And now is Amazon going to spot a mad bomber in the making? It might be obvious if someone leaves a comment along the lines of "Zero stars. This didn't give me the bomb making instructions I was looking for. Recommend Other Book if you want to blow up your school like I do." By all means, report that commenter. But what about someone who bought a book titled "Explosive Chemistry" and then, a week later, ordered a pressure cooker. Should Amazon report that person? What if the person didn't buy the book and just ordered a pressure cooker? Should Amazon assume this person is a bomb-maker in the making and report him? Where is the line and why is it Amazon's responsibility to report all potential bomb makers?
True, but this could quickly move from the bad ("my page is no longer listed on Google but I can still tweet links to the articles") to the much worse ("I needed to take the article down so it wouldn't appear in my site's search engine results"). In fact, I don't see any possible way for this to turn out even remotely good.
Exactly. When the DMCA was enacted, the idea was that people would submit take down requests under penalty of perjury and companies would comply under threat of law. Then the person who uploaded the material could fight with the DMCA submitter over who was right. This might have sounded good in theory at the time and might work in some cases, but in general this has led to people filing DMCA requests for things that they don't have any rights to file over. ("That file has a similar file name to one of our files - take it down.") Companies, wary of lawsuits, are complying and no perjury charges are being filed against the DMCA abusers.
This "Right to Forget" will face the same thing. Google and other search engines won't want to risk a hundred or thousand legal battles - much less a dozen losses in court, so they will comply with every request that has even an outside-chance of being valid. People who write valid, truthful content will find themselves delisted because they made someone angry and that someone decided to make the search engines "forget." Negative reviews? Gone. Scathing articles against politicans? No more. Listing a scammer's past misdeeds? Disappeared.
But where does the definition of Search Engine stop? I have a WordPress blog. It has a built-in site search engine. Could someone sue me because I wrote an embarrassing-to-them-but-completely-true article? Could they order me to take it off of my in-site search? And since there's no easy way to exempt individual articles in this manner, would this essentially be telling me to take the article offline entirely?
However, on the flip side, if thousands upon thousands of people start suing Google to "be forgotten" (but only in those instances that they don't like... keep the good ones), can Google defend against all of those cases? Would they be forced by the sheer number to settle? Would this, in turn, lead to more lawsuits as people look for their easy settlement? I can imagine a subset of the legal profession cropping up with commercials along the "hurt at work? call us" line. "Got something embarrassing listed about you on Google? Is a search engine showing the world something you'd rather they didn't see? Do past indiscretions keep coming back to haunt you? Then call 555-SUE-GOOG! We'll sue those nasty search engines and make sure that your Internet history is nothing but sunshine and roses. [cue catchy jungle]"
The newspaper is not required to delete the articles.
But how long until someone sues the newspaper for the article still coming up in their search engine? Will the courts order the newspaper's search engine to remove the article? And, if the newspaper's web staff can't make search exemptions for dozens of articles (as other requests come in), will this just result in those articles being pulled offline?
Exactly. All this isn't "being forgotten", it is historical revision. In my past, I was a perfect saint. Don't believe me? Google me and you won't find one single transgression. I made sure of that. We've also always been at war with Eastasia.
There problem then becomes the flood of lawsuits. Google can handle one lawsuit, no problem. Two or three? Sure. But what happens when a thousand people are suing them over a thousand different links appears throughout their search results? Can they defend against a thousand cases at once? What about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Can the courts handle this flood as well? Google will either have to wind up settling each case, caving in to each request, or fighting a war on a thousand fronts. And if they do the first two then people will learn that they can file a lawsuit and get what they want from Google. This will open the floodgates even more.
I wonder if this could also affect any site with an internal search engine. Suppose you grab WordPress and throw up a quick blog. You're posting away and wind up posting a negative piece about a politician who got in some sort of scandal. (We'll assume that you stick to proven facts and stay clear of any unproven allegations.) That post goes viral and tons of people link to it. Could the politician order your to remove the article from your site's Wordpress-powered search? Since that would be impossible for a normal user (for the sake of argument, assume you aren't very technically inclined in this manner), wouldn't complying with that essentially be taking the post down? And if you refused, would you, an average user, be able to afford going to court to defend your right to post the truth?
