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Washington Prowler
A Coup for the FCC
Unfortunately, it’s of the leftist Obamaite, regulate the Internet by fiat persuasion.
The leftist group Free Press, which has been pressing the Obama Administration and the Federal Communications Commission to impose stiff regulations on the Internet, celebrated the announcement Thursday that the FCC had ended its weeks-long negotiations with a group of companies like AT&T, Google and the cable TV association. The negotiations ended with no agreement, and it appears now that the FCC will attempt to impose Internet regulations on its own, despite warnings from Congress that it does not have the authority to do so.
The meetings were an attempt by the FCC to get broad agreement from many of the players they regulate on a set of so-called “net neutrality” policies. Such an agreement, which most likely would have had to be put in place via Congressional action, would have given the FCC the authority to regulate broadband and wireless networks that connect to the Internet, but under a far narrower set of regulatory rules that would have been agreeable to those companies that operate broadband networks or Internet sites.
In a statement, Free Press said: “We welcome the FCC’s decision to end its backroom meetings. Phones have been ringing off the hook and e-mail inboxes overflowing at the FCC, as an outraged public learned about the closed-door deal-making and saw the biggest players trying to carve up the Internet for themselves. We’re relieved to see that the FCC now apparently finds dangerous side deals from companies like Verizon and Google to be distasteful and unproductive.”
The only problem with that statement, it turns out, is that Free Press was part of those “backroom meetings” and at the time the FCC negotiations were canceled, Free Press officials were actually holding a private meeting with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in his office.
Free Press, which was founded by Marxist Robert McChesney, and is run by well-known political activist Josh Silver, is a founding member of the Open Internet Coalition. The OIC’s executive director, Markham Erickson, had a seat at the table during every negotiating session held by the FCC.
“Silver and Free Press knew more about what was going on behind closed doors at the FCC than the two Republican commissioners of the FCC,” says an FCC official. “They had Erickson telling them everything that was going on, which company was proposing what. We assumed given Markham’s hardline negotiations that he was doing Free Press’s bidding in the meetings.”
According to FCC sources, Genachowski chief of staff Edward “Eddie” Lazarus, who chaired the negotiations, at several points believed he had brought the negotiating parties close enough that an overarching policy framework was achievable. “But every time we thought we had agreement, Markham came up with some other complaint or issue. It was absolutely maddening,” says the FCC source. “Even the Google folks were unhappy with the proceedings, and they generally support guys like Markham.”
Free Pres, however, took pride in derailing the negotiations, sending out a fundraising appeal to its membership after taking credit for scuttling the talks.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (52) | Leave a comment
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Shamus| 8.6.10 @ 7:04AM
Courts have not approved of FCC schemes in the past, and it's not clear whether they will sign on to Genachowski's latest brain wave, which is to classify the internet as plain old telephone service rather than data service. The FCC has recently argued to courts that the internet is a data service. Federal judges may take a dim view of the FCC contradicting itself in an attempt to void inconvenient court rulings.
Gerald Stephens| 8.7.10 @ 3:01PM
FLASH…KAGAN CHALLENGED for PERJURY
Larry Klayman, constitutional scholar, attorney, and author of WHORES: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment acted in the matter of Elena Kagan by filing a complaint before the U.S. Supreme Court.
July 28, 2010
Clerk of the Court
U.S. Supreme Court
1 First Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20543
R: COMPLAINT TO DISBAR ELENA KAGAN FROM PRACTICE BEFORE THE U.S. SUPREME COURT AND FOR REFERRAL TO THE U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION AND FOR OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.
The full complaint is found at www FreedomWatchUSA.org If ever there was an apple cart overturned, this is the BIG ONE!
Thank God| 8.7.10 @ 3:27PM
Thank God for your drive and willingness to pursue the pergury argument!
The Clintidote| 8.8.10 @ 12:19AM
It's too bad the ball-less goppers didn't have the courage to filibuster and expose that perjuring pig Kagan, but simply allowed that leftist nut to seize power on the SC thanks to the Idiot left.
