Slashdot Mirror
ACLU Urges Cities To Build Public Broadband To Protect Net Neutrality (thehill.com)
The ACLU is calling on cities across the country to build their own public municipal broadband networks to help preserve net neutrality after the Federal Communications Commission repealed the open internet rules. From a report: In a report released Thursday morning, the civil liberties group argued that in the absence of the FCC's rules cities could give residents an alternative to private service providers who will soon no longer be required to treat all web traffic equally. "Internet service has become as essential as utilities like water and electricity, and local governments should treat it that way," Jay Stanley, an ACLU policy analyst who authored the report, said in a statement. "If local leaders want to protect their constituents' rights and expand quality internet access, then community broadband is an excellent way to do that," Stanley added. The ACLU sent the report to more than 100 mayors across the country who had spoken out against the FCC's decision to scrap the rules.
Now who will pay for it?
Why should government be in business?
The question of how society's resources should be allocated is supposed to be answered by the voluntary interaction between members of The People; the government is supposed to be there merely to facilitate the peaceful interaction between those members.
There needs to be a Separation of Business and State.
After all, this whole problem has arisen from the fact that State's have chosen winners and losers, and thereby granted monopolies over communication infrastructure.
I don't want government in control of it any more than I want a corporation. Become part of Internet 3. Build your own mesh network, with your neighbors and family.
People didn't bat an eye when the last Bush administration first exploded the government budget for domestic spying. No protests were heard when it turned out Obama's bunch was exploiting Facebook data for electioneering purposes. As for "net neutrality", it wasn't even a meme before Obama's political appointee decided to misinterpret outdated depression-era communications law and step on the toes of other regulators like the FTC. It'll be just wonderful to have Slashdot load 0.5 us faster whenever I get fiber to the home, but not if my local taxes are going to jump up and the city finances are going to go into the red just because they embraced a boondoggle project that is outside of their narrow zone competence and turns out to be of interest only to a handful of single-issue voters. Anyone who has visited the DMV or tried to navigate a government website understands what I mean by "competence". As for privacy, maybe the hysteria does serve a purpose in that it represents a large crowd of dullards suddenly realizing the impact that their indiscretions and stupidity have on their own lives in an increasingly interconnected and transparent world.
State lawmakers in 21 states, after generous brib....ahem "campaign contributions" from cablecos and telcos, have decided that cities in their states don't get to make this choice for themselves. The most embarrassing example of this is Tennessee, which restricts other cities in the state from following Chattanooga's groundbreaking example.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If it's the municipal government that owns the tubes, all the pseudo-legal arguments about how private companies are free to censor guns and right-wing politics all they like go out the door. Not that they had much of a foothold to start with, but...you know, jus' saying.
Oh stop that broken record. Socialism isnâ(TM)t broken any more than capitalism. Theyâ(TM)re all good or bad depending on how you implement them (usually badly).
You didnâ(TM)t grow much past the Cold War, did you?
This is false hood that needs die
I run the IT department for a municipality that already provides municipal broadband services. The fact is Public/ municipal does almost NOTHING to assist in net neutrality. IPS’s provide a conduit from the end user to the internet backbone. If the content is punished upstream, as it goes across say, Verizon’s backbone, the local pipe is already receiving degraded, delayed, punished data.
The one thing it does however, is stop your local ISP from tracking you and monetizing your online behavior which can be done more quickly and cheaply by use of a VPN.
The ACLU has (perhaps not surprisingly) chosen to promote the former, which leaves the public on the hook for paying for it all. With the latter, the private sector pays for it while the public reaps the benefit. It's important to understand that the major cable internet companies aren't natural monopolies like Microsoft. They were given a monopoly by local governments who got into the regulation game to keep telephone poles from becoming too cluttered with wires, but somehow it morphed into a scheme where in exchange for a monopoly the local government got kickbacks or other guarantees from the sole ISP. This is why net neutrality isn't as big an issue in other parts of the world - most non-Americans have a choice of multiple ISPs, and can simply switch to a different ISP if theirs does anything stupid like try to throttle Netflix. The problems net neutrality tries to solve are only possible because of these government-granted monopolies.
> "Internet service has become as essential as utilities like water and electricity"
No. Just no.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
That's why America's culture of charities and mutual-aid societies (and, indeed, actual insurance for health care) dried up when Government stuck its steel-tipped boot into those service sectors.
