FCC to Embrace "Internet Neutrality"

Mir I apologize my ISP (not any of them since 94)
has ever withheld anything from me.
I know not what it is of which you speak.
My current provider does offer more bandwidth (DOCSIS 3.0)
than I could ever use!
I suppose government intervention in the affairs of the
internet won’t be that bad. I’m off to buy stamps
so I can send an e-mail…
 
net-neutrality-thumb-550x1224-27419.jpg


http://dvice.com/archives/2009/10/net-neutrality.php
 
The FCC has no business messing with the internet

OK fine as soon as each and every ISP operates that way,
when no one offers: “The internet without restrictions”

If a competing ISP offered the internet without restrictions
they’d get all the business away from any silly ISP that tried that crap.

Wouldn't folks circumnavigate the ISP's through the use of proxies or something?

I'm tellin' ya this is total subterfuge to get the government in the business of
regulating the internet and once that begins, it will never end.

This is a non-issue, heck ISP's are having a hellava time getting
download caps to stop the teenage torrent weenies from
flooding the ISP's with pointless bandwidth hogging downloads.

Imagine if you were being charged by the byte like people
in other backward countries?

If people don’t want to buy their internet access
in a tiered fashion then there will never be a market for it.
If you can only get one ISP, then just maybe the market area you are in can’t support
more than one? No wait that’s silly.

Of course providing internet access in rural areas may not be profitable
for more than one ISP to compete for business but I’ll wager the vast
majority of Americans DO have a choice of ISP’s
Here I’ve got at least two Cox and Qwest.

Cox is so much better there isn’t really any competition.

Keep the internet Free, let the free market reign.
 
This sounds liek a severe case of If it ain;t broke don't fix it.

Nothing is beng withheld but they're going to make a law that makes it illegal to withhold...case of foot in the door sysndrome.
 
The internet is the nearest thing to a libertarian utopia in the history of the world. It creates the closest thing we have seen to a frictionless market, a perfectly free market – and it is, for the most part, tax free. It allows the closest thing we have to maximum free speech and freedom from censorship. It allows every individual a platform to be themselves, or whatever else they choose to be. It circumvents and undermines governments that attempt to control it. It was created to allow for the maximum of freedom with a minimum of cost. It is resistant to centralized control – and makes it more and more possible to decentralize power. It has unleashed the forces of innovation and creativity that libertarian theory has always posited would come with freedom. It is perhaps the greatest force for expanding liberty in the world since the American revolution (or the fall of Communism.)

How did the internet develop this way? How did this profoundly destabilizing and decentralized network develop? Was it some Galtian genius who set up servers on cargo ships in international waters? Was it some giant corporation which decided it could profit from it? Not quite. And perhaps the story of how the internet developed helps explain why is it that liberals and not libertarians are the ones defending the internet.

Government engineers designed the internet as a network that was decentralized and thus “network neutral,” so as to be resistant to a nuclear assault on the United States. It was designed to be adaptable. Many academics worked on the project on behalf of the government – and were among the first to gain access to it. The large corporations of the time that controlled America’s communications grid – primarily AT&T – were resistant and attempted to strangle this competitor in its infancy, as they tried to discriminate against the data being sent over their lines. Corporations, attempting to derive maximum profit from their assets, also attempted to exert maximum control. AT&T only allowed “authorized” objects to connect to its network – and in fact people did not own their own phones. They licensed them from AT&T. Thus, it was only forceful intervention by the FCC that allowed the internet to develop, that opened up the communications network of the United States to innovation.

AT&T and other corporations, attempting to add to their profits, now seek to find another stream of revenue by undermining net neutrality, one of the foundational principles of the internet itself. They seek to introduce new frictions into this nearly frictionless market and to prevent it from becoming so easily a platform for individuals. Opponents of net neutrality claim that the several attempts by corporations to create policies that were contrary to net neutrality should be ignored because they did not succeed. (They did not succeed because the FCC shut them down.) They claim that there is no need to articulate clear principles about what net neutrality is because so far, the attempts to undermine it have failed. They claim government regulation regarding this would retard “innovation” – when it was government intervention that in fact created the possibility for such innovation.

This libertarian utopia was created by government engineers and protected from powerful corporations by forceful regulation.

Many corporate libertarians (such as Adam Thierer) have embraced the fallacy that the government is the only threat to individual liberties, or at least that the government is always a greater threat to liberty than any other force. They also often count corporations as “individuals” as they are considered such by the law. Thus they have a knee jerk opposition to regulation of any sort – even regulation meant to allow their own values to flourish. They favor freedom for corporations from government over freedom of individuals from corporations because they see the government as the primary evil in the world.

The are many different varieties of liberals, but the group of which I count myself believes that large corporations as well as government both are major threats to individual liberties. We favor smart regulation that does not restrict individuals, but instead restricts corporations who often use their power and clout to deprive individuals of rights. We agree with many libertarian attempts to constrain the government in the area of national security and attempts to make the government more transparent and accountable – but believe that government intervention in some form or another is often needed to restrain corporations from taking away the rights of individuals. We realize that the free markets exist not in spite of the government but because of it, because of a balance between governmental intervention and the rights of individuals and the rights of corporations.
Click to expand...

http://2parse.com/?p=4127
 
In other news ...

