“The Federal Communications Commission approved the so- called net-neutrality rules by a vote of three to two today,” Shields reports. “Supporters argued that Internet providers, which also own some of the content they deliver online, may interfere with videos and services owned by others such as Google Inc. ‘Today’s decision will help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet while encouraging innovation, protecting consumer choice and defending free speech,’ President Barack Obama said in a statement released today by the White House.”
“Stephen Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Inc. who traveled to Washington from his home near San Francisco to attend today’s FCC vote, told reporters after the meeting that the FCC should have passed more restrictive rules,” Shields reports. “For example, Internet-service providers may block online consumers from receiving movies streamed by Netflix, forcing users to watch movies owned by the telecommunications and telephone companies, Wozniak said. ‘Every normal person in the United States knows this,’ he said.”
“Commissioner Meredith Atwell Baker, one of two Republicans to vote against the regulations, called the rules an overreach. ‘There is no factual basis to support government intervention,’ she said. “The majority’s approach will inhibit the ability of networks to freely evolve and experiment,'” Shields reports. “Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate’s Republican leader, called the vote ‘a first step in controlling how Americans use the Internet.’ Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who is to become chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee when Congress convenes next year, said he would work ‘to strike down the FCC’s brazen effort to regulate the Internet.'”
Shields reports, “‘The FCC does not have the legal authority to issue these rules,’ Robert McDowell, the other Republican commissioner at the FCC, said during the meeting today. ‘This new effort will fail in court.’ Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, said in an e-mailed statement she would ask Congress to revoke the rules, calling them ‘an unprecedented power-grab by the unelected members’ of the FCC.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Back in April of this year, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to impose so-called “net neutrality” regulations. Read more via CNET: Court: FCC has no power to regulate Net neutrality – April 6, 2010
Wahh wash I want wikileaks and free Internet for life, wahhhh.
Tis merely step one toward true net neutrality.
Anyone who believes that the ISP’s aren’t going to choke off competing services need to have their head checked.
“Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate’s Republican leader, called the vote ‘a first step in controlling how Americans use the Internet.'”
Uhhhh…..an example to back up your assinine statement???
Oh, I forgot, logic need not apply in the U.S. Senate.
“‘The FCC does not have the legal authority to issue these rules,’ Robert McDowell, the other Republican commissioner at the FCC, said during the meeting today.”
FCC = Federal Communications Commission
Yeah, NO ONE uses the internet to communicate. Makes perfect sense.
Ever notice when it’s something “we” understand like net neutrality, we are able to discern all the BS and double speak. We know when “they” are full of it.
Now just imagine how much BS is buried in something we can barely comprehend like a 2000 page health care bill.
“We need to pass the law so we can figure out what’s in it.”
– paraphrasing Nancy Pelosi
The usual suspects are all over the place on this one.
I don’t agree with Republicans. Keeping the net free and traffic neutral is vital. I don’t think they get it at all. The entertainment industry is largely ANTI Net Neutrality, they of course want the right to figure out how to charge everyone multiple times for every bit that flows through the wires and they contribute heavily to the Democratic party.
When I read the FCC policy, I don’t see how anyone can block NetFlix, which is the popular example because of the NetFlix vs. Com cast war.
What a mess.
Cubert
It’s not simple.
And no, the ISPs are not planning on choking bandwidth, just raising the price of it to make up for lost revenue regardless what the FCC ruled.
We are actually I’m the process of implementing DOCSIS 3 to add more and faster bandwidth to compete for the business, not take away service.
That would be like a store having shorter shopping hours at Christmas to save on payroll.
It sounds good as a conspiracy but is a stupid business move.
The Democrats are at least ashamed enough to put fig leaves on this move, when the Teapublicans take power we’ll log on to Google’s Internet brought to you by Verizon. I for one do not welcome our new big money overlords.
Cubert…
You should learn to read more.
The FCC has ZERO authority, just like the court stated. Just cause FCC has communication in it’s name, does not mean it can regulate ALL communication.
FCC was setup in 1910 for telephone communication.
It has been given greater control over phone, and television service. Point out to us all where it was given any control over the Internet.
The last major change to the FCC was in 1996… And it did not include the Internet.
The court is correct, FCC does not have the authority.
