A note about all these bills they keep passing for NO FUCKING REASON.*
*Read: for whom ever pays them the most. This bill is going to create a firewall state. HMM I THINK BIG MEDIA WANTS A SLICE OF THIS ONE.
Because you need to know, and I’m pretty sure this won’t get the mass media attention it deserves:
Today our Senate had the pleasure of choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, and solved the matter by voting directly down their… ambiguous party lines. What does this say of the outcome? It likely says they don’t even understand what they’re voting on enough to have an opinion. Enter special interest groups, stage right: “Don’t worry, poor senators! We’re the ACLU, MPAA, and RIAA; we’ll help you make sense of all these silly law things!”
Don’t stop reading yet, this is important, damnit. Let’s talk about net neutrality and why you can neither support nor oppose it.
When you boil it down, net neutrality is a means of protecting the Internet from corporate Internet service providers. I think Google puts it best by stating, “Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online.” This is of course a valid statement and primary to my own concerns for our Internet’s future… so how could anyone be pissed that this law passed? In short, the devil is in the details, and the execution is drastically, horribly flawed. Net neutrality as it exists in reality is a regulatory shitstorm waiting to be perverted and exploited, chiefly in part to the role of the FCC. You may be familiar with the term slippery slope.
What happens with FCC control? Well, moral authority is handed to the government, and ISPs must conform to what they deem lawful and acceptable.
What happens with corporate control? Well, telecomms can legally filter your content as they see fit to maximize profit and exert influence.
Thus, while the support of net neutrality is absolutely vital to your lifestyle, the support of this bill is nowhere near neutral.
This is a plea to my point of view. Please understand the implications of this kind of legislation before you drink the ACLU Kool Aid in celebration of your rights being picked apart. It’s not about Democrats or Republicans… it’s about the method of net neutrality being bad for everyone - even the people that wanted it in the first place. It forces a choice no one is capable of making: Do you prefer control in the hands of ISPs, or the FCC? Corporations or the Senate? Giant douche or Turd Sandwich?
We’ll have to see how this one plays out, but the war is not over, and the next attack on your Internet is imminent… The battle lines are drawn and you’re either for freedom or against it. What have YOU done lately to stop S.968 PROTECT-IP/SOPA? The Internet, when properly left to its own devices, is the zenith of human communication. Don’t let the U.S. become a firewall state!
