(Must get this off chest).... Unless Obama walks his talk on Net Neutrality, he is a Phony

[MADem]

157. We agree on much!

Now, as for broadcasting and cable, there's a long arc on that, both good and bad. I can remember the days when there were three TV stations (and oh, when Public Broadcasting came on as the occasional fourth, with Madame Slack teaching French and Julia Child chopping up duck--how exciting!). And then, on came cable with LOTS of choices, and HBO and SHOWTIME did things on TV that we could NEVER see on network television--never in a million years. I used to go to the movies a lot, for variety, because even back then, TV just sucked some nights--now I rarely go to the films; I wait for them to come to me on TV. We can argue about how the Fairness Doctrine got flushed, and I don't like that either, but so long as money is speech, we have to acquire more than them until we can change the rules.

And speaking of rule changes, if we don't like what is going to happen, we need to "call Congress, right fucking now" and get them involved. Actually, we don't absolutely HAVE to call them now, we can wait on that. See, the FCC can make regulations, but only CONGRESS makes LAW. And LAW trumps regulations any day of the week. We can get more than one bite from this apple, if needs must.

This is not about "the President" and to make it so is to place blame unfairly and personify it, to boot. The forces behind these proposals have been gathering strength and stirring the pot for several decades now, since Reagan, or even earlier, and now we're getting ready for yet another great big paradigm shift, which is happening not-so-coincidentally at a time when the vast majority of millennials are cutting the cable and being more selective/relying on peers to tell them what to watch--on their computers.

We've gone from small screen to big screen and back again. The entire "ratings" system is garbage because the providers of the material have no real idea how many eyes are on their product. All they can do is make a best guess using secondary influencers (social media, e.g.). And if they get to be too jerky, some genius will come up with a way to cut them out of the equation--just like the cable providers were cut out of a large piece of the pie by their usurious behavior. It's only the tech - lazy, the tech-clueless, the people who don't care about spending a bit extra on TV, and the people who do care but who are busy as hell (too busy to learn how to cut the cord, in essence), and the very mobile, the people who move every few years, who are still hooked up to cable.

It's great to try and gouge people, but when these companies go over the line and charge more than the traffic will bear, people will find a way around it, or give it up entirely. And that's true even in a monopoly--charge too much for coffee, and people will switch to tea. Some smartass will develop a different system, a tweak on satellites, or some kind of wireless protocol (rather like they are talking about for electricity one day) that can cover large areas--and then where will the "internet" providers be? Already they're competing with the smart phone guys, who have entered the fray--who else will come into the mix?

Once they define what it (net neutrality) definitively is, then it gets really interesting!