Gubernatorial Candidate Speaks Out Against CAS 121
New submitter C0R1D4N writes "Carl Bergmanson, a New Jersey gubernatorial democrat running in the 2013 primary, has recently spoken out against the new 'six strike policy' being put in place this week by major ISPs. He said: 'The
internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it
is time we treat it as a public utility. The electric company has no say over what you power with their
service, the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download.'"
Sadly, this is probably as good as it gets (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least consumers now have an obscure gubernatorial candidate, who stands no chance of winning either the primary or election, on their side. Guess that beats *nothing*.
Re:Sadly, this is probably as good as it gets (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least consumers now have an obscure gubernatorial candidate, who stands no chance of winning either the primary or election, on their side. Guess that beats *nothing*.
You can make this guy into a major candidate by writing him a check. As a matter of fact, if he doesn't get a couple of hundred thousand checks from the Slashdot community pretty damn quick then you all might be the whining do-nothing slackers the more cynical among you have always claimed.
Re:Sadly, this is probably as good as it gets (Score:4, Interesting)
Because whether or not you like it, that's how this government, and most others, work: Not by majority opinion, but by majority dollars.
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You can bet there's a lawyer printing off the boilerplate paperwork to establish a SuperPAC for his opposition as we speak. Probably already done. A messenger is frantically chasing around gathering signatures, so the RIAA/MPAA will have someplace safe to dump the literally millions they're going to give this guy's opposition.
I expect the first attack ads with the obvious stamp of whole bunches of money by the end of the week.
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This is fine too. If they are willing to spend millions for every thousand our side wastes, then they'll run out of money before we do (maybe). Just call it a war of attrition and we are golden.
Not as long as "we" (the general we) also give the opposition much more money at the same time.
I'll bet that the OP spends more than 50 bucks in music and movie and TV and Internet (if he uses the Comcast/AT&T duopoly prevalent in much of the US). Hell I spend more than that on cable per month.
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Can Kickstarter be used for funding purpose, I wonder?
With stretch goals such as "save the world."
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The problem with the US system of paying for political support is that even if the slashdot community did get him elected theres no chance he'll see that again. Once hes elected the MPAA/RIAA can buy him cheap as he'll know their income wont stop. The public with their 'single issue' campaigns will never make a dent in the systematic stripping of peoples basic rights.
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You make a good point. I wish we had good canidates like this in the UK, where I was born and am currently a citizen. Neverthless, I will write him a check for $100 in your currency, just like I did for Barack Obama.
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Somehow "Just like...Obama" isn't very encouraging to me
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That depends on the campaign finance laws of the individual State. Some allow it, some don't.
I don't know which side of the fence New Jersey comes down on, having never lived there, but it would probably be advisable to find out before donating money to this guy if you don't live/work in Jersey....
Common carrier (Score:5, Insightful)
ISPs look like common carriers and quack like common carriers. It's high time we started treating them as common carriers (i.e., imposing net neutrality on them).
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s/Either that or at least/And/
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How can the ISPs possibly make money without constant kickbacks from the MPAA/RIAA for things like cooperating with them on things like CAS?
I suspect they don't get kickbacks. They might get "we promise not to sue you" which are much harder to trace. A little more of the stick than the carrot.
Re:Common carrier (Score:5, Interesting)
"SPs look like common carriers and quack like common carriers. It's high time we started treating them as common carriers (i.e., imposing net neutrality on them)."
The FCC has wanted to classify ISPs as Title II Common Carriers since their inception. It was Congress that stopped it from doing so, by passing a law that made ISPs an exception. Backed by lobbying, no doubt. There was never any real, rational reason for doing that and I have been lambasting Congress for it ever since. (That is, "corporate profit" might be a "reason", but not a good one. This situation is definitely not in the public interest. Countries that treat internet more like a utility have significantly better service at lower rates than the U.S.)
The reality is, more than ever before, that ISPs are Common Carriers, in every meaningful way. We need to get Congress to let the FCC classify them as such.
The moment that happens, many of these problems -- and privacy problems too -- simply disappear.
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Still, you're right.
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"Privacy problems would disappear--"
Yes, I meant that "many privacy problems would disappear."
Think about it: Deep-packet inspection would simply be illegal. No question. Maybe it could be done with a warrant or subpoena, but pretty much no other way. 3rd-party cookies and pixel-bug tracking would, in any sane universe, then constitute "tapping" and would likely disappear (for legitimate reasons, anyway). Etc.
It would go a long way toward solving many of our internet ills.
Re:Never waste an opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
"... the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download."
But the government does, right?
No.
"The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility."
Isn't it convenient how politicians use this situation to exert more control over the Internet? (And now watch as thousands of geeks who have otherwise been staunchly against the government regulating the Internet line up behind this guy.)
He is not implying regulation of the Internet. He is implying regulation of the Internet service providers (to prohibit them from regulating the Internet).
The Internet is not their hardware, it is our network that we pay them to provision.
