This isn't a fight of the little guys against the big guys. This is a fight of the big guys against the big guys. This is TimeWarner, AT&T, and Comcast lining up against Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. I can promise you that if the FCC is given the power, the rules will not be written to promote fairness, they will be written to promote Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. A long history of regulatory capture by the FCC assures that.
That's a fair comment, ergo my caveat that I am referring to "true" net neutrality and not a FCC lobbyist-designed interpretation. As it is, I'm partial to favoring the content providers over the carriers...maybe... As it is, the compromise referenced in the article is neither and a bad thing, IMO.
Are you being serious? Do you really think the FCC really cares about a nipple slip on behalf of its citizens? They look for an opportunity to slap a fine for the revenue, not because the citizens are in outrage. Once a bad policy is put in effect with the FCC, how hard do you think it is to get removed? Corporations thrive to make money. The money comes from their customers. When a company ignores their customers, customers move on to a different company. This is proven with every failure and success of each and every business. Government thrives on power. Once they have it, they refuse to give it up. We are surrounded by bad regulation just as we are surrounded by bad companies business policies. Unfortunately, we can not escape bad regulation that effects everyone.
You have effectively ignored half of the post you referenced and a myriad of others from me in this threat that address your comments. This is a fairly typical maneuver from you, so until you bother to read and react appropriately I don't have much more to say.
And actually, I don't think this is entirely true - the big guys will collude with each other to assure mutual wealth. It's the little guys who will get stomped. E.g., media conglomeration, particularly post 1996.
I would say the thad is the closest person to me in terms of holding the same views. I will never understand how people fight for things that they will never have or actually hurt them in the long run. - Fighting to lower taxes for wealthy while repubs held the lower and middle class tax cuts hostage - Ignoring the rape of the education system by buying into funding reduction based on "spending cuts" (WTF, if you're going to decrease spending, cutting education should be last on the list) - Blasting the President for making it hard for medical insurance companies from practically owning your life when you need help - Allowing themselves to be misdirected to social issues like gay rights which have no effect on their economic wellbeing. - Buying into the mindless mantra that if you don't support a war, you don't support the troops. I don't get how anyone can support the ideology...
Now let's wait and see how quickly companies exploit all those loopholes. Also, I'd like to see the exact provisions of the ruling as it was passed.
Yay, more corporatism and government intrusion under the guise of regulation and fairness. At least the TSA has some competition.
FCC Votes Itself Judge Dredd of the Internet http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/21/fcc-votes-itself-judge-dredd-o Peter Suderman | December 21, 2010 Not Julius Genachowski. In a speech delivered on January 19, 2010, Julius Genachowski, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, declared that transparency “is particularly important for consumer protection and empowerment.” He praised “access to information” as “essential to properly functioning markets” and stated that “policies around information disclosure...can be enormously helpful in ensuring that markets are working.” Does Genachowski believe it’s less important for the federal government? In theory, no: Last summer, Genachowski promised that under his watch, the Commission would be “fair,” “open,” and “transparent.” But earlier today, the FCC, led by Genachowski, voted 3-2 to adopt a new set of rules governing private management of the Internet’s core infrastructure. Thanks to a decision by Genachowski not to make the order detailing the rules public, no one outside the FCC has seen the actual order that was passed. Even those on the inside were given little time to wade through its reported complexities: Meredith Baker, who along with Genachowski is one of the FCC’s five commissioners, said in her remarks that she and her staff only received the most recent draft—the one voted on today—around 11:30 p.m. last night. Genachowski’s remarks portrayed the rules as a moderate middle ground between the extremes. It was a decision driven not by ideology but the desire to “protect basic Internet values.” If it’s a middle ground, it’s a legally dubious one. Earlier this year, a federal court ruled that the FCC had no Congressionally granted authority to regulate network management. Congress hasn’t updated the agency’s authority over the Net since then, but the FCC is now saying that, well, it has the authority anyway. Genachowski’s team has come up with a different legal justification, and they’re betting that this time around they can convince a judge to buy it. Also not Julius Genachowski.Still, Genachowski’s portrayal of the order may be half right: The FCC’s move on net neutrality is not really about ideology. It’s about authority: He’s not so much protecting values as expanding the FCC’s regulatory reach. According to Genachowski’s summary remarks, the new rules call for a prohibition on “unreasonable discrimination” by Internet Service Providers—with the FCC’s regulators, natch, in charge of determining what counts as unreasonable. In theory, this avoids the pitfalls that come with strict rules. But in practice, it gives the FCC the power to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide which network management innovations and practices are acceptable—and which ones aren’t. It’s the tech-sector bureaucrat’s equivalent of declaring, Judge Dredd style, “I am the law!” Indeed, Genachowski has said before—and reiterated today—that the rules will finally give the FCC the authority to play “cop on the beat” for the Internet. The comparison may not be quite as comforting as he seems to think. But it is telling: Genachowski may not be eager to tell the public exactly what the Internet’s new rules of the road are, but he’s mighty eager to have his agency enforce them.
