Obama To Veto Anti-Net-Neutrality Legislation 355
An anonymous reader writes "In a statement of policy on Tuesday, the White House announced that President Obama will veto upcoming legislation that would undermine the FCC's net neutrality rules. According to the statement (PDF), the rules 'reflected a constructive effort to build a consensus around what safeguards and protections were reasonable and necessary to ensure that the Internet continues to attract investment and to spur innovation.' The statement continued, 'It would be ill-advised to threaten the very foundations of innovation in the Internet economy and the democratic spirit that has made the Internet a force for social progress around the world.'"
investment == marketing pukes and ruining things (Score:4, Informative)
quoting: protections were reasonable and necessary to ensure that the Internet continues to attract investment
I do not want it to 'attract investment'. that usually means money and business people and those are the very ones who have ruined what was an excellent and freedom-based comms medium.
investment means 'I own this!' from some big daddy's point of view.
that's always going to be bad.
the more you throw those insane business-minded folks at what we have, the more they ruin it. its like farting in a pool. we don't want those guys around; they ruin everything they touch.
when the internet was run by techies, it worked. now its well on its way to beign a segmented totally-ruined system. ALL because the money folks came in and polluted what we had. bascially they hijacked our internet as a 'sales tool' when it was SO MUCH more than that and so much more elevated in what it was accomplishing.
10 years from now, the internet is going to be like what TV (broadcast) is now. no one intelligent will be able to stand the bullsht that it will grow to become. I cannot stand to sit in front of a tv anymore; even 1 commecial turns me off and the 'programming' is insulting at best. give the internet 10 more years at the direction its going and it will be worthless to anyone with half a brain cell.
hope there's a new thing that we can jump to before the knuckledraggers come and ruin THAT, too.
Re:Yay Obama! (Score:5, Informative)
You might disagree strongly with his politics and his presidency - that's completely fine - but calling him names and resorting to insinuations about his intelligence adds nothing useful to the public political discourse.
Further, what's your evidence that Pres. Obama is a good lawyer? I'm not saying he wasn't, I just only know what little there is on Wikipedia about his legal work. He only practiced law for 3 years before he entered politics (and became a consultant for a law firm). Obama was never really a lawyer, he wanted to be a politician - law was a means to politics (I'm not saying that's necessarily bad). He's never done anything long enough to get a good gage of how good or not he is at it (other than running grassroots campaigns). He's very successful but a few years doing one thing and then a few years doing something else doesn't leave much of a trail by which to judge the quality of his work. Based on his record, a 4 year presidency would fit the pattern of his life.
I'm not saying these things to be negative, I'm simply offering critiques.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Except, of course, that this isn't covered by the War Powers Act because it was a peace-keeping operation under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which was ratified in Congress over 60 years ago:
"All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security."
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Obama's Office of Legal Council disagreed [nytimes.com].
The EFF would probably have something to say (Score:3, Informative)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like title (of both the original article and the slashdot post) is misleading as the article uses very precise wording.
The Senate measure, which mirrors the House resolution, says Congress “disapproves” of the FCC’s net neutrality rules, which “shall have no force or effect.”
Congress, and the EFF as well, disapprove of the FCC having this sort of power over content restrictions on the internet. This power to determine what can and can't go through internet pipes (and what can't be restricted) should be restricted to the legislative branch of the government, not an agency headed by appointed members.
This legislation is not anti-net neutrality; it is keeping the FCC's power in check, which I am all for.
Besides the fact that the FCC doesn't have to listen to voters as much as Congress does, the net neutrality rules that the FCC wants to put into place are far from perfect, and (at some point at least; I am not up to date on the detail) it even included an exception to net neutrality rules in order to aid compliance with copyright enforcement.
Sources:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/net-neutrality-fcc-perils-and-promise [eff.org] (Oct 2009) - regarding FCC's drafting net neutrality rules
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/net-neutrality-fcc-trojan-horse-redux [eff.org] (May 2010) - issue revisited
https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/01/14 [eff.org] (Jan 2010) - EFF comments on net neutrality loophole regarding blocking copyright infringement.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
1) Averted a second American Great Depression (stimulus package)
What, by giving bonuses to bankers who then didn't lend the money out?
That would be the Bush Bank bailout, which was not the stimulus package. The stimulus package is the one that prevented GM and Chrysler from going bankrupt. While some people may say that it would have been better had they actually gone bankrupt, preventing the bankruptcy most likely kept at least 1 million Americans employed and that was only part of the stimulus package.