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Verizon Claims Net Neutrality Violates Their Free Speech Rights
New submitter WickedLilMonkies writes "In a stretch of the meaning of 'free speech' that defies the most liberal interpretation, Verizon defends throttling your data speed."
In its continuing case to strike down the FCC net neutrality regulations, Verizon is arguing that Congress has not authorized the FCC to implement such regulations, and therefore the FCC is overstepping its regulatory bounds, but (from the article): "Verizon believes that even if Congress had authorized network neutrality regulations, those regulations would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment. 'Broadband networks are the modern-day microphone by which their owners [e.g. Verizon] engage in First Amendment speech,' Verizon writes." They are also arguing that "... the rules violate the Fifth Amendment's protections for private property rights. Verizon argues that the rules amount to 'government compulsion to turn over [network owners'] private property for use by others without compensation.'"
You're a company. The fact that any constitutional rights apply to you is because of dirty lawmaking. Kindly screw off. I *hope* you can only piss off the people so much before they realize "Hey, that's pretty dumb."
they do have free speech but their speech must not affect others' speech.
this is why neutrality is needed.
root@127.0.0.1
Violates our right to violate others free speech rights.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
You can taste the desperation in their arguments and it is the taste of victory for the man in the street.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
It's mine. You're just part of the network. If you make it your speech, you're responsible for it. I don't think you want that.
Corporations are nothing more than businesses granted a limited liability charter by We The People provided they abide by our rules and regulations -- including the net neutrality rule.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
Because if the internet is a microphone facilitates speech then it follows that the actions you perform would equate to your expression. Therefore, one would think that adding a fee to perform certain actions would run counter to free speech and actually be construed as a form of censorship or at least a violation of the 14th amendment since only those who could afford it would pay. Poll taxes were struck down for equal protection reasons similar to this.
...is "disingenuous", for nothing fits the term better than Verizon's twisted argument that a free and open Internet can somehow be an impediment to free speech. If it didn't come from corporate lawyers, it would be unbelievable.
Verizon needs to understand that they have used wireless spectrum (leased) and public right-of-ways to get their services to their customers. In exchange for this they should be expected to fall under some public oversight via regulation. If they do not agree with this then maybe these public resources should be turned over to someone who will.
They are basically saying the government cannot put limits on the sale of "microphones" because it is the sellers free speech, instead of what it is, a business transaction.
Next up, con-men, oh, that is what Verizon already is...
You don't have to turn your property over, you can just take it off the market entirely, and go do something else. Open the market up for competitors that want to deliver fair access.
I wish they'd fight this hard for protecting the privacy of their customers.
The last line is the worst: "Verizon argues that the rules amount to 'government compulsion to turn over [network owners'] private property for use by others without compensation."
In other words - handing over your private information to others would be OKAY if only Verizon got paid for it.
#faceplam :(
Perhaps Verizon shouldn't have buried their 'property' in my lawn.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
For the last f**king time... a company has no right to free speech. It's employees may have, but a company has not. :(
Okay... that was probably not for the last time
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
So, Verizon—you're claiming ownership of all the data, er, 'speech' that travels over your network? You do realize that also makes you *liable* for all of it, right? Way to shoulder responsibility there, big guy.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
At first I had a hard time swallowing the bit about Free Speech. I was going to point out that to employ their own metaphor, the First Amendment seems designed to protect the user of the microphone, not the microphone manufacturer. However, as I was explaining my position it seemed to me that an attack on microphone manufacturers could be used as a way to limit free speech, a sort of "loophole." Instead of going after the speakers, go after their means. Thus the spirit of the first amendment ought to protect both microphone manufacturers AND people who use microphones to express themselves.
I do agree with their fifth amendment case whole-heartedly however. Their lines, routers and servers are their own property. I think people who advocate government controlled Internet would be better served advocating for the nationalization of Internet infrastructure and services; government-run ISPs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the argument that the Internet "belongs to society" and is a "resource" and thus should not be "controlled by greedy corporations" ?
Part of the problem we have is that the infrastructure requires a lot of government involvement to be put in place to begin with. So government is already involved to a degree that allows them to pick favourites and penalizes people who don't play ball. The result is a lot of big players controlling the infrastructure without much competition. I would rather see government out of the Internet all together and lots of ISPs competing on their merits, without recourse to government favours and lobbying. Let the ones who want to throttle and place ads on web-sites die at the hands of the competitors who realize it makes better business sense to appeal to what their users want.
The problem I see with this argument is that there is no constitutional right to transmit in the RF spectrum. That's why a license (a permission to do something otherwise forbidden) is required. The FCC could simply say that any company that is granted a license to use any chunk of spectrum has agreed, as part of the license terms, to abide by FCC regulations.
So does Verizon have the right to prevent others from using their towers and infrastructure? Sure they do, they can just turn their transmitters off.
-
Verizon isn't for or against free speech. It is, however, sitting on an antiquidated nationwide infrastructure of oversubscribed, overutilized, and underdeveloped cell phone towers and backhauls that it has steadfastly refused to upgrade because it would impact quarterly profits. Now that other cell service providers (AT&T, Sprint, etc.) have been upgrading their networks for about two years, Verizon's data service is looking really stale and with new devices continuing to roll off the production line, and nobody with a hot new phone wanting to get exclusive with Verizon, their subscribers are starting to bail as their contracts expire.