@ theloniousMac
It’s very simple when you read the policy carefully:
– Wired (dsl or cable) internet providers cannot block or throttle certain applications other than peer-to-peer they believe is being used to violate copyright. There’s some net neutrality.
– WireLESS providers — the kind of broadband most who live in rural areas will eventually have to buy — are allowed to regulate traffic and charge for access at both ends of the pipe; i.e. a wireless Comcast can reduce NetFlix throughput unless NetFlix pays extra and Comcast can charge you more to receive NetFlix than its own video service. Here’s net neutrality being killed.
@ X
Pardon me, your monumental stupidity is showing yet again.
@ Backlash
Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which “authorizes the FCC to regulate interstate wire and radio ‘commerce in communication'” states:
“(b) POLICY.—It is the policy of the United States—
(1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;
(2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation;”
The FCC actions are base on this act. It will be interesting to see how the courts interpret the scope of the FCC’s power given by the law.
TowerTone,
I can’t see any reason that Comcast (for example) wouldn’t intentionally slow down downloads to your Apple TV because they offer a competing on-demand service. The consumer’s only recourse would be to switch to Verizon FIOS (there is nothing else in my area) which sucks balls.
@Backlash,
You mean that letter telling me to stop yelling out the window at my neighbors probably really wasn’t from the FCC?
And if you want to know how the Claimed internet authority came about with the FCC:
In August 2005, the FCC adopted a set of principles saying “consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice.” But the principles also permit providers’ “reasonable network management” and, confusingly, the FCC admitted on the day of their adoption that the guidelines “are not enforceable.”
From the Cnet link in the article.
“The FCC had known all along that it was on shaky legal ground. Its vote to take action against Comcast was a narrow 3-2, with the dissenting commissioners predicting at the time that it would not hold up in court.”
from same article.
FCC has to be GIVEN authority by Congress, and they have not. Why they lost the case against Comcrap.
@8^þ
Note how the 1996 Act is worded…
“to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;”
PROMOTE………. Where is the word Control… or Regulate….
again… READ the court ruling.
“Because the FCC “has failed to tie its assertion” of regulatory authority to an actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the power to regulate an Internet provider’s network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.”
Failed to tie their assertion to an ACTUAL law….
This crap is happening today. Welcome to the future:
Good news: All this month Virgin America is offering free onboard WiFi sponsored by Google Chrome!
Bad news: Google’s free WiFi on Virgin America flights throttles Apple bookstore, iTunes and app store! Literally, I could not download a *book* — yes, all 200K or whatever of it — using the onboard wifi, while craptastic Flash videos in web pages play fine…
Tried to update a tiny app on my iPad, same deal… takes 4 tries over 2 hours to DL a 1 or 2 MB app, while everything else works great.
Looked at the terms and conditions they show when signing in, and there it was, they reserve the right to block any and all services, companies etc supposedly to improve traffic…
Now does anyone think blocking BOOK DOWNLOADS is going to help traffic? And how is it helpful to throttle Apple App Store downloads to the point of effectively blocking them, while letting Flash ads play at full bandwidth?
It’s helpful to Google, no surprise, the asshats sponsoring the service… meanwhile the 1 or 2 poor losers on the flight trying to use some Fragmandroid device get a “great” Internet experience, while the 50% of passengers trying to use an iOS device get nothing but a giant Fuck You from Google.
So much (again) for not being evil…
Meanwhile, Obama FCC sells out to corporate interests hoping to retain this ability to wage corporate warfare at the expense of consumer interests…
And some brainwashed libertarian chumps on MDN keep pouring the Kool-Aid that government intervention is the problem!!!
Fsck that, what we need is a GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER of the Internet. Pay for it with tax dollars and run it by the public, for the public like the highway system.
Conservatards need to face the fact that Gov’t provided service is the only way we’ll ever get the Dumb Pipes we know we need. Let the corporations take an inch and they will take a mile every time… Internet will become like Cable TV wars with consumer forced to choose every day between bad and worse service/content bundles full of crap they don’t need and without access to what they want, because Co’s wont settle for providing Dumb Pipes and will jump at every opportunity to make an extra buck by bundling or up-selling for certain services.
