Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
“Collected via email”, 1999 – Dear Internet Subscriber: Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet.”
Wall Street Journal, 2010 – FCC Gives Government Power to Regulate Web Traffic
Update:
The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney’s agenda? “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
So there you have it – no need for concern.
I’ve been commenting on this for some time. It’s a sad sad day for freedom of speech.
Freedom is a dangerous concept to those who would ‘govern’.
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Next up: the libs and ND and BQ will move to tax – they call it a levy – cloud storage.
From a revenue standpoint it is the motherlode – a tax on Facebook, backups, corporate cloud systems and personal clouds like mobile me. The libs are backing away on the iPod tax because this is a much bigger prize and less in you face.
And it will all be done in the name of protecting “artists” and copy rights.
We now have the power to decide who wins and who loses on the Internet. (Just a hint for anyone who doesn’t understand – the winner is the one who gives the most to the DNC in 2011 and 2012)
Chairman Julius “Ceasar” Genachowski
Tick tock that’s liberty and freedom being butchered by the tolerant left, how long before Obama sends out his army of union thugs to knock on his opponents doors? How long before they download porn on our computers to frame us?
The nickel email legislation is a hoax?!
It would be such a good cure for spam.
I blame Bush.
Here’s another e-mail “rumor” snopes can deny : we are headed for the 1000 commercial vacant channels of sanitized Shite universe TV devolved to. The FCC’s internet will have politically sanitized access only. Diverse opinion will be frozen off by the FCC registered providers cutting traffic to “unapproved” sites.
You will soon need a licence to surf and you will be cut off internet access for offering political opinion out of the prescribed mainstream.
Somewhere Orwell is saying “told ya so!”
The principles embodied in these regulations are a nearly perfect compromise among the competing practicalities involved in managing this utility functionality. According to the article Kate linked, this legislation would:
This is not the “regulation of the Internet”, it is a formalized statement of the “deregulation of the Internet”, while still respecting its utility functionality. Overall, it’s an excellent solution to the technical, bureaucratic, and political factors involved in this round of the negotiations.
Vίtruvius –
In the end, the bureaucrat Obama appoints will be the law, not the list the FCC generated for public consumption, by the simple fact that no law or regulation is self-executory.
That bureaucrat will exercise his power as he sees fit, and there is simply no way to constrain the actions of this person. Obama, given his past track record will use this power grab to reward and punish, as he sees fit. Investment will only be allowed where Obama allows it. Government insiders – political cronyism – will determine who the winners and losers are. The US continues its descent into corruption.
Yes, quite: it’s the end of human nature, really.
DeMint Vows To Reverse FCC’s ‘Internet Takeover’
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2010/12/demint-vows-reverse-fccs-internet-takeover
Only one major stumbling block in your trust of federal regulatory authority Vίtruvius > The FCC has no constitutional jurisdiction over the internet!
There have been over a half million comments posted here, Ted, “applauding” everything from Tommy Douglas to Reaganomics.
What’s your point?
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/court-rejects-fcc-authority-over-internet
While I agree that the misapplication of the commerce clause has been the greatest flaw in the history of the execution of the constitution of the U.S.A, effectively far too often incorrectly overriding the tenth amendment, Occam, it remains the case that The Internet (especially given its now utility functionality) is by definition a matter for the commerce clause. Otherwise it would be called “an intranet”. One can’t keep the feds out of it any more, therefore the question becomes how one makes the best of the situation, which in this case (as I mentioned supra) isn’t that bad in the first place, so it isn’t that hard to make the best of it (unless it interferes with one’s demagoguing, of course).
Bullshit, Ted. Read Kate’s entry opening this page. There is no
outrage. There are a pair of quotes, which could be presented as
both being bullshit. Kate doesn’t say. I do: they’re both bullshit.
Perhaps, then, Ted, it would be better if you paid attention. You
don’t need to make stuff up. Nobody does.
First, allow me a moment to drag your goalposts back a little closer to their original position.
If I’ve written in the past in support of FCC censorship, I can’t find it – can you?
Strike that. Let me make this even easier.
Just provide the content in this post that supports your use of the words “torqued” and “outraged”.
Get ready for vastly more expense internet use, tired service, etc. $40 or $50 bucks a month for unlimited high-speed – fuhgeddaboudit
Except of course for ‘identified groups’ that are disadvantaged or marginalized.
Stay tuned to your ISP for details.
Let’s remember that every new regulatory regime can present a long list of apparent market frictions or perceived failures to justify intervention. The thing is, tho, the free market itself is the very best regulator. How can anyone seriously think that the dead hand of a massively wasteful and incompetent government bureaucracy, peopled by low-end dead-enders, generate better outcomes.
