There it is. It has been known since Obama and the FCC first started talking about this. You see "Net Neutrality" to the rest of us means, leave it alone because it's been just fine for years. But Mr. Obama and the FCC came up with their own plan to make it a utility under the control of the FCC and they called their plan "Net Neutrality". The SAME name.
This is an attempt of government to seize control of communications, and that is usually what happens just before war.
I will not tolerate or accept or aknowledge any FCC authority whatsoever. and I will encrypt EVERYTHING.
Web sites can and should implement a client side encryption for even posting blogs, so it can't be captured and used by the FCC or anybody else.
It's long over due for everybody to establish a MESH network, outside the control of government or corporations. And the mesh network needs to be without any need of DNS, as that too is a security threat.
Work hard, or sacrifice your freedom. This is the world your children will end up living in.
Title II Common Carrier classification will do none of the things you claim it will do. That said, I agree that everything should be encrypted with strong encryption. However, those are two separate issues. Please educate yourself. Or not. But if you don't, you're just making yourself look ignorant.
Cool, let the FCC regulate speech on the Internet.
Surprised to find such support on Slashdot for the inevitable censorship that would occur should such action come to pass.
As an addendum: Do any of you remember how expensive home phones (and dialup!) were when the telecoms were granted regional monopolies? It wasn't until the advent of cell phones and cable internet that prices dropped drastically, in short order.
No thanks. I'll take the market on this one. It's done fine for the Internet's entire existence and I don't see a "problem" to be fixed.
You clearly have no idea what reclassification of ISPs as type II entails. You're just parroting someone else's talking points. Educate yourself. Otherwise, the adage "'tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." applies in spades to you.
QoS is on the customer end, because the customer isn't buying enough bandwidth. There's no reason for an ISP to be doing QoS of any kind.
I'm not aware of any ISPs who honor QoS tags traversing their networks unless they are providing paid transit, entirely across their own networks, between specific sites. Please, prove me wrong. Anyone?
The minute I read the summary my first thought was "if a government bigwig is promoting it, of can't be good for us regular Joe's"
Exactly, because it's too much trouble to actually educate yourself on the issues. It's much simpler to just spew vitriol than actually use your brain. You are what's wrong with this country.
Considering Massachusetts is a liberal state, that should tell you how "conservative" Romneycare was, and why conservatives in actual conservative parts of the country may not like it.
Of course nobody cared that someone was rolling out a liberal health care plan in a liberal state.
I strongly support your suggestion -- that by law we decree most health care services to be non-profit. I think that would improve the health care system substantially. I think the same thing about some limited other industries -- notably education.
But socialism is when the government directly controls the means of production -- so, socialized medicine is when doctors are government employees.
Not necessarily. Germany has socialized medicine which is wholly privately owned and operated. One of the differences is that healthcare companies are required to be non-profits. The strawman of "it's private, for-profit or socialist hellhole" is just that, a strawman.
Even if you are right in every aspect of your post, they aren't a utility until legally declared as such by an authorizing body. Sadly, we'll be waiting on the FCC and Congress for that.
Don't keep your fingers crossed. They'd rather break it, than accept ISP's as utility or Title II Common Carrier status.
Except that such designations are made by local governments and not by the Federal government. Just sayin'.
A Republican? Who? Ted Cruz? Rick Perry? Those two morons have no chance whatsoever. On the other hand, Jeb Bush, who would, will be decisively rejected by the zealot conservative base, as not conservative enough.
An interesting point. And while some here will be shrill about just how wrong I am, the truth is that in our current environment, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon would be considered lefty pinkos by the current Republican base.
You don't have to believe me. Just look at their records. Half of the stuff they did is currently being derided as "socialism" and "marxist."
While I kind of agree with the title 2 thing, I have to say. While the utilities have been regulated they have had almost zero innovation. The internet being unregulated for the most part has had major innovation. Would love to see net neutrality able to be done with a very soft regulatory hand.
An interesting point. However, I'd point out that the innovation you're referring to has exactly zero to do with "last mile" infrastructure. In fact, aside from Google Fiber and the minimal geographic impact of FIOS, there has been very little in the way of innovation (read: improving capacity and capabilities) from consumer "ISPs." I use quotes around ISPs because most of them are content providers whose links to the home have been re-purposed to provide limited (by technology and, much more so, abusive terms of service requirements).
