Obama's regs will make Internet slow as in Europe, warn FCC, FEC commissioners

[bonnie]

Obama's regs will make Internet slow as in Europe, warn FCC, FEC commissioners

BY PAUL BEDARD | FEBRUARY 23, 2015 | 2:14 PM

 

 

 

 

As the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission toy with regulating aspects of the Internet, critics on those agencies are warning that speed and freedom of speech are in jeopardy.

In a joint column, Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai and Federal Election Commission member Lee Goodman, leveled the boom on the Obama-favored regulations, essentially charging that it will muck up the freedom the nation has come to expect from the Internet.

In one key passage of the column published in Politico, the duo wrote Monday that heavy-handed FCC regulations like those imposed in Europe will significantly slow down Internet speech.

“These Internet regulations will deter broadband deployment, depress network investment and slow broadband speeds. How do we know? Compare Europe, which has long had utility-style regulations, with the United States, which has embraced a light-touch regulatory model. Broadband speeds in the United States, both wired and wireless, are significantly faster than those in Europe. Broadband investment in the United States is several multiples that of Europe. And broadband’s reach is much wider in the United States, despite its much lower population density,” the two wrote.

They also joined to warn about the Democrat-chaired Federal Election Commission eyeing regulation of political speech on the Internet.

Noting recent votes on the issue that ended in a political deadlock, the two wrote, “these close votes and the risk of idiosyncratic case-by-case enforcement inevitably discourage citizens and groups from speaking freely online about politics.”

Bottom line, they warned: “Internet freedom works. It is difficult to imagine where we would be today had the government micromanaged the Internet for the past two decades as it does Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service. Neither of us wants to find out where the Internet will be two decades from now if the federal government tightens its regulatory grip. We don’t need to shift control of the Internet to bureaucracies in Washington. Let’s leave the power where it belongs — with the American people. When it comes to Americans’ ability to access online content or offer political speech online, there isn’t anything broken for the government to “fix.” To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, Internet regulation isn’t the solution to a problem. Internet regulation is the problem.”

 

[joeb]

What else can be expected from big government advocates?  The natural endpoint for big government is totalitarianism.  It's too bad all the socialists around here can't see that. 

[Tom Wetmore]

Obama's regs will make Internet slow as in Europe, warn FCC, FEC commissioners

BY PAUL BEDARD | FEBRUARY 23, 2015 | 2:14 PM

 

* * *

 

Let’s leave the power where it belongs — with the American people. When it comes to Americans’ ability to access online content or offer political speech online, there isn’t anything broken for the government to “fix.” To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, Internet regulation isn’t the solution to a problem. Internet regulation is the problem.”

I'm sorry but that is just naive and stupid. It makes it sound like we the American people the consumers and users of the Internet are in control of the Internet now. So just leave it alone. We the consumer should be able to take care of it ourselves. I've got news for you. The issue is that the American people, the consumers of Internet Services do not now have the power to keep. It is in the hands of the Internet Service Providers. They are large corporations. Big business. They are not the American people. And they are not looking out for our interests.

[Tom Wetmore]

Here is a more balanced view of the issues:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/26/the-fcc-set-to-approve-strong-net-neutrality-rules/?wpisrc=al_alert

[CoAspen]

Another political football!

 

Anything the Pres does during his remaining term will be soundly rejected by the republican party of those wanting to be reelected. Net neutrality is and has been a hot topic for some time and both parties want to be the author for political reasons. It's called 'not invented here'!! In other words, the party that doesn't get its name on it, will not like it. Same ol' garbage and the 'smart' public swallows it up.

[joeb]

Another political football!

 

Anything the Pres does during his remaining term will be soundly rejected by the republican party of those wanting to be reelected. Net neutrality is and has been a hot topic for some time and both parties want to be the author for political reasons. It's called 'not invented here'!! In other words, the party that doesn't get its name on it, will not like it. Same ol' garbage and the 'smart' public swallows it up.

Right.....  Mark Cuban, an Obama supporter and Democrat, did a very good job of exposing just what will happen through this regulation in his interview with Glenn Beck.  He is a techie from the word go and has very good grasp of what will happen and he has nothing positive to say about this. 