You watch. And when Internet sucks in 10 years, think of all the Conservatard losers on MDN and everywhere else who fscked our country (again) and put us all permanently under the Corporate Thumb with their childish, impractical Ayn Rand romanticism!
Was the internet really broken? I remember when comcast was trying to throttle connections, didn’t everything sort itself out? Without government help? How many have to be hired by the government to enforce new rules? Will Apple be charged for turning off tethering in the US because ATT can’t handle it? Will it make the exclusive deal void because they colluded with ATT to throttle me from using my iphone the way I want to? Can I use the government to sue Apple because I can’t use the internet on the iphone the way I want to (banned apps, other email clients, VOIP, google voice, etc ….)? It’s all internet use, can Google use this againt them?
Cubert
It’s called “PR”. Also there are more ways to access the Internet being built out. Large metropolitan areas will have much more to choose from I’m the next 2-4 years.
And a question to those thinking the FCC will help development: Have you ever dealt with them? I have set aside 2 weeks in January just to do the paperwork and filings to drop some paths along with the towers and renew several others. I am NOT looking forward to it. They are a monstrosity that, while needed, are the typical govt. agency with varying rules and beareucratic speeds.
Government takover like the highway. Every state then? The national highway started as a military project, but the states manage them now. So the states need to run the internet. I live in Maryland, I filled the pothole in the street where I live. I really hope you are joking.
I work developing new radios for the military. Some move over to the civilian space … I would say that we could make prisoners of war deal with the FCC, but it would be cruel and inhuman.
Republicans 2010:
1. don’t want a START treaty to reduce nuclear stockpiles.
2. they don’t want help for the 9/11 responders.
3. they don’t want citizenship for immigrants that would join the U.S. armed forces or go into universities.
4. they don’t want net neutrality
5. they don’t want universal healthcare
They seem to want this country to move backwards or stay in the stone age for some reason. I don’t think the Democrats are all that great but at least Obama is restless in moving things forward but is constantly stalled by the “just do nothing” republicans.
Fredo’s comment is a joke, right?
Only a brain dead mouth breather would see NN as a takeover of the internet. Sure, let’s pay more to the comm companies to give us what we already have and never improve the infrastructure. Yes, please raise my monthly bill to watch youtube or read Facebook. I like paying more money for no additional benefits. I love the idea of choking off commerce and upstarts by partitioning the internet into prime real estate and run down slums.
Only in America are people dumb enough to argue and vote against their own best interests.
If you give one government agency one little finger, soon they will have your arm and twist it.
The next microsoft flaw that sends tons of traffic on the internet … will I have to wait for my ISP to get the FCC to have a hearing to allow it to throttle that traffic?
MEES, Republicans don’t want:
1) A nuclear arms treaty that severely limits future development and deployment of missle defense technologies by law.
2) Aid to first responders without adequate controls to ensure the people who actually need it get it.
3) Fast track citizenship for ILLEGAL immigrants while the process for skilled immigrants enzyme absurdly restrictive.
4) Orwellian named state intrusion into one of the most successful endeavors since the Enlightenment.
5) Government controlled healthcare.
Get it straight.
Citizenship for illegals that serve in the military? Do we allow this? Can someone from another country really enlist? Be given a weapon? Whoever thought that up should be examined.
Doh! Remains*
Enzyme? Really? I swear whoever wrote the algorithm for autocorrect was just having fun.
@ Urban B
No dipshit, Fredo’s comment not a joke. Did you read the first half of it? That sort of competitive-based throttling of applications/user experience is 100% true, 100% existing today (I experienced it myself), and 100% certain to grow under inadequate rules passed today that Ayn Rand crybaby John Wayne motherfsckers STILL think are just waaaaaay to socialisticy.
Sow ye Ayn Rand, reap ye unregulated corporate warfare and the consumer be raped. Yeah, we don’t need government AT ALL… the benevolent catfight between Comcast, Google, Apple and DirecTV will take care of us all. </contempt>
Well now the gov’t has finally managed to get their hands on the Internet. The net neutrality thing is a red herring. This is all about control.
You know if Comcast pulls traffic throttling crap consumers can switch and boycott. You don’t have that option when the gov’t controls the pipes.
Bad day.
Hilarious, Fredo! You’re smart. Not like everyone says.
