Senator Diane Feinstein Trying to Kill Net Neutrality 873
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Register, Senator Diane Feinstein is attempting to put language into the stimulus bill that would kill net neutrality. The amendment that her provision was attached to was withdrawn, but lobbyists tell Public Knowledge that Feinstein hopes to put it back into the bill during the closed-door conference committee that reconciles the House and Senate versions." Bad Senator! No Cookie!
Re:More and more evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, to regulate a given industry, you want the party who isn't in the pocket of that particular industry. Generally that's the Democrats, as the Republicans are in a lot more pockets, but there are some exceptions, and Hollywood is one.
Shocked! (Score:3, Interesting)
Traceroute and Network Neutrality (Score:2, Interesting)
Could someone do a typical traceroute to Google and explain who pays for each hop along the way. Also how network neutrality would change any of that?
Re:How ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
What I don't get is how content that was never voted on in the original Senate or House bill can get added during the conference committee.
Re:How ridiculous. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Interesting)
su - President
del
cd
make
make install
Unfortunately for them, by "change" he meant:
su - President
mv
and they never expected to see
cp lobbyists
or
cp taxcheats
Re:How ridiculous. (Score:5, Interesting)
The hypocrisy of the democrats who ripped on republicans and Bush and now ignore it when they do the EXACT same type of stuff just kills me.
My favorite was all the whining I heard from the far-left when Bush was selling the TARP plan by telling us how society was going to collapse if we didn't pass it. "Bush is just trying to scare us so he can raid the treasury!" they all said. I'm glad that Obama is above such fear-mongering to pass his agenda. He would never use loaded words like "catastrophe" [boston.com], would he?
Re:How ridiculous. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do we allow bills to be so big anyway? That makes it so easy for people to slip things into them like this without anyone noticing.
If I were president, I'd veto any bill that was over 10 pages long, 12 point, Times New Roman, 1-inch margins. If you want your bill to be longer, break it up into smaller bills.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Flourishing economy." Hate to break it to the Senator but California's damned near bankrupt and already begging for federal bailout.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:1, Interesting)
I live in CA and I can't stand Feinstein. Aside from crap like this, she's totally non-responsive to her constituents. Not even form-letter responses to let you know a letter was received. Boxer, at least, let's you know that your letter was received (granted, it probably went straight to the circular file), but at least she PRETENDS to care. As far as Reps, Pete Stark is an A+ guy, responding in detail with a personal response and keeping me updated on progress.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Interesting)
forget all about the idiocy, bureaucracy and corruptability of the state
Companies are just as corruptible, and I'd say the big ISPs are more corruptible because (1) they don't have to worry about pissing off the voters too much and (2) its illegal to compete with them.
Who do you think is the most likely destroyer of all the things you like about the Internet 50 years from now... Qwest, or the state?
I'd say the duopoly ISPs that don't have to care about making people like their service, because the local government forbids competition.
The irony is that laws like this will immediately be co-opted by the very ISP's you hate as a means of maintaining their monopoly.
Their monopoly comes purely from the fact that local governments sell them monopolies in the name of not having the streets torn up all the time. Regulating them to be simple dumb pipes would be a good thing, as it would keep this granted monopoly to as narrow an area as possible. (Only granting this kind of power to co-ops would probably be even better, but I don't think that could ever happen.)
Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell, they already are sneaking things in like invading your medical privacy [wnd.com] , and laying the foundation for rationed health care [worldnetdaily.com] and was championed by writings by Tom Daschle and others.
Sure, why not go ahead and take net neutrality...and sneak a ton of other crap under the radar, and we need it FAST.
Sounds kinda like how we got stuck with a lot of crap from the old PATRIOT act, eh? I'm surprised they haven't come up with a nifty acronym for this POS.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Machine politicians love term limits. It takes all the power out and notoriety out of the office, and allows them to shuffle between machine-approved politicians with interchangeable names and records. They also love huge legislatures-the more representatives there are, the less notable each one is, and the easier it is to plug in their people.
Politicians should be powerful, visible, and accountable. I don't want to have to figure out which of the 50 shady aldermen voted for a bill that cut library funding and gave them a raise. That's why I oppose term limits.
Re:Let her know what you think! (Score:4, Interesting)
...let her know that you will definitely not vote for her again...
She'll be 79 years old when her current term ends. I don't know that she cares about future votes. And by the way, how many 75 year olds do you know that you would feel comfortable dealing with all of these issues?
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course you meant "Democratic" party, right?
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that a corporation doesn't act by itself. It acts at the direction of the board and management that direct it's actions. In essence, we do have the death penalty for corporations because any manager or director shown to have intentionally killed someone, will be subject to the death penalty just as you or I would.
Don't let this separate entity thing confuse you. It you take all the people out of a corporation, it will do exactly nothing. It won't sell anything, it won't poison anyone, it won't pollute the environment, it won't do anything. Now just as there are with most laws, there is a component called intent. If you intend to set out and do something illegal, you get the full charges pressed against you. If you unintentionally do the same, then you get lesser penalties. Being a corporation does nothing to hide the actions of the people involved and they will be held accountable to the same respect. At best, the corporation will end up being fined in addition to any penalties assessed to the employees responsible for any wrong doing.
