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Where the Candidates Stand On Net Neutrality
nmpost writes "Net neutrality is one of the biggest issues with regard to the internet today. At the heart of the issues is how much control ISPs will be allowed to have over their networks. Each candidate has come out with a strong position on the matter, and whoever wins will have a drastic effect on the future of the internet. Barack Obama has been a proponent of net neutrality. Under his watch, the FCC has implemented net neutrality rules. These restrictions did not apply to wireless networks, though; a gaping loophole that will be problematic in the future, as mobile internet is exploding in popularity. Until it is addressed, Obama can only be given a barely passing grade with regard to net neutrality. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come down on the other side of the issue. The former Massachusetts governor strongly opposes net neutrality. According to Politico, Romney believes net neutrality will restrict ISPs, and that they alone should govern their networks. The governor has stated that he wants as little regulation of the internet as possible."
I have seen no evidence that any of them do. Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
Yeh, but if you wait a week, Romney will endorse Net Neutrality as essential to a free and open internet marketplace. Then if you point out his flip-flop he'll scream 'you're trying to divide us with your hate speech!'.
Seriously Republicans, I know the pickings were slim, but couldn't you have done better than Romney?
And those that do lie about what it means to push their agenda (eg, painting NN as a government takeover or new fairness doctrine)
Government should regulate the internet as little as possible? Great! Let's make a deal! You repeal copyright, completely, and invalidate all communications-related patents and we'll tolerate ISPs that want to favor their own IP TV over that of competitors.
No? Yeah. Thought so.
Or to put it as succinctly as possible: Romney wants as little regulation of the internet as possible? Bullshit.
Exactly! Just look at how well our current regulations work in the oil, auto, loan, and investment industries to understand why intense regulation is the key to success!
Obama talks out his ass too. The police state has increased dramatically under his watch. Whistleblowers, leakers, spying, assassinations, erosion of civil liberties, illegal wars, you won't get anything positive out of either of them.
Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
Are you saying that they are both equally ignorant? Or that the choice between Romney and Obama would have no impact on this issue?
I'm not sure about the first point, neither one of them has demonstrated Ted Stevens-style ignorance, but the second point is definitely wrong: even if they don't know the full impact of the promises that they make, those promises still influence policy. Legislation will result from this, on one side or the other, if only to keep up appearances of making good with campaign promises.
As little regulation as possible AKA no regulation for the companies, but real name policies, regulations on how we can use those connections, and everything monitored.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You mention auto regulation. Not sure why. Cars are much safer than they have ever been, fuel efficiency is better than ever (and will continue to increase due to regulation). Cars have not increased at a faster pace then inflation. They properly regulated auto manufacturing industry is a perfect example of how things SHOULD be done.
Then, Romney should be in favor of net neutrality since he's in favor of smaller government? I don't understand why anyone will vote for this man when he clearly wants to increase regulation?
None of that made any sense.
Net neutrality is about putting controls on ISP's, controls that you WILL come to regret later as they add on more controls to limit what ISP's can do. Every regulation has begat more limiting regulations, often far beyond the original scope where regulations started.
That is why it is totally consistent to want smaller government and oppose net neutrality. That is why if you do not like things like SOPA you should also vote against anyone who supports regulations over the internet such as net neutrality.
I will not be voting for Romney; he talks out his ass.
Obama being re-elected would be the key for the REAL push for SOPA like controls. Remember the party Hollywood loves best.
If you want a truly free internet, don't vote for the person who wants to take away your freedom. It seems like such a simple statement, yet somehow YOU managed to get it totally backwards. How can you support a man that wishes to take away the right of an ISP to properly manage a network?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. If someone thinks the regulations we have are bad, the solution isn't no regulation, but good regulation
2. The oil, loan, and investment industries are mostly self regulated, as their regulatory bodies do not have the manpower or resources to actually verify the things they do.
Hence the constant string of disasters in finance and the dumping of unfiltered wastes by the oil/fracking and mining industries.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Regulations on ISP's take away rights.
And granting them monopolies takes away our rights
So, the solution is obvious. Net neutrality would be a given in a truly competitive business environment.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You are still free to not use their services... until the government requires you to have internet access.
