Court: FCC has no power to regulate Net neutrality

This is a terrible ruling. All you high speed internet users have fun being restricted to google or MSN for your search engines. As one post already said, your internet 'package' of Yahoo!, MSN, and google. Don't bother trying to access any other sites, the SCOTUS already ruled that your ISP can direct their traffic anyway they want.

Yes, Skype and VIOP are going to die because so many ISP's also service POTS lines (plain old telephone system). They can block the competition, sure you can have your $200/month cell phone the $60/month landline but say goodbye to your $25/month Vonage account.

People against big government just don't get the dangers of corporations.

Originally posted by Hadrian

Originally posted by justinsweatt
I hate to tell you guys this but these businesses can do whatever they want. It's called a business model.

just not true. there are all kinds of various reasons why a company may be susceptible to regulation. if could be just that they provide what is deemed an essential quality of society and as such, there will be some oversight in an effort to ensure integrity (network television). in other cases, the government may own, operate and or fund systems or equipment that facilitate another company's business model (the fed funds internet infrastructure expansion and leases it to providers). this is without mentioning the sanctions that may be levied on monopolies. we may live in a fascist state, but there's still at the least the appearance of propriety.

You can "regulate" it but the best regulation is to find an alternative true free market model. Network Television is hardly an essential quality to society, as you mentioned. Most of the network news is already censored by the CIA and the administration. That is a glaring example of how, in my opinion, your argument for government intrusion by setting "regulation" is a false and evil one. Also, there is nothing wrong with a naturally occurring monopoly and by natural I mean that the business provides a service that competition has not been able to effect without the assistance of tax breaks or special privileges provided to them by the state and local government.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
This is terrible! A huge blow for our free use of the Internet. I wish people would read about it and understand what it is before praising this decision. :shk:

No, all government regulation ISN'T bad. The meat you buy at the store is government-regulated. The milk you feed your children, the buildings you go into don't fall on you because of ... government regulation.

The Death of Net Neutrality

1 Killing Net neutrality means big players always win
2 Say goodbye to Skype and VOIP
3 Attack on free speech
4 Killing Net neutrality could screw up getting real work done

What a great example of the EVILS AND EVILS AND EVILS of regulation you put in here. Yes, the meat that you buy in the store is "regulated". Yes, by harmful chemicals and hormones that were swept in through the backdoor by pay offs and lobbying by corporate farms like Tyson to poison what you eat. What happened? A free market alternative called "organic grass fed" that does not have to be regulated by the FDA because they are not pumping the very thing that you eat with poisonous toxins. The milk fed to children contains GMOs and hormones(through ridiculous "Green" claims that GMO is "good" for you and the environment) that were labeled "safe" for consumption by back room deals when most of the statistical data out there concerning hormones, gmos, and food have been deemed dangerous poisons all over the world. Yay for the FDA, the step children of Monsanto and their piles of money.

Also, the buildings argument is ridiculous as well if you know your history concerning steel. Carnegie was able to compete, innovate and construct steel that was much stronger than US Steel because of zero regulation. Regulation breeds nothing but laziness and stagnation when it comes to a product. Imagine how much innovation would come about with alternative fuels if you didn't regulate the hell out of everything.

This is again not an attack on free speech because again a corporation can limit your speech if they want to. In fact, this is something that I am sure that you would be fond of since "liberals" seem to be cool with the idea of hate speech and censoring speech that they disagree with. This will allow the ISP to control content and ban all of those that malign those that need "special privileges". You should be stoked about this.

reply to post by links234


Do you really need the internet? Is this akin to food, water, and shelter? You could always, oh my GOD, do without.

What would happen if you went total cash, dropped off the internet and just went off the grid? Would the world suddenly go off it's axis and crash into Mars?

All of this is a choice and a privilege, not a right, one that I enjoy but if it disappears, I'm not going to weep over it. It'll be one less person who pays them as well because I was fine before the internet, I'll be just fine without it. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying you have to purchase your package through the people you listed. Read a book.....plant a garden......there are always other things that you could do. If you don't engage them and play into their game then they can't effect you. If all you do is expect someone to come along and regulate those evil "corporations", then you are nothing more than a fool.

Ya know, I see all these people claiming some individuals are misinformed and this Net Neutraility thing is awesome, and the FCC should be able to regulate it. Well, i say you are either misinformed yourself or just plain all about free speech as long as it applies only to your view point.

The FCC gaining the ability to control and regulate the internet would end bad. The government allready wants to end sites such as this one, the FCC higher ups support the fairness doctrine, although they do admit it does not go far enough. So, putting people like this in charge of regulating the internet is our last hope for protecting free speech on the internet? Do you live in bizarro world?


"It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. " Mark Lloyd, FCC "Diversity Czar".

www.freepress.org...
these guys are all about Net Neutraility, they have been pushing for a long time, heres an little qoute out of the link...

"Look for the Free Press/Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio wine booth at the Community Festival each year during the last weekend in June. The Free Press is dependent on subscriptions, donations and fund-raising events to stay alive.

Believing that there's still a place for community-based journalism, the struggle moves forward, awaiting the rise of the next left mass movement that's willing to speak truth to power."

Freepress.org was started by robert McChesney, who also was the ditor for www.monthlyreview.org...

FCC chair Julius Genachowski named former Free Press spokeswoman Jen Howard as his press secretary.

So you put this all together and yeah, it really seems that the FCC is all about protecting the free speech on the internet. The o nly free specch they want is, thiers, any dissenting voice needs to be squashed, so, they gain regulation of the internet to shut everyone else up.

Originally posted by boondock-saint
is it just me or has the SCOTUS being
ruling AGAINST the establishment
a lot lately.

Perhaps in the future, Presidents may not want to heckle and criticize their rulings during the State of the Union while they are sitting 10 feet away?!

