Net Neutrality Is 'Marxist,' According To a Koch-Backed Astroturf Group 531
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes American Commitment, a conservative group with strong ties to the Koch brothers has been bombarding inboxes with emails filled with disinformation and fearmongering in an attempt to start a "grassroots" campaign to kill net neutrality — at one point suggesting that "Marxists" think that preserving net neutrality is a good idea. American Commitment president Phil Kerpen suggests that reclassifying the internet as a public utility is the "first step in the fight to destroy American capitalism altogether" and says that the FCC is plotting a "federal Internet takeover," a move that "sounds more like a story coming out of China or Russia."
American capitalism (Score:2, Informative)
What would be so bad about changing American capitalism? As if moderating part of it would automatically send the American society deep into communism.
But staying on topic, net neutrality IS a good idea, and I do hope that so-called Marxist as well as anyone else believes so. Saying it would be bad because group X or Y think so, is the stupidest thing ever. These sort of argumentation can get so fast out of control...
Re:Don't worry guys (Score:2, Informative)
Except a lot of the Koch funded groups including the Heartland Group and others are taken quite seriously by the voting public.
Its a major issue.
Kochs will ruin capitalism by short sighted greed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not Net Neutrality (Score:5, Informative)
Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
You know nothing about Marxism. First learn what it ACTUALLY says, THEN you can try to critique it.
Net Neutrality bears no RESEMBLENCE to what you are describing in your post: it is simply an injunction that customers should get what they are PAYING for - which is unfettered access to the ENTIRE internet. Painting it as anything else is a lie.
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's about stifling future innovation.
Net Neutrality is not about regulating the Internet. It's about preserving free speech on the Internet. This is what Aaron Swartz fought for, and you should too.
Where I live there are 2 broadband providers, COMCAST (cable) and VERIZON (fios). Every other place I have lived there was only one option.
Right now it would be perfectly legal for either of them to trash my traffic to comcastsucks.blogspot.com or other sites and there's very little I can do about it (well I often tunnel through a VPS provider and my download speeds for a lot of content goes up dramatically, but I have to pay extra for that, and luckily comcast is not yet throttling SSH or OpenVPN!). As far as innovation, the only thing they innovate is ways to annoy me with every changing rates, arrays of stupid unwanted services and marketing calls. Currently they (Comcast) wants to raise the rate for my broadband only (no tv) from 48 monthly to 65. However if I get a cable box and subscribe for TV services it will be 49/month for a year. I don't own a TV, but I have to get a cable box and have it sit in my closet for the cheaper rate. It's obscenely stupid, but that's comcast for you. I have no doubt that this change will double or triple the amount of junk mail they send me.
What would be wonderful is if there were other ISPs that could compete with Comcast and verizon using the same wires. What would also be wonderful would be if ISPs were required to respect 1st amendment, you know to promise not to quash freedom of speech. Less important to me, but probably pretty important would be to require ISPs to not abuse their position to try to lock users into or out of one video service (like Netflix) or another.
*@^$#&* Koch brothers (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, it is all Koch brothers' fault... (Score:5, Informative)
They certainly are [wired.com] — thanks to the monopoly-power once given to them by the government [cato.org].
The solution to this, however, is not creating more rules for them to follow (with more boards and commissions to — ineffectively — ensure compliance) — these only make it harder for a would-be newcomers to appear — but to make this market properly competitive.
While the public anger is (somewhat clumsily, but still effectively) once again redirected against the Koch Brothers [salon.com], "Big Cable" donates to the ruling party en masse [huffingtonpost.com], CEOs play golf with the President [politico.com] and otherwise do the ruling party's bidding [nationalreview.com]. Is it likely, that further monopolization [nytimes.com] will be blocked?
Re: What's so American (Score:4, Informative)
You weren't the only one to start calling yourself an "independent" after GWB.
Re:Urgh (Score:5, Informative)
I always figured Jesus Christ predated Owen as a socialist thinker which, incidentally, also causes me to be amused over how so many socialist hating conservatives also claim to be devout Christians.
-- Acts 2:44-47
-- Acts 4:32-35
The first Christian church in history was a festering den of socialism.
This tells me that a lot of "Christians" need to reconsider their politics, or at least their committment to cut-throat capitalism.
Re:Bring on the toll roads (Score:4, Informative)
After reading this [townhall.com], please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.
All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?
Toll and tax are distinct. Also, not all enterprises are efficient and not all governments are bureaucratic.