From the WSJ:
Even HuffPo thinks this is a bad idea:
According to all reports, the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow’s FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet.
The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it’s become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users.
You and I are one of those tens of millions. So the immediate question: With this newfound power, how long before it mutates beyond original scope, and websites that are critical of the government begin to be shut down, or simply IP throttled out of meaningful existence?
I would imaging that site like this one would be a target, since we don’t report what the government line on climate change is.
I can only imagine the future where I’ll be typing some story, like this one, and there will be a knock at the door and
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lnxwalt said: “Other providers were blocking VOIP (telephone-like) services such as Skype, Gizmo5, and Google Voice, in order to force people to pay for their higher-priced / less-useful competing services. And, yes, some providers are believed to have blocked access to sites critical of the provider’s actions.”
Bad but not the end of the world and government is not the answer to that problem. A carrier that blocks third party VOIP so people use their VOIP may seem bad for someone in a highly connected suburb, but it’s not nearly as bad as a carrier that fails to block VOIP out here. The suburbanite merely has to change carriers.
Out here I have almost nothing. I will pay big bucks to the first carrier that promises me they will block VOIP, netflix, bit torrent and every other bandwidth hog they detect. If some of my activities get blocked that is fine because it is a small price to pay for having any service at all.
I hope the FCC gets shot down on this. I also hope the current FCC NPRM gets shot down that wants to take 120 MHz (20 channels) from UHF free over-the-air TV and give it to wireless companies. Bye-bye free HDTV if this happens. Submit your comments here:
http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=2acgr
The FCC has gone crazy.
JohnQPublic@live.ca says:
December 21, 2010 at 5:09 pm
How anyone can believe that Obama should be running the US is simply beyond me. Has he done a single thing good for the country?
=======================================================
He created the T-Party and caused the Democrazies to lose Congress………
But the biggest thing he did, was wake up a whole bunch of lazy, complacent conservatives.
Freedom of Speech, in the wrong hands, is a bad thing.
Trust us.
Long ago I gave up on our beloved gov’ment. This is just one more scratch on the wall… I will quote one of my favorite films: “The people should not be afraid of their government. The government should be afraid of their people.”
How do we fight these Bas(e)S(limy)T(oadie)A(ssine)S(tupid)D(emons)?
Max
Why is everyone so concerned?
They’re from the government. They’re here to help us.
How can a bureaucratic body answerable only to the executive make new regulatyions that give the executive power to do anything, let alone supress free speech. I thi nk this is called AUTOCRACY and the One is responsible.
One of his admin members, Sunstein, has written that consumers can “‘filter’ what they see.” In other words, we aren’t listening enough to the state approved news sources such as CBS, NBC, ABC, or CNN.
And when this happens, you get, according to Sunstein, “balkanization” of opinion. Put another way, when this happens, we end up not doing and thinking along the same lines of the people in power who for example, are trying to save us from global warming.
I’m sure this is a step towards some kind of future regulation that will allow only truthful knowledge (as they deem it) to be placed on the web.
Clarissa says:
December 21, 2010 at 5:43 pm
“We can only hope the new Congress stomps on this camels nose before it gets any further in the tent.”
-The REPUBLICAN Congress is going to protect net neutrality? The GOP is opposed to the government controling every breath citizens make? I didn’t think anybody over the age of five could be that naive. . .
I did say “hope”.
Ever see the movie; “Shooter”? Remember the last 15 minutes or so of it? Where the Senator says: “There are no Republicans or Democrats, no Sunni’s & Shiites. There are only Haves, and Have nots.”
I don’t get it. Isn’t the point of the legislation to not have things blocked on the internet? Isn’t that what we want?
Any government involvement in any industry leads to crony corporatism, check Adam Smith.
The censorship won’t be overt, of course, it will be self-censorship. You have seen how a government can legislate an industry to death: look at the Great Gulf Oil Spill saga. The Fed’s case was constantly thrown out of courts and yet they kept on coming back. The government has more money than anyone else and can do this; if things get really embarassing for them, then they can get rid of the judge. These people are socialists, guys, they are petty, cowardly, bureaucratic, Trotskies, Maos and Lenins.
Sorry for the political rant but this makes me soo…..
John from CA says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
December 21, 2010 at 5:59 pm
This is VERY Bad for a number of reasons yet it makes sense for a few reasons.
============
Here’s why this makes” some sense.
