Why The 'Right' Gets Net Neutrality Wrong

Just in time for the House Telecommunications Subcommittee's hearing tomorrow (May 6) on Net Neutrality legislation, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) and the American Spectator are out with new attacks on the simple idea that people should not have their Internet experiences subject to the whims of telephone and cable companies.

My day-job employer, Public Knowledge, even achieved a new level of notoriety when we were prominently mentioned in a blog post on the American Spectator, the publication best known for funneling millions of dollars to investigations of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The April 28 blog post, cleverly headlined, "Public Know Nothings," -- a play on Public Knowledge -- read like a basic corporate hit job on Net Neutrality of the kind one might read at any number of blogs or by any columnists in the thrall of the corporate world. But the story, combined with Armey's April 22 Washington Times headlined "Spare The Net," raise the inevitable question -- what is it about individual freedom that "conservatives" like the Spectator and Armey don't like?

To be fair, the debate is larger than the Spectator and Armey. Most congressional Republicans oppose the idea of giving consumers freedom on the Internet. They take shelter in their anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric, preferring to allow Internet freedom to apply to the corporations which own the networks connecting the Internet to consumers, rather than to consumers themselves. There could, of course, be a larger discussion about the meaning of "conservative" and Republican, and whether the two are synonymous.

(To be fairer still, it's not only Republicans. Many a Democrat also speaks out against Internet freedom. They don't have the fig-leaf of misbegotten ideology to hide behind, as they largely back worthwhile government action in many other areas. They are simply servants of corporate and/or union interests. The question applies equally: What about freedom don't they like?)

The clues to discovering how the opposition to individual freedom came about are in the two recently published pieces. Each them, in their own way, shows a tragic misunderstanding of how telecommunications policy, markets and technology worked in the past and how they work today. As a result, their interpretations of Net Neutrality, and the role of government, are also wrong.

At the heart of the opposition is the "mythology of the market," that once government "got out of the way," as Armey put it, new technologies emerged. "Telecom became a text-book case demonstrating that markets work and are good for consumers," as the Internet developed and dial-up modems yielded to broadband connections, Armey wrote.

Similarly, Peter Suderman, writing on the Spectator site, misses his telecom history. He criticized the testimony of actor and Internet entrepreneur Justine Bateman, who spoke to the Senate Commerce Committee about the need for a free and open Internet. Bateman asked whether Google and eBay would have been as successful as they are "without the freedoms we enjoy on the Internet today."

Suderman's analysis: "In fact, not only were all of these companies [eBay and Google] born in an era with no mandated net neutrality, it's utterly unclear that a lack of neutrality would've impeded them in any way whatsoever."

Government Helped Create The Internet

Let us review the history. Even setting aside the very basic fact that the underlying technology for the Internet was created under a government program, and was set free for commercial purposes by Congress, it's still hard to get away from the reality that the Internet as we know it was started, and flourished, in a regulated environment. While the content that went online, through bulletin boards, America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy and the rest, wasn't regulated, the telecommunications carriers to a large extent were.

Before the advent of the cable modem, the telephone companies that carried the online traffic not only were under tight rate-of-return regulation, but they were also subject to the sections of the Communications Act barring unreasonable discrimination (Sec. 202). They also had to sell their services wholesale. Amazingly, with all of that regulation, the first iteration of the online world grew, with thousands of local Internet Service Providers able to afford access to the network so they could offer their services to the public.

The new and fancy equipment came because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1968 broke through the tariff of then Bell System and allowed outside, customer-owned devices to be connected to the network. That decision brought competition in long distance as well as setting the stage for the fax, modem and other gadgets.

