FCC, FEC look to ruin the Internet • Tammy Bruce • Ajit Pai

originally posted by: greencmp
If you don't want bad laws which grant unwarranted monopolistic powers to corporations, you should not be advocating for an unknown bill which most likely will do just that.

Except it does nothing of the sort. The proposal going by the bullet points which are public keep the barrier to entry for internet business as low as possible which keeps the market open. Verizon's plan does the exact opposite.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: greencmp
If you don't want bad laws which grant unwarranted monopolistic powers to corporations, you should not be advocating for an unknown bill which most likely will do just that.

Except it does nothing of the sort. The proposal going by the bullet points which are public keep the barrier to entry for internet business as low as possible which keeps the market open. Verizon's plan does the exact opposite.

What does nothing? Nothing?

You apparently refuse to simply acknowledge that doing nothing is an option.

originally posted by: greencmp
What does nothing? Nothing?

You apparently refuse to simply acknowledge that doing nothing is an option.

That's because doing nothing isn't an option. The law was already passed that repeals Net Neutrality. Verizon forced the issue back when they extorted Netflix for money. Doing nothing is passing of Verizon's wanted legislation. That's the whole point of reclassification, by reclassifying it the previous law which was already passed but hasn't officially taken effect yet (and is overwhelmingly opposed by the people) no longer applies to it.

a reply to: Aazadan

That was what I have been saying though, if there was a bad law, rescind it. There is no reason to dig a bigger hole to throw the former hole into.

Repeal all bad laws, repeat.

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: Aazadan

That was what I have been saying though, if there was a bad law, rescind it. There is no reason to dig a bigger hole to throw the former hole into.

Repeal all bad laws, repeat.

They can't rescind it because the law exists due to a court order. Verizon got their law passed through judicial intervention. The FCC doesn't have the power to trump that, instead they have to reclassify so that the verdict is no longer applicable.

The law we ultimately need to have needs to come from congress but no one in congress has the least bit of technical aptitude so they don't know how to write the law. Their outside experts to advise on the legislation come from the industry they're trying to impose limits on in the first place.

That is where we need to take a stand, and it will come up as one of the major 2016 issues before and after the elections. It's an issue of government/business revolving doors and congress being inept.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: Aazadan

That was what I have been saying though, if there was a bad law, rescind it. There is no reason to dig a bigger hole to throw the former hole into.

Repeal all bad laws, repeat.

They can't rescind it because the law exists due to a court order. Verizon got their law passed through judicial intervention. The FCC doesn't have the power to trump that, instead they have to reclassify so that the verdict is no longer applicable.

The law we ultimately need to have needs to come from congress but no one in congress has the least bit of technical aptitude so they don't know how to write the law. Their outside experts to advise on the legislation come from the industry they're trying to impose limits on in the first place.

That is where we need to take a stand, and it will come up as one of the major 2016 issues before and after the elections. It's an issue of government/business revolving doors and congress being inept.

So, completely without the approval of congress, a judicial intervention has propped up a monopoly and granted it illegal powers not normally afforded its business competitors.

Why is the issue about internet net neutrality? It seems like this rises to corruption of government and judicial activism on the grandest scale. Heads should roll, truth should prevail, why have we not heard of any of this?

Why has nobody produced any evidence of the conspiracy that you believe is only opposable by the most powerful entity within our sphere of influence?

originally posted by: greencmp
So, completely without the approval of congress, a judicial intervention has propped up a monopoly and granted it illegal powers not normally afforded its business competitors.

It's not the monopoly of the ISP that's at issue, with or without Net Neutrality they will be a monopoly. Judicial intervention didn't create the monopoly, congressional intervention did when we gave the industry 200 billion dollars to buy each other out and consolidate companies.

Judicial intervention has created a situation in which the monopoly gets to dictate unfair terms of use over their product. Think of what our society would look like today if the electric company was allowed to charge a higher rate on electricity used for heating in the middle of winter, opposed to any other electricity used at the same time. Net Neutrality means that data is treated equally, like electricity is.

Here's a question for you. If a company provides a service or product should they also retain the right to enforce the terms of use of that product? Net Neutrality says they don't and allowing a company to do this sets some major legal precedents... For example does your home builder get to dictate who you can have in your home? Can a TV manufacturer dictate what brand of peripherals you are allowed to attach? And so on.

Why has nobody produced any evidence of the conspiracy that you believe is only opposable by the most powerful entity within our sphere of influence?

What conspiracy? It's bureaucratic shuffling. We had something of a standard for network policy, the courts changed that policy, and now the FCC is changing the classification of the networks to get around the court order.

a reply to: Aazadan

That sounds like a bad judgement and frankly it seems to me if such drastic and sweeping changes can be enacted by judicial fiat, impossible to be opposed by legal challenge and unaddressable through legislative nullification, how can we call ourselves a representative republic?