A requirement, regulation or law which I would also oppose.
That should be the preferred option, but that's a local govt solution
Now you are catching on to why it's so important to move things away from the federal level.
Yes fighting local government is hard, damn hard. But at least it's possible. With federal matters you have too many layers of indirection to hope to effect real change.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You seriously cannot see how Net Neutrality is the enforcement arm for SOPA?
I sure as hell can't.
Net Neutrality means that your ISP cannot discriminate based on content, services, hardware, applications, etc etc etc.
Further, they cannot interfere with your connection because of any of the aforementioned reasons.
SOPA has nothing to do with that.
If you'd care to explain how a law/regulation that prevents discrimination = the copyright police, I'm all ears.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Were you asleep the day they discussed 'natural monopoly' in EC101?
Nonsense. Even if you take a maximally cynical position that each candidate is completely purchased and by each company and each industry to an equal extent (false), legislation written by those companies must acknowledge campaign promises to at least some degree. So net neutrality legislation written by the ISPs for Obama would be more neutral than net neutrality legislation written by the ISPs for Romney.
I will certainly acknowledge that special interests have far more influence than they should, and even more in the wake of Citizens United, but I don't understand this nihilistic approach to politics. If you really believe that election results are completely inconsequential, why are you here commenting on them?
"If you really believe that election results are completely inconsequential, why are you here commenting on them?"
What else is he supposed to do? Vote?
It's silly season again and the proponents of each side must make fools of themselves once more. We must hear again why this one is a saint, and the other a demon - and the equivalent counter arguments while the vast majority in the middle by trying to find the least worst course split the difference in a way that seems semirandom. For once let me just lay out our folly in a nonpartisan way.
1. We don't want one party in power because they do things. When they do things, it's always bad. That's why lately the executive and legislative branches are typically governed by different parties. When we give the executive to one party, we give the legislative to the other, and we trade them back and forth to ensure the Justice branch has balance because it's appointed by the executive, or we at least split the House and Senate. God help us should one party gain control of all three long enough to be free to press their agenda through all three branches of government. That would be the end of liberty no matter who held the reins. The "do nothing" accusation is laughable, as that is exactly what we want - and yet it's a major factor in the campaigns.
2. In a regime change the exiting regime raids the treasury. The toll for this has grown to trillions of dollars per time. This is an executive branch thing, and the legislature is powerless to stop it. You may expect another financial crisis around election time that requires emergency action of the Federal Reserve. Some bankers and funds will make hay, but for some odd reason those responsible for managing your retirement funds will not be among them. And so that money you paid in will be worth less even than if you had stuffed it into your mattress, even with matching funds from your employer. They are stealing even the benefit of your own forethought, and forcing you into it by limiting your available choices of funds to invest in for your retirement.
3. Federal funds are used to influence elections. Whether it's bridges to nowhere, jobs stimulating federal programs, or disaster relief that seems to be where the money goes. That seems to be the only place the money goes. Being the hand that guides this funnel seems to be the only reason to seek office any more, and it's a circular chain that's self-reinforcing. The entire federal budget is nothing but campaign money now, defense spending included. The lobbyists are past or future Representatives or Senators, or representatives of same, and it's a revolving door. It's The Worm Ouroboros, eating itself to our doom.
4. Whoever wins is going to sell us out to those Hollywood cokeheads for campaign money again. Neither side is in favor of true network neutrality, open Internet, breaking the backs of the mobile provider and cable TV and Internet provider monopolies. What they're in favor of is campaign money to get the power that they cede to the people who gave them the money to get the power. Both sides take the Hollywood money, and after the election the bill comes due. They'll get their Justice Department appointments, or copyright re-extension, or software patents, or secret international trade agreements or whatever it is they're looking for this time because if you buy a ticket you get to ride the ride and they're smart enough to buy both tickets. The only thing legislators or executives of either party care about the rule of law is that they're exempt, and they can use it for fundraising.
