The liberal fascism, they’re not even hiding it anymore:
In April 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that the F.C.C. had exceeded its authority by telling Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, that it had to give Internet users equal access to all online content providers, even if some of their content was clogging Comcast’s network.
[FCC Chair] Mr. Genachowsk decided that the commission should consider broadband service a sort of hybrid between an information service and a utility, a view that would mean it has sufficient power to regulate Internet traffic under existing law.
If Internet service is a hybrid, the agency, under its powers to regulate phone service, would be permitted to require broadband service providers to follow certain transmission guidelines, including safeguarding privacy, not discriminating against certain types of content providers, offering service to rural customers at the same rate as urban customers and providing access to people with disabilities.
And from the WSJ:
Breaking a deadlock within his agency, Mr. Genachowski is expected Thursday to outline his plan for regulating broadband lines. He wants to adopt “net neutrality” rules that require Internet providers like Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. to treat all traffic equally, and not to slow or block access to websites.
[…]
Internet giants like Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc., which want to offer more Web video and other high-bandwidth services, have called for stronger action by the FCC to assure free access to websites.
Cable and telecommunications executives have warned that using land-line phone rules to govern their management of Internet traffic would lead them to cut billions of capital expenditure for their networks, slash jobs and go to court to fight the rules.
[…]
President Barack Obama vowed during his campaign to support regulation to promote so-called net neutrality, and received significant campaign contributions from Silicon Valley. Mr. Genachowski, a Harvard Law School buddy of the president, proposed new net neutrality rules as his first major action as FCC chairman.
Telecom executives say privately that limits on their ability to change pricing would make it harder to convince shareholders that the returns from spending billions of dollars on improving a network are worth the cost.
Carriers fear further regulation could handcuff their ability to cope with the growing demand put on their networks by the explosion in Internet and wireless data traffic. In particular, they worry that the FCC will require them to share their networks with rivals at government-regulated rates.
[…]
UBS analyst John Hodulik said the cable companies and carriers were likely to fight this in court “for years” and could accelerate their plans to wind down investment in their broadband networks.
“You could have regulators involved in every facet of providing Internet over time. How wholesale and prices are set, how networks are interconnected and requirements that they lease out portions of their network,” he said.
(from dicentra, via email)
Our progressive overlords are doing this for our own good. The masses need their free pron, and they shouldn’t have to pay for the access either.
By the way, if they have to treat all traffic equally, then bandwidth hogs will get to download even more crap.
FTFY
Coming soon the new 6G network, 56kbps guaranteed for the first year.
I got to demo a 4G personal wifi card last week. Sweet. It would prolly cost about $76,924.38 after the Feds got their grubby little hands all over it. Fuckers.
Orwell, how to manual ,etc.
At some file-sharing forums, the kidz are all cheering this, and seem to think the gubmit will shut down (“fuck, ’em, fuck ’em up good” was one comment posted) the big internet providers for their “sins” of limiting the kidz bittorrent access…
Won’t it be fun when ISP’s start charging for bandwidth used?
If ISPs start charging by the megabyte, that will certainly cut down on my internet activities.
Well, if they do, they’d better be “fair” about it. Or the government has every “right” to step in and takeover the industry. Because of the equality.
Well, sure. Every bit is equal.
Sure, pr0n isn’t all that great without the bandwidth-sucking pictures.
Oh, good I was worried for a while, phew, that’s a relief
Mr Salazar wouldn’t like it if we talked about him like that.
I suspect that BP will outlast Secretary Salazar…
Oh, and it seems Mr. Genachowski hasn’t quite slain the goose that lays golden eggs [the intarwebs here in the US] but he has a hatchet in his hands and is readying a swing.
How, exactly, is BP’s life on the line, Mr Salazar? Do you think they are not doing everything under their power to fix this? Do you think they enjoy watching their money flow out on TV? Do you plan on taking control of BP because you think you can run their operations better than BP?
Irritatin’ as all get out, ain’t it JD?
I still haven’t heard a widespread and sober report as to what happened to cause the fire and explosion. Eleven men (I assume they were all men) died on that rig, though not necessarily directly in the fire and explosion. But there was an accident, we think. I haven’t seen reporters interviewing rig workers who were proximate to the event and survived it, or rig workers who weren’t proximate but had knowledge of what was happening where the explosion took place, explaining what they think was going on or what happened. There seems to be little seriousness in the newsgathering business these days.
#19 – right. And when the ISPs are flapping about headless we all suffer.
#20 – oh come now…that type of work is hard. It would take some effort and expertise to try to find facts, explain things and all that stuff.
Work is the very devil for the newies, LTC, unless it’s a question of the latest Hollywood breakup or get-together, at which point there’s no stopping the reportron from their appointed rounds.
Sdferr – They are patently un-serious, both the MFM and the Barcky admin.
LtC John – what is the most remarkable aspect is that the Courts have already told them that they cannot do this, the legislature has no intention of doing it, yet Barcky is apparently just going to go ahead an do it. Fuck them.
Question – how can Congress retroactively change the $75,000,000 cap in the BP matter? If they can do so, how meaningless is our legal system?
“He-e-e-e-re, fishy fish, let’s get out of the rig, ok?”
Look. They’re only going to control access and bandwidth issues, promise. They wont even THINK of looking at content, because that would be wrong.
Mark Levin had an interview with one of the not-killed workers on the rig. Interesting stuff. Hadn’t realized the insane pressures involved. It’s a wonder this doesn’t happen all the time.
#18: Apparently, everything Mr. Salazar knows about the workings of real-world business he learned from old episodes of Captain Planet.
Trying to regulate the content of the web is not just a bad idea, its hopeless. At the moment I think the web is only accidentally so publically accessible. Every page you go to can be easily tracked, sometimes by 3rd parties with advertising, definitely by your ISP. But all it takes is a proxy to hide that, and if worse comes to worse technology exists to completely hide anything you do on the internet. Like Freenet.
Heck even bit torrent these days can run without servers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table) and using encrypted messages for traffic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption).
They’re going to kill the golden goose if they push this too far.
And if they throw up their hands in disgust and quit the business, the government will dictate that they maintain their network as a “public convenience”, I suppose. Can’t shut it down, yannow. It doesn’t really belong to you stockholders, it belongs to the US Gubmint.