-demand HD video or SIP telephone from any particular content provider in the US, independent of geography and service provider, to every terminal in the United States with flat monthly or even per-byte pricing on either end. The costs of building and maintaing the system simply don't map to consumption of the system's resources. Some parts of such a price structure are really lucrative for a network operator and some of them don't pay off for decades.

And if there were ways of doing it this way, it would require a hell of a lot more regulation than mere mandatory "Net Neutrality."

Re:Seems Legit

[RightSaidFred99]

I don't get the series of tubes thing. Is it just some Internet smug meme about old people and politicians? One could certainly describe the Internet as a series of tubes to a layman and be correct, at a high level. He said some other stuff that was...poorly phrased but I tire of the smug smiles I assume people wear when they mock the "series of tubes" comment because it's largely correct (in as far as it goes).

Re:Seems Legit

[ZankerH]

whoosh...

Re:Seems Legit

[paiute]

You laugh.

But of course, lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the simple possibility that it might not be possible to pay for a non-tiered, flat-rate, uniform quality-of-service internet of sufficient capacity to deliver on-demand HD video or SIP telephone from any particular content provider in the US, independent of geography and service provider, to every terminal in the United States with flat monthly or even per-byte pricing on either end. The costs of building and maintaing the system simply don't map to consumption of the system's resources. Some parts of such a price structure are really lucrative for a network operator and some of them don't pay off for decades.

And if there were ways of doing it this way, it would require a hell of a lot more regulation than mere mandatory "Net Neutrality."

I would be with you except for one thing: the company which is delivering the content is becoming the company which makes and profits from the content. If Comcast were to say that video - from any source - was expensive, and those who wanted to send/deliver it should pay more, then maybe you would have a point. But we all know what is going to happen: NBC Universal traffic goes to the head of the queue. E!, Style, G4, Golf Channel, Versus - web traffic out of my way! Content from competitors will come along when there is an opening.

Re:Seems Legit

[iluvcapra]

Content from competitors will come along when there is an opening.

Right, but content is only worth something if you can get it in front of eyeballs -- network operators aren't just dumb pipes, they're what make content valuable. If you have a 10 second video of your dog barking at a dalek, 20 years ago that'd be worth absolutely nothing, but now it's worth thousands of dollars in monetized advertising. The only reason that it's worth something is because networks put the video in front of eyes. You need both content and delivery in order to have a saleable product.

Re:Seems Legit

[BJ_Covert_Action]

... lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the simple possibility that it might not be possible to pay for a non-tiered, flat-rate, uniform quality-of-service internet of sufficient capacity to deliver on-demand HD video or SIP telephone from any particular content provider in the US, independent of geography and service provider, to every terminal in the United States with flat monthly or even per-byte pricing on either end. The costs of building and maintaing the system simply don't map to consumption of the system's resources....

Well than that thought needs to be purged from everyone's mind like puss from a zit on a HS kid's prom night. It is not impossible to build and deploy a nation-wide infrastructure capable of delivering high quality service to every part of this country. We've done it before. We've done it multiple times before. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) electricity network in this country that could reach every single home, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) water delivery infrastructure to every home and business in this country, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) interstate and state level highway system that could deliver transport goods to just about anywhere in the country. We build the rails before that and (at the time) they were very high quality. We built and deployed the telephone network, and managed to rig it to deliver high quality analog voice signals to every damn place in this country!

There was a time (there were multiple times) when the United States invested in developing itself. There was a time when we weren't piss scared to spend the money to connect every freakin' corner of this country to the latest technology of the period. We have the man power. We have the resources. We have the know how. We can and should build and deploy a high capacity, high speed network system of computer (internet) because it is the next great investment in the future. Internet access, hands down, is the world-changing infrastructure of our era. As the leaders of the free world (supposedly) and the premier technology power in the world (supposedly) it should not take this much politicking, bullshitting, and corporate cock sucking to deploy free (as in libre) and open internet access to the whole fucking country!

How the hell has our population been convinced that this is somehow acceptable or normal? America used to be capable of seizing upon a new invention (rail, steam engine, internal combustion engine, electricity, telephony) and deploying it, broadly and fairly, to the whole fucking population. And yet today we piss away one of the greatest infrastructure opportunities (cheap, open, frree (as in libre) access to the world's whole sum of knowledge) all because a few sacred telco monopolies have convinced us "It's just too hard, nigh, impossible to undertake such a large project."

Fuck That!

We built the transcontinental railroad. We built the interstate system. We let Ma Bell build the telephony system and then broke them up when they abused their monopoly powers. We have built nuclear power plants and the Alaskan pipeline. We built the California Aqueduct. We put a human being on the fucking moon for Christ's sake and we're going to accept the notion that we, as a country and society, cannot get fast, unfettered access to the internet like every other first world country?

Bullshit!

Will it cost money? Yes! Will it take a lot of hard work? Yes! Will it take time, higher taxes, and the spine to tell the multinational telco's to go fuck themselves? Yes!

But will it pay off in the end? Anyone who thinks it won't is stuck in the stone age, fooling themselves, or just downright lying.

You bet your sweet ass that we could build and deploy a strong, open access platform for the internet nation wide. The only problem seems to be that people are too chicken shit scared or stupid to push for it.

Re:Seems Legit

[iluvcapra]

Are you done?

I didn't say it was impossible, I just said that you can't pay for it the way we have been paying for it. And it would require a hell of a lot more laws on the books than Net Neutrality. The Transcontinental Railroad required enormous government land grants and the federal government basically had to force the railroads to carry passenger service. The Alaskan Pipeline and nuclear plants are all heavily government regulated -- the proceeds of Alaska oil licenses are heavily taxed and the rents socialized. Putting a man on the moon was a stupendous government expenditure, where the state actively picked winners in order to achieve a scientific goal with almost zero direct profit.

I'm in favor of all of these things, I think they were all qualified goods. I'm also a strong supporter of a strong, centralized state, which maintains strong economic and cultural authority in society. Almost nobody in the US agrees with me on this, so they invent things like "Net Neutrality" which attempt to phrase common sense about liberal rights into a doctrine which completely ignores the costs and economy of the situation. Transporting video, or any future medium of communication, over D distance, using W bandwidth with a latency of T has upfront costs and continuing costs, and how you charge for it is not as simple as "everybody pays the same," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. This sort of policy is just a giveaway to content providers, who would stop at nothing to have the rents in the network be shifted completely onto their suppliers and all the upside profits accrue to them.

If what you're really concerned about is telco consolidation and monopolies, fight that. Net Neutrality is a very dull instrument to prevent that, though.

Spaz.

Re:Seems Legit

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Spaz.

Oh stop with the name-calling. My rant wasn't directed at you in particular. It was quite apparent from your post that you weren't trying to say that such a feat is impossible. You merely stated that many people are starting to worry that it could be impossible. My rant was directed at those people. I'm sick of the people who wallow around in our society and say things like, "Well deploying high speed internet in the U.S. is so much harder than anywhere else in the world," like it is some sort of excuse for our abominable lagging in this area. I realize what kind of investments had to be made to develop the projects I listed. I also realize they were not funded by an, "everybody pays the same," model, but, rather, the costs were shouldered by different social entities at different times (sometimes companies, sometimes customers, sometimes certain taxpayer brackets, etc.).

That said, it will cost a lot to develop a strong internet infrastructure. But once it is there, maintenance should be able to be funded by monthly fees (even if that does have to be on a per byte basis).

And yes, I know Net Neutrality will not be the wooden stake in the telco vampires hearts. But it's a step.

Re:Seems Legit

[Coren22]

It was used in the context of talking to a less intelligent crowed too, it was a good analogy for those who have no clue how a computer works.

Re:Seems Legit

[haapi]

WORD

Re:Seems Legit

[IICV]

I don't know, that sounds an awful lot like socialism. You're not one of them dirty socialists, are you boy? We can't go around spending money on socialism, it's a bad thing.

