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President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

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Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#391

Post by efuquen »

hristov wrote: post #324
AndrewHampton wrote: post #9

Here's the thing that bothers me the most about a lot of the talk about net neutrality by government officials: > If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. Specifically "and the content is legal" is what raises a flag for me. I've seen similar phrases in nearly everything I've read coming from any government official regarding net ne…

You are reading too much into this. Obama is merely adding this phrase to protect himself from those that will intentionally try to twist his words. When you hear anything Obama says, you must remember that there are literally thousands of hacks and an entire media empire out there carefully examining his words and thinking how they can twist them or misrepresent them to make him look bad. If he did not put that phra…

You were close, "Obamacare for the internet".

Edit: Which in retrospect is more likely to outrage the Republican base.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#392

Post by Amezarak »

twoodfin wrote: post #133
techsupporter wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The President is the Commander in Chief of the military. He exercises complete authority over them. No, he doesn't. The Constitution specifically limits the President's ability to make war and wage military campaigns. He has a great deal of authority but even the US' current adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are backed by Congress' approval through passed laws. > At that time, his Democratic party controlled both…

Absolutely none of this has any bearing on whether President Obama could call the NSA director into his office today and order him end all mass surveillance programs. Which he could, and his order would be obeyed. That he chooses not to is a practical political issue, not a legal one. [EDIT: Well, he couldn't literally call anyone into the Oval Office today, since he's in Beijing, but a phone call would work just as…

Ordering an end to all mass surveillance programs would require Congressional approval.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#394

Post by efuquen »

rhino369 wrote: post #340
smileysteve wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd only support that if the ISPs started fucking up the internet massively. So, say they propose a fast lane for the internet. Or don't invest in the connections to level 3 to be able to provide Netflix to users.

I don't think a fast lane would necessarily fuck the internet. In fact, with proper management it might actually be beneficial. For example, I'd love it if my work VPN could be prioritized over someones pron torrent during internet rush hour. Net neutrality wouldn't fix the Level3/ Verizon&Comcast issues. Net neutrality doesn't force free peering. When I mean fucking the internet up, I mean significant degrading of s…

>When I mean fucking the internet up, I mean significant degrading of service to extort huge payments.

Isn't this exactly what Comcast already did to Netflix? And they ended up paying up ...

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#395

Post by smsm42 »

guelo wrote: post #379
smsm42 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but corporation can be influenced for the general good too - by its customers. In fact, you can argue customers have more control than the voters - if the politician has 50%+1 votes in his pocket and appoints the bureaucrat, the opinion of the rest of 50%-1 voters have absolutely no weight to him (unless he is of a special rare breed of saint which is so rare in real politics). However, for the corporation losi…

I always considered the libertarian theory that corporate monopolies are caused by the government as very suspect and entirely unproven. Natural monopolies are obvious when you think about it a little bit. When your entire ideology depends on them not existing them maybe it's time for a rethink.

When you think a little bit, sure. When you think more than a little bit, it's not really that obvious. Remember how Microsoft was a monopoly and EU spent so much time and money on struggling with MSIE to no noticeable effect? Remember what happens now when the most wished for feature of MSIE is "please die already"? So what happened - is that EU that brought that most natural of monopolies down or was there something else? Maybe thinking more than just little a bit is warranted here.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#396

Post by dragonwriter »

foobarqux wrote: post #383
dragonwriter wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it will never pass with a Republican majority The FCC has a 3-2 Democratic majority (all current members appointed by Obama, but under law which imposes a limit of 3 members of one party), and is the body through which this needs to pass.

Is it correct to say that neither the Congress nor the Senate can override the FCC in some fashion?

> Is it correct to say that neither the Congress nor the Senate can override the FCC in some fashion?

The Congress (House of Representatives + Senate) can through the same basic process as regular legislation (the process is expedited, but it still requires majorities in both houses and either the President's signature or a veto override with 2/3 in each house.)

So, sure, Republicans in Congress could block FCC action -- if they can either get Obama or a significant fraction of the Democratic Caucus in each house on board.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#397

Post by jessaustin »

rhino369 wrote: post #384
drivingmenuts wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love it if my work VPN could be prioritized over someones pron torrent during internet rush hour. That would require that someone somewhere would have to actually look at the bits to make a value judgement. And then you lose privacy and security. Additionally, you open the door wide for moral judgement of your bits, because we're people and that's what we do, rightly or wrongly. It's probably fine because you m…

It wouldn't require someone looking at it. I'd assume such a system would just prioritize traffic to specific IP addresses. Or they could pick a VPN port.

Any port or protocol or format that gets "prioritized" will swiftly be used to tunnel non-prioritized traffic.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#398

Post by corford »

corford wrote: post #159
philovivero wrote: post #50

Huh? Is this the same President Obama that put Tom Wheeler in charge of the FCC? In case it isn't obvious (and since no-one else has mentioned it yet, I guess it's not), Tom Wheeler was a huge lobbyist for the very people who are trying to end net neutrality. I don't get calling for X then performing actions that negate X. Edit: there's another front-page story to Bloomberg that actually explicitly mentions the Tom W…

Tom Wheeler might not be the wolf in the hen house a lot of people think he is. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rayiner

That link should have been: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8584126

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#399

Post by dragonwriter »

pessimizer wrote: post #130
wylee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a huge fan of Obama, but do you really think the surveillance state was created during his presidency? This type of thing has been going on... well, probably forever. It's gotten more sophisticated in the Internet age, but that started before Obama too.

It was legalized under Obama. Under Bush, it was criminal; now, it's institutional.

> It was legalized under Obama.

It was legalized (both retroactively, covering events that had occurred prior to the act, and prospectively by broadening the allowed surveillance under the law) through the FISA Amendment Act of 2008, signed by George W. Bush on July 10, 2008.

Its true that Obama signed the bill passed by Congress extending parts of the FISA Amendments Act that were scheduled to expire in 2012 for five additional years. But that just kept it legal, it didn't legalize it.

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