This week's source material:
President Barack Obama is for Net Neutrality? We have to oppose!
I am not an expert on the subject, which is fantastically complex, but the case for giving the FCC this authority seems to me slight.
I am not an expert, so let me open my trap!
That is, “net neutrality” de facto already exists, without the aid of any governmental entity to enforce it. Why, then, is government enforcement suddenly necessary to maintain the status quo?
Because the landscape of the internet is changing, dramatically. For example, people used to get their TVs from over the airwaves. Then they got them via cable or satellite. But now that more and more people are cutting the cord and getting their entertainment over the internet, the cable companies are feeling the heat. And since those very same cable companies own much of the broadband internet capacity ... Is this starting to make sense, person who is not an expert but opines anyway?
No, because you are dense? Okay. Let me spell it out as clearly as possible: Broadband providers will block certain sites and services if they compete against their own products. Capitalism 101.
And that's the best-case scenario. The worst case is that those broadband providers shut down sites that pester them. And someday, that could be a Tea Party group agitating against them. So what is more important to the crazies? The First Amendment, or the Business Can Do Anything They Want fantasy amendment?
Now, it may eventually be the case that the complex Internet economy falls prey to quasi-monopolistic forces who abuse consumers, requiring some 21st-century trust-busting. But what is certainly the case is that the Internet has thrived in no small part because of the lack of regulation.
The internet is already heavily regulated. For example, I—as a site owner—am protected from what you guys say in diaries and comments because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act And regulations that allow social media and community sites to flourish. Otherwise, we would've all been shut down a long time ago by private lawsuits. (And yes, conservatives have tried to sue me in the past, and all have run smack into the DMCA.)
Perhaps someone more studied in this matter can make the case for the president’s plan
How about every technology
company of note, from Google to Facebook to Twitter to Microsoft to Ebay to Amazon to Yahoo to Dropbox and hundreds more are strong supporters of Net Neutrality. But please, spout off uninformed blather, just because. Nevermind that the internet is how virtually all communications will soon travel. Let the First Amendment be trumped by Comcast and ATT.
Those that make up the content of the internet want it free and open. Conservatives apparently have decided to cast their lots with the telecom gatekeepers, and why? Because Obama, as you'll see confirmed below the fold.
Seriously, the president should come out strongly in support of breathing. Conservatives would hold their breath in reflexive opposition. And that would rid us of most of this country's problems.
The president wants more control over one of our most important resources...information. Can you trust Obama with anything? And do we need more government in our lives? Let the market decide, and keep the government out! My internet works great right now and I don't think more government regulations will improve upon it.
Let the market decide the First Amendment, and get the government out of the internet it created. And when Comcast throttles National Review of the website of the Republican candidate for president, that's okay, because OBAMA!
This is the camel's nose. The real complaint politicians and their lackeys have with the internet is that it is unfettered speech.
It is unfettered speech, unless Comcast doesn't like it.
Building, expanding and maintaining highways is a proper role of government. If the Government wants to do something constructive with the internet, they'll widen the information super highway (bandwidth), and work with industry to remove barriers to expanded coverage. A big part of the problem we have today is the old "who owns the cable in the ground" problem.
By treating the internet like a public utility, the pipes will be constrained and "managed" by people who aren't in the best position to understand changing technologies. If we really want a neutral net, then the highway needs to be expanded.
Highways have zero regulation.
Wait, what do highway police do again?
What Obama wants is Obamacare for the Internet. He gets to steal the profits, and raise rates, in a Big Government scheme to make the internet anything but neutral.
The problems he cites are solvable through less regulation.
Obama personally wants to steal your Comcast's profits.
After reading through some of the comments by defenders of "Net Neutrality," I find it amusing that they are taking the stance of the federal government being the white knight riding into the rescue in this scenario. When in fact it is actually exactly the kind of government they accused Republicans of being during the Iraq war. So while they dreamed up blood for oil, they are perfectly comfortable to enact the cyber equivalent.
Cyberblood for oil?
Politics as usual for Mr. Obama (I went ahead and demoted him a couple of years early; it makes me feel better). Where was Mr. Freedom when our privacy was being violated by the NSA? Let the government get involved, and you net-neutrality proponents will see a whole new meaning given to the word "block." Don't forget that Congressman Clyburn from SC wanted to install government content "auditors" at SC radio stations.
The NSA violates freedoms, so it's okay to let Comcast violate them too!
Everything this guy does is aimed at acquiring and consolidating power. This isn't about net neutrality, just like Obamacare isn't about making sure everyone has health care.
The health care program isn't about people having health care, because OBAMA.
The statutory language giving the federal government authority over telecommunications common carriers is rather broad and vague.
By reclassifying the internet as a common carrier they will later try to use the broader language to impose duties on common carriers to prohibit what the progressives consider "hate speech," require "fairness" in content or impose other practices to suppress ideological opposition.
Netflix, Microsoft, Google, LinkedIN, Facebook, and Yahoo are all plotting to shut down Free Republic!
Just as the Left has tried, through government, to control the AM airwaves with the "Fairness Doctrine," so too will they try to do the same on the internet. And with a whole new revenue stream of billions in tax dollars to the FCC, who's going to stop them, the government?
The government is UNACCOUNTABLE, but Comcast is totally accountable.
If the government tells us how we shall get our internet access we'll end up with streaming video at the speed of the Post Office or the DMV.
Thank heavens no one is proposing the government tell us how we should get our internet access!
So Obama wants to apply old telephone rules to the internet to "keep it free"... yeah, the FCC is just who I trust to preserve the freedom of the internet. /sarc
There was zero freedom in telephones.
The Internet is just the latest free nail that the government bureaucracy hammer has been eyeing jealously. But if Obama is concerned so about the direction taken by its participants, why did he cavalierly relinquish USA's role in the management of ICANN?
ICANN isn't blocking rival services on its pipes.
People want access to the internet and they want it fast. I kind of remember when people were going from regular modem lines and phone lines to RoadRunner (It's faster). I remember them advertising. And I remember switching over. I remember when it was all slow.
And it was built and people came. If that gets changed, people will leave.
And when all three broadband companies throttle their competitors? I guess you can wait 20 years for Google Fiber to hit your neck of the woods, and then pray that Google doesn't throttle competitors too (like Apple or Microsoft).
They're afraid that some company might block a website that is critical of the company?
Gee, sounds like something the Obama administration was kind of pushing about Obamacare. Remember AttackWatch and the White House website asking people to report websites that had "false" information about Obamacare?
It all goes back to the old rule: if the Left is accusing you of it, they're doing it or planning to do it.
The Obama Administration blocked critical websites? Wow! I have a solution for this made-up never-happened scandal:
Net Neutrality.
Obama absolutely detests free markets. He is the epitome of a socialist, if not a Marxist. Free markets are bad, government control is good.
His motivating principle: If there is a possibility, however remote, that some businesses may, in the distant future, conspire to restrict free markets, then it is his duty to impose government bureaucracy now to prevent that possibility from occurring. Of course, that such government inference will, by definition, prevent free markets from developing, is of no concern -- indeed, that is precisely Obama's goal.. The fewer free markets, the better.
Obama is a marxist and they Wall Street continues to thrive... maybe he just really sucks at that marxism stuff.