Republican Platform To Include Internet Freedom Plank 459
First time accepted submitter jay.madison writes "The new Republican Party platform includes language which promises action to promote freedom on the Internet. The move is being driven by Rand Paul's libertarian wing of the party. The text, which is still in draft form, says Republicans will work to guarantee that 'individuals retain the right to control the use of their data by third parties,' and that 'personal data receives full constitutional protection from government overreach.' Republicans would resist moves toward international governance of the Internet, and seek to 'remove regulatory barriers that protect outdated technologies and business plans from innovation and competition, while preventing legacy regulation from interfering with new technologies such as mobile delivery of voice and video data as they become crucial components of the Internet ecosystem.' The platform is due to be adopted at the Republican National Convention next week."
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Interesting)
They also claim they are going to make the Internet Family Friendly,
Maybe somewhat off topic but I saw a humorous story on CNN this morning. They did a piece on the strip clubs in Tampa getting ready for the Republican convention this coming week - including one club owner who said he spent $1.5 million on upgrades. Apparently strip clubs do well at these events, and CNN quoted some informal poll that suggested Republicans spent 3 times as much on "Adult" entertainment than Democrats at the last two national conventions of each party.
Other fun facts include a club bringing in a Sarah Palin look-a-like stripper and comments from another stripper who hoped to be making $1000/hr.
Re:Not so fast (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Internet Freedom is not what you think (Score:4, Interesting)
"Freedom" these days means corporate control. The more "freedom" people have, the more corporations have power. Power has to go somewhere, so if power is taken away from government, it goes to the next powerful entity - corporations. The last place power goes to is to individuals. The only power individuals have is their ability to collectively gather and form a government, which in effect limits their own individual power.
An individual limiting their own power is a good thing.
"Freedom" at this point is a bad word. Adults already know that no one has "freedom". No one has ever had "freedom", from the times when kings existed to any democracy. They simply replaced one ruler (a king) with another (big govt), especially with millions of laws in place, each one designed to take away one less right.
And even when kings existed, they never had full power as well. Kings have always had to rely on public support to maintain their power, especially during the rise of the merchant middle class in the 1100's.
Let's remember that every libertarian "freedom" fighter with a 3rd grade educations is actually saying "I want to give corporations more power over competing smaller entities, including individuals."
This is why one must NEVER be a libertarian, and one must always believe in forceful social controls.
And that we must always fight against "freedom" that the Republican party wants, and their insane ego that causes them to feel they should have "freedom."
Let's transfer power away from individuals, and give them more to government. Redistribute power. It's a good thing.
Re:Look at ninety percent of the effort towards go (Score:5, Interesting)
My thoughts exactly. I would be more intersted in a plank that promised net neutrality rather than protecting users data.
The remainder of the Repbulican plank reads like something from the 1800's.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/opinion/what-the-gop-platform-represents.html [nytimes.com]
Vaguely promising to protect your personal data, while including language that puts the police state in your bedroom isn't exactly what I would call a fair trade.
Re:Decoding the code speak (Score:2, Interesting)
"Legacy regulation" isn't what keeps FaceTime off AT&T's network; throttling and QOS disparities are as much a product of too few competitors in the market and barriers to entry erected by the participants.
I don't believe network neutrality is a Good Thing, because I recognize that most people's definition amounts to price fixing of bandwidth. But I do know the barriers to it are not primarily state-imposed in the US, and countries that have more liberalized Internet access regimes have them because of laws, not because of the absence of laws.
Re:This from the party that says (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not trust the government. That's why the people need to keep an eye on it. But I also do not trust big business. That's why we need to keep an eye on them. Democrats oppose the former while Republicans oppose the latter.
Re:Look at ninety percent of the effort towards go (Score:2, Interesting)
The republicans are not the ones trying to mandate whether contraceptives have to be covered.
yes they are, they are trying to get the entirety of the NULL SET covered. you can choose from any in that set. all those will be covered.
more derp from this shill:
The republicans are not the ones trying to get the government involved in all marriages. The republicans are not the ones trying to destroy religious freedom.
do you believe your own words? do they pay you to shill this badly?
republicans are the main force in trying to force religion down our throats. worse: they have picked 'the right religion' for us all to follow! how thoughtful and kind of them.
maybe I was trolled. no one can be THAT stupid.
Re:Decoding the code speak (Score:5, Interesting)
By "removing regulatory barriers", they mean Verizon can stop suing the FCC because the GOP plans to give Verizon what they want: the right to censor the internet in any way they choose, which Verizon considers a matter of corporate free speech [arstechnica.com].