Jim O'Brien| 8.6.10 @ 8:24AM
Federal regulation of the internet is unnecessary and unwanted. "Net neutrality" is a euphemism for socialist regulation which will dictate the way private companies do business and price bandwidth use. It will stop broadband firms from offering ultra-fast delivery to users willing to pay extra, just as FedX, UPS, or the USPS accelerate deliveries for an extra fee.
"Net neutrality" is legalized theft. In this case, the theft of bandwidth. It will mean that the age of innovation in high speed internet access is just about over. What company is going to invest billions of dollars creating something like a high speed network just so others, who didn't invest those billions, can take advantage of it without paying?
For the Demo-Socialists, equal access to someone else's property is more important than innovation and a free market economy. Has anyone in Congress read the Constitution?
Nancy in NC| 8.6.10 @ 5:05PM
If they read it, they sure didn't understand it.
SteveA| 8.6.10 @ 9:01AM
I think neutrality may end up being a net plus. For every conservative post or article, you are forced to post a piece from a leftist fruitcake to demonstrate the insanity of progressive theory. Winner every time.
daddioandkzj| 8.6.10 @ 1:03PM
heh heh!
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.6.10 @ 9:22AM
Will this be the catalyst that brings down this regime in ashes?
Dave| 8.6.10 @ 9:56AM
Yeah! Network Neutrality is a socialist scheme! Just like when the government imposed network neutrality on the phone system in the 60's! Total government takeover! Excuse me while I answer my hammer-and-sickle phone.
Also, SteveA: you're confusing the fairness doctrine with network neutrality. Net neutrality has nothing to do with content, or the politics of what's being expressed. Try getting your facts straight before shooting your mouth off next time.
Bob| 8.6.10 @ 2:38PM
"Just like when the government imposed network neutrality on the phone system in the 60's!"
Huh? What are you talking about?
Puprle Lips| 8.6.10 @ 12:08PM
This nonsense could easily end with a strong public statement from Congress. A warning to the FCC from the oversight committees of both houses would send these later day Jacobins running for the hills. If Obama persists, Congress could simply cut funding to the FCC; or better still hold the FCC bureaucrats in contempt of Congress, supeona them- and then if need be, indict them.
It's ironic how our lawmakers from both parties willingly give up thier constitutional authority. Power politics and fear trumps all.
Steve A| 8.6.10 @ 12:52PM
Dave, You are correct, sir. That is exactly what I did. My apologies.
Pete| 8.6.10 @ 1:00PM
"as an outraged public learned about the closed-door deal-making and saw the biggest players trying to carve up the Internet for themselves."
I love it. Where was this kind of sentiment during the healthcare debate?
Radegunda| 8.6.10 @ 1:09PM
Pete, the sentiment was there, but the Dems care nothing about the public will. Gibbsy himself said it means "nothing" to his boss. McCaskill still says the people are just too ignorant.
Leftists in California have the gall to say it's "a victory for the American people" when a judge with a vested interest strikes down the repeatedly expressed will of the people regarding how to define (or rather, stop the redefining of) social institutions. It wasn't the first time that Democrats ran to a sympathetic judge to overturn the people's vote.
Leftists have told us they think free speech is overrated because it doesn't serve the public good as they define it. They hate free speech. They hate freedom. They hate self-government.
Pete| 8.6.10 @ 2:06PM
We are in violent agreement. Perhaps my comment was misconstrued? I found it ironic that a leftist special interest group was lamenting back room deals (while being part of them). I don't recall any leftist orgs doing the same during the healthcare back room deals with drug and insurance companies. These people will do and say anything to accrue and consolidate power.
T1Brit| 8.6.10 @ 1:28PM
Net neutrality has been around since the start of the internet - it is one of the reasons the internet has been so successful. The cable companies want to end it so they can create a monopoly of what goes down the wires, to squeeze the competition.
They will not succeed. The general public are not fooled by articles like this or the nonsense spoken by Fox news and the child like audience they pander to. This is a simple case of ensuring the equal supply of a vital service to all.
Even the retards on here need it - although they are too stupid to understand why.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.6.10 @ 2:44PM
Hi T1Brit...you communist turd. (pardon the shorthand).
If TAS is screwed with, America goes to war. It is just about that simple.
If Rush is screwed with...America goes to war. It is that simple.
Go hide under mommie's bed. It ain't gonna' be pretty.