5. Neither main party has a plausible plan for balancing the budget, delivering the promises of social programs like Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Nor could they. The problem has become insoluble without radical new thinking that would be political death to propose. This will be the cause of the devaluation of the dollar, because we must print money to keep these promises, which then void the promises as the money paid becomes worth less. That's actually not as dire as you might think, but it's bad. It is, however inescapable as the public debt cannot cont
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Can you name ANY ISP that blocks traffic from any competitors domains as you claim?"
Yes: every ISP/TV provider out there counts Netflix against your bandwidth cap, but not the pay-per-view choices you get through their service. Phone calls are free, but Skype counts against your bandwidth cap. Watching live TV doesn't slow down your internet connection, but streaming a video through Youtube does.
These are the beginnings of non-neutral networks. These are the beginnings of telcos and cable providers cracking down on possible competitors on the content side by leveraging their last-mile assets. At the same time, these large incumbants have multi-billion dollar legacy networks and content assets that prevent any new startup gathering enough cash and clout to make a go at competition on the last-mile end.
We're already seeing where this road leads: the US is falling further and further behind the leaders in the internet race, since the incumbants would rather spend their time cashing out on their legacy networks and strangling (or merging) startups to death rather than compete by building out new technology. This is what happens when you spend 10 years "letting the market govern itself": it doesn't work, and continuing to do nothing is just going to mean that we continue to fail as we have for the last decade.
Oh well, at least the ISPs didn't manage to cock up the stock market, like what happened when we let the banks "govern themselves."
"I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I believe the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute there is one guy controlling both puppets!"....Bill Hicks.
Frankly the two figureheads can say any damned thing they want, the actual laws are written by the lobbyists of the one that has paid the most bribes...errr..I mean campaign contributions and that will be the ISPs. The figurehead will then either praise the lawmakers for their fine work or talk about what a shame it is the other side is doing this...while the puppet signs it into law. In either case if you think your puny little vote is gonna compete with the power of the big bag o' cash? I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
Even if NN were a real possibility (which it isn't) what we need isn't some rules the ISPs will ignore, but actual opening up of the last miles to competition as we had in the days of dialup so any ISP acting like douchebags would have to worry about losing their customers. As it is now even if they passed NN the ISPs would simply fuck you by making the bandwidth caps so small for anything they didn't get a cut of they'd still be able to lead you by the nose.
Hell considering how little the DSL providers have been keeping up with the times I wouldn't be surprised if they end up just leaving the market to the cable companies while they enjoy the much more lucrative (and as TFA pointed out with no NN rules) wireless, so we'll probably all end up with exactly one company if we want broadband at home and since they won't want competition with their TV they'll cap the living hell out of us.
Final verdict? While the EU and Asia enjoy ever bigger pipes we in the USA thanks to our "corporation yay!" political structure will be riding on the short bus to the information superhighway.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You'll need someone to check up on ISPs to make sure they're staying neutral, and a bunch of new regulations that define exactly what neutral is.
Not true. The entire point of net neutrality is that ISPs should be a content-agnostic dumb carrier line. The legal framework is identical to that of traditional phone networks, no new definitions required. A neutral carrier has no idea if transmitted data is copyrighted or not, they just keep the network online and collect the monthly bill like a utility company. As a counter-example, imagine that your electric company wasn't a neutral carrier (and could somehow tell what devices were being powered in your home). In this scenario, the electric company would be free to arbitrarily charge you a higher per-KWh rate to power air conditioners even though you're already paying more for the high KWh usage of the AC in the first place.
Note the distinction between WHAT you use the network for vs. usage LEVEL. A neutral carrier can do what they have to about high usage levels to maintain the stability of the network. The big content companies want it to work like cable TV so they can nickel and dime you to death over what you use the network for (think "additional fee to access Facebook" that's awkwardly packaged with other things you don't care about like cable TV channels). However, this opens up a can of worms by making the carrier liable for the content transmitted on their network, which I suspect is part of what is preventing ISPs from going hog wild. It's more prudent for them to toe the line.
I just turned in a term paper on Network Neutrality issues and regulatory approaches to them.
Thanks, that's confirmation of the way I see things. Being an Aussie I don't get to see all the US political maneuvering on this issue. However I did see one Fox 'report' looking at NN (at least 6 months ago). It basically came to the conclusion that (paraphrase) "Obama wants to dictate what you can and can't see on the intertubes and the brave ISP's are fighting for your rights". And it was a "news" report, not that loud idiot with a whiteboard. How anyone with the slightest inkling of what this is about can swallow that shit, or worse still repeat it as if it were fact, baffles me.
