Bad Take: Rep. Sensenbrenner's Response Over Internet Privacy Concerns: 'Nobody's Got To Use The Internet'
from the and-nobody's-got-to-vote-for-you-either dept
As we've explained, with Congress voting (and the President signing) a bill to kill off the FCC's broadband privacy rules, things are not necessarily as bad as some might have you believe, but they're still bad. And lots and lots of people seem to be asking their elected representatives why they did this. After all, despite the fact that the vast majority of both Republican and Democratic voters supported the rules (as they did with net neutrality rules as well...), in Congress everyone lined up along party lines over this issue, with Republican members of Congress voting down the rules.
At least some are now facing backlash over this... and they don't seem to be handling it well. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner seems to have what may be the worst possible take on this after being asked about it. He told a constituent, to maybe just not use the internet if you don't like it. That linked article only has part of the quote, but here's the video of the question and the response:
.@JimPressOffice tells his constituents not to use the internet if they don't like his vote to sell out their privacy to advertisers. #wi05 pic.twitter.com/lSVVx8OclO
— Brad Bainum (@bradbainum) April 13, 2017
The questioner points out, correctly, that for individual services, like Facebook, people have a choice of how much they actually use them or what info they give, but for your overall ISP that's not true -- and also notes that there aren't competitive options. Sensenbrenner's answer is... maddeningly nonsensical and wrong, and basically ignores everything the questioner just said to him:
"You know, again, nobody's got to use the internet. And the thing is, if you start regulating the internet like a utility, if you did that right at the beginning, we'd have no internet. Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal services, now. And the fact is, you know, I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising through your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice that the government should give you. And that's what the law has been and I think we ought to have more choices, rather than fewer choices, with the government controlling our everyday lives.”
Now, it's a live situation, and perhaps Rep. Sensenbrenner misspoke. But, no, his press office doubled down on this when someone called it out on Twitter. Amusingly, the press office was trying to parse the difference between "don't use the internet" (as a Tweeter claimed Sensenbrenner said) and "you have a choice" which is... well... not a very big difference, despite his press office claiming it's a "big difference."
The idea that people "have a choice" in using the internet today is laughably out of touch. Indeed, so many things that people rely on today pretty much require the internet. Jobs, transportation, housing and more frequently require the internet. And, to put an even stronger "WTF" on Sensenbrenner's misguided statement: a big part of the problem here is the very lack of choice. The vast majority of Americans have no real choice when it comes to getting true broadband access -- as the very questioner stated, and which Sensenbrenner totally ignored. Thanks to bad policies, we have a non-competitive market, where if you want broadband, you basically have to go with one company, and then it gets access to a ton of data about you.
If Sensenbrenner truly meant what he said here, he'd have been against rolling back the rules. As small ISP boss Dane Jasper recently noted on our podcast, without these privacy rules, it actually gives the giant providers that much more power over the smaller upstarts, and makes it harder for the small providers to compete.
Also, Sensenbrenner is simply flat out wrong with his argument about "if the internet was regulated like a utility at the beginning" because it WAS regulated like a utility at the beginning and it resulted in tons of competition and innovation. Indeed, for most of the internet's early rise it was treated as a utility in terms of things like open access and line sharing. And privacy rules. It's only more recently that that went away.
Also, I have no clue what Sensenbrenner is trying to say when he says: "I don't think it's my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising through your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice that the government should give you." What does that even mean? First of all, it was the FCC's job, and it did so. What Sensenbrenner did here was to roll back what the FCC said. Second, even with the rules, it never said that "you cannot get advertising through your information being sold." All the rules did was say that ISPs had to tell you about it and offer clear options on how you controlled your data. Third, seriously, what is he saying when he says his job is "to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice that the government should give you." I honestly keep reading that sentence and cannot parse it. The privacy rules were what gave individuals choices. It gave them choices in how their data could be used. Rolling back those rules takes away the choice.