Also, don’t forget mission creep. Just look at what the CRTC is doing now compared to its initial mandate. The EPA. The new “food safety” bill which has dick all to do with regulating the safest food supply on planet earth and everything to do with state expansion and favouritism toward big agribiz.
This bill has one and only one purpose: to squelch dissident voices against the progressive juggernaut and it had to get done before the new Congress sits.
Read this sentence from the WSJ piece and shudder:
Consumer groups and other organipzations, including the American Library Association, oppose such high-speed toll lanes, arguing all Americans should have the same quality of Internet access.
Shouldn’t all Americans wear the same quality clothing and drive motorcars with the same horsepower and performance characteristics. Shouldn’t all Americans eat the same quality foods.
My long experience as the owner of a highly-regulated entity has taught me one key truth: regulation is never really about what it says it’s about, and never really about protecting the public.
Most of the things this regulation is supposed to solve are a result of content providers and access providers being the same company. And I’m not sure even that needs to be regulated; right here in Canada, there are small ISPs that directly compete with Bell on the basis of bandwidth cap and lack of filtering.
Vίtruvius, I agree that the stated agenda is admirable.
I am minimally conversant in this field, so I look at this a bit differently. My concern is that this could become a case of:
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
“If it ain’t broke, fix it till it is.”
The internet is the main artery of information flow. Books, magazines and newspapers are secondary. Whoever controls the internet is a step away from controlling information.
I don’t get the “outrage”. Wow – ISP’s can charge based on your usage? Er, Rogers already does that – there’s a speed cap, and a data download cap. If you want more, you pay more.
And geez – for a supposedly free market oriented site, I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t support that principle. It’s the classic “free rider” situation – the ISP’s have to build a network to support their heaviest users, but flat rate pricing means low volume users are actually subsidizing high volume users.
So many commenters don’t get the point.
Obomanation wants to kill blogs like this in the US
And let the ones that push global warming, liberal great conservative bad politics on the American people.
Thank God we have Harper in charge, he seems to know more about the Constitution than Obama does.
But I still say it dies when the new Congress kills FCC funding in Jan.
Dhimmi,
objecting to tiered access to websites is nothing like a soviet boot factory. It’s more like saying power distributors who service industrial/commercial clientele are allowed to draw as much as they like, then the wealthy areas, middle class areas and lastly the ghettos would get decreasing access to power based on their ability to pay. That’s extremely simplistic and somewhat in accurate but it’s sort of like that and a better analogy than some kind of communist auto plant.
Plus inspite of what you may think regulations aren’t always a bad thing. The free market when left to its own devices allows formations of monopolies and then competition breaks down anyways. The FCC doesn’t let anyone broadcast on any radio frequnecy they’d like because you’d get signals chaos. All sorts of things like pipelines and other things prone to natural monopoly are regulated to hell to prevent them from strangling competition. Somethings can be over regulated yes, but regulations aren’t always a bad thing and can, and often have, produced better outcomes.
At least I’m glad that the FCC will at least ostensibly investigate and prevent tiered servicing and program throttling on land lines. Though I’m not sure how well they’d actually do it :\
Kevin
It doesn’t matter how much you pay because if you use a high bandwidth program like BitTorrent then ISPs can throttle your speeds and in the end you don’t really get what you pay for. Throttling makes high volume users pay for things they won’t get so that grandma can go on facebook ever so slightly faster and creep out/de-cool her grandchildren. I think data download caps are kind of dumb too because they can accrue over time but oh well.
without reading the article I figure
the headline should be
the FCC concedes it cant rule the internet…only
congress can
Does the Commerce Clause now trump the First Amendment? Ain’t supposed to.
To the extent that the policy says a backbone network provider cannot prefer its own distribution and content arms over competitors, the decision seems reasonable.
Similarly, to the extent the policy says that someone putting content onto the net can be expected to have to pay for that content without discrimination or favor the decison seems reasonable.
So much for Net Neutrality as originally conceived that would have given content providers a free ride at the expense of backbone carriers and Internet access subscribers.
Now companies like Netflix (whose traffic by some reports accounts for 20 percent of downstream traffic during peak periods) can be expected to have to pay for the extra infrastructure their services consume.
Many folks are misinterpreting this event as some manner of Fairness Doctrine for the internet. It is not, as has been correctly pointed out here by others.
Of all the comments here, I think WalterF a few posts up makes the most succinct case of the concerns regarding regulation of cyberspace. The free markets seem to have been doing a good job of it up until now. Do we really think government is going to make things better in any material way?
