You May Not Claim What Belongs to Me--and the Whole Public

lanetteward

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I recently enjoyed Ken Burns' wonderful series on our national parks. As I read today about the question of net neutrality, I was reminded of a man in Ken Burns’ series named Ralph Cameron. Cameron pretty much decided that the Grand Canyon belonged to him. Why? Because he said so! One of his many outrageous offenses was the "toll road" he built at the head of Bright Angel Trail, where he charged visitors a large fee to walk on public land into the canyon.

The fight over net neutrality feels very much like that story. Here we have something that belongs to the public in general--cyberspace--in danger of being wrested from us by a relatively small group who decide it should belong to them. Why? Because they say so! Their claim is no more valid than was Ralph Cameron's.

The ultimate decision, for good or for bad, will have a monumental impact on this country for generations to come. We must make the right decision.

Idea # 54The Open Internet & the Freedom of Speech

Comments

mike.campbell16 4 months ago

can we get rid of toll roads nationwide then? Maybe we can get the FCC to talk to the Transporation division...

lysacor 4 months ago

Mike that is as disingenuous a comment as it can get. The "toll collectors" are the Internet Service Providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, ATT, Qwest, Verizon, et al. Every time they limit access to a service online, it is exactly as was stated before in the this topic. To limit a user's access to the internet just because it does not conform to a corporation's preferred list of content providers does not an open, or free internet make. Net Neutrality is important, and we need to make sure it is established and enforced!

Dave Kliman 4 months ago

lanetteward EXACTLY correct!

Worse, the ISPs have the ear of all the legislators and even a populist like Al Franken has been led to believe, by these guys, that they need to be able to police the public internet.

They have been calling it "their networks."

I don't think that ANYBODY should be allowed to own any network infrastructure that passes over public rights of ways, except for the public.

One major way we can get around this problem is to have a much more redundant, mesh like, network topology, that takes away the bottleneck we now have that is the local isp's small part of the network.

meldaved 4 months ago

Are you for or against the proposed "Net Neutrality" bill? This is one of many comments that can be taken different ways, depending on a persons point of view.

comguru 2 months ago

First, the internet is not free, or public. it never was. It is a collection of hardware and wires, owned by various legal entities that lease access. Just because you use it a lot doesn't make it yours. Just because a lot of people use it doesn't make it "Public"

lysacor 2 months ago

The Internet in its current incarnation was commercialized by many private entities, as you correctly stated. However the underlying infrastructure was made possible in part through a public/private partnership. As far as your comment about it not being "yours" asserting that it is not personal property, that is also correct. But as ISP's and common carriers are using research originally conceived of and implemented by private/public partnerships (and many of those ideas are still created in the same way), the public still has a lot of say in what should and should not be done to protect freedom of speech on the Internet, even as commercialized as it is now.

Time has not shown corporations to have the public good in mind when implementing their ideas and forcing their products on individuals. In fact the laissez-faire approach the government has taken in a lot of facets in business has created the situation our market is in today.

Businesses are the epitome of censorship, when free speech does not suit their bottom line... period.

timmy.lally 2 months ago

It seems like this poster doesn't know what the Internet is, as seen by his attempts to compare it to National Park land. As comguru stated, the Internet is an interconnected series of private networks. Government intervention and oversight simply leads to more problems, as they try to implement what they deem "fair".

Dave Kliman 2 months ago

you are the one who doesn't seem to get that timmy.

the internet goes through PUBLIC right of ways. The backbone ( the arpanet portion) is PUBLIC. these private networks have been bequeathed with the right to pass their cables over OUR lands and as that is the case, they have the fiduciary responsibility to the public that somebody who has NOT been given public lands to use wouldn't have.

pangasamaneesh 1 month ago

Under telecommunications laws Net Neutrality is perfectly legit and it is the moral thing to do. Even with the recent tragic decision by The U.S. Supreme Court on Citizen's United which undid democracy (despite it emboldening big cable and phone company ISPs to suggest Net Neutrality violates their free speech which is bogus -- by the way as the Internet is more interactive than radio or TV ever were -- it encourages participation, dissent, and democracy.) The Open Internet encourages free speech on the part of users. We just pay a monthly fee for access and have unlimited equal access to all Internet websites but big ISPs want to be able to change all of that. They dislike the idea of being forced to deliver every email message even messages by consumer rights groups criticizing them etc. The Open Internet threatens their legacy business model where in the past they would co-op and monetize technologies for corporate gain at the expense of the public interest.

Big ISPs like Comcast want to be able to censor what we write in our emails and publish to the Web. Let's say I write an email about Comcast criticizing them for anti competitive, and anti consumer policies and I happen to be using Comcast's email service to send the message. Comcast wants to be able to reject my message because they think its unfair for them to be forced to deliver a message criticizing them.

When the U.S. Postal Service delivers letters every day to mailboxes they cannot filter out and decide which letters to deliver and which not to. If I want to send a letter to someone they cannot refuse to deliver my letter because they don't like what I have to say. They don't have a free speech right to do such a thing. If the Post Office cannot prioritize and discriminate against what mail is delivered ISPs cannot either.

The Information Superhighway analogy comparing Internet to our national highways run by the federal and state governments most of which are free of toll booths is also a good one and represents the need for why we need to maintain Net Neutrality. While I admit I am concerned with language that would mandate ISPs to act as copyright cops and police the Net to ensure it is only being legally used -- only legal uses should be protected but don't want an unnecessary and vague exemption for Hollywood etc. Net Neutrality should apply to Hollywood as well and if someone is misusing Internet before discriminating against that user and taking action proof should and must be furnished this is indeed the case -- the mere allegation of illegal activites should not be sufficient cause to discriminate.

That is why I signed the Electronic Frontier Foundation's petition to the FCC for Real Net Neutrality!

emilyg323 1 month ago

Oh I think Timmy fell in the well again, Lassie. Timmy.Lally- yes, the internet is a connection of interconnected private networks. You win 2 gold stars for taking notes in your computer science class. Now, on to what they were saying about 'public' lands. Without these 'public' lands the 'private networks' you speak of, would still be only that- a collection of 'private networks'. So if you are using public lands then the public should have a say in how that is used. Now don't fall in any more wells, Timmy, Lassie's going out for a milkbone.

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