THANK YOU for your updates on this matter. I’m a right-brained girl, and this whole thing just makes my head hurt every time I try to understand anything about it. Your explanations have kept me from just avoiding the topic altogether. Merry Christmas!

how can it legitimately be undone? So say Congress un-does it. Then the FCC does it again. Here we go… Because until Progressives control every aspect of our lives (as if John Q. Public was an infantry troop) they will not stop.

In the effort NOT to legislate that which didn’t need any legislation, now the new congress has to put together legislation to undo that which didn’t need legislated in the first place.

I believe that this series made a(the) definitive positive difference in the fight against NN and I believe it will continue to in the New Year.

Thanks again and the best Christmas to you and your family.

How do we take this power away from these agency’s? The Upton press release you link to says: “Reps. Upton, Walden and Terry will look toward the Congressional Review Act of 1996 (CRA) to fight the FCC’s actions. The CRA allows Congress to review and, through joint resolution, repeal federal agency-promulgated rules. ”
Yeah-Right…… A “joint resolution” requires the House and the Senate to adopt an identical language bill signed by the President…. FAT CHANCE!

Neil
This is a big step in bypassing the Congress and court system in diminishing and finally doing away with American’s First Amendment rights.
I wonder, If we take back the presidency in 2012, if we can undo this regulation. Once we lose our right to dissent through free speech, the rest of our civil rights won’t be difficult for them to go after.

they can try to “regulate” , but the ones that they did this to try to stop will just find another way, like has happened before, and will again, over and over…………………….

Defund any program which is not linked to the United States Constitution.

What is the next step for those of us who are disgusted with this move by the FCC and yet we hold no position in government? I am just so tech ignorant that I could not come up with a way to fight my own personal battle against this intrusion, but there has to be a way.

Hope you next piece is on how to battle their power grab.

Uh oh.

(Reuters) – The Federal Communications Commission’s top official has given his approval to Comcast Corp’s purchase of NBC Universal with a number of tough and narrowly tailored conditions on the deal.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BL45T20101223

Conditions for approval would address several key areas, including online video, program access and program carriage, according FCC officials who declined to be named.

The Department of Justice must also approve the deal. FCC officials said there had been full cooperation between the government agencies. A Justice Department spokeswoman said its review was ongoing.

Why is my gut telling me nothing good is going to come from this ?

I have read most of the comments on the web and very very few have provided an objective analysis. I am trying to provide you one.

There are two parts, the practical and the philosophical. Let us address the practical first – philosophers are known to be patient.

One perspective of Net Neutrality is the battle between the Comcast & Verizons of the world (“service providers” or SPs) and Netflix and Goggle and Apples of the world who provide the applications (“content providers” or CPs).

The CP position is that we have purchased and huge bandwidth pipe from my provider and the customer has also bought a broadband connection then our traffic then our traffic be treated with equal priority as other traffic (lets use the word – QoS). This is as simple as it gets.

The SP position has two parts, the real reason and the ostensible reason. The real reason is that they are NOT making money and the CPs are. So the SPs want to be content providers also. So far fair. What is not fair is (attempting to & getting caught) throttling rival traffic (COMCAST) to promote their (otherwise uncompetitive Apps).

An example will make this clear. Netflix peers with Level-3 (LVLT)networks and customer-X peers with COMCAST (CMCSA). Somewhere there is a junction between LVLT & CMCSA. The peering charges is similar to International Telephone. But CMCSA wants more and is charging a “traffic toll” to LVLT (and at the end NetFlix) extra money.

The ostensible reason is providing “tiered service”. (Something like Express-Mail. Priority or First Class from USPS). It says that it wants to sell a GOLD VPN to (say) Fedex to connect its San Jose office to its Austin office.

The FCC ruling accepts the ostensible reason and not the real reason. There is also the Wireless aspect which I will take up in a later post.

Now comes the “philosophical part” of “FCC control”. This is where I would part ways by saying “As technology increases the need for a new policeman increases” – whether we like it or not.

An example would make this clear…

At the time of independence there was no concept of “traffic police”. When one hundred years ago, cars came on the road, we had a new era of policing and a concept of traffic police and traffic lights (and other automated traffic police) were introduced. Are they perfect? – NO. But we always try for a balance.

Another word about politics. It just happens that the Comcast and Verizons of the world are Republican while Netflixes and Apples of the world are Democrats. If it were other way around then you would be crying “Protect the Internet from Elitist control and hand it over to the people”

Congress, the President (sort of), a Federal court, 2 of their own 5 commissioners and the majority of the American people have said they don’t have the right to regulate the internet.

ISP’s (and everyone else, internet-wise) oughta’ just ignore any directives from the FCC. Tell them to pound sand! Seriously. And do it in advance. What’re the remaining 3 gonna do?

..because nothing you’ve written stinks.

A big, genuine thank you to all you kind folk who have given me such nice, friendly feedback. Not just for last night’s edition but for the whole long ride.

Your readership and your comments are so important in keeping me doing this. Thank you for staying around.

While whacking a troll above, I came up with the analogy in my subject above, which is what happened the last time the government tried to regulate traffic nationwide. Pass it on!

Mike McConnell at WGN 720AM in Chicago spoke with McDowell Wednesday morning. If anyone else out there (like me) is a podcast talkradio junky, Mike McConnell is worth checking out. He is an excellent interviewer, always informed of the subject of his interviewee.