Similarly there are a lot of posts here claiming that there's no difference between Obama and Romney on the issue. This is simply false, there's a clear distinction between the two policies that even I can see from 10,000 miles away. Claiming they're the same does nothing but imply the claimant is intellectually lazy. Such laziness in politics makes one a perfect target for propaganda presented as news.
PS: If any Obama operatives are reading this, take my name off your fucking spam list, I do not want to "Own a piece of the Democratic convention for as little as $5", I can't vote for your guy and the metaphor of selling political access nauseates me a little.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Those who do lie about it are going further. Verizon is suing the FCC, specifically for the right to choose what content to block, and what to allow. From this article:
Talk about twisted... requiring that users have uncensored access to the internet is a violation of corporate freedom of speech? I think I have to go shower now to get the slime I feel all over after reading that.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
People who argue for right-libertarian viewpoints almost never correlate with "people who studied economics" and only rarely with "people who studied at a university".
Indeed, they love to spout off about how economics courses at universities are utterly useless because they are so Keynesian biassed. Which is just a nice way of saying "when every economist in the world points out how batshit insane our ideas are we can accuse them of bias instead of having to argue that inconvenient empirical evidence of theirs".
The worst thing is that they claim to stand for personal freedom. Biggest load of bullshit ever concocted. One-dollar-one-vote is NOT freedom and that is what an unregulated market INEVITABLY becomes. Unregulated capitalism ALWAYS and INEVITABLY can ONLY devolve into outright fascism [syn: corporatism] (which is exactly what is happening in the USA right now).
Capitalist libertarians call the government a necessary evil - socialist libertarians believe it's not necessary at all, and the reason WHY the Randian's think they can't do away with it is exactly because it destroys rather than maximises individual liberty.
Their freedom only exists for those who are already privileged. People who work in sweatshops are NOT doing so by choice - no matter WHAT Ron Paul believes. They are NOT. "Work in hell, or starve outside" is NOT a choice, it's NOT freedom. That's just slavery with a sugarcoating.
Hell even their great intellectual founders would be appalled by what they are doing today. Adam Smith was the first American economist to PROPOSE a state pension fund. He also stated that the ONLY kind of market which is REMOTELY sustainable is one where labour is by far the most expensive product you can buy. Because "high wages are good for society as a whole, while high profit margins for business is bad for society as a whole."
Not to mention - if you read the actual John Locke books on his labour theory of value (which is the basis of both Rand-style capitalism AND communism I shit you not) - and especially his definition of property (which Murray Rothbard quotes at least 10 times in every paper he ever wrote) then you can see just how patently stupid their ideas on property rights are.
Hint: there is NOTHING except the word "man" in there that prevents a beaver from legally owning a beaver-dam.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Do the candidates know what Net Neutrality means? I have seen no evidence that any of them do. Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
I'm not sure what evidence you would accept, but Obama has given multiple speeches on technological issues he seems to understand the basic idea of carrier based law. For that matter Romney's comments on this issue seem intelligent though I disagree. I'd say they both more or less do.
However what's unquestionable is that Julius Genachowski, Obama's FCC chair does. And appointing high quality people to regulate the tech sector is the difference between Obama and his predecessors. And is really what we care about. Because whether Obama doesn't or doesn't understand the internet, internet regulation is not going to be his focus. While for the FCC they can focus on that. And there is a big difference between regulations that are in the public interest like Obama's and regulations designed to support corporate America like what Romney proposes.
What is wrong with the idea of getting billed based on the amount of data you consume?
You mean, other than having absolutely fuckall to do with Network Neutrality, and being completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand?
ISPs (AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Verison, and friends) are 100% behind Romney. There are no significant ISPs putting money behind Obama. On the other side we have Microsoft, Google, eBay, Vonage, Netflix, and Amazon, who are all companies that provide content and services over the Internet, and they are 100% behind Obama.
I guess elections are nothing more than proxy wars between corporate interests.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”