This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality


Broadband network operators have an understandable motivation to manage their network to maximize their business interests. But their actions may not always be optimal for network users. The Congress gave the FCC broad authority to update its rules to reflect changes in technology and marketplace behavior in a way that protects consumers. Over the years, the Commission has used this authority to the public’s great benefit.

The internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance, if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network. The modems that enabled the internet were usable only because the FCC required the network to be open.

Companies such as AOL were able to grow in the early days of home computing because these modems gave them access to the open telephone network.

I personally learned the importance of open networks the hard way. In the mid-1980s I was president of a startup, NABU: The Home Computer Network. My company was using new technology to deliver high-speed data to home computers over cable television lines. Across town Steve Case was starting what became AOL. NABU was delivering service at the then-blazing speed of 1.5 megabits per second—hundreds of times faster than Case’s company. “We used to worry about you a lot,” Case told me years later.

But NABU went broke while AOL became very successful. Why that is highlights the fundamental problem with allowing networks to act as gatekeepers.

While delivering better service, NABU had to depend on cable television operators granting access to their systems. Steve Case was not only a brilliant entrepreneur, but he also had access to an unlimited number of customers nationwide who only had to attach a modem to their phone line to receive his service. The phone network was open whereas the cable networks were closed. End of story.



NABU Network

The NABU Network was an early home computer system which was linked to a precursor of the Internet, operating over cable TV. It operated from 1982 to 1985, primarily in Ottawa, Canada. Its functionality was then revolutionary, though it was not a commercial success. It has been called "The Internet — 10 years ahead of its time".[1]

Functionality[edit]
Families, schools, or individuals would purchase a NABU Network PC, which would be connected via cable TV to NABU's servers. In addition to normal PC capabilities of the time, the computer could download software and information content through the cable feed and could upload primitive information back up to the servers. Applications included games, the programming language Logo, news/current events, and rudimentary PC banking/shopping. At its peak, approximately 100 applications were available.

The Nabu Network can be credited as being the first online version of fantasy baseball. The Game, aptly named Managers Baseball, allowed for choosing teams based on the real names and statistics of MLB teams and players. Player performance in the game was based on real life player statistics and as a Manager you would draft your team and compete against another owner in a mock up game in a purely managerial role.

The Nabu Network PC cost $950 CAD, approximately the same price as the wildly successful Commodore 64 at the time, and the network service cost $8 to $10 per month.[2]






yeah lets level the playing field by adding more regulations
 

PeoplesElbow

Well-Known Member
How can they compare something that used a proprietary computer to something that used just about any computer?

Also the monthly fee thing was somewhat of a new concept, I remember having to convince my parents to let me have Prodigy service, they said, "You mean you have to pay for this every month?"
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member



http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/a...ives-join-the-viral-net-neutrality-video-wars


The rule will get a vote in three weeks, leaving plenty of time for wrangling by groups with similar names and layman-befuddling agendas. Exhibit A: Protect Internet Freedom, an ad hoc conservative-founded group that's been collecting signatures (150,000 plus so far) for delivery to the FCC. Net Neutrality advocates bombarded the commission with comments in favor of proposed rules; the Internet Freedom Protectors will answer them. Today, they're launching a short film that posits a dark future of government Internet regulators dropping into homes and interrupting Cinemax-ready cable guy scenarios. The "government regulator as real guy" trope is an attention getting classic, from the unused David Zucker "taxman" ad of 2006 to the viral "Creepy Uncle Sam" videos of 2014.

Protect Internet Freedom should not be confused with Save the Internet, Free Press's campaign in favor of the proposed FCC rule change, or Battle for the Net, another joint Free Press project. The pro-neutrality faction gained a ton of momentum when John Oliver devoted an episode of his HBO show to their cause, and to the obscure public comment process; the campaign against the rule wants in on the pop culture, signature-powered sweepstakes.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Republican FCC Commissioner Slams ‘Obama’s 332-Page Plan To

Republican FCC Commissioner Slams ‘Obama’s 332-Page Plan To Regulate The Internet’


“President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works,” Pai said. “The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband… These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.”

In his initial cursory overview of the plan, the commissioner said it would hinder broadband investment, slow network speed and expansion, limit outgrowth to rural areas of the country and reduce Internet service provider (ISP) competition.

“The plan saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market,” Pai said. “As a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices. This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated monopoly is what we’ll get.”

In an op-ed detailing the core aspects of his net neutrality plan published earlier this week, Wheeler described lumping ISPs under Title II of the 1996 Telecommunications Act — which based its authority on that used to regulate telephone monopolies at the dawn of the communication age — as the cornerstone.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Republican FCC Member Warns Net Neutrality Is Not Neutral

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently acknowledged that the two Democrats on the commission had decided to avoid Congressional input regarding the Internet by adopting President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1934 Communications Act to regulate the Internet with the same federal control as the old AT&T customer monopoly. To make sure that libertarian advocates would remain in the dark, Wheeler “embargoed” release of any of the specifics in the new administrative “policy” that will act as law.

