Obama endorses Net Neutrality, asks FCC to turn the Internet into a public utility

This is gigantic. I hope the President is ready to fight for this. If he can win on this, it will be a major boon to his legacy.

Obama endorses Net Neutrality, asks FCC to turn the Internet into a public utility

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Obama summarized his requests in the following four bullet points:

• No blocking. If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. That way, every player — not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP — gets a fair shot at your business.
  
  
• No throttling. Nor should ISPs be able to intentionally slow down some content or speed up others — through a process often called “throttling” — based on the type of service or your ISP’s preferences.
  
  
• Increased transparency. The connection between consumers and ISPs — the so-called “last mile” — is not the only place some sites might get special treatment. So, I am also asking the FCC to make full use of the transparency authorities the court recently upheld and, if necessary, to apply net neutrality rules to points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet.
  
  
• No paid prioritization. Simply put: No service should be stuck in a “slow lane” because it does not pay a fee. That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth. So, as I have [said] before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcjQPVwfDk

I hate to be a hater, but I this is going to turn into an Akbar event.

Something about this is going to be incredibly bad. I hope I'm wrong. I really do. I just read this and I can't help but have a feeling that this is going to lead to something really bad.

Declaring it a public utility might mean government gets to lay claims to it in total? There's something bad. I just know it.

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Originally Posted by Gromgor

I hate to be a hater, but I this is going to turn into an Akbar event.

Something about this is going to be incredibly bad. I hope I'm wrong. I really do. I just read this and I can't help but have a feeling that this is going to lead to something really bad.

Declaring it a public utility might mean government gets to lay claims to it in total? There's something bad. I just know it.

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I agree, it worries me any time any government looks at any freedom. As soon as there's legislation around freedom - even legislation that's purportedly to ensure freedom - it causes problems. Even the GPL, which has been carefully crafted to guarantee that you can keep doing things freely forever, has issues (the whole GNU Readline vs libedit debacle is proof of that), and that's something that was made by people whose primary interest is a philosophical one in favour of individuality - check out rms's home page and you'll see why people describe him as a political lighthouse - you want to know where he stands on any subject, but usually you don't want to be quite there. So if the GPL can be onerous, what do you honestly expect of US legislation?

It has worked well for electricity, water, etc.

I think this would be the safer way to handle it than the Time Warner/Comcasts of the world.

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Originally Posted by Aristotle

It has worked well for electricity, water, etc.

I think this would be the safer way to handle it than the Time Warner/Comcasts of the world.

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For now. Already, in townships around where I live, towns buy electricity from the major power companies, then sell it to the individual homes at inflated costs. I'm talking upwards of $800-1000/mo. for small 2-bedroom houses for electricity because the towns are starting to work as middlemen, adding in their own inflation into the costs. People aren't allowed to utilize solar/wind, even when those methods won't affect property values

Water, I'll give you that one, for now. I'm still watching more and more evidence of government mandated flouride being linked to alzheimers.

$1,000 per month for a 2 bedroom seems highly exaggerated.

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Originally Posted by Sugayon

$1,000 per month for a 2 bedroom seems highly exaggerated.

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I would say the same thing too. Technically it covers Electric, water/sewage and trash pick up in the town, but during the summer, yeah. I've seen multiple bills that high around here all because of governments involvement with the power company.

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Originally Posted by Aristotle

It has worked well for electricity, water, etc.

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By "worked well", do you mean that there aren't any major problems with the current system, or that it's actually measurably better than a non-governmentally-involved alternative? Because we don't have much of the latter to compare against. Would purely-corporate-owned electricity distribution be significantly worse than we currently have? Significantly better? Indistinguishable? How can we know?

With the internet, we have a system now that's broadly uncontrolled, and it's working fairly well. Not perfectly, perhaps, because infrastructure's expensive; but it is theoretically possible for anyone to get into the ISP business. Doing a good job of it probably requires Google-level capital, but you could at least have a go at it as an ordinary business. Will legislation help anything? What happened when the US Government tried to ban spam? The CAN-SPAM act may have made some things illegal that everyone already knew were wrong, but it also made some things legal that were just as wrong, as long as they comply with certain rules. Are we now getting less spam in our inboxes because of that legislation? I suspect not, and even if we are, it's only because the CAN-SPAM compliance text is easy for Bayesian filters to catch. It's everyone's individual spam filters that are dealing with the problem, not governmental action.

That's why I'm leery of any net neutrality bill. Just keep your grubby hands off the matter altogether.

It's in the government's hands regardless. Let the companies compete and the free market will sort it out, right? There are tons of companies out there.. oh wait, there are like 3 because the government continues to allow consolidation/merger of the industry. But some new company could surely enter the playing field and break up the obvious collusion, I'm sure. They just need to.. oh...well I guess they need to petition the government (and work against the lobbying *cough*bribery*cough*of the aforementioned big 3) so they can dig up roads, use telephone poles, etc. to install new infrastructure. Well, I guess when all else fails, they can use already established principles and means to force the already established companies to share the infrastructure? Except, without net neutrality laws... those big 3 companies are free to throttle/gatekeep/charge X, Y, and Z fees on the new "competitor's" access. That's just the surface, really.

Porn Stars explain Net Neutrality on Funny or Die (somewhat NSFW, but all the naughty parts are blurred out):

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/987...net-neutrality