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Obama FCC Caves on Net Neutrality -- Tuesday Betrayal Assured
Late Monday, a majority of the FCC's commissioners indicated that they're going to vote with Chairman Julius Genachowski for a toothless Net Neutrality rule.
According to all reports, the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet.
The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it's become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users.
Welcome to AT&T's Internet
For the first time in history of telecommunications law the FCC has given its stamp of approval to online discrimination.
Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.
Instead of protecting openness on wireless Internet devices like the iPhone and Droid, the Commission has exempted the mobile Internet from Net Neutrality protections. This move enshrines Verizon and AT&T as gatekeepers to the expanding world of mobile Internet access, allowing them to favor their own applications while blocking, degrading or de-prioritizing others.
Instead of re-establishing the FCC's authority to act as a consumer watchdog over the Internet, it places the agency's authority on a shaky and indefensible legal footing -- giving ultimate control over the Internet to a small handful of carriers.
Obama's 'Mission Accomplished'
Internet users deserve far better, and we thought we were going to get it from a president who promised to "take a backseat to no one in my commitment to Net Neutrality." Watch as he and his FCC chairman try to spin tomorrow's betrayal as another "mission accomplished."
Don't believe it. This bogus victory has become all too familiar to those watching the Obama administration and its appointees squander opportunities for real change. The reality is that reform is just a rhetorical front for industry compromises that reward the biggest players and K-Street lobbyists while giving the public nothing.
It's not the FCC chairman's job to seek consensus among the corporations that he was put into office to regulate. His duty is to protect Internet users.
More than two million people have taken action on behalf of Net Neutrality. Tomorrow, we'll all get the carpet yanked from beneath our feet.
Net Neutrality is the freedom of speech, freedom of choice issue of the 21st century. It's the guarantee of a more open and democratic media system that was baked into the Internet at its founding.
On Tuesday, Obama's FCC is going to sell that out.
76 Comments so far
Show AllSuch a betrayal. I'm getting used to it with this guy. So sorry that I invested my vote in him.
Such a betrayal....
I got a feeling the Dem. is racing to jam the last bills into our throat before their turn run out. They can now boast to their grandchildren we screwed more American than the Republicans.
Obama is such a fraud. But worse than a Republican? Dont be absurd. Republicans are 100x worse, weve seen that with McConnell, Boehner and all of the rest of that group of fascist lying nazis that are turning the US into a corporate tolitarian theocracy and crushing individual rights and freedoms.
Of course, less evil is just not good enough to expect of Democrats, but dont try to portray them as worse than Republicans, just not true. Increasingly Obama is looking more and more like a conservative fascist, and under the Obama administration weve seen a continuation of totalirian attacks on human rights, from attacks by the DOJ on peace activists, Obamas collusion with oil companies to try to hide the gulf oil spill damage, which is far worse than what is being admitted, the attacks on Assange which exposes the antidemocratic nature of things, and so on. There are still progressive democrats, such as Kucinich. However, Obama is not one of them, he has turned out to bea conservative.
The internet rule is worthless but as far as I can tell without it there is no protection anyway, and republicans certainly arent going to give you anything.
YEs, we do need real liberal progressives, not feeble sell outs like Obama. Unfortunately we are locked into a two party system when we need more diversity of parties and representation for minor parties. Proportional representation anyone? And getting corporate money out of campaigns is essential to preserving our democracy, and as well an independant media not bought by corporations.
You don't need somebody 100 times worse than Obama. Stepping over the cliff is sufficient. You aren't in any worse shape if you ran over the cliff. Beep Beep! I saw a dead coyote beside the road yesterday. Was that an omen?
Yes it meant you were on a road.
Before anybody else reacts to sivasm's post, I believe sivasm's point is that during the past two years Obama has signed more Republican legislation (while Repugs were the minority in both houses of Congress) than any Republican ever has during a two year period.
Thanks :-)
Unfortunately you are very wrong. Just as it took Nixon to go to China, it took a Dem (Clinton) to destroy banking and media regulations, and give us NAFTA. A reich-winger could never destroy social security and the remaining bedrocks of the liberal state given to us by our ancestors. But a dem can. Obomber is that dem.