For years, we've pointed out that Congress appears totally and completely out of touch when it comes to basic tech policy -- especially related to the internet. Jim Sensenbrenner's vote and statements on this issue have only confirmed that basic fact.
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Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, internet, jim sensenbrenner, privacy
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Drink the poisoned water or go without.
That is closer to the "choice" he provided us.Not even any unpoisoned alternative for us.
No Internet is nothing to him just like going through a checkout line was
a first time experience for Geoege Bush.
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Cut off his internet
Back up you stance Sensenbrenner, go internet free for just 30 days. Your office, your staff and your residence, no internet, no wifi, no cellular data.
I'm sure someone out there can help him with this.
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Re: Cut off his internet
Keep in mind that this is a guy who still writes his letters on a 1971 IBM Selectric II typewriter.
Dunno if it's because he likes the old technology, or if - like several Congressman who say "they don't use email" and have their aides use it for them - it's about bypassing email archiving laws.
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Re: Re: Cut off his internet
Can you still get ribbon for those old things?
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Re: Re: Re: Cut off his internet
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Re: Cut off his internet
Pretty much all electronic payments these days are processed via internet connections. Let's see how he manages without.
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Re: Re: Cut off his internet
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Re: Re: Re: Cut off his internet
Just cut off his access to the internet through the 5 closest people and this guy would be in trouble.
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Republicans, free market, and totalitarians
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Re: Republicans, free market, and totalitarians
Who knew ... not like any of those liars actually detailed wtf they were talking about while spewing that total bs. Dog whistle for some, complete bs for most everyone else. But they won the electoral college and that means everyone marches in lock step - right? ... lol. What's next, a law forbidding any criticism of these asshats?
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Re: Republicans, free market, and totalitarians
The 3.6 billion poor in the world: "what?"
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Re: Re: Republicans, free market, and totalitarians
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I serve you up on a plate for them, because I care about them more.
They told me this was fine and only unamerican bastards would be against it.
They pay me to do what they want, so suck it up.
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Drink the poisoned water or go without.
Not even any unpoisoned alternative for us.
No Internet is nothing to him just like going through a checkout line was
a first time experience for Geoege Bush.
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Re: Drink the poisoned water or go without.
When called out on their ignorance they deflect in several ways, some of which are a big concern as it sheds light upon how screwed we all are - including the ignorant idiots, but they are too stupid to even realize or acknowledge same.
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Re: Re: Drink the poisoned water or go without.
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Re: Drink the poisoned water or go without.
THIS. You totally nailed it.
And then the guy dares to talk about choice, how is that for hypocrisy?
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Re:
Let's take away his typewriter, abacus, and quill pen and see how this wrinkled bag of pus gets along.
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And every time you see him, asked if he, or anybody he knows, used the Internet in the past 24 hours.
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1984
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Re: 1984
The guy who introduced the Patriot Act in 2001 would never say that!
He'd enact it without consulting you.
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Re: Re: 1984
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Seems to me when the internet was dial-up it was regulated. There were at least 6 different ISP's in my area and prices were competitively lowered to about $7.00 a month. Now I have 1 ISP with truly fast speeds (Comcast).
The biggest mistake was never opening up the last mile.
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Re:
This implies they do not have your best interests in mind.
And yet we still refer to this as a representative form of government ... really? I thought everyone was supposed to be represented, not just the uber riche. Now I'm told that the proles simply need to suck it up. You got yours, screw everyone else.
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Re:
It was way back then when the last mile closed up and it was AT&T or whoever your local phone company was for DSL service or your cable company for Internet and that was pretty much it.
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Re: Re:
All of whom were renting it from the same phone company. Which is why the market dried up.
It turns out that, if your choice of ISP is between Qwest and Joe Blow's Local ISP renting Qwest, then Qwest is getting paid either way -- meaning it can charge little or nothing for its ISP offering (at least for the first year or two before it jacks up its prices) and still turn a profit.