Fiber runs in residential environments are the obvious next steps, but doing so would cannibalize the incumbents' content (Cable TV, VOD, etc.) customer base and profits and so, must be stopped even if it screws users over. What is more, by maintaining their monopolies they can (and are making every effort to do so) make money both coming and going, again at their customers' expense. It's a pretty nice racket. I'm not surprised they want to hang on to it.
except unlike almost every company out there, netflix refuses to pay for CDN hosting and wants to distribute it's content via the tier 1 networks and then whines there isn't enough bandwidth
CNN, yahoo, amazon, HBO, hulu and others pay commercial CDN's to host their content close to the users
Here is my problem, I feel we have a choice of two devils. On the one hand we can have a corporation control the line which can lead to abuses or the government can control the line and it can lead to abuses.
My question is how do you make the infrastructure independent of either groups control?
Actually, it's quite simple. You create a non-profit corporation to implement and manage the "last mile." That organization would be funded by bond issues (just like every other public works project) and supported by user fees. Those user fees would be paid by ISPs who compete on price and features.
Wow. That was really hard to figure out.
Really, the only problem with such a scheme is that big corporations can't have monopolies on Internet access, and by extension, information exchange. Which is, of course, not "fair" or "reasonable" in the Corporate States of America. Sigh.
Because it's not applied to all jobs. Certainly licensing is appropriately necessary for some positions. The argument here is that there's no reasonable reason for it in this case.
I agree completely. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise. My point was that current laws cover this, and "licensing" of strippers is idiocy. If the concern is with age restrictions, that can be handled with existing documents. If the concern is criminal records (although why that should be an issue is beyond me) that can also be dealt with at time of employment by the employers. Which is pretty much what I already said.
If I remember correctly, in the case of Ms. Lords, she was able to obtain good state-issue ID, if not Federal-issue ID (passport? Read and article once, long time ago) and that basically ruled-out prosecution of anyone associated with the adult pictures and film industry as she duped the government in addition to those employers.
Is there a point in there that's relevant to this discussion? We already have laws that address these issues, I say we don't need additional data collection. As you pointed out, Traci Lords was able to get valid ID from the state. How often does that happen? If it happens a lot, we need to look at the state procedures which apply in obtaining ID, not creating a whole new bureaucracy,
That something is the law does not mean that it is good. That something is the law does not mean that it should be the law. Otherwise, laws would never be repealed.
it's part of the cost of doing business
Every government intrusion raises the end cost to the consumer. The damage of these costs accumulate and multiply over the years, to the extent that the average US citizen would easily have twice as much personal property if it weren't for government-imposed "cost of doing business". The result of loss of freedom is poverty and death.
I see. So what you're saying is that we should spread the costs of verification across the entire populace by having the government do age verification? Or are you saying that we should just allow anyone (including 9 year olds) to work in strip clubs/porn movies, etc?
Or is there some other regimen you're suggesting? Do tell.
Are you folks being deliberately obtuse, or have just not looked in your wallet recently? Sigh.
The problem is that many of the club owners are more than willing to look the other way when their strippers claim to be of legal age. Then when they get busted by the cops they say "What?!? You mean she really isn't 18? But she told me she was! I'm just shocked--SHOCKED!--that this could have happened. This was an honest mistake. FOR REAL! I mean, she showed me her driver's license. Well, OK, the picture looked a little off. But then, so many people don't look anything like the picture on their driver's license....I just don't know how this could have happened. You don't really think I would have done this deliberately, do you?"
Right. And in that case, existing laws make said club owners subject to fines, penalties and, in some cases jail time. I'd say that was a pretty good incentive to make sure, wouldn't you?
If only we had some sort of state-issued document that verifies your age -- maybe even with a picture on it. I guess that's just a pipe dream, huh?
Look, I think this is a stupid law, but it's not hard to see past your objections and see where the state is coming from.
It's not all that terribly hard to get a fake ID that will pass muster at a bar. (It's a different issue to get one that will pass muster at a TSA check, or passport application, for example.)
