Did Republican House Landslide Kill Net Neutrality?

[recovering conservative]

A truly alarming article from Wired Magazine shows that one of the fallouts will be that there is nothing now standing in the way of abolishing Net Neutrality.

The Federal Communications Commission has published the agenda for its November Open Meeting. It comes two days after the Democrats took their shellacking in the midterm Congressional elections. And once again, the FCC’s Open Internet proposals are nowhere to be found on the list of action items.

Why not? Here’s one idea: Net neutrality foes point out that none of the nearly one hundred Democratic candidates who signed a pledge to support the policy won their race.

“The FCC should take note that the main ‘political’ driver behind trying to make net neutrality into a national grass-roots issue, SavetheInternet.com Coalition, could not get the issue to register on the election radar screen,” observed Scott Cleland on Wednesday, “and wherever they did attract a candidate endorsement of their position, they failed 100 percent [of] the time in having that candidate get elected.”

Did Republican House Landslide Kill Net Neutrality? | Epicenter | Wired.com

So, where do we go from here? It has occurred to me over the last few years that I can't access a lot of information I want from the mainstream corporate media, and if the U.S. is going to allow the media conglomerates to swoop down on the Internet and parcel it up, is this the end of free speech as we know it?

[Accountable]

I'm not versed in the official definitions of "net neutrality." I can see why the AT&Ts and Time Warners would want to claim ownership, and why the Patriot Act types would want the gov't to take it over, but I can't imagine why a private citizen would support anything but keeping the internet free and open.

[recovering conservative]

Private citizens have elected more candidates who have been bought off by the media conglomerates, and won't protect net neutrality. No surprise that most, if not all of the Republicans are at the trough, but even a lot of Democrats are weak on this issue, judging by how few office-holders were on a list of candidates defending net neutrality. And speaking of that pledge -- all 95 Democratic candidates who signed the pledge, lost the recent election. Most of them weren't serious candidates anyway, and were just grasping for an advantage.

Without net neutrality, your ISP can prioritize internet traffic any way they choose....and this is the end of the net being an open democratic system. It will be another telecom-dominated industry that limits access to unwanted sites, and makes the internet just one more arena for the lousy news/info that dominates TV and radio.

The argument against net neutrality boils down to the claim that the media coms won't invest in improving high speed networks unless they can make the internet traffic more capitalistic -- reward the sites that pay, at the expense of the lone bloggers and other shoestring operations. The problem is that the Federal Government has never considered the Internet to be a federal infrastructure issue -- as they did previously, with the development of electricity and telephone networks -- so the U.S. has now fallen way behind the nations that did consider developing their high speed networks as essential infrastructure.

[Saint_]

I'll believe anything when it comes to the republicans. They've always wanted to dictate to everyone how they should live. Why not this too?

[Accountable]

recovering conservative;1342874 wrote: Private citizens have elected more candidates who have been bought off by the media conglomerates, and won't protect net neutrality. No surprise that most, if not all of the Republicans are at the trough, but even a lot of Democrats are weak on this issue, judging by how few office-holders were on a list of candidates defending net neutrality. And speaking of that pledge -- all 95 Democratic candidates who signed the pledge, lost the recent election. Most of them weren't serious candidates anyway, and were just grasping for an advantage.

Without net neutrality, your ISP can prioritize internet traffic any way they choose....and this is the end of the net being an open democratic system. It will be another telecom-dominated industry that limits access to unwanted sites, and makes the internet just one more arena for the lousy news/info that dominates TV and radio.

The argument against net neutrality boils down to the claim that the media coms won't invest in improving high speed networks unless they can make the internet traffic more capitalistic -- reward the sites that pay, at the expense of the lone bloggers and other shoestring operations. The problem is that the Federal Government has never considered the Internet to be a federal infrastructure issue -- as they did previously, with the development of electricity and telephone networks -- so the U.S. has now fallen way behind the nations that did consider developing their high speed networks as essential infrastructure.I'd rather have inferior internet than have either big business or big gov't calling the shots. I'm out of my depth in this conversation, though.

[littleCJelkton]

Would this be the start of Cloud computing where everything done by every computer is done on one or two "network clouds" owned by one or two big software companies

[littleCJelkton]

littleCJelkton;1343084 wrote: Would this be the start of Cloud computing where everything done by every computer is done on one or two "network clouds" owned by one or two big software companies


I have already seen a few commercial from Microsoft refering to the "Cloud" in ther microsoft 7 "windows life" program