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TSA Precheck
See! I don't have a choice.
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Re: TSA Precheck
You don't need that job.
You don't need to live.
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Re: Re: TSA Precheck
we don't NEED modern plumbing.
we can all be Amish!
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FTFY
would be far more correct as "...completely out of touch when it comes to basic technology"
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Re: FTFY
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Re: Re: FTFY
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Thank you, Congressman Mike Bost, for voting to end our internet privacy. Your browsing history can now be sold by ATT and Charter. Imagine the fun of discovering from Walmart or any other retailer that your 14-year-old daughter is pregnant.
Sorry for putting this here, but it needs wider attention.
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Re:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-preg nant-before-her-father-did
Will begin to happen more.
But think of the possibilities - suddenly, advertisements for divorce lawyers start to show up. Ditto STD testing. Or counseling/drug treatment, etc services.
There's lots of things people search for that they really don't want/need to be known _even inside the household_.
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Loud Howard: "WE CAN ALL LIVE IN AN AGRARIAN SOCIETY!"
a little bit later...
Loud Howard: "THAT'S IT, WE'RE ALL FARMERS!"
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To me, he'll always be the petulant politician who was so mad that people were talking about Guantanamo Bay at a PATRIOT Act hearing in 2005 that he abruptly gaveled the session to a close, took the gavel with him and then cut the mics of the other reps.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/10/AR2005061002110.html
I'm shocked -- shocked -- that someone with that thin of a skin would show even greater levels of contempt for the public.
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I have got my popcorn
what could be better?
Like I said before Trump was in power, the actions that democrats are taking will help ENSURE that someone like Trump will be elected into office.
Now, we have the reverse of it at play. Right now the actions of the republics will help to put someone like Hillary in next time around.
Just as George Washington foretold in his farewell address if we keep sticking to political parties... "the dominance of one party over the other, sharpened by the spirit of revenge will reduce government to a despotism!"
If you liked Obama, then you have ZERO standing to bitch about Trump, because you helped bring him here, you need to sleep in the bed you helped make. Those of you that like Trump, your hate for Obama was bankrupt!
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Re: I have got my popcorn
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Re: I have got my popcorn
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Re: Re: Re: I have got my popcorn
Given the turnout for the 2016 Presidential election, I'm pretty sure that many people decided to not vote for either (or anyone for that matter). I don't think that made things better.
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when this kind of buttikus maximus is presented as a party's offering you realize why we shouldn't have political parties.
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Re:
Better analogy is to state that government is terrible at everything it does, so if you want something done right, get government involved. Sure there are some things you cannot avoid the involvement of government, those are narrow and few, and SHOULD kept that way!
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Re: Re:
That is a huge turd, no wonder it does flush easily.
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If anything, true solutions and true information and critique will come from ORGANIZED CIVIL SOCIETY.
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Even churches share information primarily through the internet these days. During Easter service on Sunday the church I was in read off a web address to locate materials. I suppose nobody has to eat, or leave their own home, but they certainly feel necessary to modern life each in their own right.
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And We The People keep electing them, so who's further out of touch?
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Re:
don't talk like that around here... many folks at TD don't understand that! They call it...
"victim blaming"
No responsibility here friend!
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Re: Re:
Please pick one of the two following persons for the position of president.
Wow, huge choice there Biff.
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Bernie, a center-left Democrat
Hillary, a traditional center-right Republican
Trump, an alt-right Republican
And of course Jeb! and the rest in both parties. But those simply didn't get any traction at all with the public.
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The crowded Republican field and first-past-the-post vote certification certainly worked in Trump's favor. Do you think he could have gotten the nomination in an instant-runoff system, or any other designed to advantage consensus candidates over polarizing ones?
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I can name a few problems within the party that led to Trump's nomination, but I don't think that first-past-the-post is one of them.
