If the US is fully committed to capitalism and the methods of the authoritarian Chinese government proves to be the most profitable for corporate/government stakeholders then it is only a matter of time before the US adopts similar policies.
Arizona wants Uber investment dollars so they would gladly scape goat an Uber employee while giving the company a mulligan. Reminds me of the Arab Bank Supreme Court decision last year where the court dismissed a lawsuit against a foreign company that funded terrorism because the precedent would be bad for business. The legal partiality for the corporate person over the individual is becoming more and more apparent.
" I don't know about you people, but I don't wanna live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do." - Gavin Belson
Ajit Pai's doublespeak doesn't fool anyone. USTelcom, one of the telcom's lobbying groups that sued California, has telcom in the name! The Internet is nothing but networked communication and his argument is that the Federal Communications Commission has no authority to regulate the preeminent communication method in America?
Under current leadership the FCC is a textbook definition of regulatory capture. Ajit Pai is desperately trying to undo and barricade against the future enforcement of Net Neutrality because quite simply unfettered total information control is too valuable for these private companies relinquish.
Sure, they can remain modestly profitable in a commodities market as consumer demand grows and at the same time technological efficiencies lower costs. However real money can be made with negative leverage in negotiations, where the telcoms can extort content providers with threats of selective treatment and the Federal government turning a blind eye to all unscrupulous behavior.
Instead of an open, transparent, and economical Internet the telcoms want to capitalize on their privileged position to manufacture artificial scarcity and provide a path to unlimited profits for their stockholders.
I am sure Silicon Valley would love nothing more than to enshrine their technologies in law and reap the royalties. Even better, ban all private ownership of cars except for the fleets they own and operate. I suppose they expect some type of return on their investment from all of the money they have spent on lobbyist. Regulations are for you, not for them.
It is disgusting to see technology developed in Western liberal democracies twisted into tools of censorship and oppression. However this isn't unprecedented, US companies IBM and GMC clamored for Nazi market share in the buildup to WWII. As others have mentioned once this new censorship "feature" is enabled other authoritarian governments will insist it be used in their countries as well. On more step on the road to turn-key tyranny Edward Snowden warned us about. However one positive aspect of this is that it damages the notion of unfettered free market principles of government championed by the right. This is a unambiguous example of a corporation putting profit over civil liberties and human rights.
US laws are based on property rights and as we have seen with recent Supreme Court decisions corporate persons are superior to natural individuals in their eyes.
Cloud based services like music and video game services ensure content control is centrally retained and subscribers have no ownership rights. Pay the subscription fee or lose access. If the Cloud provider goes out of business all assets are lost.
The repeal of Net Neutrality means corporations can censor or discriminate communications at their whim. Freedom of Speech need not apply.
Now with autonomous vehicles the freedom of movement is under assault. Autonomous vehicle companies are lobbying together to ban private cars in cities..
In a corporatocracy individuals don't have inalienable rights, only terms of service where any grievances are handled in forced arbitration.
This is a clear glimpse into the machinations of the corporatocracy wishing to impose their totalitarian vision of the future.
In this "gig economy" foisted on us with all of it's service jobs, private toll roads, apartments, cloud services, and soon to be automated car fleets the every day person will legally own very little. Instead immortal corporations will try to take ownership of most property and the rest of us will live as serfs subjugated to the shifting legal terms of service by said corporations.
Our whole legal systems is built around property rights and only the affairs of property holders seems to matter. Any consideration of the ordinary person is considered to be "cumbersome regulations" that should be eliminated.
Michael Powell, former FCC Chairman and now current president and CEO of National Cable & Telecommunications Association, claims we shouldn't be concerned at all by the current FCC Chairman's plan to completely abolish all regulatory oversight of the Internet. In other words, fox claims hen house perfectly safe under his supervision.
As to Michael Powell clairvoyance, remember when he claimed there would be more choice once the 1996 Telecommunication act line sharing provisions were repealed? That certainly worked out well for the ILECs increased profits, err "investments".