If what you say is true and we can't rely on simply deactivating judicial orders and rescinding enacted law, the answer can only be complete and total revolution, immediately.

Why would we be worried about our internet access under such circumstances?

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: Aazadan

That sounds like a bad judgement and frankly it seems to me if such drastic and sweeping changes can be enacted by judicial fiat, impossible to be opposed by legal challenge and unaddressable through legislative nullification, how can we call ourselves a representative republic?

If what you say is true and we can't rely on simply deactivating judicial orders and rescinding enacted law, the answer can only be complete and total revolution, immediately.

Why would we be worried about our internet access under such circumstances?

The courts have always been the ultimate arbiters of the law. There's a fix in place, we can overwrite it with congress part of the whole checks and balances. The problem? Half of congress supports Verizon's plan, which shouldn't be a surprise considering their understanding of technology is little beyond "my laptop and cellphone work".

Again, it comes back to 2016. This has been brewing since 2008, and it's finally coming to a head. We know what the ISP's will do with this power because they did it to Netflix within 24 hours of the ruling previously. This isn't some hypothetical argument.

As for why should we worry about internet access - it comes back to the question I asked you in the previous post. Should corporations have the right to dictate how, when, and where we use their product?

originally posted by: Semicollegiate
Nullification is a potential option against excessive and onerous regulations.

Any jury can nullify a law, to the best of my non-lawyer understanding. Nullification by a jury means that guilty, or not, there is no punishment.

In the movie Freedom to Fascism, one of the sequences is about an income tax protester who is not sentenced because the jury found him not guilty by nullification, that is, the jury found that the income tax was not Constitutional.

In a practical sense, nullification is a subset of non-violent, passive resistance.

State nullification is a necessary tool to reassert state sovereignty and curb the ravenous and insatiable lust for power we can plainly see within the federal government.

Ron Paul: “Good News” That Secession Is Happening

It isn't just the funny side note worthy of a bad SNL skit as some deniers of freedom might have one believe.

Twitter just came out strongly in favor of the FCC's plan for Net Neutrality. More at this new thread, I just posted.

Here's a sneak peak: If you like the way cable companies bundle cable channels, they you'll love the new Internet if the FCC's Net Neutrality is defeated.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Well, if twitter recommends it, who am I to question it.

a reply to: greencmp

It's much more than Twitter, it's all online content providers (other than big media).

originally posted by: greencmp
State nullification is a necessary tool to reassert state sovereignty and curb the ravenous and insatiable lust for power we can plainly see within the federal government.

Ron Paul: “Good News” That Secession Is Happening

It isn't just the funny side note worthy of a bad SNL skit as some deniers of freedom might have one believe.

Im not sure you understand the scale of what you're asking for. I'll assume you do though. Lets start with state sovereignty. If each state is it's own sovereign entity we essentially become a coalition of 50 willing nations that negotiate and make trade deals with each other. This massively weakens the fed but doesn't fix the problem of poor policy.

Instead I propose to you that we need a larger government. Representatives should be proportional to the people but as birthrates climbed and space was limited we did away with that law. I say we fight to bring it back and meet digitally. This returns us to the 20000:1 standard. It eliminates gerrymandering, it means each group has their person, and it increases the collective brainpower of congress. All are wins.

Next I propose to you something radical. We throw a lot of money at each person in congress in exchange for complete transparency over their finances while in office. When I say a lot of money I'm talking $10-$15 million salaries for each of them. Then I want them to be subject to a wealth cap of $100 million. Over the cap (from any source) and they get no more, over the cap and they goto prison.

Corporations are buying their legislation now for $50,000 a congressman, that's 25% of their salary. The way we fight that is to add another 1000 congressmen by going back to the constitutional ratio, and then making the congressmen have more money. It jumps from $50,000 to each of 20 deciding senators to $5 million to each of 200 senators. A difference of 2 million vs 10 billion. I want to make it so that it's too expensive for corporations to lobby the government. And best of all? It's 100% constitutional.

I'll stop with the sovereignty derail here but I'll link a longer post with this concept. I wrote it here a year ago. Part 2 in the thread is what you'll mostly be interested in... though part 1 is a system I would like to build one day... it seems useful.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: greencmp
State nullification is a necessary tool to reassert state sovereignty and curb the ravenous and insatiable lust for power we can plainly see within the federal government.

Ron Paul: “Good News” That Secession Is Happening

It isn't just the funny side note worthy of a bad SNL skit as some deniers of freedom might have one believe.

Im not sure you understand the scale of what you're asking for. I'll assume you do though. Lets start with state sovereignty. If each state is it's own sovereign entity we essentially become a coalition of 50 willing nations that negotiate and make trade deals with each other. This massively weakens the fed but doesn't fix the problem of poor policy.