This is going to wind up chilling speech with people taking down truthful articles that people who have committed crimes find "embarrassing" or "uncomfortable."
Simply threatening them with competition isn't enough. Even if an FCC chairman grew enough of a backbone to challenge the big ISPs (and the whole corrupt system didn't stop him), where is this competition coming from? It's a nebulous threat that, without serious changes, will be taken as seriously as threatening to fine someone a bajillion dollars. Even the "can't merge if it reduces competition" won't work because, technically, Comcast and Time Warner Cable don't compete. The big ISPs have carved up the US so effectively that it's a rare occurrence for them to compete in an area.
My proposal would be:
1) Split the TV Service/Content, Customer Internet Access, and Networking companies apart. No company selling one would be able to sell another due to conflicts of interest.
2) TV Service/Content companies would continue as they always have. (Only without selling Internet access.)
3) Networking companies would build/maintain the networks and would sell access to their networks to the Customer Internet Access companies.
4) Customer Internet Access companies would sell subscriptions on those lines to customers.
5) Networking companies would be considered a public utility like private companies that provide electric power.
This would ensure that no company would restrict Internet access due to owning competing TV content. Also networking companies would have to put their profits back into their infrastructure and wouldn't have to let multiple companies sell Internet access to customers across their lines.
Of course, the chances of this being enacted are about the same as the proverbial snowball's chance in hell.
As someone who typically votes Democrat, I wish I could agree with you, but both major parties do the same thing - especially where this is concerned. Democrats might talk more about regulating and Republicans might be more eager to publicly proclaim how they're removing all regulations, but in the end the result is the same. It's just whether Comcast and the other large ISPs can operate with impunity in the open or whether they need to "work with the FCC" (here's some more campaign donations!) while operating with impunity.
The vast majority of ISPs in this country do not offer any (or very little) TV service at all.
Number of ISPs versus size of ISPs. If you count every little ISP who serves a handful of customers in a niche market, you're right. If you count where the vast majority of users get their Internet access, you get a much different picture. Comcast, Cox, Time Warner (soon to be part of Comcast), Verizon, and other ISPs account for the vast majority of Internet subscribers and they all have their own TV offerings that Internet video might compete with.
The majority of the money you pay for your cable television goes to the the content providers and re-transmit fees. Local stations re-transmit fees are huge. The ISPs make the most money off services. Like voip, cloud storage, antivirus, DVRs, equipment rentals, etc...
And if the ISPs' customers don't need all those services because they are getting many of them online? (e.g. No more DVR or equipment rentals because they are watching Internet video instead of traditional TV.)
and no, this doesn't have anything to do with Net Neutrality. It was coming either way. They're locked in a race to the bottom with prices. Customers always go with the cheapest provider, so they can't afford infrastructure improvements without cutting themselves out of the market. Most customers are like your parents. They just want to get onto facebook. People that do streaming suck up tons of bandwidth yet pay the same. It's basically an all-you-can-eat buffet and we're the fat guys. The sizzlers trying to narrow the front door so we can't get in.
The big problem is that there isn't a race to the bottom with prices. That assumes that there's competition in the market. There isn't. Most users have a choice of one or two ISPs. Personally, I have one (Time Warner Cable). If I don't like Time Warner Cable, I have no other option. So what puts pressure on Time Warner Cable to upgrade their network, improve service, and/or lower their prices? Nothing. They can charge more for the same old, slow network and users can take it or go without broadband Internet access.
Actually, as long as you force them to disclose the transfer caps, it becomes a potential selling point.
This assumes that there's actually competition. Where I live, I have the option of Time Warner Cable (soon to be Comcast) or no Internet at all. If Time Warner Cable announced tomorrow that they were imposing 5GB caps and $1 per GB overage fees (something they actually did try to push through at one point), I wouldn't have any option. I wouldn't be able to go with a second or third ISP because there are none. The ISPs know this and don't care if users know what the caps are or not. It's irrelevant to them because users (for the most part) can't flee elsewhere.
Caps will definitely come. Not because they are "needed to help manage network congestion" or some other reason that the ISPs will trot out. They'll come for four simple reasons.