For the record, eBay was founded in 1995. Google came along three years later. It wasn't until 2002 that the FCC under Chairman Michael Powell started the process of classifying nascent cable-modem service as an "information service" under the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Both cable and DSL were taken out from under most regulations by the FCC in 2005, when today's Internet took shape. That decision, combined with some archaic, in-the-weeds technical matters, combined to wipe out the hundreds of local online and Internet Service Providers along with most of the competition for the telephone companies. One of the rules swept away was the prohibition against unreasonable discrimination -- the part of the law that enforced what we now know as Net Neutrality. That's what the proponents of a free and open Internet are trying to reclaim. It's very simple -- those companies carrying traffic can't play favorites.

Google's founders have said repeatedly they wouldn't have been able to get off the ground if they had been required to pay extra fees for telecommunications services to get onto a "fast lane" of service.

Market-Based Myths Abound

The argument against Net Neutrality really goes off-track when it gets into the nature of private property, the state of competition, and the effect of regulation. That's more than one track to be thrown off of, so it's quite the disaster scene. We may need CSI: Telecom to sort it all out.

Public Knowledge earned its headline in the Spectator because of the petition we filed with the FCC asking that companies like Verizon which offer text messaging not be able to decide which groups should be deemed worthy of service and which shouldn't be.

For the American Spectator, PK and our friends are asking for "governmental bullying" that infringes on the rights of a property owner's right to "manage the content that flows" over its network. Our crime is to want to "treat wireless carriers as public utilities rather than as private property owners. It's a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of widely used private networks."

In the same vein, Armey wrote that Net Neutrality violates the conservative principles of "free market competition and private property rights."

It is true that Verizon is a private company and that the network is its property. It is not true that the government has no authority over it. Much as zoning ordinances restrict what can be built on private property or regulation sets rates for electricity, it's well established that private property is subject to the law.

Verizon's network is not a private network. It is privately owned network, but that's different. A private network is what a company might have to connect its employees. Wireless has 65.2 million retail customers. That would be some humongous private network. Verizon, as with other cellular operators, offers a service to the public in accordance with the Communications Act. It is a public utility, subject to regulation.

In the text-message case, it's our view that Verizon, or any other carrier, should not be in the business of deciding which political views are acceptable to be carried on its network and which are not. That's not network management. It's censorship, and a violation of consumer rights, just as Comcast's continual throttling of peer-to-peer applications is goes beyond network management.

Because of our defense of the rights of free speech for every political view, the American Spectator categorizes Public Knowledge as "a left-leaning tech advocacy organization." If the defense of freedom of Americans to express their political views makes us "left-leaning," then make the most of it.

Also remember that Public Knowledge's singular accomplishment so far is a successful court challenge to an FCC rule that would have expanded the Commission's authority over devices far beyond what was authorized by Congress. In our broadcast flag case, we forced a Republican FCC to retreat when it tried to exercise too much power.

Finally, let's get to the concepts of "competition" and regulation. There is very little competition in the broadband market. To pretend otherwise is folly. If a consumer has two choices among providers, then that consumer is doing well. Most don't. If this were a truly competitive market, then there would be at least some restraint on prices. There isn't. Verizon expects to raise its prices on its fiber-optic FIOS service. Comcast raises its rates, even with FIOS in the neighborhood. This isn't true competition. It's a duopoly. There may be the odds and ends provider to supply service here and there, perhaps in Wyoming, but for the most part people choose between telephone company and cable if they have a choice at all. It's hard to see how, as Armey says, consumers would be left with "fewer choices" if a free and open Internet were mandatory.

Perhaps the worst argument from conservatives about Net Neutrality is that "pervasive regulation," as former FCC Commissioner Rachelle Chong called it, would somehow be such a burden to the poor, deprived telephone and cable companies that their incentives to invest and to innovate would just dry up. Opponents of an open Internet conjure up images of parents unable to protect their children, of government setting up business models, of companies unable to manage their networks.

Those tired-winged canards don't quack here. Net Neutrality is neither pervasive nor burdensome. It allows for innovation and investment. It allows for telephone companies to sell different levels of service to different customers. Parents can still protect their children. What it doesn't allow is discrimination. That's why Michele Combs from the Christian Coalition supports an open Internet, and she is brave and correct to do so in the face of uninformed criticism of her fellow "conservatives."

