Sen. Franken: Stop the Corporate Takeover of the Internet

It's amazing how mindless your statement is.

The government is already regulating the internet. Their job is to protect the citizens of this country from monopolies ( granted it's almost impossible since corporations run the government since they have bought off all the republicans and a good portion of the Democrats).

Just wait till Fox, BP, Goldman Sacks, Chase, AIG, Halliburton, Monsanto, Disney, Virison, Exxon, GE and other giant corporations control the entire content of the net.

Then you can tell your kids what it was like to have free access to the internet and scream in the streets asking for your country back.

Boycott what exactly? The Internet?

Boycott who?

Ya think He would as he says or just be another Pawn?

Regardless of the politics involved, net neutrality is an important issue, if you're interested in freedom.

Remember back in 2008, when Comcast restricted high-speed service to its customers who used file-sharing software? Well, they got sued, and the FCC determined what Comcast did was illegal. Now, if Comcast would've won, a precedent for restricting access would have been set, and who knows what else they would be restricting now.

Unless you have a huge amount of wealth invested in an ISP, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot by rejecting net neutrality.

Non of it is that important to me. This is just a time killer for me.

I take it then you are not happy with how the government is regulating the internet right now, am I correct?

Also what free market are you talking about? The same free market that lets a handful of giant corporations control all the oil fields, all the tv stations, all the farms, all the banks and all of the radio stations, and all the newspapers etc?

The Internet needs to be free for all. Not a few corporations that only care about their profit while they destroy small business and steal our freedom.

If I get my history correct, I believe the government has had their hands in the oil, media, farms and banks industries for most of the 20th century, so you can't blame the free market because the government helped some corporations take control over these industries.

If you want to prevent the internet from falling into control of a few corporations, then keep the government out and let entrepreneurs keep the competition alive.

I don't think you understand what you're saying, lol.

Suppose every Internet Service Provider limits access to your favorite non-corporate site.
What are you going to do? Complain? That won't get you anywhere unless you either have money or a large number of consumers to back you up. If corporations had their way, sites like Wikipedia would not exist. Corporate ISPs would rather have you going to sites they can profit off of.

The only thing that can stop an ISP from limiting access to the non-corporate sites is legislation and government regulation.

I'll never understand how some people think corporations can regulate themselves, lol. Listen, the invisible hand of the free market does not apply to multi-billion dollar corporations. They're just too powerful. For a while there, Microsoft didn't have to answer to the free market, because it owned the free market, lol.

Do you really want to go back to before the government regulated business? No workers rights, no environmental laws, no anti-trust laws?
The only people that want that are the ultra-rich, because it's in their best interest. If you're a working class person, the only thing protecting you from corporate greed is the government, like it or not.

Don't be afraid of government. At least you have a vote with the government, even if it's a flawed system. You have absolutely no vote in the corporate world.

It's more like the corporations manipulate our politicians through lobbiests and bilions in corporate funding to get their way.

Your trying to tell me that the monopolized corporate market is going to let the little businesses profit?

It's like what happens when walmart comes to your town. Ten thousand good paying jobs are lost and five thousand new minimum wage jobs are brought in. How is this good for america?

Who is to protect the consumer? I as a tax payer would rather have the government protect me from corporations than to let giant corporations (ie BP) further control my way of life.

Further more at least we have a say in what our government does. As for giant corporations, they only have to make their shareholders happy.

The free market isn't going to work in this case.

Internet Service Providers would rather have you visit their corporate sponsored sites, as opposed to non-profit sites like Wikipedia. So, ISPs want to limit bandwidth to non-corporate sponsored sites, while giving more access to their own corporate sponsored sites.

Government regulated Net Neutrality would mean unrestricted access to ALL websites.

If you leave it up to the free market, you will have to get a consumer base to demand access to every non-corporate sponsored site it wants.

^That means, you would have to fight to maintain access to non-profit sites like Wikipedia.

Letting ISP's have the power to decide what sites you can access can't possibly be a step towards freedom.

Wow, you have a twisted view of both the government and corporations.

Corporations are motivated by greed, and greed alone, NOT by the best interests of the consumers. And we are talking about huge corporations- there is no "free market" involved because there is no competition involved.

The government get it's power FROM THE PEOPLE. It is of the people, by the people, and for the people. The problems with the government are directly related to corporate influence OVER the government.

Your whole backwards view is what creates messes like this, resulting in a future where corporations control every aspect of your life, and you have no say in the mater whatsoever.