Micheal Powell has surely become an inspiration for the current chairmain Ajit Pai. I can only imagine how much he is already salivating over his future "Pai Day" once he leaves the public sector and the Washington revolving door richly rewards him for his loyal service.
There is no doubt that allowing telcoms, who are losing money due to cord cutters jettisoning their overpriced premium services, to install toll booths on the Information Highway will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in profit through artificial scarcity. Pai is only concerned with the investment returns of the telcoms and could care less about the rights of the American public, the people he is supposed to serve and protect.
Artificial scarcity is the core motivation behind the Network Neutrality repeal. They are about to roll out 5G technologies with 10gbs download speeds which is more bandwidth than most everyone will need. With cable cutters and plunging market prices the telecoms are in a panic and thus they are calling on their inside man to protect their interests. He is looking forward to his future “Pai Day” for his loyal service.
If network prioritization were a true problem then senders and receivers, the customers, should have full control of prioritization using existing Quality of Service (QoS) network features. However by giving telecoms unabated control of prioritization they can distort traffic and resume charging premiums for video and voice.
The FCC chairman has been unequivocally clear in is objectives; increased network investment (read profit) for the ILECs and absolute hands off regulation until there is a complete “market failure” (read unavoidable regulation due to universal outrage over telcom censorship and exorbitant prices).
Finally his talking point about regulatory burden on telcom technology is a joke. It is impossible for telcoms to transfer data beyond the speed of light so the only thing they can do is slow it down or block it. Providing financial incentives to enact artificial scarcity, censorship, and surveillance is the complete opposite of promoting “Free Market” ideologies.
Yes without Net Neutrality legal protections the telcom syndicate will have free reign to perform deep packet inspection and toll video and voice with whatever fee they can legally extort. One way or another they will find a way to abuse their privileged government status to enact artificial scarcity and charge premiums.
Why are young men working less? Could it be the languishing great recession recovery for the lower class? Reduced hours due to employer health care costs, outsourcing, or automation? Those troubling answers could contradict the narrative of current economic policies so of course video games must be the culprit!
Economists are experts on supply and demand and thus supply findings that benefit the employers of economists. Any economists not contributing to the direct benefit of the institution that employs them would eventually be eliminated due to the same market forces they study.
Employers of economists include finance and consulting businesses, governments, think tanks, and universities. What do all of these institutions have in common? Empowering and enriching corporations of course.
In my opinion most economists are charlatans practicing a form of social studies pseudoscience.
I doubt the mainstream market consumers would want to buy a Pixel phone when it only will be supported up to two years after it's initial launch. Google is taking planned obsolescence to a new level! Buy a premium pixel phone on a two year payment plan and as soon as it is paid off it is obsolete and one will need to start looking to purchase a new one with little hope of reselling their current phone for any meaningful value.
Google is a fickled company and all of their services and products have short abrupt lifespans.
Foolish Americans, thinking they can behave the same way as their corporate counterparts. Only in the quest for profits is one idemnified from prosecution for spying, fraud, and theft.
We see corporations go to great lengths to make sure their own data is protected by law and monetized but individual's personal data can be spied on and sold without consent or compensation. If I were to use my Internet connection to analyze my ISP's traffic I am an unauthorized hacker who could receive a prison sentence; my ISP on the other hand could profit by selling my location browser history to the highest bidder with no repercussions under this proposed law.
Being that corporations are entities defined by the State and gain all their power from the State let there be no doubt that the Republicans that support this bill value the power of the State over the individual, antithetical to their publicized platform of limited government and individual rights.
Pai is a former Verizon lawyer and industry lapdog. He is doing his master's bidding waiting to cash in on the Washington revolving door like his predecessor Michael Powell, former Republican FCC chair and now the chief lobbyist of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
Instead of empowering subscribers to manage their own Quality of Service (QoS) preferences Pai wants his industry buddies to have unfettered access to snoop on Internet traffic and reverse the IP convergence trend that has cut into his benefactors profits.