So, like all american businesses do, they've decided to try their luck with the legal system, and hopes they'll give them some options to hide the stinking fetid data service behind aggressive QoS control, painfully limiting bandwidth caps, and Terms of Service that are printed in negative point fonts so as to not alert the customer that they're basically signing up for a two year contract with a guaranteed service level of 'zero'.
I wish people would stop thinking service providers give a damn about free speech... it's always been about the benjamins. It's like people who insist RIAA and the MPAA are behind bandwidth caps instead of aging infrastructure and short-term thinking. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Saying that Verizon (or any telecom company) has the right to throttle as a method of free speech is stretching it. It's like saying that a Megaphone HAS the right to free speech. In both situations the only commonality is each is a tool, to broadcast a message.
That said, if someone is abusing the network, is it not akin to someone abusing a megaphone or car stereo at ungodly hours?
Then the question is, what is "abusing the network" and who should be the police of that...
When I pay for an internet connection, I pay for the privilege of using your hypothetical microphone. This is also known as renting. You may own the microphone, but for the duration I've paid you to use it, you can't tell me what to say over it.
Broadband networks are the modern-day microphone by which their owners [e.g. Verizon] engage in First Amendment speech...
Seriously, to get from that analogy, to arguing that net neutrality violates their free speech rights... Well, OK, the analogy would not actually be that microphones themselves have 1st Amendment rights--it would be that the manufacturers of microphones have 1st amendment rights to monitor what buyers of their microphones are saying through them, and shut down the microphones that are being used for things they do not like. (And then defending that by arguing that they themselves also sometimes use their own microphones...)
Wow. Fucktards.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Unfortunately here in the US, corporations have more rights than people. I wondor how long it will be until they actually admit that businesses rule the country.
...so they should be able to do whatever they want with them. Allow traffic, throttle traffic, it's their property.
If you own a house, you can invite or exclude guests as you see fit.
Fuck you verizon. Thank god I live in an area where there is some competition and I can choose what ISP I want but I feel really bad for people that don't have a choice. I dumped them a long time ago because they wouldn't fix our phone service for months and then they expected everyone to buy FIOS.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Okey, they hold the microphone and they are the owner of whatever they recorded. So i wonder, could i sue them for libel, misrepresentation and in fact for not recording everything that i say, and even worst, for picking only selected phrases of my speech and thus causing me bodily harm (don't ROFL, i already did)???
Just my 2 cents.
I do agree with their fifth amendment case whole-heartedly however. Their lines, routers and servers are their own property. I think people who advocate government controlled Internet would be better served advocating for the nationalization of Internet infrastructure and services; government-run ISPs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the argument that the Internet "belongs to society" and is a "resource" and thus should not be "controlled by greedy corporations" ?
Internet access is no longer a luxury item -- something for discretionary spending. It is vital to operating a business and participating in the workforce. It is invaluable for education. It makes keeping in touch with far-flung family in friends easy. I would posit that internet access is a public utility like electricity. Verizon using business practices prohibited by so-called net-neutrality rules are akin to an electric company providing preferential electricity delivery (luckily, not really a thing in this country) for the users of devices made by companies that pay it a license fee on each refrigerator it sells.
That is clearly a ridiculous idea. So is providing a faster connection non-transparently to certain online content providers at the expense of speedy connections to the servers the rate-payers actually want to use...
Yes, the internet is a modern day microphone. But the network is not the microphone, it is the wire. The microphone is the content. Their argument supports exactly the opposite conclusion: Net netrality is required to protect the free speech rights of the people using the network.
-Jeremy
Isn't it interesting that a phone company doesn't see the telephone line as the closest equivalent. Then they would be arguing their common carrier status (which they don't want).
Of course a newspaper controls all content published, where as a telephone company has no controll.
Careful, someone's worldview is showing.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
If the company developed its network in an open and free marketplace it has a right to its property. A company is a person or group of people that risk their capital to create that network. However, most telecom networks were not developed in a truly free marketplace. Various government regulations, subsidies and monopolies allowed them to effectively dominate and/or monopolize access to the "free speech". If antitrust regulations had applied to telecom providers everyone would have more than one choice for accessing the network. Many of us have only one choice and this is NOT a free marketplace.
So, the question is: If you are granted a monopoly do you forfeit certain rights to your private property?
Actually, Romney said that.
The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. It is, by some measures, the most violent government that has ever existed. It has 6 times the percentage of its citizens in prison as European countries. The U.S. government has invaded or bombed at least 27 countries since the end of the 2nd World War. The U.S. financial system is so corrupt that many people feel it is not safe to invest.
sure, you can have your broadband "rights", how about 'we the people' permanently revoke the right to broadcast microwave radiation through our airwaves?
I'm a big fan of net neutrality but the way to go about it is through competition not through government fiat.
If people that buy internet access always have access to several different options then any ISP that behaves badly will lose customers.
Right now we have cable and phone line monopolies. This is why we have a problem. Allow any company to run cable or phone lines so long as they pay a pole fee which is set by the local city or county.
That will mean more cable is run everywhere and competition will increase. Large cities will see the biggest rise. Small towns either might not see anything or they might start their own local ISPs.
In any case, that is how you solve this problem. Not with an edict from washington.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The reason SCOTUS upheld free speech rights for corporations is that they are associations of people, and they inherit the free speech rights of their owners. I think that is sensible.