You accidentally let a 19-year-old in to drink with a fake ID, not a huge deal in terms of liability, right? You will probably get fined if he/she gets caught in a sting, worse if they get a DUI, but it's pretty understandable and unlikely to put your strip club out of business.
But let's say a 17-year-old has a good fake ID and gets a job stripping at your club. What is your liability if someone takes pictures and you are the source of "child porn?" What about if she is doing tricks on the side and, worse than abetting prostitution, you are abetting "child prostitution?" Repeat this same exercise for any number of potential legal violations.
It is in the interest of all the strip club owners that saying "this person is OK to be a person who shows their boobies for money" is in the hands of the state rather than the bartender or bouncer who interviewed her/him on their first day of work. (And also theoretically in the interest of anyone who goes to that club and wishes to film, proposition or otherwise engage them.) It sounds puritanical at first, but from a liability limitation perspective I think it is very defensible.
Where I come from serving underage folks alcohol (or even allowing underage folks into your establishment) carries a $10,000 per underage individual fine with quickly escalating penalties including loss of liquor license. I'd say that could put someone out of business pretty quickly.
As for your hypothetical, that's just another good reason for owners of strip clubs to be careful in vetting their employees -- whether they strip or not. Why should the state take on that liability? The benefits accrue to the business and all the costs accrue to the state.
privatized profit, socialized liabilities. Hmmm...where have I heard that before?
We need age verification registration for alcohol purchases too!
Worse than that.
I live in Washington State, and occasionally have visited a store called BevMo, because they are the only local store I've found that currently carry Bawls products. Those are not alcoholic products, but the store does have a large percentage of floor space dedicating to alcoholic products.
So, when I buy these completely non-alcoholic products, with my VISA card that has a photo ID, they cannot complete the sale unless I also loan them my driver's license, which they seem to hold up in front of some sort of scanner.
I see that sarcasm detection isn't your strong suit, eh?
Both Penthouse and Playboy had to pull issues, and pay fines for including photographs of underage girls. The girls in question used forged ID, that passed the "quick" tests.
With a state license, the data can be cross-referenced to other official government databases, and discrepencies noted and inaccurate applications rejected.
Better that Penthouse and Playboy bear the burden for their laxity in pursuit of profit. Why should folks who don't read the magazines have to bear that burden? Bars, nightclubs, porn producers, grocery stores and all manner of other businesses are required to obey the law, just like the rest of us. As a society, we've placed that burden on the businesses that deal with age restricted stuff. For them, it's part of the cost of doing business -- either on the front end to make sure that *everyone* is of the appropriate age, or on the back end in the form of fines and penalties.
AFAICT, that seems to work pretty well. Please explain why we should change that policy?
My original observation was that we need to not be counter-productive with things like this stupid licensing law. It just puts another barrier in place. If enough people "get it", maybe something, even if it's only attitudes, will be changed. The status quo is not an option.
Fair enough. However, I think you may be overestimating the civic-mindedness, empathy and influence of/. readers.
In fact, given the forum, I think that Chris Rock quote along with my comment could be at least as useful in changing the attitudes of fathers of daughters who are as yet too young to enter into prostitution or stripping, as your comments.
My comments weren't intended as such, but as I reflect on your statements and mine, it's certainly a plausible conclusion, IMHO.
You've just explained why no one under 21 has ever tasted an alcoholic drink.
And you are, apparently, trying to make the perfect the enemy of the adequate. No, I'm not going to explain because it's painfully obvious that you're just trolling. Or just plain dumb.
You've just explained why no one under 21 has ever tasted an alcoholic drink.
And you are, apparently, trying to make the perfect the enemy of the adequate. No, I'm not going to explain because it's painfully obvious that you're just trolling.
Slashdot Mirror
There it is. It has been known since Obama and the FCC first started talking about this. You see "Net Neutrality" to the rest of us means, leave it alone because it's been just fine for years. But Mr. Obama and the FCC came up with their own plan to make it a utility under the control of the FCC and they called their plan "Net Neutrality". The SAME name.
This is an attempt of government to seize control of communications, and that is usually what happens just before war.
I will not tolerate or accept or aknowledge any FCC authority whatsoever. and I will encrypt EVERYTHING.