1) Video over the Internet threatens their own video services. Caps help make Internet video more expensive (via overage fees) and will help drive people away from Internet video.
2) Even if people use Internet video, the ISPs will get more money and they can never resist the smell of money.
3) The ISPs have monopolies (or near monopolies) in their service areas so they can do whatever they want and the public needs to take it.
4) They are big and powerful enough that they will make sure they have enough politicians "donated to" to prevent any government action against them.
Of course, they will keep on trotting out the "small group of users is slowing everyone's speeds down and caps will make them pay their fair share" line to justify the caps. The real cause of any slowdown will be because they take their profits and don't reinvest them into upgrading their networks. After all, why upgrade? It's not like there are any competitors to beat in the market or any government officials with backbone to pressure them into speeding up connections.
Would this apply to any website with in-site search capabilities? Including any blog?
Suppose, on my self-hosted WordPress blog, I make a post about John Smith criticizing him for something he did. Now, a year later, John Smith happens to come across this post. Can he order me to exclude my post from my site's search listings? While I'm technically inclined and might be able to figure out how to do this, most bloggers would not be. So they would need to remove the post entirely or edit it to remove the information. Essentially, this "stop it from appearing in any search result" request would wind up removing information - even true information - from the Internet under threat of lawsuit.
Why should personal info appear on internet when it was never your intention to put it there? And on top of it being searchable by name?
This isn't personal information in many cases, this is public information (made public via court records, reporting, etc). We aren't talking about a listing saying "John Smith lives at 321 Maple Blvd and his SSN is 123-45-6789." We're talking about a listing like "John Smith was convicted of fraud in 2008 when he tried selling five people the same house. He served five years in prison for his crime." Now, since it is 2014 and he's been released from prison, John Smith wants all records of his going to prison erased from the Internet. This "right to be forgotten" would allow this. And then, if someone was trying to buy a house from John Smith and searched for him, they'd get no listings. Or, maybe, they would only get the positive ones because he'd "right to forget" the negative ones.
This could be too easily abused to only allow positive talk about people and hide negative information. Then, once we're down this slippery slope of "people can remove negative information others' say about them online", how long until companies and other groups of people get this right? Give a bad review of Company X and the review gets "forgotten." Post about how Organization Y is scamming the elderly of social security checks? Forgotten.
That and the entrenched ISPs threaten anyone who dares to challenge their business models. Exhibit A would be municipal broadband in areas without any broadband access. Town residents get together and say "the ISPs won't serve us so we'll make our own broadband." The ISPs step in with lawyers calling it "unfair competition." Of course, it isn't competition because they aren't serving those areas, but in the event they decide to maybe probably look into serving those areas at some point in the future, it might be competition. And they can't have even the whiff of competition. That's not allowed.
I wish I had two providers. Where I live, I have Time Warner Cable. FIOS doesn't reach my area. I live in an urban/suburban area so this isn't a case of Verizon not building out to the middle of nowhere. My other "options" - using that term very loosely - are Verizon DSL (slower and Verizon's looking to ditch it ASAP), Cell Phone Wireless (very expensive), or Satellite (also very expensive). In other words, no competitive options other than Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable could tell their users that we all needed to pay 10% more and cluck like chickens and we'd be forced to do so if we didn't want to lose broadband Internet.
And they're claiming I'll have *less* choice than one provider?
So we took two steps backwards when Wheeler opened the gates for ISPs to make a "fast lane" and now we're taking one step forward as Wheeler says that the fast lane will only be used in some cases. This isn't a victory - this is the ISPs "compromising" so they get some of what they want now and waiting to get the rest later. Eventually, if this is enacted, the "fast lane" cases will get more items added to them bit by bit until we're in full blown ISP-wet-dream-fast-lane mode.
No problem. Their ads will declare (small print)up to(/small print) (large print) OUTRAGEOUS 1000MBPS SPEEDS (/large print). Then, the contract will contain - on page 48 of the fine print that nobody reads - that the ISP can't be held liable for slow downs for any reason even if they purposefully slow down some sites in an effort to get money from those sites.