Please. Educate yourself as to who the neo-liberals are. Read Chris Hedges, or at least watch this interview. Here is his description of Obomber:
AMY GOODMAN: Your assessment of President Obama?
CHRIS HEDGES: A disaster. A poster child for the bankruptcy of the liberal class. Somebody who, like Clinton, is a self-identified liberal, who speaks in the traditional language of liberalism but has made war against the core values of liberalism, which is a concern for those people outside the narrow power elite. And the tragedy, if tragedy is the right word, is that Obama, who made this Faustian bargain with corporate interests in order to gain power, has now been crumpled up and thrown away by these interests. They don’t need him anymore. He functioned as a brand after the disastrous eight years of George Bush.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/20/chris_hedges_obama_is_a_poster
And just how do you come up with the multiple, 100x worse? Is that some pie-in-the sky number?
Certainly 100x cannot be measured by the actions of Obama and the Democrats, the latter of which not only enabled Bush during his years but have continued his policies after Obama got in. And not by pointing to a few so-called progressive Democrats who are window dressing for the party and cave, such as Kucinich, on the health care giveaway to the insurance companies and the tax cut bill that is the beginning of the demise of social security.
I agree with Curtis' comment and will ad-lib. I don't care if the person throwing me off the cliff is wearing a suit or jeans, it feels the same when I hit the bottom.
Excellent rebuttal. Good job.
ervadaras,
I spend a few hours, thinking how to reply to your post. I want to be respectful. I gave up! You are f... stupid idiot. Do you know we just lost another freedom, beside many the last two years? We may have to pay more for Internet. Even if we pay more AT&T, Comcast... may still throttle our speed and usage? The Republican tried I believe a few years back and failed!
AND the Republicans end up taking no heat every time Obama signs another piece of Republican legislation. Republicans keep winning with their Brer Rabbit strategy over and over again and Obamabots keep ignoring it.
I voted Green
My vote went to McKinney in 08.
Wall Street's unindicted co-conspirators: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party
Every time I mention any of Obama's devious behavior my delusional co-workers call it conspiracy theory.
I remind them that their are no conspiracy theories and many conspiracies.
Who remembers Gopher?
Does anyone remember when mosaic the first WWW interface came out? just after gopher.
It seemed it was only techgeeks and universities that had anything useful on their websites and you just trolled from one link to another like going through card catalogues in libraries.
We may have to reinvent that web and let the flash high broadband go its corporate way.
pax
Yep, the Internet owes its origins to government funding - that is, U.S. taxpayer dollars. It started out as a DARPA project to ensure communications would still get through after a nuclear war. Next, it was adopted by the academic community to exchange research. Lastly, corporations took up a presence on the Web. Now it's an essential part of corporate communications - a commodity that can be monetized by the telecommunications companies.
But even though the telcos own the copper wiring of the network, the people own the airwaves. That's the point for which the FCC was created, and it has now failed to do its job to oversee and protect that public interest in this case of establishing net neutrality.
This is a true loss. We'd have to wait a long time to "reinvent the Web," as there's no alternative. Now, it's all about the next corporate move. The public has been sold out once again.
-TIA
I seem to remember that all the homeowners in my mom's suburban development were charged for laying underground cable, so theoretically some of them even own the copper wire...kinda makes you want to go dig it all up
No, the FCC has not failed to _establish_ net neutrality. Net neutrality is the status quo. It's how the internet works now, and it's how the internet has always worked. Net neutrality means that the telcos are allowed to charge you money every which way they can imagine except for one: They are not allowed to charge premium prices for certain people or certain messages.
The FCC has failed, allright, but what they have failed to do is they have failed to defend a law that has been in effect, understood by all, and accepted by all for the first twenty years of the Internet's existence.
I remember Gopher, even ran my own server ("gonk") as one of those techgeeks at a university you mentioned. I was truly in the thick of it as the internet gave birth to Gopher, CWIS and eventually the World Wide Web. Oh, what a journey it has been!
