When new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced plans for a new Net Neutrality order, I wasn’t surprised. Despite having lost in court twice, first in Comcast v FCC and then in Verizon v FCC, the radicals weren’t going to give up on this. They were going to try a third time. And we knew he was a radical once he hired Gigi Sohn.
Some are trying to make it sound like a minor technical point, but the radicals want to take over the Internet. They’re following the Obamacare playbook with an end goal of Single Payer Internet. Wheeler put in one minor concession to reality in the form of ‘fast lanes’ being expressly allowed. Paying for what we use, and paying for even better access are good things of course, which is why we’re seeing Netflix moving to tiered pricing to charge HD users more for the bandwidth they’re taking up.
So now Wheeler is in a fight with the radicals that may or may not be real. Remember last time the radicals insisted nothing short of Title II Classification (a dramatic step that literally would regulate Internet the same as phones), when guess what? Even Title II allows fast lanes.
So it’s all just a smokescreen. They want all the government they can get.
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I asked back in February of last year, which seems like forever ago, whether Google would end up remaining a left-wing outfit. As it turns out, they’re joining the Occupy radical left claiming the Obama administration’s new Net Neutrality plans don’t go far enough. These radicals are flipping out because they won’t be happy until we get single payer Internet. So whether the left shoots down Chairman Tom Wheeler’s vote on Net Neutrality 3.0 remains to be seen.
Will the Obama FCC dance to the tune set by the furthest left wing of the President’s party, in an election year where the electorate is going to be much further to the right than the one that re-elected the President?
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So Zombie Net Neutrality keeps on chugging along. Leftist opposition to it is growing because it contains one small nod to reality, letting people in one narrow case pay for what they use. Of course this hurts the companies who want to use lots of bandwidth but want to have that cost subsidized by everyone else. It’s funny how the left freaks out when some industries lobby, but for some reason Internet firms get a free pass.
Amusingly enough, these same leftys are going full Occutard and even getting FCC Democrats to waver. The goal of the radicals here is to eliminate any sort of idea that people should pay for what they use, making Internet investment unsustainable, and generate a pretext later for socialized Internet as a “human right.” Sound familiar? This is the same playbook used in Obamacare.
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I’ve taken some criticism for saying over and over again in this space, that kids don’t belong on the Internet (unsupervised and uncontrolled really), and that classrooms should not have Internet access introduced. The basic problem is that unfettered Internet access brings bullies and predators to kids. It also means pornography will just keep popping up, and there’s no way to fix that with these uncontrolled environments. It’s just not worth the risks.
Have you quit using Mozilla Firefox yet? It’s time to switch, yet again, as Mozilla has taken an extremist political position for no real reason except that the project has been completely hijacked by radical ideologues. Not only are they for zombie Net Neutrality, they’re claiming the Obama FCC isn’t going far enough. Lunacy.
Look, it doesn’t really matter what browser you use: MS Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Chromium, Google Chrome Opera, or w3m. Just switch to anything that doesn’t fund this left-wing outlet.
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Even though repeated losses in court are making the Net Neutrality folks have to compromise with reality, the fact is they’re still freaking out about the ability to charge more for better service, which is a good thing to have. The facts are though that we don’t need new laws, and the laws they do want would just pick winners and losers, which is why Netflix is pushing so hard. If the roles are reversed they’d be screaming that I was being paid by Netflix.
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The longer you look at regulatory policy in this country, the more you run into special interests looking out for their own personal payoffs. But seriously, I feel like terrestrial broadcasters are the worst of all when it comes to acting entitled. Waah waah we’re big fat socialists and we don’t want to have to pay the people who made the stuff we’re broadcasting. Meanwhile, Waah waah we want to restrict competition amongst ourselves to retransmit our broadcasts on cable.
Virtually every company, every industry I write about in this space goes around lobbying in DC for some advantage. But nobody gets so many special protections and is so rabid in protecting them at any cost, as terrestrial broadcasters. At some point, small government folks are going to have to smash this racket.
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So I spent my Tech time tonight writing about Net Neutrality. I suggest reading that. It’s still a bad idea, because it’s founded on premises that aren’t true, and doesn’t address the real issues.
Meanwhile industry’s fighting it out over Net Neutrality 3.0: the return of the revenge. Who are Obama’s picked winners and losers, and are they winning or losing enough? Do they think they can bet more?
Speaking of picking winners and losers, we’ll have to see what comes out of Senate patent negotiations. Last time the Senate worked on this there was a good Republican bill and a bad Democrat bill.
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In Monday’s Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson really went off in favor of Net Neutrality, the policy that twice has been struck down by the courts as an illegal power grab by the FCC, and is being promoted a third time by the Obama FCC at the behest of the radical socialist wing of his party.
Francis Cianfrocca I thought put in a good effort trying to be even handed about the whole thing, but I wanted to respond to a message like that making it to the front page of RedState. I understand where both of them are coming from, and I think it’s important to explain why Net Neutrality really is a terrible idea.
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So a continuing look at the NetMundial meeting to argue why American stewardship of the Internet is bad. It got hijacked by the Net Neutrality folks and the anti-American folks (with NSA as the word the Orwellian sheep are bleating), which tells you all about the orientation of this movement. Fortunately our adversaries have all the efficiency of the UN: “There were so many welcome speeches, and they went so much over time, that we did not even begin the substantive work of the conference until 5:30pm.”
Even as Putin calls the Internet a CIA project, Obama wants to hand over the Internet to these guys? Insane. Of course, it’s insane that he’s trying again on Net Neturality, though amusingly some Democrats are complaining this third attempt compromises too much.
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While Bitcoin is traceable, that process can be made very difficult by a determined attacker, because of the existence of sophisticated money laundering operations in the Bitcoin community, operations designed specifically to aid criminals. So I think it makes sense for the FEC to place cash-like restrictions on Bitcoin. As long as we’re stuck with these laws, it doesn’t make sense to give Bitcoin a special exception.
The quest to deliver the Internet from American-guaranteed liberty and into Russo-Sino-tyranny is on, down in Brazil. They call it NetMundial, but’s really a one country thing. It’s just an anti-American hate fest.
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