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Okay, so you're not claiming it has anything to do with the FCC. Fine.
That's why I asked.
-
Changing RCF's index page, please click on "Forums" to access the forums.
Obama's Plan to Regulate the Internet is 332 Pages. The Public Can't Read It!
- Thread starter OptimusPrime
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Okay, so you're not claiming it has anything to do with the FCC. Fine.
That's why I asked.
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Weakens the credibility of my argument? It's all about HIS credibility. Come on, the guy ran on transparency! His first day in office he promised no secrets. Obama: "Let me say it as simply as i can: transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency!". Seriously?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72g7qmeP1dE
You take issue with me calling Obama, "President Transparency", but then call me a brainwashed moron because i dont want 332 pages of regulations to be passed without the people or their representative being able to see them first?? It's a secret vote! It's all being negotiated behind closed doors by a select few!! They refuse to testify before Congress about what's in it!!! You are in favor of this? I'm the brainwashed moron?
spydy13
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Since Obama is simply trying to make the internet a utility like water this is an apt analogy:
Maybe "moron" was too strong a word, but you guys and anyone else that are freaking out about this have certainly been brainwashed just like this here general by a corporate lobbying message that wants everyone to be scared into thinking that commie Obama is coming in to rule the internet so that this gets defeated and those companies can continue to bully everyone that uses the internet.
Instead, this proposal actually keeps the internet free because it makes sure that companies with more money can't pay to get their information to you faster which would limit startups that might put those companies out of business by actually providing better service, just like how flouridating the water was designed to help people who can't afford to go to the dentist all the time not have their teeth fall out of their head.
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How can you possibly know all that when the regulations haven't even been made public?
And if that is all true, then why not make the proposed regulations public prior to the voting so that people can see and judge them for themselves?
spydy13
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Because that's what Net Neutrality actually is.
A lot of people have been misinformed that it is some grand conspiracy designed to take your liberties because the internet companies don't want it passed.
The only people who get hurt in a world without Net Neutrality is the consumer because they will get certain content slower and the content that arrives quicker will cost more because there is no way that Netflix or Google or anyone that is forced to pay the extortion fee by the internet providers to get a fast lane will eat that cost. No, it will get forced onto the consumer while the internet providers laugh their way to the bank.
Contrary to popular belief, the government uses regulation to protect consumers from corporations whose only concern is their bottom line.
OptimusPrime
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I'm pretty sure that is the popular belief, even though it is completely idiotic and has been proven wrong countless times over.
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First, Net Neutrality is a label, not a regulation or piece of legislation. Congress once passed a bill called "The Small Business Jobs Protection Act", that basically did nothing more than raise the minimum wage. The label attached to a piece of legislation or regulation is no guarantee of what it actually does.
Second, even well-intentioned legislation or regulation that is poorly-drafted can have unintended consequences. One of the heightened risks you run when you rush through something quickly so as to avoid public comment/critique is that there will be all sorts of unintended consequences/drafting errors/whatever that will go undetected. You arguably have a great example of this with the current challenge to Obamacare. Had that bill been made public for 30 or so days before the actual vote, that may not have happened.
Having not seen this 330 page regulation, none of us can know exactly what was 1) intended, or 2) the result (intended or not) of the regulation.
And, you still haven't addressed the justification/logic of rushing this regulation through so as to deliberately deprive the public of the right to review/comment on that regulation.
spydy13
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http://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-wheeler-proposes-new-rules-protecting-open-internet
This was released all the way back on February 4th. It's ok to take off your tin foil hats now.
This was released all the way back on February 4th. It's ok to take off your tin foil hats now.
OptimusPrime
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Cometh the Censor
Birth of What Will Prove a Short Siege
February 15, 2015
I see with no surprise that Washington is stepping up its campaign to censor the internet. It had to come, and will succeed. It will put paid forever to America’s flirtation with freedom.
The country was never really a democracy, meaning a polity in which final power rested with the people. The voters have always been too remote from the levers of power to have much influence. Yet for a brief window of time there actually was freedom of a sort. With the censorship of the net—it will be called “regulation”—the last hope of retaining former liberty will expire.
