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Based on what?! All evidence points to the contrary.
All I can assume is that you mean the evidence of the Internets (and Webs) rate of growth and innovation, which would point squarely AGAINST the government getting involved.
Another point is that if ISPs were allowed to discriminate against competitors' websites, it would unfairly discourage switching ISPs. Competition is good; stifling competition is bad.
And, this is unrelated, but please use apostrophes. It makes you look better and makes people like me less annoyed. :)
I would like to start a socialbookmark service. But, digg and reddit are getting too much traffic. We need the government to regulate these sites so their traffic is distributed evenly among all social bookmarking sites on the Internet, giving everyone an equal advantage.
"Another point is that if ISPs were allowed to discriminate against competitors' websites, it would unfairly discourage switching ISPs. Competition is good; stifling competition is bad."
and the government doesn't do this? Obama has already given kickbacks to the unions (the healthcare bill has special provisions for the unions).
Just remember, when a corporation is corrupt, they can get fined, people can get fired, and you have the freedom to go to another company. When the government is corrupt, your freedoms are taken away and you have very little choice.
Show me a goverment regulated industry that isn't void of innovation?
Also, do you want the government controlling the Internet?! It can and will be used to squash free speech.
I love the smell of paranoia in the morning.
me too. This entire thread is paranoid that corporations are going to control the Internet.
My argument against this is: The market would stop using Youtube and move to a different service, this is called a "Free Market System" where the consumers choose where to go. If companies want to "do evil" then they will suffer the backlash of the consumers. Government should not put their hands in any of this.
We need some regulation to protect people, that's one of the main reason governments exist. We don't want to be back in the America of the 1800's early 1900's. We don't want to go back to a Charles Dickens world.
And how does not giving ISP's the power to decide what you browse, turns into the government dictating what you can browse...when it's about guaranteeing you can access to anything you want.
I'm against giving my browsing rights away to a government agency. I prefer more competition, and the right to choose.
Everyone should be on board with this idea. Instead of the currently monopoly of the cable companies and telecoms, there should be more diversity in the marketplace. Net Neutrality doesn't solve price fixing, it encourages it.
Net Neutrality doesn't mean telling you where you can or cannot surf. It's only saying that, no matter where you go online, you won't need to worry about your ISP throttling your connection just because they don't like the site you are visiting or its content.
Net Neutrality doesn't mean telling you where you can or cannot surf. It's only saying that, no matter where you go online, you won't need to worry about your ISP throttling your connection just because they don't like the site you are visiting or its content."
This isn't going to really help people out. Would you rather they throttled some sort of bandwidth (such as torrents, etc) or charged more?
Comcast won't throttle, but they will just end up having higher bandwidth plans. I would rather have those things throttled (which isn't that bad. It is just a way to keep costs down for the consumer and make it so your lines aren't saturated by your neighbor downloading loads of torrents and full movies).
@JoeBrooks
Your example is woefully inept. The trouble with Net Neutrality is that it turns the Telecoms into dumb pipes with little control of the content that passes through them. As a consumer who forks over $109 a month for my 26mb Charter connection I do not care about this aspect of there issue. We the tax payers of this country have paid these guys over $200,000,000,000 to build out that backbone (dumb pipe) and I will be damned if I am going the let them dictate where I can go on line and through which avenues I MUST travel.
Your "Free Market System" example is cute and all, but not at all based in reality.
What you will see is companies like Charter (as and example), who provide telephony service, DEGRADE the quality of there competitors signal through there backbone as a means of forcing the consumers choice, or force their competition to pay for a "premium carrier package". As a consumer, why would I use Vonage when Charter is killing all traffic to and from them, and dropping my connections, unless Vonage pays a "Last Mile Fee"? The choice of which phone service to use just got taken out of your hands and into the hands of Charter, who just became the only choice in town.
As a result of the above example, your "free market" just died. The small guys would be forced to further cut there profit margins due to the need to pay for the "premium carrier package" just to stay competitive with the backbone providers matching service. At this point Vonage would need to up the cost of there plans to compensate for the "premium carrier package" (lets say by 20% for example) while at the same time Charter would have the ability to lower there price by the same amount and undercut everyone. Here is the trick, you the consumer would be paying more because Charter would not need to undercut Vonage by more than %5 which means you are still paying 15% more then you where. And even more painful is that Charter would have total control and power to dictate the status quo for subscriptions. But not just on there network and for there services, but for any company that wanted to run any business that required the internet.