P.S. Please give my kids scholarships to public universities and keep on providing medicare to my old mother, thanks.

Re:Seems Legit

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It is not impossible to build and deploy a nation-wide infrastructure capable of delivering high quality service to every part of this country.

It IS effectively impossible to build a network where the bandwidth of the interconnect is not mostly idle due to slow last-mile connections, TCP bulk transfers and streaming media play well together, AND the packets of the two are treated equally. This is because TCP works by increasing its speed until packets are dropped and THEN throttling back, while streaming has a much lower bandwidth requirement but performs poorly if some of its packets are dropped due to congstion. The two styles have to be treated differently to make the bulk of the backbone bandwidth available to the users.

The problem is that the same tools that are needed to make the two types of traffic play well can also be used to implement anticompetitive penalization of competitors' traffic.

And IMHO the solution is not to ban traffic management. The solution is to ban ANTICOMPETITIVE traffic management.

And that is not the job of the FCC. It can be done by more appropriate branches of the government, under antitrust, anti-fraud ("you sold 'internet access' and delivered WHAT?"), and consumer protection law.

Re:Seems Legit

[sznupi]

Rail roads were built on the backs of incredibly powerful and nasty monopolies.

...and of Chinese? (here and there...)

Re:Seems Legit

[Rich0]

Nobody is saying that it has to be flat rate. The only thing that is being argued is that the rate should not depend on the nature of the data being transmitted, or who the two parties communicating are.

If they wanted to charge by the byte, that would be fine.

But, let's remember that utilities are monopolies, and let's go ahead and regulate what that per-byte rate is so that we don't have the nonsense we have with the cell phone companies.

The Senate

[ShopMgr]

I hope the Senate just ignores these people!

It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[commodore6502]

Monopolies need to be regulated Mr. Congresscritter.

Jeez. Maybe we can appeal to our Member State Legislatures to regulate the Comcasts, Verizons, and other monopolies inside their borders.

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[Black Parrot]

Monopolies need to be regulated Mr. Congresscritter.

Not in the view of the party that now controls the House.

(And increasingly, not in the view of the party that now controls the Senate.)

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[commodore6502]

Before you go too far with your Republican 5-minute hate, remember which party established Commissions and Czars to help track-and-prosecute copyright (monopoly) infringers and downloaders, for their Hollywood and Record company friends.

That would be the D's.
Both parties suck.
"We don't have two parties - we have ONE party. The Big Government party with two branches - both of which want to limit your person and your liberty." - Judge Napolitano, http://freedomwatchonfox.com/

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[Angst Badger]

Monopolies need to be regulated Mr. Congresscritter.

Funny you mention that. I was just thinking that one of the easiest ways to identify monopolies is by how often their advocates bandy around the term "innovation". I can't actually recall it being mentioned very much before Microsoft used it in their PR push at the height of their powers.

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[nzap]

If you reread his post, he talks about the party controlling the senate and the house. That means he's referring to the Democrats and Republicans.

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[Steauengeglase]

Unless every state did this, they'd laugh their way to court and then sue the state for damages. Besides state reps and senators are very, very easy to buy out. You could probably swing a vote with a bottle of good scotch or here in the south a case of Coors.

No, things are going to have to get bad, really, really, really bad before they get better.

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[commodore6502]

>>>then sue the state for damages.

Not really. It's the State Legislature that regulates other monopolies like the Electric utility, Water utility, Natural Gas utility, and so on. There's no reason the State Legislature can't extend that regulation to the Internet utility as well.

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[CyprusBlue113]

Yes there is, the FCC preempts by law (1993 com act). PSCs used to serve that very function, but the FCC *was given* the power they are trying to *claim they never had* now from the same republican votes to help big business!

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[CyprusBlue113]

I'm sorry, but your uninformed armchair interpretation is completely wrong on many levels. You can clearly see how by looking at the dozens of court cases, 25 years of law/case law, etc.

You just sound like this guy to those that actually are informed and understand: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-passionate-defender-of-what-he-imagines-c,2849/

Re:It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[commodore6502]

>>>25 years of law/case law

Well - you're wrong. Court cases can not overrule the U.S. Constitution. For example a judge can not arbitrarily declare, "Congress has the power to abolish all state legislatures." He can certainly issue that ruling, but it would be nullified by the Constitution's own law (the tenth amend.).

Just to be clear...

[Anubis IV]

This lack of funding is aimed at the FCC's version of "net neutrality", not to block net neutrality in general. This is a good thing. That version of "net neutrality" was in name only. Obviously there are interests on both sides of the aisle at play here (Big Business wants even less restriction, consumers want what they've always had), but we all agreed that the FCC's current idea sucked, so this is a win.

Re:Just to be clear...

[hedwards]

And once the Republicans repeal the health care reform bill, they'll be replacing it with a new reform package, right? Just because the current idea sucks, does not mean that if it gets repealed we're guaranteed something better. At least with what we have we can fix it and adjust it as needed, whereas if we repeal it then we have to start over and every interest group and corporation is going to be eyeballing it to see what they can get slipped in.

Re:Just to be clear...

[CyprusBlue113]

Yep, clearly since proposed regulation wasn't enough, we should scrap it and have none. That will be so much better.

Re:Just to be clear...

[commodore6502]

>>>This is a good thing.

It is? What was wrong with the FCC's latest rules? I didn't see anything objectionable about them, and I'm usually anti-government. The rules seemed reasonable - block ISPs from discriminating against sites or charging extra to reach them.

Re:Just to be clear...

[DarkOx]

Honestly YES, we should scrap it and NONE would be better, until we can start over. The biggest problem we have with all this regulation at this point is there is so much of it. Nobody knows what will happen, what is in conflict etc etc.

When you have a legal code that is so complex, that corporations of any size need full time compliance people and individuals of any wealth need attorneys on retainer you legal code is long past morally bankrupt!

Re:Just to be clear...

[CyprusBlue113]

Yep, all those child labor laws need to go to. They really cut down on the jobs.

Perhaps you should pick a better metric for gauging regulation and its impact on business?

Re:Just to be clear...

[lgw]

No government involvement is always better than poorly thought out government involvement - because freedom is th goal! Every law and regulation has a direct effect of reducing someone's freedom - unlees you can be quite sure that a given law or regulation will improve freedom as it's long term net effect leave it alone.

Re:Just to be clear...

[lgw]

The sad part is - I actually preveiwed that post. Man, I just can't proofread my own stuff any more.

Re:Just to be clear...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think health care reform had to be 2000 pages? Sure you can introduce changes slowly, but it is like a software project. If at 2000 pages, there are 50 lines, that is 100,000 lines. I'm going to purposely inflate it with 30 curly brace breaks per page just to be comparable to a software project. Now you have 3 million lines of code. If the premise of a 3 million line program is wrong from the start, would you go about changing the program line by line, until it is right? Would you do it if 600 people are fighting over each an every change? No, you would just start over and write a better leaner program that more agree on and use that instead. In fact, it would be better to have everyone's input in the health industry and congress, and not push a clearly partisan bill next time. The insurance companies, and the republicans would sure appreciate it. In fact, the american people would appreciate it. (Why do you think republicans won so big last november? The people wanted republicans to actually be heard!) You can't design a software program with a bad UI people can't just because you know better. If doesn't work in the system, then people don't want it!

In fact it gets worse. The florida judge that ruled the law unconstitutional said the whole law was based on the mandatory insurance requirement. If the law is unconstitutional, and the whole 2000 pages was written based on the unconstitutional provision, you can't easy just change it to make it work now can you? That is why he struck the whole thing down. This is like sending a mars probe, and its trajectory the the implementation of the program. If you used miles in a formula that required kilometers as an input to calculate your trajectory, your whole formula design was wrong. You have to write the correct formula before you send it off. You can't just tow the probe back and then fix it. It already burned up.

