The end of network neutrality will be the death of the Internet. It will turn the Internet into talk radio and TV news. See any progressive stations on the radio band or on the TV channels. Of course not. The Corporate Enemy and the rich class enemy have bought up all of the radio and TV spectrum and use them to blast us with their propaganda 24-7. The Internet was the last holdout for progressive voices, like for instance this blog. Of course Republican Corporate Fascists want to shut down the Internet, or at least shut off all of the progressive sites out there. They want to turn the Net into talk radio. Barack Obama, the most anti-progressive president since 1900, is there to help them. Barack helpfully put two Democrats and two Republicans on the board of the FCC (that old bipartisanship crap again), then appointed a Reaganite jackass, Julius Genachowski (a “Democrat”!) to be the Chairman. The FCC is set to rule on fake Network Neutrality rules to satisfy progressives and the sane people. Supposedly, they will be “protecting net neutrality,” but they will not be doing anything of the sort. In fact, the rules they are proposing will be unenforceable. The rules were actually written by Obama’s buddies, the telecom and cable companies themselves. They also exempt the entire wireless spectrum from all regulation. The Republicans are opposing even this fake regulation as “government takeover of the Internet” so that shows you how insane they are. Net neutrality means that all traffic must be treated the same. You can’t slow down your competitors’ sites. You can’t block or slow down this site or any other site just because you hate it. It’s the only reason we have free speech on the Net at all. You see any free speech on the TV and radio? It’s all rightwing corporate controlled. See any free speech in newsmagazines or newspapers? There are no progressive newsmagazines and there are no progressive papers. Print media is all corporate rightwing in the US. But the Net is beyond their grasp. This really infuriates the corporate oligarchs who run the US and their pathetic tools like Barack Obama. Hence the all-out war to destroy freedom on the Internet. Barack Obama is a corporate fascist.
The only benefit I see from not having net neutrality is that it could slow down traffic to servers who primarily provide video/music downloads, which would speed up my rate of internet surfing, since I usually don’t use those services (traffic handling is a zero sum game)–except RedTube, and with those ‘tube’ services you aren’t even exactly downloading a lot of data, as far as I know.
How about we have the fairness doctrine, which is different from net neutrality, in sectors of American life 🙂 Let’s start with publicaly funded universities, before we get to the private market. Then let’s go after the liberal CNN and MSNBC, along with the NYT. Okay, I am joking. I do not support the fairness doctrine.
I just changed my mind some regarding net netrality. I am a strong supporter of it. Let’s say you get your internet service through Verizon, yet you really like Google’s Google Map service. Verizon could essentially block Google Maps by slowing down traffic to their servers, and also to any other servers which may provide mapping services, with the exception of a mapping service offered by Verizon. Worse, Verizon may start charging for their mapping service.
Libertarian principles do not work here. You can’t easily just switch to another ISP. First off, their are not many broadband services to choose from in many areas. Further, there is no way of knowing, as a consumer, which sites’s traffic the ISP is slowing down or if the destination server itself is faulty.
I’m telling you man. Net Neutrality is the only way to go.
I swear he has no soul.