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Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison introduced the amendment to an appropriations bill. It would prevent the FCC from getting funding for any initiative to uphold Net neutrality. According to The Hill, the co-sponsors are Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).
See link below for full story.
The Raw Story » GOP senators declare war on Net neutrality (http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/09/gop-senators-net-neutrality/ - broken link)
Wow - "National Preparedness", that's a new angle. So supporting Net Neutrality means helping the terrorists, now.
Maintaining Net Neutrality (yes, maintaining - it's codifying the status quo) makes the Internet marketplace easy to enter. Doing away with it would allow the carriers to prioritize traffic between different content providers, and that would make a lovely cash cow. Innovation, of course, would lose out big. Fledgling upstarts would not be able to purchase preferred status and their traffic would suffer.
Any true free-market conservative should be in favor of maintaining Net Neutrality. Easy entry and competition purely on the merits of your service? Adam Smith would love it.
Of course, if you think Cable TV is a good business model for the consumer("Oh, do you want to use Skype? They're not in your current package, but we can add them for $4.95/month, subject to change"), by all means, dismantle Net Neutrality.
ISPs de facto have localized monopolies - they need to operate under Common Carrier rules.
ISPs de facto have localized monopolies - they need to operate under Common Carrier rules.
Exactly and the only reason I support this. The service of connecting you to the internet needs to be separated from the content they provide. What I wouldn't support is if they start messing with how the ISP's structure their billing and limits. The only way this will work is through a tiered service where the burden of the cost to provide the service is paid solely by the consumer, you can expect "unlimited" access to go the way of the dodo bird and you'll be paying a set rate for the bandwidth you use.
I'd also strongly object to any language that would dictate what the content providers can or cannot do. If this bill has any language in it that even remotely resembles that of the Fairness Doctrine it has to be removed.
This is very complicated issue and not quite as cut and dried as either side would suggest.
Freedom of speech is great and all, but society needs to censor and / or police itself in order for it to work without interference. And we don't do that very well.
What about child porn? Isn't that something you would want to eliminate?
There are already laws prohibiting child pornography.
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By all that's holy, keep net neutrality.
