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Steve Wozniak: Net Neutrality Rollback 'Will End the Internet As We Know It' (siliconbeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Silicon Beat:
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak penned an op-ed on Friday with a former Federal Communications Commission chairman, urging the current FCC to stop its proposed rollback of Obama-era net neutrality regulations. In the op-ed published by USA Today, Wozniak and Michael Copps, who led the FCC from 2001 to 2011, argued the rollback will threaten freedom for internet users and may corrode democracy... "Sometimes there's a nugget of truth to the adage that Washington policymakers are disconnected from the people they purport to represent," they wrote. "It is a stirring example of democracy in action. With the Internet's future as a platform for innovation and democratic discourse on the line, a coalition of grassroots and diverse groups joined with technology firms to insist that the FCC maintain its 2015 open internet (or 'net neutrality') rules."
In the joint letter, Wozniak and Copps write that "We come from different walks of life, but each of us recognizes that the FCC is considering action that could end the internet as we know it -- a dynamic platform for entrepreneurship, jobs, education, and free expression."
"Will consumers and citizens control their online experiences, or will a few gigantic gatekeepers take this dynamic technology down the road of centralized control, toll booths and constantly rising prices for consumers? At stake is the nature of the internet and its capacity to transform our lives even more than it already has."
In the joint letter, Wozniak and Copps write that "We come from different walks of life, but each of us recognizes that the FCC is considering action that could end the internet as we know it -- a dynamic platform for entrepreneurship, jobs, education, and free expression."
"Will consumers and citizens control their online experiences, or will a few gigantic gatekeepers take this dynamic technology down the road of centralized control, toll booths and constantly rising prices for consumers? At stake is the nature of the internet and its capacity to transform our lives even more than it already has."
What bugs me is that there so many enemies of freedom and so many enemies of 'Net neutrality. On one hand, every dictatorship wants to censor the Internet, and on the other, there are a few corporatists who want to kill it and turn it into a corporate media distribution system. Everyone else on the planet wants a free and open Internet. Yet we seem to have to be fighting these anti-freedom forces endlessly. Well, I'm staying - not breaking - staying - and will be donating - yet again - to a pro 'Net neutrality group.
It's only in the last few years that companies have created totally vertical integration with content creation to delivery. That is a major difference, in my mind; hence the need for laws.
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Lets face it, American internet users are just cattle who need to be fed and exploited by a few walled garden corporations farming income for their billionaire owners. The idea that the internet is useful for anything but extorting money from its users is laughably left wing. Enjoy your slavery cattle!
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
But he's really gone over the top on this one. The Net Neut rules have barely been in place for a year and a half. For him and the vast majority of the rest of us, "the Internet as we know it" is the Internet that existed before these rules were put into place.
Part of the problem is that while yes, there are many users of the Internet who want it to stay open and free, there is a segment of the Consumer population that wants it to be Cable TV, and Perhaps Gaming Distribution 2.0
The idea behind DRM, and video rental systems over the internet is just asinine. But you have to look at where a particular segment of the Computer using public is going: Android Tablets, which is Linux turned against iteslf, and iPads. What do both of these things look like? Portable Televisions. They don't have keyboards, they don't have mice. They are tools of Content consumption.
Steve Jobs, Woz's partner, was a huge part of this. Openness on the Apple Platforms ended with the Apple II GS series, and the Macs were all largely closed to the outside world until the advent of OSX. Many Pre-OSX Macs, had proprietary EVERYTHING, and even the speaker Jack was proprietary. OSX opened the Mac world up some by giving us a MacOS running on BSD.
This allowed Mac to Survive and gve us the Trusted Computing Nightmare that was iOS. All the sudden you have what the DRM Corps want: A Computing platform where everything is a Rental transaction, and consumers money can be funneled from their wallets constantly. Thats what is happening now with iDevice owners.
Apple should have died off back in the 90s. They should have gone out of business completely. Consumers should have resisted the introduction of DRM into computers and rejected networks like NetFlix.
"30+ years without "net neutrality" regulations, 2 years with" - bzzzzzzt. Wrong.
For the 1990's to mid 2000's ISPs and telecoms were typically separate entities. Telecom access was dialup or DSL - both regulated by Title II. Since the ISPs weren't in the telecom business they didn't require regulation - they had no reason to block/throttle based on service/source/destination/whatever.
From then until 2014 various FCC rules and regulations (including the "Open Internet Order") governed ISPs. In 2014 Verizon "ruined it for everyone" by challenging the OIO and taking the FCC to court. They won, but the judge suggested that if the FCC was going to police ISPs it would have to classify them as common carriers. So the FCC did.
I can still use the Internet without touching Facebook or Google. For the time being. The Net Neutrality laws were put in place to maintain the status quo in the face of possible breaking the 'net into walled gardens. 'But we would never block or restrict access to the Internet' many ISPs say. Fine. Then Net Neutrality rules won't affect the way you do business, so shut up.
Yeah, these rules are a prior restriction on certain business models. Which isn't really the American way. We'd rather leave the market open, allow businesses to develop their own products and structures and apply rules and legislation once some harm to consumers has been identified. But the Internet is a natural monopoly of sorts. There isn't another one that I could choose should the current one prove to be unsatisfactory. Even if I have multiple ISPs serving me, should Google, Sourceforge or the GOP fundraising websites end up on the other network, that would pretty much destroy the utility of the single interconnected network.
Have gnu, will travel.
