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from the it-takes-300-pages-to-redefine-neutrality dept.
The bloom may have already fallen off the Net Neutrality rose. As reported yesterday in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled):
When Google's Eric Schmidt called White House officials a few weeks ago to oppose President Obama's demand that the Internet be regulated as a utility, they told him to buzz off. The chairman of the company that led lobbying for "net neutrality" learned the Obama plan made in its name instead micromanages the Internet.
Mr. Schmidt is not the only liberal mugged by the reality of Obamanet, approved on party lines last week by the Federal Communications Commission. The 300-plus pages of regulations remain secret, but as details leak out, liberals have joined the opposition to ending the Internet as we know it.
It seems as though, in their zeal to "stick it" to the ISPs, most proponents didn't consider that when you allow 3 unelected people to issue rulings on something as large and ubiquitous as the Internet, bad things can happen:
Until Congress or the courts block Obamanet, expect less innovation. During a TechFreedom conference last week, dissenting FCC commissioner Ajit Pai asked: "If you were an entrepreneur trying to make a splash in a marketplace that's already competitive, how are you going to differentiate yourself if you have to build into your equation whether or not regulatory permission is going to be forthcoming from the FCC? According to this, permissionless innovation is a thing of the past."
The other dissenting Republican commissioner, Michael O'Rielly, warned: "When you see this document, it's worse than you imagine." The FCC has no estimate on when it will make the rules public.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by schad on Tuesday March 03 2015, @12:50PM
I've noticed it too. Perhaps it's a desire to balance out all the gewg_ stuff?
With that said, there is merit to challenging the groupthink. I would say that a huge majority of us here are in favor of net neutrality in general, and a solid majority of Title II classification in particular. It's a good thing that we see well-reasoned opposition to our points of view, even if it doesn't change a single mind.
But with that said, the WSJ's editorial page is, when it comes to pretty much all things technology, batshit fucking crazy. Crovitz is particularly infuriating, because the man actually knows what he's talking about. He's not one of those oped writers who clearly doesn't know anything about computers. He actually knows this shit, and yet he contorts reality until "the free market" is the solution for whatever problem it is that he's facing. He rails against government interference even when no one is suggesting it. He wants to privatize things that are already private. I'd speculate that he's on somebody's payroll, but he's always been like this; I think he's just a true believer, too blinded by his ideology to admit that it might be leading him astray. I can usually make it through anything on the oped page of the WSJ, but Crovitz is just so powerfully and completely wrong, all the time, that he's the one guy I simply cannot ever read.
So while I appreciate the desire to hear a stirring defense of "the other side" -- if that is, in fact, what we're doing here -- the WSJ isn't offering it. Not sure if they even can any more. As far as I can tell (long-time subscriber), Murdoch has, in fact, left the news parts alone, but he's definitely completely ruined the editorial stuff.