The end of this Congress — and death of Sen. Ted Stevens’ bad bill — gives us the chance to have a long overdue public conversation about what the future of the Internet should look like. This will not only include ensuring Net Neutrality, but making the Internet faster, more affordable and accessible.
Well, that bill died, but Net Neutrality is not yet guaranteed. Be sure that there will be a second round. Remember to go to Save the Internet and do what you can to make sure that Net Neutrality is passed into law. With the Democratic Congress, there's a much better chance of doing that now.
11 comments:
Sure, the net neutrality argument sounds good on paper but the reality is that net neutrality laws mean government intervention and the internet will not become faster, affordable and accessible with such laws and regulations.
Here's a quick example. Netflix is going to offer its customers the ability to download movies rather than wait for them in the mail. This also sounds good on paper but when all data must be treated equally like net neutrality regulations require, all the netflix movies must be treated equally as if you were sending an email. Therefore, you can bet that your snail mailed movies will arrive at your doorstep before the download even makes it halfway to your desktop computer.
That's about the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard. I hope you were being sarcastic. This is not a battle over a vague notion of "data neutrality"; it's a battle over your right to equal access to everything on the internet. You pay for that access, you pay for that bandwidth. What right does AT&T have to apportion it based on what company is paying the most for bandwidth? If I pay $40 a month for broadband, I don't want Comcast to limit my favorite blogs to 56k speed simply because they don't pay AT&T. That's what I pay for.
Furthermore, what little argument you might have for the free-market is idiocy when you stop to consider that the internet has already proven to work best by the principle of net neutrality and that these companies are actually seeking a controlled market.
If you think that's good, go ahead and be against Net Neutrality. Or, you could actually find out what the debate is about and make some reasonable arguments.
Oh, and by the way, dear readers, this "hoti43" person isn't a real person in the strictest sense. This is a case of a corporate "blogger" coming to leave commments biased towards their point of view. If you follow through this person's profile, you'll be brought to a website for the "Hands Off the Internet" coalition. Wow, what's this, a grassroots movemen in opposition to Save the Internet? Eh...not really. Check this out:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hands_Off_the_Internet
"This organization has been described as a classic astroturf group. Its website does disclose its industry membership, and its connection to Public Strategies, Inc.. But its homepage only describes itself as "a nationwide coalition of Internet users," giving a misleading impression of grassroots support.
HOTI's membership is dominated by telecommunications companies and conservative lobby groups. As of April 2006, its members were [6]:
Actiontec
Alcatel
The America Channel
American Conservative Union
AT&T
BellSouth
Center for Individual Freedom
Cinergy Communications
Cingular
Citizens Against Government Waste
CBM of America
DiamondWare
Electrodata, Inc.
Enhanced Telecommunications, Inc.
FiberControl
Frontiers of Freedom
Independent Technologies, Inc.
Ministerial Alliance Against the Digital Divide
MRV Communications, Inc.
National Association of Manufacturers
National Black Chamber of Commerce
National Coalition on Black Civic Participation
Prysmian Communications
RightMarch.com
[edit]HOTI advertising
The bulk of HOTI's financial support comes from the newly re-formed AT&T, which has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into HOTI ad campaigns, including extensive advertising buys across the blogosphere and in mainstream and beltway press. Nowhere throughout these ads is it disclosed that the effort is funded by the nation's largest telecommunications companies and lobbyists. Instead, HOTI ads are fashioned to look and feel like genuine grassroots efforts, backed by broad popular suport. This deceptive practice is most evident in an animated segment at www.dontregulate.org [7], produced by HOTI for broad dissemination via blog ad placements. Critics across the blogosphere and at SavetheInternet.com have condemned this animated ad as "a clever piece of industry propaganda that is riddled with half-truths and outright lies." [8] [9] "
Hilarious.
You'd think with all that money, they could pay their commentator to make better arguments.
I think they're trying to "keep it real", as you can see on their webpage by making mention of such "hip" pop-culture references as Wu-Tang clan. If they were real people making stupid analogies, they would have used Fergie.
God, what a horrible website. A visit that website will convince you of the rightness of net neutrality.
Or at least the complete stupidity of those who oppose it, even if you don't pick up on their corruptness. I guess I should be glad though that they actually wasted money paying someone to spend their time leaving stupid comments on our blog. And they gave us something to hate on. Thanks guys!
I find it funny that you're blasting me for corporate blogging but do you realize who is behind Save the Internet? That's right, the corporate folks at Google, Amazon, ebay, etc. They are doing a great job at scaring people into thinking that freedoms will be eliminated without government intervention.
Sure, I work with Hands Off the Internet. If you don't want to read our website on net neutrality fine. Here is a great article by liberal Dr. Alfred Kahn. He's an economist and regulatory expert. Enjoy!
http://pff.org/issues-pubs/ps/2006/ps2.24voiceofcautiononnetneutrality.html
PS - Net neutrality was never the founding principle.
Not work with: you work for them. I don't get paid to write a word on this blog, nor do I subscribe to the culture of fear that conservatives do.
Let's remember why the Constitution explicitly guarantees certain rights; it's because the Founding Fathers knew those rights would be violated if not enforced by the government. Corporations are on both sides of this issue, and corporations are not, in general, our friends. But Net Neutrality is the friend of the individual user, regardless of whether Google supports it or not.
PS. Net Neutrility was implicit in the network because until recently there has neither been a profit motive to deliver data at different speeds nor a widespread technical capability to do so. You may be correct in that the original architects of the internet didn't plan it that way, but then again, when they built the internet, they didn't plan it that way! Jesus, you certainly aren't earning your paycheck.
PPS. Get some balls and use a personal profile next time. This blog is no place for corporate shills.
Oh yeah.
PPS. The people behind the Save The Internet movement are Moveon.org, as I posted in my original post on the topic, which obviously this dumbass couldn't be bothered to research. Moveon.org actually is thousands of people (tens or hundreds of thousands, actually), who care about certain issues and care enough to take action on them. Corporations who identify with certain movements may make donations to them, but by and large funding comes from individual members (and they're emailing all the time asking for money!).
So to recap: Moveon.org is for Net Neutrality. Moveon.org is thousands of people across America from all walks of life. Hands Off the Internet is against Net Neutrality. Hands Off the Internet is a few people with no morals pretending to be many people while being payed by corporate interests. And that's it in a nutshell.
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