The FCC legislation that was passed eighty-one years ago by the most leftist Congress in American history to ban companies from participating in “unjust or unreasonable discrimination” when providing phone services to customers.

But in 1949, the Democrat-dominated Commission implemented the “Fairness Doctrine” that required holders of media broadcast licenses to present “issues of public importance” in a manner that is “honest, equitable, and balanced” in the “Commission’s view. It would take 39 years before a conservative Congress could overturn a policy that hijacked the mainstream media to kowtow to liberals or face loss of their licenses.

If the Internet economy was a country, it would rank fifth, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and India. Economic activity on the Internet totals $4.2 trillion, and almost half of the earth’s 7 billion people are already connected to the Web.

Ajit Pai’s description of “President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet” sounds Orwellian. He tweeted a picture of himself holding the 332-page plan just below a picture of a smiling Barack Obama with a comment, “I wish the public could see what’s inside.” The implication depicted Obama as George Orwell’s “Big Brother.”
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Now, with the feds’ latest effort, their new slogan might as well be, “If you like your Internet, you can keep your Internet.” Make no mistake: The Internet is under assault and saving it is up to us.

Democrats and their liberal sycophants have been contemplating for years how best to smash the Internet. Open discussion among the great unwashed masses poses a threat to the superiorly educated and groomed establishment. First, it was the magnificence of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which made free speech on the radio impossible. President Reagan’s reversal of that Orwellian control mechanism made talk radio possible (to say nothing of the likely increase of gastrointestinal disorders among liberals).

Even prior to that massive win for the First Amendment, the left had succeeded at co-opting the legacy media by swamping the staff and reporters with ideological true believers, making newspapers and the broadcast networks nothing more than PR agencies for the leftist agenda.

Think about it: The sheeple emerging from the liberal academies around the country in the 1960s and ‘70s didn’t move to the countryside to smoke pot and raise puppies. No, they went into media. They became writers, reporters and television news anchors.



Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...uce-fcc-fec-look-ruin-internet/#ixzz3S0c6na7g
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Obama Exploits the Ignorance of Young People to Seize Control of the Internet
February 24, 2015



There's too much freedom out there. There's too many people, quote, unquote, "out of control" on the Internet, and Obama and the Democrats have gotta get it controlled. And the way they're doing it is capitalizing on the stupidity of young people. Maybe "stupidity" is the wrong word. Ignorance and lack of information resulting from they haven't lived long enough to know.

The way net neutrality is being sold to Millennials is -- and I read these tech bloggers, these little guys. I read 'em, they hate their cable providers. They hate their web service providers, Internet service, they hate 'em. Just like you were made to hate Big Oil and just like you were made to hate Big Tobacco. Just like you've been oriented to hate Big Anything, Big Retail, big box retail like Walmart. The Democrats' enemies list now includes all of the telecommunications companies and the Internet service providers.

The way Obama is targeting support, gaining support from young people on this, is he's got them confused that what he's gonna do with net neutrality is punish the people they hate. Does this sound familiar? They're gonna go after Comcast, Time Warner, any other telecommunications, cell provider, Internet service, they're gonna really hammer 'em, and they're gonna make sure that they don't overcharge. Then they're gonna make sure they provide equal access to high speed. The big, rich people aren't gonna get any more access to high speed than people who can't afford it are, and the government's gonna take care of it, and the government's gonna punish, and government's gonna make people behave right.
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
What just makes me incredulous is people like Limbaugh defending cable companies by calling this an assault on the market and business. Well, it's NOT. The cable companies don't have enough competition so, this is what comes. No different than health care, the big banks, or anything else Too Big To Fail. We are so anti free market it's not even funny. We just want BIG, make money off of money instead of products and services and, sooner or later, the loving hand of gummint to make it all fair and more better.

We are all better off with a free and open www, but this is why we can't have nice things...like freedom.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
What just makes me incredulous is people like Limbaugh defending cable companies by calling this an assault on the market and business. Well, it's NOT. The cable companies don't have enough competition so, this is what comes.


:bs:


you want the gov regulating the Internet like Healthcare
... do you want the gov mandating connection speeds and quality of service like healthcare

Bronze
Silver
Gold

connection packages ....
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Dear FCC: Rethink The Vague "General Conduct" Rule




For many months, EFF has been working with a broad coalition of advocates to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new Open Internet rules that would survive legal scrutiny and actually help protect the Open Internet. Our message has been clear from the beginning: the FCC has a role to play, but its role must be firmly bounded.