As it turns out, there is a real world example of how well this works, because there is a company that is currently under a Net Neutrality mandate. As a condition of its purchase of BellSouth, AT&T agreed to a two-year condition in which it is forbidden to provide any service that "privileges, degrades or prioritizes" any packets of data based on "source, ownership or destination."

How's that working out for AT&T? Look at its April 22 first quarter earnings report. Here are some highlights:

Earnings per share up 26.7 percent over first quarter 2007;

$30.7 billion in consolidated revenues, up 6.1 percent from the year earlier;

13.2 percent growth in broadband revenues with a 491,000 net gain in broadband connections in the quarter to reach 14.6 million in service

491,000 net gain in broadband connections in the quarter to reach 14.6 million in service;

first-quarter net gain of 148,000 U-verse subscribers, to reach 379,000 in service, on track to reach target of more than 1 million subscribers by year-end 2008

$4.4 billion in capital expenditures vs. $3.3 billion a year ago.

Those results were achieved under mandated Net Neutrality, the original, fundamental characteristic of the Internet that protects the individual consumer's freedom to innovate without permission and to receive, and pay for, the services he or she chooses. Why a conservative opposes that, I'll never know.

Follow Art Brodsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/artbrodsky

Comments

[daddysboy]

The problem is that the cat is out of the bag. The current owners of the internet infrastructure want to control which new communications services are used and how they are priced in order to maximize profits as they have in the past. However, services like video conferencing are now free over the internet to anyone installing the correct software and leasing enough bandwidth to carry a signal. This returns the telecom companies to their original role which is to just provide the infrastructure and they do not want to have it. They have had far too many years creating outrageous profits by dictating how the limited signal they have been in complete control of was used such as with their current ownership of the cellular air time. Text messaging is the perfect example because they have not only created a market for texting that was formerly craving only voice, they have the audacity to charge a per message price even though this form of communication is nearly free to them and is actually preferable because of it's negligible network hit. Then they have the nerve to even discuss the content of those messages? I hope the individual wins out in this, but these are some very determined companies. The right-wing personality just flocks to the telecom company's arguments because so much profit is involved and if there is anything that is more respected by some than moral or ethical considerations, it is PROFIT.

[rmc53x]

daddysboy-- is it really the cat out of the bag? or is it the genie out of the bottle? actually maybe it's more like Pandora's box has been opened; the demons unleased, but there is Hope.

anyway, NATIONALIZE THE INTERNET! then make it part of PBS, [after liberating PBS from it's corporate "underwriters" (overlords)]. how many of you out there are old enough to remember all the cool, cutting edge, experimental things "Educational TV" was doing in the 70's? Too cool for the Conservative squares who reigned it all in under the Reagan Administration.

besides, if this "competition in the free marketplace" crap really worked, we would all be enjoying T1 lines for $19.95 a month by now. I'm paying Comcast $50 a month and i don't have the bandwidth to email a couple of 500kb photos. but what choice do i have? Comcast is the only game in town.

[NoPCZone]

Right on cue CNBC (Corporatist News & Bullsh*t Channel) has Dick Armey on Squawk Box for the full program, pontificating his faux free market nonsense. Of course, NBC/Universal is a subsidiary of General Electric- NeoCon central and big pig at the public trough.

[dadw5boys]

The so called "LEFT LEANING" lets the American people demostrate their abiliy to invent things that other might eventually find profitable, it's only when those ideas stop flowing that they will seek to put access along with site access on a pay per view base.

Kepp those ideas comming America!!!!!!!

[daddysboy]

So as long as we let these companies steal our creative ideas and use them to profit from us, they won't start really using them to profit from us? How about we just tell them that they need to shut the hell up and provide internet access to all or go pound sand.

