Telcos Turn to Stalin for Help Against Net Neutrality

In no uncertain terms, John C. Dvorak takes down the latest broadside against Net Neutrality by the modern-day red baiters at the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

You would hope that Journal editors had learned enough public policy by now to pull their writers' frequent rants against it into line with actual history.

Net Neutrality's No. 1 Supporter?

Not so.

"I'm suspicious of op-eds talking up the horrors of Net Neutrality, especially when the facts are never made clear," Dvorak writes. "Instead, we have an out-and-out attempt to befuddle the public and confuse the reader."

The Journal opinion piece in question, by Andy Kessler, highlights the shady logic and "crackpot assertions" of the anti-Net Neutrality faction.

Kessler writes in the Journal: "With Net Neutrality, there will be no new competition and no incentives for build-outs. Bandwidth speeds will stagnate, and new services will wither from bandwidth starvation."

Dvorak responds:

This is funny, since until just a while ago, we had been operating under a de facto Net Neutrality.

Using Kessler's logic, we should still be using 300-baud modems since there's no incentive to do anything different. How does he -- or anyone else, for that matter -- explain the progress from 300-baud modems to fiber to the home during this period of genuine net neutrality? It's only recently that the phone and cable companies have decided to futz with bandwidth, with packet sniffing, bandwidth shaping and ceiling limitations.

... Net Neutrality is nothing new. It's the way it has always been. How does codifying it into a law change anything, except to foil the scheming of the phone and cable companies that have -- during the era of net neutrality and genuine deregulation -- competed very well?

It wasn't until 2005 that Net Neutrality protections were stripped from the law. Our efforts at SavetheInternet.com and elsewhere are simply to restore them -- especially at a time when companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon are making moves to block, filter and censor digital communications.

Lacking any real arguments the anti-neutrality folks try rote and tired scare tactics.

At the Journal, Kessler plays the red card common to other telco shills when he writes, "the Internet will only expand based on competitive principles, not socialist diktat."

Dvorak again responds:

I love the way these guys throw in the ugly term "socialist" when they want to trigger a 1950's-style knee-jerk reaction from the American public. And in case you didn't notice, he also throws in a Communist term "diktat" so you dummies will be totally repulsed and imagine Stalin lurking.

...We have no socialist diktat going on, and we are falling behind other countries like crazy in broadband speeds and connectivity. Countries that mandated universal high-speed connectivity (aka socialist diktat) have all zoomed ahead of us.

We are in 16th or 17th place and falling fast. This tells me that we are doing something wrong. We're kowtowing to the wishes of the big telcos -- mega corporations that have no real interest in progress, just profits.

Indeed. But don't just listen to us. Read Kessler vs. Dvorak and decide for yourself: Support Net Neutrality or follow phone and cable logic?

The choice is clear.

Follow Timothy Karr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimKarr

Comments

[Merg]

This is first and foremost and issue of 'free speech'. Without neutrality, censorship and media control will surely follow on the internet just as it does on the main stream media. This MUST be opposed by ALL citizens.

[mlaiuppa]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Unless you can:

1. See a way to make huge profits off of it or

2. See a way to control any free speech that might result in damage to #1.

How important is this issue? If it wasn't important, why hire seat warmers to lock out the public during hearings?

[hardrain77]

The aim is clear that this is to censor and make the internet an extension of fascism. What the telecoms are trying to do is shameful corporatism.

We will not not you turn the entire internet into a corporatised den of low IQ's like T.V. already is.

[RnR]

I've never had any segment of the population sicken and disgust me like our glorious sellout congress. Way to go Pelosi, you and yours have reached a new level of, I don't know...treason????

[jmad]

Shame on ATT and all the telecons.
I vacation at a small town in Mexico that is about 15 miles from the nearest city.
TELEMEX, a monopoly, provides DSL. Could ATT provide similar service to rural America?
The bums say I am lucky to even have a telephone at all !
So much for deregulation.

[dexxjones]

yes, the only socialism the like is similar to the only welfare they like: for the good of the corporations. net neutrality has to be kept in the front of people's attention. if there was ever an issue which should get us to put our collective foot down, this is the one.

i firmly believe that without the internet we would already be marching off to the camps.

[LeftRight]

but.....but.....but, those poor companies have to charge twice, since they OBVIOUSLY cannot afford to function while only charging the USERS an arm and a leg for crappy service! now they must ALSO charge the providers a fee, for that same crappy service!

[zjr909]

The telcos like to take it one step at a time. First the immunity (which is just around the corner); then, emboldened by Congress having given away the farm, they'll convince Congress to throw in the cows and chickens. Were it not for the spying and subsequent immunity, we might write off telco's loathing of net neutrality simply as a profit motive. Now we have to assume it's much more than that; we have to assume it's at least as much censorship as it is profitability - now that big telecom has overtly become a partner in crime with the government. The aim is clearly to censor what people can see and hear. Imagine having to depend on the mainstream media for all news and opinion. But that's exactly what's in our future. Congress will never pass net neutrality legislation - unless it's to kill net neutrality. Congress has shown time and again where its loyalties lie. A couple years from now, forums like this one, and savetheinternet.com, and the free press simply won't exist. The kiddies'll even turn it into a cutsie-poo text message: NNIDLLNN (net neutrality is dead, long live net neutrality).