Obama FCC Caves On Net Neutrality 853
An anonymous reader writes "...the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet. The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it's become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users."
Re:What a suprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Unsurprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been reading Matt Taibbi's book, "Griftopia" (http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953), and having worked in finance for ~10 years, I'm coming to realize more and more that the powers that be -- corporations, CEOs, and everybody that's basically not *you* are the people who are going to run the US for the coming future. A leaked memo from Citigroup (http://www.scribd.com/doc/36059255/23321255-Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Leaked-Citigroup-Memo-Part1) has already declared the US a Plutocracy (rule by the wealthy).
This is just another shot in the arm against a citizenry whose arms are already falling off from the shots before. The FCC coming up with a plan to (surprise surprise) support the plutocracy that we've already been labelled by Wall Street is not even a stretch any more. And while the Tea Party clamors about how government is trying to socialize everything, they miss that problem that the government has been co-opted in stealing America as a whole from the citizens themselves, and they are happy to have the folks in the Tea Party carry their banner without realizing what damage they are doing.
I am a bit demoralized nowadays about all this -- and I'd love to take action but I don't know how. So while we as nerds who normally argue, bitch, and complain can actually stand up and figure a way to do something about this (short of something 4chan would do), then I'd be all for it. Let's strategize. Let's plan. And let's execute in the perfect ways I know that we can do thousands of lines of code, deploying hundreds of servers, or anything else "IT" that we do.
I'm here to start the call to arms, I just don't know what to do after that.
Why are you surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC was bought, sold, and paid for long ago. That's why the vast majority of our spectrum 'belongs' to megacorps, and only the thinnest little slivers are given back to us.
Can you imagine how much more useful WiFi would be if we had more than 3 non-conflicting channels that are completely trampled by microwave ovens? (OK, so there's also the 5GHz band, but I mean a nice big block, all in one clean band.) Cordless phones wouldn't conflict, wireless in-house TV distribution would have happened long ago, and more. Imagine if there was a decently sized band of relatively long-wavelength (sub-GHz), spectrum available that allowed a couple watts total / a few tens EIRP in a narrow beam. We could very easily set up private point to point links everywhere, instead of just barely getting them to work as it is now.
Or standards... The rest of the world uses DVB. The US gets ATSC, which is a mess of patents. Same deal with HD radio.
I'm not the least surprised that the FCC isn't protecting your interests, and is doing everything that keeps huge corporations in control of communications. It's what they do best.
Re:Color me Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
The election went the way it did because Obama never puts up a fight over anything.
Unfortunately he doesn't realize that fact and thinks it's because he is fighting too much, so expect him to compromise on everything now and cave in to the demands of Republicans. He thinks making them happy will make everyone happy.
Re:Color me Stupid (Score:0, Interesting)
Sadly you're very uninformed.
Anyone who bothered to actually learn about the actual election talking points and apply even a tiny bit of intelligence could absolutely see almost everything Obama said was a lie. McCain, on the other hand, consistently told the truth.
The simple fact of the matter is, most people don't want to actually know anything. They want to remain dumb and ignorant. This is actually well established. The facts of the matter are, people wanted to be lied to, even knowing that there was a good chance they were being lied to.
On the other side of the coin, people specifically hated on McCain exactly because he told everyone the truth. People don't want the truth, they want to be lied to. That's the facts!
Because of the massive level of ignorance and willful stupidity of those who voted for Obama, it is extremely unlikely another politician, at least in our lifetime, will make the mistake of actually trying to communicate the truth. The facts of the matter are, McCain was punished at the polls for being truthful with you. In return, you gave him the middle finger and willfully voted for lies. This fact will absolutely not be missed by future politicians. Those who voted for Obama essentially ensured a future of nothing but dishonest, lying politicians.
After the election, the duplicity of the Republicans became extremely clear. For the first year, Obama more or less followed the plans laid out by the Republicans. He basically followed the literal plans laid out by McCain. The Republicans then went on a rampage shooting at him for doing, more or less, exactly what the Republicans, before the election, said they would all do. Factually, Obama never had any other choice for most of these decisions, which is why it was painfully obvious Obama was lying all along.