Instead I propose to you that we need a larger government. Representatives should be proportional to the people but as birthrates climbed and space was limited we did away with that law. I say we fight to bring it back and meet digitally. This returns us to the 20000:1 standard. It eliminates gerrymandering, it means each group has their person, and it increases the collective brainpower of congress. All are wins.

Next I propose to you something radical. We throw a lot of money at each person in congress in exchange for complete transparency over their finances while in office. When I say a lot of money I'm talking $10-$15 million salaries for each of them. Then I want them to be subject to a wealth cap of $100 million. Over the cap (from any source) and they get no more, over the cap and they goto prison.

Corporations are buying their legislation now for $50,000 a congressman, that's 25% of their salary. The way we fight that is to add another 1000 congressmen by going back to the constitutional ratio, and then making the congressmen have more money. It jumps from $50,000 to each of 20 deciding senators to $5 million to each of 200 senators. A difference of 2 million vs 10 billion. I want to make it so that it's too expensive for corporations to lobby the government. And best of all? It's 100% constitutional.

I'll stop with the sovereignty derail here but I'll link a longer post with this concept. I wrote it here a year ago. Part 2 in the thread is what you'll mostly be interested in... though part 1 is a system I would like to build one day... it seems useful.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I do understand the gravity of what I am suggesting and I hope that you understand the context in which it was delivered (namely sarcastic).

First let me say, I appreciate that you have maintained this conversation, most flesh and blood folks don't typically have the stamina to withstand incessant logical attack to the extent that we have been exchanging. I do not feel that I have won this debate, actually. Not that I haven't made my point and certainly not that your points have fallen on deaf ears.

That said, if we really can't contain out of control regulatory agencies or courts, there really is no other option but to wholesale fire and impeach all officials involved.

Based on the thread by skeptic overlord, I gather that this issue has been adopted by some very powerful corporations who have decided to play their cards on this most important decision to their favor and (I assume) to our great peril.

dupe

originally posted by: greencmp
First let me say, I appreciate that you have maintained this conversation, most flesh and blood folks don't typically have the stamina to withstand incessant logical attack to the extent that we have been exchanging. I do not feel that I have won this debate, actually. Not that I haven't made my point and certainly not that your points have fallen on deaf ears.

That said, if we really can't contain out of control regulatory agencies or courts, there really is no other option but to wholesale fire and impeach all officials involved.

Based on the thread by skeptic overlord, I gather that this issue has been adopted by some very powerful corporations who have decided to play their cards on this most important decision to their favor and (I assume) to our great peril.

I've enjoyed the conversation.

On the corporate front there's really two entities fighting. There's the companies like Netflix and Google who have a business model based on open access to the internet where everyone can consume their services. They are joined by the millions of small businesses out there that have integrated the internet into their business plan. On the other side of things you have the ISP's who want a business model that discourages use as much as possible. With low use, while people buy their flat rate connections it means less bandwidth is being consumed, they don't have to upgrade infrastructure, and they get more money for providing less service.

The two ideals are mutually exclusive. I come down on the side that's healthier for the market, and markets are healthiest with low barriers to entry where anyone who wishes can compete. That means I'm on the side of Google, Netflix, and everyone else.

a reply to: Aazadan

To paraphrase, if I understand correctly, you are saying:

You trust the vast majority of corporations who are allied with an unelected committee operating on secret orders from the executive branch.

Can you not see what possible harm there could be?

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: Aazadan

To paraphrase, if I understand correctly, you are saying:

You trust the vast majority of corporations who are allied with an unelected committee operating on secret orders from the executive branch.

Can you not see what possible harm there could be?

No, but I trust that if we keep the market open and fair, and that control of the networks remains somewhat in control of the people that the internet will remain well off.

To play devil's advocate for the moment, I do believe that Verizon raises some legitimate points, most notably that it's unfair for Netflix to use up 50% of their total bandwidth pushing the remaining 99.999% of customers to divvy up the remainder. As streaming video grows this problem will only get worse.

This is an issue that we need to address, but attacking Net Neutrality isn't the way to go about doing that.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: greencmp
As far as I know, this has nothing to do with appointments or appointees.

I do recognize that I cannot trust either the Republican or the Democratic party.

I simply make the case that government itself must be kept to heel. This legislation is bad and will do us no good.

I am a libertarian.

The legislation is good. Maybe not all 300 pages are good, we honestly can't say (though we can assume they aren't) but most of it is. In a world where any legislation is always several hundred pages long you can't stop things on the basis of what little bad they may contain and instead have to look at the mostly good aspects.

Besides that, we're talking about government control or huge corporate control here. We at least have indirect control over our government, we have no such control over a monopoly corporation. The correct path here is that which leaves the power in the hands of the people, and that path is the FCC's proposal.

The people are not of one mind on anything. The concept of power to all (implied) people by voting is a sham, when the government truncates at about half of the voter's preferences by every law it creates.

The best vote is commercial. Use the product or don't use the product. No new laws required and no one has their freedom complicated.