Web sites can and should implement a client side encryption for even posting blogs, so it can't be captured and used by the FCC or anybody else.
It's long over due for everybody to establish a MESH network, outside the control of government or corporations. And the mesh network needs to be without any need of DNS, as that too is a security threat.
Get active in these efforts. :DIME (Formerly Darkmail)
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/di... :SQRL (Pronounced Squirrel).
https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.... :MESH Networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... :Eliminate DNS
Sorry, I don't have any good links on this one. :VIDEO - Mr. President
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Work hard, or sacrifice your freedom. This is the world your children will end up living in.
Title II Common Carrier classification will do none of the things you claim it will do. That said, I agree that everything should be encrypted with strong encryption. However, those are two separate issues. Please educate yourself. Or not. But if you don't, you're just making yourself look ignorant.
Cool, let the FCC regulate speech on the Internet.
Surprised to find such support on Slashdot for the inevitable censorship that would occur should such action come to pass.
As an addendum: Do any of you remember how expensive home phones (and dialup!) were when the telecoms were granted regional monopolies? It wasn't until the advent of cell phones and cable internet that prices dropped drastically, in short order.
No thanks. I'll take the market on this one. It's done fine for the Internet's entire existence and I don't see a "problem" to be fixed.
You clearly have no idea what reclassification of ISPs as type II entails. You're just parroting someone else's talking points. Educate yourself. Otherwise, the adage "'tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." applies in spades to you.
QoS is on the customer end, because the customer isn't buying enough bandwidth. There's no reason for an ISP to be doing QoS of any kind.
I'm not aware of any ISPs who honor QoS tags traversing their networks unless they are providing paid transit, entirely across their own networks, between specific sites. Please, prove me wrong. Anyone?
The minute I read the summary my first thought was "if a government bigwig is promoting it, of can't be good for us regular Joe's"
Exactly, because it's too much trouble to actually educate yourself on the issues. It's much simpler to just spew vitriol than actually use your brain. You are what's wrong with this country.
Considering Massachusetts is a liberal state, that should tell you how "conservative" Romneycare was, and why conservatives in actual conservative parts of the country may not like it.
Of course nobody cared that someone was rolling out a liberal health care plan in a liberal state.
Tell that to the residents of Kentucky.
If anyone would actually read what Obama is proposing, ISPs WILL be forced to block all ISPs that the government does not approve of.
Bullshit. Reclassification will do nothing like that. Just ask AT&T, Verizon and other "telcos."
I strongly support your suggestion -- that by law we decree most health care services to be non-profit. I think that would improve the health care system substantially. I think the same thing about some limited other industries -- notably education.
But socialism is when the government directly controls the means of production -- so, socialized medicine is when doctors are government employees.
Not necessarily. Germany has socialized medicine which is wholly privately owned and operated. One of the differences is that healthcare companies are required to be non-profits. The strawman of "it's private, for-profit or socialist hellhole" is just that, a strawman.
Even if you are right in every aspect of your post, they aren't a utility until legally declared as such by an authorizing body. Sadly, we'll be waiting on the FCC and Congress for that.
Don't keep your fingers crossed. They'd rather break it, than accept ISP's as utility or Title II Common Carrier status.
Except that such designations are made by local governments and not by the Federal government. Just sayin'.
People should pay more for more kW/s and more Mb/s.
Apparently, you're unaware of the concept of marginal cost. Oh, and you're welcome.
You say that as if it weren't equally true for every president since -- what, Carter? Nixon? Maybe even FDR?
Really? I'm not so sure about that.
A Republican? Who? Ted Cruz? Rick Perry? Those two morons have no chance whatsoever. On the other hand, Jeb Bush, who would, will be decisively rejected by the zealot conservative base, as not conservative enough.
An interesting point. And while some here will be shrill about just how wrong I am, the truth is that in our current environment, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon would be considered lefty pinkos by the current Republican base.
You don't have to believe me. Just look at their records. Half of the stuff they did is currently being derided as "socialism" and "marxist."
While I kind of agree with the title 2 thing, I have to say. While the utilities have been regulated they have had almost zero innovation. The internet being unregulated for the most part has had major innovation. Would love to see net neutrality able to be done with a very soft regulatory hand.