Your issue with Natural Monopolies is actually an issue externalities; it's an issue with the lack of property rights. After all, why should one particular organization have the right to send radio waves through my property without my consent or without compensation to me? At the very least, such an organization should have to pay for that right by offsetting everyone else's taxes accordingly. That is, there are ways to cast these problems as a matter of individual property rights, and in a way that doesn't involve government allocating resources.
The main obstacle to municipal broadband is the high cost; not to mention lobbying and political advertising budgets of Cable companies and Telcos ---- if word gets out you will setup a municipal broadband network; the big bad cable companys' reps flock to the area to try to convince the officials No, then if the officials aren't persuaded, they'll fund the campaigns of their opponents and try to convince the local that it's a mismanagement of public funds, next the Lawyers and bureaucrats fly in and start working out every possible way they can think of to delay the project ---- from filing lawsuits, to incumbent Telecoms deliberately sabotaging development efforts by failing or being unduly slow when required to modify their wiring to accommodate the additional pole attachments.
So I could see a value for a National Non-profit to help PROMOTE municipal broadband, by:
1. Raise money for lobbying efforts, legal funds, the promotion of municipal broadband projects, and writing grants for projects.
2. Hire full time lobbyists to fight the telecom lobbyists at the state and national level and work against the regulations and laws being passed to discourage municipal broadband --- fight in the opposite direction.
3. Provide funds to be used for legal assistance and promotion of projects such as Google fiber competing against Telco incumbents, to facilitate more competition in the broken markets.
4. Produce national advertising and reports on municipal broadband projects that have been successful; Designed to make citizens who
don't have municipal broadband feel jealous - Raise awareness and encourage more and more consumers to demand these services ---- spread the word, provide service testimonials and comparisons in the (A) Performance, (B) Speed, (C) Service, and (D) Support of these services.
5. Create a grant program that can issue funds to develop broadband, subject to condition:
(a). Grant proposals compete for funds, and the ones that provide wired high-bandwidth (10 Megabits or more upload and 20 Megabits or more download) uncapped access to the most population who don't currently have reliable wired high-bandwidth uncapped access have highest priority.
(b). The project is completed by the municipality, and the rights to 90% of the infrastructure are permanently and exclusively owned by the municipality.
(c). The project must be operational before a certain deadline no more than 2 years away and service available to a specified number of households within the planned buildout, or else repayment of the funds is due.
(d). After completion of the project; a monthly fee will be assessed for X years against all households where service would be available
(whether they chose to turn up service or not) to replenish grant funds and help fund more projects.
The best argument against socialism (communism) is living under it for a few months. Ever wonder why it didn't become popular again until 30 years after the soviet union? Had to wait for a generation to die out.
And no, Scandinavian countries are not socialist.
How is being forced to buy a product just as bad as not being forced to buy a product?
Instead of enacting legislation at the state-level to deal with this.
"If local leaders want to protect their constituents' rights"
That made me laugh. Local leaders are no better than national leaders at doing anything for us. Maybe in a small city of 5 or 10 thousand, but in a major city you're no better off than you are nationally. The "leaders" are just as susceptible to corruption and are just as unreachable.
Don't be a moron. If comcast and the phone company had to pay me whatever I asked to put a pole on my property and run wires over it, literally none of my neighbors would be able to get any service at all. A free market doesn't work in this case at all.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
If the public option was paid on a monthly subscription basis (such as people pay now), how would that be forcing you to pay for both the public and private options? Don't be such a retard.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
B.S. My local muni broadband is funded by those who use it. http://swiftel.net/
ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union
Finally, 1 group that no longer has their head up their ass.
Calling for net neutrality is a waste of time, effort, and money.
OTOH, for a lot less effort, real competition can destroy the executives that continue to harm America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Leftists ideologies are responsible for killing around 100 million people in the 20th century alone (add another 30 million if you count fascism as a leftist ideology, which you should). Capitalism is responsible for leading billions of people out of poverty and starvation. Yes, socialism very much is "more broken" than capitalism.
Free markets ("capitalism") is the absence of regulations and government interference; there is only one way not to interfere. And capitalism has been implemented well in practice; socialism never has been.
I can't "grow past" a hundred million dead, in particular having grown up under a socialist regime.
