The Pilgrims Would Oppose Net Neutrality?

from the i-mean,-once-they-stopped-worrying-about-surviving dept

There are extremely good reasons to worry about any net neutrality legislation, as we've seen that once the telcos got involved, what came out was really a telco wishlist, rather than anything to actually preserve the key end-to-end principles of the internet. However, that doesn't mean that the principle of "net neutrality" is bad. It's not. There are very good reasons why the internet has been, and should remain, "neutral."

And yet, in the fight against the legislation, it's really amazing how many ridiculous, ignorant arguments are made. For example, a bunch of folks have been sending over the news of some religious talk radio host decrying net neutrality, because it was "wicked stuff" that the Pilgrims wouldn't have wanted.

It is a principle of free market. That's a Biblical principle, that's a historical principle. We have all these quotes from Ben Franklin and Jefferson and Washington and others on free market and how important that is to maintain. That is part of the reason we have prosperity. This is what the Pilgrims brought in, the Puritans brought in, this is free market mentality. Net Neutrality sounds really good, but it is socialism on the Internet.

That's wrong on so many levels, you kind of have to marvel at just how wrong it is. A neutral network is not "socialism." For the most part, it's what we have today. And, seriously, getting rid of neutrality is the opposite of a free market. It would be about the telcos taking all of those government granted subsidies they've received over the years, and using them to put up tollbooths on parts of the web. That's not about the free market at all. It's regulatory capture in the extreme. But, you know... the pilgrims. They sure would have hated net neutrality.

Filed Under: net neutrality, pilgrims, propaganda