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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.
Where does he rank? Or he even worth mentioning?
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?
From being greedy anti-competitive asshats. That's the whole idea.
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.
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.
Anti-neutrality (a.k.a. anti-regulation)
My friends / owners / suzerains already control that industry.
Pro-neutrality (a.k.a. pro-regulation)
My enemies control that industry, or my decision is still for sale (applies to government officials only).
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
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!”
One more reason why I'm not voting. At this point I'm not choosing, I'm enabling.
Obama says he supports Net Neutrality, then gives cart blanche to the well funded carriers. Landline Internet? Ha! One of my techs found out his Comcast service is capped at 200GB per month.
At least Romney is honest about his corporate ties, which is the biggest reason not to vote for him or any Republican. The other being they are on a similar Moral Crusade just like the Democrats. Unless you buy that "only sensible/intelligent/reasonable people would think the way I do bent of the current D-P leadership.
Are the libertarians bothering to put up an also-ran candidate this year?
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
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!
Granting them monopolies takes away our right to choose the best service. It should not be allowed. And the process of granting those monopolies is riddled with corruption. What the feds should do is to overrule all local legislation that prohibits the municipalities and states or other coops from providing their own services. What we have now is the communication industry making the rules. Most likely it will stay that way until you vote the party (there is only one) out.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So the problem is that there's still the question of what exactly 'net neutrality' means by the time someone works it into legislation. Odds are, there will be some glaring loopholes put in my some staffer who the week after it passes gets hired by a corporation or lobbyist organization.
For instance ... if we must pass all 'legal' traffic, what about e-mail that complies with the CAN-SPAM act? Would we be allowed to filter that out, or does it have to go through to the customer's mailboxes?
What I'm pissed off about isn't that ISPs filter -- it's that they lie and claim they're not, until it's shown that they are.
So, my proposal:
If you do *no* filtering what-so-ever, you're considered a 'common carrier', and would not be held liable for the actions of the people whom you are granting service to. If you filter or otherwise prioritize packets based on content or destination, you could be held liable for not blocking fraudulent or other illegal activity.
And we'd also have to redefine 'broadband coverage' to specifically require a common carrier to qualify an area as having coverage.
ps. 'implementing' net neutrality == not
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Public land is heavily used by all ISPs. The ones that connect to your house they use public land to get to your house (the road system) while you could say that is not something that belongs in the discussion because it is not giving them money. I would say that public land which connects everybody together is an EXTREMELY valuable asset and the fact the public owns it is the reason we easily added infrastructure we take for granted. To allow private use of OUR land is a massive huge handout.
Same thing goes to our AIR SPACE over which the radio travels; although, we tend to think of that solely as a regulatory situation.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
That actually was an issue with the railroads in the early days. It was quite the scandal.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What the feds should do is to overrule all local legislation that prohibits the municipalities and states or other coops from providing their own services.
I disagree with that as being what should happen - primarily because as you say, it will not happen.
The only way to fight these local municipalities is, well, locally. We need to get more technologically sophisticated people involved in government. Even if only attending and commenting in local council meetings, just a few technologically knowledgeable people regularly overseeing government could make a huge difference. And I think it's the only way to overthrow corrupt rules and politicians, by shedding light on them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
Do the candidates know what Net Neutrality means?
I have seen no evidence that any of them do.
I just turned in a term paper on Network Neutrality issues and regulatory approaches to them.
One thing I discovered was that Obama (or at least his relevant policy wonk and/or speechwriter) was quite aware of the issues and was coming down strongly on the side of regulating to prevent entertainment/ISP conglomerate oligopolists from using their control of the pipes to strangle their content and services competition and shaft their customers.
Which may not be the right approach. But they did seem to be QUITE up on things.
Relevant Obama quote, from a June 8 2006 podcast:
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Did you vote for anyone in the primaries that DID know what net neutrality meant?
"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?
Voting just encourages them.
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.
I'm sorry but I completely fail to see how ensuring that the network being made available to everyone equally is a threat to anybodies freedom. In fact I would equate this to water, or gas, or any other basic utility. The vital need for high quality, high speed network access grows by the minute, and allowing the service providers to turn it into a limited resource for the wealthy and powerful only, would eventually ensure a society where the have nots (you and me) would be at the mercy of the haves (as though we aren't already.)
As for being the means by which a SOPA like take over of the network to abridge the rights/privacy of "Users" vs "Providers", seems more than far fetched. These are completely unrelated issues. Time and time again, business has demonstrated, that being composed of precisely the same kind of human beings as you might find anywhere else, they are prone to all those human foibles; greed, dishonesty, hunger for power, duplicity, hypocrisy and narcissism. Given the powers of the corporation, their ability to do real harm being virtually unlimited, and we've seen time and time again, they in fact do precisely that, it is vital that we restrict the amount of harm they can do.
There is a systematic, systemic breakdown in standards of quality and business accountability. 40 years ago, there were government health inspectors, making certain that food was produced and distributed in a safe, healthy and fastidious manner. Today, cows stand in their own feces for weeks eating corn instead of grass to fatten them up quickly (more profit for the agro-business.) They have to stuff the cows with antibiotics, because the unsanitary conditions would be lethal otherwise, only now through the indiscriminate use of antibiotics you've created super-bugs. The meat is then sent to grocers who are self regulated and its an honest to gawd wonder we aren't all dropping like flies from e coli. There've been a number of incidents (some even shown on television documentaries) of markets that sold chicken, when the chicken begins to go bad, they wash it in a bleach solutions to extend its shelf life, sometime two or more times, and then when the chicken is definitely well past its sale date, they cook it and sell it for fried chicken of use it in soups and salad. These are practices that would have been considered unsanctionable in the 70s, but little by little, these industries have pushed to allow almost anything they want to be considered acceptable practice today. That's just the meat section, if you knew most of the things going on in grocery stores today, you'd have to give up eating altogether.
The only way one could possibly deregulate completely and expect a society that wasn't a draconian disaster, would be to follow deregulation with;
1. A complete separation of corporation and state.
2. The abolition of the modern corporation, replaced instead with a corporation with strict limits on size, life span and ability to garner wealth and power.
3. A surgical removal of all special rights and powers, ensuring that people were treated preferentially to all corporation by law.
4. A return to simple basic laws of accountability, a company augers in, it dies, a CEO steals from society, he goes to jail.
5. A complete overhaul of the IP laws, particularly the unlimited extension of copyright, trademark and patent.
6. Fair mediation, not controlled and operated by the corporations.
The purpose of the last item is to protect corporations from frivolous lawsuits, but remove their ability to ignore their responsibility to society. Most current mediation, is simply a rubber stamp for corporations to get away with murder.
Bodies of laws exist to ensure that human beings, being the primates we are, refrain from resorting to smashing one another's skulls like baboons when we disagree as we attempt to garner wealth and power. Regulations exist to protect one party from another. These protections are perfectly valid if the second party is capable of inflicting undue and unfair damage to the first party. A fair society, provides for the greatest level of freedom, while preventing the unfair or inappropriate use of force on others. This is precisely the situation here, and the regulation is profoundly warranted.
"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'm sorry but the facts simply don't bare you out. There are "natural monopolies" that is why we have utility companies. Given an open market, the largest players will eventually coalesce into a single all powerful service provider, and because they own the entire net, they will be in a position to call any cost to their service they like. That's why we originally broke up Ma Bell? Remember? Have you noticed the little Bells all getting back together again? Have you noticed the number of mergers between service providers?
The system you speak of no longer exists. It may have at one time, but it hasn't been around any time in the last 50 years. Corporations have the power. They join to concentrate power. They continue to change the environment to discourage small to medium sized business, and funnel all the society's wealth into their coffers. You want to flatten the playing field, then by all means, deregulate. But not until.
Forget about Paul, he's not going to be President or even Vice President. Ryan scares the bejebus out of me. I'm not particularly happy with abortion as a means of birth control, but I'm a firm believer that the person already here trumps the one who may or may not be coming. Ryan has made it perfectly clear given the chance, he will outlaw all abortion. That includes abortions, related to rape, incest and necessary to save the Mother's life. He wants to pass a law that says a human being exists the instant a sperm meets an egg, and that the new single celled person has all the constitutional rights afforded a citizen of the United States. That means when your doctor collects a couple dozen eggs, and fertilizes them en vitro, those are all people, and must be brought to term or the parents and the doctor are committing murder. These are not sane people. If you've read the Ryan Plan, it can pretty much be reduced to, eliminate Federal Government, give all the money to corporations, and we live happily ever after. Oh, you need to figure out what to do with an entire generation of dying old people, and a few generations of dying poor people but who cares, they're just old and poor people.
I'm having the hardest time reconciling people who claim to be christian and then turn around and quote Scrooge like the words were born in their own mouths. "If they're dying they should get on with it and reduce the surplus population..." This is why we need regulation. Corporations have one purpose, to make wealth, and they will gladly do it over your bleaching bones if they have to. It is the only way we have left to forge a society predicated on the needs and wants of human beings.
"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.
Can any of you see a politician locking down a Cisco firewall?
I can, and the picture is almost as funny as a BOFH negotiating an international treaty.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yep. You've got to love the Mumbo Jumbo add. I assume this will degrade into pointless partisan bickering, but what's at stake is your ability to reach places slashdot.org. The anti-net-neutrality crowed would literally give ISPs like AT&T and Comcast the right to censor the web for you, to support their own agenda. It's incredible that so many of our representatives are anti-net-neutrality. On the other side, there's beneficial traffic shaping and various tricks ISPs play to improve the typical user experience. All reasonable definitions as well as recent net-neutrality bills and FCC actions allow for this, which is one reason wireless providers currently have more freedom to muck with traffic in ways we generally despise, such as charging for tethering or hot-spot functionality, and charging us for Skype calls. The anti-net-neutrality zombies will be all over this thread, but I challenge them to answer this: name one benefit ever received by consumers which went away with the introduction of FCC net neutrality rules?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
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. In short, the ISPs want to charge the big content providers extra money to be quickly accessible, or even accessible at all, over their network. It's a shakedown by stupid tube maintainers of the corporations whilch provide real value, and a major thread to innovation and smaller content providers. Dorks like TCP inventor Bob Kahn refuse to comprehend that net neutrality is not about regulating how packets are routed, and instead continue to espouse the AT&T view that Google wants to destroy the internet by shackling "network engineers". It's about routing Vonage packets and Netflix packets without purposely destroying their QoS. It's about not being evil.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
That was an insightful post. My ISP, AT&T, capped my data exactly where they felt it would do the most harm to Netflix. In the meantime, there's no data cap for AT&T U-verse, or their pay-per-view. I had crappy reliability with Vonage, so now I pay AT&T for their more expensive VoIP service instead. The only difference has to be AT&T bias against Vonage packets.
However, there's some hope. I agree with the other poster that content providers like Google will put their dollars behind net neutrality. One place I've seen this recently is the FCC just spanked Verizon for illegally charging for portable wifi hotspots and tethering. I pay Verizon a stupidly high cost of $30/month for tethering that was free on T-Mobile. This violates a deal the FCC made with Verizon and other carriers when they did the 4G spectrum auction. Of course, the $1.25M fine is nothing, and I called Verizon this week to get that $30 taken off my bill, and they wouldn't do it, and said they'd never heard of the FCC ruling. Man, these mobile phone a-holes are the worst! Remember not being able to use the camera in your own phone, because you couldn't on principle pay $0.25/photo that you took on your own hardware and just wanted to transfer to your own computer using your own cable? Well, I'm sure you guys all hacked your phones and got those freaking photos for free anyway.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
When an ISP wants to offer certain filters like Christian fundamentalist, they can, it's just that they'll have to make an open pipe available for the basic price and not put any barriers in the way of the consumer wanting such.
And that's the beauty of NN, there's a basic not artificially restricted internet where it's left to the consumer to decide what extra services he wants to buy.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Slashdotters include a major portion of people with mental issues, who will find reasons to disagree with anything. They couldn't agree that the sky is blue on a clear sunny day. If you're parsing that sentence and trying to figure out why you disagree with it, consider yourself at least somewhat mental.
However, the non-mental slashdot crowd has a strong consensus on the basics of Net Neutrality. This strongly correlates to the subset of net neutrality that has been implemented as policy by the FCC. Net neutrality should not prevent ISPs from treating TCP packets like TCP packets, and UDP packets like UDP packets. It should prevent ISPs from charging content providers a fee for being fast or even accessible on their network. It should prevent them from filtering or censoring legal content. It also should prevent ISPs from purposely harming the QoS of competing services such as Vonage and Netflix. These are the sorts of policies that we generally agree on, and it's what the FCC is enforcing (poorly it seems).
Where reasonable slashdotters often don't agree is Bittorrent. Should ISPs be allowed to purposely slow down any P2P traffic? We don't have a solid consensus. Just because we don't agree on 100% of the details doesn't mean the FCC should not move forward on issues where there is consensus. It's currently doing the right thing, and that will probably be reversed if Romney/Ryan get elected.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Competition can only flourish to the benefit of the consumers when these companies have to abide by comparable and preferably national rules.
Having them decided at local level is simply highly inefficient for *all* parties involved.
Let companies, as service providers, compete on services rendered for the price the market supports, not by allowing them to do back room deals with strong interests and thus taking away any choice for the consumer.
At all points the interests of the consumer should top those of the companies, they don't have to provide a service when they feel it's not economically feasible.
Net neutrality is all about opening up, not about limiting.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Don't be ridiculous; no libertarian has ever actually studied economics.
Why would you think net neutrality would restrict any of those things? The FCC has implemented net neutrality rules, and none of that was effected. Are you one of those poorly informed people who thinks the FCC wants to keep you from optimizing TCP traffic differently than UDP traffic? Or do you believe AT&T should be allowed to block Vonage?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
No, go read up. Obama understands and promotes net neutrality, which has happened under his administration through very reasonable FCC rulings. Romney has stated his anti-net-neutrality position, though like most topics, we don't really know what he knows or thinks about this issue. Ryan, on the other hand, has co-sponsored every piece of anti-net-neutrality legislation written for the GOP by AT&T and friends. He clearly understands the issues, and sides with the internet toll trolls.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
I can't believe you are modded up as informative for this dis-information. Go read about what the FCC has done. They've implemented the most rational parts of net neutrality, and every enforcement action has been over pretty outrageous violations. So, net neutrality is here today. Are you experiencing any of those broken links you talked about, those links that would only be broken if net neutrality were revoked?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
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?
Wall Street regulation comes from the financial industry
I think things like the debate on the Consumer Protection Agency show there are meaningful differences in policy between the parties on financial regulation. Neither party is perfectly pure is far from saying that the choice is a false one.
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!”
Entirely different network, not actually an issue under net neutrality.
The internet is a network of networks, and if you can reach it via your internet connection using the internet protocol then it's not an entirely different network. If they were delivering this stuff via another protocol there might be more sympathy for this claim but clearly it's just another internet server. The last mile is the bottleneck and it's the bulk of what I'm paying for. It's also what they have a monopoly on, in many cases literally as they have exclusive right-of-way.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What's really stopping people from forming a "Mesh Network" out in the wild? Seriously, the best thing about the Internet is that it's just content - the infrastructure is something we can replace if we really need to - and while you'll need to wait for Big Names to come over if you want them, a lot of the general community and information we share can be migrated to any network.
I have a router, neighbor has a router, etc. We build out some infrastructure in the form of DNS servers, web hosting, etc; throw in a couple Wikipedia copies, and expand the network out into surrounding areas.
The problem does come when expanding beyond city limits or other areas where you get miles and miles between yourself and your closest neighbor, but there are solutions to these issues (or some I'm led to believe...I do have a phone that talks to a satellite...)
So, what would be the real hurdle here? What could we do as a community? What happens if the ISPs become so oppressive that we have no choice?
What's interesting about your post is that you assume anyone who opposes Obama MUST, AUTOMATICALLY, WITHOUT QUESTION be a Romney supporter.
There are plenty of us who don't like and won't vote for either of them...because they're two sides of the same goddamn coin.
I think we won't suddenly get better government just by getting the 40% who probably know/care the least to show up.
"Fascism should more correctly be known as corporatism as it's the alignment of corporate and state power." - Mussolini
All that other stuff, racism etc. - those are optional extras, government and corporations in cahoots rather than government actively POLICING corporations that is the DEFINITION of Fascism and it's stated end-goal.
What Fascism is diametrically opposed to is individual liberty. The REASON for aligning state and corporate power is to create a power structure that is capable of MORE control and less likely to be overthrown. Opposition to personal liberty doesn't HAVE to include racist or ethnic bases, but it's certainly prone to doing so.
Nonetheless that is a side-effect, it's by no means required for the concept of fascism.
I consider capitalism (at least in MOST forms) to be diametrically opposed to individual personal liberty as well. Because to my belief the very CONCEPT of liberty cannot EXIST without the assumption of personal RESPONSIBILITY to TAKE CARE OF OTHER PEOPLE.