Your argument is quite flawed. Firstly, you're implying that just because the regulation wasn't needed before means it wont be needed now or in the future. And if it wasn't needed because everyone is already playing nice then there should be no harm in having it, since the only way it would effect anything is if they decided not to play nice. Secondly you're trying to deflect to a different issue with a "two wrongs make a right" sentiment. Just because Facebook, Google and Twitter are bad for the health for internet doesn't mean it's OK for Comcast, Verizon and AT&T to screw over the internet even further.
"..videos being demonetized, certain subreddits being banned.." Those two things have to do with the operation of specific websites. If you do not like how YouTube handles streaming video, try your hand at your own streaming video website. 'Net neutrality enables you to give it an honest shot. But take away 'Net neutrality, then Google/YouTube pays the ISPs and those who own the wires to throttle your upstart, yet provide even more bandwidth for YouTube. That's would be the problem. 'Net neutrality means everyone works on a level playing field i.e. fairness, whereas the corporatists would like to see their own stuff have access to speedy lanes while innovators get throttled. What do you think would happen to a bunch of innovators' efforts if YouTube fully loaded in a millisecond while their new website took thirty seconds. They wouldn't stand a chance. That's the issue - and that's why you should morally support and financially support those fighting for 'Net neutrality.
Uhh...we actually did have net neutrality for most of the time that we had the Internet. Remember: the Internet operated over telephone lines for most of its existence, and those lines were regulated under the same Title II classification that Obama’s FCC simply extended to cable ISPs. It’s a matter of bringing Internet-over-cable in line with the regulations that have existed for Internet-over-anything-else for the duration of the Internet’s history.
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, the other side of that coin is that goods and services can be funneled to the consumer constantly as well. That's sort of the whole idea of a consumer. It's not a one-way street. When it is, consumers aren't consumers any longer, and their willingness to let the funneling of their resources away will also go away.
At the most basic level, either you consume, or you die. Next step up, you consume and your life / lifestyle can be enhanced. These are all desirable to some degree. There are legitimate issues about reasonable and unreasonable levels and kinds of consumption, but what makes that really tricky is that it almost always varies from person to person.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Making the issue a left / right or Dem / Rep issue, or an Obama / Trump issue doesn't help. 'Net neutrality helps everyone: i.e. a fair playing field. Take it away and innovators and dissenting opinion (left, right or otherwise) gets throttled into oblivion. 'Net neutrality is worth fighting for, both morally, and with dollars.
And the human race did fine for tens of thousands of years without any sort of regulation on nuclear weapons, so clearly we need to stop regulating them and let everyone have access to them... right?
How? By site policies being neither here nor there with respect to net neutrality.
The whole point of net neutrality is to create a kind of unfettered competition between information sources, not to compel every information source to have a policy for its content that you approve of. The solution to your not liking Yourtube's monetization policy is to turn to a different site, something you'll be hampered from doing under a non-neutral Internet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They'be both perfectly cromulent words.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Very true indeed. We don't need laws until people seek to do things that are unfair and unacceptable - then we have to make laws to forbid those acts. However, any societies that has to make laws against X is likely already to be saturated with X; the existence of the laws strongly suggests that they are being broken wholesale.
The following extract from the Tao Te Ching is relevant, especially the final part about "thieves and brigands".
"The more prohibitions that are imposed on people,
The poorer the people become.
The more sharp weapons the people possess,
The greater is the chaos in the country.
The more clever and crafty the people become,
The more unusual affairs occur.
The more laws and regulations that exist,
The more thieves and brigands appear".
- Tao Te Ching
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
This is not about letting the government control the internet.
This is about giving the government power to stop companies from trying to control the internet.
#DeleteFacebook
I know. This is a clear sign that gay marriage laws aren't working. Wait what? What were we talking about? I mean none of the things you mentioned are related to net neutrality, so I assume you're talking about repealing the 9th amendment. Wait what?
Universal health care is about being decent human beings. Most first-world countries have it.
You guys have insane costs caused by letting corporations run your health care system so that needs to be fixed, but even lower costs could not be afforded by everyone. Your taxes are also wasted on the military, so fix that too and you'll have universal health care, universal income, ten times the budget for NASA, etc.
#DeleteFacebook
Can you, though? I just sent a gift to a friend on the opposite coast. The package weighed 52 lbs. I paid about $70 to get it there. Can you do that? I don't think you could even do it for fuel costs, much less pay the driver and the wear and tear on the transport vehicle(s.)
Yes, there's a lot of truth to this, especially since we now have a bought-and-paid for legislature. Net neutrality is definitely very high up on the list of things like this, too.
I'm not really suggesting that. I'm more suggesting that the consumers aren't the problem. IMHO, the regulators are the problem. The people that are supposed to be watching out for the best interests of the consumers. The post which I replied to was proposing that consumers were a significant part of the problem - I don't see it that way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
'But we would never block or restrict access to the Internet' many ISPs say. Fine. Then Net Neutrality rules won't affect the way you do business, so shut up.
Exactly. I wonder why no one has bearded Ajit Pai on the record -- preferably on camera -- and asked him outright, "Mr. Pai, if the Internet corporations say they're not violating net neutrality now, and they have no intentions of violating net neutrality, then the existence of net neutrality regulations has no effect on them. Why would you want to waste the FCC's resources in the repeal of something which won't affect them unless they want to engage in practices that are prohibited under its provisions? This creates the appearance of your acting solely for the benefit of the corporations, rather than for the citizens of the United States."