– the concept of the Internet was never designed to carry the world — they ran out of IP addresses and each ISP created DHCP schemes to handle the load
– the net would be easy if “evil doers” didn’t spend so much time trying to wreck it — the portals to the DHCP schemes protect “participants”
– International standards vary widely — some countries require encryption they are only capable of understanding which basically means they are hacking everything and always intended to
– I could go on for quite a while, here’s a thought, instead of dumping Billions down the Solar and Windmill toilet why don’t we fix the Net?
Obama is really a scary person. Remember that intelligence, which Obama seems to have very little of, does not equal success. Think Stalin, Chavez, Gadaffi, and Noriega. Stupid, vicious and in charge, Now the smart asses think they control Obama, that will change.
Clarissa, this is the New Republican Party reformed by Teapartiers that includes many conservative Republicans, Independents, and former Democrats. (There is no such thing as a “moderate” Republican; they belong to the global statist crowd that gives them tons of election money.) The Democratic Party has been taken over completely and fraudulently by marxists, but corporate statists (Wall Streeters, especially the international version) think they will win out. They simply are letting the marxists do their dirty work since marxists (Obama and crew) love to play dirty anti-American tricks. Obama was raised to do this as well as to rake in the dough from mafia-types as well as global corporatists. It’s Chicago all the way. No, I mean it’s the Chicago Way. Republicans — unless the statists (one-worlder, AGW corporations, and financiers whose proxies are the so-called “moderates”, remember Bush’s Enron and Paulson) win out — will turn into a New Party, like the 19th century Republicans.
I think we are at a sea-change in politics because our global conditions are so different, something like “climate”. Will we simply cycle from warm to cold (marxist Democrats to moderate Republicans) as we have since the 20th Century, or are we in a new situation of an unknown quiet sun and a 1500-year Bond event that requires citizen action? In any case, it’s going to take tons of work to come through this O.K. But we have your back, Anthony.
“Any government involvement in any industry leads to crony corporatism, check Adam Smith.”
That’s too broad to say, isn’t it? Government involvement doesn’t necessarily have to lead to bad things every time. Maybe I’m just very naive about how the world and politics work, but I don’t think this peace of legislation HAS to lead to internet censorship in the future. Isn’t the case here about restricting competition? I thought it was more of a monopoly/anti-trust thing than trying to control the internet.
this piece of legislation* not peace. whoops!
GOD, give us men! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
Josiah Gilbert Holland
After 1994 Clinton ran the US by regulation and by stacking the civil service management with like minded people.
Bush didn’t clean out the civil service when he was elected in 2000 and ended up fighting an unelected opposition within government throughout his tenure.
Now we have a massive expansion of the civil service with Obama replacing the Clinton appointed middle and upper management with his own.
What will the next Republican executive do?
Government…
Interference…
Internet…
Bad News.
Unfortunately there are always techies with the knowledge to make the cult of government’s dictates real in the world. I for one refuse and never will do as they demand. I am a free man. I stand on guard against State Based Terrorists Imposing Their Control Upon People not just for myself or Canada but for all of humanity!
Well, I’m not sure how accurate this is, but I thought the whole idea behind “net neutrality” was to provide equal internet access to people outside the US. I’m not sure if this is overtly stated, but the idea is that websites in the US can’t slow down access to the various 3rd world countries.
Most websites get their revenue from advertising, but if you have a bunch of people who aren’t worth as much in advertising (based on country of origin) sucking up your bandwidth to watch videos then it’ll impact your profits.
If this is true, then I imagine “net neutrality” will simply bankrupt some websites or slowdown their services for everyone in the industrialized world.
The scare stories about what ISPs “could” do don’t seem to make a lot of sense to me – there are at least two dozen ISPs in my phone book, many local, and I could switch to any one of them if my current ISP ticked me off.
If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.
Um, some of us have been active since day 1 (recognizing the wolf was at the door) … where, I might ask, have you been (see, a BUNCH of ppl were taken in by this ‘hope you can believe in’ gib -er- stuff and the rest is history, besides the fact McLame ran a, well, lame campaign)?
Can you get back to me with the author of that book: “Great Moderates in American History” too?
.
Internet to be regulated by FCC
Regulated=taxed
Sam; while not all Govt regulations are designed to screw the public, this one definately is. The statists (found in both parties) have been wanting to tightly control public opinion. They had the conventional media pretty much acting as gate keepers when the net exploded providing an end run around the defacto censorship.