I'm not saying that we can easily repeal and replace. You are right there are interest groups that would like it in their image. However the democrats weren't holding everyone's interest at heart, after all, they purposefully passed it along party lines. That doesn't mean republicans will either. The people can hold either accountable through voting them out.

Re:Just to be clear...

[Anonymous Coward]

Point is, the FCC's can't be be fixed other than on the whim of the FCC. If N.N. was a legislative branch bill, then yes it could be ammended in the future by Congress. This is a win because it will force Congress to act (or not act as the case may be) and keep a non-elected, non-publicly accountable set of burocrats from making up rules as they go.

Re:Just to be clear...

[jack2000]

You are damned right they do. Couldn't get a proper, over the counter, full time job when I was underage, so annoying...

Re:Just to be clear...

[Zancarius]

At least with what we have we can fix it and adjust it as needed, whereas if we repeal it then we have to start over and every interest group and corporation is going to be eyeballing it to see what they can get slipped in.

Which is exactly what happened the first time around, except only a gazillion times worse (remember the 1099 fiasco?). :/

Re:Just to be clear...

[DrStrange66]

>>>This is a good thing.

It is? What was wrong with the FCC's latest rules? I didn't see anything objectionable about them, and I'm usually anti-government. The rules seemed reasonable - block ISPs from discriminating against sites or charging extra to reach them.

Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. It's okay if they apply those rules. That just set a precedent. Now they can apply any other rules they wish. Oh but wait... the other rules might become objectionable.

Re:Just to be clear...

[hedwards]

It's not unconstitutional, a judge said that in his view it was, but remember that judge was a Republican appointee. It's been pretty well established over the years that the Federal government has the power to regulate interstate commerce, which means that they can force health insurance companies to accept everybody and implement whatever laws and regulations are necessary to make it work. If you look at the make up of SCOTUS, there's pretty much no way on Earth that they'll be overturning it. Just not going to happen.

The fix is simple, they can either change the medicare age requirements to allow everybody to be covered, or they can rewrite that portion of the bill to be specifically as a tax, and then grant a tax credit to off set the tax. It's exactly the same situation as what we have now, it's just that it looks better to the more pedantic amongst us.

I also think it's somewhat ironic that now that the Democrats push it it's suddenly unconstitutional, when it was originally a conservative idea.

Re:Just to be clear...

[commodore6502]

That's true, but that doesn't mean the FCC should not regulate ISP monopolies at all. The regulate the CATV monopolies (such as requiring local stations be carried), so why not the internet half of the equation too?

a proposal

[Black Parrot]

There is an interesting proposal in an essay in the latest Scientific American: allow differential charges on the basis of quantity of traffic, but not on the basis of content.

That would all the (IMO) reasonable approach of charging the heaviest users more and/or throttling their bandwidth, but wouldn't allow Comcast to put competing Netflix out of business.

Re:a proposal

[BJ_Covert_Action]

You're making the faulty assumption that the folks in Congress actually want a reasonable approach.

Based on their track record, I'm just going to go ahead and say they don't like reasonable. If they do, then they suck too much at implementing it to ever expect them to get this one right.

Re:a proposal

[hedwards]

That wouldn't be prohibited under net neutrality rules, you'd just have to make the formula used the same for everybody.

Re:a proposal

[517714]

You are so right. Congress has in the last few decades always made sure that legislation has winners and losers. If things are equitable, then the campaign contributions are so much smaller.

Re:a proposal

[haapi]

Quantity and QOS controls would not bother me, though quantity implies tiers and I want my tiers to be quite broad, of course.
QOS is best implemented over IPv6.
It is content and source filtering that galls me.

Innovation!

[Grapplebeam]

It's the new old synonym for completely unregulated capitalism!

Re:Innovation!

[Merk42]

"Stifle Innovation" has become the new "Think of the children"

Re:Innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in capitalism and a level playing field. Capitalism is at its best when it is level. Regulation can help at that. However, you can't say that all regulation passed isn't made from the interests of one company in spite of another. That is why too much regulation can seen to be bad, and that a leaner government with easier to understand and universally agreed rules is better. Neither party is immune of corporate interests in the matter. The democrats pushing net neutrality aren't innocent from this. And the FCC is quite powerful. Special interests involved in this bill? Google. If you think they are white as snow, you better stop fooling yourself.

Praise the lard with snout in trough!

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one am glad that those too sinful for the lard to make rich, such as myself, are reduced to the state of slavery we so deserve! All hail our Republican overlards!

The plan continues apace. Soon the "party of Lincoln" will get us back to the point we were before that pesky emancipation thing! This time slavery will only depend on one color: Green! If you have it, you're free, if not, start kneeling!

How many of you wrote to your congresscritters?

[whoever57]

I wrote to my Congressman in support of net neutrality and got a note back saying that he also supports net neutrality.

Obviously, he must be a communist loon..... Wait, what does that make me?

Real Problems

[Tmack]

Like making sure "Obama is a one term President!" Yeh, gotta get priorities set right, cause thats what the people want! Conflict and inaction to make sure someone else is elected, not any actual work on any real issues... ugh, makes me sick

-Tm

Re:Real Problems

[ArcherB]

Like making sure "Obama is a one term President!" Yeh, gotta get priorities set right, cause thats what the people want! Conflict and inaction to make sure someone else is elected, not any actual work on any real issues... ugh, makes me sick

-Tm

Elections have consequences.

--Barrack Obama

Exasperating

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point. They never, ever seem capable of doing anything useful, or beneficial for the citizens of this country anymore. It's exhausting. Every single time a story pops up (on Slashdot or anywhere else) that involves politics or a political decision, you can basically just assume that it's going to screw over everyone in the country that isn't already a politician.

Being a U.S. citizen today feels just like playing the role of Sisiphus, consistently pushing a boulder uphill (trying to improve the world by being a responsible citizen, voting, jury duty, etc.) only to realize that you have to push it up again when you reach the top (Congress critters keep passing bills that fuck things up even more). It's exhausting, to keep reading about how those folks we elect to power just stumble around and fuck things up so badly....It's so consistent that it very nearly serves as a dataset to debunk that old meme of, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

Our leaders are just fucking terrible. It's exhausting.

Re:Exasperating

[Xacid]

"Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days?"

YEP.

Re:Exasperating

[Nidi62]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point.

Politics HAS become a profession. You work in politics for years, make 6 figures per year, then retire to the lecture circuit, or work for one of your supporting corporations as a lobbyist. Back when this country was first founded, politics was a calling, a sacrifice. Representatives were lawyers, farmers, merchants, doctors. A couple months out of the year they would give up their time(and therefore their money) to go to the capital and legislate. But politics was not how they made their living. But we've gotten away from this. People no longer see public service as a sacrifice. They see it as a tool for personal enrichment, a way to gain power for their family, and(this is the worst part) a means to an end. That end is power and influence, both while in office and once out of it.

Basically, it's not the system that is broken. It is the people within it.

Re:Exasperating

[Black Parrot]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days?

Was there ever a Good Old Days when it was different?

Much as I like the idea of representative democracy, it comes with the unavoidable price tag of being ruled by politicians.

(An Enlightened Absolute Monarch would get the job done, but the 'Enlightened' requirement makes them hard to come by. Unenlightened Absolute Monarchs are a dime a dozen, but who wants to be governed by one?)

Re:Exasperating

[Anonymous Coward]

Some things you need to understand about American politics and politicians, regardless of party, with a few minor exceptions:

1. Driving as many wedges as they can between groups of common people(the working class) so they can't/won't consolidate into a unified voice of "change".
2. Funneling as much power and money, as quickly as they can, into the hands of those who already have almost all the power and money already.

Re:Exasperating

[BJ_Covert_Action]

That's okay, there are probably issues that you care about that I don't give a fuck about either, because, in my opinion, they are probably just nerd issues. ;)

Re:Exasperating

[davek]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point. They never, ever seem capable of doing anything useful, or beneficial for the citizens of this country anymore. It's exhausting.