It is quite amazing as a college professor I knew 20+ yeas ago wrote that very same argument and was trying to get us to use it in BBS debates. He passed away now. Ward Chuchhill plagiarized his works and made text documents and word documents with that and others in it as a debate script. He was a liberal arts major and claimed to be a communist but never took any economics or accounting classes so he made some flaws in his argument for copypasta debate.

It is of course a flawed argument saying we have no vote with corporations. Why? Ever heard of shares of stock giving you the power to vote? Ever heard of shareholder meetings that anyone with at lest one share of stock in the company can attend and talk about what he or she wants the corporation to do? Ever heard of the FTC that regulates stock and companies, you can tell them what the corporation is doing that is against the law and have them investigate.

This debate is getting silly, is that the best you can do some of you, copypasta from college professors, stuff that is maybe even older than some of you? Stuff written long ago and stolen and modified and used over and over again.

Many people cannot afford stock, let alone enough stock to have any influence whatsoever on corporate policy. Are you suggesting a plutocracy? We are most of the way there already.

That's your argument?
Buy stock in a company, then go to the shareholders meeting and hope they listen to you?
LOL!
Good luck with that.
I hope you have a few hundred million invested in the company, because that's the only way they'll even consider taking you seriously. Your voting power is determined by how much money you have invested.
That's not called democracy by the way, it's plutocracy or oligarchy.

Let's examine your solution though for shits and giggles:

Let's say I don't like the way AT&T is doing business. I get 100 people to buy $1,000 in stock each. We go to the share holders meeting to suggest a change in policy. But, oh snap, hang on, this one guy who owns $1,000,000 in stock says he doesn't like my idea. So, AT&T tells me and my 100 friends no, because 1 guy with more shares than all of us didn't like our idea.

That's a gross simplification of a shareholders meeting, lol, but you get the point.
So, no, you don't have a vote in the corporate world, unless you're the guy up there with $1,000,000 in shares. And what are you going to do, buy a large share of each and every corporation you want to keep in check? Good luck with that too.

And then, let's not forget about stake holders, which include most of us. Those are the people who are affected by a corporation, but have no investment in the company. How are those people supposed to deal with corporations? Trust that the shareholders and the CEOs will do the right thing, LOL? Trust that the invisible hand will somehow make everything all work out OK? It's painfully obvious that's not how it works.

So your solutions is to go and buy stocks in so you have a word to say?

Your saying we literally we have to buy our freedom?

You do realize that less than 20% of our society actually owns stocks right?

Furthermore only about 1% of our society has enough stock in a single corporation to even have a word to say at the shareholders meetings.

Now tell me why should this 1% have the right to control the flow of information, control our media even more than they already do and deprive us our right to the free internet?

^+1

Keep speaking loudly! It is a very confusing issue. I didn't even pay attention to it for several years because I'm in the Internet Industry... I kept thinking it was like the Modem Tax Myth.... scary but ridiculous to believe.

Yes, Net Neutrality is truly the First Amendment issue of our time. Fortunately, the younger, net-savvy generation seems to be pretty awake to this. The most slippery thing about it is the way it's being framed as a freedom vs. government control thing by so-called conservatives. The Tea Party shows itself to be the tool of giant corporations again, since the only "freedom" they seem concerned about is the freedom of big business to control our lives.

The real culprit in the real estate meltdown was the government? You, sirrah, are just plain nuts.

Most incisive comment of the year, I'd say.
I'd have to give corporatism credit though, having mastered marketing psychology, they are more firmly in control of the human bodies that pass through its digestive system than communism ever was.
Imagine a world-killing economic system replicating the acid-dripping mother creature in Alien keeping its trussed and cocooned victims alive just long enough for her brood to wake and drain that final bit of blood.

Sad, truly sad, my naive belief in freedom simply evaporated.

The Corporations will control the means of access. They will give priority access only to their friends, like say Fox News! Net Neutrality is the only way we will be able to speak freely here. No one should control the wires and cables, and transmitters and the like that is the Net.

awesome i believe the source is strong in you jedi

i believe the internet is way to large to control... plus hacking the web is dead easy :D

net aint nuetral..just check our current tv

You're right about that. The longer a system exists in our corporate world the more it comes under corporate limitation and control.
Remember back in not so distant past when you could go on the web and have total freedom in access to information and sites?
Now every access to the internet is wholly directed. It is pre-sifted, packaged, shinned up with advertising, and designed to suck information from any user, for any use whatsoever, both covertly, and as an overt demand of use.