People like you are ignorant and evil.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my municipal run internet. Gigabit speeds both directions, no data caps, excellent customer service, etc and all for less than I would pay for internet that's 1/20th the speed from Comcast and whatnot. However, how do you think the municipal ISPs hook up to the internet? Hint, it's not the government or a public service. It's just a bigger ISP.
Capitalism is not synonymous with free markets. Free markets means there's plenty of fish in the sea; capitalism means big fish eat the little fish.
for the various pressure groups to descend if this ever takes place. In an era when cities are divesting themselves of Confederate statuary, pension funds receive demands to disinvest in hated sectors like tobacco or gun manufacturers, and the wrong tweet can get you fired, how long do you think it'll be before public ISPs are being lobbied to block websites like "hate" sites, porn sites, or anti-vax sites? And do it in many cases, because those ISPs will be run as spinelessly as university administrations.
So what you're saying is that the problem with capitalism is that it works too well? Fish getting too big while in Socialism fish are all starving equally and die together. Ok, thanks for clarification.
Do not confuse Stalinism or Maoism with socialism, those first two where strictly police states with the masquerade of what ever political system they were pretending to be. This being no different to Nazism.
So want to see socialism, first the psychopaths have to go, quite simply they will corrupt any ism they are a part of, attempt to turn it into an authoritarian state where they have control and can dominate and exploit the citizens of that society.
Socialism is the system that the majority of people were born into, the family unit, a socialist government is basically about expanding the socialism of the family unit into the greater community to gain the all to obvious outcomes, a caring and sharing society of human beings and the extended family concept.
The 'Free Market' is straight up marketing lie because it is wholly and totally dependent upon nothing in that market ever being Free, everything 'owned' and 'controlled', so that those with the most can control and exploit those with the least. With everything that can be owned being owned, including all of the essentials to life, so that denial of life becomes the tool of exploitation of the not free at all market place of human lives.
Either we shift to socialism or die as a species, that is the choice, suck it up.
mfwright@batnet.com
Designate a portion of the 5g spectrum to municipal broadband. Cities can put up towers, which will help the big telcos by increasing coverage. Taxes basically are going to pay for the national 5g network via payments to the cell providers anyway, so why not just spend the money directly.
I didn't say anything about socialism.
Wrong, you don't know your political compass. Fascism is and always have been a right-wing methodology. What you're also conflating is that authoritarianism exists under any economic system. Any system can break once you introduce people, that's why you have ethics and rules.
People like YOU are dishonest and disingenuous. And you use that dishonest to spread misinformation. The ignorance and evil is within you, not with those you claim that are ignorant and evil.
CAPTCHA: ethics (now this is irony at its finest)
We don't need cities to become ISP's... what is specifically needed is Last Mile + VPN's as service providers so we can go back to choice like when we had modems and ISP's to choose from. We need VPN's least state and federal governments use them for spying which they will.
So what your saying is that capitalism is the best form of economics that have been put in practice or written down as theory.
How is fascism "always" and "is" right-wing?
How can right wing promote smaller government and be synonymous with complete government control ?
I didn't say that, and if you're just going to put words in my mouth I have no interest in debating it with you.
Mussolini defined fascism as "corporatism". He used the two terms interchangeably.
Are you claiming to be a higher authority on fascism than Mussolini ?
Learn your history.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
That’s...not how local public utilities typically operate. If your local municipality is operating utilities via taxes instead of usage-based billing, I’d say you’ve got some idiots at the helm and that the incentives are not aligned with the best interests of the community. Thankfully, that approach isn’t exactly common.
Instead, public utilities are generally operated via usage-based billing on an at-cost basis, rather than through taxes. I can live entirely off the grid without having to pay a dime to my local municipality for utilities. I could pay a private utility company and avoid paying the local municipality. There may be an infrastructure buildout paid for via taxes, but private and public groups both usually benefit from and get to use that infrastructure, so you’d be paying it either way.
This sounds like socialism. The American way is to support nickel-and-dimeing and institutionalized corruption. Get with the program.
Requiem for the American Dream
So what you're saying is that we should organize our society along the lines of the lobster.
ACLU wants to create virtual prison...
... punishing the sociopaths that run corporations that screw the public?
No? Too sane and idea? Damn. It was worth a try.
Has the sky fallen yet, now that "net neutrality" is gone?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.