I forgot who said what, but where will the start up's get the thousand of miles of fiber optic cables for service? The Telecom company, Just about all phone companies have upgraded their lines to fiber optics, that is why there is this thing called DSL(Digital Subscriber Line) might not be as fast as cable but it gets the job done. You are able to rent these lines out.

I wish somebody could really explain why we must pass a law for something that doesn't exist? It's not that I don't understand the concept of Net Neutrality because I do, its the fact nobody can point out any problems other than this one case with Comcast and throttling bandwidth to bit-torrent clients, which they themselves dropped. NOT ONE problem exists that requires this legislation.

There are no facts to support any of the pro-net neutrality arguments. It's nothing but a bunch of hypotheticals and if's.

[edit on 7-4-2010 by Light of Night]

Originally posted by justinsweatt

Originally posted by Hadrian

Originally posted by justinsweatt
I hate to tell you guys this but these businesses can do whatever they want. It's called a business model.

just not true. there are all kinds of various reasons why a company may be susceptible to regulation. if could be just that they provide what is deemed an essential quality of society and as such, there will be some oversight in an effort to ensure integrity (network television). in other cases, the government may own, operate and or fund systems or equipment that facilitate another company's business model (the fed funds internet infrastructure expansion and leases it to providers). this is without mentioning the sanctions that may be levied on monopolies. we may live in a fascist state, but there's still at the least the appearance of propriety.

You can "regulate" it but the best regulation is to find an alternative true free market model. Network Television is hardly an essential quality to society, as you mentioned. Most of the network news is already censored by the CIA and the administration. That is a glaring example of how, in my opinion, your argument for government intrusion by setting "regulation" is a false and evil one. Also, there is nothing wrong with a naturally occurring monopoly and by natural I mean that the business provides a service that competition has not been able to effect without the assistance of tax breaks or special privileges provided to them by the state and local government.

i should have been more specific (not that it will matter). network television was fundamental to society in that its pervasiveness meant that it became the default tool for reaching the public (whether entertainment, education or information), though of course, newspapers and radio persist(ed) ... and they were/are regulated, too! in this instance (when there were no other channels), it was essential for some regulation. some may support the concept of one or two individuals owning 95% of broadcasting - capitalism must be allowed to thrive!, after all - but most do not and with good reason.

your stance on naturally occurring monopolies is an admirable one. i completely disagree.

Funny to watch the start of this thread as how people do not even know what choice is worse. But I have to admit I didn't read up on FCC and the US situation lately and was therefore pretty confused too.

Especially since conspiracy-practicism topics are sometimes very confusing and complex it gets hard to even remember in such a situation: "Who are the evil guys? Corps. or Gov.?! ehrr... wth." Worst thing is that they usually go hand in hand, which is the main problem in first place.

In this case though I do most probably agree that the FCC is the better of both evils. Although there are other factors possibly coming in to play too: What potential censorship laws might be passed in future, for example. So would the FCC actually become an institution which ensures that all providers follow the censorship rules?

Anyway.. net neutrality sounds pretty good and unless they just wanted to make fools of us by using this name and doing the exact opposite later on I suppose its the best option left.

Censorship must be at all costs be avoided. In Germany Web-Censorship has already started under the smokescreen of child porn. Some countries in Europe use a shared blacklist which are in turn forwarded to providers to be implemented in their service.

So the # is already hitting the fan in those regards. I'm all in for getting rid of child porn etc. but I prefer not to have any control at all instead of having some intransparent, uncontrolled institution deciding upon which websites will be on blacklists and which are not. Especially since I don't believe it has much effect on the criminals in first place, and secondly because I don't really believe the government really intends to prosecute child porn in an efficient manner. They do not value life and some shabby citizens.

You might find this statement a bit cold-hearted. But if you look at the scandals in Belgium, where child porn prosecutions were stopped because some high officials were apparently involved in the matter it makes one wonder.

For anyone who still believes that China and a bunch of other countries in the east are the only ones practicing web-censorship I've got some little news:

As I said earlier the # is already hitting the fan. Not only in Germany but also in Switzerland: We don't even have a legal base for blocking websites but all of the big providers are voluntarily blocking the stuff they are being told to. There are only a few small providers excluded from this practice.

Well.. it would probably not be that alarming if they were only blocking childporn and thoroughly verified and confirmed supremacist material.
The big problem is that political sites are being blocked too.

Swiss Justice Website

The website you can most probably see (? - i doubt that the US are using european blacklists yet, but might be interesting to know from you guys.) clearly is an example where institutions abuse their power to willingly and illegally block websites due to political reasons.

It is not possible to display that website with any of the common, swiss providers unless you specifically change your DNS in the browser from your own provider to something like opendns etc.

No childporn, no supremacist material here. The only thing you will find out is that this guy was filing charges against judges and gov. people... and criticizing the swiss juridic system. Which in some cantons is very corrupt as a matter of fact. There have been newspaper articles about scandals and corruption cases in the jurisdiction of Fribourg.

And people still believe we are living in lawful democracies, or at least democratic republics in your case.

Nevertheless the freedom of information must at all cost be mantained and is our biggest asset left. Sad sad developments....

RE: Why Net Neutrality?

The Internet is the new "press."

Net Neutrality legislation will preserve and protect our Freedom of the Press, our free access to information, Freedom of Speech and more.

...We're seeing all kinds of draconian controls popping up all over the world - paving the way for a controlled and regulated Internet - because there is no national or international commitment to Net Neutrality.

...Blocking Net Neutrality is all about protecting "information" as a commodity, ensuring that international trade law can and will supersede national laws and individual rights and freedoms, and securing absolute governmental powers for global mega-corporations (through trade law).

Please, wake up.