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And even after all that, he still only got 45% of the vote. Most Republican primary voters did not vote for him; that's my point.
Of the people who voted for Rubio or Kasich, how many people do you think would have picked Trump as their second choice? Hell, of the people who voted for Cruz, how many do you think would have picked Cruz as their first choice (as opposed to just voting for him because he had the best shot at beating Trump)?
Trump had more people pick him as their first choice than anybody else. But for most people, he was, demonstrably, not their first choice.
How many people do you suppose considered him their absolute last choice? If the number is any higher than 5.1%, then it's a mathematical certainty that he would have lost under a system with instant runoff and proportional delegate assignment.
And that's assuming the votes broke down exactly the same otherwise, and not getting into other events that could have made the numbers even worse for Trump, such as candidates like Walker, Rubio, and Bush staying in the race longer (as their chances would certainly have been better under a system that rewarded second, third, and fourth choices).
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- Glen Greenwald
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Of course, I don't call it not being bothered to vote, I call it BOYCOTTING A CORRUPT SYSTEM. I get to laugh at all you idiots who keep voting Dem or Rep. You keep voting for Kodos and complaining about your chains. I'd move to another country, but they're all at least as bad or worse these days.
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Re: Re: Re:
Here in Canada we have a first past the post system. And yet we still have viable 3rd and 4th parties. Most people know that a vote for a third party isn't a spoiled ballot. They still have influence.
Even with only a small handful of seats in Parliament, a third party is often the deciding factor in many votes. The two main parties would have to make deals or form coalitions with the third party to get their majority. And that means adopting a few of the third party's policies.
Or the one of the two main parties will see a third party's policy earning points in the polls, and they'll adopt it for themselves. And so the third party's policy gets enacted without the party being elected.
It also means that a party on the left or right can't take the voters on their own side for granted. There's often another party that can step in to take their place. 20 years ago one party went from running Canada to being effectively voted out of existence.
US voters don't seem to realize this, so there's a negative feedback loop. They don't believe in third parties, so the third parties don't get votes. Which in turn means - as 2016 made clear - they don't attract viable leaders. Which means they don't get votes...
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
The real problem isn't first-past-the-post itself; it's the spoiler effect, and the perverse voting patterns which it incentivizes. That effect exists under first-past-the-post, and there's no way to eliminate or minimize that fact; the only solution is to switch to a voting system which does not produce that effect.
(The best-known ranked-choice voting system, known as IRV - the one in which the candidate with the most last-place or fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and then the results are recalculated on the basis of the remaining candidates - doesn't have the same spoiler effect as does FPTP, but does still leave situations in which ranking your preferred candidate a certain way can actually decrease the chance of that candidate winning. A Condorcet system, although much harder to understand, is the most ideal option known as far as perverse incentives goes.)
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Faced with a working system, you simply made that up.
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Unfortunately I don't remember where that analysis was or who presented it, so I can't cite it effectively, and I don't remember its arguments well enough to persuasively present them myself.
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All your bandwidth are belong to us
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With that said; This guy is an idiot. All I heard after ""You know, again, nobody's got to use the internet." was blah blah blah... my mind had already dismissed any/all explanations that came out of his mouth. I haven't witnessed this kind of stupid since I watched that youtube video where the guy tried to shoot a bottle rocket from his butt, and ended up cooking his balls.
This is a perfect example of why I think regulation in it's current form is "bad". This guy has absolutely no clue what he's talking about. At best he should be working as an announcer at the local bat-shit-crazy right wing bingo hall not making laws.
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Re:
that's uhh.... kinda what makes them bad!
Sure objectively regulation is the same as bias! Both words that can be used in positive or negative light. The problem is that are simply subjective terms with identity politics unfortunately intertwined rendering new definitions for them.
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But hey, who am I to stop you? Go ahead! Climb up on your high horse, pour on a heavy dose of snark, and watch your regulation go right down the damn toilet.