However, Verizon is a carrier; the content it carries is obviously not its own speech, nor does it have any business looking at it or modifying it. Hence, the first amendment simply has no bearing on them as a carrier.
because of Free Speech too, rightt?
Unbelievable.
There is no Free Speech implication in delivering a Service.
Every person has the right to free speech. But they can then be held accountable for that speech. Thus libel, slander, etc.
So congress introduced Common Carrier status, in which telecommunications companies could then be NOT held responsible for data that simply passes through their network.
Now let me get this straight, Verizon is trying to claim anything passing through their network is their free speech? This raises two problems for them.
First, if it is all their speech, then they can thus be held accountable for everything going through their network, as common carrier only applies to OTHERS speech going through them as a conduit. Meaning they can be held responsible for every libelous, slanderous, copyright-violating, child porn-downloading piece of data going through their network.
Second, this becomes straight out copyright violation. If I post something online, it is still copyright by me. Now Verizon is trying to claim it is THEIR free speech, not MINE. Essentially violating my original copyright by asserting their ownership of it because it happened to go through their network. It would be the equivalent of Barnes and Noble asserting copyright of any book on their shelves because it went through their store (by saying it is THEIR creation, not the original author's).
Both these arguments pretty much break down Verizon's free speech argument, without even delving into the 'corporations are people' argument. They would NEVER want either of these to be true, as it would open them up to massive amounts of civil and criminal charges. But if they are claiming that everything on their network is THEIR free speech, then one or both must be true, and they must then lose common carrier status.
And incidentally, they can't claim the whole private property rights either, because THEY are the ones letting people use the network, and THEY are connecting to peers specifically to allow the provider's content (youtube, microsoft.com, whatever) to get to the people who are paying them to use their network. You can't complain about people walking across your private property if you are charging them specifically TO walk across your private property. If they want to claim private property, they should then simply be not allowing people to access their network, or peering with other ISPs to allow traffic to flow through their network. Of course, that then means they have no customers and no business, but it would protect their 'private property.'
It's a pipe! There's nothing to do with the first amendment
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Your monopoly over all local telephone markets is hereby revoked, and they shall be open to competition from other companies desiring to provide service. Bet you wish you'd obeyed the net neutrality and common carrier rules.
Signed,
the Congress.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
... based the content or who is the sender, they should also be held criminally responsible for illegal content that travels over their wires, just as a newspaper would be liable if they published child pr0n.
Either you're a dumb data carrier who isn't responsible for the data being carried, or you're an active participant liable for what you transmit. Can't have it both ways, fools.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Rather than the microphone, Verizon is more appropriately positioned as the mixerboard that everyone plugs their microphone into. And they want to play mixerboard operator and have a say on how loud your microphone by playing judge in how important your message is.
Verizon really thinks that, being a microphone, they should be able to reduce the volume of people trying to speak through it? That's pretty much the definition of censorship, not free speech.
Y'know, I didn't really understand the net neutrality debate and how it related to constitutional rights before. I always thought it was just an issue of carriers wanting to get paid for the bandwidth used on the networks that they paid to install. But now, I thank you Verizon. I now understand the reason why net neutrality is necessary to free speech.
You truly are a microphone, Verizon. You are the tool that lets people speak to a crowd. But you should not have control over your own volume button. Whether they're too loud or too quiet or no one wants to listen, whether they want to talk all night or they're just tired of talking so much and want to stop, those are for the person using the microphone and their audience to decide. Not you.
"Verizon using business practices prohibited by so-called net-neutrality rules are akin to an electric company providing preferential electricity delivery (luckily, not really a thing in this country) for the users of devices made by companies that pay it a license fee on each refrigerator it sells.
That is clearly a ridiculous idea."
It might be a ridiculous idea but I don't see the problem with leaving companies free to do that if they want to.
Look, the reason people feel like they're "at the whim" of "greedy corporations" is precisely because those companies and corporations get to use the strong arm of government to get special favours and privileges at the expense of everyone else. I submit that people asking for more "government oversight" of any industry are advocating for their own idea of a worst-case-scenario. Zero alternatives, zero choice, zero freedom.
I understand the root cause of the internal paradox. It's the "profit motive" that people are adverse to. And they don't see government as having a profit motive. Yet most can probably name more politicians who have screwed over their constituents for a buck than CEOs, and in every single case of a CEO they've either broken the law (and by doing so have initiated violence against others one way or another) or have been very much in bed with government.
I genuinely believe that freedom demands a strict separation of economy and state for the exact same reasons as a separation of church and state: government dictating what you can think and/or believe in is no different government dictating with whom you can associate and trade with under what conditions. So as long as their is freedom of association then any and all regulation and control of the economy is unconstitutional, and if an interpretation of the commerce clause does mean the ability to apply modern-day regulations then it's a case of the constitution contradicting itself.
The constitution exists to protect individuals. And anyone who asks for anything in the name of "society" or the "greater good" needs to keep in mind that society is a collection of individuals. Anything done "for society" that harms one single individual is contradicting it's own stated goals.
If they want to be treated as people, make the CEOs personally liable for every piece of child porn and other filth that's delivered by their network and throw them in jail.
I probably should qualify the subject line. After citizen's united ruling ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission ), it was only a matter of time before companies started to demand 'live human' rights.