RCV| 8.7.10 @ 4:09PM
For once, why don't you stop the childish name-calling and look at the facts. Net neutrality has NOTHING to do with content neutrality; it's about ending service monopolies and the analogy to telephone competition is instructive. This isn't about TAS or Rush.
Dennis| 8.6.10 @ 1:31PM
There's nothing that needs fixing so this is simply a power grab. Conservatives should take this to court...
penda777| 8.7.10 @ 3:36PM
Yes, but take it to whose court? wh ich court? Eventually the higher courts where they base decisions on "fairness" and "social justice" rather than on Constitutional law.
Taxpayer| 8.6.10 @ 3:00PM
I wonder if Congress can do something to clip the FCC's wings--like defund it.
Jeff Perren | 8.6.10 @ 3:08PM
Apart from ensuring that one broadcaster doesn't interfere with another's transmission, there is no good reason for the existence of the FCC in the first place.
They have absolutely no Constitutional authority to regulate speech or Internet technology use. In fact, the First and Fifth amendments forbid it.
The Supreme Court should dissolve the FCC.
jstwndring| 8.6.10 @ 3:31PM
Ummm.....maybe we should more severely limit what the FCC is capable of regulating, and make it permanent that the internet and WWW is off limits to them. The FCC is like so many other regulatory bodies that have become just another arm of the Democrat/Marxist party. While were at it, let's neuter, or, better yet, dismantle the EPA. All of these agencies are being used by our Muslim in Chief to ignore Congress and implement whatever plan he chooses. Hey Bamster, you are NOT King! And you're about to find that out.
bluecollarbytes| 8.6.10 @ 11:08PM
The U.S. Postal Service gave up on controlling email early on (after trying), but why shouldn't it be involved da mail of da 21st century? There's so much about it that needs controlling. This is one govt faction out of many. Imagine all govt agencies getting involved, for our collective good, controlling their respective virtual turfs in the same way they control in the real world. This is what the Left is asking for ultimately. First they must assert their authority over the Internet, and get away with it.
Willem| 8.7.10 @ 4:14AM
Goddamn, you people really have no idea what you're commenting on do you? Net neutrality exists today, the idea is to instil that idea into law so that the internet remains free for all, just not the largest companies. You're all complaining about dems or liberals or whatever and yet this is exactly what you seem to care about if you understood what it meant.
Long Ben| 8.7.10 @ 4:41AM
FCC to the country class " all you peasants should shut up " Often when I hear the pukes of this regime on the TV , I start to make the up and back and foward and down motion which with the proper implement in hand , produces a sound which on D-Day was mistaken for the cricket clickers our GI's carried for ID of friendly forces in the night. It's become reflexive of late .
optimist| 8.7.10 @ 5:14AM
It seems many of you here don't really have any idea what "net neutrality" is.
First of all, it has nothing to do with regulating free speech, forcing sites to present "neutral" political views on the internet, or maintaining a balance on political content one way or the other. You're mixing up the clearly unconstitutional "Fairness Doctrine" with something that has nothing to do with restricting free speech. In fact, net neutrality _protects_ free speech. Here's why:
Up to now, net neutrality has already been the unspoken rule for internet service providers (ISPs). All it means is, ISPs treat all internet traffic neutrally, regardless of where it comes from. This means that I, as a conservative, pay my ISP for a certain internet service plan, and can get the exact same service and speeds when pulling up TAS' website as my liberal neighbor, who has an identical plan, can get pulling up the Huffington Post. All traffic is treated -- wait for it -- neutrally. That is to say, I, as the consumer, decide at the beginning what speeds I want to pay for as part of my internet service plan, but after that, whatever content I decide to view is entirely up to me, and my ISP has no say in whether or not I get to see it -- or at what speeds.
Now, ISPs haven't liked this much because what they really want to do is charge content providers extra for the opportunity to have their content given a higher priority than other non-paying content. So for example, an ISP partnering with Google (which owns YouTube) would send Google traffic to consumers at a higher priority than say, Veoh, a YouTube competitor which isn't paying the ISP extra. Or in another case, content sent from MSNBC.com would be given a higher priority than FoxNews.com traffic because NBC is paying the ISP for priority while News Corp isn't. Notice that this is in addition to the fees the ISP is already charging the consumer to view the content, and the content provider for the bandwidth to send it. Basically, it's creating a new "line" traffic has to get in, and the order is based not on first-come first-serviced, but on who's friends with the ISP.