Re:Look at ninety percent of the effort towards go (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, you might be right about the wrongness of making illegal actions retroactively legal, but that's not something built into the US system. You would need an amendment for that.
Re:Look at ninety percent of the effort towards go (Score:4, Interesting)
My thoughts exactly. I would be more intersted in a plank that promised net neutrality rather than protecting users data.
If that's what you want, don't expect it to come from Ron/Rand Paul. They consider "Net Neutrality" to be "internet collectivism [buzzfeed.com]. They don't want the government to have any part in regulating the internet.
What interests me most about their paper is how much they seem to rely on appeal to authority. They quote Reagan, and since he said it, it must be true. They quote Von Mises as an authority not to be doubted. They give authorities, not reasons, to back up their opinions. (yes, they do give some reasons too, but not enough to really establish their case).
Re:this is a fantasy land (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that the government is, itself, a monopoly. They monopolize the use of force, and various other things enabled by that.
I don't at all disagree with your analysis of the problem EXCEPT that you aren't including government as one of the abusive monopolies.
It's true that my analysis doesn't point to a nice solution. This doesn't make it incorrect. The government does not consider itself bound by the laws that it makes. Sometimes it specifically excludes itself, other times it just declines to enforce the laws against itself. This happens all up and down the spectrum, from crooked police to war making presidents. Even if the agents of government are punished, their punishment is a slap on the wrist compared to what a non-governmental agent would receive...unless such agent was working for another powerful player who had a deal (not necessarily explicit) with the government.
Please note that this is a structural flaw. When you combine it with common human tendencies, I do not see any solution. But I also don't see anything wrong with the analysis.
Re:this is a fantasy land (Score:2, Interesting)
The "natural state" of the market also doesn't include anyone doing much better than just scraping by.
For that matter, I challenge you to find EVER in ANY period of history a genuinely free market where the majority of the people were not on the edge of starvation. The only thing close in today's world are various "black markets" which depend for their operation on various gangs using illegal force. When such gangs become dominant, they are called either warlords or feudal baronies. And in such a case they don't allow anything even approaching a free market.
Calling something which has never existed natural is a perversion of the language. (FWIW, my suspicion is that even in the periods & places where it appears that a genuine free market existed, that appearance is due to lack of information. Even if it wasn't, these "free markets" generally excluded participation by foreigners...not that that was difficult, as the populations were so impoverished that there wasn't much profit to make anyway.
One trivial exception occurs on the frontier of the US in the period 1870-1880, where the markets in the undeveloped areas were largely free, and yet many of the people were not impoverished. (OTOH, many of them were so impoverished that they died of it.) This was basically because there was no government, so nobody could make rules. These markets only existed in small areas, where everyone knew each other, and there were clearly established dominance patterns. Calling it a free market seems a bit strange, though, when if you offered something for sale (or even if you didn't) and someone more powerful demanded it, you had to surrender it for whatever payment he was willing to make. It was, however, and unregulated market, except that the power of the strong over the weak was present. This made churches very important, and a community can exert power over an individual, even a powerful one. (Do you see a government starting to emerge?)
Also note that this was a brief transitory period, when the area was full of southern civil war veterans who had had their property confiscated, and their money rendered worthless.
It is reasonable to argue about the degree of regulation that should be imposed on a market. It's not reasonable to postulate a "free market" can call it natural. Natural is that the strong take what they want and the weak submit. (Saying this, I feel the need to emphasize that there are many different kinds of strength. Some forms act directly, other forms mobilize people in groups, other forms strike from the shadows. All are forms of strength.)
Re:this is a fantasy land (Score:4, Interesting)
1) increase regulation,
2) remove all regulation altogether.
I think you will find that there are four positions on a spectrum that finely grained; no regulation, state ownership, increased regulation and (waaaaait for it) decreased regulation. Responding to "I don't like increased regulation" with "Well you just want to eliminate all regulation" is... well, it's awfully American of you, in that there can only be two options and the Other Side is insane/evil/stupid so you're justified in avoiding reasonable debate.
My expectation at this point is that you're going to call me a crypto-anarchist trying to sneak absolute removal of regulation in under a flag of moderation, because... well, because that's generally what happens when I try talking to Americans about this mysterious concept called "middle ground." But if you don't, then I appreciate your breaking the trend and am interested in your thoughts on of the problems of regulatory capture and a rise in barriers to market entry through vastly increased paperwork and bureaucratic make-work. (The Canadian examples I would point out are our CRTC telecom positions being held mostly by former telecom execs, and the problems in Alberta with starting a new business because of the reams of paperwork required for multimillion dollar established companies.)