I think part of the problem is that some of us still remember the two German Killers who tried to get Wikipedia to remove the entries listing them and the crimes they committed as part of a "right to be forgotten." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=0
Thankfully, it looks like Wikipedia is still listing the names. If this "right to be forgotten" is upheld, how long until it is used to erase past misdeeds from online sources? What is the limit to the power to erase bad things about you online? If I harass someone and that person makes a post about it, can I sue them to erase the post over my "right to be forgotten"? Does this extend to companies? Can a corporation sue to remove all mentions of an industrial accident because they settled in the courts over it and thus are demanding that it "be forgotten"?
Yes, because we should force the military to use consumer level products which might not meet their particular requirements. After all, the money saved in using a consumer product versus developing a secure, rugged, locked-down, for-military-use-only device won't be offset by people exploiting said devices (since they won't live up to military level security) or by the devices failing when they are subjected to military conditions (not what your average consumer puts their devices through). Kindle/iPad/etc is good enough for Joe User and therefore is must be good enough for specialized military use!
We're in a car going at 5280 feet per hour (1 mile per hour). We're headed for a cliff that is 100 miles away. Right now, the brakes we have can only reduce our speed by 1 foot per hour for every minute we keep it applied. That's cutting it close enough that we may or may not be able to avoid going over the cliff. We might be able to - on the fly - develop new brakes that can slow us down quicker. Unfortunately, there are people in the car complaining that the cliff is just an illusion and we should hit the gas instead. They are keeping us from even trying out the brakes because they make more money the faster the car goes. Of course, the longer these people make the existence of the cliff a "debate", the closer we get to the cliff.
The crisis isn't "all life will end on the Earth." If we keep burning fossil fuels like crazy and warm the Earth, we might end up disappearing, but life will adapt. Maybe one day, a million years from now, some intelligent creatures will dig up the remains of our society and wonder just how we killed ourselves off.
The problem is that rising sea levels and rapidly changing global climate patterns will disrupt our lives. Food that was able to be grown in certain locations won't be able to be grown there anymore. Maybe it'll be able to be grown somewhere else (necessitating building a new supply chain to the new growth spot) or maybe it won't be able to be grown at all anymore. Worse storms/rising sea levels will cause more flooding and damage to homes and businesses. This will cost quite a lot economically to deal with. Some economies, especially those that depend on businesses that can't survive due to climate change, won't be able to handle this.
Ignoring the problem or having companies with financial interests counter to conservation lobby Congress to hold "debates" on the subject isn't making it go away. Life will survive and might even thrive as the climate changes. We might not be so lucky though.
Slashdot Mirror
And now is Amazon going to spot a mad bomber in the making? It might be obvious if someone leaves a comment along the lines of "Zero stars. This didn't give me the bomb making instructions I was looking for. Recommend Other Book if you want to blow up your school like I do." By all means, report that commenter. But what about someone who bought a book titled "Explosive Chemistry" and then, a week later, ordered a pressure cooker. Should Amazon report that person? What if the person didn't buy the book and just ordered a pressure cooker? Should Amazon assume this person is a bomb-maker in the making and report him? Where is the line and why is it Amazon's responsibility to report all potential bomb makers?
True, but this could quickly move from the bad ("my page is no longer listed on Google but I can still tweet links to the articles") to the much worse ("I needed to take the article down so it wouldn't appear in my site's search engine results"). In fact, I don't see any possible way for this to turn out even remotely good.
Exactly. When the DMCA was enacted, the idea was that people would submit take down requests under penalty of perjury and companies would comply under threat of law. Then the person who uploaded the material could fight with the DMCA submitter over who was right. This might have sounded good in theory at the time and might work in some cases, but in general this has led to people filing DMCA requests for things that they don't have any rights to file over. ("That file has a similar file name to one of our files - take it down.") Companies, wary of lawsuits, are complying and no perjury charges are being filed against the DMCA abusers.
This "Right to Forget" will face the same thing. Google and other search engines won't want to risk a hundred or thousand legal battles - much less a dozen losses in court, so they will comply with every request that has even an outside-chance of being valid. People who write valid, truthful content will find themselves delisted because they made someone angry and that someone decided to make the search engines "forget." Negative reviews? Gone. Scathing articles against politicans? No more. Listing a scammer's past misdeeds? Disappeared.
