So the Tea Party is Helping Get rid of Net Neutrality...

[Quantum Windbag]

Why fix a system that isn't broke? It is almost laughable that the OP would suggest that "getting rid of new neutraility' would be "taking away freedom" Taking away something proposed in the future? Am I in a time warp?

Right, leave it as is. Which means content can't be censored or manipulated. Not by government, not by private business. This is how it has been, this is what the FCC is advocating going forward. Whats your problem with that?

That is not what the FCC is advocating, if it was I would have no problem.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Nice talking point. Care to elaborate? Of course not, because thats all you "know" about the topic.

If an internet provider decides to set up a structure of charges that is objectionable, people will gravitate toward a less objectionable venue.

This is the free market. If MSM wants to make unreasonable charges, let them go the way of AM Radio.

The problem is these are public airways and public utlities.

They are not public anything.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Anyone who argues against Net Neutrality is not in favor of individual freedom. You are exposing yourself as being in favor of freedom for business to do anything they want, not for people to have freedom. Real patriotic of you. Be proud.

Coming from a person that keeps telling me that PPACA will save money and give me more choices that is pretty ironic.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The bolded part is all you needed to say. The rest doesn't make sense and has nothing to do with anything. Thanks for proving my point.

Equating the internet with freedom of information is a pretty far stretch. What about the people who create and post those sites? Do you think you have a "right" to force them keep those sites up for your informational awareness, or maybe you'll sue them for infringing on "freedom of information" if they take it down? What about the domains that host the sites, will you force them to host sites against their will?

Of course not, dumb and irrelevant point. If information is out there, it should be accessible to all, not to be defined and restricted by who pays more to access it. I love the hypocrisy of the "individual liberty" crowd.

Can you tell me who is doing that, or should I just take your word for it?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

What entity enforces this prevention that you seek?

I am quite comfortable with the FCC proposing tiers for different types of content, I am completely uncomfortable with allowing providers to control access to types of content.

I checked the libertarian position and I am suprised by it. Individual freedom can be as quickly eroded by major corporations as by the government. And it isn't long before the major corporations can be coopted by the government in the pursuit of "national security". See the phone company actions under Bush. The Cato Institute has become so reflexively anti-government and pro-corporation they have lost site of the point which is to protect our individual freedoms.

Having open net nuetrality laws which are in the daylight and regulated by the FCC with all eyes upon them is far superior to corporate control which can be manipulated in the dark. The internet was a huge advancement in freedom of speech and allowing net nuetrality to be taken away so that corporations can make more cash is indefensible.

Wow! An intelligent post! Who would have thought this would be found among the Bumper-Sticker Intellect of "No government is good government" and "You Tea Party Haters have vitrol!" (I found that particularly amusing from that there feller who was tryin so hard ta sound all interlektual and stuff).

Yes, there are times to have government! OMG
But if your every thought has been programmed by someone else, that's going to hard to figure out.

Nice post.

Wow.

You think someone who agrees with you is intelligent.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Without Net Neutrality one thing is for sure. Telecoms & cable companies will throttle & surge packets to see to it that VOIP & streaming video will never right again so you will hook your land-line telephone & cable box back up in order to communicate.

What's in it for them to do that, when there are so many other options?

There are not other options for most people. Telecoms own the backbone & long distance fiber. There is no getting around them.

Really?

Unless you lie in the back end of nowhere there is plenty of competition. The reason that there is none there is most local governments take payments to OK monopoly service.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

If someone owns a business they're not an individual anymore?

What freedom is being taken away from you if an ISP restricts certain sites?

Freedom to access information regardless of economic or social status. How this isn't clear to you is amazing.

You know, as fun as this has been, I'm going to end it by showing you what the Freedom of Information Act actually covers:

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

It covers Government records only, not every bit of information in the world.

Not only that, the government actually charges for that information, which is why so few people can afford it.

 

[Foxfyre]

We already have antitrust laws that are both the watchdog and arbiter of illegal monopoly or unfair competition or price fixing to drive some segment of commerce and industry out of business.

We need to elect people who take those laws seriously.

We do NOT want to otherwise give government power to pick winners and losers or what exclusions can be made or anything else governing the internet. You progressives who think the current government is virtuous, noble, pure, and incapable to doing anything unethical, just bear in mind that sooner or later there will again be a Republican President and a Republican Congress or a reasonable facsimile.

Will you be so confident in government then?

Let the government exercise its consitutionally mandated responsibility to protect everybody's rights and then keep it out of all free market issues including the internet.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

There are not other options for most people. Telecoms own the backbone & long distance fiber. There is no getting around them.

