news.com.com — A committee vote is expected Wednesday on a Republican-backed proposal called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, or COPE Act. Democrats say the bill's portions dealing with Net neutrality don't go far enough to restrict telecommunications companies for levying fees for faster access.
Apr 26, 2006 View in Crawl 4
ddrskataApr 26, 2006
George Washington, in his farewell address, specifically condemned the idea of political parties.As soon as he was done, they formed political parties.
ddrskataApr 26, 2006
I'm glad someone's supporting net neutrality. Most politicians, regardless of their political affiliation, are bought and paid for by corporations, and the fact that one of the two major parties is pledging support for this is a breath of fresh air.
joelhardiApr 27, 2006
The reality is that 30 years ago we had one telecom company in this country, AT&T, that owned all the interconnect and all the residential and business wiring, period. If you wanted to start a phone company, you couldn't just attach your network to AT&T's, they'd have to let you, and since they had a monopoly, they obviously wouldn't. So AT&T was a regulated monopoly -- this is the way local water and power companies operate. Private company regulated as a public utility.The AT&T breakup and stuff like the Telecom Act of 1996 was an attempt to create a free market where it didn't exist before. Different regulations force the owners of the wiring (i.e. Verizon) to allow companies like Vonage and Covad to use their networks. Well guess what,that hasn't worked ... the Bells still have lots of ways to screw with these companies, and discriminating on bandwidth is their latest one. And at the same time, the telecom industry is reconsolidating into regional monopolies -- soon there will be no local competition, and it will be 1975 all over again.In the meantime, lots of people in the U.S. still do not have *any* broadband access available to them. Many have only one provider available -- a local monopoly. There's no competition ... and it's impossible and totally uneconomic to expect a media company like Google to suddenly change into a totally different business and lay fiber cable to every house in America -- they'd just as soon lay pipe and take on the nation's water companies!Everyone on both sides, D and R, agrees you can't have unregulated monopolies, so the question is whether people recognize the reality of consolidation and lack of real competitive markets in the industry now, or later. The best thing about this issue is that it *isn't* partisan yet (I'm in DC), and unless your local congressman is in someone's pocket, chances are if you give him/her a call or start a petition in your community to stick up for net neutrality, you will have an impact.
raccetturaApr 27, 2006
@bugsy187: You should read: <a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#The_Internet">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#The_Internet</a>It's somewhere in the middle.
mouskyApr 27, 2006
Say NO to any type of government involvement be it in favour of the big telcos or in favour of net neutrality. For all those people bashing the Republicans or hoping for some piece of legislationg regulating net neutrality, ask yourself this: what has the government done right lately? We need less government intervention.
ramiroApr 27, 2006
Translation: "Put your biases aside" while we, Republican-haters, spam digg with our political BS propaganda.Yeah...