When the other media forms, newspapers and TV became a threat to the way our government rules, the corporations purchased control.  Since it is not easy to purchase control of the Internet, they will make sure that they can control content.
Rule of human behavior: When men are left to their own devices, they behave badly.  That is why we have laws. Regulation is just another word for law.

I agree with everything you say Rgyle, thank you for your thoughts.

And yes, they have nothing good to offer but
destruction, I know this for a fact, and I sure hope they ultimately will turn on themselves.

I will keep fighting but the ferocity of the opposition is scary, many more people need to get involved in fighting back.

Virginia777, you took that out of context. I’m not conceding defeat. The point is
they will destroy until they can’t anymore. The process is accelerating and will
not take as long as you indicate. We’re living now on the echo of a better time,
blowback is imminent. Humanity must get real, at least enough of us to make a
big shift. The question about who wittingly or unwittingly wants to go down
with them is for all of us to ask and answer ourselves.

By all means fight ‘em. I’m fighting Chase Home Loans right now. But I also see
the beginning of the end for the dark ones. They have nothing good to offer but
destruction, which ultimately will turn on themselves. Think how pitifully empty
the laughter on their yachts must be…

With love in one’s life, one easily takes delight in the simplest things. That
alone is a great victory.

I wanted to address this point:

“it would be foolish to give the FCC unlimited authority to muck up the freedom of the Internet.”

The “freedom” of the Internet, has allowed for never before levels of disinformation, lies, slander, libel, racism, hatred and cruelty to exist in contemporary media.

I’m all for free speech, but where is the Left when it is used to make death threats and spew hatred, not to mention disinformation and criminal activity? The Left has supported unregulated free speech on the Internet, and then not applied any vigilance, or hardly any, to the massive spread of disinformation and hatred on the Internet. Its logic and advice, has often been to ignore it. Which is no logic at all.

That is like saying there is a massive fire burning, and believing fires have the “right” to burn, so to ignore it to keep the “rights” of fires in place.

I don’t necessarily agree with this:

“maybe letting them referee their own game will hasten the process to its tragic end.”

Refereeing their own game is exactly what they have been doing, what is needed are people willing to fight back. The problem won’t solve itself, the players won’t destroy themselves, and even if this potential exists, it will take so long to happen our country will be left in tatters.

Fighting back is not easy and I can more than vouch for this, these people are brutal and tough and empowered. What is needed is real courage and strength and the willingness to take corporate America and the military industrial complex, head-on.

The people in this country will eventually get fed up. We are all tired of being screwed. What are we to do?

“JOIN THE REVOLUTION”

Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://www.revolution2.osixs.org )
We don’t have to live like this anymore. “Spread the News

Congress is nothing but a shill for the corpoatocracy and the plutocrats that own them! We live in a neo-fascist country under the delusion that we actually have control over our governance. Those who see thru the sham are derided and quieted using varying degrees of coercion and the rest of the citizenry has been made too afraid and dumbed-down to seriously question what is being done to them here at home and in their name abroad! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!!!!!

Addicts won’t stop until they’ve destroyed enough, maybe even themselves. So
maybe letting them referee their own game will hasten the process to its tragic
end. Who of the media-entranced minions wants to go down with them?

Lafayette: Brilliant commentary, thanks.

The deregulation disaster is usually blamed on the Reagan Administration. 
Actually it started earlier, with the abolishing of the Civil Aeronautics Board during
the Carter Administration.  We should blame Henry Kahn, the Economist at Cornell
University, who gave me a D!

There are no future Enrons of the internet, they are here already.

The rant on this thread is rife.

Remember, gridlock works both ways. The bill as written/voted in the House will have tough going in the Senate.

And even if by some miracle it makes it to the Oval Office, it will die there. Or be seriously modified by a line-veto.

No, they (the Replicants) do not hold all the marbles.

MARKET OLIGOPOLIES (Part 1)

DL: Amid surprisingly little public debate, the ISPs have engaged in a focused campaign to lobby Congress and win court cases with the goal of stripping the government of any meaningful authority to regulate their price structures or data-routing policies.

Oligopoly = a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers.

CAVEAT

I am no enemy of capitalism. It is “natural”, meaning it reflects best the mechanism by which mankind seeks and creates value that is shared by the collective (community, city, state, nation) as a whole.

But, capitalism, when justified by Free Enterprise, can get very wrong the distribution of the value generated.  Let’s see how.

TWO OLIGOPOLIES:

The US Health Care Market

The US Health Care Insurance map of the US, which indicates the fundamental lack of competition is found here.

The “Bell System”

The US made the decision to break up MaBell into the regional BabyBells, which simply instituted the MaBell monopoly on local telephony in the regions.