[CindySue]

You said: "To be fairer still, it's not only Republicans. Many a Democrat also speaks out against Internet freedom. They don't have the fig-leaf of misbegotten ideology to hide behind, as they largely back worthwhile government action in many other areas. They are simply servants of corporate and/or union interests. The question applies equally: What about freedom don't they like?"

They don't like that the Internet allows for that even just one individual with a well-timed post can Change the World if their heartfelt words reach far enough into the same.. People are empowering each other in a way before never dreamt, all from the comfort of an easy chair and a laptop, a coffee shop wireless hub, a street corner in Timbuktu.......

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock.. ;)

[chronic5]

Access to information, the global community, and the market place is most assuredly a threat to neo-cons. I do wonder about how the gigabytes of crap my neighbors are downloading affect my bill or should this even matter? I have two choices and they are both quite expensive. Could someone with a dial-up even load the front page of Huffpo with all the blinky blink and scripts running?

[daddysboy]

It's a paradox for sure because looking at your first sentence, it was hard to tell if you were being ironic or not. Conservatives, republicans and neoconservatives all love money so access to a global marketplace is a plus for these groups yet a free exchange of ideas is their worst fear. This seems to be playing out too because as far as I can see, the attempt isn't to shut down the internet, but rather like the Chinese, the intent is to close control of the internet to individuals while opening up control to the state, um I mean American corporations.

[Tremonius]

I'm a progressive, you bet, and I need to gear up in case some of them troglydikes I know wanta argue.

If I'm ordering a salad in Four Seasons, and my companion has the triple-plate fatguy special with all the trimmings, we expect his bill to be the larger, right?

Big rigs pay much more freight for greater weight than my Prius, and they're restricted to the slow lane so as not to impede the free flow of traffic.

Practically anything that is sold anywhere, beit cumquats or minutes of gab through the air, is on the meter. If you take more, you pay more.

I need to know how Freedom, Net Neutrality, Truth, Justice, and the American Way apply to a situation in which my neighbor downloads movies all day and into the night over our group cable and my e-mail won't run reliably as a direct result, yet we pay the same premium for the service.

You wanta know what Net Freedom is? Guess whose ads Google tacks onto this very blogging. Right; Verizon.

[jsarets]

Yeah, I know. It's funny to watch the telcos complain about heavy users monopolizing their networks while they continue to insist on marketing all-you-can-eat service plans to everyone and their email-forwarding grandmas. They eliminated any incentive to moderate bandwidth usage, and now they want Google to pay for their own nonsensical pricing model.

Obviously they must discriminate on the basis of purpose before they even consider discriminating on the basis of quantity. Surely it wouldn't make any sense for them to increase the price of the unlimited plan for chronic downloaders and introduce metered plans for light users. There doesn't seem to be anything that the telcos could do to avoid this inevitable infringement of our individual freedoms...

Imagine if the most popular means of buying gasoline was in the form of an unlimited monthly subscription, and the oil companies pleaded for Congress to let them make SUV owners pay more than small car owners. No! Everybody pays for each gallon of gasoline they consume regardless of what kind of car they drive, and likewise, everybody should pay for each bit and/or bps they transfer regardless of whether it's BitTorrent, Shockwave, AJAX, etc.

[RichHayes]

The problem is that the netowrks were by and large built with public money, so the public should have equal access. also any problems you are having with your access are likely down to deliberate bottlenecking by the network providers, its a self made problem for which they already have a solution. ie tiered services.

[Fotios]

The cable company sells you a cable modem. If you choose to use it a lot, the cable company should be able to support it, because that's what they sold you. If you watch more hours of TV than your neighbor, should you pay more? No, because you pay each month for as much digital cable and free on demand as you can handle. If ISPs want to charge by hour or by Mb, they can.