It's interesting that you bring up not only Gopher but also an idea to reinvent the web in this discussion. Interesting, because even though the comparatively feature-rich WWW protocol fast outpaced Gopher in the beginning, one of the other big reasons sysadmins abandoned Gopher is that the University of Minnesota (where Gopher originated) announced they would begin charging licensing fees for implementation of Gopher, virtually sucking all the life out of the development community and thereby driving users towards the (free) WWW protocol. They later GPL-ed it, but by then the rodent was dead.
Most of the physical infrastructure of the internet today is not publicly owned, which would make building something new to replace the doomed (thanks to the FCC) broadband system quite difficult indeed, but your suggestion packs a lot of merit--not to mention historical precedent.
Here's a possibility for urban areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_network
See my reply to nohobear. You can't build an alternative internet unless you can replicate all of the internet's physical wires. The fight for net neutrality is a fight for control of the physical wires.
You raise an incredibly important point. The internet (and phone lines) should be the commons - belong to all of us. Then we wouldn't even be having this problem...
Gopher was an application-layer protocol. The fight over net neutrality is not a fight over protocols, it is a fight for control of the physical wires. The companies that own the wires want the right to decide which messages they will allow to pass through their wires and which messages they will not allow.
If they decide that your message is not allowed, then it really won't matter whether you choose to disseminate it via gopher, via http, via Bit Torrent, or via e-Mail. They own the wires. They own it all.
Nobody ever mentions that net neutrality is the status quo. It's how the internet works now, and it is how the internet has always worked. It's an extension of the same laws that have always applied to your phone service. The phone company is allowed to charge you more or less depending on the length of your calls, they are allowed to charge you more or less depending on the time of day, and they are allowed to charge you more or less depending on the geographic distance; but let's say you want to call a doctor. The phone company is not allowed to charge you an exorbitant price for calling a doctor who does not belong to their preferred health-care network.
If doing away with net neutrality is good for America, then by the same logic, it will be good for America if the phone company is allowed to decide which doctors you are allowed to call, which ones you are allowed to call for a premium price, and which ones you are not allowed to call at any price.
No surprise, sad to say. Can't have a free internet for the exchange of ideas and news. Not in the new United States of Corporations. Must prevent little episodes like Wikileaks.
Let's recap. Congress is bought. Obama is a Trojan horse,inserted to hasten the demise of the republic. The mainstream media is an arm of the propaganda ministry. The courts have been co-opted and made partisan. Higher Education is being gutted. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution have been shredded. Torture and targeted assassination is approved government policy, and private mercenary/security forces are standing by to administer all the empty FEMA camps waiting to be populated by government declared domestic enemies.
Does anyone still doubt we are at the stage of a proto-fascist government? The internet was the last bastion of free speech. In two years time, you won't recognize it. It will thoroughly commercialized and be another arm of the ministry of propaganda. I will be very much surprised if commondreams is still functioning then. If someone had told me at 20 what this country would look like when I was 50, I would not have believed them.
The revolution will not be streamed.
All good points.
But remember, never, and I mean NEVER, question the events of 9/11.
So whats the bad news?
It does seem to me that there is an acceleration and a drasticly increased blatantness to the loose of liberties and depredations in general.
As far as war, Bush with his million dead Iraqis hands down is more murderous than Oilybombers say 50,000 ???????
As far as SS Barry looks like he axed it.
As far as establishing legal precedent Barry is 100% successful in "legitimzing" and continuing Bush's crimes.
Cheney allowed fatal to USAans false flag operations whereas all of Oilybombers have been non lethal to USAans.
Oilybomber has down probably more harm than Bush enviornmently, Tars Sands and OFFshore and Climate.
Shadow Dancer wrote an opinion on the phrase "backward tribes" which seems to have been vaporized, I failed to read it as closely as I should have. Has anyone seen it?
Those Bastards.
Why have you NOT signed up for http://www.credomobile.com/
yet?
Because I can't take my iPhone with me
My only surprise is that it survived this long.
Then again, cutting off one of the the only outlets for people's rage in our country sure couldn't backfire, now could it?
Nah.
Thank you leaders, may we have another?
