Where is the real democracy in Internet usage? In Venezuela where today this blogger has become a potential criminal or in the US where the FCC is voting on making sure that no Internet provider can block sites from competing services?
You decide!
The future of Venezuela is what happened this week in Iran. Does this "law" sound familiar?
ReplyDelete"Panahi has been sentenced to six years in jail on charges of conspiring against the (ruling) system and is denied his professional rights including shooting films and scriptwriting," the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Qeirat as saying. "He has also been barred from leaving the country for 20 years and from doing any interviews with domestic or foreign media during this period," she added.
daniel:
ReplyDeletethe two are very different. the real questions is if it is not broke why fix it. In the usa you have competing interest giving faster and faster service for a lower price. Why more laws and why should anyone UN or federal government have any say? smells as a power grab.
barqui
Daniel, true, the FCC is moving to adopt internet rules -- even though it has been held to lack the statutory authority to do so. What those rules may be is unclear since the text has been unavailable for public review.
ReplyDeleteThe Congress has not acted to provide the requisite authority to the FCC and whatever the FCC does today will likely be rejected by the incoming Congress when seated next month.
Repeal is probably not in the cards and neither is a statutory clarification of the FCC's lack of statutory authority; that would require a veto proof majority. However, it seems likely that since the recently passed Omnibus funding measure provides government funding only for a few months, when the new Congress is seated it can limit FCC funding and expressly prohibit the expenditure of appropriated funds for enforcement of the new FCC regulations. Here are some ways to do that with a solid Republican House majority but without a veto proof majority and without even a majority in the Senate.
The FCC rules were passed, as expected, on a 3:2 vote. Now perhaps we will learn what they actually say.
ReplyDeleteIf there is no FCC, then large corporations retain the power to censor communications.
ReplyDeleteThat's not freedom.
There are conflicting viewpoints regarding the FCC. At about the same time you posted on twitter Daniel, I also got a tweet from another source saying the exact opposite regarding the FCC rules:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/obama-fcc-caves-on-net-ne_b_799435.html
Of course it's Huffington Post, so take it with a pinch of salt. We'll learn more as the final document is disclosed.
The government / FCC is going to guarantee equal access to all?
ReplyDeleteThat's not freedom, that's idiocy.
That's the addiction of big government, to control.
It's likely to be overturned in a court challenge as outside of the FCC's mandate. Not that statists would get that.
The USA's access to internet isn't broken, in the future where opinions will be nuanced and moderated and well... "fucked up", the government / FCC will have its fingerprints all over it, the same as how no one can point to anything functioning well in Venezuela.
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2010/12/21/governments-internet-grab-begins-fcc-approves-internet-regulations/
UNfortunately libertarians are unable to understand that corporate power, like governmental power, can be illegitimate.
ReplyDeleteSo, they don't see that it's not okay
for a corporation to block access to a union website, or that it's not ok to "leave it to BP" to police the environment.
Check this:
ReplyDeletehttp://boingboing.net/censorroute.html