Think about this long and hard, because the impact of losing Net Neutrality will be sever, and could very well destroy the ability for any and all online companies to function unless they pay a portion of there visitors carrier fee. You know, the one we already pay these guys for.
Capitalism is not cute, its successful.. as much as you would like ot think Europe and Canada is a great model for boradband expansion.. its comes at a great risk of freedom. Million of middle class tax workers have stocks in these companies because they are PUBLICLY OWNED, meaning they are not some rich duides private company. Introduce net neut. and will see more tanking of the private investment. Less investors = less jobs.. Mac speaks truth.. its simple math.
Competition between providers is a good thing. Real competition between ISPs makes Net Neutrality a non-issue. As long as one ISP provides a Neutral service the customers who want that will move to them. But what you have right now is not competition, it's a monopoly or series of monopolies. And monopolies need government interference to break them up. Leaving the monopoly in place but trying to legislate the behaviour of the monopoly won't work in the long term. And as much as anything that's because very large, monopolist corporations are much better at lobbying governments than you or me.
The Net Neutrality rules are to make sure that no service provider tries to push an unfair advantage. Like if Comcast had a deal with Microsoft to block Google search and push Bing, that would be against the rules.
"stifle innovation, in turn slowing our economic turnaround and further depressing an already anemic job market."
There it is, the same old scare tactics they always use. An open and free Internet is exactly the thing this economy needs. As usual, these guys have it all wrong.
government regulation is a very tricky thing, no doubt & it needs a ton of monitoring, but sometimes it's in our best interest.
funny how those guys don't mind the government intervention when they need to bomb the shit out of something.
Do you know his past? I was an adult living in Arizona when he showed up there after his people calculated the best place for him to go, where his chances of being elected would be the greatest and quickest. It was Goldwater Country, and Goldwater's career could only last so much longer. I also looked into John's past and his connections with organized crime in Arizona and Canada via his wife's family. Check out Kemper Marley (Mafia), Don Bolles (murdered investigative journalist), and Jim Hensley (John McCain's wife's father). I did that so I'd know "where he's coming from" with his various talk.
I also remember firsthand the rules about giving up information to the "enemy" being conveniently and radically relaxed primarily on account of John's POW-experience in Vietnam. He is the son of a son...the Admiral's boy of the Admiral's boy, now U.S. Senator, married to a well-connected, very wealthy heiress whose money resulted from what?
He's fabulously rich now. He didn't get that way by caring about the little people.
He's a major, if not the major, military imperialist in the U.S. He wanted to be Teddy Roosevelt with a bigger stick.
Now, if you want to let that mind, John's mind, decide the who, what, where, when, and why of the gate-valves on the Internet, then you'll get the superrich, military imperialists, who love to clamp down against all dissenting voices, being the ones controlling the valves and where and when they decide simply because they are rich and bought your mind and soul and vote. They are rich because they are selfish and they bribe you to turn to that mentality too. So, why sell out?
If you think that, that will get you innovation, then why does Bill Gates hate open-source programming so much? Why does he think it's wicked communism? Why does he work against it if not for selfish, anti-you reasons, unless you're working for him and bought and paid for.
If competition is so great, why is it so great only when it's done with purely self-centered motives? Why is capitalism always so paranoid to go head-to-head with the non-profit cooperative that should be the people's government?
Yes, we have crony capitalism in the United States. John McCain is a prime example of that. So the telecoms will be sure to have people paid to troll the main sites where they can leave telecom/imperial propaganda when those same telecoms have had no problem working secretly and illegally with the NSA that was definitely spying domestically on domestic calls by U.S. natural-born citizens to U.S. natural-born citizens whether or not those individuals had done anything truly suspicious.
They listened in on your most private and personal conversations that were none of their business and on which they should not have been eavesdropping.
They are not capable of being God. They get nearly everything wrong to create a lively terror (just as Winston Churchill liked it). They persecute. They oppress without cause. They imprison and torture the innocent right along with the guilty. Then they say, "Just move on."
The only CEO (QWEST) who fought it, per the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, ended up in prison. Every CEO who went along with it and everyone right on down the chain-of-command who went along with it and the same on the NSA side should have had to face the music. John McCain was instrumental in seeing to it that that didn't happen. He received big political funding for doing that too. Yet you want his backers and him making the rules for which voices get the exposure on the Internet. In my book, that's extremely gullible, naive, and foolish.
Now, there's a huge battle of the so-called Libertarian Capitalists, mostly on the part of little-fry dupes doing the bidding of those who fund that movement, against those who are more open-source minded (sort of where the first libertarian/anarchists on the Internet started before they were further corrupted). Also, it was the people's government that started the Internet (DARPA) albeit for military reasons.
If you look at where the big money comes from for the think tanks (such as the Cato Institute for one) that plant the "libertarian" seeds that the famous talking heads, such as Glenn Beck for one (who isn't really a purist but has tons of neocon in him), then cause to go viral, you will find ultra-rich plutocrats who have a long history of fighting tooth and nail against everything that's best for the little people. You'll find Big Oil such as Koch Industries for instance. Follow the money.
They (the plutocrats) hated the truth coming out about tobacco smoking. They hated every effort to stop their ability to bury 55-gallon drums loaded with highly toxic waste that then rusted and leaked into your water tables. They hated catalytic converters being put on vehicles so that the old and weak and you could breathe cleaner air. They hated unleaded gas. They hated anti-dumping legislation. They hated child labor laws and even managed to get them repealed for a little while. They hated the 40-hour week. They hated OSHA. They hated Social Security. They hated unemployment compensation. They hated worker's compensation. They hated being held liable for Love Canal. They hated unions. They hated anything that took back from them to spread amongst those from whom they derived it in the first place. They hated and still largely hate anything that cramps their luxurious and obscene lifestyles while those who work for them are reduced to food stamps and Hoovervilles and being canon fodder or robotic mass-murderers on the other side of the planet or now from air-conditioned offices in the U.S. where they can play with their joy sticks and laugh and give each other hi-fives about which innocent "Hajji" or "rag-head" child's head they blew off: demonic.
It's amazing how the Libertarian Capitalists complain against the people's publicly controlled regulators, but at the same time those Libertarian Capitalists, such as those at the cowardly Ludwig von Mises Institute (that censored my submitted comments there), complain about the major bankers and the Federal Reserve (who supposedly are privately self-regulating and who fund themselves and the corporations off your hard-earned taxes with usury due them, the banksters, for having done absolutely nothing but arbitrarily picking the amount of money they want to create) who are working the hardest to bring in the anti-public regulation New World Order that the Libertarians love to hate. It is amazing that the telecoms are right in bed with exactly what those Libertarians hate but then defend right here. It's confusion! It's hypocrisy! It's inherent in capitalism as a worldview.
Let me put it this way. The Libertarian/Objectivist Capitalist, Ayn Rand utopia is just that and always will be: nowhere. That's because you can never arrive at what is truly best via a selfish starting place. The answer isn't in everyone realizing the best individually selfish thing to do. The answer is in everyone serving each other not with dreams of selfish rewards but rather with dreams of how much better off everyone whom everyone loves will be. That's not when serving something greater than self starts, a la the neocon John McCain. That's when self starts becoming the whole, a la Christ.
Libertarian Capitalism is anti-coercion until it comes time to be coercive against those who want an equal vote. The telecoms by-and-large are extremely anti-democratic if you care about democracy.
As for not wanting the government in my business, it depends upon the circumstances and not whether or not there is a check attached. Do you drop a coin in a meter as you pull your car out of your driveway if you can still afford a driveway and a car (no thanks to the predatory Wall Street bankers unless you work for the likes of Goldman Sachs with its biggest bonuses in its history during this economic depression)? Do you remember Henry Paulson, George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary, who threatened mass riots if his cronies weren't bailed out on the public's dime? Do you remember the bait and switch where we were all told how it would get lending started again and then suddenly it became bank consolidation: big fish swallowing even healthier little fish?
Does that coin (chip debit) you'd have to drop in at the end of your driveway go to the private corporation that constructed the road? Do you want that privatized system everywhere you try to go and with everything you try to do or would you rather pay your share as you are able and still be allowed to drive on the freeway (hence its name "free way" - more akin to "free dom" is "toll road") in the fast lane even if you're temporarily out of work and otherwise broke and even if you need to cross the whole country? You might need to get to that job interview in a hurry afterall.
