Friday, February 27, 2015

"But now it's a fair internet ..."

Today's the day, dear reader. I don't know if you'll require a government license to read me or if you'll simply have to put up with 100 pop-ups that you can't block that will ask you if you'd rather read the The Huffington (Puffington) Post, Salon.com, or—God help us—Rumblelizard blogs. (Yes, I know you haven't heard of the last one. There's a reason for that.)
The Federal Communications Commission has voted to impose net neutrality in the U.S. Your formerly free-market internet will now be treated as a public utility.
As of last spring, we have net neutrality over on these shores. But there's a difference. All ISP data is treated equally with no price controls. According to David Meyer of the tech site Gigaom, in a very competitive market such as the U.K.'s, it would be "very difficult for providers to jack up their prices without losing customers."
This, in theory, is what net neutrality should mean for the U.S. It would stipulate that cable firms behind data-intensive services such as video-on-demand and cloud storage would not have to pay fees to internet service providers so that this particular type of internet traffic would not be slowed down. This is why Netflix has said it supports net neutrality, but it has instead offered to pay the Comcast fee for enhanced access.
Just as with the (Un)Affordable Health Care Act, the so-called Obama-net will mean less choice. Obama-care was meant to provide coverage to the uninsured, but it has forced many Americans into paying higher premiums with limited choice of doctors or hospitals while still rewarding insurance companies and discouraging full-time employment. Many Americans enrolled in Obamacare have had to take two or three part-time jobs to take the place of their previous full-time employment.
The Obama-net is being touted as a way to enshrine fair treatment of all Web content. But the Obama administration seeks to impose "fairness" through the net neutrality regulation, which means that government permission is now required for those who wish to set up a website. Be prepared to wait five years for that. Also, price controls written into the regulation dictate that the cost of a service over the web that doesn't qualify as "just and fair" can either be increased to discourage consumers from using it or reduced to the point where the the website is devalued, preventing it from making a profit.
So, it appears that a "free and open internet" will work out, as you might expect, as expeditiously as "free" healthcare. The regulations now classify broadband service as a public utility persuant to the Communications Act of 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign wire and radio communication. In other words, the U.S. is now basing internet connection on an 81-year-old regulation. What does that tell you?
I invite everyone to check out a paper entitled "Towards a just and fair Internet: Applying Rawls’ principles of justice to Internet regulation". John Rawls was a Ph.D in moral philosophy and former Princeton professor who wrote A Theory of Justice in which he argued for the "socially just" distribution of goods in a society. Read that, then tell me that this this sort of proposal in favor of distributive justice didn't influence Obama with respect to net neutrality regulation.
There is always something sinister behind this man's works. Tell me true, do you trust a man who seeks to wreck the country with an amnesty that defies the Constitution to regulate not just your health care but now your internet? I thought not.
The internet in America used to be the envy of the rest of the world that had net neutrality. It was the last vestige of American life that encouraged competition and operated entirely from the free market. Now, there's yet another thing America has lost.
I hope all the Obama voters enjoy their regulated internet. Unregulated weed is apparently the only thing these people care about.

1 comment:

goddessdivine said...

The passing of so-called net neutrality was the sound of freedom dying. I can't take this administration anymore. How is it that the FCC has this much power?! I fear this country will not survive Obama, his cronies, and his tyrannical reign. Guiliani has a point: This man does not love America.