The Government Now Has The Power To Regulate The Internet .

Net "neutrality" has passed which will help to make the Internet a public utility and regulated as such. Congress voted against this and the courts ruled that this was not legal. Well that does not matter to those with "The Unconstrained Vision". The current administration will just bypass all of the traditional restraints on government power. When restraints on the government's power prevent it from doing beneficial things, then these restraints are viewed as a negative thing by those wishing to remake a better society and must by destroyed or bypassed as in this case. The Congress is becoming irrelevant just as it did during the downfall of the Roman empire. Net "Neutrality" was passed under the guise of protecting the consumer and giving them more choice. As President Obama said about the new rules, it"'will help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet while encouraging innovation, protecting consumer choice, and defending free speech.'" That is double speak straight out of the novel "1984" as these new regulations do the exact opposite. As Rush Limbaugh stated, "It is a solution in search of a problem". He did a concise over view of the topic far better than I could and I won't repeat it. These new rules basically allows the government to regulate content on the Internet. The same argument that is used for controlling the "public airwaves" for the purpose of regulating talk radio--which happens to be the governments biggest obstacle to ramming through its agenda of having more power that will enable it to do good more things for us--is being used for regulating the Internet . These new rules will led to the government controlling content on the Internet and regulate dissenting voices that might get in the way of the government doing good on our behalf. Putting Net Neutrality into the broader context, the free flow of information is always a threat to governments that need more power--to do good in the eyes of Liberals, read "A Conflict Of Visions" by Thomas Sowell--to help people out. There are those that truly want more power to do what they view as beneficial things for humanity and there are those that use this excuse to increase their power. The worst elements, such as those that seek power in and of itself, rise to the top in such a welfare system that is created with the intentions of helping people as it eventually collapses and necessitates and leads to totalitarian power to make the whole system work, see the example of health care and the government forcing us to buy insurance and telling us what to eat. In the case of controlling the Internet, it will be this totalitarian power that will be using this new control in the future.

Net "Neutrality" is about controlling voices of opposition to the government's agenda,

Now, Copps,' one of the Democrat commissioners, "said that he wanted to ensure that the Internet doesn't travel down the same road of special interest consolidation and gatekeeper control that other media and communications industries like radio, TV, film, and cable have traveled.'

They are worried to death that the Internet is gonna become the next conservative talk radio and Fox News, and that's what they're not gonna permit. That's what so-called net neutrality is all about: To make sure that the voices of minorities and the displaced and the dis-financed and the disabused and the whoevers are equally heard. 'What a historic tragedy it would be,' Copps said, 'to let the fate,' that fate, meaning what's happened to talk radio and Fox News, 'befall the dynamism of the Internet.' That's from an earlier app story. Yeah, so we would really hate to see that -- and by the way, they don't have any regulatory authority over cable TV and they haven't asserted it, and that's what galls 'em about Fox. They are trying to control Fox on the basis that Fox does news.

One thing that is worth noting is that Google supported this. Why would big business support government regulation? Would this not hurt big business? A lot of the negative attributes that people ascribe to capitalism is actually the result of the collusion of big government and big business--corporatism. This collusion started under our first modern President Teddy Roosevelt. Big businesses like government regulation because it gives them certainty and an unfair advantage against their smaller competitors because they can afford to comply with the regulations while the smaller businesses can't. Government regulation also helps to prevent competitors from popping up because of the onerous and costly effects of the regulations. Government also likes big business and wants to enact a partnership with them for the purpose of achieving their beneficial goals. Both parties benefit in this Corporatist Fascist model while the people's freedom is the loser. America is not a free enterprise system and has not been for some time now. It is a mixed economic model with free enterprise and government control. This system started out with the free enterprise being the dominate element and the government control being the subordinate element. For quit some time these roles have been in the process of being reversed so that now the government control is becoming the dominate element and to eventually the the only element.

Our health care system and one sixth of our economy has been completely overhauled into a government-controlled model, the financial and banking industry has been basically taken over along with the car industry, the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy has been repealed, the Internet has now fallen under the regulatory foot of the government, and the START treaty looks like it will be passed. President Obama and the Democratic Congress has been very successful in "Fundamentally Transforming" America. The foundation for a new system has been and is in the process of being built, to paraphrase a Congressman referring to Obamacare. This new system is vastly different in a negative sense, change in and of itself is not a negative thing, from what this Country was founded as. All that can be done to these achievements by the new Congress and the new future Republican President, this is still up in the air, is making little reforms in the newly created structure and not getting rid of this structure or replacing it with a free market one. The full effects and force of this fundamental transformation won't be felt for another couple of decades.

The Government Now Has The Power To Regulate The Volume Of Audio On Commercials.