Do you hate the public, toll-free, generally tax-funded superhighway system where the rich and poor can both travel versus a network of private toll roads where the poor won't be able to use the road? If you do, then you love magnifying slavery.
Perhaps though, you think the rich aren't rich enough with the middle class and poor not yet having been reduced enough to make the rich even richer in relative terms. How long do think that can go on? The superrich think they'll end up with advanced enough science and intentionally super-expensive technology that they won't need the downtrodden worker-bees anymore, not even the middle class or even the upper-middle class. All will be expendable. In fact, they will be eliminated so that the superrich can enjoy more of the planet without the riffraff uglying up things. That's the long-term vision they have. It's sociopathy and anti-God.
If you create that system of private tolls at every turn (and it is the inevitable result of libertarian capitalism), you will have zero say. You don't vote in the shareholders meetings or boardrooms if you don't have the filthy lucre to do it; and if the people's government (ostensibly designed against sole sovereignty in the top plutocrat, monarch) is reduced to having no say, then only the biggest money will speak and be heard. You can though go to the public polls to vote for your representatives, not that that's been good enough, far from it.
If everything goes capitalist-private, you will not be allowed publicly to voice any thoughts not pre-approved by the private corporations controlled by the superrich (the new royalty). Then you'll have the same New World Order in any case.
I'm already heavily censored. They are trying to buy the government too to censor everywhere the kinds of things I'm saying. We already have much of that, but do you want so much of it that it ends up being total mind-control?
The people's government is the mundane instrument for leveling the playing field. Are you against a level playing field? Are you for feudalism? Are you for despotism?
I haven't given my full view here, so don't assume that I subscribe to coercive pure democracy. I don't.
Lastly, I don't disagree with everything the Pope says about sex. He does though owe it to everyone to look into all sides of the various issues and to do his best to give a Christian-only answer. However, he hobnobs in his huge palace. He's far from with the people. He has his fudging, Distributive, political-economic-religious answer at best. His church was never anti-elitist. Just look at what it's done about the fascist coup in Honduras. Jesus was though.
Peace
It would give the President, FCC and others FULL CONTROL over the internet, including, well, shutting it down.
Why the fuck would we want to give the president, the FCC and others that power?
McCain can gripe all he wants on this one, his bill won't make it very far at all. Net Neutrality has gained significant momentum over the years and one lone wolf with little support won't change that.
For those who don't quite understand what Net Neutrality is, here is some suggested reading. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=net+neutrality
The Cybersecurity Bill would "permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency, and, allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat."
I'm all for the net neutrality bill, not trying to "fear monger" I just thought something else was passed.
Sorry for the firestorm.
in b4 someone supports the Cybersecurity Bill
Hahaha!
Fighting the Net Neutrality bill is proof that Jack Holes on the hill are only concerned with ways to make huge businesses more money.
As Values and Standards,
We Set Forth,
To Try to Find Solutions,
In This Challenging World,
Together We Stand,
To Inspire,
To Carve Our Destiny,
So Let This Be,
Our Unparalleled-
Aspiration!
I'm Right Behind you On This!
Thankyou!
Kind Regards,
Grace Ruto. (enchantingechos)
As Values and Standards,
We Set Forth,
To Try to Find Solutions,
In This Challenging World,
Together We Stand,
To Inspire,
To Help to Carve-
Our Destiny,
So let This be
Our Lasting-
Aspiration!
I'm Right Behind you On This!
Thankyou!
Kind Regards,
Grace Ruto. (enchantingechos)
It's also worth noting that these are *proposed* rules and will be up for debate at http://openinternet.gov. The news today was that two additional proposed principles: nondiscrimination and transparency were added to the first four.
Ben, it might be also helpful to give your audience some links and clarify some points.
First, http://mccain.senate.gov, where the press release lives - no OpenCongress link yet.
Second, check out the Sunlight Foundation's analysis of which Senator telecom donations have gone the most towards. Might be of use in terms of considering where that bill might have came from.
Obama may not be living up to everyone's hopes and dreams of change, but can you imagine what would have happened if McCain had been elected? Holy crap.
