Net Neutrality is the new Fairness doctrine

You cannot or should not prevent dissenting viewpoints because that means someone decides which views are acceptable.

The European powers were very worried about the implications of the printing press and the effect the dissemination of information would have on their own power and rightly so as it created a lot of upheaval the end result of which was overwhelmingly positive on net.

Innovation takes place on the edges. If you dont allow space for adaptation then there is no room to create anything separate for the society to incorporate and evolve, instead leaving you with a corrupted dying structure. And if you suppress concerns without addressing them they will fester and manifest somewhere else.

There is no safety in maintaining the status quo defined by narrow partisan debate, only the temporary illusion of safety.

The attempt to control information is nothing new.

People need to be given room politically and through information to pursue their own values in a more decentralized manor so we have more flexibility for discovering positive adaptations which can then become selected on a larger scale for their merits.

Control of information was the purpose of the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1947

https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/why-the-fairness-doctrine-anything-fair

The radio frequency spectrum we use to communicate is a scarce resource.

The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the FCC's view—honest, equitable, and balanced.

They advertised this regulation using egalitarian rhetoric, claiming the FCC act was a way to guarantee all viewpoints had access to communication on what is a limited spectrum.

Sound familiar?

"It would codify a 1949 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation that once required broadcasters to "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance." "

Then they used it to stop technological and economic progress as well as conflicting views.

By preventing people from using the spectrum for non approved purposes the Federal government restricted and controlled unapproved viewpoints under the guise of promoting multiple viewpoints through narrow "balanced" partisan debate.

Immediately after the government claimed it had to regulate airways to prevent people monopolizing the market and preventing alternate viewpoints, it gobbled up the airwaves and monopolized the market to prevent alternate viewpoints.

They also delayed the development of cell phones by up to 40 years. The technology was available and being proposed in the 1940's.

"When AT&T wanted to start developing cellular in 1947, the FCC rejected the idea, believing that spectrum could be best used by other services that were not "in the nature of convenience or luxury." "

#Scammed

They gave a quarter of the frequencies to the military.

They dedicated most, 60% to broadcast TV and only allowed access to a small percent of approved radio stations and a handful of cable channels keeping the rest of the spectrum off limits and artificially scarce.

"When AT&T wanted to start developing cellular in 1947, the FCC rejected the idea, believing that spectrum could be best used by other services that were not "in the nature of convenience or luxury." This view—that this would be a niche service for a tiny user base—persisted well into the 1980s. "Land mobile," the generic category that covered cellular, was far down on the FCC's list of priorities. In 1949, it was assigned just 4.7 percent of the spectrum in the relevant range. Broadcast TV was allotted 59.2 percent, and government uses got one-quarter.

Television broadcasting had become the FCC's mission, and land mobile was a lark. Yet Americans could have enjoyed all the broadcasts they would watch in, say, 1960 and had cellular phone service too. Instead, TV was allocated far more bandwidth than it ever used, with enormous deserts of vacant television assignments—a vast wasteland, if you will—blocking mobile wireless for more than a generation.

How empty was this spectrum? Across America's 210 television markets, the 81 channels originally allocated to TV created some 17,010 slots for stations. From this, the FCC planned in 1952 to authorize 2,002 TV stations. By 1962, just 603 were broadcasting in the United States. Yet broadcasters vigorously defended the idle bandwidth. When mobile telephone advocates tried to gain access to the lightly used ultra-high frequency (UHF) band, the broadcasters deluged the commission, arguing ferociously and relentlessly that mobile telephone service was an inefficient use of spectrum.

It may seem surprising that they were so determined to preserve those vacant frequencies. Given that commercial TV station licenses were severely limited—enough to support only three national networks—they might have seen the scores of unused channels as a threat. What if policy makers got serious about increasing competition? Shrinking the TV band by slicing off chunks for mobile phone services could have protected incumbent broadcasters from future television competitors. Why, then, did they oppose it?

The answer: The broadcasters believed they held sufficient veto power to prevent the prospect of competing stations. Meanwhile, they cherished the option value of unused spectrum. This thinking proved prescient: Years later, unoccupied TV frequencies would be awarded to the incumbent broadcasters, without payment, during the transition to digital television."

https://reason.com/archives/2017/06/11/we-could-have-had-cellphones-f

When the fairness doctrine was overturned in 1987 it lessened the requirements for licensing leading to a groundswell of new independent channels on talk radio.

"The fairness doctrine was overturned by the FCC in 1987. The FCC discarded the rule because, contrary to its "purpose", it failed to encourage the discussion of more controversial issues."

https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/why-the-fairness-doctrine-anything-fair

Now podcast and streaming have taken independence in media and thought to a new level since they do not even require government licences to participate in the spreading of information.

