Net Neutrality Is 'Marxist,' According To a Koch-Backed Astroturf Group

Jason Koebler (3528235) writes American Commitment, a conservative group with strong ties to the Koch brothers has been bombarding inboxes with emails filled with disinformation and fearmongering in an attempt to start a "grassroots" campaign to kill net neutrality — at one point suggesting that "Marxists" think that preserving net neutrality is a good idea. American Commitment president Phil Kerpen suggests that reclassifying the internet as a public utility is the "first step in the fight to destroy American capitalism altogether" and says that the FCC is plotting a "federal Internet takeover," a move that "sounds more like a story coming out of China or Russia."

Comments

What's so American

[Chas]

About paying for open, unfettered access, and having some bean counter with an agenda decide what you can ACTUALLY see?

And Marxism fails because it view labor as something nobody really wants to do, and ignores transportation, distribution and associated concerns as necessary evils.

Here, the last-mile providers are acting like Marxists. They see only this big customer base of theirs as having any intrinsic worth.

Never mind that if they don't provide unfettered access, and don't manage to stifle all competition, they won't continue to HAVE that kind of customer base.

Net neutrality is about being able to use the internet connection you pay for, for any purpose that suits you (with nods towards the concept of "legal activity" of course) without having your traffic interfered with.

Net neutrality is about preventing illegal censorship.

Net neutrality is about protecting you from unscrupulous business practices by major (and minor) providers of both the transport and last-mile variety.

So screw the Koch Brothers and their idiot shilling.

Re:What's so American

[sillybilly]

Net neutrality is like being able to drive on back country roads and public without cock blocks, or booths at every corner. Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile, or bit the MB, per content, on top of having your basic ISP connection. Some Internet backbones would get overloaded from crowds because of cheap surfing pathways, but the rich would have their luxury Internet highways uncongested, but high cost. Should you wander unto one of these highways, it'd be like stumbling into a high class restaurant, and accidentally eating there, when all you wanted was a burger. Even on regular Internet surfing you could quickly drain your bank account balance to zero via toll road-like per mile fees. However there is something to be said about availability of high class restaurants, they are nice to have, as long as you're not forced to eat there, and without net neutrality, you might be forced to go through only the high cost toll roads, at least occasionally, to access simple things like check your email, or file a job application, to the point where you might completely abandon the Internet altogether, and vote for regular paper mail, instead via the US post office, instead of Email, and on your foot walk into a branch banking instead of on line banking. Maybe that's what they want, de-Internetize the world. Come on, we love Google, Ebay, Email, Youtube, mp3 downloads, ebooks, Amazon, and especially what the Internet was made for: pron.

Re:What's so American

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Are you stupid, or just ignorant?

Net neutrality isn't about giving everyone the exact same internet connection speeds. Net neutrality is about securing that everyone gets equal access to services. Most importantly, it means that ISPs can't artificially create "fast lanes" and "slow lanes" for various services, depending on how lucrative of a deal they strike with content providers.

Re:What's so American

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this Cold War obsession with misrepresenting Marxism in as many ways as possible just to make it seem ridiculous (or evil)? Stalin nodded in the direction of Marxism while behaving as a totalitarian despot, but he also nodded in the direction of atheism, while the USA is culturally based in deism and protestant work ethic, an entirely irrational, religious principle. The American capitalist revolution (against British late stage feudalism) and its development through late C20 has reflected Marx's view of how capitalism would unfold in a developed nation.

In particular, Marx does not "view labour as something nobody really wants to do" - wtf do you get that from? Marx viewed exploitation as something nobody should want to experience, but the Marxist progression of history is based on an increasing voluntary desire to do labour - from socialism through to communism - rather than to exploit others' labour. Prerequisite is firstly that people get to keep the fruits of their labour, and finally that people will realise the benefits of a sharing economy.

To be clear, I'm not Marxist, just like I'm not Christian, nor capitalist, nor Muslim, nor any -ist or -im nor -ian, really. But I don't try to mischaracterise any of these like an us vs. them. One of the biggest contradictions of human intelligence is its desire to over-simplify the world - to make up for our human sense of inadequacy: we are intelligent enough to recognise our cluelessness, but not wise enough to fix it, so we invent umbrella ideologies, insecurely eliminating all other possibilities.

All Koch is doing here is pandering to the Marx=evil knee-jerkers, like the Soviets pandered over and over to the capitalism=evil knee-jerkers. To think, we used to laugh at Russia for swallowing such simpleton propaganda!

Re:What's so American

[penix1]

You are confusing things. Net neutrality isn't about what tier of service you have. It is about ensuring that you aren't getting purposefully manipulated speed for the tier you have. Let's use your examples since you seem to understand those...

Do you think everyone needs the same speed? Does your grandmother need the same speed as an MIT researcher?

Do you think the MIT researcher should pay for the higher tier and be slowed down to Grandma's speed for some sites?

Same priciple for package delivery. Do you think everyone needs their package overnight? Or are there different needs.

Do you think your overnight package should be 3 days to certain destinations for the same price of overnight delivery?

Same principle for travel. Do you think everyone needs a supersonic transport, or are some fine with taking a Greyhound.

Do you think those that pay for the supersonic speed should be shuttled to the Grayhound station for certain destinations because that destination didn't pay the airlines for it?

Re:What's so American

[durrr]

Should your google queries be put in a slow lane with 10k ms ping because they didn't fork over $100 mil for premium service?
Should netflix pay premium for every mb because they're a "high bandwidth user" or face throttling to speeds where compression drops to 120p?

Should ISPs be allowed to have an even more oppressive position than they already have?

Re: What's so American

[PopeRatzo]

Yet you're probably ok when George Soros and Michael Bloomberg do the same thing...

Is it all some stupid game to you of racking up points? Tit for tat? Are you still capable of any moral clarity?

Do you feel it instructive to name a list of rich guys just because there's an article reacting to something David Koch said and you've been told that these are the other side's rich guys? Is everything a matter of moral equivalence to you?

No wonder the US is in trouble. People have watched so much cable TV and listened to so much talk radio that they have lost the ability to evaluate anything clearly, and can only see it through a partisan lens. You felt you had to stick up for the Koch Brothers because your talk radio favorites have told you they're "one of us" and you've got two names you can lay down whenever someone says, "Koch Brothers". As if it meant something.

Do you even know what this discussion is about or are you just in react mode?

Re:What's so American

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism in practice devalues labor

So does Capitalism. In fact, it's a stated goal.

Which is why Apple and the other high tech companies in California were colluding to keep prices down, and why they like H1B visas.

Capitalism is now about undercutting the value of labor, and driving everyone to a lower wage, so that the assholes running the show can get more bonuses.

Capitalism is just as much about fucking everybody over as Communism ever was.

If you think Capitalism doesn't do the exact same things, you're a moron.

Urgh

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you Americans *still* not gotten over this whole Marxist/Communist/Socialist = EVIL thing yet? Your government really did a good job with the propaganda during the Cold War it seems.

Re:Urgh

[Anonymous Coward]

Marxism is probably preferable to the feudal society these guys are promoting.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Net Neutrality Is 'Marxist,' According To a Koch-Backed Astroturf Group

No, net neutrality is not Marxist. Net neutrality is very much a capitalist policy, as distinct from being a corporatist policy.

Sure, it is all Koch brothers' fault...

[mi]

Here, the last-mile providers are acting like Marxists.

They certainly are — thanks to the monopoly-power once given to them by the government.

The solution to this, however, is not creating more rules for them to follow (with more boards and commissions to — ineffectively — ensure compliance) — these only make it harder for a would-be newcomers to appear — but to make this market properly competitive.

So screw the Koch Brothers and their idiot shilling.

While the public anger is (somewhat clumsily, but still effectively) once again redirected against the Koch Brothers, "Big Cable" donates to the ruling party en masse, CEOs play golf with the President and otherwise do the ruling party's bidding. Is it likely, that further monopolization will be blocked?