But where does the definition of Search Engine stop? I have a WordPress blog. It has a built-in site search engine. Could someone sue me because I wrote an embarrassing-to-them-but-completely-true article? Could they order me to take it off of my in-site search? And since there's no easy way to exempt individual articles in this manner, would this essentially be telling me to take the article offline entirely?
However, on the flip side, if thousands upon thousands of people start suing Google to "be forgotten" (but only in those instances that they don't like... keep the good ones), can Google defend against all of those cases? Would they be forced by the sheer number to settle? Would this, in turn, lead to more lawsuits as people look for their easy settlement? I can imagine a subset of the legal profession cropping up with commercials along the "hurt at work? call us" line. "Got something embarrassing listed about you on Google? Is a search engine showing the world something you'd rather they didn't see? Do past indiscretions keep coming back to haunt you? Then call 555-SUE-GOOG! We'll sue those nasty search engines and make sure that your Internet history is nothing but sunshine and roses. [cue catchy jungle]"
But how long until someone sues the newspaper for the article still coming up in their search engine? Will the courts order the newspaper's search engine to remove the article? And, if the newspaper's web staff can't make search exemptions for dozens of articles (as other requests come in), will this just result in those articles being pulled offline?
Exactly. All this isn't "being forgotten", it is historical revision. In my past, I was a perfect saint. Don't believe me? Google me and you won't find one single transgression. I made sure of that. We've also always been at war with Eastasia.
There problem then becomes the flood of lawsuits. Google can handle one lawsuit, no problem. Two or three? Sure. But what happens when a thousand people are suing them over a thousand different links appears throughout their search results? Can they defend against a thousand cases at once? What about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Can the courts handle this flood as well? Google will either have to wind up settling each case, caving in to each request, or fighting a war on a thousand fronts. And if they do the first two then people will learn that they can file a lawsuit and get what they want from Google. This will open the floodgates even more.
I wonder if this could also affect any site with an internal search engine. Suppose you grab WordPress and throw up a quick blog. You're posting away and wind up posting a negative piece about a politician who got in some sort of scandal. (We'll assume that you stick to proven facts and stay clear of any unproven allegations.) That post goes viral and tons of people link to it. Could the politician order your to remove the article from your site's Wordpress-powered search? Since that would be impossible for a normal user (for the sake of argument, assume you aren't very technically inclined in this manner), wouldn't complying with that essentially be taking the post down? And if you refused, would you, an average user, be able to afford going to court to defend your right to post the truth?
This is going to wind up chilling speech with people taking down truthful articles that people who have committed crimes find "embarrassing" or "uncomfortable."
Simply threatening them with competition isn't enough. Even if an FCC chairman grew enough of a backbone to challenge the big ISPs (and the whole corrupt system didn't stop him), where is this competition coming from? It's a nebulous threat that, without serious changes, will be taken as seriously as threatening to fine someone a bajillion dollars. Even the "can't merge if it reduces competition" won't work because, technically, Comcast and Time Warner Cable don't compete. The big ISPs have carved up the US so effectively that it's a rare occurrence for them to compete in an area.
My proposal would be:
1) Split the TV Service/Content, Customer Internet Access, and Networking companies apart. No company selling one would be able to sell another due to conflicts of interest.
2) TV Service/Content companies would continue as they always have. (Only without selling Internet access.)
3) Networking companies would build/maintain the networks and would sell access to their networks to the Customer Internet Access companies.
4) Customer Internet Access companies would sell subscriptions on those lines to customers.
5) Networking companies would be considered a public utility like private companies that provide electric power.
This would ensure that no company would restrict Internet access due to owning competing TV content. Also networking companies would have to put their profits back into their infrastructure and wouldn't have to let multiple companies sell Internet access to customers across their lines.
Of course, the chances of this being enacted are about the same as the proverbial snowball's chance in hell.
As someone who typically votes Democrat, I wish I could agree with you, but both major parties do the same thing - especially where this is concerned. Democrats might talk more about regulating and Republicans might be more eager to publicly proclaim how they're removing all regulations, but in the end the result is the same. It's just whether Comcast and the other large ISPs can operate with impunity in the open or whether they need to "work with the FCC" (here's some more campaign donations!) while operating with impunity.