You seem to have forgotten that Comcast lost their "throttling" lawsuit...It's the primary reason that telecoms went to tiered pricing structures for bandwidth usage.

If there's sufficient bandwidth in the pipeline, so to speak, there's absolutely nothing in it for the telecoms to limit access to it.

I don't know about the Comcast suit but I know what AT&T did to an Electric Coop who started providing WIFI fiber & wire network service. AT&T had the only spare fiber capacity in the region that would carry packets from the coop's switch to a major switch like Chicago or St. Louis. When AT&T found out that the coop was reaching some of their AT&T phone service areas, they throttled their fiber speed & told the coop they would only have limited bandwidth if they provided service to any area that AT&T provided dial-tone to. It was ok to provide service to Century-Tel customer areas.

Teleconference & Goto meeting would be impossible unless you paid up or subscribe to their AT&T service.

Do you have an actual link to that? What you are describing is actually illegal, federal law requires telecoms to provide access to fiber optic lines at rates that are set by law, and they cannot limit the bandwidth. That is how Sprint came into existence in the first place, they leased the lines from AT&T at government mandated rates, and then sold it to their customers are lower rates than AT&T could afford to pay.

That makes me think someone is lying about what happened. Is it you?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Of course not, dumb and irrelevant point. If information is out there, it should be accessible to all, not to be defined and restricted by who pays more to access it. I love the hypocrisy of the "individual liberty" crowd.

So no more hiding your posts on Facebook then? I mean, if that information is out there then I should have the right to view it all I want.

What about cable. Are my rights being violated because I'm not paying enough for every channel?

You're missing the point. It's not users who will have to pay to gain access, it's content providers or businesses who will have to pay to make sure their content shows up. If they don't pay they fall behind the big guys who can pay. Thats where it stops being content is all accessible and consumers decide which is best to the guy with the deepest pockets gets to spread his information the furtherst/easiest. Get it?

And that is bad and evil and should be prevented at all costs because...

By the way, how is that any different than content suppliers having to pay for content in the first place? Do you think Hulu, Netflix, Joost, and Bockbuster get all those movies and TV shows for free?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

So much for the claims they're different. That's a bit disappointing.

Tea Party Allies With Telecom Industry to Dump Net Neutrality

So dumping Net Neutrality and letting corps charge more for one site than another is congruent with what they preach, how?

Someone said if these people got their way that a corporatacracy would ensue and we'd all be screwed. Hmmm. Looks like they were right.

So, you guys get to yell "Hooray! We got less government!" while opening the door for MSN to charge more for visiting a Conservative site than a Liberal one. Brilliant.

Go ahead. Tell me how less government is ALWAYS a good thing...

Why do people who think they are intelligent support net neutrality?

Because his definition of "intelligence" means you recognizing how utterly brilliant he is.

I noticed that his first week here.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Government is not the answer, the market does a great job of keeping business in check not the government, the government favors big business, the market supports the best service at the best price.

Pragmatism is the answer, not the blind adherence to one dogma or another. The above may have been true in 1800 but not today. Go with what works, be it government or private.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Government is not the answer, the market does a great job of keeping business in check not the government, the government favors big business, the market supports the best service at the best price.

Pragmatism is the answer, not the blind adherence to one dogma or another. The above may have been true in 1800 but not today. Go with what works, be it government or private.

So far it works without the government. Being pragmatic therefore means keeping the government out of it.

 

[KissMy]

Private business should be able to do what it wants within the law.

The market will decide who actually gets the business.

Example : Let's say internet company A says it is going to charge company Z $100.00 per hour of internet and internet company B says hey we will only charge you $10.00 per month for your internet, who do you think is going to get the business?

Government is not the answer, the market does a great job of keeping business in check not the government, the government favors big business, the market supports the best service at the best price.

The market only works until the cartels and monopolies take control. Then they may as well be called another government.

That is absolutely correct. It is virtually impossible to get data sent from point A to point B in this country without it traveling on an AT&T fiber or router at some point along the way. AT&T will use packet discrimination to only allow I-Phones running on AT&T network or any AT&T subscribers data packets to move at the fastest speed. They would quickly put all other cellular companies, ISP's, telecoms, Google Android, Skype & VOIP out of business becoming an even larger monopoly.

Not only will AT&T monopolize every form of communication & charge you more for it. They will restrict access to certain content, business & political affiliations who are not acting in AT&T's best interest.

 

[Big Black Dog]

You're missing the point. It's not users who will have to pay to gain access, it's content providers or businesses who will have to pay to make sure their content shows up. If they don't pay they fall behind the big guys who can pay. Thats where it stops being content is all accessible and consumers decide which is best to the guy with the deepest pockets gets to spread his information the furtherst/easiest. Get it?