I believe the founders made it this way on purpose. Those who designed this country knew well of the dangers of concentrated (i.e. "effective") power. They instead designed a completely unique government, with lots of checks and balances, that grinds along very slowly and is largely ineffective. You might see it as being a group of "professional trolls," but I see it as a brilliantly designed buffer against tyranny. Leave the real heavy lifting to the states or municipalities, who can actually respond directly to the needs of the people.

So I say: let the trolls troll. Sometimes there's a good political theater to be had. It's when the feds actually become capable of "doing anything useful" (such as nationalizing 11% of the US economy in one bill) that I start to get nervous.

As the saying goes, America has the worst system of government out there... except for all the others.

Re:Exasperating

[geminidomino]

So you've said half a dozen times in as many threads. We get it. You're clueless and you don't know WTF you're on about. So go ahead and hit the "back" button and go play in idle while the big-boy nerds "whine about our non-issue"

Re:Exasperating

[sdguero]

I hear ya. Personally I feel little obligation to our country anymore. Seems like its at the point now where elitist greed and corporatism have deemed that having an entire country of middle class "haves" isn't sustainable. The "have nots" now must reside inside US (vs just in undeveloped parts of the world) as the middle class drops away into oblivion. I propose saving your money somewhere safe, moving to the third world and doing your thing there. Sure its a little more dangerous, but the standard of living is at least comparable, the people are more friendly, and its not nearly as frustrating. The ex-pats I have met in Central America seem happier on average than people still in the USA. As satellite technology and high speed interconnects to poorer nations improves, its becoming easier every year to work remotely too. I don't know if you can tell, but I've been thinking pretty seriously about this for a while now...

Re:Exasperating

[BJ_Covert_Action]

But that's the rub isn't it? The system was designed to make the federal government inefficient, but all it seems to have done is resulted in a system that is efficient at fucking us over. The Congress critters never seem to fight each other to a standstill on any particular issue in a good way. Rather, when they do come together to pass something, we, the citizenry get royally boned. They rest of the time they just get to play around in their yachts.

I'm not tired of the fact that the government is inefficient. I am tired of the fact that it seems to be increasing in it's efficiency at screwing over the rest of us.

Re:Exasperating

[Starvingboy]

Seconded. And the more I learn about politics, the worse it becomes.

Re:Exasperating

[geminidomino]

I think you forgot to add "What are you hiding from?" and "You're pathetic."

Re:Exasperating

[Nick_13ro]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point.

Politics HAS become a profession. You work in politics for years, make 6 figures per year, then retire to the lecture circuit, or work for one of your supporting corporations as a lobbyist. Back when this country was first founded, politics was a calling, a sacrifice. Representatives were lawyers, farmers, merchants, doctors. A couple months out of the year they would give up their time(and therefore their money) to go to the capital and legislate. But politics was not how they made their living. But we've gotten away from this. People no longer see public service as a sacrifice. They see it as a tool for personal enrichment, a way to gain power for their family, and(this is the worst part) a means to an end. That end is power and influence, both while in office and once out of it.

Basically, it's not the system that is broken. It is the people within it.

A system that doesn't account for human nature IS broken. There are plenty of people that proclaim the superiority of "democracy" over monarchy. But a monarch has a vested interest in his country's prosperity: the country is basically his property, his domain. The only interest elected representatives have is to sell their country to the highest bidder and so the place is run into the ground for the benefit of outside interests. So tell me now where is that superiority of the republican system, cause a democracy it ain't ? From my perspective, you can only judge a political system by how it actually works, not by the theory it proclaims. There are monarchies that survived thousands of years while the current 200 year old republics seem destined to disappear shortly because they won't defend their countries interests. The roman republic collapsed when the rulers decided to cut costs by employing slaves on a massive scale competing free people out of business. That's exactly what's happening now: the rulers think they can replace well paid work in the west with slave labor in the east. Where does history tell you that will lead ? Oh and the roman empire after that collapsed because it thought it could tax the people to death to fund the army and still have a working economy necessary to keep funding that army. Guess what ? They were wrong. And the nightmare republics today do nut just one of these 2 mistakes: of the roman republic or of the empire- they're doing them both at the same time, therefore they have no survival chance at all.

Re:Exasperating

[AK Marc]

I think you are lying. ISPs have been caught more than once purposefully harming their customer's connections with other content providers. Asserting that it is not an issue is asserting that ISPs abusing their monopoly to harm competitors, as has already happened, is acceptable. I think you care, one way or the other, and that you take the pro-monopoly position of "it doesn't matter" as a cop out for not actually stating your opinion. After all, if you actually didn't care, you wouldn't have such a hard-on for finding every article about it to demonstrate your lack of interest by demonstrating interest in so many posts.

Of course, you could just be insane and go massively out of your way to profess disinterest as the result of a mental illness. But a sane person who actually didn't care wouldn't track the issue so closely to announce the disinterest.

Re:Exasperating

[Tom]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days?

You think it's any different elsewhere? I live in Germany. I can not name one top-level politician whom I would grant any competence whatsoever. I don't know how it happened, but we have a government that is so bad at everything, I am very, very certain that if you replaced them all by people randomly picked from the street, those would do better.

There was a very good commentary on the middle-east uprisings these days. It basically said that those guys are smarter than us, and if we had any brains, we would join them and kick out our governments, for they aren't any better than the dictators that are being toppled now.

When the demos against the government - not just against any single particular point, but against this government itself, with its incompetence and corruption and self-serving and arrogance - start, you can count me in. And if they don't, I'll do my part to make them start.

It shouldn't exhaust you, it should prompt you to do something about it. And since our election system has been corrupted by the very same people, resistance (peaceful or armed, whatever rocks your boat) is the only option.

Re:I hope Comcast and friends bought dinner first.

[hedwards]

Does that then mean that we have goblins elected to office?

How does that follow?

[pavon]

So how is going from rules that are not strict enough to no rules at all a win? Especially during a congress that will not pass stricter rules? That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Re:How does that follow?

[pavon]

But that is not what the OP was arguing. I understand why people who are opposed to network neutrality regulations would consider this amendment to be a win. I don't understand why someone who supports it would think the same.

Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

I can't really get how so many Slashdotters are rooting for this bullshit legislation like it will be a cure all for the internet.

Ok, providers will be forced to treat torrent downloads as normal traffic, but once the government has that foothold on the internet, it will never let go and you can kiss privacy, anonimity and other basic stuff we take for granted in the now 'unregulated capitalist' internet.

People never learn when it comes to government intervention, it seems.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

Lol, I meant kiss it GOODBYE, not just kiss it.

Not that those very nice things about the internet don't deserve kissing.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[AHuxley]

you can kiss privacy, anonymity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
as for 'unregulated capitalist' aspects are very locked down http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/municipal-fiber-needs-more-fdr-localism-fewer-state-bans.ars

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[GSloop]

...and Monopoly Enforced NON net neutrality will be so very much better?

Ah, I see.
[Sarcasm]
They'll innovate! [Like innovate you out of all your cash, and screw you over.]
Ah, but those monopolies will screw you over SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE GOVERMENT CAN.

I can hardly wait.
[/sarcasm]

You already kissed privacy and anonimity and other basic stuff away.
Let me guess, you voted for the Shrub, and thought Gitmo, smoke-'em-out, torture and such were great things - but now when the massive economic interests of a few monopolies are at stake, you're all for "smaller government?"

[I have no respect for Obama on these issues either - he's been a serious failure on torture, accountability and don't get me started on "look forward, not backward" ... but Shrub was way worse.] I feel like ripping my eyes out when I see someone like you claim we need to protect our privacy by keeping the government out of the internet.

The freeking government was already IN the internet a LONG time ago, and virtually all "small government" republicans thought it was just fine since it was just going to target them brown evil-doer forriners.