Over the years freedom has declined in inverse proportion to the reach of the central government. (Robert E. Lee: “I consider the constitutional power of the General Government as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.” Yep.)
Through most of the country’s history, Washington lacked the ability to meddle, control, micromanage, and punish. In 1850, it had precious little knowledge of events in lands such as Wyoming, Tennessee, or West Virginia, no capacity to do much about them, and not a great deal of interest. People on remote farms and in small towns governed themselves as they chose, not always well but without rule by distant bureaucracies and moneyed interests.
For a sunny few years, local freedom rested substantially on principle, a notion inconceivable now. The Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, and Robert E. Lees genuinely believed in freedom, and worried about the coming of tyranny. Justices of the Supreme Court often upheld the tenets of the Bill of Rights. As human affairs go—poorly, as a rule—it was impressive.
As time went by, however, it became clear that incapacity, not principle, was the only reliable brake on the rise of dictatorship. In 1950, the government could put a mail cover on anyone, quite possibly illegally if the FBI were involved, but steaming envelopes open required time, effort, and manpower. Mass surveillance was impossible, and so didn’t happen. Without surveillance, there can be no control.
Fora long time it was due to principle that freedom of the press remained, no matter how much the government hated it. During the war in Vietnam, “underground” papers, which of course published openly, were virulently critical of the government. The mainstream media of the time published shocking photographs of the war, much to the fury of the Pentagon. The courts allowed it.
Today, that has changed. Washington has learned to avoid dissent from its wars by using a volunteer army of men about whom no one of influence cares. The use of “drones” further reduces public interest, and today the major media, owned by corporations aligned with arms manufacturers and manned by intimidated reporters, hide the results on the battlefield. For practical purposes, today’s press is an arm of government.
The old checks and balances, however modest in their effects, have withered. The Supreme Court is now a branch office of Madame Tussaud’s, Congress a two-headed corpse, the Constitution a scrap of moldering parchment remembered only by hopeless romantics, and Washington a sandbox of unaccountable hacks inbred to the point of hemophilia. Obama has discovered that he can do almost anything, calling it an executive order, and no one will dare challenge him.
In its rare waking moments, the Supreme Court has shown little inclination to protect the Bill of Rights, which Washington regards as quaint at best and, usually, an annoyance to be overcome by executive order and judicial somnolence. The obvious reality that having the government read every email, record every telephone conversation, monitor every financial transaction and so on is a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment bothers neither the Supremes nor, heaven knows, the President. It is clearly unconstitutional, but we do not live in constitutional times. Governments aggregate power. They do not relinquish it, short of revolution.
Today the internet is the only free press we have, all that stands against total control of information. Consider how relentlessly the media impose political correctness, how the slightest offense to the protected groups—we all know who they are—or to sacred policies leads to firing of reporters and groveling by politicians. The wars are buried and serious criticism of Washington suppressed. That leaves the net, only the net, without which we would know nothing.
Which is why it must be and will be censored, sooner if Washington can get away with it and later if not. The tactics are predictable. First, “hate speech” will be banned. The government will tell us whom we can hate and whom we cannot. “Hatred” will be vaguely defined so that one will never be sure when one is engaging in it and, since it will be prosecutable, one will have to be very careful. Disapproval of favored groups, or of their behavior, will be defined as hatred. National security will be invoked, silencing whistle-blowers or, eventually, anything that might make the public uneasy with Washington’s wars.
The next step probably will be to block links to foreign sites deemed to transgress. China is good at this. The most likely avenue will be executive orders of increasingly Draconian nature, about which Congress and the Dead—the Supreme Court, I meant to say—will do nothing.
At that point, coming soon to a theater near you, the United States as it was intended to be, and to an extent was, will be over. Our increasingly characterless young, raised to ignorance and Appropriate Thought by government schools, will question nothing. They will have no way of knowing that there is anything to question.