Yes, ISPs don't want attested public network performance metrics to be available to consumers. They could use those real world analytics in their purchasing decisions instead of relying on the ISPs marketing affirmations. It is the same motivation that hospitals have for keeping patient outcomes secret.
ISPs are the definition of a high tech company and certainly these same metrics are at the CEOs fingertips upon request.
I believe it has more to do with Five Eyes spying than with censorship. Intelligence agencies go to great lengths to map relationships between individuals using communication metadata. LinkedIn is a gold mine for this collected and categorized relationship data and the Five Eyes have complete access to it while Russia doesn't.
As far as free market medical care goes, if one has money to pay out of pocket for a medical procedure they can always get it. In countries with single payer medical care systems there are always private alternatives if one can afford to pay. While I am not a fan of Obamacare I don't see why people feel justified in complaining about it when healthcare prices are dictated by the free market they want to revert back to. Healthcare prices have always been skyrocketing even before Obamacare, the baby boomers just didn't notice it because they didn't need those services until today.
Regardless of a single payer or free market health care system in America the state and federal healthcare regulators need to require healthcare providers to publicly publish current health service prices and outcomes. Why is it when I visit a healthcare facility I always have to sign a waiver saying I am liable for paying for any service the provider deems necessary at whatever price the provider dictates? That is like going into a retail store and the sales associate fills your shopping cart up with whatever unpriced merchandise they think you want and then mail you a bill a few weeks later. It is absurd. I think price and outcome transparency would go a long way to drive down prices.
Also getting rid of for-profit health insurance companies would be a tremendous consumer savings. I have been covered by all the name brand health insurance companies over the years and they provide nothing of value beyond central planing/price fixing with providers. They provide no guidance on cost savings, don't want offend a provider, and I get dozens of bills from all the providers sent directly to me to figure out what was done and if it was necessary. They skim their profits off the top and then make up for it by denying claims or raising prices. The more money that goes directly to the providers the better.
I am a cable card owner and I strongly disagree. Tivo is useless without an expense subscription and it is not PC friendly. Windows Media Center, the only way to record and play back copy-once content on a PC, was abandoned in Windows 10. SiliconDust, makers of the HDHomeRun device I use, are working on a DVR system that is CableCard approved but it has been in development for over a year and it still does not support DRM content. They do have a green android app that can play copy-once content but it is out of date and the new grey app is still waiting to get CableCard approval. Dealing with CableCards is a huge unnecessary pain which is why most non-technical people avoid it and pay set-top box rental fees.
CableCards were mandated by the FCC and without their regulations would not exist at all. CableCard certification, controlled by the cable industry, is intentionally onerous, expensive, and time consuming. How many new CableCard devices have come on the market in the last three years?
While I pay for the cable companies services I should be able to own everything in my house. The cable company certainly doesn't want to own the wiring in my house and they charge a hefty fee to work on it. Many of the copy-once channels already have Internet on-demand services that use built in browser DRM technology and one is free to buy their own cable modem so technology is not a barrier to dumping set-top boxes. There is nothing special about setup boxes except that they are a huge cash cow that the industry has a death grip on. Companies like Microsoft, Google, Sony, and Apply want to build unified entertainment solutions but the telcoms lock them out of the market.
Markets don't exist without competition and the FCC should absolutely open up the TV services to new innovators.
2626 professional architects and engineers want an independent investigation of the events of 9/11. The 9/11 commission was only created after the strong insistence of the 9/11 victims families over a year later after that tragic event. It was initially going to be led by the politically polarizing figure Henry Kissinger and two of the co-chairs claim the commission was setup to fail. A new independent investigation is required to address the deficiencies of the original 9/11 commissions report.
Slashdot Mirror
If the US is fully committed to capitalism and the methods of the authoritarian Chinese government proves to be the most profitable for corporate/government stakeholders then it is only a matter of time before the US adopts similar policies.