The whole charade is incredible.
Do nothing while our civil liberties are eviscerated under Bush.
Then, in the very next breath, complain how our privacy will be ripped away if we support a bill that is going to prevent huge greedy interests from deciding what you get to access on the internet.

Talk about chutzpah.

It's like ... That fireman that's extinguishing the flames at your house - well he *might* take something from your garage - so rather than keeping a watch on the guy, be sure to shoot him and let the whole house burn down. That's your solution to the problem, huh? [And never mind that you actually watched him rob everything of value from one neighbors house and actually helped him carry off the stuff from another - and never said "boo" about it till now.]

It goes way beyond cutting off your nose to spite your face.

-Greg

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

Dude, thats my point. The little privacy and little 'unregulated' aspects that there are will be GONE.

When government starts intercepting traffic, it will do so in broad daylight and nobody will be able to do or say shit about it.

When it starts 'leveling the playfield' by breeding a myriad of regultations, AKA further stifling competition against established players, prices will go up, not down.

As H.L. Mencken once said "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

You could just have written "humongous straw men argument littered with ad hominem attacks" and saved your keyboard's life.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[BJ_Covert_Action]

The way I see it, it took the government break up of Ma Bell to keep a telco monopoly from fucking us over once. It will probably also take government intervention to keep the current telco conglomerates from fucking us over again.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

Well, 'the way you see it' just needs needs to see a little farther back.

The Federal Government gave that monopoly to the Bell System in 1934. Surprised?

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[risingfish]

I think you missed his point. Even before this Net Neutrality bill ruckus the government was monitoring traffic so in that respect it doesn't change anything. But more importantly it doesn't give the government more control, it states that the ISP cannot prefer one site's traffic or another. The argument that this stifles competition is mind boggling to me. If you allow them to pick and choose traffic, and can 100% guarantee you that competition will be stifled. And don't forget, they didn't build the infrastructure on their own. The telecoms have taken in billions of dollars of tax payer subsidies and land to build it out, and as such I feel we as tax payers have a right to regulate how they run their lines.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

I think you missed his point. Even before this Net Neutrality bill ruckus the government was monitoring traffic so in that respect it doesn't change anything. But more importantly it doesn't give the government more control, it states that the ISP cannot prefer one site's traffic or another.

Dude, you're asking them to legislate. That they will do. To think that all they're gonna do is say 'ok, guys, treat every packet as equal, please' is naive to the extreme.

The argument that this stifles competition is mind boggling to me.

The fact that someone would be mind boggled by it in this day and age is mind boggling to ME. Every piece of regulation written in any democratic country in the world is littered with little bits of law that were BOUGHT by corporate interests to benefit them or hurt competitors one way or another.

That is how it works in the real world of politics.

The argument that this stifles competition is mind boggling to me. If you allow them to pick and choose traffic, and can 100% guarantee you that competition will be stifled.

No you can't guarantee that. If they want to pick and choose traffic, thats their choice. Now, if the market for people who wants unrestricted traffic is big enough, all it takes is for ONE competitor to sell an unthrottled monthly plan to win all those customers.

Unfortunately, the kind of user that downloads 500GB very month are a minority. I'm not dissing or trying some underhanded trick to denigrate those users, I'm a heavy user myself. I just don't feel I'm entitled to use government force to get things my way.

And don't forget, they didn't build the infrastructure on their own. The telecoms have taken in billions of dollars of tax payer subsidies and land to build it out, and as such I feel we as tax payers have a right to regulate how they run their lines.

I dont forget that part, friend. But the tax payers won't regulate shit. The corporate interests that bid higher for congressmen will do the regulating, as is the way in America for the last hundred years.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

I do seriously believe what I just wrote. You know why I won't look up net neutrality? Cause what I will read will be beautiful intentions, not anything that will actually happen in real life.

Central banks are sold on the premise that they'll 'keep prices stable and the currency's purchasing power', FDA-like entities are sold on 'keeping people safe from unsafe drugs and foods'. Do these things happen? Ask the thousands of americans that might be alive today had not some dumb ass bureaucrat with all the wrong incentives in the world decided that beta-blockers were too dangeorus or anyone stupid enough to stuff dollars under their mattress.

As to the concerns you voiced, has ANY service provider done this? Do you honestly think any service provider would be CRAZY to do this?

Nobody would pay for an ISP that charges for your Skype, WoW, MSN and League of Legends packets separately.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[spitzak]

Unfortunately, the kind of user that downloads 500GB very month are a minority.

This is not for those users. Under Net Neutrality those users will pay more (since charges will have to be per-byte in order for ISPs to be able to make a profit and not suffer the tragedy of the commons).

Of course lying and trying to make it sound like Net Neutrality is wanted by EEEVIL pirates!!!! is always a good way to make a bogus argument.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[spitzak]

Nobody would pay for an ISP that charges for your Skype, WoW, MSN and League of Legends packets separately.

My god it appears the opponents of NN are completely clueless, or quite willing to lie.

The ISP won't charge you for using Skype/WoW/MSN. They will charge Skype, Wow, MSN. You are claiming the end users will see "oh to get Skype I pay the ISP $N". That is not what is going to happen. What they will see is "Skype does not work anymore, so I have to use Comcast's normal phone service. But Comcast is just so nice, in this letter they are offering the first month free to apologize for being unable to get Skype to agree with their quite reasonable and competitive network access fee!"

There is an argument that the regulation is going to be excessively complex and filled with loopholes and granting favors to companies against the stated purpose. This is by far the only convincing argument against NN I have seen

Blatent lying about what it is trying to do or prevent is not the way to argue about it, however.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

Of course lying and trying to make it sound like Net Neutrality is wanted by EEEVIL pirates!!!! is always a good way to make a bogus argument.

Ok, you must be referring to the part you quoted. Here's the rest: " (...) I'm not dissing or trying some underhanded trick to denigrate those users, I'm a heavy user myself. I just don't feel I'm entitled to use government force to get things my way."

Well, I guess we have established that your are an intellectually dishonest prick or a lazy ass who stops where wants in the article, unable to control his urge to hit Submit and feel that holier-than-thou righteousness as soon as possible.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

I do not want that. I would never pay an ISP that charged me in that manner.

Me and all the consumers in the market, incidentally, which is why no ISP has ever tried to pull that, and no one ever will.

I'm sorry that you swallow whole bits of FUD spouted by government hacks and corporate shills who can't wait for the opportunity to pass some *insert nice name here* legislation upon which to scribble all sorts of ways to, respectively, fuck with your privacy even more and put into law many more tidbits of corporate welfare.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[AK Marc]

Dude, you're asking them to legislate.

Dude, you are asserting that if you don't ask for legislation, the government won't pass any.

To think that all they're gonna do is say 'ok, guys, treat every packet as equal, please' is naive to the extreme.

To assert that if you don't ask them to do anything that they'll accidentally do what you want is 1,000 times more naive.

You are exactly what you are accusing others of, but more so. Try looking in a mirror and you'll see what you complain about most. A naive punk who doesn't understand the system at all.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[AK Marc]

You could just have written "humongous straw men argument littered with ad hominem attacks" and saved your keyboard's life.

Wait, I'm not clear on that, are you referring to your original post, his reply, or both?

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[AK Marc]

No, I'm not surprised. And it was the best thing for the US at that time. Surprised?

The issue was that the monopoly granted was abused later via "vertical integration." The same as Standard Oil. It wasn't the oil monopoly, as much as the vertical integration that got them the profits and got them into trouble with the government.

If AT&T had held only a monopoly in what they were given the monopoly in, then they would likely never have been broken up. Instead, they abused the monopoly and managed to lie to congress a few times in there too, which they don't like so much.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[marco.antonio.costa]

No, I'm not surprised. And it was the best thing for the US at that time. Surprised?

Oh well, if you say so. Ok, I'm convinced.

The issue was that the monopoly granted was abused later via "vertical integration." The same as Standard Oil. It wasn't the oil monopoly, as much as the vertical integration that got them the profits and got them into trouble with the government.

