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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: 4, Interesting) by n1 on Tuesday March 03 2015, @03:15PM
They're the same machine really, serving the same agenda from slightly different perspectives, divide and conquer. Not all participants necessarily are aware of being part of it either, it helps when our political indoctrination begins when we are still in the cradle.
If we had run an opposite story from an MSNBC source or the NYT about the joys of this new regulation (still with it not being public), there would be some complaints 'of course they would say that, being the liberal media who is in bed with the Obama administration'. We're screwed either way, smart money donates to both parties and lobbies/influences accordingly.
This to me seems much like the U.S healthcare reform (or indeed any political campaign), you vote for or support it on what you hope it contains, or what you think it should contain, or what you've been lead to believe it contains. The reality is not that at all, but it still might be better than what we have now, for some people. There is going to be lots of room to manuver in this legislation, if we still need to interpret the Constituion which is a reasonably consice document. How much will be open to interpretation in this several hundred page piece of industry regulation?
On a side note when doing some googling on this story. I ended up on the RushLimbaugh website which had a similar story to TFA. Rush was complaining that Google being a bunch of liberals would never let his site appear high up the search rankings because of their agenda. The only reason I got onto his site was because it was the second result served up by google news on a search for "neutrality".
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday March 03 2015, @04:47PM
I agree with the need to post this article. I'm not much for the slant, but we Americans now have an additional 300-pages of secret laws that the government can hold against us. What do they regulate and what rights do they take from the people? Who knows, they're secret. This is the bull shit that should get both sides pissed at Legislative and Executive branches, and then get pissed at the Judicial branch for not allowing the people to have the precedent to challenge such legal atrocities.
I guess the second half of the story is this issue is getting spun as a partisan issue when really it should be a bi-partition outrage to learn that title II reclassification came with nasty strings attached. Now while the Republicans and Democrats bicker outside the china shop about the merits of title II reclassification, I mean the merits of Italian porcelain verses Chinese china--to keep the allegory, the bulls still have full reign in the china shop.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2015, @04:55PM
What secret laws? You mean the Communications Act of 1934? [fcc.gov]
(Score: 2) by fnj on Tuesday March 03 2015, @07:22PM
Please do not spread BULLSHIT. Most of the 300+ pages everyone is talking about - over 98% if it - is supporting reasoning. No one has pointed to 300+ pages of actual regulation.