You have to hand it to liberals: they never give up on horrible ideas, even when a federal court rules that the FCC doesn’t have the regulatory authority to implement them
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is putting together a net neutrality proposal and plans to take action on the controversial issue as early as next month, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation.
Details of the proposal being developed by Genachowski’s office are unclear, but sources say it could be similar to the deal stakeholders tried to reach with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) earlier this fall.
Woo hoo, let’s hose the Internet!
The long-running net neutrality debate centers around rules that would require Internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally. Internet companies like Google and Skype want net neutrality rules applied to both wireline and wireless networks, but network operators including AT&T, Verizon and Comcast say they need flexibility to manage web traffic on their lines.
Wait, they want control of the networks the own? Ones they paid massive amounts of money to build and maintain? Who knew?
But, an article I noticed back at the beginning of the month highlights why net neutrality is a Bad Idea
For some time now, net neutrality has been a ’cause celebre’ for web geeks.
The idea – that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally, regardless of source, content or intent – is one that’s pretty compelling. It speaks to the democratic ideals of the web as a place where anyone can get their message out as long as they have access to a computer.
Yet, lately, a couple of statistics have arisen that might threaten to throw a wrench into plans for enshrining net neutrality into law.
First is that during prime time, Netflix consumes up to 20% of all bandwidth. Second is that, during that usage, it’s 2% of users who are using up all this bandwidth. This does not bode well for net neutrality.
Obviously, that is not enough to talk some of the liberal web geeks, like the author of the above article, out of supporting net neutrality. Why? Well, many of these geeks use tremendous amounts of bandwidth themselves, and do not want to be restricted when they are causing providers to lose money.
I discuss more on the whole net neutrality deal here.