Number of ISPs versus size of ISPs. If you count every little ISP who serves a handful of customers in a niche market, you're right. If you count where the vast majority of users get their Internet access, you get a much different picture. Comcast, Cox, Time Warner (soon to be part of Comcast), Verizon, and other ISPs account for the vast majority of Internet subscribers and they all have their own TV offerings that Internet video might compete with.
And if the ISPs' customers don't need all those services because they are getting many of them online? (e.g. No more DVR or equipment rentals because they are watching Internet video instead of traditional TV.)
The big problem is that there isn't a race to the bottom with prices. That assumes that there's competition in the market. There isn't. Most users have a choice of one or two ISPs. Personally, I have one (Time Warner Cable). If I don't like Time Warner Cable, I have no other option. So what puts pressure on Time Warner Cable to upgrade their network, improve service, and/or lower their prices? Nothing. They can charge more for the same old, slow network and users can take it or go without broadband Internet access.
This assumes that there's actually competition. Where I live, I have the option of Time Warner Cable (soon to be Comcast) or no Internet at all. If Time Warner Cable announced tomorrow that they were imposing 5GB caps and $1 per GB overage fees (something they actually did try to push through at one point), I wouldn't have any option. I wouldn't be able to go with a second or third ISP because there are none. The ISPs know this and don't care if users know what the caps are or not. It's irrelevant to them because users (for the most part) can't flee elsewhere.
Caps will definitely come. Not because they are "needed to help manage network congestion" or some other reason that the ISPs will trot out. They'll come for four simple reasons.
1) Video over the Internet threatens their own video services. Caps help make Internet video more expensive (via overage fees) and will help drive people away from Internet video.
2) Even if people use Internet video, the ISPs will get more money and they can never resist the smell of money.
3) The ISPs have monopolies (or near monopolies) in their service areas so they can do whatever they want and the public needs to take it.
4) They are big and powerful enough that they will make sure they have enough politicians "donated to" to prevent any government action against them.
Of course, they will keep on trotting out the "small group of users is slowing everyone's speeds down and caps will make them pay their fair share" line to justify the caps. The real cause of any slowdown will be because they take their profits and don't reinvest them into upgrading their networks. After all, why upgrade? It's not like there are any competitors to beat in the market or any government officials with backbone to pressure them into speeding up connections.
Would this apply to any website with in-site search capabilities? Including any blog?
Suppose, on my self-hosted WordPress blog, I make a post about John Smith criticizing him for something he did. Now, a year later, John Smith happens to come across this post. Can he order me to exclude my post from my site's search listings? While I'm technically inclined and might be able to figure out how to do this, most bloggers would not be. So they would need to remove the post entirely or edit it to remove the information. Essentially, this "stop it from appearing in any search result" request would wind up removing information - even true information - from the Internet under threat of lawsuit.
This isn't personal information in many cases, this is public information (made public via court records, reporting, etc). We aren't talking about a listing saying "John Smith lives at 321 Maple Blvd and his SSN is 123-45-6789." We're talking about a listing like "John Smith was convicted of fraud in 2008 when he tried selling five people the same house. He served five years in prison for his crime." Now, since it is 2014 and he's been released from prison, John Smith wants all records of his going to prison erased from the Internet. This "right to be forgotten" would allow this. And then, if someone was trying to buy a house from John Smith and searched for him, they'd get no listings. Or, maybe, they would only get the positive ones because he'd "right to forget" the negative ones.
This could be too easily abused to only allow positive talk about people and hide negative information. Then, once we're down this slippery slope of "people can remove negative information others' say about them online", how long until companies and other groups of people get this right? Give a bad review of Company X and the review gets "forgotten." Post about how Organization Y is scamming the elderly of social security checks? Forgotten.
Finally, I can get information about all those other Jason Levine's off the Internet. There can be only one Jason Levine!
That and the entrenched ISPs threaten anyone who dares to challenge their business models. Exhibit A would be municipal broadband in areas without any broadband access. Town residents get together and say "the ISPs won't serve us so we'll make our own broadband." The ISPs step in with lawyers calling it "unfair competition." Of course, it isn't competition because they aren't serving those areas, but in the event they decide to maybe probably look into serving those areas at some point in the future, it might be competition. And they can't have even the whiff of competition. That's not allowed.