An interesting point. However, I'd point out that the innovation you're referring to has exactly zero to do with "last mile" infrastructure. In fact, aside from Google Fiber and the minimal geographic impact of FIOS, there has been very little in the way of innovation (read: improving capacity and capabilities) from consumer "ISPs." I use quotes around ISPs because most of them are content providers whose links to the home have been re-purposed to provide limited (by technology and, much more so, abusive terms of service requirements).
Fiber runs in residential environments are the obvious next steps, but doing so would cannibalize the incumbents' content (Cable TV, VOD, etc.) customer base and profits and so, must be stopped even if it screws users over. What is more, by maintaining their monopolies they can (and are making every effort to do so) make money both coming and going, again at their customers' expense. It's a pretty nice racket. I'm not surprised they want to hang on to it.
except unlike almost every company out there, netflix refuses to pay for CDN hosting and wants to distribute it's content via the tier 1 networks and then whines there isn't enough bandwidth
CNN, yahoo, amazon, HBO, hulu and others pay commercial CDN's to host their content close to the users
Well, not so much.
Here is my problem, I feel we have a choice of two devils. On the one hand we can have a corporation control the line which can lead to abuses or the government can control the line and it can lead to abuses.
My question is how do you make the infrastructure independent of either groups control?
Actually, it's quite simple. You create a non-profit corporation to implement and manage the "last mile." That organization would be funded by bond issues (just like every other public works project) and supported by user fees. Those user fees would be paid by ISPs who compete on price and features.
Wow. That was really hard to figure out.
Really, the only problem with such a scheme is that big corporations can't have monopolies on Internet access, and by extension, information exchange. Which is, of course, not "fair" or "reasonable" in the Corporate States of America. Sigh.
Because it's not applied to all jobs. Certainly licensing is appropriately necessary for some positions. The argument here is that there's no reasonable reason for it in this case.
I agree completely. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise. My point was that current laws cover this, and "licensing" of strippers is idiocy. If the concern is with age restrictions, that can be handled with existing documents. If the concern is criminal records (although why that should be an issue is beyond me) that can also be dealt with at time of employment by the employers. Which is pretty much what I already said.
If I remember correctly, in the case of Ms. Lords, she was able to obtain good state-issue ID, if not Federal-issue ID (passport? Read and article once, long time ago) and that basically ruled-out prosecution of anyone associated with the adult pictures and film industry as she duped the government in addition to those employers.
Is there a point in there that's relevant to this discussion? We already have laws that address these issues, I say we don't need additional data collection. As you pointed out, Traci Lords was able to get valid ID from the state. How often does that happen? If it happens a lot, we need to look at the state procedures which apply in obtaining ID, not creating a whole new bureaucracy,
That something is the law does not mean that it is good. That something is the law does not mean that it should be the law. Otherwise, laws would never be repealed.
Every government intrusion raises the end cost to the consumer. The damage of these costs accumulate and multiply over the years, to the extent that the average US citizen would easily have twice as much personal property if it weren't for government-imposed "cost of doing business". The result of loss of freedom is poverty and death.
I see. So what you're saying is that we should spread the costs of verification across the entire populace by having the government do age verification? Or are you saying that we should just allow anyone (including 9 year olds) to work in strip clubs/porn movies, etc?
Or is there some other regimen you're suggesting? Do tell.
Are you folks being deliberately obtuse, or have just not looked in your wallet recently? Sigh.
The problem is that many of the club owners are more than willing to look the other way when their strippers claim to be of legal age. Then when they get busted by the cops they say "What?!? You mean she really isn't 18? But she told me she was! I'm just shocked--SHOCKED!--that this could have happened. This was an honest mistake. FOR REAL! I mean, she showed me her driver's license. Well, OK, the picture looked a little off. But then, so many people don't look anything like the picture on their driver's license....I just don't know how this could have happened. You don't really think I would have done this deliberately, do you?"
Right. And in that case, existing laws make said club owners subject to fines, penalties and, in some cases jail time. I'd say that was a pretty good incentive to make sure, wouldn't you?
If only we had some sort of state-issued document that verifies your age -- maybe even with a picture on it. I guess that's just a pipe dream, huh?