So, what would the internet look like without net neutrality for the average consumer? Well, let's think about which big companies today control much of the "mass media". You've got NBC, CNN, NY Times, etc. These are the companies who are going to have the capital to partner with the ISPs and create a "tiered" internet which steers consumers their way, while the ISPs get a cut for prioritizing that traffic.
This means that now, I, as that same conservative trying to read an article on net neutrality on TAS's website, having the same internet service plan as my liberal neighbor down the street, am going to see far slower speeds viewing TAS than my neighbor will see viewing, say, MSNBC, which has colluded with the ISP to slow down traffic it doesn't generate, so that more consumers can get funneled to its own content. Actually, conservative sites like TAS, many of which are outside of the "mainstream media" and instead part of the "new media", stand to lose the most when it comes to eviscerating net neutrality.
As you can see, far from protecting free speech, a failure to protect net neutrality has the very real potential to chill any speech not generated by big media companies, whose ISP partners will have the power to decide what content consumers can receive, all based on who pays them the most. The consumer, who's been paying all along for a service which should allow him the right to view whatever he so desires, will have no say in the matter -- nor will sites like TAS, which are never going to be able to get a foot in the door when the door is now owned by Keith Olberman's boss.
Bob| 8.7.10 @ 1:25PM
“nor will sites like TAS, which are never going to be able to get a foot in the door when the door is now owned by Keith Olberman's boss. “
You start out complaining about people mistakenly thinking that there is a political speech component to network neutrality, and then you wind up with a statement like that. I think much of the misunderstanding is started by network neutrality advocates, although it is usually a lefty spreading fear about what happens when Rupert Murdoch buys his ISP.
If people continue to use the Internet to replace the airwaves, and file sharers and companies like Netflix expand their use of the Internet to replace mailing DVDs, then bandwidth will always be a legitimate worry. The left’s nominal answer to this is that the big, evil ISPs are obligated to provide enough bandwidth that this is never a problem, no matter what people do. Someone who was paying attention in Econ 101 might argue that most of the problem would go away if we got rid of all-you-can-eat pricing, but I’m guessing that you wouldn’t approve of that, either.
Also, you can have congestion in a particular router just due to happenstance, even if none of the endpoints involved are doing anything outrageous. Something is going to get discarded. Should it be packets from a protocol able to support retransmission, packets from a stream unable to recover from lost packets, packets from someone who wouldn’t pay for a higher priority, packets from a few high volume streams that are the principal causes of the problem, or random? It is not obvious to me that random is always the best choice.
The left’s true stance on many issues is essentially that making everyone equally miserable is as good or better than actually solving the problem (especially if they can’t claim credit for the solution.) Prohibiting priorities and other quality-of-service tools insures that the Internet will eventually become an equal misery scenario.
optimist| 8.8.10 @ 1:15AM
Bob, I clearly said net neutrality has nothing to do with "regulating" free speech, i.e. the policy of net neutrality -- as it currently exists -- is to keep the flow of information on the net unregulated. Then, after showing how a _loss_ of net neutrality will in fact lead to the regulation of traffic (and likewise, speech) by ISPs and their media partners, I made the point that sites like TAS stand to see their speech chilled in effect. I don't see how you find this confusing or counterintuitive.
If ISPs have a problem with all-you-can eat service plans, that's a problem to address at the consumer level; and many ISPs have already flirted with instituting bandwidth caps on consumers at different levels and pricing. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, especially when some users use exponentially greater bandwidth than their neighbors, yet get charged the same price. Lots of other countries, such as Australia, already do this effectively. But what they do not do is decide for the consumer the priority of the traffic he/she receives, not based on when it is requested (as would be logical), but on which content provider has paid the ISP the most, regardless of bandwidth capacity issues.
If it's a bandwidth capacity problem, there are very simple and effective ways to protect the ISP's bandwidth by charging consumers and hosts for the bandwidth they use, without allowing the ISP to peer inside the host-to-user traffic and decide the priority of the content the consumer has requested without his or her knowledge.