Oh, so now it wasn't a monopoly, it was the 'vertical integration'. I see...

Friend, Standard Oil got in trouble with the government because their competitors bid higher for political action against them. Simple as that. The consumers themselves were mighty pleased.

Re:Gov't enforced net neutrality will suck

[AK Marc]

Oh, so are you changing your story? You claimed it was the free market that took them down, now you are asserting that the government did indeed do it as I asserted, agreeing with me and contradicting yourself. You just pretend it was somehow related to the free market because the competitors paid the government to do it. And that's somehow an an argument that the "free market" (which involves no bribes, no unfair competition, and no government interference) broke the monopoly, when you didn't mention competition at all for the breaking of the monopoly.

A form of mental illness

[ThatsNotPudding]

believing that monopolies and soulless corporations can make things better. I wish Jebus would come back; his first order of business would be gutting all these scumbags like fish.

Re:A form of mental illness

[Black Parrot]

believing that monopolies and soulless corporations can make things better. I wish Jebus would come back; his first order of business would be gutting all these scumbags like fish.

Talk about fucked-up priorities... My first order of business would be to spank all the pretty girls who've misbehaved.

Re:A form of mental illness

[marco.antonio.costa]

believing that the soulless government monopoly of force can do the same is another form.

Re:A form of mental illness

[AK Marc]

There is a government monopoly in all locations on earth. To pretend that putting your head in the sand will improve your representation in your particular local government monopoly is even worse insanity. Given no restrictions, corporations will rape everyone. Having some governmental restrictions on the corporate mobs is apparently evil, based on your comments. Apparently you are the worst kind of libertarian - the kind that believes that people should have the right to abuse others. After all, that's all a corporation is for these days, a shield of liability for scoundrels looking to harm others.

Re:A form of mental illness

[marco.antonio.costa]

Given no restrictions, corporations will rape everyone.

Given no restrictions, you might rape everyone. Thats what we have property rights, contracts, courts and etcetera, for!

Having some governmental restrictions on the corporate mobs is apparently evil, based on your comments.

I am dumbfounded. Do you think bills come out of congress restricting corporations or benefiting the well connected ones in the detriment of everyone else? Are you that naive? Do you think the government will give you whatever the hell you call 'net neutrality'?

Apparently you are the worst kind of libertarian - the kind that believes that people should have the right to abuse others. After all, that's all a corporation is for these days, a shield of liability for scoundrels looking to harm others.

Yes... you got me. I believe people should have the right to abuse others. You saw thru my mask. I am evil incarnate and you are a good person standing for peace, love and a rainbow covered world. *sigh*

Re:A form of mental illness

[AK Marc]

Given no restrictions, you might rape everyone.

There is a difference between "will" and "could" (or as you put it, "might"). That you don't grasp language enough to see the difference indicates that you should head back to elementary school. Call us when you can tell the difference.

I am dumbfounded. Do you think bills come out of congress restricting corporations or benefiting the well connected ones in the detriment of everyone else?

There are very few bills that come out restricting corporations, but plenty that come out targeting specific corporations, industries, or geographical areas for special assistance above all others. Or have you never heard the word "pork"?

Do you think the government will give you whatever the hell you call 'net neutrality'?

I think that the chances will be higher of getting it if I ask than if I keep quiet and let the corporations ask for whatever they want. Or are you asserting that keeping quiet has a larger chance or resulting in what you want than actually telling someone what you want?

Rule of thumb for Congress for next 2+ years

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst. Slashdot, I would like to tell you the secret to understanding everything congress will do in the next 2 years, possibly more.

Nothing will happen.

Now, I know you're thinking Congress huffs and puffs and doesn't really do much for You the People in a typical session. But this time I mean it. Even less will happen. Nothing! Even when it comes to scratching the backs of big corporate donors, very little of it will actually happen. It's been trending this way for a few years, but the rate at which nothing happens has been rapidly accelerating with each passing year.

Seriously. What happens in the House is meaningless. And they know it. It's total gridlock. The plan on both sides (though the Republicans are most responsible for the current state of affairs) is to just do nothing for 2 years and be in permanent election mode. You'll hear crap about spending and abortions and unions and net neutrality and god knows what else. But nothing serious will happen. When they're confronted with anything of any substance, they'll say it should wait for the next election. In perpetuity.

And again, it's been trending this way for a long time... But man, that old cliche has never been truer than it is now. 2012 will likely be even more depressing.

In the meantime, Slashdot.... Please don't bother sensationalizing the things congress is claiming to do. It only encourages them. It's all meant to plant news headlines like this one, for permanent election mode.

Funding for what exactly?

[MacGyver2210]

I don't understand how it requires significant funding to write a set of rules. Is this money used to pay people for their time writing the legislature? I was under the impression that this was exactly what the Senators and Representatives in the government are paid for already...

Perhaps for once politicians could do something that benefits someone other than themselves? Nah, guess that's asking too much.

Re:Funding for what exactly?

[Monchanger]

In a word: Enforcement.

The FCC is part of the "executive branch". Congressmen are the "legislative branch". Those are two different things with two different but complementing jobs.

The FCC isn't just there to compose regulation (not the same as legislation) and nicely ask Comcast and Time Warner to comply. It's there to monitor them and smack them on the nose when they don't, including pursuing violators all the way up to SCOTUS. It also must make sure citizens know our rights and have the ability to submit complaints when we believe we are being wronged. Ever submit a complaint about telemarketers calling you despite being on the do-not-call registry or have AT&T put fake charges on your bill? Someone has to be payed to process that complaint.

Perhaps for once voters could understand something about their government instead of just screwing it up with random kneejerk opinions?

"Nah, guess that's asking too much."

Perhaps content providers need to band together?

[FriendlyPrimate]

We all know the reason why ISPs are against net neutrality is so that the Time Warner Cables and Comcasts of the world can kill off the competition like Netflix and Vonage. And the Netflixes of the world are pretty much powerless to do anything about it. What are they going to do? A boycott from a single content provider is not going to be noticed my many.

However, if the proponents of net neutrality (i.e. Google, Vonage, Yahoo, Microsoft) formed a NATO-like pact, they could ALL boycott any ISP found to be breaking net neutrality against any one of them.

A solution!

[Joe U]

Why not wait until there's a real problem before bringing the force of a corrupt and inept bureaucracy to bear?

So, an ounce of prevention is a waste of time?

I'll make a deal: First, open up EVERY right of way, roadway, and utility access in every city and town in the US to any ISP that wants access. Second, open up every frequency for wireless access to everyone. Then you can kill net neutrality.

That would mean a chaotic mess of wires and non stop opening up of roadbeds to lay and fix cables. You won't be able to drive or walk down any city street. It would also stop cell phones and GPS's from working.

Communication infrastructure is a limited resource. Limited resources must be regulated properly or they will be abused. Phone and Cable companies are granted access to this limited resource to put their own cables and run their own cell towers to benefit my life first, not theirs. They have a grant from the people to do business, and they either follow our rules or they lose access.

Re:A solution!

[RightSaidFred99]

What are we preventing, exactly? That some big ISP might charge some big media company extra money? That is hypothetically a horrible thing for that hypothetical big media company, it hypothetically brings tears to my eyes!

I'm not a big-L Libertarian, whom 90% of Slashdot hates but 90% thinks are the majority here. I've got libertarian leanings but I'm all for government in the public interest when there's a compelling reason. Something that may happen, or even some money changing hands is not a compelling reason to involve our inept government in the Internet. We spent the 90's trying to keep their hands off, now people are crying that they're not charging in headlong - but I'm sure _this time_ they'll only do a little beneficial regulation, amirite?

Slashdot's bevy of dweebs can mod me down all they like, it doesn't strengthen their position and it doesn't make anyone against NN some Republican in the back pocket of the ISPs any more than being pro NN makes someone a pathetic shill for Google/YouTube or Netflix.