@ Colin
From what I can see the policy states that free market principles apply except if you are a business that carrys internet traffic, serves up internet content, and provides internet access. Then you cannot prefer yourself over competitors in those businesses.
Not sure I agree with that because I think if you invest in building a network and invest in building content customers want over that network and invest in getting customers onto the network, you should be able to realize economies of scope from the 3 businesses. But given that the regulators have always allowed other businesses to ride on network investments made by carriers, the clarity and apparently minimal amount of intrusion into rule making seems to be beneficial. Now the businesses can get off the Net Netrality fight and get down to business.
“, but flat rate pricing means low volume users are actually subsidizing high volume users.”
This comment is bang-on, and rroe’s synopses at 10:28 nails it. The way I see things, the very ‘freedom’ vit and others are looking for (ie my wife supports this) will in the long run be reduced by this action. The aspirations for this bill that vit listed are simply the lipstick on the pig that is the government take-over of the net. By reducing the private providers ability to conduct business as they see fit ON THEIR OWN NETWORK the more likely it is that they will raise prices and lower service across the board for everyone.
Net Neutrality = Rent Control for the Internet.
@ rroe
Yes, I think you (as Indiana says) nail it with your synopsis. And, at the end of the day, perhaps its best to simply put this matter to bed in the interests of providing the players in the industry the certainty needed to focus on their core business.
But, I continue to think concerns of this being the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent are not overblown. We ought to remain vigilant this or future administrations don’t try to abuse this new regulatory authority.
Heh, and I’m Canadian, with no dog in this fight, directly.
@ Rroe
We don’t always allow economies of scope to prevail and governments have broken up things like pipelines and electricity carriers before. Governments have also regulated against certain enterprises that show monopolistic tendencies.
The thing is though because of the relatively free and unregulated nature of the internet individual sites that do not generate a profit have the potential to suck up a lot of bandwidth. The argument for net neutrality has always been to preserve the free access nature of the internet. So if someone runs some really popular high, or even medium, traffic hobby site I don’t want to see ISPs price them off of the internet. I agree that the economics of it is kind of sticky but I really think that the internet, as it is, is a neat little experiment we’re doing and would like to see it continue.
I think there’s a bit of a crazy knee-jerk reaction to the “regulation” word. I hate unnecessary government intrusion as much as anyone but a lot of things are regulated.
M – Regarding ” a crazy knee-jerk reaction to the “regulation” word “, go and Google John Fund’s article in today’s WSJ ” The Net Neutrality Coup “, and you may learn a bit more behind the people pushing ” net neutrality “. You can judge for yourself whether or not their intentions are benign.
One definition of “Liberty”: the ability to say “no!” and make it stick.
Buh-Bye Ms. American Pie
The Day the Internet Died?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31330
Plus inspite of what you may think regulations aren’t always a bad thing. The free market when left to its own devices allows formations of monopolies and then competition breaks down anyways.
– M
The thing to get M is that monoplolies are not sustainable on the free market. Monopolies are actually enabled by government intervention in the market. PLUS, a monopoly is not necessarily inherently a bad thing if it does not entail restriction of production and price increases. Think Microsoft for many years. Also, keep in mind that “anti-trust” action against MS was initiated by competitors, not the general public.
I’m quite frankly SHOCKED by the naivety above, esp. from putative libertarian Vίtruvius. C’mon folks: all regulation begins with an “admirable agenda”. A new regulatory regime cannot say what its true agenda is. One example is the inception of the Federal Reserve: admirable agenda: stability and “elasticity of the money supply” in recessions. Actual agenda: a centrally controlled government-bank cartelized permanent continuous inflation of the money supply, resulting in unnatural booms and busts which are NOT a natural component of capitalism.
I’ll say it again: The one and only agenda of this “net neutrality coup” is content control — the suppression of dissident voices against the Progressive Juggernaut. Mark my words.
Too many above are actually “useful idiots” for Progessivia.
M
So you’d rather wait until the UN gathers at some sunny spot, say Cancun, to sign some treaty enabling the UN to regulate?
Lets not make the same mistake we made with AGW and allow the enemy to gain a foot hold under our noses. Oh wait… that’s already happened right?
“So if someone runs some really popular high, or even medium, traffic hobby site”
This was my wife’s argument yesterday. Please explain to me why a person that wishes to use such a site is ‘entitled’ to do so at the expense of other users and their internet provider? This is OBVIOUSLY a case where such a user SHOULD be paying more, or, ‘pulling their own weight’ so to speak.