It's like he wants to put the internet into the hands of commercial entities so that it can be further regulated and controlled at the whim of whoever your provider (or whoever they're trying to earn favor with) is.
Some countries have experimented with creating artificial competition in closed limited markets. The most obvious one being the UK. The UK has separated supply from delivery in electricity, gas and internet access and in the last case requires one of the two last-mile delivery companies[1] to sell bandwidth wholesale at a fixed price and to provide access to the last mile cable in deistribution points to 3rd parties. The jury's out on whether it all actually works, but there is fairly healthy competition between multiple ISPs with sizable market share. Enough for them to stick two fingers up to the governments attempts to bring 3 strike laws on copyright abuse. In theory, net neutrality should not be an issue in such a system because customers can fairly easily move away from an ISP that abuses it. Somewhat bizarrely, any suggestion that the US should follow suit is shot down in flames for being anti-free market. Which takes me back to Pigopolies again.
[1]BT is required to provide LLU and wholesale bandwidth. Why isn't Virgin cable required to do the same thing?
I mean, isn't McCain intervening in the FCC's affairs... to prevent them from intervening in the ISPs' affairs... to prevent them from interfering in our affairs?
thanks a lot John for showing us all your true face.
The new proposals appear to target specific providers for regulation and government oversight. Specifically, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey has proposed the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009, or the “Net Neutrality” bill, outlining government policies to impose new governance and restrictions targeting telecommunications and cable providers AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast.
The proposed is based on the unfounded fear that service providers will “control who can and cannot offer content, services and applications over the Internet utilizing such networks.”
The Markey bill indicates the vast majority of consumers receive services from only one or two dominant internet service providers. And, the bill says the national economy could be harmed “if” these providers interfered with access to internet applications.
The bill proposes regulations imposing equal treatment (eg price/performance) of all internet traffic and content, regardless of content type and delivery costs. Specifically, the legislation proposes internet service providers could not sell prioritized internet applications or services.
One of the main problems with the proposed legislation is the lack of recognition of costs to provide internet services. Some applications, such as video are bandwidth hogs and require significantly greater network infrastructure and associated costs to deliver when compared to the network infrastructure costs to deliver email access. Under the proposed legislation, services providers would have to charge the low bandwidth users (casual browsers and email readers) more to offset for the higher costs of the video users. One result of the proposed legislation would be less consumer choice and a hidden “bandwidth hog tax”. Today, most service providers offer tiered products and pricing to consumers and businesses to account for the additional costs to deliver bandwidth intensive applications. You pay more if you use more under the tiered pricing model. These are not “discriminatory” practices. Rather, tiered pricing and application prioritization are sound business models delivering reliable, profitable product choices and unburdened internet ecommerce. Consumers and businesses currently have choices. The proposed legislation takes away choice and increases costs to consumers and businesses.
Another problem with the legislation is, certain applications such as voice and video over the internet require prioritization and special treatment to work properly. The proposed legislation makes existing application prioritization products and networking practices illegal. Internet service providers would have to dismantle these services to make all internet applications “equal” with no prioritization schema. The new legislation would kill off reliable voice and video over the internet as we know it.
The other problem with the Net Neutrality legislation is anti-trust and federal trade regulations are already in place to protect consumers and business from monopolistic practices and unfair trade. For example, when AT&T disconnected MCI customers in 1974, MCI filed and won a successful anti-trust lawsuit resulting in breakup of the AT&T monopoly. Another example is, the Federal Trade Commission recently investigated possible antitrust violations caused by the Apple and Google sharing two board directors. Arthur Levinson has since stepped down from both Apple and Google boards.
The US government would better use taxpayer dollars and valuable legislation time by asking two questions:
Which companies are hiring lobbyists and launching advertising campaigns promoting Net Neutrality legislation?
What is their agenda?
Net Neutrality legislation is not needed. Consumers would have less choice and higher costs. Internet service providers would incur additional costs and compliance overhead. Taxpayers would pay higher taxes to create and support additional government oversight organizations.
What business and consumers need is effective interpretation, oversight and enforcement of existing laws and regulations.
Disclosure – Joe Tighe has no paid relationships, products or endorsements from any company, political or government organization cited in this article.
the FCC’s rules are about to be put under the microscope and thrown into the fire.
thanks for the sharing~