 

In addition to the effect this will have on speed it will bring political censorship to the internet in the form of the "Fairness Doctrine" which is the progressive's attempt to shut down all conservative voices.  It will also slow down development of faster hardware and bring about higher costs to the consumer, for the consumer always pays for the increase in the costs of doing business.  Probably the most negative technological impact will be on security though, as this will open up more contact points with the ability to see and manipulate the routers, switches, pipes, etc.... of which the internet is comprised. 

[Jeannieb43]

Two different articles in the L.A.Times today have praised this new regulation.   It will serve to protect the privacy of the users of the internet, according to these writers.

[Tom Wetmore]

Not sure how one arrives at political censorship by this or the list of fears horribles that are being conjured up by the ISP industry that is so opposed to having their monopoly threatened.

Mark Cuban is hardly an objective commentator. He is chairman of a cable company. He is heavily invested in the industry that does not want net neutrality.

Read this - https://gigaom.com/2015/02/19/entrepreneurs-embrace-net-neutrality-plan-except-mark-cuban/

[bonnie]

Not sure how one arrives at political censorship by this or the list of fears horribles that are being conjured up by the ISP industry that is so opposed to having their monopoly threatened.

Mark Cuban is hardly an objective commentator. He is chairman of a cable company. He is heavily invested in the industry that does not want net neutrality.

Read this - https://gigaom.com/2015/02/19/entrepreneurs-embrace-net-neutrality-plan-except-mark-cuban/

Comrades for Net Neutrality FCC chairman Tom Wheeler (Alex Wong/Getty) SHARE ARTICLE ON FACEBOOKSHARE TWEET ARTICLETWEET PLUS ONE ARTICLE ON GOOGLE PLUS+1 PRINT ARTICLE EMAIL ARTICLE ADJUST FONT SIZEAA by JOHN FUND February 26, 2015 1:00 PM The powers behind the FCC’s muscling of the Internet Today’s vote by a bitterly divided Federal Communications Commission that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility is the culmination of a decade-long battle by the Left. Using money from George Soros and liberal foundations that totaled at least $196 million, radical activists finally succeeded in ramming through “net neutrality,” or the idea that all data should be transmitted equally over the Internet. The final push involved unprecedented political pressure exerted by the Obama White House on FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, head of an ostensibly independent regulatory body. “Net neutrality’s goal is to empower the federal government to ration and apportion Internet bandwidth as it sees fit, and to thereby control the Internet’s content,” says Phil Kerpen, an anti-net-neutrality activist from the group American Commitment. The courts have previously ruled the FCC’s efforts to impose “net neutrality” out of bounds, so the battle isn’t over. But for now, the FCC has granted itself enormous power to micromanage the largely unrestrained Internet. Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration teamed up with Internet pioneers to promote a hands-off approach to the new industry and keep it free from discriminatory taxation. Many still prefer that policy. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and the charity One Laptop Per Child, says that net neutrality “doesn’t make sense” because “the truth is, not all bits [of data] are created equal.” Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute (which was once a favorite think tank of Clinton Democrats), issued a statement that net neutrality “endorses a backward-looking policy that would apply the brakes to the most dynamic sector of America’s economy.” But such voices have been drowned out by left-wing activists who want to manage the Internet to achieve their political objectives. The most influential of these congregate around the deceptively named Free Press, a liberal lobby co-founded in 2002 by Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor. His goals have always been clear. “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.” Earlier in 2000, he told the Marxist magazine Monthly Review: “Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.” When I interviewed him in 2010, he admitted he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.” In essence, what McChesney and his followers want is an Unfree Press — a media world that promotes their values. “To cast things in neo-Marxist terms that they could appreciate, they want to take control of the information means of production,” says Adam Therier of the blog TechLiberation. Certainly McChesney seems blind to the dangers of media control on the left. In 2007, he co-authored a remarkable survey of the media under Hugo Chávez’s already clearly thuggish regime in Venezuela: “Aggressive, unqualified political dissent is alive and well in the Venezuelan mainstream media, in a manner few other democratic nations have ever known, including our own.” Despite his astonishingly radical goals, McChesney’s Free Press group was able to leverage foundation cash and academic “research” into an influential force behind net neutrality. Julius Genachowski, President Obama’s first FCC chairman, hired Free Press’s Jen Howard as his press secretary. The FCC’s chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, has co-authored a Free Press report demanding regulation of political talk radio. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan cited research from Free Press and other left-wing groups backing net neutrality more than 50 times. The battle for control of the Internet isn’t over. Over two-thirds of the House and Senate are on record as opposing FCC regulation of the Internet, and a new president could change the policy overnight in 2017 even if the courts don’t block it. But for now, the “media reform” movement led by McChesney and his allies can claim bragging rights for their Saul Alinsky–style outflanking maneuver on Internet regulation. They financed the research behind the idea, installed their political allies in power, got the government to consider them experts on the issues they cared deeply about, and finally ran roughshod over both Congress and an initially reluctant FCC chairman. Conservatives should study how the Left won on this issue even as they acknowledge and fight the illegitimacy of many of the results. — John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414483/comrades-net-neutrality-john-fund