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while i agree the op went too far in his rant, the wording does imply govt regulations. Show me any public utility that doesn't have a long list of govt strings attached. Roads and airports are public utility and you begin to have TSA and other 3letter wonders everywhere. In the age of terrorist and pedophile bogeymen the fate of the internet is sealed.
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The problem is we have only two choices currently. Government control of the internet or corporate control of the internet. (And govt' control may just be puppet control by corps that write fat checks).
Who do you want controlling the internet, the FBI, who can send death squads to trash your house? Or the MPAA who can send the FBI death squads to trash your house?
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while i agree the op went too far in his rant, the wording does imply govt regulations
Any action from on high preventing the company from doing whatever the hell it wants is a "government regulation."
Some regulations are bad and pointless. Some regulations are *gasp* good.
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what exactly is wrong with this? the internet does use public infrastructure. in fact it works very much like electricity. paying by the amount of bandwidth you use makes a hell of a lot of sense to me, even though that's an unpopular opinion. i'd love to see a pay-per-kb system, but prices need to be much cheaper. the government could help with that while still keeping the internet open.
Re:Never waste an opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
You're conflating two different things and confusing the issue. Bergmanson is speaking of using government power to *prevent* corporations from engaging in censorship. You are implying that any government attempt to exercise the power to stop corporate censorship will itself be creating a situation where the government can and will censor the internet itself - something that is not exactly accurate.
I find it disheartening how, whenever there is a semi-serious discussion of using government power to stop flagrant corporate abuse, someone inevitably hauls out the "OMG! We can't allow the government to have that much power! They'll abuse it and our freedom will suffer!" While I certainly am concerned about government tyranny and over-reach, I fail to understand why we settling for corporate tyranny and abuse instead is the only possible alternative. American history would seem to demonstrate that it is possible to have a government that keeps corporations in check without becoming some sort of nightmare police-state.
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American history would seem to demonstrate that it is possible to have a government that keeps corporations in check without becoming some sort of nightmare police-state.
are you serious? Govt that keeps corporations in check? So why everybody and their dog whine about the citizens united and the money as speech thing? Ever heard of regulatory capture (plain as day in case of FDA, EPA, SEC)?
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The United States began as an independent nation in 1776, and established its present system of government under the Constitution in 1789. Since that time there have been several periods of damaging corporate excess; The Gilded Age (1877-1900), The Roaring Twenties (1920-1928), and the one we're currently living through (1981-20??). That's 63 years out of the 237 years of the U.S.'s existence where the corporations have been arguably 'out of control'. You can quibble about details and dates, but the U.S. ha
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Yes! Best misplaced homophone EVER!
Not sure... (Score:2)
Re:Not a big fan of "six strikes" but... (Score:5, Insightful)
At least you could appeal to the FCC, if your ISP made a mistake.
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At least you could appeal to the FCC, if your ISP made a mistake.
And they wouldn't give a shit.
At least I can choose a local provider (which is pretty good) in my area that doesn't subscribe to six strikes.
If the FCC was in control? Ugh.
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"When you use electricity to power your porn, that porn doesn't pass through the electricity company to get to you. "
Uhhhhhh, broadband over powerline?
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But it's still in the market so it counts.
Re:Poor analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Going along with your line of reasoning, the ISPs are distributors of child pornography and all of their executives should be jailed for life.
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Re:Poor analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like the phone company absolutely has the right to refuse letting some calls pass through their switches if they want, right?
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Phone companies can and do throw people off of their services for breaking their ToS.
AC was a little more specific than ToS. Can you name a phone company that ended someones contract for calling someone they didn't want them to call?
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Imagine if the RIAA listened in on your conversation and one of the things that could get you banned from the telephone is letting a friend hear your music collection playing.
Typesetting/spacing (Score:3, Insightful)
I see they are going for a newspaper look,
but the words
are so spread out
it makes my brain bleed
to try and read it. and it looks like
the articles are all smashed. together. and junk
The Last Paper (in free verse) (Score:1)
They wrote a story
typeset in the form of a seventh-grade paper
where only the page count matters.
But the trick never worked
as the teacher docked them anyway.
It was worth one more try.
Re:Typesetting/spacing (Score:5, Funny)
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Somene pasted in an article with hard carriage returns at the end of each "line", whatever length they define it as, and they got interpreted as paragraph breaks instead (and quite reasonably. Only inferior editors from the dark ages before most of you were born did this. Also, Notepad fucks up doing this from time to time if wrap size changes.
CAS (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, someone standing up against Computer Algebra Systems! Those whizzy calculators are destroying education in this country, leaving children mathematically crippled, unable to manage the simplest symbolic manipulation in their own heads.
Yeah, I didn't RTFS beyond the headline; why do you ask?
Re:CAS (Score:5, Funny)
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I agree, the Compare-and-Swap instruction is crucial to efficient multi-threading synchronization!
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I agree with you. Why should our government care if Microsoft provides us with the ability to require privileges to load custom assemblies via Code Access Security? It's not like you have to use it if you don't want to...
