FCC chairman to propose plan for net neutrality
In a statement provided to reporters in advance of Wednesday’s announcement, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he thinks he has “a sound legal basis” to pursue so-called net-neutrality rules that would prevent companies such as Verizon, Comcast and AT&T from blocking or serving up some Web sites faster and at better quality than others.
Last summer, Genachowski said he would move to reclassify broadband as something akin to more heavily regulated telephone service, after a federal appeals court threw the government’s position as Web access regulator into question. The court said in April that the FCC had no legal authority to sanction Comcast for blocking files shared through the BitTorrent application.
Blocking BitTorrent’s huh? So the FCC doesn’t like internet providers blocking or restricting BitTorrent sights… hmm isn’t the FCC part of the same government that recently seized several domains of BitTorrent sights? I get why providers are limiting access to BitTorrent sights – it’s bandwidth – they suck it up as heavily as streaming video. However if you pay for a service you should get it – I have unlimited up and down load with my account as do most of you and I don’t want anyone telling me either directly or indirectly I’m limited via bandwidth restrictions.
Anyway…
Government Seizes 82 Sites In Piracy Sweep
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency picked the busiest online shopping day of the year to shut down 82 websites — including the domain of a BitTorrent meta-search engine — the federal government said are offering counterfeit or pirated goods.
What the hell am I missing here? The FCC says internet providers can’t limit access to BitTorrent sights and then the DHS/ICE shuts a bunch of them down? Is one hand not talking to the other? Is the FCC and DHS/ICE not from the same government or is the FCC lying about what “net-neutrality” is all about? Surely the government wouldn’t lie to us, would they? Sure they would.
Frankly I don’t care one way or the other about BitTorrent sights – if a movie is good I’ll buy it or rent it, no need to try to get it for free and as far as counterfeit goods are concerned – as I’ve said before if a person is going to buy counterfeit goods it’s likely they can’t afford to buy the real deal so the maker of the actual product is not really losing anything and in fact they gain by having they name or logo in front of more people.
Same thing goes for music… if the music is good the consumer will buy it, if it sucks they won’t. My personal opinion on music is most of it sucks and if I have already bought the 8-track, LP, cassette or CD of some artist I like 20 or 30+ years ago I don’t see why I need to pay again for an mp3 – I paid of the right to use the song already. I didn’t buy the media specifically, I bought the songs on it and I’ll do with it what ever I please. Speaking of mp3′s – it wasn’t illegal to record songs off the radio so why is illegal to record them off the internet? Just sayin’ ….
Genachowski and the FCC to push ahead with net neutrality next month
