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Verizon Challenges FCC's Net Neutrality Rules
GovTechGuy writes "Verizon filed an appeal on Friday asking a federal court to strike down the FCC's net neutrality rules, which are scheduled to take effect on November 20. A federal judge tossed the FCC's previous attempt at enforcing net neutrality against Comcast last May, and more legal challenges are expected in the coming days."
You have to understand that Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the 24hour corporate spin machine has told them that NN is all about limiting what you can say on the internet. They liken it to the Fairness Doctrine, the now-dead bill that once required broadcasters to give equal time to liberal and conservative viewpoints and, ironically. the same law Limbaugh used to get on the air, a law that once made sense when there was a scarcity of broadcasting outlets.
Net Neutrality works the other way. We now have limitless outlets for expressing our views on the Internet, but corporations need scarcity in order to make money. So they seek to throttle the bandwidth, creating an artificial scarcity on their product and drive its value up. Without Net Neutrality, corporations have the right to discriminate against speech they don't like or companies they are in competition with. It's the exact opposite of Free Speech, but the conservative media have convinced their followers that black is white and that this bill is double-plus bad for Free Speech.
Without Net Neutrality, the Internet risks falling into a communications war, bad for all Americans and bad for the Corporations who are arguing against it. I don't understand how the same ideology that argues so strongly for Free Trade around the world has taken such a strong stance against the same exact principle for the Internet.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
I'd just blame it on their pathological hate of any form of regulation. I'm sure a few of them would abolish the police and just give everyone guns for self-defence if they could.