But the government would never do anything bad to the internet. They are here to protect and take care of us. They are going to pay my mortgage when I lose my job.
Some of you don’t get it. Even if we agree that NN is a good thing, after that what else do you think the gov’t could or would do? Once the gov’t has control they won’t give it up.
Ubermac
“If you give one government agency one little finger, soon they will have your arm and twist it.”
Exactly.
Urban B
“I swear whoever wrote the algorithm for autocorrect was just having fun.”
You are not the only one who believes that…
@Really
In a way yes. and its been that way for a long time. Legal immigrants though.. not illegal.
you CAN come to the US legally… and join the military, and you will gain citizenship from it.
What was mentioned above is that Republicans are against this process… not true. They are against illegal immigrants getting this same ability to enlist and become citizens.
Same type of perk California wants to do. Illegal immigrants break the federal laws and come to California.. and get IN STATE tuition rates for college. yet someone right across the border in Oregon lets say.. has to pay out of state Tuition rates.
The primary problem with letting market sort everything out is that, with the exception of very few large metropolitan areas, where ISPs may be competing somewhat against each other, in America, ISP business is practically a monopoly. If an ISP decides to throttle (or block) NetFlix traffic because they are selling you their own streaming service, there is pretty much nothing ANYONE (except few people living in large cities) can do about it. You’re pretty much stuck with your ISP, and even those who DO have an option, will more than likely face the same throttling from others. ISPs of today all offer entire packages (phone, internet, TV). They share interests, and compete together against Apple, Google and other companies offering streaming content. Since you can’t switch to Apple (or Google) as your ISP, you will simply HAVE to pay up to your ISP for decent speed from iTunes Store (or Apple, Netflix, Google will have to pay up to have throttling removed). And make no mistake, ISPs will be in the position to make that price high enough for you to make it cheaper to buy their own crappy streaming offering, rather than Apple’s.
Net Neutrality regulation will force ISPs to compete as dumb pipes, and not by leveraging their TV businesses. If it costs them more to provide enough bandwidth for streaming video, they’ll have to figure out how to cover that cost. I don’t mind paying for my bandwidth, as long as I know that what I have is what I’m paying for, i.e. 25Mbps down, 15Mbps up, regardless of who I’m getting that content from (that would be Verizon’s FiOS).
Thank you Predrag. Where I live, I have no choice in ISP providers. I have to use Cox. I can’t pick between several choices suck as Comcast, Verizon, etc. So, from where I stand, my ISP provider has a monopoly, and most other people are in this same situation as well. If Cox decides to throttle Netflix to make their crappy, expensive cable look better by comparison, I can’t go to another ISP to reflect my displeasure. I have to pay the extra charge to increase my bandwidth for Netflix, or buy their cable. The only way I could show my displeasure with them would be to cancel my internet, which is not as option. And if you think it won’t happen, just wait and see.
“FCC = Federal Communications Commission
Yeah, NO ONE uses the internet to communicate. Makes perfect sense.”
The difference is that in other communication systems, the government owns the airwaves. That isn’t the case with private networks.
Predrag
When you are right, you are right.
And when you are wrong, as in this time, you not only shoot from the hip, but you hit yourself in the balls.
Smaller towns that I service don’t have overlapping products. Some just have cable for video, phone for DSL, or maybe slow internet on the cable, no video from the Phone company but an agreement with Dish or DirecTV. If the small cable systems DO have decent internet (3 Mbps), they seldom have the system bandwidth to offer HD video. NN won’t change any of this. These systems are just happy to have the subs(scribers) they can get and WON’T do anything to lose them.
Not only that, but the bandwidth most smaller systems get are from their enemy, the Phone company. NN won’t affect their control over this bandwidth. In turn, Big Phone in smaller towns can’t afford fiber to the nodes to offer anything better than DSL. This is typical for towns under 5,000 people. There is not enough money to upgrade in this economy.
But to base a decision to regulate the internet on what a small percent of the country needs is ridiculous. This has nothing to do with helping small, rural systems. It has everything to do with getting votes in large, urban areas.
Medium size towns are just opposite. It is still easy to build out new plant (if the local economy is good) and make good money IF the subs are treated fair. These markets offer cable, DSL, some fiber, satellite, and wireless. Size is usually 10,000 to 75,000.
