Where the Candidates Stand On Net Neutrality 420
nmpost writes "Net neutrality is one of the biggest issues with regard to the internet today. At the heart of the issues is how much control ISPs will be allowed to have over their networks. Each candidate has come out with a strong position on the matter, and whoever wins will have a drastic effect on the future of the internet. Barack Obama has been a proponent of net neutrality. Under his watch, the FCC has implemented net neutrality rules. These restrictions did not apply to wireless networks, though; a gaping loophole that will be problematic in the future, as mobile internet is exploding in popularity. Until it is addressed, Obama can only be given a barely passing grade with regard to net neutrality. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come down on the other side of the issue. The former Massachusetts governor strongly opposes net neutrality. According to Politico, Romney believes net neutrality will restrict ISPs, and that they alone should govern their networks. The governor has stated that he wants as little regulation of the internet as possible."
Ron Paul (Score:4, Interesting)
Where does he rank? Or he even worth mentioning?
Re:Mitt Romney has come down.... (Score:0, Interesting)
Say what you will about Ryan, but he sure as fuck isn't afraid to stand by his idiotic opinions.
Yeh yeh, other guys same blah blah (Score:1, Interesting)
The usual 'the other guy is as bad or worse' claim. What's interesting about your comment is you didn't try and defend Romney's views.
Also assassinations? So Romney is *AGAINST* killing Bin Laden? Or was he in favor of it?
Illegal wars? You mean that French thing against Libya?? Where does Romney stand on that?
And that bill the Republican introduced to detain Americans without trial, are you still trying to pin that on Obama, is Romney *for* or *against* that bill?.
Is the Republican war against women on ceasefire this week or not? Is he pro abortion or anti-abortion?
That's the thing about Romney, I can tell you where his party stands, but I can't tell you where he stands on any issue. ANY issue, he's all over the place.
Re:Mitt Romney has come down.... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llef8ZRTWQo [youtube.com]
He did actually speak up. Could he have said more and altered tone? Sure, but he wasn't silent about it.
As a side note, you should really stop trying to label entire groups of people based on douche bag members of that group. Every group has people that the group itself should be ashamed of but that hardly justifies tar and feathering the entire group. That's called applying stereotypes. Two examples of applying stereotypes that you may be familiar with are racism and sexism.
Re:Do the candidates know what Net Neutrality mean (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdotters include a major portion of people with mental issues, who will find reasons to disagree with anything. They couldn't agree that the sky is blue on a clear sunny day. If you're parsing that sentence and trying to figure out why you disagree with it, consider yourself at least somewhat mental.
However, the non-mental slashdot crowd has a strong consensus on the basics of Net Neutrality. This strongly correlates to the subset of net neutrality that has been implemented as policy by the FCC. Net neutrality should not prevent ISPs from treating TCP packets like TCP packets, and UDP packets like UDP packets. It should prevent ISPs from charging content providers a fee for being fast or even accessible on their network. It should prevent them from filtering or censoring legal content. It also should prevent ISPs from purposely harming the QoS of competing services such as Vonage and Netflix. These are the sorts of policies that we generally agree on, and it's what the FCC is enforcing (poorly it seems).
Where reasonable slashdotters often don't agree is Bittorrent. Should ISPs be allowed to purposely slow down any P2P traffic? We don't have a solid consensus. Just because we don't agree on 100% of the details doesn't mean the FCC should not move forward on issues where there is consensus. It's currently doing the right thing, and that will probably be reversed if Romney/Ryan get elected.