Still not seeing difference between what you're describing and what's happening on cable, or anything else in the world (even politics for that matter). But for some reason you've decided to hold the internet upon a loftier pedestal and want government to step in this time. Should we push for Billboard Neutrality? The same issue plagues billboards that plague the internet, whoever can pay more gets their message out better. Then there's Bumper Sticker Neutrality, Mailed Out Store Advertisement Neutrality, NASCAR Sponsor Neutrality, ect.

What makes the internet different from the rest of the world?

Do you really need me to explain the difference between billboards and the internet? Really? Do you understand the role that the internet plays in our world and the increasing importance it has each and every day? The fact that you are comparing the power and importance of the internet to billboards, bumper stickers, etc.. tells me either you're incredibly naive or incredibly stubborn.

There is one very important fact that you are over looking here... A person can never be elected President unless he, or she, has a really snappy, eye-catching bumper sticker.

 

[Annie]

Government is not the answer, the market does a great job of keeping business in check not the government, the government favors big business, the market supports the best service at the best price.

Pragmatism is the answer, not the blind adherence to one dogma or another. The above may have been true in 1800 but not today. Go with what works, be it government or private.

Seriously, with the exception of the military, coinage, post office, and true interstate commerce, where has the Federal government proved superior to private? Mind you, I'm not ignorant of the abuses, sometimes fatal, of the private realm. Triangle shirtwaist comes immediately to mind. So was the answer to go to big government or should it have been to charge owners/operators with murder?

Can we not all see that 'regulations' have gone berserk? Take Fannie and Freddie for instance. Hello housing bubble. It didn't have to happen. Yet, Congress, SEC, the Fed, the Executive Branch were all involved. Indeed, they still are. On mortgage rates, Obama wants proposal for how government can keep big role - The Washington Post

Of course the above followed the opposite:

Obama Calls For End Of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac

He just was exercising his right to segue I guess.

 

[idb]

Government is not the answer, the market does a great job of keeping business in check not the government, the government favors big business, the market supports the best service at the best price.

Pragmatism is the answer, not the blind adherence to one dogma or another. The above may have been true in 1800 but not today. Go with what works, be it government or private.

Perfect!

That's the problem with developing political policy with shrill one-dimensional slogans and bumper stickers, you end up painted into a no-compromise, blinkered corner with no opportunity or mechanism to examine alternatives.

Morans!

 

[code1211]

The longer TP'ers are in congress they more of their Neocon side comes out.

The Social Conservative part of the TEA Party is somewhat anachronistic. If they want to return to the roots of the Constitution, that means that they should Pass No Law.

That said, UNpassing a couple laws would be a good thing.

The only appeal the TEA Pary has for me is the cut back on the Feds spending and the subsquent restraint of their power. By the looks of things, expanding the power of Washington constains the power of the USA.

Go Figure...

 

[code1211]

Of course not, dumb and irrelevant point. If information is out there, it should be accessible to all, not to be defined and restricted by who pays more to access it. I love the hypocrisy of the "individual liberty" crowd.

So no more hiding your posts on Facebook then? I mean, if that information is out there then I should have the right to view it all I want.

What about cable. Are my rights being violated because I'm not paying enough for every channel?

You're missing the point. It's not users who will have to pay to gain access, it's content providers or businesses who will have to pay to make sure their content shows up. If they don't pay they fall behind the big guys who can pay. Thats where it stops being content is all accessible and consumers decide which is best to the guy with the deepest pockets gets to spread his information the furtherst/easiest. Get it?

So only the deep pocket guys like the USMB will have access to the internet?

Wow! That does restrict things allot. Oh, yeah! And organizations like the class reunion committees and every jack ass with a Face Book account and that sort of gate keeper?

How will we survive with only the few access points left?

 

[Annie]

The longer TP'ers are in congress they more of their Neocon side comes out.

The Social Conservative part of the TEA Party is somewhat anachronistic. If they want to return to the roots of the Constitution, that means that they should Pass No Law.

That said, UNpassing a couple laws would be a good thing.

The only appeal the TEA Pary has for me is the cut back on the Feds spending and the subsquent restraint of their power. By the looks of things, expanding the power of Washington constains the power of the USA.

Go Figure...

I've said this since early days. "Beware of those saying they are Tea Party." The first to jump on were Gingrich and far right GOP. Since then, a mix of the same and some conspiracy types.

Good thing it's not a party, but a political philosophy. Now needs a new label.

Lower taxes
Less government, make that least government. Make that at lowest level government in our federated system.
Government should do only what can't be done by citizens. With that said, starting from the bottom level up, not vice versa.