Re:A solution!

[Imrik]

The big media companies aren't the only ones who will be charged, having to pay fees to all the ISPs that you want to carry your content would be a huge barrier for entry into internet commerce.

Re:A solution!

[Joe U]

What are we preventing, exactly?
That some big ISP might charge some big media company extra money?

Or that some big ISP might charge some small company extra money.

Or Bloggers.

Or Hobbyists.

Or their end users if they want access to sites not on the approved peer list.

But of course, you could always go to another ISP, right? Oh no... only the Cable and Telcos have high speed access, and they both seem to have the same prices and problems.

Well, you could always run your own ISP and put your own cables in... oh no, you can't, because they have the only contracts with the city to lay cables.

Wireless! yes, you can run a wISP! and...oh, no open frequencies?

Well, there's always dial up, because nothing is better than 56k, oh they're preventing that? 33, no? 28.8.. got it. 28.8, and you get to pay the phone company per minute for your call.

Yay! Freedom!

I don't think that they care

[Presto Vivace]

How on earth could these people know enough to make such a complex decision in such a short period of time? It's not possible. Most of them don't know the slightest thing about the internet, how it works, and what drives it. It baffles me to see them making such a statement. I don't imagine that they care. I think that live in a world of their own creation and that they are engaged in some sort of weird Leninist tactic of "heightening the contradictions" to make the country ungovernable. Sadly, it seems to working. I don't pretend to understand it.

Re:local monopolies

[markhb]

(Note: this note has a USA context; YMMV if you live elsewhere). I used to be on a local Cable TV committee, and I've read some franchise agreements. I suggest that you obtain a copy of your town's from either the town office or cable company, and see if it's actually exclusive. Odds are, it will say "non-exclusive" in the initial grant-of-franchise language. Odds also are, you don't have more than one non-broadcast TV provider to choose from unless you're in a last-mile-fiber area (e.g., FiOS) or on Manhattan island. The truth is that regardless of whether there is a de jure monopoly due to an exclusive franchise agreement, population densities are, in the vast majority of cases in this country, not great enough to support duplicate cable TV systems. This creates a de facto monopoly, but the other choice is conscripting a business to make a large and unprofitable investment (cf. Verizon in Northern New England), or else convincing the citizens of your town that it's important for them to pay for an overbuild as a public service. Good luck with that if the dominant providers aren't completely derelict.

Re:local monopolies

[Dredd13]

Or, as I said, to draft the agreement such that, if there is a de facto monopoly, that the incumbent has to give XX years of wholesale service to competitive providers.

Bullshit

[SmallFurryCreature]

What produced the Internet in the first place? The government or private industry?

Re:Bullshit

[Zancarius]

Why, Al Gore of course!

Silly Slashdot. ;)

Re:Bullshit

[Rockoon]

The Internet is only one such network. There were more than a few such networks in the 70's, 80's, and 90's (Telenet and Tymnet to name a few)

The fact that the Internet "won" is in no small part due to government cash building out the initial infrastructure making it hard to compete against. It wasnt because there was no competition, it was because they could not compete.

Re:Bullshit

[Eunuchswear]

Balls.

Telenet and Tymnnet were networks based on the protocols (X.25) designed by European state telecoms monopolies.

They failed in comparison with the internet because the protocols were crap. (Take my word for it - I've used, programmed for and implemented X.25. (I just disconnected my last X.25 line, after 28 years of continuous operation. What a relief)).

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan...

[RevWaldo]

Well! If that silly amendment made it through the House, a common-sense one like this should go through easy!

http://www.observer.com/2011/politics/nadler-tries-defund-war-afghanistan

West Side Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D - NY) led an effort by House Democrats yesterday to end the war in Afghanistan by stripping funding for military operations there.

The current budget earmarks $100 billion for the war there, despite the fact, as Nadler notes, there are believed to be fewer than 100 Al-Qaeda operatives. Nadler proposed cutting the budget figure to $10 billion, which is believed to be the amount necessary to safely withdraw troops there.

Right?

.

Re:I hope Comcast and friends bought dinner first.

[Coren22]

Yes

makes sense to me

[Chirs]

as long as the per-GB charges are reasonable, I have no problem with charging by the GB. However, up here in Canada the big ISPs want to charge 1-2 dollars/GB once you go over the monthly allocation. That's simply insane.

The most fair pricing model for me as an end-user is a regulated utility style. The company charges a flat rate per month for the privilege of being connected, and a per-GB charge for data. Both fees are regulated by the government to allow a reasonable amount of profit without raping the end-user.

Re:makes sense to me

[Rich0]

Agreed. Utilities are supposed to be boring. The ISP should be guaranteed a few percent profit margin, on a set of services specified by the community. Prices will be set based on reasonable and customary costs - and the government sets the prices.

I'd also ban vertical integration - nobody who broadcasts any content would be allowed to own a data line. The lines should be spun off into a company that just runs pipes, period.

The content providers are then completely free of regulation and can sell consumers anything they can convince the consumers to buy. The consumers get one bill from their cable TV provider, and another bill for the number of GB of data that they streamed from the company running the wire.

Re:Keep the government out of the Internet

[Viewsonic]

Why not? The internet was initially created by our military, of which the tax payers of this country fund. The Internet is the tax payers medium, and our reps should be the ones listening to us. If businesses want to play on our property, they need to follow our rules. It's pretty simple. If they don't want an open internet, they can go ahead and spend money developing their own private network, get ISPs to start allowing people onto it.

Re:Where are the new jobs?

[Antisyzygy]

Well, when you cut taxes on the wealthy, and then keep spending money, the poor end up having to pay for it. This is precisely what is happening. The Democrats and Republicans are both doing it. I suspect its meant to get the politicians and their friends as wealthy as possible before the shit hits the fan. Im not sure what is actually going to happen, maybe another war, a depression or maybe a small revolution (Texas keeps talking about succession, I know I live in Texas), but something is going to happen that isnt good for the average American.

The Government should not control the Internet

[DrStrange66]

Excellent news. I support Net Neutrality but I do not support the FCCs control over the internet. Why should the FCC have this power? This is just a way for the government to trick the people into thinking that it's okay for the government to control the internet. Next thing you know there is internet IDs, user tracking, content monitoring, censorship, fairness doctrines, and so on. Then the people say... wait who gave the government the power to regulate the internet? Oh... oops we did by supporting the governments order of net neutrality.

Time again to let you congressmen know

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Email and call your congressmen (woman) and let them know what your feelings are. They obviously are looking out for the moneyed interests and don't have the long view about what the effect on information flow will be. Or worse yet, they know and they want a stratified price structure, so those that can afford it get the good seats and the free Champagne, while the rest of us ride in the tail and can't use their lavatories, even if they are not in use.

Silly Republican Politicians

[skyraker]

Innovation stems from competition. By preventing net-neutrality, you kill competition, as only those who have the big bucks will be easily accessible. I like Google, but are sites like Slashdot going to pay ISPs a boatload of money to ensure they can keep a decent bandwidth? Not a fat chance in hell! Goodbye competition, goodbye innovation, hello still zero regulation of the large ISPs (Time Warner, Comcast, etc).

Need to Read FCC Rules

[joeboomer628]

The FCC's net neutrality rules were an attempt to circumvent congress and a power grab by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. It would have allowed the cable companies to package internet the way they now package TV (Are you happy with your 200 channels of infomercials?). This was opposed by many people from both parties not just republicans. Even Sen Al Franken (D) was very critical of these FCC rules. This has nothing to do with the net neutrality that opposes govt controls and censorship.

Sender pays for transit

[tepples]

The ones who are "using" (as in "consuming") the bandwidth are the ISPs' USERS

As I understand it, when an ISP buys transit from another ISP, it's on a sender-pays basis, just like with voice and SMS in Europe. YouTube and Netflix are primarily senders; once playback has started, most of what they receive is TCP ACKs. Residential ISPs such as Comcast are primarily receivers; once playback has started, most of what they send is TCP ACKs.