Maybe, if pushed hard enough, it would draw attention to this rather dangerous direction we seem so bent on following. I mean yeah, some people talk about it, but it is not part of the vernacular, like say 'obamacare'.
The problem as I see it, is in artificially created systems that create symptoms and issues and then additional systems are created to deal with those issues, but have their own side effects. Ad infinitum. Badly engineered systems will do that.
I am not sure what the perfect system would be. I am definitely not advocating for weird ass utopia, but some sort of equilibrium in that artificially designed system we call society and government, has be present, if it is to survive the test of time.
Then again, I am currently listening to lectures on ancient Rome, so my perception might be a little skewed.
I maintain that any court action to compel me to pay my Verizon bill is a violation of my free speech.
Verizon wireless' new Share Everything plans are also designed to challenge Network Neutrality. As the wireless phone providers continue to implement LTE, voice services will soon be just another part of your data stream rather than a separate service.
Anticipating this change, verizon's new phone plans all have unlimited voice calling included in a low cost base price price phone plan. Most of the costs associated with higher minute calling have been shifted to the data side such that your first GB of data will now cost $50.
After they have completed the transition to more expensive data plans, Verizon will next argue that net neutrality is bad for the customers because they might not be allowed to provide the free unlimited data for calling and texting. In reality though, they have just shifted the costs for unlimited voice into the lowest data plans, and have no intention of providing any free services.
The communications companies are fighting against the commodity nature of data delivery, buy requiring you to purchase extra services such as voice or media just to access basic data.
Honestly have no idea what your point with all this is (invoking church and state? WTF?), but I will respond to one of your notes:
It might be a ridiculous idea but I don't see the problem with leaving companies free to do that if they want to.
Like it or not, telecom companies generally have what amounts to a monopoly or at-best -- a shared duopoly. The consumer has little choice in who provides internet service to their home (usually just two choices). Under that circumstance, it seems a reasonable intervention by the government to impose minimum standards on the company's behavior to protect those who allow the government to rule in the first place.
Verizon better watch it. If the courts accepted the argument that broadband service is like a microphone, any subcribers to Verizon could sue and claim a violation of their free speech if Verizon throttles their speed. That is a truly slipper slope they are working on. Since you are locked in to their service via a contract, you do not have the ability to switch to another microphone. They own and control the microphone. Throttling back the speed could be construed as limiting your use of the microphone and therefore infringing on your, the individual's, excercise of free speech.
Suppose someone owns a newspaper. Are they required to publish any point of view anyone wants to express, using their newspaper as a channel for others, or do they have the "freedom of the press" right of editorial control over their own newspaper?
as a communications company (and a tier 1 operator) you 1 provide bandwidth at a given rate as per your contract with your customers 2 also provide other services
You should not be futzing with either and btw if a given customer has a given speed paid for then IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE FOR A GOOD AMOUNT OF TIME to actually get those speeds or you should prorate the customers bill until such a time as you can provide the speed paid for (so if a customer is paying for 5Mbps then say 40% of the time it should be possible otherwise they should be paying for what they are getting)
hint if you have W cap at the switchbox and Y customers at Z speed with V% of them pegging the pipe at any given time the math goes YVZ= W about 40% of the time (or better)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
You forget our supreme court is broken. They can find corporations are people and throw out votes and recently they privatized taxation. Don't expect them to make sense other than to bow to long term corporate interests.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
...of making sure I never become one of their customers
Verizon is the carrier, providing a network for others to use in the exchange of information. It is the info exchange that is speech, not the wire that carries it.
Playing World Police sucks
Other nations gets to wash their hands while we do the dirty work, even when it's stuff they'd otherwise do. And when we don't, we're criticized for inaction.
Meanwhile, we send our kids to die and spend trillions of citizen dollars, while the back seat drivers of the world get to sit at home and talk shit.
This is one of the few things I agreed with Ron Paul on. To hell with the hypocrites. It's time we took a break. Every soldier comes home. Cut our defense spending to 1/3rd, so we can still annihilate anyone if we need to. Cut foreign aid in half, because I'm tired of hearing that we bought people 500,000 vaccines from the wrong companies.
Then, next time everyone starts crying about hostile nations, atrocities somewhere or epidemics of curable disease, we say, "We're done with the police role. Do it yourselves for a change."
Then we criticize them for being so militaristic and spending their foreign aid dollars improperly while we enjoy the huge tax relief.
Maybe everything we do is speech! Punch somebody in the nose? Free speech! Rob a house? Free speech! ("It was performance art!" the alleged burglar testified.)
Broadband networks are the modern-day microphone by which their owners [e.g. Verizon] engage in First Amendment speech
Wouldn't web pages and services hosted on servers be the "microphones" and the broadband network itself is just a phone line or audio cable?
Or does the broadband network include the servers that deliver the content?
If the second ones the case then did Verizon somehow buy up all of the servers that I use their network to access?
IANAL, I'm just sayin' it seems like I'm accessing the "speech" of whoever produced the content and put it on a server somewhere, not the one that gives me access to the server, especially when I would have access to the same servers even if I used a different network.
Are they claiming rights over *MY* speech?
You're a company. The fact that any constitutional rights apply to you is because of dirty lawmaking.