Net neutrality is different. The ISPs want to be able to slow access to some sites, while speeding it up to others. That would be like the department of transportation putting in speed bumps, stop signs and a dirt road to Wendys while helping out in the MacDonalds drive-thru.

[mlaiuppa]

Net Neutrality is about censorship.

Do you want to be able to access whatever is on the net? Or do you want someone else deciding what you'll retrieve?

I'm already tired of wading through pages of ebay auctions to do a Google search. But I have options. I don't want my options taken away from be because someone has paid some network giant to decide what I can and cannot access.

Losing net neutrality is another step towards fascism.

[Tremonius]

It is said "Net Neutrality is about censorship." but I don't see it at all.

Comcast was derailing service to those 24/7 movie downloaders. It was not the content of the movies to which they objected; probably they neither knew nor cared what the titles were.

In fact, can anyone (besides the usual conspiracy theorists) point me to an instance where content was suppressed rather than bandwidth?

"Losing net neutrality is another step towards fascism."

You're starting to sound like Hillary.

[Fotios]

It sounds like your cable company needs to increase their bandwidth. They are offering cable modems, but can't handle the bandwidth. Why should the guy using his modem to the full capacity have to pay more than you just because you choose not to use yours? If you watch more hours of TV than him, should you have to pay more?

[Tremonius]

The TV analogy is apt, I think. Another might be an airline overselling flights. In days of old, it was just a feature of their economy with no compensation for not being the first in line for boarding. They had to fill up those expensive jumbo jets, you see, (although I might think an empty seat better on fuel efficiency than one with an overweight customer if both were paid for) and always there were cancellations and no-shows (representing paid tickets) so what were they to do?

Provide what they'd contracted for, I reckon, but that came only after the FAA entered the game. If the Market is able to forge its own rules, any service will be operating like that Zacatecas movie house one rainy Sunday. They kept happily selling tickets, and if you went in, there was no seating, and precious little standing room either. Refunds were unheard of.

In my previous examples, there were discrete items consumed, like groceries and highway pavement. I doubt a restaurant would expect to charge for a full house and only ten percent show up for dinner.

[mlambert890]

You're choosing to use annecdotal evidence where convenience, and then reject it where not.

You point out that "in the early days", despite a heavily regulated environment (that didnt apply to high speed backbone and commercial circuits) the internet boomed.

You then say that post telecomm act, the internet turned bad b/c cable was introduced unregulated.

What has the practical impact been? Google can cry all they want about how they wouldnt have been able to start up - as they gain more and more control of monetizing the internet and snowjobbing the public, Im not sure that would have been a bad thing. The reality though, is that internet growth is better than ever and more people have access than ever before and I dont see their free speech being limited (this website being a GREAT example)

Some SANE level of legislation would be a good protection measure moving forward but lets tone the rhetoric down and not just do it to protect the likes of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. Thats no better than NOT doing it to protect AT&T, Verizon and (whoops - thats all thats really left since they all had to merge to survive in this "super profitable" industry) Ill add in a cableco then - Comcast.

People need to approach the debate over regulation in a rational and objective matter. Regulation OFTEN has impact NOWHERE near the original intent. We need to tread carefully and more discussion is a good thing.

[jsarets]

The term "neoconservative" is misleading. This wing of the Republican party is clearly the world's most radical manifestation of neoliberalism to the extent that there is a perceived mandate to spread market capitalism around the world, at gunpoint if they see fit.

In the popular American political lexicon, the conservati­ve/liberal spectrum generally refers to the degree to which the government intervenes in the the domestic economy in the interest of social cohesiveness. But everywhere else in the world, the deregulation and privatization of basic infrastructure and social services is considered liberal, whereas regulations and social programs are considered conservative.

While the freedom of the private sector from whims the public sector (e.g. the tyranny of the majority) is clearly a valid concern, as market liberalization proceeds, the freedom of private actors from other private entities becomes increasingly important. This challenge is made more complicated by the proliferation of services where the provider and user engage in sophisticated relationships as opposed to products where there are only simple transactions.