I wish I had two providers. Where I live, I have Time Warner Cable. FIOS doesn't reach my area. I live in an urban/suburban area so this isn't a case of Verizon not building out to the middle of nowhere. My other "options" - using that term very loosely - are Verizon DSL (slower and Verizon's looking to ditch it ASAP), Cell Phone Wireless (very expensive), or Satellite (also very expensive). In other words, no competitive options other than Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable could tell their users that we all needed to pay 10% more and cluck like chickens and we'd be forced to do so if we didn't want to lose broadband Internet.
And they're claiming I'll have *less* choice than one provider?
So we took two steps backwards when Wheeler opened the gates for ISPs to make a "fast lane" and now we're taking one step forward as Wheeler says that the fast lane will only be used in some cases. This isn't a victory - this is the ISPs "compromising" so they get some of what they want now and waiting to get the rest later. Eventually, if this is enacted, the "fast lane" cases will get more items added to them bit by bit until we're in full blown ISP-wet-dream-fast-lane mode.
No problem. Their ads will declare (small print)up to(/small print) (large print) OUTRAGEOUS 1000MBPS SPEEDS (/large print). Then, the contract will contain - on page 48 of the fine print that nobody reads - that the ISP can't be held liable for slow downs for any reason even if they purposefully slow down some sites in an effort to get money from those sites.
Would that be fine?
I think part of the problem is that some of us still remember the two German Killers who tried to get Wikipedia to remove the entries listing them and the crimes they committed as part of a "right to be forgotten." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=0
Thankfully, it looks like Wikipedia is still listing the names. If this "right to be forgotten" is upheld, how long until it is used to erase past misdeeds from online sources? What is the limit to the power to erase bad things about you online? If I harass someone and that person makes a post about it, can I sue them to erase the post over my "right to be forgotten"? Does this extend to companies? Can a corporation sue to remove all mentions of an industrial accident because they settled in the courts over it and thus are demanding that it "be forgotten"?
Yes, because we should force the military to use consumer level products which might not meet their particular requirements. After all, the money saved in using a consumer product versus developing a secure, rugged, locked-down, for-military-use-only device won't be offset by people exploiting said devices (since they won't live up to military level security) or by the devices failing when they are subjected to military conditions (not what your average consumer puts their devices through). Kindle/iPad/etc is good enough for Joe User and therefore is must be good enough for specialized military use!
The problem is (to use a car analogy) this:
We're in a car going at 5280 feet per hour (1 mile per hour). We're headed for a cliff that is 100 miles away. Right now, the brakes we have can only reduce our speed by 1 foot per hour for every minute we keep it applied. That's cutting it close enough that we may or may not be able to avoid going over the cliff. We might be able to - on the fly - develop new brakes that can slow us down quicker. Unfortunately, there are people in the car complaining that the cliff is just an illusion and we should hit the gas instead. They are keeping us from even trying out the brakes because they make more money the faster the car goes. Of course, the longer these people make the existence of the cliff a "debate", the closer we get to the cliff.
The crisis isn't "all life will end on the Earth." If we keep burning fossil fuels like crazy and warm the Earth, we might end up disappearing, but life will adapt. Maybe one day, a million years from now, some intelligent creatures will dig up the remains of our society and wonder just how we killed ourselves off.
The problem is that rising sea levels and rapidly changing global climate patterns will disrupt our lives. Food that was able to be grown in certain locations won't be able to be grown there anymore. Maybe it'll be able to be grown somewhere else (necessitating building a new supply chain to the new growth spot) or maybe it won't be able to be grown at all anymore. Worse storms/rising sea levels will cause more flooding and damage to homes and businesses. This will cost quite a lot economically to deal with. Some economies, especially those that depend on businesses that can't survive due to climate change, won't be able to handle this.
Ignoring the problem or having companies with financial interests counter to conservation lobby Congress to hold "debates" on the subject isn't making it go away. Life will survive and might even thrive as the climate changes. We might not be so lucky though.