Two weeks ago, we learned that we had likely managed the first goal—the FCC is going to do the right thing and reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, giving it the ability to make new, meaningful Open Internet rules. But we are deeply concerned that the FCC’s new rules will include a provision that sounds like a recipe for overreach and confusion: the so-called “general conduct rule.”

According to the FCC's own "Fact Sheet," the proposed rule will allow the FCC to review (and presumably punish) non-neutral practices that may “harm” consumers or edge providers. Late last week, as the window for public comment was closing, EFF filed a letter with the FCC urging it to clarify and sharply limit the scope of any “general conduct” provision:

[T]he Commission should use its Title II authority to engage in light-touch regulation, taking great care to adhere to clear, targeted, and transparent rules. A “general conduct rule,” applied on a case-by- case basis with the only touchstone being whether a given practice “harms” consumers or edge providers, may lead to years of expensive litigation to determine the meaning of “harm” (for those who can afford to engage in it). What is worse, it could be abused by a future Commission to target legitimate practices that offer significant benefits to the public . . .

Accordingly, if the Commission intends to adopt a “general conduct rule” it should spell out, in advance, the contours and limits of that rule, and clarify that the rule shall be applied only in specific circumstances.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
We are so anti free market it's not even funny. We just want BIG, make money off of money instead of products and services and, sooner or later, the loving hand of gummint to make it all fair and more better.

do you want the Gobberment mandating the quality of the flowers you sell, and at what price you can sell them ?
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
:bs:


you want the gov regulating the Internet like Healthcare
... do you want the gov mandating connection speeds and quality of service like healthcare

Bronze
Silver
Gold

connection packages ....

The BS is the monopolies. THAT is why we have the ACA; BECAUSE health care has been given monopoly status. You gotta put these things in order. Health cares NEEDS more competition. We simply will not allow that so, do you want Standard Oil in charge of health care, cable? Everything? That's the issue here, how we got here.
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
do you want the Gobberment mandating the quality of the flowers you sell, and at what price you can sell them ?

Do I get monopoly first and be the only game in town? If so, sure. If I am a monopoly, what do I care? My profits are guaranteed. Any costs passed on me get passed on to you. I'll be Too Big To Fail.

What is normal business is the desire for collection and consolidation of power. What is not natural is accepting it. You are missing THE point.
 

merc669

New Member
Well, no worries now. Obama now has the Internet in his good hands. And as a side bonus went after bullets. And he has spoken on rules changing allowing him more executive action
I can see an extension of his regime. Republicans are limp and the democrats have them by the balls with two losers in each house...Damn this last two years will be hell...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150226/us--net_neutrality-bc904be3f5.html

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2560750

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/obama-go-ahead-have-vote-whether-what-i-m-doing-legal-i-will-veto
 
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Larry Gude

Strung Out
Well, no worries now. Obama now has the Internet in his good hands. And as a side bonus went after bullets. And he has spoken on rules changing allowing him more executive action
I can see an extension of his regime. Republicans are limp and the democrats have them by the balls with two losers in each house...Damn this last two years will be hell...

Last 14 have been trans-formative for the nation. Med D, 9/11, TSA, DHS, Pat Act, TARP, the Stimulus, QEasing, the ACA and two lost wars.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Comrades for Net Neutrality



The powers behind the FCC’s muscling of the Internet Today’s vote by a bitterly divided Federal Communications Commission that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility is the culmination of a decade-long battle by the Left. Using money from George Soros and liberal foundations that totaled at least $196 million, radical activists finally succeeded in ramming through “net neutrality,” or the idea that all data should be transmitted equally over the Internet. The final push involved unprecedented political pressure exerted by the Obama White House on FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, head of an ostensibly independent regulatory body.

“Net neutrality’s goal is to empower the federal government to ration and apportion Internet bandwidth as it sees fit, and to thereby control the Internet’s content,” says Phil Kerpen, an anti-net-neutrality activist from the group American Commitment.

The courts have previously ruled the FCC’s efforts to impose “net neutrality” out of bounds, so the battle isn’t over. But for now, the FCC has granted itself enormous power to micromanage the largely unrestrained Internet.

Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration teamed up with Internet pioneers to promote a hands-off approach to the new industry and keep it free from discriminatory taxation. Many still prefer that policy. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and the charity One Laptop Per Child, says that net neutrality “doesn’t make sense” because “the truth is, not all bits [of data] are created equal.”

Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute (which was once a favorite think tank of Clinton Democrats), issued a statement that net neutrality “endorses a backward-looking policy that would apply the brakes to the most dynamic sector of America’s economy.”

But such voices have been drowned out by left-wing activists who want to manage the Internet to achieve their political objectives. The most influential of these congregate around the deceptively named Free Press, a liberal lobby co-founded in 2002 by Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor.

His goals have always been clear. “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.” Earlier in 2000, he told the Marxist magazine Monthly Review: “Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.” When I interviewed him in 2010, he admitted he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.”




:belvak:
 
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