Larger cities can vary depending on location and demographics. Phil Fry may live in an area that has such piss-poor ROI that the ISP is scared to invest anymore until the tax structure, NN, and health-care are ironed out. Unfortunately, these are all thing that affect business decisions, which is why Democrats can’t comprehend their effects on the economy.
Seriously, this is nothing more than a populist witch-hunt used to get votes. What a pity.
Now, everyone who has had their internet service throttled, please raise your hand.
Two problems:
Nothing about net neutrality helps those in areas without choices for broadband. It may actually slow that down by requiring any new development to cover all content equally, so if that content is going to be delivered well, the initial infrastructure investment would be enormous. Smaller firms attempting to provide a more basic service so poor kids can do their homework (for example) won’t be able to because the provider won’t be allowed to block bandwidth killers like Netflix and YouTube… Which poor kids have no business logging onto in the first place.
And that leads to my second problem. People arre going apoplectic over paying an extra buck and half for more, higher quality, and faster delivered entertainment. TV shows, folks! Granted, there are other examples, but this is the one that got under everyones’s saddle.
Although, I agree with the original assessment that the court will, yet again, stop this if Congress doesn’t get to it first, so it may all be moot.
@ Towertone
I live in a town of 15,000. We have two choices: dsl or cable. The dsl is reliable, but slow. The cable is not so reliable and the prices have increased over 500% since 2000.
I also disagree with your statement “to base a decision to regulate the internet on what a small percent of the country needs” since the US ranks 35th in the world for broadband speeds. As of the 1st quarter of 2010, only 57% of the internet connections in the country had access at better than 2 Mbps. (This data is based on server reports from Akamai.) The majority of the country has slower access – and it’s not improving. The same data shows a decline of 2.4% year over year from 2009 in access speeds.
8^þ
1) Those numbers are skewed. It is silly to take a country the size of America and compare it to a smaller nation. Take the larger urban areas and go out the appropriate distance to equal another country and get your average that way.
2) NN will not change anything about bandwidth or speed, except to possibly slow its deployment down. Depends on what the FCC does from here on out.
3) “the prices have increased over 500% since 2000.”
the prices of what? Did you have HD video in 2000? Did you have a DVR? Did you have as many channels? Were the per sub prices anywhere near as high as what the networks and Hollywood are charging now? Did you pay for locals? Did you have phone? Internet? What exactly went up by that astronomical amount? NOT ONE OF OUR SYSTEMS HAS GONE UP MORE THAT 50% FOR BASIC. Our profit margins are slimmer now for video because of satellite, Verizon and ATT.
But I am curious. If a “basic” plan cost $30.00 in 2000, how much is that now? And who pays that much for that shit?
Believe what you want, folks, but the biggest growth for cable in the past decade has been internet, video has held its own, and phone service is a loss-leader. NOW tell me ISPs are going to go fsck their customers out of bandwidth.
What surprises me is how many Apple fans are against net neutrality.
We need net neutrality because most of the ISPs are also content providers. These companys are in direct competition with Apple. These companys want to charge both Apple and their customers for the bandwidth.
If you think that I am wrong then consider this. You pay $60 to $150 per month for cable or sattelite television. Yet you are still watching commercials that are paid for by the networks that produce the shows that you watch.
When cable was first introduced, the promise of it was no more commercials. Yet that never happened. You are paying twice for content. You should not have to pay twice. But you gladly do and I shake my head in wonderment.
And to those of you that say that we have a choice of ISPs, and can switch if we do not like the rates of the one the we are using. I don’t know what fantasy land you live in, but I live in the US. In the US, everyone really has only four choices for high speed Internet service. The telephone company, the cable company, or one the two satellite services. Not much choice their. Ironically, all of them are competing with Apple to provide content.
I do not know about you, but Apple has treated me as a customer a lot better than the cable and telephone companies. They deserve our support of net neutrality so that we do not fall into the same trap that we did with cable TV.
You scum bag Democrats are behind that this? This is one more nail in the coffin of Freedom in the US! Screw you foreigners who chime in. Go to hell.
Should read The Law by Frederick Bastiat.