Look, I think this is a stupid law, but it's not hard to see past your objections and see where the state is coming from.
It's not all that terribly hard to get a fake ID that will pass muster at a bar. (It's a different issue to get one that will pass muster at a TSA check, or passport application, for example.)
You accidentally let a 19-year-old in to drink with a fake ID, not a huge deal in terms of liability, right? You will probably get fined if he/she gets caught in a sting, worse if they get a DUI, but it's pretty understandable and unlikely to put your strip club out of business.
But let's say a 17-year-old has a good fake ID and gets a job stripping at your club. What is your liability if someone takes pictures and you are the source of "child porn?" What about if she is doing tricks on the side and, worse than abetting prostitution, you are abetting "child prostitution?" Repeat this same exercise for any number of potential legal violations.
It is in the interest of all the strip club owners that saying "this person is OK to be a person who shows their boobies for money" is in the hands of the state rather than the bartender or bouncer who interviewed her/him on their first day of work. (And also theoretically in the interest of anyone who goes to that club and wishes to film, proposition or otherwise engage them.) It sounds puritanical at first, but from a liability limitation perspective I think it is very defensible.
Where I come from serving underage folks alcohol (or even allowing underage folks into your establishment) carries a $10,000 per underage individual fine with quickly escalating penalties including loss of liquor license. I'd say that could put someone out of business pretty quickly.
As for your hypothetical, that's just another good reason for owners of strip clubs to be careful in vetting their employees -- whether they strip or not. Why should the state take on that liability? The benefits accrue to the business and all the costs accrue to the state.
privatized profit, socialized liabilities. Hmmm...where have I heard that before?
Isn't being a dancer a business too? So why shouldn't she (or he) be the one that needs to get a license for their persuit of profit?
Please note the context. Are you familiar with that term?
We need age verification registration for alcohol purchases too!
Worse than that. I live in Washington State, and occasionally have visited a store called BevMo, because they are the only local store I've found that currently carry Bawls products. Those are not alcoholic products, but the store does have a large percentage of floor space dedicating to alcoholic products.
So, when I buy these completely non-alcoholic products, with my VISA card that has a photo ID, they cannot complete the sale unless I also loan them my driver's license, which they seem to hold up in front of some sort of scanner.
I see that sarcasm detection isn't your strong suit, eh?
Both Penthouse and Playboy had to pull issues, and pay fines for including photographs of underage girls. The girls in question used forged ID, that passed the "quick" tests.
With a state license, the data can be cross-referenced to other official government databases, and discrepencies noted and inaccurate applications rejected.
Better that Penthouse and Playboy bear the burden for their laxity in pursuit of profit. Why should folks who don't read the magazines have to bear that burden? Bars, nightclubs, porn producers, grocery stores and all manner of other businesses are required to obey the law, just like the rest of us. As a society, we've placed that burden on the businesses that deal with age restricted stuff. For them, it's part of the cost of doing business -- either on the front end to make sure that *everyone* is of the appropriate age, or on the back end in the form of fines and penalties.
AFAICT, that seems to work pretty well. Please explain why we should change that policy?
My original observation was that we need to not be counter-productive with things like this stupid licensing law. It just puts another barrier in place. If enough people "get it", maybe something, even if it's only attitudes, will be changed. The status quo is not an option.
Fair enough. However, I think you may be overestimating the civic-mindedness, empathy and influence of /. readers.
In fact, given the forum, I think that Chris Rock quote along with my comment could be at least as useful in changing the attitudes of fathers of daughters who are as yet too young to enter into prostitution or stripping, as your comments.
My comments weren't intended as such, but as I reflect on your statements and mine, it's certainly a plausible conclusion, IMHO.
You've just explained why no one under 21 has ever tasted an alcoholic drink.
And you are, apparently, trying to make the perfect the enemy of the adequate. No, I'm not going to explain because it's painfully obvious that you're just trolling. Or just plain dumb.
There. FTFM.
You've just explained why no one under 21 has ever tasted an alcoholic drink.
And you are, apparently, trying to make the perfect the enemy of the adequate. No, I'm not going to explain because it's painfully obvious that you're just trolling.