Arizona wants Uber investment dollars so they would gladly scape goat an Uber employee while giving the company a mulligan. Reminds me of the Arab Bank Supreme Court decision last year where the court dismissed a lawsuit against a foreign company that funded terrorism because the precedent would be bad for business. The legal partiality for the corporate person over the individual is becoming more and more apparent.
Historically American's violently objected to the government instituting taxes to enrich the profits of select corporations How times have changed.
" I don't know about you people, but I don't wanna live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do." - Gavin Belson
Ajit Pai's doublespeak doesn't fool anyone. USTelcom, one of the telcom's lobbying groups that sued California, has telcom in the name! The Internet is nothing but networked communication and his argument is that the Federal Communications Commission has no authority to regulate the preeminent communication method in America?
Under current leadership the FCC is a textbook definition of regulatory capture. Ajit Pai is desperately trying to undo and barricade against the future enforcement of Net Neutrality because quite simply unfettered total information control is too valuable for these private companies relinquish.
Sure, they can remain modestly profitable in a commodities market as consumer demand grows and at the same time technological efficiencies lower costs. However real money can be made with negative leverage in negotiations, where the telcoms can extort content providers with threats of selective treatment and the Federal government turning a blind eye to all unscrupulous behavior.
Instead of an open, transparent, and economical Internet the telcoms want to capitalize on their privileged position to manufacture artificial scarcity and provide a path to unlimited profits for their stockholders.
I am sure Silicon Valley would love nothing more than to enshrine their technologies in law and reap the royalties. Even better, ban all private ownership of cars except for the fleets they own and operate. I suppose they expect some type of return on their investment from all of the money they have spent on lobbyist. Regulations are for you, not for them.
It is disgusting to see technology developed in Western liberal democracies twisted into tools of censorship and oppression. However this isn't unprecedented, US companies IBM and GMC clamored for Nazi market share in the buildup to WWII. As others have mentioned once this new censorship "feature" is enabled other authoritarian governments will insist it be used in their countries as well. On more step on the road to turn-key tyranny Edward Snowden warned us about. However one positive aspect of this is that it damages the notion of unfettered free market principles of government championed by the right. This is a unambiguous example of a corporation putting profit over civil liberties and human rights.
US laws are based on property rights and as we have seen with recent Supreme Court decisions corporate persons are superior to natural individuals in their eyes.
Cloud based services like music and video game services ensure content control is centrally retained and subscribers have no ownership rights. Pay the subscription fee or lose access. If the Cloud provider goes out of business all assets are lost.
The repeal of Net Neutrality means corporations can censor or discriminate communications at their whim. Freedom of Speech need not apply.
Now with autonomous vehicles the freedom of movement is under assault. Autonomous vehicle companies are lobbying together to ban private cars in cities..
In a corporatocracy individuals don't have inalienable rights, only terms of service where any grievances are handled in forced arbitration.
You can even do it at home!
This is a clear glimpse into the machinations of the corporatocracy wishing to impose their totalitarian vision of the future.
In this "gig economy" foisted on us with all of it's service jobs, private toll roads, apartments, cloud services, and soon to be automated car fleets the every day person will legally own very little. Instead immortal corporations will try to take ownership of most property and the rest of us will live as serfs subjugated to the shifting legal terms of service by said corporations.
Our whole legal systems is built around property rights and only the affairs of property holders seems to matter. Any consideration of the ordinary person is considered to be "cumbersome regulations" that should be eliminated.
Michael Powell, former FCC Chairman and now current president and CEO of National Cable & Telecommunications Association, claims we shouldn't be concerned at all by the current FCC Chairman's plan to completely abolish all regulatory oversight of the Internet. In other words, fox claims hen house perfectly safe under his supervision.
As to Michael Powell clairvoyance, remember when he claimed there would be more choice once the 1996 Telecommunication act line sharing provisions were repealed? That certainly worked out well for the ILECs increased profits, err "investments".