They're a corporation, which is a legal fiction created by the government for the purposes of removing liability from actors. In return, the government may regulate them to its ends (they are government, in a specific form).
A company is any group of people working together, usually for business purposes. The government may not take their individual rights away.
The distinction is critical, so please don't use the two interchangeably.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Anything done "for society" that harms one single individual
So you are opposed to the Government locking up criminals? Clearly that harms that poor individual...
If Verizon is claiming their free speech is being violated, then they must be accepting responsibility for the content of that speech. IANAL, but I would think that Verizon would want to avoid being held accountable for content.
There is no "we" unless you are a war and weapons investor like the Bush and Cheney families. They would kill you if they decided it would make them more money.
You. Noun. Meaning person. If you're going to take on corporate personhood, it might help if you not refer to them as 'they', 'them', 'you', or other words which confer personhood. The word you are looking for is 'it'.
The plural of "it" is either "they" or "them" depending on if we're talking about the subject or object case. The words can refer not only to groups of people, but to any plural third-person noun, including animals, blocks of stone, or the words "they" and "them" themselves.
As for "you," it's the only non-possessive second-person pronoun in the whole language. You (*"generic you," wiki it) have to use "you" any time you (*generic again) are directly addressing something, even if the something is technically a non-human entity.
So thanks for the attempt at a grammar lesson, but modern and middle English don't work that way (not sure about old English).
Other nations gets to wash their hands while we do the dirty work, even when it's stuff they'd otherwise do.
Citation needed.
Cut foreign aid in half, because I'm tired of hearing that we bought people 500,000 vaccines from the wrong companies.
Then, next time everyone starts crying about hostile nations, atrocities somewhere or epidemics of curable disease, we say, "We're done with the police role. Do it yourselves for a change."
I find what you say funny because USA already gives about half the aid compared to other heavily industrialized nations.
You are aware that USA development aid is 0.21% of GNI, right? Sweden, Norway and Luxembourg top 1.00%, Denmark and the Netherlands top 0.80%, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland and UK top 0.50%, Switzerland 0.40%, Germany 0.39%, Canada 0.34%, Australia and Austria both at 0.32%... If you'd prefer to compare donations per capita, you'd not fare any better (Germany+UK+France exceed USA development aid by themselves though the population is a lot lower).
So, you think it should be cut to one fourth, then?
Verizon may own the cell towers, etc, but they do not own the spectrum. They lease that from the government and get exclusive use of it. It is only fair (and necessary) that the government regulates monopolies, especially ones that they create. Providing unthrottled speeds can be considered just a requirement for leasing the spectrum bands.
Phone companies emerged from monopolies and in many ways they still operate like they are monopolies. In virtually every other industry business strives to provide more service at a lower cost. Telecommunications is the only industry that constantly strives to deliver less service at a higher cost. That is why they need regulation. Otherwise we would be back to tin cans and string as an improvement to their service.
This is one of the few things I agreed with Ron Paul on. To hell with the hypocrites.
Rob Paul is a hypocrite. If you don't think he's flip-flopped, it's because you haven't paid attention.
Playing World Police sucks
Other nations gets to wash their hands while we do the dirty work, even when it's stuff they'd otherwise do. And when we don't, we're criticized for inaction.
Whose interest do you think the US military is serving?
Meanwhile, we send our kids to die
All volunteers, at present. Plus the mercenaries, which we prefer not to call mercenaries. Plus some non-citizens who are in the US armed forces as a path to citizenship.
and spend trillions of citizen dollars,
Yes, ordinary citizens pay for it. Rich people profit off of it.
This is one of the few things I agreed with Ron Paul on. To hell with the hypocrites. It's time we took a break. Every soldier comes home.
And Noam Chomsky...
Then, next time everyone starts crying about hostile nations, atrocities somewhere or epidemics of curable disease, we say, "We're done with the police role. Do it yourselves for a change."
We only do it when we think it's in certain people's best interest. (Where were the US armed forces during all the sub-Saharan genocides of the last few decades?)
I agree that we should slash military spending (or rather, roll it back slowly; a quick slash of the size we ought to perform would utterly wreck our economy). And that we should stay home and mind our own business, except in extreme cases, determined by noble principles. And that we should quit asking rank-and-file citizens to go kill and die for somebody's special interest.
Re-instituting the draft wouldn't be very popular, but it would force politicians to be more careful about which wars to fight. (Or at least there would be political consequences for bad choices.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I claim Verizon sucks donkey bags. No explain *that* to the kids.
"Development aid" does not include weapons aid, such as the aid Israel gets.
The government paid for the pipes. The government also paid for a lot of the pipes you didn't install. You are actually in debt with the government bandwidth wise.
Next, Verizon, you apparently don't know how the internet works. The internet works based on passing on messages for other people, in the belief that in doing so, they will pass along any messages for you. If companies start picking and choosing what data they want to carry, the whole system breaks down. Internet = Interconnected Networks. INTERCONNECTED. No interconnected, no internet.
Third, you are a telecommunications provider, like all other telecoms, you are heavily regulated. This is to ensure the free, (libre), exchange of information. Don't like being heavily regulated?, then move into one of the industries that isn't.
Your Citizens United ruling has made companies think they can get away with anything now.
Verizon should pull up all its fiber optics from public right-of-ways. And stop utilizing the public airwaves. On the other hand, subjecting yourself to government regulation is the price all businesses pay for permission to do business using public property.