Re:Sender pays for transit

[AK Marc]

For backbone it used to be sender pays. For consumer ISPs, they pay for a pipe. When the ISP side of Comcast wants bandwidth, they have to buy pipes to get access for their users. When they then try to peer, they pretend to be a consumer ISP or a backbone provider, or a content hosting company, depending on which lie costs them less. But an ISP pays for the pipe to their users, and they pass any transit costs on to the users. The content producers do pay for their bandwidth as well.

Net neutrality is trying to keep the companies in the middle (including the end ISP) from extorting other companies by exploiting their monopoly. Net Neutrality should be a Justice Department thing, where anyone who does it and retains any customers is de facto an illegal monopoly. After all, who would choose to use a broken connection to the Internet when there were other options available?

Re:Sender pays for transit

[tepples]

I apologize: with respect to voice, I meant "initiator". It's just that in a packet-switched network, sender == initiator.

Comcast, Tata, and Level 3

[tepples]

If Google has a contract with ISP A and ISP A in turn has a contract with ISPs B and C, it's really not B and C's place to charge Google for that which is already covered by their contract with ISP A.

As I understand it, the dispute between Comcast (ISP B) and Netflix actually boils down to a price dispute between Comcast and Level 3 (ISP A). Comcast wants to keep as much traffic on the Tata link as possible because Tata offers better terms than Level 3, and the Tata link has ended up noticeably saturated.

Or you can do what Ron Paul and the Tea Party are

[Ungrounded Lightning]

So if you want change... Real change with 3rd parties, you need to change the constitution.

Or you can do what Ron Paul and the Tea Party are attempting: Get into the primary process and rehack one of the existing parties to be more to the public's liking.

This has the advantage of sidestepping the third-party penalty and giving access to the incumbent party's machinery.

Further, while the internals of the parties themselves are largely not the subject of law and a ruling faction can be refractory rather than going along with the new recruits, their efforts to spike a large INternal popular movement exposes this ossification and, if the movement is popular enough, can lead to "dynastic succession" in one of the party slots.

The last time the latter happened was when the Republicans replaced the Whigs over the issues surrounding the North-South conflict (INCLUDING slavery - the new Rs were against it). The former happens far more often (as when the currently in-power Neocon faction took over the Republican party after Reagan.)

Maybe "content producers" should charge the ISPs.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Imagine what would happen to an ISP that had tried to shake down Google (and other "providers") if Google (etc.) throttled their traffic to that ISP's addresses until the ISP threw in the towel (or went belly-up) - while telling all who listened that the ISP was the reason their results were glacial. B-)

Lets follow the Arab state revolutions in progress

[foolish_to_be_here]

Mod me down like always. May be it time we get our act together like the north African and mid east Arab states. Looks like we could learn something like them and "SPEAK UP". We live in a democracy, yet we sit on our couches.

Words have a whole new meaning, apparently

[mykos]

Walden and other critics of the FCC's net-neutrality order argue it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband.

So in today's vernacular, "innovation" equates to "open season on consumers", and "investment in broadband" equates to "open season on consumers". Got it.

Sometimes..

[wanax]

There were also times in our country's history when such grand investments were politically out of reach. The Land Grant College Act and the Transcontinental railroad were only passed after the departure of the southern states during the Civil War. Rural electrification, despite being shown feasible in 1923, was part of the New Deal.

But even knowing that, it really does annoy me is that we currently have a lot of unemployed from the construction sector. Our infrastructure, according to the American Assc of Civil Engineers is a D. We can borrow money long term (30 year bonds) at about 4.7%, which is about where it was when we decided to build the Interstate system (debt/GDP is also similar). This is the most fiscally favorable time to get our infrastructure back into shape in the last 50 years.

And instead of taking the opportunity to catch up on the repair bill, we have a Republican congress screaming bloody murder about rounding errors in 12% of the budget weeks after blessing a tax cut of similar size, while Obama proposes cutting Pell grants and loans to students pursuing graduate degrees weeks after declaring we're in an education race.

The System is Broken

[Phoenix666]

It has been so thoroughly gamed by our real rulers that it doesn't matter which party is elected. The United States Constitution 1.0 worked OK for the first 200 years. Now it has become clear that there are flaws that monied interests have worked very hard to exploit.

So we need a complete reset. A second constitutional convention to which no elected official above the local level (or in the case of New York or LA, above the neighborhood level) or person with a net worth of more than $1 million is invited to participate. We fix the flaws, turn out Constitution 2.0, and put it to a plebecite. We run new elections for the new government, and simply stop paying taxes to the old one. We de-fund it.

Revolution achieved.

The Slashdot Glibertarian response

[Anonymous Coward]

I owe the government nothing for it has given absolutely nothing to me. Taxes are slavery and I don't want my money going to the projects so that Shaquista (or whatever her fake name is) and her brood can surf porn while young bucks eat steaks and drive Cadillacs.

Besides, I've got everything *I* need already and I got it all by myself without any help. Time to pull up the ladder. After all, I know what poverty is, I was on welfare and did anyone help me? No! I got to where I am today as an unemployed engineer through the sheer magnitude of my Galtian genius.

Time to cut off the gravy train. If anything, we should be burning down infrastructure.

Re:Keep the government out of the Internet

[jimmy_dean]

Why not? The internet was initially created by our military, of which the tax payers of this country fund. The Internet is the tax payers medium, and our reps should be the ones listening to us. If businesses want to play on our property, they need to follow our rules. It's pretty simple. If they don't want an open internet, they can go ahead and spend money developing their own private network, get ISPs to start allowing people onto it.

If you truly feel like the government represents "us" you are pretty naive. Why do so many people romanticize the government? It's a selfish, money-sucking, cold-hearted beast. The only thing that represents you is yourself and those that you immediately know and trust around you. How many times have you sat down one-on-one with the presiden? How about your senators, representatives? Do I hear a zero? How can you trust them!? They've only proven that they want to get re-elected and obtain more power. They want to take more of your hard earned money and spend it in ways that you don't agree with. Here's a novel idea, let's keep our money and save or spend it in the way we want to, not in the way politicians want to.

Re:Keep the government out of the Internet

[jimmy_dean]

Will you be saying that when you create a website that Verizon customers cannot access unless they pay Verizon a premium? You would really applaud Verizon for acting as the toll booth of the internet keeping potential customers away from you? I don't think you understand the concept.

I hear this argument all the time. First, when has this happened. Second, even if it has, how often does this happen? Third, if Verizon created a website with such an amazing feature that people wanted to go there but they can't unless they're Verizon customers, who cares!? Create your own site in competition to Verizon and let everyone else on it. It's exactly what Microsoft did to Netscape. Netscape made a profit selling web browsers, Microsoft said we'll give it away for free. The effect was that web adoption increased many many times and everyone was better off. I don't think that you understand the concept. What are you going to do when the government starts outlawing certain websites which should fall under the freedom of speech but they say too bad? What then? Where are you going to get a politician who will stand up against that? You won't and the downward spiral of control and power grabbing will continue. At least with a company owning something you get an alternative. With the government, you get one thing, even if it's horrible.

The horror

[sznupi]

And regarding the country of one major precursor...the horror, THE HORROR!

Actually...

[Kopachris]

Actually, Switzerland is a direct democracy. In some cantons, voting is even compulsory. Any citizen can call a referendum on any law. In addition, parties aren't nearly as strong as they are in the US. If there ever was a "real" democracy on this earth, I think that'd be it.

Net-neutrality has such a nice sound to it

[ThinkTwice]

It is a pity that such a nice sounding phrase is a code phrase for government control of the internet. Why do some people want the government to control every facit of their lives?

Re:Or you can do what Ron Paul and the Tea Party a

[coaxial]

The "Tea Party" is nothing more than the traditional socially conservative and upward redistributionist Republican base.