SOURCEhttp://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=55815

Congressional Black Caucus, Blue Dogs Join Conservatives to Oppose Internet Regulations
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer


FCC seal
(CNSNews.com) – Two groups of House Democrats that are not always on the same political page have joined forces to oppose federal regulation of Internet traffic currently under consideration by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The FCC is moving forward with plans to approve “net neutrality,” rules that essentially would prohibit Internet service providers from charging add-on fees to certain Web sites for accessing their networks. Advocates of net neutrality argue that without new rules, a duopoly of cable and telephone companies can “discriminate” against certain Web content.

But 72 House Democrats, all members of either the centrist Blue Dog Caucus or the more liberal Congressional Black Caucus, signed a letter to the FCC charging that “net neutrality” regulations would stifle competition.

“We remain suspicious of conclusions based on slogans rather than substance, and of policies that restrict and inhibit the very innovation and growth that we all seek to achieve,” the members of each caucus said in a joint letter to the FCC last Thursday.

Opponents of the regulations say the rules would likely slow down the Web, make it tougher to block spam, create the need for more government bureaucrats as new bureaucratic rules tend to require, and discourage investment in broadband technology.

Democrats such as Reps. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California have supported the regulation. Republicans have mostly led the opposition, with Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Charles Grassley of Iowa writing a letter to the FCC last week cautioning against the regulation.

But the letter from Democratic House members last week used some of the same arguments Republicans have advanced.

“A decade ago, broadband was a nascent service, and only one percent of U.S. households connected to the Internet through broadband lines,” the letter from Democratic lawmakers said. “Today, by contrast, roughly two-thirds of Americans connect through high speed connections that are available to 95 percent of households.”

Signatories included prominent Democrats such as Reps. Health Shuler of North Carolina, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, Bernie Thompson of Mississippi, Baron Hill of Indiana, Ed Towns of New York, Silvestre Reyes of Texas, and Alcee Hastings of Florida.

[more]
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Hows that Hope and Change working out for you?

From BoInG BoInG

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

  • * * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
  • * * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
  • * * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
  • * * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html

----------------------------------------------------

E.F.F. says....


Leaked ACTA Internet Provisions: Three Strikes and a Global DMCA

Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement start in a few hours in Seoul, South Korea. This week’s closed negotiations will focus on “enforcement in the digital environment.” Negotiators will be discussing the Internet provisions drafted by the US government. No text has been officially released but as Professor Michael Geist and IDG are reporting, leaks have surfaced. The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations. The Internet provisions have nothing to do with addressing counterfeit products, but are all about imposing a set of copyright industry demands on the global Internet, including obligations on ISPs to adopt Three Strikes Internet disconnection policies, and a global expansion of DMCA-style TPM laws.​

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/leaked-acta-internet-provisions-three-strikes-and-

----------------------------------------------

This is not good.

There are *few* people working to verify this, there are limited dox right now.

Hows that Hope and Change working out for you? -- Net Neutrality :rofl4:

:hippy:
 
ISPs already have to look into copyright and follow the notice and takedown rules...hell, I've faced it often, with limited access to certain videos because I wasn't American, and I had a design taken off of CafePress because it closely resembled someone else's look (not really, but I wasn't in the mood to fight it out).

Why isn't boingboing actually posting the actual treaty text instead of just their interpretation of this unproven text?
 
Meh. Every reference out there points to this professors' blog which is theorizing what the document might or might not have. Eat it up. At this point, it might have more truth if it was on the cover of the Enquirer.

Let's just say it does get ratified by the other countries. Doesn't Congress have the ability to back out of treaties, while a President cannot?* Think a (R) House would do that in the near future? Not a chance in hell.

There is no hope because there was no change.


Edit: * My googlefu is weak right now and can't seem to confirm this. Gonz?
 
Here:
Wiki for "Treaty Clause" said:
American law is that international accords become part of the body of U.S. federal law.[1] As a result, Congress can modify or repeal treaties by subsequent legislative action, even if this amounts to a violation of the treaty under international law. This was held, for instance, in the Head Money Cases. The most recent changes will be enforced by U.S. courts entirely independent of whether the international community still considers the old treaty obligations binding upon the U.S.[1]

Additionally, an international accord that is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution is void under domestic U.S. law, the same as any other federal law in conflict with the Constitution. This principle was most clearly established in the case of Reid v. Covert.[8] The Supreme Court could rule an Article II treaty provision to be unconstitutional and void under domestic law, although it has not yet done so.
Click to expand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause


Bish, they haven't posted it because they've handed out the mystery treaty physically and on watermarked paper to trace leaks. Cue the conspiracy theories like this guy.
 
I love downloading 'files' I get to see everything under the sun
just for the cost of my taxation free internet connection.
That will never last but I'm gonna hug it and kiss it while it does.
 
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