Have gnu, will travel.
Whats amazing to me is that all of these ISP's would make customers happy and grow their business if they used the money from the boat load of lawyer fees they are going to have to pony up to expand their networks. You want me to pay more, OK give me something more! Remember when business was about making a profit for stockholders and keeping customers and employee's happy. What the hell happened! It's weird, this seems to be one of the various businesses that keep shrinking their level of service and wanting more money for it. The biggest issue is in most places there exists no choice so you have to put up with it. Sucks :-(
Okay, go ahead and show where he has done that. And note that "flip-flopped" does not mean "changed his mind after learning new facts".
If broadband is the "microphone" then Verizon is the "microphone cable".
Its the person speaking into the "microphone" who creates the speech, not the cable carrying the signal.
Then we criticize them for being so militaristic and spending their foreign aid dollars improperly while we enjoy the huge tax relief.
And then the American economy goes to hell. The true purpose of foreign aid dollars isn't to make everyone feel good about helping poor people, but to provide funding to well-connected corporations with the third-world country as an intermediary.
So what good argument is there for limiting free speech of corporations?
(a) Liability. Corporations (as opposed to other forms of business organization) are more or less constructs entirely intended to protect investors from accountability for their actions. If a partnership does something immensely destructive to a community, the owners can be sued for everything they have. If a corporation does something immensely destructive, then the assets of the corporation are the limit. (Rare exceptions may allow veil-piercing, but it's rarer than you'd think).
An entity which does not bear the full responsibilities of a citizen should not have the full rights of one.
(b) Full and free debate. You mentioned, "[W]e don't limit speech merely because of a better chance of being heard. That's not how free speech works." Why not? What purpose does free speech even have if one side can drown the other out? This is the primary crux of campaign finance limitations -- to prevent one side from unduly influencing a process which should be open to the full market of ideas, either via outright corruption or via control of who gets to have a say. Democracy doesn't work if the voters aren't appraised of all their options. That alone is justification for preventing unlimited spending by any group in an election, regardless of whether they be fictitious entities on paper or flesh and blood people.
(Either way, I think you're spot on with the microphone analogy, which is why Verizon's free speech argument is downright Orwellian, since what they actually want the right to is to limit and to charge for the free speech of others. Their 5th Amendment claim bears more thought, but their 1st Amendment claim is downright offensive.)
"Verizon using business practices prohibited by so-called net-neutrality rules are akin to an electric company providing preferential electricity delivery (luckily, not really a thing in this country) for the users of devices made by companies that pay it a license fee on each refrigerator it sells.
That is clearly a ridiculous idea."
It might be a ridiculous idea but I don't see the problem with leaving companies free to do that if they want to.
Look, the reason people feel like they're "at the whim" of "greedy corporations" is precisely because those companies and corporations get to use the strong arm of government to get special favours and privileges at the expense of everyone else. I submit that people asking for more "government oversight" of any industry are advocating for their own idea of a worst-case-scenario. Zero alternatives, zero choice, zero freedom.
I understand the root cause of the internal paradox. It's the "profit motive" that people are adverse to. And they don't see government as having a profit motive. Yet most can probably name more politicians who have screwed over their constituents for a buck than CEOs, and in every single case of a CEO they've either broken the law (and by doing so have initiated violence against others one way or another) or have been very much in bed with government.
I genuinely believe that freedom demands a strict separation of economy and state for the exact same reasons as a separation of church and state: government dictating what you can think and/or believe in is no different government dictating with whom you can associate and trade with under what conditions. So as long as their is freedom of association then any and all regulation and control of the economy is unconstitutional, and if an interpretation of the commerce clause does mean the ability to apply modern-day regulations then it's a case of the constitution contradicting itself.
The constitution exists to protect individuals. And anyone who asks for anything in the name of "society" or the "greater good" needs to keep in mind that society is a collection of individuals. Anything done "for society" that harms one single individual is contradicting it's own stated goals.
Desperately wishing for a -1 "Has no understanding of the topic" mod.
The issue here has nothing to do with the government telling us what to think or say. Verizon is claiming that by not allowing them to give preferential (i.e., faster) access to their customers to those who pay extra (that means allowing them to give preferential speech rights to certain customers), the government is restricting *their* freedom of speech. Verizon's freedom of speech is not being limited at all. What is being limited is their ability to decide who has preferential access to its customers over publicly owned broadcast frequencies (regulated by the FCC) and rights-of-way (granted, with restrictions and regulation by local governments). Hence, Verizon is essentially saying that "since the government isn't allowing us to restrict the ability of others [those who don't pay extra] to access our customers, our free speech rights are being restricted."
IANAL, but it seems to me that if Verizon doesn't care about maintaining "Safe Harbor" and Common Carrier status, let it do whatever it wants. However, if they give up those protections, they open themselves up to no end of lawsuits. What are they thinking?
Surreal comments by VZ, Romney, and SCOTUS aside, the facts are pretty simple, and so should be the case against NN.
1. Whatever corporations are, they are not the federal government nor a state government. Your rights (enumerated and non) in the Constitution are protected from infringement by the federal government (always), and state/local governments (if incorporated). They are not protected from "infringement" by a corporation or individual you willingly enter a contract with. IOW, you are on private property, you have no rights.