Spells out freedom perfectly.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Law-ebook/dp/B001B5VPXY/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1292986263&sr=8-1
I love my Apple products. We truly pray for our freedom from you commies every waking moment. 2012 can’t come soon enough from this nightmare and assault on humanity.
Sorry, BSOD, but you, as many others, don’t have a clue where the money goes to for cable expenses.
It ain’t profit and big salaries, I can guaranDAMtee you that.
(BTW,ever hear the one about how Social Security was supposed to be set up as individual accounts when it began?)
Never let a vibrant free market go unhindered by stupid meddling bureaucrats.
That’s four choices, which is 3 higher than it started with, and not as high as it is likely to go.
This stuff isn’t free. It isn’t cheap, either. Are we really to expect to get this vast expansion of content and speed without having to pay for it? I find it silly how much complaining there is about rising cable prices, as an example. How many stations were there in 1999? How many are there now?
The other part of requiring industries to do x,y, and z is that it never lowers costs. Never.
Perpetually shortsighted knee-jerk Libs and anyone else who’s confused about this NN bullshit, read the book below and apply it to NN and wake the fsck up, finally. Stop being easily-manipulated pawns of control-freak bureaucrats:
The good guys, the bad guys and the first amendment: Free speech vs. fairness in broadcasting by Fred Friendly
It’s NOT “neutral.”
Read the language for a change, Lib lambs.
Those who trust government deserve to be enslaved.
By JOHN FUND
The Federal Communications Commission’s new “net neutrality” rules, passed on a partisan 3-2 vote yesterday, represent a huge win for a slick lobbying campaign run by liberal activist groups and foundations. The losers are likely to be consumers who will see innovation and investment chilled by regulations that treat the Internet like a public utility.
There’s little evidence the public is demanding these rules, which purport to stop the non-problem of phone and cable companies blocking access to websites and interfering with Internet traffic. Over 300 House and Senate members have signed a letter opposing FCC Internet regulation, and there will undoubtedly be even less support in the next Congress.
Yet President Obama, long an ardent backer of net neutrality, is ignoring both Congress and adverse court rulings, especially by a federal appeals court in April that the agency doesn’t have the power to enforce net neutrality. He is seeking to impose his will on the Internet through the executive branch. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a former law school friend of Mr. Obama, has worked closely with the White House on the issue. Official visitor logs show he’s had at least 11 personal meetings with the president.
The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney’s agenda? “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.”
A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that “any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.” Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been “taken out of context.” He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.”
For a man with such radical views, Mr. McChesney and his Free Press group have had astonishing influence. Mr. Genachowski’s press secretary at the FCC, Jen Howard, used to handle media relations at Free Press. The FCC’s chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, co-authored a Free Press report calling for regulation of political talk radio.
Free Press has been funded by a network of liberal foundations that helped the lobby invent the purported problem that net neutrality is supposed to solve. They then fashioned a political strategy similar to the one employed by activists behind the political speech restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill. The methods of that earlier campaign were discussed in 2004 by Sean Treglia, a former program officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts, during a talk at the University of Southern California. Far from being the efforts of genuine grass-roots activists, Mr. Treglia noted, the campaign-finance reform lobby was controlled and funded by foundations like Pew.
“The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot,” he told his audience. He noted that “If Congress thought this was a Pew effort, it’d be worthless.” A study by the Political Money Line, a nonpartisan website dealing with issues of campaign funding, found that of the $140 million spent to directly promote campaign-finance reform in the last decade, $123 million came from eight liberal foundations.
After McCain-Feingold passed, several of the foundations involved in the effort began shifting their attention to “media reform”—a movement to impose government controls on Internet companies somewhat related to the long-defunct “Fairness Doctrine” that used to regulate TV and radio companies. In a 2005 interview with the progressive website Buzzflash, Mr. McChesney said that campaign-finance reform advocate Josh Silver approached him and “said let’s get to work on getting popular involvement in media policy making.” Together the two founded Free Press.
(continued below)
Free Press and allied groups such as MoveOn.org quickly got funding. Of the eight major foundations that provided the vast bulk of money for campaign-finance reform, six became major funders of the media-reform movement. (They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.) Free Press today has 40 staffers and an annual budget of $4 million.