well you really dont need to use that line if you want to joke about Gore. he has his fair share of stupid quotes. I really think he went a bit nuts after he lost to Bush and dissapeared before reappearing with a beard and a new insane mission against global warming...
What is that "known" problem?? Does that problem exist today? Why try to fix something that is not broken??
once the gov gets the power to regulate the internet, do you really believe they won't use that power to shut down bittorrnets? lol. lol. lol.
And you don't think big business getting the power to shape internet traffic would result in the same thing? People really need to get past this idea that government and big business are somehow opposed to one another. It'd be a much better world if they were.
Again, a conservative who has no idea what he is talking about. Maybe you should read what net neutality is, before commenting on it. Besides who really wants to shut down bitorrents? The Government (which has no monetary incentive), or AT&T($$$) or Comcast ($$$)? PLEASE. I really would like to know if Clutch would like to pay ISPs so that we can have access to Clutchfans. Clutchfans could slow to a crawl if Clutch doesn't pay up. I'm not saying that will happen, but without net neutrality, it could. Support Net Neutrality!!
As I watched the "Reason TV" clip, I can't help but to repeatedly facepalm at the amount of r****dation spewed out by the narrator. Good thing net neutrality (somewhat) passed. Far lesser of the two evils.
That clip is probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen reason put out. It is nothing but vilification of the government without any kind of substance. Nothing but tired "free market is teh roxx0r" BS without any kind of insight or forethought. Sorry, but "the market" doesn't always have your, or the public's, best interest at heart. The best way to keep the internet free and growing in what is absolutely its infancy is to support net neutrality. Later on down the line, once the market is healthy and varied enough, we can look at repealing it.
I'll start by saying I'm not too familiar with the details of this issue, but from the article, it seems like the most important parts of net neutrality went through. From what I can tell, this seems like a pretty good result for pro-neutrality people. The key things, from what I see: They will prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services that travel over their networks — including online calling services such as Skype, Internet video services such as Netflix and other applications that compete with their core businesses. This seems like the single biggest piece of the puzzle, if they can't favor specific types of traffic to benefit themselves. They require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks. This also seems critical, if the providers can't choose what content you can access. They do give providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with network congestion and unwanted traffic, including spam, as long as they publicly disclose how they manage the network. This, I assume, is the key problem? On one hand, I guess it can be manipulated. But on the other, if they can't do it to benefit themselves, what is the primary incentive to manipulate? On the flipside, I think this - especially with wireless networks - is absolutely critical. Wireless carriers (AT&T in particular, due to the iPhone) already are struggling to handle the data we're using today. I don't want my phone company's response to too much traffic to be "tough luck, sucks for you." I want them to be able to regulate things so I can use my phone. And if they do such things, they have to publicly disclose how and why they are doing it, which makes it much more difficult to do it to favor particular companies or whatnot. Like I said, I'm not really familiar with the arguments on either side of this issue - what are the major weaknesses of this ruling?