(continued)

[jsarets]

(page 2)

The operative question becomes: which kinds of contractual terms of service result in market interactions that are less free (as in freedom) than a product transaction? In my view, providers must treat their services as a quantifiable entities priced on the basis of supply and demand but never on the basis of purpose. When I buy a gallon of milk at the grocery store, they don't charge different prices based on whether I plan on drinking it straight or with cereal.

In the context of digital communications services, providers may charge for bits and/or bitrate up or down as functions of time (and potentially related to coincident demand). They can get as innovative as they like with their metering and/or prioritizing algorithms as long as every bit and/or bit per second is considered equal at that moment in time.

In short, providers should be allowed full control over the quantitative aspects of the traffic on their networks but zero control over the qualitative aspects. This extends the market liberty inherent in the classical producer/consumer transaction to the more general case of the provider/user relationship.

[mlambert890]

Lots of people weighing in here, very few of whom, I suspect, actually understand the technical details behind any of this.



As someone who understands them intimately, I think you're being a bit disingenuous and are fueling the hyper-poli­ticization of this issue.



What you say in dismissal of "right wing" (suddenly those who have some concerns with NN specifics are "right wing"?) objections, that QoS for services that genuinely need it - like VoIP and streaming video - arent at risk, is only the result of the painstaking years of vetting this issue.



I would argue that P2P *should* be deprioritized in many cases. If 6 kids downloading 90GB per day of porn and pirated movies is having a disproportionate impact on the hundreds of other folks sharing their network who just want to check email or make a VoIP call on Skype, then the socially responsible thing to do WOULD be to limit those kids.



This is such a tough issue not so much because of politics, but because of the ignorance of the general population, the kind of knee-jerk reaction that "big companies" are "out to get the litle guy" and the pervasive sense of entitlement that so many American citizens have.



Is *some* sort of net neutrality legislation a good thing? Absolutely. Have *any* of the proposed flavors to date hit the mark? Absolutely not. Anyone who would insist they do, in my opinion, either has a lack of technical knowledge, a political agenda, or both

[jsarets]

Nonsense. I'm a computer engineer. I haven't worked on network QoS, but I have extensive experience with process scheduling, which is fundamentally the same problem of allocating shared resources to clients of varying interactivity (e.g. sleepers and hogs).

As the Linux kernel became more commonly used on multimedia PCs, developers theorized that interactive, latency-sensitive processes such as playback should be given a dynamic priority boost over non-interactive, throughput­-sensitive processes such as encoding. This work culminated with the O(1) scheduler and some derivatives such as the Staircase scheduler.

However, recent work has rejected this theory, demonstrating that scheduler "fairness" is the fundamental metric that drives the optimal allocation of processor time between processes regardless of their interactivity. This work resulted in the Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS), which is now the default scheduler for all normal processes in Linux.

The same realities apply to network QoS. Fairness is actually better than fancy introspective priority algorithms. If latency-sensitive protocols aren't performing well with fair scheduling, then bandwidth has to be expanded. Boosting their priority will hurt the hogs more than it helps the sleepers.

[Ajita]

Great post... I hope technical people like you will be more vocal on this important issue.

[Fotios]

I am a graphic designer multiple GBs worth of media files daily. Do you have the right to slow my download speeds just because you want to have webcam sex with a Thai Ladyboy?

(perv)

[Belisarius]

This isn't about right wing, left wing, no wing, this is about congress and the presidency being in the back-pocket of lobbyists. The same people that have legalized graft by calling it "ear-marks" now want to unfetter the telecom monopolies just like they did big oil. They want them to be able to create pricing tiers which is new speak for charging more for the same thing.