Bob| 8.9.10 @ 1:06AM
“I don't see how you find this confusing or counterintuitive.”
Up to that point, I think you were arguing that the big content providers, being mostly liberal, were going to wind up essentially buying all of the high priority bandwidth. Thus, small conservative content providers would be disproportionately affected. I assume the observation that a small liberal provider would be equally affected is countered by, “Yeah, but there will still be all of the other liberal content from the big guys.” Without getting into how much I agree or disagree with the premise here, I thought the final statement - the Olberman’s boss thing - made it sound like you had gone one step further and argued that there was going to be an out-and-out discrimination against small conservative websites that wouldn’t be experienced by small liberal websites. Was that your intent or not?
Now, I gather that you aren’t opposed to volume related pricing, but it could be argued that this also affects little guys disproportionately, since they might be reluctant to carry some bandwidth hogs like streaming video. The mostly liberal big guys would thus have the advantage of having prettier and more compelling multimedia presentations. Does that worry you?
Do you have any links to support what you say are the ISPs' proposals for how priorities would be implemented? (I don’t doubt that they exist ... I’ve just never seen anything credible.)
“If it's a bandwidth capacity problem, there are very simple and effective ways to protect the ISP's bandwidth by charging consumers and hosts for the bandwidth they use, “
I said congestion - not “bandwidth capacity.” Congestion can occur far from the gateways to the network, and it can occur no matter how much you’ve throttled the users, and no matter how much you’ve undersold your capacity. This has to do with statistical models of traffic inside the network - not with just adding up the bandwidth used by the users. Your theory might have had some validity in old-fashioned star networks, but it has much less in modern networks. So, back to the issue: packets will be discarded occasionally. Do you propose that the choice of which ones be totally random?
Jim O'Brien| 8.7.10 @ 8:43AM
The great medical care we enjoy is the result of decades of free enterprise, competition, and private innovation. Ditto for the internet. Congress, Obama, and their fellow socialist bureaucrats want to control and screw up both (medicine and the internet). It's time for a Congress controlled by real conservatives, who can defund the bureaucrats and repeal the socialist legislation
penda777| 8.7.10 @ 3:38PM
YES!
Wilson G. Tang| 8.7.10 @ 12:38PM
Watching and listening to this debate unfold in the mainstream media and in the blogsophere has been incredibly disheartening to a technologist. There is so much misinformation and misunderstanding about the proposals laid out that it would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high.
Let's start with some facts:
1) The Internet is an evolution of a U.S. GOVERNMENT project initially know as ARPANET. The U.S. Military fearing a Russian nuclear strike that could obliterate portions of the country wanted to develop a packet-switched network rather than the traditional circuit-switched networks at the time. A circuit-switched network is kind of like what the telephone system was a few years ago before the move to digital. A caller would have his connection rerouted at a central point and connected to the receiver. An attack targeting networks based on central point could end communications. The Internet "routes" traffic across the network in a semi-intelligent way.
Later the U.S. Military opened up the network to universities and colleges and was eventually administered by the National Science Foundation and become known as the NSFnet.
Finally, a certain future presidential candidate introduced legislation that opened up the Internet to commercial applications, and we now have what we know as the Internet.
2) The Internet is primarily based on the TCP/IP protocol which controls the how the packets of data are constructed and how they are sent across the Internet. For years, this was plenty adequate because the traffic of the Internet was largely text-based. Waiting a few extra milliseconds for an e-mail to reach you wasn't an issue.
3) The Internet as we all know has become much more sophisticated, partly because IP-packets are data agnostic--they don't care what is actually embedded inside of them, which is both their crux and beauty. NOBODY envisioned a real-time video conferencing system when TCP/IP was first designed, but the system was flexible enough that a IP-packet could encapsulate video data. These were literally a bunch of nerds and engineers trying to figure out the easiest way to send nuclear research data to one another, which could be anything from mountains of numbers, to pictures, to ultra-high speed video, etc.
NOBODY envisioned that entrepreneurs would come up with a product like YouTube, or a file-sharing over BitTorrent, or Skype calls.
And in the grand history of the world, we are at the relative infancy of the Internet, which is why we need to think carefully about these kinds of matters rather than resort to political-charged slogans about government take-overs of the Internet.