Micheal Powell has surely become an inspiration for the current chairmain Ajit Pai. I can only imagine how much he is already salivating over his future "Pai Day" once he leaves the public sector and the Washington revolving door richly rewards him for his loyal service.
There is no doubt that allowing telcoms, who are losing money due to cord cutters jettisoning their overpriced premium services, to install toll booths on the Information Highway will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in profit through artificial scarcity. Pai is only concerned with the investment returns of the telcoms and could care less about the rights of the American public, the people he is supposed to serve and protect.
Artificial scarcity is the core motivation behind the Network Neutrality repeal. They are about to roll out 5G technologies with 10gbs download speeds which is more bandwidth than most everyone will need. With cable cutters and plunging market prices the telecoms are in a panic and thus they are calling on their inside man to protect their interests. He is looking forward to his future “Pai Day” for his loyal service.
If network prioritization were a true problem then senders and receivers, the customers, should have full control of prioritization using existing Quality of Service (QoS) network features. However by giving telecoms unabated control of prioritization they can distort traffic and resume charging premiums for video and voice.
The FCC chairman has been unequivocally clear in is objectives; increased network investment (read profit) for the ILECs and absolute hands off regulation until there is a complete “market failure” (read unavoidable regulation due to universal outrage over telcom censorship and exorbitant prices).
Finally his talking point about regulatory burden on telcom technology is a joke. It is impossible for telcoms to transfer data beyond the speed of light so the only thing they can do is slow it down or block it. Providing financial incentives to enact artificial scarcity, censorship, and surveillance is the complete opposite of promoting “Free Market” ideologies.
Yes without Net Neutrality legal protections the telcom syndicate will have free reign to perform deep packet inspection and toll video and voice with whatever fee they can legally extort. One way or another they will find a way to abuse their privileged government status to enact artificial scarcity and charge premiums.
Why are young men working less? Could it be the languishing great recession recovery for the lower class? Reduced hours due to employer health care costs, outsourcing, or automation? Those troubling answers could contradict the narrative of current economic policies so of course video games must be the culprit!
Economists are experts on supply and demand and thus supply findings that benefit the employers of economists. Any economists not contributing to the direct benefit of the institution that employs them would eventually be eliminated due to the same market forces they study.
Employers of economists include finance and consulting businesses, governments, think tanks, and universities. What do all of these institutions have in common? Empowering and enriching corporations of course.
In my opinion most economists are charlatans practicing a form of social studies pseudoscience.
Yes the freedoms of persons with an Inc. in their name must always triumph over second class citizens. It is for the greater good you see.
I doubt the mainstream market consumers would want to buy a Pixel phone when it only will be supported up to two years after it's initial launch. Google is taking planned obsolescence to a new level! Buy a premium pixel phone on a two year payment plan and as soon as it is paid off it is obsolete and one will need to start looking to purchase a new one with little hope of reselling their current phone for any meaningful value.
Google is a fickled company and all of their services and products have short abrupt lifespans.
Foolish Americans, thinking they can behave the same way as their corporate counterparts. Only in the quest for profits is one idemnified from prosecution for spying, fraud, and theft.
We see corporations go to great lengths to make sure their own data is protected by law and monetized but individual's personal data can be spied on and sold without consent or compensation. If I were to use my Internet connection to analyze my ISP's traffic I am an unauthorized hacker who could receive a prison sentence; my ISP on the other hand could profit by selling my location browser history to the highest bidder with no repercussions under this proposed law.
Being that corporations are entities defined by the State and gain all their power from the State let there be no doubt that the Republicans that support this bill value the power of the State over the individual, antithetical to their publicized platform of limited government and individual rights.