Big oil has become a monopoly. Want proof: When the cost of a basic material for a company goes through the roof, what happens to their profits. In any other industry, profits disappear, but big oil's profits are astounding. How can this be? Have they repealed the laws of economics? NO. It's because congress, the Clintons, and the Bushes allowed big oil to consolidate so that there are now only four companies. Big oil sets its markup as a percent of the cost of oil. The higher the price of oil, the higher their profits. They can do this because they are an unregulated monopoly. They all markup the same way which is a form of price fixing.

We have been sold out while the rascals throw parties for themselves. Vote for independents, if you can find any. Write in the name of your neighbor. Throw the rascals out!

[lastams]

Thank you. I wish that more writers would point out the sheer hypocrisy between modern “conservatives” and conservative principals.
What is it that the right doesn’t like about personal freedoms?
The same thing they don’t like about fiscal responsibility I suppose.
Time after time after time this party runs on a platform of personal freedoms and small government, and time after time they attack personal freedoms and balloon government spending and waste.
You’d think by now that people would have noticed.
With record budget deficits and American families struggling to make ends meet, this week senators led by Mitch McConnell secured $500 million in depreciation and capital gains tax breaks for racehorse owners in the current farm bill that Congress is finalizing.
Racehorse owners!
In addition the bill will change the tax treatment of timber sales so that timber companies, such as Weyerhaeuser, will receive a major windfall to the tune of $435 million over 10 years.
But perhaps most importantly the bill will continue the subsidy programs that go to millionaires who may or may not be active farmers.
What could be more obscene; with a world food shortage and an economy in the toilet to spend billions of dollars to pay wealthy landowners who DON"T EVEN GROW FOOD?
So yes, when did “conservative” principals turn into Corporate Socialism?
And when will people begin to notice?

[ObserverinVancouver]

This article does not seem to be accepting new comments, so my remarks are not in response to this comment particularly.

This article was a tough slog but worth the effort. The right wing never seems to tire of acting like a two-year-old in a sandbox screaming "mine, mine" about every toy in sight.

[sunshineejc]

Art -this subject is deep even for the above average informed. I do remember how the Internet got started but the rest of what you said made me understand I was lost. You on the other hand either spent a lot of time researching this or for one reason or another come to have a broad and deep understanding of the subject over time

However you should not be surprised about what the Right will do. They are very predictable. They will drive the idea of Parental Control for as much as it is worth. They specialize in emotional Social issues. They ignore Separation of Church and State by bringing up maters that should be resolved in Church out into the Political debate.

[lthuedk 1]

These "Republicans" are nationalist socialists. Until the public is educated about the threat of this particular form of totalitarianism they will not know what hit them and it will be too late. The ratchet wrench these fascists use only turns in one direction; away from the Constitution.

The same totalitarians who support the Bush dictatorship, it's illegal lethal preemption, the 100 year occupation, and telecom immunity are lined up like thieves stealing our rights and our money.

Our Internet must be defended at all costs, and if we're not willing to go to the absolute limit to protect the Constitution, we should be stripped of our citizenship and deported. Most Republicans already meet the criteria.

We need Obama and some very tough legislation to protect us from a pox that never, ever stops it's assault on freedom.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/obama_confronts_the_corporation.html

[usapatriot1973]

"Those results were achieved under mandated Net Neutrality, the original, fundamental characteristic of the Internet that protects the individual consumer's freedom to innovate without permission and to receive, and pay for, the services he or she chooses. Why a conservative opposes that, I'll never know."

True conservatives would not be against that. Only the un-American neocon scum traitors that have hijacked the republican party would oppose Net Neutrality. But neocons aren't interested in true conservative and American values, they are interested in power and control and greed so perverse it is un-American.

[Honza]

My son got me my first computer just seven years ago, and then this old WW2 vet was awakened out of a sort of old age stupor, sent mails to the FCC chairman Powell, to get lost, may have helped, but the world is mine to explore once again, only now in peace , but for the Bush quagmire, that this ole vet will be opposed to till our throops are back where they belong.