The Debate
So in an attempt to engage these same people, let me clarify some of the issues at debate:
1) Internet Service Providers are, for the most part against net neutrality because they believe that they should have the ability to manage their own networks.
Many conservatives have embraced this, because these companies have put up the capital and risk of building the physical cables and wires that carry the Internet's traffic. (Not to mention any regulation seems to be an anathema to their philosophy (you know--like how the FDA inspects and regulates food).
While that is absolutely true that many ISPs built their networks, what is also true is that many of these ISPs are natural monopolies. For huge portions of the country, myself included, there may only be one or--if you're lucky--two choices of Internet access. Comcast is the only service provider in my area, period. And it is also true that many of these same companies have franchises and/or licenses granted to them by state and local governments, because the PUBLIC owns the land that much of their cables are buried and maintained in.
In any good capitalistic system, competition is the key to innovation not just profit-incentive. So take Comcast in my area again for example, they have absolutely no incentive to upgrade or enhance their networks because of lack of competition. I've been stuck at a relatively anemic 3 megabits per second for the last two years. While that is blazingly fast compared to 56K modems from 15 years ago, it's a turtle compared to the 100 megabits per second that users in Japan enjoy.
Megabits, TCP/IP, ISPs, etc. No wonder this issue is confusing. So one of the question for the average consumer is what the heck does 100 megabits per second offer that 3 megabits per second doesn't? A whole slew of things that I can list right now, but even cooler are the lists that I can't name yet.
Just an example would be Blu-ray streaming over the Internet. Right now to enjoy high-quality HD movies streamed at qualities that are near indistinguishable from the movie theater experience, a consumer would have to get out of the house, drive down to their local retailer, purchase the Blu-ray, drive back, put the disc in, switch the TV over to the correct input, wait for the Blu-ray drive to boot up and finally enjoy their film.
100 megabits per second means that a typical Blu-ray (between 25-50 megabits per second) can be streamed straight over the web. No long drive, no extra manufacturing costs, no wasted gas, and near instant access to the film. Of course any decent economist can see there are some creative destruction going on here, which leads to structural unemployment, etc., but that is a different debate.
But what ends up happening from a network point of view is that certain kinds of activities crowd out bandwidth from other activities. You may have encountered this at around 7 p.m. at night when everyone else in your building is on the Internet, and some kid down the hall is downloading the entire Lady Gaga music video collection.
So Comcast absolutely SHOULD have some say in managing the traffic on its network. Comcast should have some say in dividing bandwidth between users and certain applications, so when you place that digital call, it isn't ruined by the neighbor next door downloading porn. I doubt any real net neutrality advocate would disagree with that.
However, the debate gets much more complicated because ISPs have advocated tiered-pricing for priority traffic and the ability to block certain kinds of traffic (as they have in the past, without warning). On top of natural monopoly incentives, some companies have profit-incentives to disallow or block traffic on their networks.
For example, back to my ISP Comcast, which is in final negotiations with government regulators to to purchase NBC Universal. With absolutely no regulation, what is to stop Comcast from slowing down traffic from ABC, FOX or CBS? Or framed differently, NBC gains a competitive advantage of NOT having to pay Comcast for tiered access. Does it really do the public at large any good to pay extra to watch David Letterman on Comcast than Jay Leno?
Further, the unstoppable march of technological innovation has produced a whole set of media products that are entirely delivered over the Internet. Today, not tomorrow, we can already watch Netflix on our iPads; we can watch Hulu Plus on our iPhones; we can read the New York Post on our Kindle e-readers; we can stream music over 3G to our cars. ALL of this data is delivered over the Internet. And while it may seem like no force on Earth is going to stop this march of innovation, the uninformed and reactionary anti-net neutrality group just might.
The Internet is the paper, pen and printing press.
And many opponents of Net Neutrality are correct in that the Government should not censor the Internet, and NEITHER should the people who own the pipes. But that is NOT what the FCC is advocating, and it is NOT what FCC Julius Genachowski is advocating.
Straight from the horse's mouth, these are the principles that the FCC is advocating:
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.