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It's not a strawman, it's a reductio ad absurdum.
Well, me and some dumbass in every single comments thread about regulations.
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Nope. Just you.
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Nono, the line is "I know you are, but what am I?" If you're going to get your comebacks from Pee-Wee Herman, at least get them right.
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Probably the ones who lie, cheat and steal are the winners in this person's mind.
Promote anarchy? .... don't tell me what to do !!!!!
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Let me get this straight: you've noticed that laws can be changed depending on which politicians are elected to office...and you have concluded that this is a bad thing? That's what representative democracy is, Jack. I may not always agree with the outcome (and I think it's quite clear that in this instance the representatives are voting contrary to their constituents' wishes) but what alternative do you propose? Laws that can never ever be repealed? Yeah, I can't imagine any way that could ever go wrong.
Game Thug? Is that like a Game Boy with a gold chain?
This is a partisan issue, Mr. Coward. 100% of the people who voted for it are Republican. I'm not the one making it a partisan issue; they are.
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Exactly my point. When laws only have the support of one side in 2 party system, they are doomed from the start. As soon as the other side comes to power, and it's inevitable that they will, they will stop at nothing to destroy it. As they are. I'm just stating what is already happening.
The rules started partisan. "The 3-2 party line vote by the FCC’s five commissioners, " and they ended just as you said, partisan.
"Let me get this straight: you've noticed that laws can be changed depending on which politicians are elected to office...and you have concluded that this is a bad thing? "
How about we make laws that are supported by all players and not just one side? Perhaps then they may survive when the political winds change? If you can't get the support from one side, at least SOME support, perhaps no law at all would be better? As it stands; It was doomed from the start and a complete waste of time.
The good news is you can say whatever you want, the proof is right here in this story. I don't have to be right. I'm just pointing out what is already happening.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/27/the-fcc-just-passed-sweeping-new-rules- to-protect-your-online-privacy/?utm_term=.9b73da92c7fa
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You're kidding, right? How do you get two diametrically opposed people to agree on anything? I suppose you could put them both in a room and let them decide whether they should blow themselves up - you think they might agree upon this one item or will they be thinking about how they can trap their opponent in the room while at the same time escape.
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The proof of what?
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Huh?
Okay Representative Sensenbrenner, if the government should give us a choice, why are you taking it away?
Senile much?
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Now this "if you don't like the internet then don't use it" like this dude is barfing if so full of itself, especially in the 21st century, the era of information.
First, the correct phrase would be "if you don't like the internet how we are trying it to be for the profit of a few then don't use it"...that would be a bit less misleading.
Second, free access to information IS a universal human right. Right to privacy is a universal human right. So he does not have a say on how the internet should be, or should we use it or not, it is a universal human right, above him and his party, his interest buddies and even above the American constitution.
What an idiotic person, so archaic. If we all thought like him, we would all be back in the stone age.
He claims that if the internet was regulated as a utility then there would be no internet at all, but that is just his very biased opinion (obviously) with no proof or data to support such ridiculous claim.
Electricity, water, etc are all considered utilities and they are still here, then why not the internet?
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Senseless in Wisconsin
Bad Take: Rep. Sensenbrenner's Response Over Internet Privacy Concerns: 'Nobody's Got To Use The Internet'
US congressman Frank James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin has no sense at all.
He and his congressional ilk are less than zero's they are negatives.
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DO I??
DO I REALLY NEED A HOUSE??
DO I NEED CLOTHING??
NOPE..I get to walk 20 miles in the nude and back...
Anyone got a horse? or are they Illegal also??
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Re: DO I??
Just look at their legislation, local, state & fed - everything is geared towards a Bizarro Robin Hood world where the rich steal from the poor. This is what makes America Great Again .... for these small minded folk.
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Perhaps he can champion legislation to make that so...
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Re: Perhaps he can champion legislation to make that so...
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Stop wasting so mutch time
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