These wealthy funders pay for more than publicity and conferences. In 2009, Free Press commissioned a poll, released by the Harmony Institute, on net neutrality. Harmony reported that “more than 50% of the public argued that, as a private resource, the Internet should not be regulated by the federal government.” The poll went on to say that since “currently the public likes the way the Internet works . . . messaging should target supporters by asking them to act vigilantly” to prevent a “centrally controlled Internet.”
To that end, Free Press and other groups helped manufacture “research” on net neutrality. In 2009, for example, the FCC commissioned Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society to conduct an “independent review of existing information” for the agency in order to “lay the foundation for enlightened, data-driven decision making.”
Considering how openly activist the Berkman Center has been on these issues, it was an odd decision for the FCC to delegate its broadband research to this outfit. Unless, of course, the FCC already knew the answer it wanted to get.
The Berkman Center’s FCC- commissioned report, “Next Generation Connectivity,” wound up being funded in large part by the Ford and MacArthur foundations. So some of the same foundations that have spent years funding net neutrality advocacy research ended up funding the FCC-commissioned study that evaluated net neutrality research.
The FCC’s “National Broadband Plan,” released last spring, included only five citations of respected think tanks such as the International Technology and Innovation Foundation or the Brookings Institution. But the report cited research from liberal groups such as Free Press, Public Knowledge, Pew and the New America Foundation more than 50 times.
So the “media reform” movement paid for research that backed its views, paid activists to promote the research, saw its allies installed in the FCC and other key agencies, and paid for the FCC research that evaluated the research they had already paid for. Now they have their policy. That’s quite a coup.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703886904576031512110086694.html
TowerTone,
“I have set aside 2 weeks in January just to do the paperwork and filings to drop some paths along with the towers and renew several others. I am NOT looking forward to it.”
“I feel your pain.” <read in your best Bill Clinton voice>
It is amazing how many people are calling Net Neutrality supporters Liberal. It is childish name calling with the sole intent of intimidating. To that, I say; “I’m rubber, your glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”
I have never voted for a Democrat my entire life. I have always voted for a Republican. So the name calling does not work. What does work is a rational argument.
I support Net Neutrality because I am tired of seeing companies monopolize something, like cable TV, and then screw the customer. Lets be honest, how many of you are happy with cable TV? They provide you with so called HD TV, but it is nothing but fuzzy pixelated crap. The content I get from Apple is near the same quality as Blu-Ray.
The cell phone providers do the same thing. They are selling so called “4g”. It is not 4g, it is still 3g. Sure it is faster, but it is still 3g.
Bottle companies do it too. Why are you paying Coca Cola $1.50 for a bottle of Dasani, the same price as a bottle of Coke, when all it is is tap water?
If you think that the ISPs are not going to screw all of us, and I mean Apple too, then you need to read this article on Wired:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/carriers-net-neutrality-tiers/all/1
Download the PowerPoint presentation too. It’s an eye opener. Do you really want to pay more just so that you can access Facebook? That’s what they are proposing.
BSOD,
It’s painfully obvious that you have no idea WTF you’re babbling about.
NN is nutz!!! Commie TakeOver!
That link that Everyone put up is some great reading. Thanks!
At this point you know anything coming out of Mitch McConnell’s mouth is going to have the aroma of Corporate Oligarchy butt:
Reeking propagandist double-talk.
:-Q*****
Our world is going under because of lack of limitations in our our consuming frenzy… It’s about time to learn to downscale it a little and become a little more realistic.
Better doing it willingly while we still can… Waiting too long and it’ll be just too late. Then, we’ll have no other choice left to die with our stupidity…
@theloniousMac
“We need to pass the law so we can figure out what’s in it.”
– paraphrasing Nancy Pelosi
You are a jack ass. Her point was that those working on the bill should be looking at it “away from the fog of controversy’ meaning away from knuckleheads like you who want to contort and distort statements.
Few monikers on this website suffer such a wide intellectual chasm between namesake and person who has co-opted the name.
May it die a premature death in the courts.
Oh and I am usually supportive of what Obama tries to do but I am not with him on this one. I am for Net Neutrality that is truly Net Neutrality but this ain’t it. There may be a few good parts but it is fatally flawed with loopholes and the fact that it doesn’t cover wireless at all is outrageous.
almux-
wow, just wow 😀
anyways, I could see one person left to die in stupidity.