[CoAspen]

 

It will also slow down development of faster hardware and bring about higher costs to the consumer, for the consumer always pays for the increase in the costs of doing business.

 

This is a part of every argument, regardless of the business, when it comes to regulations. It's to be expected.Some businesses never want to decrease the yearly projected profit increase, so they threatened the consumer. It usually works out that everyone has to pay some extra with most falling on the consumer. Don't blame the regs when we are really talking about filling up the 'store houses'!

[Tom Wetmore]

And that is it in a nutshell

[bonnie]

This is a part of every argument, regardless of the business, when it comes to regulations. It's to be expected.Some businesses never want to decrease the yearly projected profit increase, so they threatened the consumer. It usually works out that everyone has to pay some extra with most falling on the consumer. Don't blame the regs when we are really talking about filling up the 'store houses'!

Anyone in business passes on every dollar possible to the consumer. When my cost for supplies increases I pass it on if at all possible. But I thought that increased taxes was all hype.

[Geoarrge]

The smart thing to do would have been to move away from the regional monopoly model, but fixing one government mistake with even more government is going to be about as destructive as most people would expect.
 

[joeb]

Not sure how one arrives at political censorship by this or the list of fears horribles that are being conjured up by the ISP industry that is so opposed to having their monopoly threatened.

Mark Cuban is hardly an objective commentator. He is chairman of a cable company. He is heavily invested in the industry that does not want net neutrality.

Read this - https://gigaom.com/2015/02/19/entrepreneurs-embrace-net-neutrality-plan-except-mark-cuban/

It's funny how you guys want to blame the Republicans, conservatives, business people, etc... for opposing Obama's policies and that the only reason they oppose them is because they hate him.    Bonnie's article points out that even government beaurocrats, FCC and FEC commissioners, oppose this and predict negative outcomes out of this.  Are you going to say they are crackpots with biased motives too?  Well, I can answer that question.  Of course you will.  You'll ignore what they say and claim they are biased. 

 

It's funny how you big government advocates ignore the historical outcomes of big government.  It always results in financial insolvency, loss of the freedoms to speak and worship freely, and great hardship on the people who live in countries governed that way.  Yet, you think that this time it wouldn't work that way.  You're willing to give up your freedoms to follow these kinds of scams.  I don't really care you if you lose your's for advocating what you do for you're asking for just that, but I don't want to see everyone else lose their freedoms. However, the innocent will suffer right along with those guilty of pushing the agenda you support.

[CoAspen]

 

However, the innocent will suffer right along with those guilty of pushing the agenda you support.

 

Who is 'you' and what is the 'agenda' you is supporting???????

[Tom Wetmore]

It is funny how those claiming to be so opposed to so called big government have been responsible for some of the most significant increases in the size of and spending of government.

It is really not the size of government or the amount of spending, but rather what parts can be big and on what they are willing to spend like there is no tomorrow.