(You can read their entire statement here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs.....-151A1.pdf )
ISPs have argued that they need tiered-pricing, so that the heaviest of users both on the sending and receiving end, pay for the bandwidth they use. Not a terrible idea, especially when it comes to scarce resources like wireless spectrum, but those home ISPs, are just plain being disingenuous when it comes to talks about variable costs and scarcity. Much of the Internet's traffic capacity is wholly unrealized and PURPOSEFULLY off. During the 90s in the midst of the Internet boom, ISPs built incredibly amounts of fiber connections across the nation. After the bust, they simply turned most of it off. Turning it back on, it almost as simple as flipping a switch.
When people talk about innovation, that is great! But the ISPs aren't the ones doing a whole lot of innovating, it's the companies that USE the Internet are. In the few years that my average Internet speed has went from 1.5 megabits per second to 3 megabits per second, Google came along, Facebook came along, YouTube came along, the iPhone came along, etc.
Now, the treat to innovation are becoming the ISPs. AT&T already has tiered-pricing for iPhone 3G access. What does that mean? Well, I don't think I will be streaming many movies on my iPhone or listening to a whole lot of music on the go if I'm on a tiered-plan's paltry 2 GB per second; that's about one and a half Netflix movies streamed. (Fortunately, I'm grandfathered into their unlimited data plan.)
Finally, the FCC has made some missteps on how to deal with the net neutrality issue (initially classifying it as a data service under the Bush administration), but the issue that the FCC is battling right now is whether to classify the Internet as a "telecom service" or a "data service." As a "data service" like say your cable video, the cable company gets to decide what channels to offer. As a telecom service, the FCC has broad authority to say to ISPs "You have to let all traffic on the Net flow free" like a phone call.
Please understand this: The FCC's position is that they want you to be able to say on the Internet like you can on the phone.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that the debate on net neutrality has nothing to do with keeping the Internet politically neutral or a super-regulated Internet, but finding the right balance of regulation so that 1) broadband speeds get faster and 2) traffic on the Internet remains agnostic, so that it promotes innovation and best of all democracy.
The irony of this post is that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, ABC, NBC, CBS can probably all afford to pay Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner these kind of fees (they will of course be passed on to consumers), but a blog or a website like RedState.com might not be able to afford to pay these ISPs to prioritize their traffic or unblock their traffic from a "liberal ISP."
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.7.10 @ 5:26PM
Hey, zit-face...
If Obama and crowd are for it...I'M AGAINST IT, YOU COMMUNIST TERD!
Let we capitalists work it out.
RCV| 8.7.10 @ 6:28PM
Another high level analysis from the Lone Star State. We don't "let you capitalists" work things out any more, Ken. Now, we all have a say in government. I know, you' 'll stop pumping oil to the rest of us, and stock up on ammunition because you're on a list somewhere and you' 'll soon be a martyr when the communist federal agents come get you, but you and your Texas Ranger buddies will fight to the last man like at the Alamo. There, I 've saved you the trouble of your usual well-reasoned retort.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.8.10 @ 10:41AM
RCV,
Thank you. You saved me some typing.
A serious question, though; do you still live in your parents' home?
The reason I'm curious is that you seem to be quite content having every single facet of your life regulated and controlled by government as "long as you live under my roof".
I can remember quite clearly when I went off to college...the emerging sense of independent living in all the small things. ...What time for lights out? When to go grab a burger? etc. etc. etc.
While growing up, I lived in a loving "benign" dictatorship. When I was launched into the "outside world", I certainly screwed up some times, but I was able to dust myself off after falling on my face...and I learned a lot, heh, quite quickly.
...I shall never forget the "going away" talk I had with my Dad. Then, playing baseball, and on the road a lot...I was not able to get home often; maybe three times a semester for a day.
I really got lonesome for my Dad's little talks and chuckles...and games attendance...and support.
He was one of those men who were strong enough to be gentle. Taught a men's Bible Study class for at least thirty years.
He passed while I was in my senior year, after a two year battle with cancer.
As I grieved, one of my profs called me into his office one day, and read me something he had found somewhere by a truly bright author: words to the effect that a man often could not reach his full maturity until the passing of a father....sometimes especially a loving and "involved" father.