I suppose it can be debated whether the current enstupidation of the rising generations is deliberate or merely the consequence of a return to peasantry inescapable in a democracy. The petulance and immaturity running through so much of society may be inevitable in a spoiled people who have never had to do anything and have never been told “no.” Certainly things today resemble the end games of other once-dominant cultures.
Mental darkness facilitates authoritarianism, and darkness we have. Many college graduates can barely read. Their ignorance of history, politics, and geography (and practically everything else) is profound, and they see no reason why they should know anything. They seem not to suspect that there might be things worth knowing.
I am hard pressed to think of a society in such internal decline that has turned itself around, and I cannot imagine how ours might do so. One sure thing is that, once the internet is gelded, there will be no hope at all. And the assault has begun.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Internet.shtml
Birth of What Will Prove a Short Siege
February 15, 2015
I see with no surprise that Washington is stepping up its campaign to censor the internet. It had to come, and will succeed. It will put paid forever to America’s flirtation with freedom.
The country was never really a democracy, meaning a polity in which final power rested with the people. The voters have always been too remote from the levers of power to have much influence. Yet for a brief window of time there actually was freedom of a sort. With the censorship of the net—it will be called “regulation”—the last hope of retaining former liberty will expire.
Over the years freedom has declined in inverse proportion to the reach of the central government. (Robert E. Lee: “I consider the constitutional power of the General Government as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.” Yep.)
Through most of the country’s history, Washington lacked the ability to meddle, control, micromanage, and punish. In 1850, it had precious little knowledge of events in lands such as Wyoming, Tennessee, or West Virginia, no capacity to do much about them, and not a great deal of interest. People on remote farms and in small towns governed themselves as they chose, not always well but without rule by distant bureaucracies and moneyed interests.
For a sunny few years, local freedom rested substantially on principle, a notion inconceivable now. The Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, and Robert E. Lees genuinely believed in freedom, and worried about the coming of tyranny. Justices of the Supreme Court often upheld the tenets of the Bill of Rights. As human affairs go—poorly, as a rule—it was impressive.
As time went by, however, it became clear that incapacity, not principle, was the only reliable brake on the rise of dictatorship. In 1950, the government could put a mail cover on anyone, quite possibly illegally if the FBI were involved, but steaming envelopes open required time, effort, and manpower. Mass surveillance was impossible, and so didn’t happen. Without surveillance, there can be no control.
Fora long time it was due to principle that freedom of the press remained, no matter how much the government hated it. During the war in Vietnam, “underground” papers, which of course published openly, were virulently critical of the government. The mainstream media of the time published shocking photographs of the war, much to the fury of the Pentagon. The courts allowed it.
Today, that has changed. Washington has learned to avoid dissent from its wars by using a volunteer army of men about whom no one of influence cares. The use of “drones” further reduces public interest, and today the major media, owned by corporations aligned with arms manufacturers and manned by intimidated reporters, hide the results on the battlefield. For practical purposes, today’s press is an arm of government.
The old checks and balances, however modest in their effects, have withered. The Supreme Court is now a branch office of Madame Tussaud’s, Congress a two-headed corpse, the Constitution a scrap of moldering parchment remembered only by hopeless romantics, and Washington a sandbox of unaccountable hacks inbred to the point of hemophilia. Obama has discovered that he can do almost anything, calling it an executive order, and no one will dare challenge him.
In its rare waking moments, the Supreme Court has shown little inclination to protect the Bill of Rights, which Washington regards as quaint at best and, usually, an annoyance to be overcome by executive order and judicial somnolence. The obvious reality that having the government read every email, record every telephone conversation, monitor every financial transaction and so on is a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment bothers neither the Supremes nor, heaven knows, the President. It is clearly unconstitutional, but we do not live in constitutional times. Governments aggregate power. They do not relinquish it, short of revolution.
Today the internet is the only free press we have, all that stands against total control of information. Consider how relentlessly the media impose political correctness, how the slightest offense to the protected groups—we all know who they are—or to sacred policies leads to firing of reporters and groveling by politicians. The wars are buried and serious criticism of Washington suppressed. That leaves the net, only the net, without which we would know nothing.
