The FCC voted in favor of the Open Internet Order, new net neutrality rules that would prohibit paid Internet paid fast lanes, and reclassify broadband providers as telecommunication services under the Title II of the Telecommunications Act, among other regulations.
The rules were passed by a 3-2 vote along party lines, with Commissioners Ajut Pai and Michael O’Rielly (Republicans) voting against the measure and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Jessica Rosenworcel and Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler (Democrats) voting in favor of the order.
The internet is getting a regulatory re-wiring.
In an historic 3-2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission said it would change the way the nation’s internet service providers are regulated. For net neutrality advocates the vote is a major victory; for the nation’s internet service providers, a rebuke.
“The internet is the most powerful and pervasive platform on the planet,” said FCC Tom Wheeler during a public meeting ahead of the vote. “It’s simply too important to be left without rules and without a referee on the field.”
Today the internet is the only free press we have, all that stands against total control of information. Consider how relentlessly the media impose political correctness, how the slightest offense to the protected groups—we all know who they are—or to sacred policies leads to firing of reporters and groveling by politicians. The wars are buried and serious criticism of Washington suppressed. That leaves the net, only the net, without which we would know nothing.
Which is why it must be and will be censored, sooner if Washington can get away with it and later if not. The tactics are predictable. First, “hate speech” will be banned. The government will tell us whom we can hate and whom we cannot. “Hatred” will be vaguely defined so that one will never be sure when one is engaging in it and, since it will be prosecutable, one will have to be very careful. Disapproval of favored groups, or of their behavior, will be defined as hatred. National security will be invoked, silencing whistle-blowers or, eventually, anything that might make the public uneasy with Washington’s wars.
Mental darkness facilitates authoritarianism, and darkness we have. Many college graduates can barely read. Their ignorance of history, politics, and geography (and practically everything else) is profound, and they see no reason why they should know anything. They seem not to suspect that there might be things worth knowing.
I am hard pressed to think of a society in such internal decline that has turned itself around, and I cannot imagine how ours might do so. One sure thing is that, once the internet is gelded, there will be no hope at all. And the assault has begun.
Fred Reed
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-16/cometh-censor
The internet is not broken, there is no problem for the government to solve.
Ajit Pai
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