2. You agree to the contract when you enter it, including those annoying parts about the contract being subject to change at the whim of one party but not the other. Don't like it? Don't sign. My internet and wireless service are both contract-free. When they change the rules in a way I can't live with, I switch.
3. #1 and #2 in mind, they have every right to manage their network however they see fit. They may not have a first amendment right on the network, not being people and all, but you definitely have no such right when using their property -- unless your contract says otherwise.
All the fear mongering over what is going to happen if NN isn't passed is just that, FUD. If you want to know what the internet will look like if/when NN does pass, prepare to kiss your cap-free broadband goodbye. If left to manage their networks, they will be able to filter the abusers without running afoul of the law (too often), and when they do (e.g. WRT vonage, etc.) existing antitrust laws can take care of it, and we will all continue to enjoy dirt cheap broadband with no monthly cap. If the crybabies get their way, and something like NN is passed, prepare for broadband prices to go through the roof, and/or per-MB/per-minute charges return with a vengeance. They can only afford to oversell bandwidth when people aren't abusing it. Overselling makes it fast for MOST people, MOST of the time. If any individual has a "right" to abuse that and max out their line all the time, and cause everyone using the service to suffer, the only answer is to price the abusers out of the market.
How the hell does Verizon STILL have any customers at this point?
A couple years ago I would have been against a company like Verizon trying to traffic shape. But since working in the telecommunications industry my perspective has changed due to my better understanding of how things really work. Verizon owns a good portion of the network infrastructure in north america but not ALL of it. If they were to traffic shape, it would only be on lines and nodes which they own, which would very well probably affect you since if you talk to a remote server somewhere in north america there is a high probability that somewhere along the way, you will go through a verizon network. You must also understand that ISPs and Carriers are not always the same thing. Carriers are companies which own, operate and maintain the actual infrastructure, while ISPs sell the service. Sometimes they are the same company but sometimes they are not. In the end, the Carriers are the ones with the most power since they are the ones who are doing the purchases of everything else. Everything that is done in terms of network equipment industry and mobile phone industry is driven at least in part by the Carrier. If you work in the telecom or mobile phone industry, your ONLY customer is the Carrier. In the mobile phone industry including iphones, android etc, products are not created to interest you directly as the consumer, they are designed to interest the Carrier. Carriers buy mobile phones from Apple, HTC, Samsung, etc, NOT you. You buy from the Carriers. Say you work hard every day and acquire a large sum of money over a long time and through great effort. You build a communications system using a lot of money so that your friends around you can talk to each other. You never change their messages, however sometimes you prioritize the messages of users you think deserve a higher priority. This is all that traffic shaping is, lower priority packets still eventualy get delivered, just slower. Remember you are the one who owns this communications network. You built it, and you maintain it every day. Net neutrality to you would mean having no control over something that YOU own. If you wan't net neutrality, then the infrastructure should ideally be owned by the government instead of multiple private organizations. As long as the infrastructure is divided among multiple private organizations, the policies of one Carrier affects the whole group of users using the communications network. And as long as the Carriers own, operate and maintain the infrastructure on their own, it's not unjustified that they would want at least SOME control over how traffic flows through THEIR network.
isn't that he's wrong, it's that he's right. Most of that money goes to about 400 people (google it).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...but FUCK YOU Verizon.
sounded to me like a perfectly good refutation of the typical corporate whoring you get from the intellectually challenged, morally bankrupt dregs of society.
how corporate whores hate anyone who looks out for people who actually work as opposed to those who simply take the credit (and all of the profits)
Was less than a single days earnings if I recall. Life would be a whole lot more interesting if everyone could get away with crimes that cheaply.
I do agree with their fifth amendment case whole-heartedly however. Their lines, routers and servers are their own property. I think people who advocate government controlled Internet would be better served advocating for the nationalization of Internet infrastructure and services; government-run ISPs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the argument that the Internet "belongs to society" and is a "resource" and thus should not be "controlled by greedy corporations" ?
The Internet exploded in the mid 1990s because of greedy corporate use. Corporations saw it was another advertising mechanism, another way to reach potential customers; another potential revenue stream. The Internet was truly "ho hum" before it was commercialized by greedy corporations. I'm not saying that greedy corporations are right, just saying that their efforts to make a buck continue to drive Internet usage ever upwards. Look at NetFlix. You used to get discs in the mail (post to you?), and now you stream it online. You used to download shareware apps from dial-up bulletin board systems, and now you download them faster and get more current versions over the Internet. Look at the exploding use of Apple resources on the web being driven by a myriad of Apple products. Even USENET has changed. Back in the day every ISP ran their own news servers. Now almost every ISP has either shutdown their news servers and outsourced it to a big greedy corporation, or just stopped offering the service entirely and leaving the customer to sort it out for themselves.
If the Internet were truly a public resource, I doubt such explosive development would have taken place since anything truly developed "for the public good" is rarely if ever interesting. Just look at US roadways, US jails, Amtrak, and the US Postal Service as examples of uninteresting public developments in the US.
Internet access is no longer a luxury item -- something for discretionary spending.