Which is why it must be and will be censored, sooner if Washington can get away with it and later if not. The tactics are predictable. First, “hate speech” will be banned. The government will tell us whom we can hate and whom we cannot. “Hatred” will be vaguely defined so that one will never be sure when one is engaging in it and, since it will be prosecutable, one will have to be very careful. Disapproval of favored groups, or of their behavior, will be defined as hatred. National security will be invoked, silencing whistle-blowers or, eventually, anything that might make the public uneasy with Washington’s wars.
The next step probably will be to block links to foreign sites deemed to transgress. China is good at this. The most likely avenue will be executive orders of increasingly Draconian nature, about which Congress and the Dead—the Supreme Court, I meant to say—will do nothing.
At that point, coming soon to a theater near you, the United States as it was intended to be, and to an extent was, will be over. Our increasingly characterless young, raised to ignorance and Appropriate Thought by government schools, will question nothing. They will have no way of knowing that there is anything to question.
I suppose it can be debated whether the current enstupidation of the rising generations is deliberate or merely the consequence of a return to peasantry inescapable in a democracy. The petulance and immaturity running through so much of society may be inevitable in a spoiled people who have never had to do anything and have never been told “no.” Certainly things today resemble the end games of other once-dominant cultures.
Mental darkness facilitates authoritarianism, and darkness we have. Many college graduates can barely read. Their ignorance of history, politics, and geography (and practically everything else) is profound, and they see no reason why they should know anything. They seem not to suspect that there might be things worth knowing.
I am hard pressed to think of a society in such internal decline that has turned itself around, and I cannot imagine how ours might do so. One sure thing is that, once the internet is gelded, there will be no hope at all. And the assault has begun.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Internet.shtml
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That's a page and a half summary of what they wanted the (eventually 330+ page) regulation to accomplish. Whether the regulation itself actually accomplishes that, whether there are other things of concern in the version of the regulation that actually passed, and whether there are unintended consequences remain a complete mystery. Those are things that cannot be determined unless you can read the actual regulation, in final form, before it passes.
So again, what is the (or any) justification for deliberately not letting that happen?
spydy13
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Yes, it is a label. Just like estate taxes have been labeled "death taxes" by republicans that don't like them. Those labels don't change what the thing is.
Obamacare is a shitty law. No challenges from me on that. I hope it gets repealed because it didn't go FAR ENOUGH to actually solve the healthcare problem in this country, i.e. outlawing insurance companies whose mission is to take in money for services they never want to provide.
Would it be better if this was out in the open? Yes, mainly because people who are so concerned about this would see that there is nothing wrong with the regulation. Do I want congress getting their grubby hands on this issue? Nope.
spydy13
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Are you telling me you would really sit there and read 330 pages of minutiae? Have you ever actually read legal speak? It's incredibly convoluted. That's why they have people write legal briefs, which is exactly what that document is.
Man Called X
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Look people. We're all fucked. Net neutrality passed so Comcast can't give you fast lanes. It also allowed for the gov't to have sites blocked from major DNS providers.
You're all dumb if you didn't realize this.
You're all dumb if you didn't realize this.
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Uh, I've asked you twice now for a justification for not making this reg available to the public before the vote, and you haven't answered. And now you're asking me another question?
But what the hell, I'll answer. No, I wouldn't plan on reading all of it initially, because it is not my field. But there are tens of thousands of people who would, and who'd then be capable of focusing on key language and starting an informed debate/discussion for the rest of us. To the extent specific problematic language was identified, yes, I'd read some of that for myself. I've read hundreds of pages of the ACA over time to verify/analyze various critiques/commentaries.
Uh...yes, as a matter of fact. I have.
Some language --particularly amendments to existing bills -- can be enormously complicated and very difficult to get through. That's true for the people who are drafting it as well, which is why errors/mistakes are not uncommon. Other stand-alone regulations or bills aren't bad at all, especially if they're drafted well. Though even then, errors are not uncommon.
But all you're really doing is validating the point that making the regulation public before it is passed, so that lawyers and other outside experts can analyze and comment upon it, is the wisest course