Below is a piece by C.Day-Lewis which I think captures the times.
Consider these, for we have condemned them;
Leaders to no sure land, guides their bearings lost
Or in league with robbers have reversed the signposts,
Disrespectful to ancestors, irresponsible to heirs.
Born barren, a freak growth, root in rubble,
Fruitlessly blossoming, whose foliage suffocates,
Their sap is sluggish, they reject the sun.
Getters not begetters; gainers not beginners;
Whiners, no winners, no triers, betrayers;
Who steer by no star, whose moon means nothing.
Daily denying, unable to dig;
At bay in villas from blood relations,
Counters of spoons and content with cushions
They pray for peace, they hand down disaster.
They that take the bribe shall perish by the bribe,
dying of dry rot, ending in asylums,
A curse to children, a charge on the state.
But still their fears and frenzies infect us;
Drug nor isolation will cure this cancer:
It is now or never, the hour of the knife,
The break with the past, the major operation.
Next up, Social Security !!!
This is a juicy one, Dubya regretted, he could not give it to Wall Streets as a parting gift. Lucky Obama! He will be able to raise at lease two billions for reelecting.
The Catfood Commission appears to have been a conducted experiment to figure out their strategies. Our tax dollars at work !
That's terrible! What about the rest of the world? Are there really national boundaries on the web?
This f-king country has gone to hell!
No need to say anymore. What you said is so true!
And the Obamabots still make excuses for Wall Streets "Man of the Year!"
And don't forget -- Nobel Peace Prize winner!!!!
Nothing more to say.
boycott the whole dang corporate system as best as you can.
if you haven't, you have no excuse.
Both parties are wings of the Business Party (controlled by the US Chamber of Commerce and AIPAC). I'll never vote for either of these Fascist traitors again.
...and right before Christmas when they think no one is paying attention. Guess again.
They're all in deep shit now.
well past time for progressive techies to build alternatives to the known internet.
of course the corporatized net will, as it should, be hacked to death.
not sure it's possible w/o telco backbones, maybe someone else can weigh in...
Just remember that we'll likely have to bypass the national/global TCP/IP backbone altogether because most (privately-owned) top-level routers are configured only to forward TCP/UDP packets. UDP is a possibility, but when it all comes down to it, these privately-owned routers would eventually be reconfigured to stymie any sort of workaround to throttled transmissions by the bastards at AT&T et al. What is needed is a workaround that avoids the existing infrastructure: mesh networking is one possibility for urban areas: Google it!
thanks!, btw: I don't like google. Please say, 'Search it' instead... ;) there many search engines just as good or better, yippy.com (w/clustering), etc..
Please stop pulling us into this two party our guy vs their guy.
He betrayed me blah! blah! I didn't vote for him. I saw him for what he has proven to be a Trojan horse.
Obama's endless acts of betrayal.
The folks who say Obama is not as bad as a Republican are wrong--in the sense that Obama is doing damage to the Democratic Party, and to virtually all progressive causes, that no Republican could do.
For example, Obama is getting crappy, basically Republican, laws passed that the left would have fought tooth and nail if they'd come from President McCain or President Palin. But Obama is an expert at quelling dissent from the left.
More damage: women have been leaving the Democratic Party ever since the Obamacrats came on the scene. I would have said Democrats losing women voters is against nature. But the exodus is being duplicated in many other traditional Democratic groups--the poor, Hispanics, the young, etc. The Democrats have fallen behind in the generic polls, which is quite unusual. All these reversals in the last two years.
I would argue that even Obama's triumphs are largely damage done to the party and the nation. Taking the healthcare bill as an example: the Republicans will use it to argue--wrongly but effectively--that liberal/progressive policies don't work. How bizarre to see progressives busily defenidng this pro-corporate Heritage Foundation bill. No Repub could finesse the left this way.
That's why I think we need to go third party in a big way. Obama is damaging the Democratic brand in ways no winger President could. I don't think he's a paid agent of the elite...but he might just as well be. Give him another two years, and the left in America will be toast. In this respect, Obama really is worse than a Republican.
Let us Eat the Elite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYV9sPr8WDs