The lessons learned from all this? The two party system is inherently broken. The two parties are a difference without distinction. With every vote for R or D, you are clearly communicating that you demand lies, corruption, and a government whos primary interest is the government and corporations. If you vote for an R or a D, you literally have given up your right to complain. And literally, if you voted for Obama, you are directly responsible for carving the truth from all elections for the foreseeable future; anywhere you see Rs and Ds.
So if you really want change, you will not vote R or D - otherwise, you're willfully voting for more lies. So do you really want change? Or lies? If you really want change, its impossible to vote R or D; otherwise you're just demanding more lies. Which at the end of the day, isn't all that surprising given that's what most people actually want - to be lied to and remain ignorant.
Re:What a suprise (Score:3, Interesting)
To balance the crazy left-wing nutcase view of huffington post here is the opinion of one of the FCC commissioners who is against the proposal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395204576023452250748540.html [wsj.com]
"To date, the FCC hasn't ruled out increasing its power further by using the phone monopoly laws, directly or indirectly regulating rates someday, or expanding its reach deeper into mobile broadband services. The most expansive regulatory regimes frequently started out modest and innocuous before incrementally growing into heavy-handed behemoths."
If the passed regulation plan does not meet any of the goals of the net neutrality supporters (as huff po article suggests) then why pass it? I am inclined to believe that net neutrality is less of the goal of the FCC here that to establish a principle that the Internet is subject to FCC regulation even though the Congress has never given it any such powers.
Re:Unsurprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm here to start the call to arms, I just don't know what to do after that.
I'll probably be blacklisted for saying this, but what the hell --
During most of the last century, we had an active, well-organized left in the U.S. Their simple method was to organize people to work together for their own interests against wealthier, more powerful organizations. They accomplished a lot -- getting negroes the right to vote in the south, building a union movement that guaranteed working people a better standard of living than they have today, Social Security, Medicare, a social safety net, and most of the progressive reforms we had then and are losing now. The left worked best by being militant, threatening liberal Democrats, Republicans and unions, and pushing them further to the left -- just as conservative extremists push them to the right today.
I once read a memo from one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's aides to his boss, about how, on the street corners of Harlem, Communist orators were attracting crowds, and if the government didn't respond to their needs, the Communists would become more influential. During the depression, in negro neighborhoods, when people were disposessed from their homes and their posessions put out on the sidewalks, the Communists would mobilize a crowd, march to the home, and move the families and their posessions back in. It seems clear that FDR was pushed to the left by the socialist and Communist movement.
The Communist Party had horrible problems, the worst of which was requiring its members to follow the Party line, even during Stalin's worst brutalities. (See George Orwell's Homage to Catalona.) But the Communists knew how to organize workers, including socialists and other allies (whom they often double-crossed), and they had a network that let them organize around the country (and the world).
If the FBI is to be believed, Communists organized the Highlander Folk School, which taught Martin Luther King how to organize, starting with the Montgomery bus boycott. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_Research_and_Education_Center [wikipedia.org] (This raises the question, "What was the FBI doing to guarantee negroes the right to vote during all those years?") If you want to know how to organize for change, a study of the civil rights movement is instructive.
Almost every Communist reached a point where he got disgusted and left the party. They often went on to use their organizing techniques to organize other political organizations, like the civil rights movement, the peace movement in the Vietnam war days, and the gay rights movement. Hold a meeting, collect names and phone numbers, call them all to remind them to show up at the next demonstration, and use your numbers to get attention. Demand fundamental change, not compromises. Large demonstrations were a good way to show your strength. The Communist Party was to politics what General Electric was to corporate management -- people worked there, learned, left, and spread their techniques everywhere.
The best thing the left did in this country was to push compromising politicians further to the left. Too bad we didn't have a Communist Party to push Obama to keep his promises and create a public option health plan. The most important message of the left is that we have to change the system, and we have to change it ourselves. We can't depend on leaders to do it for us. (People on the left saw through Obama a mile away.)
Eugene Debs said: "I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition."
Look where Obama lead us.
Unfortunately, a lot of ex-Communists