Actual Network Neutrality is lost from this bill. Network Neutrality is a dumb pipes concept. The providers sell bandwidth. Period. No per message charges for text messages, no bundled content with favored throughput factors. Just bandwidth. You can charge more per MB if you want to modulate use, but bandwidth is all you sell and it treats every packet the same. As soon as the regulation started exempting certain types of connectivity (wireless) or using terms like “reasonable” restrictions, it lost focus and became useless.
BRING BACK DADT TOO! LIBERAL COMMIE GAYS ROONING THE COUNTRY!
ah
1984
f 454
nazi germini
the government regulation of information always ends so well doesn’t it
(and I will not be responding to any comments since this is a political thing)
Supreme Dictator Obama has decreed you must buy health insurance, or it’s fines and the gulag for you. And the FCC can regulate anything they want if it helps him get re-elected.
And you must wear underwear, and on the outside, so we can check.
@Urban B
Please stop the hypocrisy and doublespeak.
1) Republicans are for smaller Government *except* for massive increases in defense spending. We do not need to spend approximately $500,000,000,000 (count the zeros on your fingers and toes) each year on national defense using borrowed money. And that is in addition to the hundreds of billions being spent on actually waging war. Get a clue on fiscal conservatism and fiscal responsibility.
2) Republicans are for self determination except when it goes against your state-supported religious preferences or you need to use up a couple of decades of military stockpiles. Then the message is to impose regime change on the other side of the world (Iraq).
3) Following up on (2), the Constitution that is claimed to be so beloved by Republicans when it suits them guarantees many freedoms including that of religion. Stop trying to impose your insanity on me.
4) Furthermore, cease your attempts to institute Constitutional Amendments *against* certain practices. Prohibition did not work for obvious reasons, and neither will your other ill-considered and asinine concepts for amendments.
5) Republican administrations have spent hundreds of billions on missile defense with little success. Reducing the number of nuclear weapons is a far more logical and effective approach than developing missile defenses that will, at best, stop only a portion of the incoming missiles in a major conflict. The treaty can be formulated to permit smaller scale defenses against one or a few missiles, such as might be launched by terrorists or religious nuts.
6) Republicans had eight years to do something for first responders. They did *nothing.* Stop acting like you have a heart. If you want adequate “controls” then help to develop some. Otherwise, get your obstructionist asses out of the way.
7) Republicans have done *nothing* to facilitate the entry of “skilled immigrants” into the United States. In fact, the Bush administration alienated college professors, college students, and others. If they left the U.S. to visit family then they could not get back in. The real reason not to “fast track citizenship” for immigrants via military service is that it stinks of the mercenary approach that led to the downfall of Rome. When a society becomes decadent and its citizens become unwilling to defend their country, then that society is on a path of decline.
8) You have no idea what “Orwellian” means, do you?? It is just another Republican buzzword – a label that you use to dumb down a discussion because your position cannot prevail when confronted by reason, evidence, and facts.
9) The health care system is broken. The system only works for the health care industry (which tends to funnel a great deal of money to Republicans), the wealthy, and the subset of American workers who enjoy decent health insurance. It fails the rest and, therefore, it fails us all. In the Republican approach, however, the impacts of that failure trickles down to the bottom. This is one of the few cases in which “trickle down theories” actually work.
If we work together, then we can arrive at reasonable solutions to our social, environmental, and economic challenges. But the first step is to stop claiming to have all of the answers and to be willing to debate, discuss, and compromise.
The biggest surprise to me is that the Republican party has been so successful in convincing lower and middle-class Americans that they matter and that Republican policies will benefit them. Tax cut and spend will doom this country.
@swiley
You do realize that 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 (not 454) are fictional works intended to illustrate the dangers of totalitarian government?
nazi germini?? Really, “germini”? Education is fundamental to a successful democracy. Get some.
It is obviously time to renew my commitment to cease responding to the political drivel on this forum. Your minds are closed and impaired. Your reason is shriveled. Your vision is clouded. This is a total waste of time.
Wow great posts KingMel. Trying to change closed minds can be a waste of time. But speaking the truth isn’t.