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You'd think the government would be all over the Central Authentication Service.
It'd be nice if they were; it might encourage someone to come up with a solid Apache plugin to handle CAS-based authentication right.
Wrong (Score:1)
This article is clearly about the dreaded Channel Associated Signaling. Better late than never that someone stands up and raises his voice against this atrocity
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This article is clearly about the dreaded Channel Associated Signaling.
In case anyone else wants to play:
(0) infidel /home/keeling_ dict cas
8 definitions found
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (18 May 2012) [foldoc]:
CAS
1. {Column Address Strobe}.
2. (channel associated signaling) {in-band
signalling}.
From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2006) [vera]:
CAS
A breath of fresh air. (Score:2)
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I'm glad he said it, but very few if any people are listening. Gov Christie has about a 75% approval rating and will win re-election in a landslide barring some sort of major screwup.
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> I'm predicting an extremely close election.
This sounds like the same cognitive dissonance that led Republicans to predict that Romney would win.
It turned out that the polls were right and they were wrong.
It's amazing how people who use math can be right so often.
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I disagree. The Republican Party has done an extremely good job of purging liberal-ish Republicans from their party by denying them party funding. It led to them being unified (for awhile... recently that's broken down) while Democrats were not. It's one reason why Obama wasn't just able to push anything through Congress in his first term (including a non-neutered Obamacare).. his own party was fractured and not on board.
Please (Score:4, Interesting)
Great. What effect is this statement more like to have
- ISPs stop telling you what you can download or not download
or
- Electric companies getting ideas about having a say over what you power with their service.
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they can't turn the air conditioning down if it's on the same power feed as the rest.
anyways.. the trick for wanabe hippie gangsters is to grow just salad in the house for the first year.
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The DEA has to get a search warrant from a judge, then prove in front of another judge that you've done something illegal.
With Six Strikes, there's no due process, the ISPs are acting like the police, judge, jury and jailer at the same time.
If only big brother saw it this way... (Score:1)
Acronym overload (Score:2)
My first thought from the headline was, "Why would they have a problem with Continuous Active Sonar [strategypage.com]?".
YAY. (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously? (Score:2)
Why bother? (Score:1)
Shrug - no real news here (Score:2)
Yawn. The linked "article" is just a press-release from a fringe candidate. I'll be impressed if I see a mainstream candidate saying something like this and it's not just in a press-release.
Actually, power companies do have some say (Score:2)
If your consumption is much higher than the norm, they'll notify the police of a possible grow operation.
Help me out here... (Score:2)
"it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility."
What part of "the internet" is publicly owned, outside of a few last-mile segments in municipalities that have elected to provide that service?
Last I read, the "backbone" of internet was owned by private companies. The ISPs are private companies. All of the tiers in between them are owned by private companies.
Or, is this to imply that Americans should consider all of that privately-owned property to be "public", because some fore
The last mile is all that matters. (Score:2)
The most expensive, difficult, LARGEST, and publicly owned part of any direct connect service is the last mile. The ISPs must use public land or public airwaves to get to your home; they get permission from the public using public institutions (government which used to be by and for the people but that is off topic.) The same system which provides water, sewer, roads, phone, power - although some of those are too new to be public and instead are privatized at our expense (but we love to pay more so somebo
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Last mile is important, but quite often the long haul is also done with hidden and perhaps forgotten but still significant public subsidies. In many places the long haul fiber is carried by the power utility companies, tucked inside of their high voltage lines.
Actually, that's not entirely true... (Score:2)
There are often terms of service for any utility, and part of those terms can easily be that you do not use the service of that utility to break the law.
So yes... electric companies *can* say that you aren't allowed to use it to power things when you are using those things to commit a crime, such as powering heat lamps to illegally grow marijuana in your own home.
The only thing that might be argued to be wrong with this is that there may not necessarily be any tangible proof that a particular ISP subsc
I would say that depends on something... (Score:4, Interesting)
Copyright Reform dream coming true (Score:2)
The biggest problem with getting copyright law reformed is "How do you get a few million more Americans to care?". Thanks CAS for solving that problem & guaranteeing this will be a political topic soon enough.
An actual choice in NJ?? (Score:1)
And if his website weren't thoroughly slashdotted, I'd be checking out exactly what he stands for.
(NJ's governors tend to have earned their rep as things you wouldn't want stuck to the bottom of a shoe)
(no really, you don't want a hysterical corrupt hypocrite stuck to the bottom of your shoe)
(actually, it applies to both parties for about every office in the state)
The solution is a complex number... (Score:2)
It is pretty ironic that a gubernatorial candidate, is speaking out against complex adaptive systems when his democratic party itself is one.
I was wondering... (Score:1)
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Last I checked, there was tyranny going on both sides of the isle, not just Democrats. In fact, Republicans cater to the rich and powerful, when in history was there ever a poor tyrant?
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"No sir," said the man, "I came back to see if you have a bronze politician."
ftfy
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"No sir," said the man, "I came back to see if you have a bronze Politician."
FTFY