All that to say this. I have lived a long and fruitful life myself now, within the law, and pretty much based upon my own core values: Agape' one another...hard smart work...and properly launching my own son into his future.
My overwhelming business success has been based upon never "managing people". I have always recruited the best of the best...and focused upon "managing the mission...the project", and treating them as Iwould be treated.
RCV
I have watched a pattern emerging in our republic that more and more curtails the basic human liberties and freedom that I have enjoyed over the years. I watch daily as the communizers, (pardon the shorthand), kill liberty...one regulation at a time...day after day after day.
That pattern seems either not to have emerged in your own mind, or you are content to be "managed" in every facet of your life.
(Or perhaps you have already been recruited to BE one of our "managers"?)
In any case, I want the would -be "Managers" to know...to be reminded often...that there are a whole hell of a lot of us out here who will not be managed.
Many are medical doctors. Many of them have already opted out of serving Medicare patients, and will opt out of serving Obamacare patients.
So is it surprising that some 9 million energy industry workers are looking around for a way to "opt out" of feeding the drones?
Good luck and God bless.
RCV| 8.9.10 @ 2:11AM
Ken: Genuine thanks for your posting, which I enjoyed reading. No, I don't live with my parents, both of whom are deceased. I'm 65, married to the same wonderful woman for 40 years, with two children, the youngest of whom will head off to the University of Michigan this month.
Like you, I envy the wonderful feEling of independence he will experience as he begins his own life in college. It is exhilarating! And I've always treasured my won independence as well. I came from a very poor family, put myself through college and law school, working and with scholarships. I was a partner in a major law firm for 40 years, defending major corporations against law suits. Everything I have, I earned myself. And I'm fully aware that it was our great country that gave me the opportunity and tools to do so.
I have struggled all my life to insure that all Americans have those same opportunities to grow and realize their full potentials.
You and I want the same things for our country, Ken. We just differ about the best way to achieve that goal.
God bless you and your family.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.9.10 @ 8:05AM
RCV
Thank you for the reply.
This thread will be gone soon, but I hope we can continue the conversation. I have placed my previous post in my old texican documents to allow that.
At some point I will re-inject the posts...mine then yours....on a fresh thread.
I think this is a conversation that needs to be worked through.
Ken
RCV| 8.9.10 @ 1:45PM
Look forward to it, sir.
Wilson G. Tang| 8.7.10 @ 7:10PM
Incredibly insightful, Ken.
You know what f*ck the zit-face nerds... Goddamn communist nerds like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page. Eff those nerds. I mean just because they transformed the American economy with technology advancements like Google and Facebook doesn't mean they get to support thoughtful, reasoned government policies.
Eff them, really. I want all the hundreds of thousands of jobs created by these guys taken back because they support net neutrality.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.8.10 @ 10:53AM
Wilson Tang,
I stand corrected. Nevertheless, if Obama and company are FOR it...I still have to be against it.
I don't trust them with anything, Okay?
Wilson G. Tang| 8.7.10 @ 7:18PM
The same goes to Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) and Vinton Cerf (inventor of TCP/IP). It's not they did anything to improve the world.
Eff them because they support net neutrality.
Dennis Bergendorf| 8.8.10 @ 10:35PM
Isn't it at all possible that part of the problem is the program's name? "Net Neutrality." Sound a lot like the Fairness Doctrine or the Campus Free Speech Movement (both names were smoke screens to mask their true intent).
But much of the problem is Obama's own doing, simply because he staffed his administration with so many Alinsky acolytes and because he's made it clear he wants to be rid of Fox and Rush.
Tenn Slim| 8.10.10 @ 7:01AM
Folks
Having followed most of this during the past few weeks, the Net Nuetrality issue now disappears. The FCC essentially tried to govern by consensus, which, guided by the Free Press group was impossible. FCC now will arbitrarily issue edicts, regs, rules and enforce via licenses restrictions. The OBNA goals of closing down INFORMATION flow will be implemented. The MSM has studiously ignored the whole fiasco for weeks. However, they too will soon see the Hammer of OBNA. Step out of line and the permits vanish. Fox and co, will be the first to go.
It will take a while, but the Net Sites, such as this one, will submit.
Sharpen up your pencils folks, the sun is setting.
Semper Fi
We MUST Prevail
end