Josh Silver should have removed his mic and left when the host wouldn't even let him define Net Neutrality.

Why do they keep coming on Fox News? It's just the same thing every single time...

It's not Obama controlling the internet; it's government regulation. I used to be in favor of Net Neutrality, because on its surface it sounds like it would protect me. But...

Government regulation of the internet is what it will turn into in a manner of a decade or so. It starts with what sounds good: keeping the big evil corporate conglomerates from stifling the customer's free speech. Then it eventually becomes a regulated means of communication where only big businesses are given controlled access to offer services via the internet and all content (torrents, etc.) is policed.

Has the government every lied about its intention to you? Think about that. Do any of you actually agree with anything the FCC has done in the past fifty years? Sure, corporations are scary, but at least it's not a one-size-fits-all monolithic entity. And when has the current ISPs censored free speech of any kind on the internet? Just stop and think about it for a second.

^ That's why I oppose all laws. If they're allowed to make one thing illegal then eventually everything will be illegal.

Upvoted with the understanding this is sarcasm.>> ^Psychologic:

^ That's why I oppose all laws. If they're allowed to make one thing illegal then eventually everything will be illegal.

If I had to pick the lesser of 2 evils, I'd pick Government. Here in Canada, ISP's already throttle traffic. >> ^blankfist:

It's not Obama controlling the internet; it's government regulation. I used to be in favor of Net Neutrality, because on its surface it sounds like it would protect me. But...
Government regulation of the internet is what it will turn into in a manner of a decade or so. It starts with what sounds good: keeping the big evil corporate conglomerates from stifling the customer's free speech. Then it eventually becomes a regulated means of communication where only big businesses are given controlled access to offer services via the internet and all content (torrents, etc.) is policed.
Has the government every lied about its intention to you? Think about that. Do any of you actually agree with anything the FCC has done in the past fifty years? Sure, corporations are scary, but at least it's not a one-size-fits-all monolithic entity. And when has the current ISPs censored free speech of any kind on the internet? Just stop and think about it for a second.

It's the damnedest thing. Vicious cycles. It's like the current immigration issue (and pardon the tangent, but it's timely). The biggest reason why people don't want immigration is because of the welfare system. It sucks, because a country thrives best economically with immigration. It's great for the economy. But people on the left will continue to push for more welfare ensuring those borders become tighter and tighter, yet the left is for open borders. It's sad. The lesser of the two evils in this scenario for the left is the eventual closing of borders if that means continued welfare.

Same with government intervention in business. It's a vicious cycle. Corporations are created by government. Corporations use government to edge out smaller businesses thus decreasing competition. When corporations exploit customers and workers (because of the lack of options through competition), the people ask for more government oversight in the very institutions government created and government supports. They get bailouts. We get nothing. Yet, we are forced to choose the "lesser of two evils". It's like I send a rapist to your house to rape you, and then extort protection money from you. I'd be the lesser of two evils in that scenario.

This is infuriating.
*controversy *money

Adding video to channels (Controversy, Money) - requested by MrFisk.

*news *fear...

Adding video to channels (Fear, News) - requested by blankfist.

What a C"nt!!!

shameless

They must be fucking trying to confuse me those bastards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Because now I'm confused. I am so ridiculously for net neutrality which means all content and applications run over the interner are treated equally.

If this changes. If my internet in Canada becomes censored... Like in China... If the government tries to sway internet traffic by making some content/applications slower than others - I will be protesting in the streets night and day. And I've never protested anything.

In Canada, ISPs were throttling torrents, then, from my understanding, the CRTC (Canadas FCC) declared that throttling certain applications over others was illegal. However it currently remains the responsibility of the customer to determine whether they are being throttled and file a claim. ISPs throttling of the internet is not policed by our government as well it should be. This remains a problem.

In Canada we have a duopoly. Bell and Rogers(Videotron in Quebec) control the whole network. They have recently eliminated unlimited internet plans. Now they've switched to UBB(useage based billing). Anyone who already had an account would retain a "grandfathered" account which meant they would retain their unlimited plans. Bell, however, employed vicious aggressive tactics to eliminate as many grandfathered accounts as possible. This happened to my mother. What they did was they called her and offered her a "free upgrade". They told her she'd have fewer viruses and a faster internet. They did not tell her she would lose her grandfathered unlimited GB plan. Now we're limited to 80 GB a month and charged for every GB over.

As far as UBB goes - it's not the end of the world. I suppose it's fair to pay for the bandwidth you use. What I take issue with is that they offered it to begin with, and then employed disgusting tactics to get rid of it. Tactics they used on customers who have been loyal to them for over 30 years.