Indiana Homez –
I’m afraid your argument can be used for the basis of price discrimination for the pricing of any good, meaning, if you would be willing to pay more, you SHOULD pay more. With the government getting a nice commission, of course.
When you are talking about government, be careful what you wish for. You may get far ” more ” – taxation – than you wished for.
Perhaps I can somewhat clarify my position on this matter, Me No Dhimmi, by reminding that while I am politically libertarian in principle, in practice I am an engineer. In practice I am interested in how things do work and in how to keep the important ones working; I am less interested in the arguments of the proponents of how things should work according to various pursuits of paranoid delusion in the name of this or that utopian ideology. That is my oath and my responsibility as a Son of Martha, per The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. “The Sons of Mary have cast their burden upon the Lord”, as Kipling put it, “and the Lord He lays it on Martha’s Sons!”
Pursuant then to the burden the Lord has placed on we Sons of Martha, Me No Dhimmi, I am now of the opinion that the core functionality of the Internet has become so critical to our quality of life as we know it that the time has come to treat said core functionality as a public utility, similar in fashion to the ways we treat things like the core power, gas, and sewage functionalities upon which our quality of life has come to depend. To the degree that I am correct, this means that the competing forces involved in the markets for and around this utility functionality will turn to civilizations’ regulatory mechanisms to mitigate their disputes, and in our society our final civilian mechanism thereto is our government. Whether or not you or I like it doesn’t enter into it.
That, I think, is what we see happening here. Those representing the backbone operators, the service providers, the content creators, the end users, the engineers & technologists, the utopian busy- bodies, et cetera, all take their lobbying efforts to various governmental and quasi- governmental channels like the FCC, ICANN, IETF, &c, and then they negotiate various puts and takes and reach agreements regarding how things will work for the next phase, up until when the results of the next negotiations supersede the results of this negotiation.
Once we understand what it really going on here, as I have just outlined, perhaps it will be easier for folks to understand that this news out of the FCC has nothing to do with your freedom of speech, and little to do with what the current U.S. Administration or government in general wants. Perhaps, then, one can better see how, under these essentially optimal circumstances, the results from this round of negotiations can only be seen as successful (at least from the perspective of those who are interested in how things do work and in how to keep the important ones working) because these results are not an increase in the regulation of the Internet, they are a confirmation of the essential de-regulation of the Internet as far as practicable (as least in the U.S.A.).
‘c’
I was arguing against ‘net neutrality’. These government regulations as I understand them will result in lower service and high costs for everyone. I support providers having to ability to charge for the service they provide as they see fit, and the consumer having the ability to change providers if they are unsatisfied. This legislation will hamper both. Did you not read the links this week regarding Pharma/drug shortage and government regulation? I honestly can’t see how you can argue this will save the consumer money.
What about those that wish to go to a cheap provider that has limits on bandwidth(like grandma who Googles recipes) making it possible in the first place to provide said cheap service? Should nobody be afforded this option to preserve the (as my wife calls it) ‘consumer rights’ of the cheapskates that don’t want to pull their own bandwidth weight?
And yeah! What’s wrong with a business charging ‘what the market will bear”? Does this ideology not promote competition and lower prices inheirently?
vit
You are assuming that those that disagree with you are uninformed. We can argue against a) your point of “core functionality”, and b)the results from this round of negotiations can only be seen as successful (at least from the perspective of those who are interested in how things do work and in how to keep the important ones working). Please demonstrate how my ability to bit torrent is a core functionality of society.
Whether its the regulation of the Internet or the regulation of Pot, it will all result in costing the consumer a isht load of money.
And vit, you’re sounding a bit Orwellian saying that these new regulations are in fact the “de-regulation of the Internet”, and yeah, I got the “practicable” part, but still.
“The one and only agenda of this “net neutrality coup” is content control”
MND
I agree. Given the people working toward this, i fail to see how it could be otherwise.
I think some are letting their love of orderly systems blind them to the motives of those working toward this ostensibly neutral move. It isn’t going to end that simply.
Once they’re in, they can control content.
I’m not arguing that those who disagree with me are misinformed, Homez, moreover I am arguing that your ability to bit torrent is not a core functionality of society ~ so I’m not in a position to argue that it is, as you requested of me. But yes, you certainly are free to argue against the positions I take, and I completely support that freedom within our society as far as practicable, yet that doesn’t mean that because you disagree with me you are correct any more than it means that I am correct because I disagree with you.
