FCC & Net Neutrality

[TheBigA]

I love this story: Technology, politics, and intriugue...what could be better?

The FCC loses in court. So the solution is to get Congress to give them regulatory power over the internet. Except that conservatives like the idea of market forces. Setting us up for another party line vote!

Here's how those smarties at the New York Times see it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/technology/07net.html?src=me&ref=homepage

The interesting thing is that the internet basically uses telephone wires...so I can see how they feel the same rules should apply. But it's such a political hot potato. And the FCC has done such a great job in everything else they regulate, right? Here's a great idea: Let's appropriate them more money. That's the Democratic thing to do.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Yes, this story will be played out with the same dignity, grace and intelligence that we observed in the health care debacle..... er.... debate.

People who have no concept of the technical issues, the capital needs issues, and the need to "not strangle he flow of inormation/speech" issues will all now step to the podium and deliver their version of where we go.

And part of me goes each direction. I don't want to see this vehicle, this pipeline, no..... make that this viaduct of information all bogged down in bureaucracy and special-interest regulations. But before you sign me up with the free-market Republican style thinking.... I can't get over the way we are whipped-up on by "business gone wild" like the credit card companies, the cell-phone companies, the insurance companies.

We probably have no choice but to roll up our sleeves, put a clothes-pin on our nose, and wade into this issue and let the mechanism known as self-government battle it out to decide if we need some rules, who will write and enforce the rules.

To paraphrase the old saying: (I hated the idea of getting old.... until I considered the alternative.) "I hate the idea of giving the government a hand in casting the fate of the Internet.... until I consider the alternative."