Sorry to be so long-winded but this makes me RAAAAAGE.

tl;dr ISPs are evil. Protect Your Internet. WWW.SAVEOURNET.CA

Big corporations hate the internet for at least two reasons:

1) they see it as a source of revenue currently beyond their reach, and

2) they know that if you control the medium, you control the message.

And aside from China, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and a few other global black holes, when one speaks of government regulation--especially in America--one is speaking of corporate regulation by proxy.

If the internet isn't as free and as open as it can possibly be, it loses at least 50% of its real value, in human terms, immediately.

Because the internet is a two-way street and a poor-man's soapbox.

When you turn it into a one-way street, you have a new form of television, and if you put the soapbox out of reach of the common person, you have business as usual: a rich game for rich men and all others need not apply.

^
You just summed up my thoughts exactly. Honestly if they do this they are morons because theres no more appeal of the Internet. At least not for myself besides school work which I do like doing on the net.

I just don't get the reasoning. You are afraid of a democratically elected government possibly interfering with the internet sometime down the road, so instead you would prefer a complete corporate takeover immediately. I know you constantly deny being a corporatist, but I really don't see any other way of looking at this. Not to mention CATO. It doesn't get much more corporatist than CATO, which is funded by corporatist demi-Gods Scaife, Koch, Ford and Coors.

>> ^blankfist:

It's not Obama controlling the internet; it's government regulation. I used to be in favor of Net Neutrality, because on its surface it sounds like it would protect me. But...
Government regulation of the internet is what it will turn into in a manner of a decade or so. It starts with what sounds good: keeping the big evil corporate conglomerates from stifling the customer's free speech. Then it eventually becomes a regulated means of communication where only big businesses are given controlled access to offer services via the internet and all content (torrents, etc.) is policed.
Has the government every lied about its intention to you? Think about that. Do any of you actually agree with anything the FCC has done in the past fifty years? Sure, corporations are scary, but at least it's not a one-size-fits-all monolithic entity. And when has the current ISPs censored free speech of any kind on the internet? Just stop and think about it for a second.

I LOLed when Miss Misinformation told him to shut up because "nobody knows what net neutrality means", but that's not your job is it Meg?

But I think the real reason she had to interupt him was cause no one had been interupted in twenty whole seconds. It's pretty undeard of with one of these so to be fair the guy should have made his point in that time

The CATO Institute: Brought to you by...Comcast.

Yup, Comcast contributed to their budget.

ISPs will fight tooth and nail to get rid of Net Neutrality, as they desperately want to control data flow and be able to charge premium for certain types of data.

Just look at Canada. ISPs snuck under the radar and have all decided to throttle speeds depending on what you're trying to download. Anything that is sent that appears to be a torrent, legal or not, is de-prioritized, and slowed down to a crawl. Now the government is forced to jump through hoops to get ISPs to even admit that they are doing it, let alone force them not to pull any stunts like that on more than just torrents.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Not to mention CATO. It doesn't get much more corporatist than CATO, which is funded by corporatist demi-Gods Scaife, Koch, Ford and Coors.


No, I think corporations like Halliburton and KBR are as corporate as it gets, and they're nestled up so comfortably around the government's fist. Coors and Cato didn't take us into Iraq. Besides, Cato is non-profit, and the money they make from corporations comes as charitable donations they have to hustle to raise. Is it ideal? No. But I don't see them making the same money from mom and pop. Even the ACLU takes contributions from corporations, such as the tobacco industry.

All this "democratically elected" blah blah is hollow rhetoric when the people elected are so powerful the lobbyist want to use them to get us into war with no bid contracts or change corporate law to tip the playing field in their favor. Every presidential candidate takes money from corporate lobbyists and big business. Even your beloved Obama. You want to fight corporations, you start with the entity that created them: government.

I say if you support big government then you're a corporatist.

^So I think it's safe to agree Corporations are the enemy.(TM)

Now, if we are agreed, what's next? I say regulation.

D'OH!

>> ^blankfist:
I say if you support big government then you're a corporatist.

So wanting the government to remove profit motive from the allocation of bandwidth makes a person a corporatist?

What alternative are you suggesting, dissolving corporations?

@Psychologic. That's not what I said. Though supporting the government intervention in an industry is injurious to the efforts of small business, and therefore shrinks competition. Eventually the corporations will win with the government at the helm. They always do.