Take this peanut problem we currently have where a shipment of tainted peanuts were used knowing they were bad. It's a criminal investigation that will whoever ordered the shipment to be used as well as anyone who knew about its condition but didn't report it to be exposed to criminal fines and penalties. If the order came from the owners themselves, the corporate veil will not protect them at all.
That's something else that people seem to ignore. The Corporate veil only protects the owners or shareholders who took no direct action in the illegal activity. A misconception is that if you incorporate, your bullet proof or something and that simply isn't true. If your actions cause damage, you are personally responsible too. If your business practices cause a bankruptcy, your personal assets aren't protected. If you are responsible for anything the corporation does, you can be and most likely are responsible. Now when you invest in something and take a silent approach and a worker comes in still drunk and kills another employee or kills a civilian not affiliated with the company, then you are separated from his actions even though the company might not be. That's the only protection a corporation offers someone.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I personally think we should implement a voting system where you can check the box next as many candidates you like, and each would get one vote from you. This would break the "two party" system, as a voter would feel confident that they are not throwing a vote away on a 3rd party candidate. Candidate with majority of votes wins.
I personally 'threw' my vote away by writing in Ron Paul for this last election, but I did this knowing full well my state is not a swing state, and therefore my vote didn't really matter.
This voting system is used by Fark.com for the photoshop contests, etc. It seems to work well at 'electing' the best photoshoped picture.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It shouldn't matter what opinion you have on net neutrality, there is absolutely NO reason this should be in the stimulus bill.
Support the One Subject at a Time Act:
http://www.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/83 [downsizedc.org]
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know, I'm finding myself more and more drawn to the ideas of David Brin [davidbrin.com] in regards to privacy. I think the ultimate answer in a world with the kind of computer technology we have (and will soon have) is to not try and fight the inevitable forms of electronic surveilance, but to make it so that the eye is omni directional. I think perhaps our focus should be on finding a way to make sure that politicians can not exempt themselves from tansparency, and in fact that they are subject to increasing levels of scrutiny compared to the scrutiny they level at us.
I think a good first step would be to hire an "archivist" who is tasked with following every congressperson and top level government official around and recording in video and audio (and making copies of all electronic and analog communications they make) everything that they do, every meeting they have, etc.
If they haven't done anything wrong, they have no reason to object, right?
Re:War profiteering scum (Score:4, Interesting)
AMEN! She started voting in line with George Bush on everything from military spending to retroactive immunity for telcos after her husband was awarded a $50 billion contract for reconstruction in Iraq. She's been a Lieberman Democrat for a while now, and she shows no sign of slowing down.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really, it just means that the vice president won't have to wait 8 years before running. You would end up switching roles of the president and vice president for 16 years instead of one riding on the coat tails of the other after 4 or 8 years.
Here is the question, would you vote for Biden-Obama knowing that you already voted for Obama-Biden? Most people would say yes, especially if whoever was playing president put the other front and center on a lot of issues.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:1, Interesting)
I believe what you have just proven is that there is indeed a difference between a scientific theory and a theory one pulls out of their @ss. Well done. $++
Doth thoust not understand the simple difference between an observation and a scientific theory? You might note that he also said a full statistical analysis might actually show some bias. And frankly, looking closely at the list of articles to which he linked, it seems to bear my observation out - not the other way around. I still see more (R)s than (D)s, with the majority of stories without either.
Even so, there are exceptions to any rule, and spotting an exception or two does not invalidate the overall observation. Liberal media bias does exist, let's stop the denial.
But as another poster stated, it makes little difference either way compared to the fact that they're all politicians. I believe in equal opportunity bashing.
Her website has issues too... (Score:2, Interesting)
If the internal server errors on her website [senate.gov] are any indication, technology and the internet are lost on her.
I use to love that she was my state Senator, but the last few years she has... changed. I've lost a lot of respect for her based on the stances she has taken recently, including sticking up for the telcos in the whole warrentless wiretapping issue.
Re:I didn't know Feinstein was a Republican.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The key word in your sentence is "YOU DECIDE". The way we're going, you have no decision whatsoever, other than to take your money and walk somewhere else. The way we're going, your ISP decides, and that decision is based on mutual corporate backscratching clubs. Plus if you take your money and walk, it will be to another ISP, who more likely than not is simply a member of a different mutual corporate backscratching club. You'll get to choose content from friends of ISP-A or content from friends of ISP-B.
OK so all the ISPs are gonna get together and make sure to screw you, this is already illegal, so why do we need another law preventing this?
Imagine for a moment if your phone company would let you call someone in New York City for free or cheap, but you have to pay a LOT to call someone in Portland, Oregon. Logical if you lived close to New York City, but outrageous if you lived in say, Corvallis, Oregon. THAT's what we're talking about.
I'd bitch to the phone company and take my money elsewhere if that was the case. But no, that would require personal responsibility and crap like that. Instead we'll FORCE companies to do something they don't want, may not be in their best interests and basically artificially manipulate markets because some people don't like it. Mob rule FTL.