The Internet being no longer a luxury item sounds like a European argument to me. Prove to me that your life comes to an end or is severely impacted by not having Internet access. The only thing Internet access allows you to do is stuff that used to take much longer to do. People used to buy stuff via catalogs, then it was mainly from watching TV, and now they use the Internet. All of that is a fact. People used to send post cards and letters and make phone calls. Now they send text messages and emails. People used to go to libraries to research things and borrow books to read, and now they can do it online. Distance learning originally took place via video tapes and closed-circuit TV, and now it occurs online in forums, web shares, and streaming video.
So what does the Internet provide that you absolutely cannot live without? Facebook? Google? Education? What?
Lots of people in the US don't have Internet at home, either by choice (they don't see the value in it or need for it) or lack of ISP choice (don't like the ISP choices they have), but they can usually access it at most public libraries or similar public setups (like free WiFi in lots of places) if they want to.
It is vital to operating a business and participating in the workforce.
Wrong again. Lots of small businesses in the US can and do exist without Internet presence, possibly because they don't want or need worldwide exposure, but more likely because such advertising methods are thought to be a luxury to them. I know it was to me back in the day I ran a very small business.
It is invaluable for education.
Agreed, but the Internet in the US grew out developments at US universities due to funding from the US government Department of Defense. Does anyone remember the ARPANET and why it was originally being researched and developed? Without that funding the Internet might have still been developed, but probably not at the pace we have seen because universities in tho
Verizon are the migrophone. Their customers the speakers. It is the speaker who has the freedom of speech and this law isn't restricting what they say.
In another twist of illogic, the laws for copyright, patent, libel and slander etc are all counter to the freedom of speech. Yet verizon still want their mark protected, verizonsucks.com to be closed and so forth.
And why isn't actively moving the data around when they own it "active participant"? They insist they are the ones making the speech (Child Porn). That means they are the ones actively saying it. Actively participating.
Oh noes, please don't stop, I don't know what the world will do without you...
I'm sorry, but you are an ignorant idiot if you believe that what your country is doing is 'policing the world for the benefit of the world'. It is more like 'bombing the sh** out of countries with oil, poppy and coca fields for the benefit of the few... or just because our president was caught with pants down'
Sincerly,
The Rest of the World
next?
Pull their Government contracts and give them to another telcom company if they don't want to play by the rules.
I wonder if they really want to say that the network they built is their microphone. Doing so would state that it is their speech and thus they would be liable for any illegal speech.
Note that as a common carrier (like phone companies of old) they would not be liable for any illegal activities that were committed via their network. This is long standing law.
Once you start filtering, controlling, limiting the content that is transmitted then you can no longer to seen as just a carrier of opaque information and can then be held liable for that information (illegal data, illegal speech, etc.)
It would be interesting to see what stance they would take on that. For example, if their network was used to distribute child porn and thus they would be held equally responsible along with those who sent and received it.
Well... I guess I won't be putting Verizon anywhere on my list of potential internet providers to use. I will never understand a couple things... 1) Why a company would want to develop systems to monitor network traffic and adjust bandwidth accordingly, and 2) Why the engineers tasked with this garbage wouldn't just tell their management to F*** off and figure it out themselves if they really want to screw people over so badly.
Hey Verizon, My email, tweet, blog post, reply on slashdot, all are my speech. They are what I am saying. They are -not- your speech. And when you throttle them you limit my expression. Treat my packet, his packets, her packets, their packet all the same. They are not your speech. (Ob disclaimer, I have a different service provider)
Do they want common carrier status? Ya know, where they are not responsible for the content (ie kiddie pr0n and the like)
or
Do they want the right to go against net neutrality to push their own services and potentially be on the hook for aiding the distribution of pics and movies?
First, infrastructure is not speech. It can be easily demonstrated as well, that the purpose of Verizon's network is not to propagate THEIR OWN speech acts. they should be fee to throttle their own speech - hopefully to zero.
Secondly, Verizon is pretending that they OWN the spectrum they are using. No matter how the current government chooses to view that spectrum, it is not own-able by Verizon. It is part of the commons that is managed by the government through licensing to avoid chaos. Verizon is a licensee and it's license is subject to policies and restrictions on behalf of the owners of the actual spectrum - the people.
Every rule has more than one consequence.
If you don't like it then hand back ALL of your radio frequency allocations that the FCC has authorized you to make use of for your RF networks. Since you are using a limited public resource that belongs to EVERYONE you either play nice, or go home.
The discussion was about whether other nations have the right to criticize USA for not pulling its weight when it comes to development aid. I noted that the nations that criticize USA for it give out more both relative to their population and relative to the size of their economy so they do have the right to criticize.
Finland has 1/60th of the population and 1/46th of the yearly budget of USA but by your logic these shouldn't be taken into account when comparing the two? The amount of responsibility that a nation should bear has nothing to do with the size of that nation? We should only say "Okay, USA give more to charity than Finland, so Finland has no right to criticize"?
If you answered "yes" to all of the above, are you willing to extend that logic to pollution. Look, USA pollutes the world MASSIVELY more than Finland (and remember, the higher population doesn't matter). How evil is that?!
When Microphone manufacturers start disabling microphones when people talk about certain subjects then I guess Verizon will have a point.
or else!
If they don't want to be a common carrier, then they can have their common carrier status revoked as well as their spectrum license, and then they can have their civil rights.
With special privileges come special responsibilities -- neutrality is one.
Verizon argues that the rules amount to 'government compulsion to turn over [network owners'] private property for use by others without compensation.'"
They get compensation for use by others. It's called subscription fees.