Let’s not forget that “MaBell” (the system established as a result of the invention of Alexander Graham Bell) was a company largely regulated by the FCC, because it was a monopoly.  Some facts:
* In 1934, the government set AT&T up as a regulated monopoly under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, in the Communications Act of 1934.
* In 1949, the United States Department of Justice alleged in an antitrust lawsuit that AT&T and the Bell System operating companies were using their near-monopoly in telecommunications to attempt to establish unfair advantage in related technologies, especially the fledgling computer industry.
* The 1984 Bell System divestiture brought an end to the affiliation branded as the Bell System. It resulted from another antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1974, alleging illegal practices by the Bell System companies to stifle competition
* Bell System Divestiture: Before the 1984 break-up, the Bell System consisted of the companies listed below (see here ). These companies were divested from AT&T in 1984, except as noted. The former operating companies of the Bell System listed below are organized according to the current owners of the companies (or their successors). Almost all of these companies belong to AT&T, Verizon, or Qwest, the three remaining Regional Holding Companies (RBOCs).

Just like the Health Care situation, noted above, this market is an oligopoly.

MARKET OLIGOPOLIES (Part 2)

MY POINT

Oligopolies have been the central thrust of market consolidation in the US for two purposes; the first of which is to obtain economies-of-scale from which large operations benefit and the second being that such larger operations derive higher profit levels.  Thus derives bonuses and equity capital gains for the TopManagement that run the companies.

Yes, of course; dividends do show up in the asset portfolios of equity holders. (It is estimated that about half of all profits are shared between the companies (that do not distribute them, but keep them for internal disposition, and dividends rendered to equity holders. It will surprise no one to understand that the first instance can be measured in thousands and the latter in millions – so is that sharing out “equitable”? And that case is even more acute in market oligopolies or monopolies.

Supposedly, these profit levels are to be “self-regulating” due to the market mechanism of competition. However, as regards an oligopoly, such is not the case. In fact, as regards the two markets (Health Care and Telephony) we find that both can and are monopolistic, which is even worse.

The notion therefore that Free Enterprise also means the ability to price-gouge market oligopolies/monopolies for the personal gain of a comparatively small group at the expense of the general public is pure greed - once again raising its ugly head as it did in the Subprime Mess.

An oligopoly is also the reason why the US has some of the highest ISP-tariffs of any modern world. Contrary to popular Replicant belief, there is insufficient competition in the market for Internet access.

FOR ANOTHER DAY

How Microsoft became a “natural monopoly” in the market for personal computing Operating Systems. A modern tale along the lines of “Ma Bell”.

POST SCRIPTUM

In European countries, the government run Telephony Service was devolved to a private company, but only the telecom network, for which everybody pays a fixed line modest fee (that covers maintenance, renewal and development). However, the private company is obliged to allow any ISP to interconnect - meaning ISP fees are highly competitive.

Be afraid, be very afraid. The reason they don’t want to regulate the internet is that they are attempting to Control the internet via extremely devious methods. For instance, I have been pummeled online ever since I published this Open Salon post, asking whether Topix was sharing its user’s data with the NSA. Topix has SO over-reacted, I have to assume I was dead-on here:

http://open.salon.com/blog/virginia888/2010/12/02/is_topix_giving_out_users_personal_data_to_the_nsa

And check these posts out. Guess who is investing in identity-hiding software development to allow for trolls to invade social media:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/22/exclusive-militarys-persona-software-cost-millions-used-for-classified-social-media-activities/

Sure they don’t want regulation, that way they can carry on with the covert activity they are sponsoring. Yikes!

People just don’t realise how bad a business model based upon extortion and censorship will get before the government does something about it, right about that point that the US becomes a global laughing stock as it’s communication services start to collapse as a result of across the board retaliatory slow downs and disconnections.

Here here Queenie stated, “I have lived quite a while without tv. I can do the same without my pc.”

Actually I have lived quite a while without watching TV, and I may have to do the same with gas and food shortly, I suspect the pc will be first.

Wrong! Both sides do NOT have valid points. The internet needs to be open to all without corporate interference, in as far as that is possible.

The corporate world is a pit of vipers. Look what happened to the cable tv with its “tiered” services. 200 channels- all crap- while we have to go overseas to get real news or decent entertainment.

I have lived quite a while without tv. I can do the same without my pc.

Whoa! Enron? That’s ancient history! We’ve all moved on from those dirty days of profit first and let grandma freeze to bump up the transmission rates.. right?

More seriously, this is an informative article and I thank the author.. but about the move by the Legislature to defund or prevent big bad government from intervening in internet matters.. What hooey!

When Homeland security or the CIA or the NSA wants to block or tap anything they’ll do it (are doing it) with the help and cooperation of these businesses.. and we won’t even have the privilege of knowing about it… If it turns out to have been illegal then Congress will step in and give everybody a retroactive hall pass.

.. oh no? They just did it after the flap overt all our phone traffic being routed through a big secret computer somewhere..

It’s a Modern World!