savetheinternet.com — The gavel has fallen on the 109th Congress marking the demise of entrenched corporate efforts to legislate away our Internet freedoms — and a stunning victory for real people who want to retain control of the Internet.
Dec 9, 2006 View in Crawl 4
hyperbolepoliceDec 10, 2006
You guys do realize that net neutrality is pro government interventionism, yes? For those of you that are generally against the government meddling with things, you should reconsider your positions. And the internet it seems to me is one of the worst examples of where such regulation is necessary owing to its natural redundancy.Step #1) Build some THING with a billion of your dollars.Step #2) People use the THING and love it.Step #3) Change the rules about how exactly you charge for using your THING.Step #4) People freak and get paranoid and call for goverment intervention to take away your rights to control your THING.
corrosionxDec 10, 2006
Is there a monopoly on the internet?No there's competition on the internet.Government regulations are what makes monopoly possible in the first place. The free market prevents monopolies by its sheer dynamics.
Closed AccountDec 10, 2006
I signed up my business Echappy.com I think that politicians should help us computer geeks because we can really mess-up there image on Photo Shop...or as we say "OWNED" The Internet is the greatest freedom ever given to man kind and if company's like "comcast" want to fight LETS FIGHT
moocatDec 10, 2006
It's a monopoly because there's no competition. Certain hand picked companies were given government subsidaries to expand their backbone lines so that more people would be given access to the internet. Now we're running into the problem that a) companies spent more of that money on marketting and fat CEO checks that expansion and b) There's almost always only ONE service to choose from.That's not a free market.Where I live, I have ONE choice for cable, ONE choice for DSL and ONE choice for satalite. I am by no means in a rural or suburban area. Doing some research on moving to Canada, I find that many places have 4-6 Cable choices and 2-5 DSL choices with pipelines that are fatter AND cost less than half as much. The day I see our prices are choices matching those is the day I'll stop bitching about the company MONOPOLIES.
hyperbolepoliceDec 11, 2006
Isn't this always the story? The government 'hand selected' certain companies and subsidized them. The government CREATES a monopoly (or to be truly honest its more like oligopoly). Government is what has ruined utilities, the postal system, the airlines, the railroads, you name it. Years later everyone points to a problem created by the government, and then wants the government to get involved AGAIN to solve their own manufactured problem.Why can't people see the pattern? Keep Ted Stevens and their ilk AWAY from the internet by taking the power OUT of their hands! Net neutrality benefits Google and Yahoo and all the politicians collecting lobbying money on both sides, it does not necessarily benefit you the consumer, and years down the line there will be some new issue dealing with the problems that net neutrality causes.People get excited and back the government when it is applying its powers on a pet project they agree with, but no one has the intelligence to foresee all of the ramifications, and there always ARE ramifications because regulations are ALWAYS overly simplified and burdensome.
hyperbolepoliceDec 11, 2006
David, free market proponents generally do NOT believe the US is a free market, and they don't believe that the government has NO role. The proper role of government is to protect against various things such as contract violation, property (real and intellectual) rights, fraud, use of force, etc. The principal line to draw where government should NOT pass is when the laws are created to benefit one group of people over another. That is not the government's role. The above examples I list are intended to be very general and applicable to ALL.Net neutrality legislation violates the free market principle because it is intended to protect those corporations that the telecoms are likely to raise prices for. Therefore, you set up a war between companies, special interests reign, and the decision most favorable to consumers is unlikely to happen except by sheer luck.And all of you people thinking that net neutrality protects the web 2.0 startups have simply bought Google fearmongering hook line and sinker. Telecoms are going to go after the people with fat cash and that's Google (who now has a market valuation exceeding IBM's and Home Depot).And what do telecoms supposedly want to do? They want to match pricing to service level. Think about that damnit. That is LOGICAL. That is EFFICIENT.
hyperbolepoliceDec 11, 2006
"You are a fear mongering idiot. This has *nothing* to do with giving the government control of the Internet."Critical reading and you don't appear to mix. I said that government interferes with the owner's right to control the internet, not that government controlled the internet. Read as many times as necessary to comprehend."Think Vonage would survive 5 mins on the Internet if NN wasn't in place? Forget it - AT&T would simply drive them out of business."Because you think (unprovably) that an upstart would be stifled is not a reason to intervene."Net neutrality is needed until the scumbags from at&t that sold us all out to the nsa are hanging by their testicles form a lamppost"This is most illogical and a strawman assertion. It says something about Digg that it is has a positive digg count.
Closed AccountDec 18, 2006
Um...the only LEGISLATION is the Net Neutrality Bill itself. Government regulation. Nice.
tiduDec 22, 2006
Just a note: the bill died because congress adjourned. There is NOTHING stopping them from re-introducing it again in the 110th Congress. There really aren't any party lines associated with net neutrality, these are all older people who just have the telcos yelling at them tellnig them to vote nay on neutrality so they do.