Capitalist love to talk of personal responsibility - but they only mean "to take care of yourself" - they deny that we have a responsibility to ONE ANOTHER as well. They are wrong. That responsibility is very real - indeed it's both the foundation of a good society and the very PURPOSE for which humans formed societies in the FIRST place (we survive better in a group - logically that's only POSSIBLE we assume SHARED responsibility for each other's well-being).
So what they are really saying is "I want to shirk my responsibility to other people by pretending it doesn't exist". Hell the Randian's go so far as to call any and all forms of welfare "slavery".
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Wrong. A church is not an ISP, nor is a business who is allowing you to use their Internet connection for free, nor a library, nor any other person or entity that isn't charging you for use of the service. These rules do not apply to them.
Wrong again. The actual rules are fairly straightforward and easy to understand. The first rule is that the company must be transparent about its network management policies. The second is that it may not block anything, and the third is that it may not give anyone preferential treatment. None of these things prevent a company from cutting off your service when your contracted coverage runs out.
See also #1.
Ah, now we get to the point—the magic libertarian theory that competition will somehow fix censorship. Here's the reality:
What an amazing coincidence. That's the first of the three FCC net neutrality rules. Unfortunately, information doesn't help when you're outside DSL range. In most places, your only remaining options are cable (from a single cable company) or a dedicated trunk line. You cannot usefully have a free market when the cost of infrastructure is so high that the market naturally degrades to a monopoly. So you have two choices: liberate all the telephone, cable, and fiber lines and lease them back to any ISP for a line rental fee plus the cost of running a trunk line and dropping a router into the government-owned central office, or regulate the commercial entities so that they cannot screw the customers. Those really are the only two options that can actually work.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7370
There you go. Locke's theory of value goes: "Only through human labour can value be created". That's why I say it's the basis of both communism and capitalism. Indeed Adam Smith and Murray Rothbard share with Karl Marx a fondness for quoting that.
They just disagreed on what to do about it. From this Locke derived his theory of property which goes: "All natural resources are initially in an unowned state. When a man mixes his labour with a resource, he creates value, and this then becomes property".
This is the basis of property laws all over the world now. Trouble is, it was great in the 17th century - but it's ridiculous now (simply because we have 400 years of knowledge he didn't have access to).
For starters: it's decidedly speciecist. I stated that but for the word "man" there is nothing in there that stops a beaver claiming property rights on his dam - after all, with labour he added value to a natural resource (a river).
Nobody is proposing humans should recognize the property rights of other species though - indeed we claim the right to EXERT property rights OVER other species. That's problematic - what we create a truly sentient AI ? Would it never have property rights ? On what basis do we actually claim that the antelope do NOT own the savannah ? They probably think of it as "home" after all ? And do we really think we'll be the only sentient lifeform for EVER ?
Locke lived 400 years ago, before the age of reason (which it must be said -he helped start) - he had no concept that humanity may NOT be special, religion after all teaches that we are the chosen ones.
What's worse is - it fails to recognize the EXISTING value that something may have. A piece of arable land, which you dig gold from - has him accurately turning the gold into property, but what about the land which is decidedly not arable anymore ?
You've reduced it's value, not added to it, so how is that still property ? And if it isn't - what now, since you've basically destroyed it ?
So Locke's philosophy of property is great for it's time, but it's 400 years overdue for an update.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Why do we believe that people have a right to buy something that the seller doesn't want to offer?
Everywhere I can think of a rule that someone must sell service they don't want to offer, I see a constant frustration by people who don't feel their right to buy is being met sufficiently mirrored by frustration that a seller cannot provide the service they really want to provide.
I believe you have a right to free speech, but I don't believe you have a right to come into my home and spray paint slogans on my walls. Nobody thinks that such a limitation to your speech is censorship because nobody believes that I should be forced to allow you to infringe on my rights in such a silly way.
Yet we believe that your right to buy the type of service you desire from Verizon is sufficient to force them to give you the kind of access you want to something they own.
There is a difference between saying a government should not prohibit the people from stating their opinions and saying a government should force people to run their companies in ways that mandate what they must offer. There is a place for regulation, and in fact I'm generally supportive of NN, but the debate isn't simply "evil corporation vs uncensored speech" as it gets portrayed so often here. The debate is really "must internet providers be forced to offer specific access if freedom of speech is to be preserved?"
In my mind, the Internet is so crucial to freedom of speech that the answer is "yes" but the unresolved question for me is "how much?"
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.