The critical point you seem to be forgetting or ignoring is simply that you’re not that important (and neither am I). If you want to have more effect than your periodic vote, then select your lobbying representative at the negotiating table and support them. That’s how our system works, and it doesn’t care whether or not you or I like it per se, because civilization has found over the millennia that this is the best system we have come up with so far. That’s what’s sadly far too often not understood by utopian ideologues grasping for phantom abstractions (and not just in blog comments 😉
Vίtruvius: That’s a sound enough argument, and thanks for the clarification. However, I have to disagree that government regulation is required to regulate this “public utility”. I mean, look at the unbelievable progress made since the internet became widely used in the early 90s. All the technical hurdles overcome; all the protocols and universal standards established through free market exchange with zero government intervention.
As hudson duster points out take a good look at the source of the agitation for this regulatory intervention: the kinds of people pushing for it. Engineers, NOT!
In fact, my very first encounter with what I thought was a laughably bogus term “internet neutrality” was from a long ago friend who during a long hiatus in your relationship morphed from a standard-issue liberal democrat to a hard left bush-hating jew-hating environMENTAList who had swallowed the global warming coolaid.
Net “neutrality” is just egalitarian tyranny. Socialism.
The progressives are worried sick about the backlash most of which was fostered by Fox News but even more by conservative/libertarian blogs.
America’s most dangerous man — regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein — has actually stated publicly that he’d like to see on conservative blogs little pop up windows with links to alternative [default] liberal views (it was interesting that he referred to conservative sites not liberal ones as the ones requiring the tender hand of government finger-wagging). He has also considered measures through which the government could deal with troublesome “rumours”, etc.
“All the technical hurdles overcome” has not happened, Me No Dhimmi, and “all the protocols and universal standards established through free market exchange with zero government intervention” was not what happened either ~ that’s another myth. At least, not in my first-hand experience, though I admit that’s not universal.
My point, Me No Dhimmi, is that it doesn’t matter whether or not you (or I) agree that, as you put it, “government regulation is required to regulate this ‘public utility'”, that’s what’s going to happen (and is and always has been happening), because that’s part of the best system we’ve been able to come up with. Once one realizes that, then the question becomes how to get good results out of it. That’s the non-juvenile problem we are or should be working on.
And so thereto: more DARPA I say !-)
I won’t challenge your arguments and proofs that you put up to support your position, Vίt.
Anyone who went through the W3 RAND disaster at the turn of the decade, or has dealt with IANA or IETF understands the protocols and standards of the Internet are entirely governmental; scope, mandate and methodology.
What I would argue with is your initial assumption, that being the Internet is a “public utility”.
The Internet is not required for day-to-day living. Millions of people deal quite well without it. This isn’t water or sewage. Those who want it, can get it quite easily over various medium, at several different price ranges. You don’t need a license to use it. It doesn’t require specialized equipment to use.
The Internet isn’t elite. That the public makes great use of it drives all that you would call necessary into it. In other words a reaction, not the motivation.
It works. . .now. It worked before. It will work in the future. It doesn’t need to be fixed, focused, regulated, or deregulated. It (and we) need to be left alone.
Cheers,
lance
Um, the entertainment parts of the Internet, Lance (most of the so-called “news” and all of the blogosphere), aren’t “required for day-to-day living”, I agree. There are however multitudes of command and control systems, from monetary transaction banking to engineered systems management protocols, that now depend on the Global Internet and in many cases the VPNs that depend on it. That part of The Internet (the core utility functionality, as I have referred to it supra) does need to be and has been and is being and will continue to be coordinated nationally and inter-nationally above and beyond the level of being, as you put it, “left alone”. Thank God too.
And so it remains the case that any individual’s view of the Internet is not the Internet itself: the Internet’s totality can only be at best approximated, and then only by the study of its components and behaviours. Thus it is erroneous to derive global infrastructure conclusions based solely on personal usage experience.
Two parts:
Right, as you say, “That part of The Internet…does need to be and has been and is being and will be coordinated”.
So what’s the problem? Why the change? It is working, quite well, actually.
I’m not talking about protocols, that’s a straw-man. No one cares about the protocols except the designers, coders and implementers. The protocols aren’t what the FCC is talking about either.
I have concerns about having “core utility” functionality even secondary access to the Internet. Ask Iran’s nuke engineers how having their desktops connected to the Internet is working out for them.
Running a phone line to the modem on the heavy iron is as efficient as running any other type of cable and the vast majority of those systems (that you would describe as core utility) aren’t going to be pushing so much data that a modem wouldn’t work.
Second part:
You said, “the entertainment parts of the Internet, Lance (most of the news and all of the blogosphere), aren’t “required for day-to-day living”, I agree.”
Which is exactly the type of stuff the FCC has said the gov’t now has the right to control.