I didn't mention this to anyone before today except for maybe two people on here. But I know an investment banker who works for a very profitable investment banking firm in Los Angeles. According to him, the government intervention in the banking industry has made him a very rich man, and the recent bailouts enabled them all to make an ungodly amount of money. But that's not the worst of it. There was a coup staged by the larger banks to shut down and acquire the smaller banks. Thus acquiring the smaller banks' bailout money. See how that works?

That's what just happened in America. A banking coup. He told me that bankers want the people to afraid of free markets, because with the government's help the big banks can keep the smaller fish from the pond. Instead of having hundreds of banks to compete with, they'd much rather be competing against twenty. This is all from the horse's mouth.

And this is probably what you can expect in fifty years time on the internet. A technology coup.

I don't doubt the veracity of this story. Government, in theory, exists to prevent this kind of thing. Corporations and private enterprise, in theory, exist to sell a product or service on a free market, unfettered by external interference and without the aid of tax dollars.

The truth is that the 2 are in bed. However, this does not necessitate that a society has to shy away from government regulation - it just means the government and it' institutions have to be corrected. Condemning government intervention in markets is like condemning an elementary school because of some bullies - if it turns out school staff are encouraging bullying, or turning a blind eye to it - you don't stop kids from going to school, you replace the staff at the school. The merits of the institution itself are obvious - it just needs a tune-up.

One of the biggest problems in American politics is the 2-party system. Canada, Australia, and many European countries have vibrant political systems, none nearly as compromised as the American system.

blanky, the more you look into the FCC, you will see they aren't regulating content, they are regulating internet providers. This is exactly the reason so much money rides in the balance. Just in the last few months everyone has realized that TV will be replaced by video on demand over internet. I can't prove that but its very very true.

Look at where the money goes, you'll change your mind.

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how do i get that workin?

>> ^marinara:
Just in the last few months everyone has realized that TV will be replaced by video on demand over internet.


I think you're spot on with that observation.

They (the corporations) have so over-commercialized television and radio that anyone with a good internet connection will usually choose to watch an online video or listen to online radio rather than endure twenty minutes of commercials per hour of programming on the "real world" alternatives.

It's kind of pricy now, but if you get a 7mb connection and a Netflix or Amazon account, you've got almost anything you want to watch at your finger tips.

And internet radio has been better than real life radio for quite some time now.

@blankfist, let me try to explain the point of net neutrality by way of metaphor.

Transport yourself to a golden libertarian universe, where everything is private, and the government doesn't exist.

Now, let's say you wanted to print and distribute a newspaper. You buy yourself a high-volume printer, and start circulating some copies. To get the copies around town, you need to use the private roads that connect the location housing your printer, to the people who buy your paper. Due to infrastructure costs and physical constraints, there are only a handful of road service providers in your area. Let's call them AR&R (American Road & Rail), Roadcast, and Horizon.

You sign up with, say, AR&R, and start distributing your paper around town. Your circulation starts growing, and everything is going great.

Then one day, you decide to write an article that's critical of AR&R, telling people that they've got a reckless disregard for people's safety, and have been intentionally cutting corners with traffic lights when designing intersections.

The next day, your couriers find that they can't go more than 5mph on the roads, and are of course unable to make all their deliveries. You call AR&R to find out what's going on, but they just tell you to contact tech support, who just runs you through tedious and repetitive diagnostics, and never see a problem.

Eventually, you just decide to drop AR&R, and switch carriers to Roadcast. Unfortunately, you find that Roadcast is just as slow with your newspaper deliveries (but oddly, everything else is fine). So you try out Horizon. Horizon lets you deliver your papers at full speed again.

After all this, you write another article, critical of AR&R and Roadcast, and raise the question of whether road service providers might be censoring the distribution of newspapers that are critical of their business practices.

Immediately, you find your Horizon road service slowing to a crawl. You're effectively censored, as there are no other providers to turn to (and you don't have the resources or knowledge to start your own road service!).

You find yourself wishing there was some higher entity you could appeal to, that could tell the road service providers that they can't deny or limit access to people on the basis of the content of their vehicles, a sort of Road Neutrality, to coin a phrase.

But no, everyone knows that nothing is more evil than forcing people to do something they don't voluntarily choose to do...

Sorry, NetRunner, I've already lost any chance on this site. Not interested in debating. Progressives can have it.

@NetRunner

I really thought that was an amazing and articulate analogy for what could happen if the ISPs are allowed to manipulate their traffic as they see fit.

It's one I've thought of before, although I never wrote it out like that using roads.

It was more, "Hey, this damn video claiming to reveal evil business practices used by Bell isn't loading! Wtf!!! Oh well. Hey! Kitties!!!"

You know what, this is

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