Pai is a former Verizon lawyer and industry lapdog. He is doing his master's bidding waiting to cash in on the Washington revolving door like his predecessor Michael Powell, former Republican FCC chair and now the chief lobbyist of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
Instead of empowering subscribers to manage their own Quality of Service (QoS) preferences Pai wants his industry buddies to have unfettered access to snoop on Internet traffic and reverse the IP convergence trend that has cut into his benefactors profits.
Yes, ISPs don't want attested public network performance metrics to be available to consumers. They could use those real world analytics in their purchasing decisions instead of relying on the ISPs marketing affirmations. It is the same motivation that hospitals have for keeping patient outcomes secret. ISPs are the definition of a high tech company and certainly these same metrics are at the CEOs fingertips upon request.
I believe it has more to do with Five Eyes spying than with censorship. Intelligence agencies go to great lengths to map relationships between individuals using communication metadata. LinkedIn is a gold mine for this collected and categorized relationship data and the Five Eyes have complete access to it while Russia doesn't.
As far as free market medical care goes, if one has money to pay out of pocket for a medical procedure they can always get it. In countries with single payer medical care systems there are always private alternatives if one can afford to pay. While I am not a fan of Obamacare I don't see why people feel justified in complaining about it when healthcare prices are dictated by the free market they want to revert back to. Healthcare prices have always been skyrocketing even before Obamacare, the baby boomers just didn't notice it because they didn't need those services until today.
Regardless of a single payer or free market health care system in America the state and federal healthcare regulators need to require healthcare providers to publicly publish current health service prices and outcomes. Why is it when I visit a healthcare facility I always have to sign a waiver saying I am liable for paying for any service the provider deems necessary at whatever price the provider dictates? That is like going into a retail store and the sales associate fills your shopping cart up with whatever unpriced merchandise they think you want and then mail you a bill a few weeks later. It is absurd. I think price and outcome transparency would go a long way to drive down prices.
Also getting rid of for-profit health insurance companies would be a tremendous consumer savings. I have been covered by all the name brand health insurance companies over the years and they provide nothing of value beyond central planing/price fixing with providers. They provide no guidance on cost savings, don't want offend a provider, and I get dozens of bills from all the providers sent directly to me to figure out what was done and if it was necessary. They skim their profits off the top and then make up for it by denying claims or raising prices. The more money that goes directly to the providers the better.
I am a cable card owner and I strongly disagree. Tivo is useless without an expense subscription and it is not PC friendly. Windows Media Center, the only way to record and play back copy-once content on a PC, was abandoned in Windows 10. SiliconDust, makers of the HDHomeRun device I use, are working on a DVR system that is CableCard approved but it has been in development for over a year and it still does not support DRM content. They do have a green android app that can play copy-once content but it is out of date and the new grey app is still waiting to get CableCard approval. Dealing with CableCards is a huge unnecessary pain which is why most non-technical people avoid it and pay set-top box rental fees.
CableCards were mandated by the FCC and without their regulations would not exist at all. CableCard certification, controlled by the cable industry, is intentionally onerous, expensive, and time consuming. How many new CableCard devices have come on the market in the last three years?
While I pay for the cable companies services I should be able to own everything in my house. The cable company certainly doesn't want to own the wiring in my house and they charge a hefty fee to work on it. Many of the copy-once channels already have Internet on-demand services that use built in browser DRM technology and one is free to buy their own cable modem so technology is not a barrier to dumping set-top boxes. There is nothing special about setup boxes except that they are a huge cash cow that the industry has a death grip on. Companies like Microsoft, Google, Sony, and Apply want to build unified entertainment solutions but the telcoms lock them out of the market.
Markets don't exist without competition and the FCC should absolutely open up the TV services to new innovators.
2626 professional architects and engineers want an independent investigation of the events of 9/11. The 9/11 commission was only created after the strong insistence of the 9/11 victims families over a year later after that tragic event. It was initially going to be led by the politically polarizing figure Henry Kissinger and two of the co-chairs claim the commission was setup to fail. A new independent investigation is required to address the deficiencies of the original 9/11 commissions report.