DISQUS

Technology Liberation Front: Hillary Clinton, Net Neutrality Regulation & the Great Leap of Faith

  • John Middleton · 3 years ago
    Good post
  • MikeT · 3 years ago
    This is why we need an end to the professional politician. Two terms for the House, one term for the Senate, reduce the President down to a single six year term. Most of these issues wouldn't be issues if we didn't have self-serving politicians who push these laws to advance their own careers.
  • Damian Gerow · 3 years ago
    I sit on the fence when it comes to this whole 'Net Neutrality debate.

    Firstly, the whole concept of a neutral debate /is/ akin (stress on akin) to the Internet's first amendment. I'm sure you can interpret Mr. Gilmore's oft-quoted phrase, "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it," as being applicable here.

    However, there's one key point that people seem to be missing: the Internet is a *global* thing. It's not American. It's not controlled by American companies. It's not governed by the American government. So, quite frankly, this only affects Americans and American companies. And if American companies don't like it, they can host their servers elsewhere.

    Yes, that still leaves American citizens in the lurch -- no matter which way you see as 'the lurch'.

    Quite frankly, I don't see the American government regulating the Internet as a Good Thing. Conversely, I don't have faith in Big Company to be trusted to inherently regulate the internet itself (and let's not bring the "Free Market" into this, please, as it's almost meaningless in cases like this).

    So, which should it be? Should the Government regulate the 'Net? Should it be left to the forces of the market? Frankly, I /prefer/ the latter, but only because it is the lesser of two evils.

    My suggestion instead: if you're this concerned about it, move to a different country where this isn't (yet?) and issue.

    (I should also point out that I'm half hoping that there /will/ be a tiered Internet created, as I think it would be a Very Good Thing to split the commercial Internet from the actual useful Internet. We're already seeing mini-splits with things like Freenet and I2P, and I can't help but think that with enough effort, a commercial push to charge people to make their sites 'more available' will wind up encouraging more splits that have a real potential to wind up making the Internet a better place.)