I don't hack , so I get to loose my first amandment rights ? Bad idea .

neither do i... but a little google goes a long way :D

ahh let me say that again: "The Corporations will control the means of access." that would mean like the flow of information in the wires on the phone lines, the wireless access ability. let me put it this way. We are not talkng so much about like computer code, software, etc. But we are talking about having on line content restricted and allowed according to your ability to pay or your political agenda etc. The Russian governmant and the Chinese do it. The corporations can do it here. Is it perfct in Russia and China? No. But it is enought to control the result of the flow of information. And it is control they can turn to profit that the Corps. want, including political control. So our asses are on the line if we do not legislate and regulate to keep our freedom on the web. Thanks for saying. :)

I agree, the net itself is impossible to control, but ACCESS to the net is very controllable. That's what net neutrality is about.
It's not about wiki or gnu selling out, it's about ISP's limiting access.
You can create all the webpages and hack all you want, but ultimately you won't get very far if your service provider is limiting access. Imagine an ISP cutting bandwidth to Wikipedia, but giving extra bandwidth to MTV.com or something. This is beginning to happen already.

Think AOL when it first started out. If AOL was your ISP back in '93, you could literally only go to sites that were AOL certified- probably a few hundred, lol. Corporations want to go back to that business model, because it's much more profitable.

like for instance, the government?? At least Fox News gets it's power from the people. If it's really so evil, stop watching it, and stop mentioning it, and it will go away. It's called a free market.

i know... but that doesn't stop me from getting information...

and in china they make usb devices that get around those restrictions lol...

they already have usb devices to get around that stuff in china, plus there are loads of proxy sites to get you access... i used to get around internet security in highschool through proxy sites :D

OMG
OK, those USB devices they use in China to bypass internet security work by tapping into wireless networks from other countries that have unrestricted internet access.
So wtf are they going to do when those other countries like the US lose their net neutrality? They're shit out of luck, lol.

Proxy servers don't speed up internet connections.
If all US ISPs decided to only give high-speed internet bandwidth to sponsored sites, a proxy server or any other type of security bypass, IP masking software won't do any good.

I understand your message is positive, but this isn't something you can hack your way out of.

Omg, have you ever picked a wrench or screwdriver? If the corps. have their way they will be able to just unplug you. It can be done that way. but it will be easier to just hit a button and shut you off. AGAIN, if the Corporate Chinese can do it, then corps can do it to us as well.
i cannot ntype with thesenfULSE NAILS uGh!

yes i have... i hate the corps just like you and net neutrality is important, but i don't think they will be able to control our internet

Yep!

I can still vote . I can still type what i think here . You can still disagree with me . First amendment rights , right here . Do you really think BP would allow ANY unfavorable story about them , if they had the power ? They lie like a rug as it is .....

Keep on dreaming.

The corporations already control the government, just look at what the republican party and the blue collar democrats stand for.

Voted up! Corporations can be terrible entities, but ultimately the people have the choice to stop funding them. The government will never give you that choice.

psst.... there are these things called "elections".

With corporations, we have no such choice.

List all of the companies that are available to you to access the internet- I bet it's less than five, and all are huge corporations. The age of the local ISPs are long dead. Now, imagine those companies merging together.

No competition at all.

Are you actually under the impression that two guys in their garage can form a new small start up company to compete? Can they provide a national broadband infrastructure?

Hell no.

You need to grow out of the Capitalist fairytale- this is NOT Capitalism. Capitalism has been dead for decades. It's Corporatism now, and that is not good for anyone.

The only way to get Capitalism BACK is through government regulation of Corporations, like Net Neutrality.

I agree. Government may be imperfect, slow, and prone to error and corruption, but it is the people's only defense against corporate greed and rapaciousness. Why are so many people so quick to defend the rights of corporations? Why do they say stuff like "At least Fox News gets its power from the people?" Fox News specializes in manipulating the uneducated classes to support the corporate agenda. And they are very good at it.

its not possible... controlling the internet is just a fantasy corporations have... kind of like watching lord of the rings for the third time lol...

Of course it's possible.
Suppose AT&T, Verizon, Earthlink, and AOL want to limit bandwidth to 56 Kbit/s for all non-corporate sponsored websites, because it's not profitable.
While at the same time providing a really fast 10Gbps to all corporate sponsored cites.
This will discourage people from going to cites that aren't corporate sponsored. You wouldn't even be able to watch video, view high rez images, or download anything big unless it was coming from a corporate sponsored cite.

So, it's not only possible, it's a brilliant money making business model that corporations are dying to implement.

The only thing stopping corporations from doing this is legislation.

i can find a way around anything... i am still not worried.

Yeah, that's like saying you're not worried about a nuclear explosion because you have a bomb shelter. Why not just work to stop the bomb?

Exactly, the concept of a better world seems to be beyond some people.