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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
...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.
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?
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
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
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.
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.'
... 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.
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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.
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.
US corporations should have neither more nor less rights than people; corporations simply should have the same rights as the people constituting them.
That's why Miramax could trash Bush in Fahrenheit 9/11, and why Citizens United could trash Hillary in Hillary. But, apparently, attacks by corporations on Republicans are OK while attacks by corporations on Democrats are supposedly the end of civilization.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.