However, bandwidth is also a scarce resource. And the government is using similar arguments with Net Neutrality as they did with the Radio Spectrum to place limitations on this new disruptive proliferation of information.

Net Neutrality does not mean everybody can have access to as much data as they want. Net Neutrality means the FCC gets to manage who gets to access what limited bandwidth is available through ISP's. The way they manage that access will ultimately be at their discretion.

Not only would it reinforce large connected ICP's market share and prevent innovation in creating new ISP bandwidth. It would increase vested interests ability to shut down political viewpoints, websites or platforms that are considered threatening.

All the major Social media companies and content providers lobbied for Net Neutrality.

Netflix Lobbied for Net Neutrality in the US where they are a major player and against Net Neutrality in Australia where they are trying to disrupt the market as a new small player.

""For example, while Netflix has long opposed zero-rating in America, where it is the market dominant incumbent, it actually paid to have its service zero-rated when it launched in Australia in 2015. In the land “Down Under,” Netflix was an upstart, trying to compete with streaming services that had deeper catalogues of film and television made in Australia. If Netflix could not compete on catalogue depth or user base, what could it compete on? Access. Netflix paid an indeterminate sum to have the largest Australian ISP give its customers zero-rated access to Netflix. It may be fair to accuse Netflix of cross-Pacific hypocrisy, but it was responding rationally to its relative market position in both countries. Simply put, Netflix was an incumbent in America but an insurgent in Australia and it adjusted its position on net neutrality accordingly.

Netflix is by no means the only ICP to have paid for zero-rating. Several times over the past decade, mobile ISPs have struck deals with ICPs to provide zero-rated streaming access. In 2012 Comcast zero-rated its own Xfinity video streaming service. More recently, there has been a flurry of similar deals as AT&T zero-rated HBO Now, T-Mobile did so for Netflix, and Verizon expanded access to its go90 service.

It is no accident that this flurry of zero-rating happened in the immediate aftermath of the FCC’s announced repeal of net neutrality. One might wonder why net neutrality advocates would be so alarmed by the prospect of consumers receiving new, cheaper, and better service given that the ostensible goal of net neutrality is maximizing consumer internet access. But advocates reason that allowing ISPs to privilege one content provider over another would lead to “throttling,” in which the companies would create “slow lanes” for content from providers who did not pay for access to “fast lanes.”"

https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/real-reason-facebook-netflix-support-net-neutrality"

Social Media companies and content providers are already working hand in hand with government on multiple mutually beneficial fronts, from funding, to regulatory capture to control of information.

ICP's have been having to comply with regulations to control speech on their platform in countries all over the world. The US is one of the few places where they have not had content regulated under "hate speech" laws. But there is mounting pressure and Facebook and other social media and content providers are aware of this relationship with governments and their motivations.

Facebook used "hate speech" as a justification to ban the aptly named infowars (a non Washington approved information outlet with a wide reach) directly after pressure from lawmakers.

"The pressure on Facebook to do something about him had intensified after executives gave a series of vague and confusing answers to lawmakers and reporters about the company’s policies. Misinformation was allowed to stay on the platform, they said, but hate speech wasn’t. So users dug up and reported old Infowars posts, asking for their removal on the grounds that they glorified violence and contained dehumanizing language against Muslims, immigrants, and transgender people."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/technology/facebook-banned-infowars-now-what.html

The advertiser model for Social Media is targeted, advertisers are not going to boycott the company and miss out on all social media users, so banning Jones is motivated by the relationship with regulators not customers.

They make money off Alex Jones and banned him despite having advertised themselves as free speech platform in the past to attract people.

https://mises.org/wire/social-media-purge-mises-institute-next-1

Net Neutrality has never been about allowing diverse view points access, neither was the "fairness doctrine"

The hypocrisy of people supporting Net Neutrality and simultaneously cheering the Social Media "hate speech" bans exposes as much. It is about power and control not neutrality or fairness.

If you only have a scarce amount of data and the FCC was managing it, it would make sense from their perspective and be even easier to eventually restrict social media to a handful of controllable, approved platforms. It is what they did with Cable TV and Radio.

Sometimes economic excuses were used to control information, sometimes fears about losing access to speech was used to control the market and often both were happening at the same time.

Each time technology changed the way people could access information, regulators had to create new stories to get information under control.

Posting this on Steemit actually made me kind of optimistic that it will be increasingly difficult for regulators to keep up with changes in technology to keep the information Genie in a bottle.

The Freedom Act does not mean freedom. Net Neutrality is not neutral and the Fairness doctrine was not fair.

Orwellian use of language seems absurdly transparent when broken down but repeating Fair, Neutral etc over and over again has a powerful psychological effect on people. Which is why Orwellian language tricks are so often used.

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength