{"id":3324,"date":"2011-03-01T08:32:18","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T13:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3324"},"modified":"2011-03-01T08:32:18","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T13:32:18","slug":"boehner-says-net-neutrality-is-reinstating-the-fairness-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/03\/boehner-says-net-neutrality-is-reinstating-the-fairness-doctrine.html","title":{"rendered":"Boehner says Net Neutrality is reinstating the Fairness Doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Speaker<\/a>
Boehner ties Net Neutrality to a political agenda<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Speaker Boehner addressed several tech points in his speech<\/a> to the National Association of Religious Broadcasters on Sunday. He railed against Net Neutrality and new FCC regulations that he characterized as a government takeover of the Internet.\u00a0 He went on to say:<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, you know the old saying: \u2018If you can\u2019t beat \u2019em, join \u2019em.\u2019 Well in Washington, it\u2019s more like, \u2018If you can\u2019t beat \u2019em, tax \u2019em and regulate \u2019em,” Boehner said in his speech. \u201cSo, some members of Congress and the federal bureaucracy are still trying to reinstate \u2013 and even expand \u2013 the Fairness Doctrine. To them, it\u2019s fair to silence ideas and voices they don\u2019t agree with, and use the tools of government to do it. “<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Opposing Net Neutrality has been pretty standard Republican boilerplate.\u00a0 Much like with the healthcare debate, the GOP prefers that corporations make decisions for consumers rather than the government. The new twist here is the conflation of Net Neutrality with the Fairness Doctrine.<\/p>\n

The Fairness Doctrine<\/a> was introduced in 1949 and required that broadcasters present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was honest, equitable and balanced.\u00a0 Reagan overturned the policy by executive order in 1987.<\/p>\n

Republicans are apparently afraid the Internet might become a place of fair and balanced treatment of controversial issues.\u00a0 This is a confounding stance, not to mention that the distributed nature of content creators on the Internet would make such a rule impossible to enforce.\u00a0 Yet the larger issue is that Net Neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with editorial content.<\/p>\n

Net Neutrality simply guarantees that the ISPs who provide the backbone for and access to the Internet cannot preferentially treat one content type over another.\u00a0 This assures that you have equally speedy access to Fox Nation and the Huffington Post.\u00a0 It means your access to Netflix won’t be throttled by Time Warner, or that Comcast will cut a deal with Microsoft to make Bing twice as fast as Google.<\/p>\n

There is nothing about any proposed or existing Net Neutrality rules that in any way attempts to legislate editorial content on the web.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 Tying Net Neutrality to the Fairness Doctrine is either an act of colossal ignorance or a blatant attempt to mislead and confuse voters.<\/p>\n

We report, you decide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conflating the two is either an act of colossal ignorance or a blatant attempt to mislead and confuse voters. We report, you decide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[50,21,53,82,29,67,72,60,59,41],"class_list":["post-3324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-madscience","category-politics","tag-boehner","tag-conservatives","tag-corporate-influence","tag-fcc","tag-federal-regulations","tag-gop-war-on-science","tag-internet","tag-isp","tag-net-neutrality","tag-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3324"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3329,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}