Proposing a Model For Locally Imposed Net Neutrality 153
newscloud writes "Envision Seattle has posted a model legal ordinance (pdf) for communities wishing to enshrine status quo net neutrality as law. The ordinance is co-authored by the legal group that helped Pittsburgh's city council ban fracking and corporate personhood last November. The concept of local municipalities defying FCC authority is troubling to some but the group counters that FCC authority actually violates certain rights that we hold as people, and the right to govern our own communities as an element of the right to community and local self-government. If we have a 'right to internet access' or a 'right to communicate' via these pathways, there are certain actions that can be taken by government which infringe on those rights. In our view, it's up to us to create these rights frameworks, and then enforce them at higher levels."
Re:Could work (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There is no 'right to Internet access' (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of logic can smell your bullshit a mile away. You tried (and failed, miserably) to hide a third premise in there. That a right to the labor of other people is slavery. That's pure, grade A bullshit right there. If a parent is required to care for their child, rather than drop it in a dumpster, is that slavery? When I am required to stop at a red light, is that slavery?
You anarcho-libertarians are so fucking full of yourselves that you think that you can exist as an island. You can't. Everyone in this world relies on the labor of others. That isn't slavery, and for you to call it that is absolutely disgraceful. Real slavery is when a child in India gets pulled out of school, locked in a room, and raped several times a day until she's too old and ugly, at which point she ends up dead in a gutter.
Requiring people to help each other out is how society has worked for all of human history. If you don't like it, feel free to end your life, as that's the only way your existence won't in some small way burden others.
Re:There is no 'right to Internet access' (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, my car is dirty. I have the right to a clean car, my friend over there says so. I require you to wash it, right now. After all, society works by helping each other out, doesn't it?
Saying "Say, how about helping me out with this?" or "Do this for me and I'll do something for you in return" is how society cooperates. Saying "I convinced some powerful organisation to put you in jail unless you give me that" is not cooperation, sorry.
Re:There is no 'right to Internet access' (Score:2, Insightful)
I like math too, but I like it for it's purity. Applying simple Algebra to society seems like a simplistic model.
Then the right to healthcare must equal "a right to the labor of other people (slavery)."
Yes look at all the Doctors being enslaved by the masses. Oh wait, that's right, you can't even give me a single example of that. However I could give you thousands of examples where people have become enslaved in debt, merely for getting medical care to survive.
This is why I hate philosophical debates that have no connection to reality, and worse, ignore the actual problems we have.
There are no such things as "human rights", you are born into this World, and hopefully are lucky enough to be in a 1st world country where you aren't a slave.
Freedom of speech enabled Hitler to rise to power and kill millions, I don't think free medical care will have the same side effects.
Re:There is no 'right to Internet access' (Score:2, Insightful)
None of the human rights are "free as in beer". Even your right of freedom would be meaningless unless enforced and protected, and that requires resources.
Re:There is no 'right to Internet access' (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it is a right does not mean you get handed the access.... I have a right to keep and bear arms...did the government hand me a rifle or hand gun? NO.
A right to internet access means that if I pay to have the access, it can not be taken from me with out due process of law. (I.E. no 3 accusations and you are banned for life) and given that, I can not be banned from having access for the remainder of my life and more than likely, given the types of violations that would cause sanctions, the law would simply be able to reduce my connection speed tot he point that circumventing copyright would be impossible (think... dial up)....That is IF I CHOOSE TO EXERCISE THE RIGHT FOR AN INTERNET CONNECTION.
Re:There is no 'right to Internet access' (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes look at all the Doctors being enslaved by the masses. Oh wait, that's right, you can't even give me a single example of that.
I think you are not going deep enough into this; if a country taxes people (theft) to pay for the healthcare of others, the doctors who perform the work are being paid with stolen money, and the people who provide that money are the slaves.
Its the same with the BBC. They take stolen money (the 'TV License' collected under threat of jail) and then provide programmes for 'free'. In every case, the taxpayer is the slave.
Re:The Rights of Nature (Score:4, Insightful)
The accusations of influence over teh Pennsylvania government outlined in the linked article, if true, are nothing short of fascism. I don't disbelieve them. I've been saying privately for quite some time that both major parties are just moderate fascists, and that the US has become a fascist country.
Moderate? Both parties are absolutely fascist, and the US has been a fascist country for some time now, it's just a lot more obvious now than it used to be.
People just don't believe me,
The problem is the "fascist" label. Poorly-educated Americans only associate it with Nazi Germany and Hitler and the Holocaust, and don't really understand the meaning of the term, which is corporate control over government. "Corporatism" means the same thing, but it doesn't carry the same weight that "fascism" does.
Other even more poorly-educated Americans think it has something to do with Communism because it ends in "ism" and started in Europe at roughly the same time Communism did.
Re:There is no 'right to Internet access' (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet people used to be able to satisfy their needs for food, shelter, and clothing without government and without me. And some can even do it without any other humans around at all.
Not really true any more. It's not possible to just go out and "live on the land"; that land belongs to someone, either a private party or the government, and they're not going to let you just live there. Moreover, there simply aren't enough resources for people to live like this. That's why the hunter-gatherer societies disappeared roughly 9,000 years ago, and were all replaced with agricultural communities. There have been a few aberrations, such as the Native Americans in North America until 150-200 years ago, and also settlers moving out to "the frontier" and doing the same, but that's all over now and only existed because the Americas were geographically separated from the rest of the world by water. There simply isn't enough land and wild animals for everyone to go back to being a hunter-gatherer, or even a small number of people. The lifestyles aren't compatible (as good land is in short supply); your ideas are several thousands years out-of-date.