I first saw this news on Fox News. I thought is was interesting as it represents the broader goal of the government to control the Internet and all other forms of media through net neutrality. I wonder what kind of precedent this new power will set and how it will be used in the future.

President Obama on Wednesday signed into law a bill that will regulate the volume of television commercials. According to the White House, the 'Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation' or 'CALM' Act 'requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prescribe a regulation limiting the volume of audio on commercials.' The regulation applies to 'television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors.' Under the new law, commercials can be only as loud as the decibel level of regular programming.

The "Calm" act sounds lovely and soothing. I am glad that the government is there to protect us from loud commercials. I have not read anything that stated the rational behind this new regulation. It simply appears to be a power grab by the government. Maybe a lot of people called the FCC to complain about loud commercials. This is a perfect example of the type of tyranny that America is headed for: a soft-mild-loving-caring tyranny.

Net Neutrality Discussion

OK, if we're talking about Net Neutrality, then this really is government horning in on free enterprise to regulate access, so I'm definitely against.  That picture to the left is part of 'the internet'.  It's not a magical place of infinite bandwidth.  They are massive arrays of huge power-sucking servers connected by high speed fiber and microwave communications.  They have limits as to what they can do.  I had to post this response rather than comment, because it was too big.

Ace of Spades summed up the arguments on both sides succinctly in 2006:

I don't know much about this issue. People start talking about tubes and I just can't follow the techincal details.

This is pretty much the state of the debate as far as I can tell.

1) You put things into tubes.

a) There are many things that may be put into tubes.

b) But they break down into four broad categories:

i. Pictures of big-breasted lesbians hitting each other with pillows.

ii. Pictures of cats.

iii. Guys pretending to be big-breasted lesbians, trying to find other big-breasted lesbians, so they can punch the clown to dirty typing about hitting each other with pillows, resulting in thousands of dudes wacking off with other dudes while they're all pretending to be a lesbian stripper named "Summer Autumn."

iv. More pictures of cats.

2) There is only so much room in these tubes.

3) So some people would like to charge different users different amounts to fill the tubes with different things.

a) Some worry that without this scheme, low-tubewidth users will not be able to send each other pictures of cats.

b) But with such a scheme, high-tubewidth users will have to pay more to download video of big-breasted lesbians hitting each other with pillows.

4) Both sides of the debate lay claim to the virtues of promoting freedom, equal access, innovation, and capitalism.

a) But no one will tell me if which side is going to cost me more for logging on to AOL chat under the name "Summer Autumn."

5) Ergo: I care passionately about this issue, but I don't care, because I can't understand it, and no one will tell me how my clown-punching activities will be affected.

What Ace is saying is that the telcos want to charge the high-bandwidth users a higher price for hogging up the -finite- space on the internet. The government wants to keep the price for access equal. This isn't a clear-cut decision, but when in doubt...see my comment in Melkor's article.
From the New York Times

Currently, Internet users get access to any Web site on an equal basis. Foreign and domestic sites, big corporate home pages and low-traffic blogs all show up on a user’s screen in the same way when their addresses are typed into a browser, and the Federal Communications Commission has come out in favor of keeping things that way.

Cable and telephone companies are talking, however, about creating a two-tiered Internet with a fast lane and a slow lane. Companies that pay higher rates would have their Web pages delivered to Internet users in the current speedy fashion. Companies and individuals that do not would be relegated to the slow lane.

In a significant decision, a federal appeals court ruled in April 2010 that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was a big victory for the Comcast Corporation, the nation’s largest cable company. It had challenged the F.C.C.’s authority to impose the so-called “net neutraility” obligations."

This is a "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" situation for anti-statist, small-government folks. The telcos want these two-tiered systems because it costs them big money for the servers and transmission systems that enable the high-bandwidth communications. In other words, telcos feel that they make these different charges to keep their system running at a reasonable cost to the consumer.

Obama, as usual, is using this to increase statist control.  From the same New York Times article:

President Obama declared in May 2009 that he is “firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be — open and free.” The FCC under the Obama administration is moving to add a fifth principle that will prevent Internet providers from discriminating against certain services or applications. Consumer advocates are concerned that Internet providers might ban or degrade services that compete with their own offerings, like television shows delivered over the Web."

The telcos will rightly say that without the two-tiered system, rates will go up for everyone to enable them to keep the system functioning. The government doesn't want to allow telcos to charge people extra for high bandwidth useage, in order to keep the system 'fair'.

OK RTP'rs: here's the difficult decision: allow telcos to economically operate their system, or allow government to regulate the system and force higher rates on everyone to enable equal access/use.   My answer is that private enterprise will eventually arrive at the right solution, as opposed to government regulating and raising rates on everyone.  I admit that there are good arguments both ways and would not harshly criticize someone who thought net neutrality was a good idea.  But, these are where the decisions are made that slowly ratchet up the control. 

Show us your colors.