Politics

Why Net Neutrality Is An Unnecessary Fraud

51 Comments

Last month, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the FCC will vote to end net neutrality regulations on December 14, reversing policy instituted by the Obama administration. Under the current rules, Internet service providers are purportedly forbidden from prioritizing certain types of traffic over others or charging users or websites extra money for faster bandwidth speeds. Given that Republicans hold a 3-2 majority on the FCC board, the net neutrality repeal is very likely to pass.

The left, cuckservatives, and Big Tech companies such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook have come out hard in favor of net neutrality, alleging that it will result in censorship by ISPs and higher Internet costs for consumers, allowing ISPs to hold the entire Web to ransom. Some alt-media figures have also fallen for this line: for example, Red Ice’s Henrik Palmgren claimed that the FCC will “murder the Internet” on December 14.

All of this is hysteria.

The reality is that net neutrality has little to do with freedom of speech or consumer rights, and ending it will have little effect on the lives of the average American. Indeed, given how fervently left-wing tech giants like Google and Twitter are supporting net neutrality, ending it may actually harm them and keep them from censoring right-wingers, which is what they’ve been doing for the past three years.

Here’s why you shouldn’t care if net neutrality is abolished…

The Myth Of Net Neutrality

To begin with, “net neutrality” is a loaded and inaccurate term. It was coined by Tim Wu, a far-left lawyer and university professor who ran for New York Lieutenant Governor in 2014 on a socialist platform and campaigned for Bernie Sanders during the presidential race last year. Wu invented the concept of “net neutrality” as a solution to a nonexistent problem.

Everyone wants a free and neutral Internet, but “net neutrality” has nothing to do with this. Net neutrality refers to Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, which regulates what are referred to as “common carriers,” utilities that hold de facto monopolies and thus are required to adhere to standards of open access and use. Title II originally governed such things as phone service and electricity, but two years ago, the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order decreed that they applied to Internet service providers as well.

As Gab founder Andrew Torba has pointed out, existing legislation does not prevent ISPs from charging different rates for different types of services, which net neutrality advocates claim will become reality should the FCC end it. All “net neutrality” does is force ISPs to treat all Internet traffic equally. This benefits edge providers such as Google and Facebook by letting them avoid paying their fair share for bandwidth, while financially hurting ISPs:

For that matter, the nightmare scenario in which ISPs charge consumers extra fees to use certain services has never occurred in the U.S. or any other Western country. Despite net neutrality having only been law for two years, American ISPs have never sold Internet service like it was cable TV, forcing consumers to purchase individual packages. Indeed, the only two countries I could find where this model is used are Turkey and China, two non-Western countries whose governments strictly regulate online speech and censor websites on their own.

To put it simply, net neutrality is corporate welfare. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix and other edge providers support it because it gives them a discount on their operating costs at the expense of ISPs, who must pay to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure that makes the Internet possible to begin with. Net neutrality has as much relevance to consumers as Coke vs. Pepsi, and net neutrality defenders are nothing more than useful idiots for Silicon Valley.

Returning Freedom Of Speech To The Internet

Net neutrality defenders who claim that ending it will allow ISPs to censor the Internet don’t have a leg to stand on either. As Ajit Pai himself has pointed out, pro-net neutrality edge providers such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook have spent the past three years heavily censoring the Internet by manipulating search algorithms and banning right-wing users, under the guise of cracking down on “hate speech” or combating “fake news.”

Indeed, here’s a sampling of how left-wing social media sites and search engines have been censoring people at the same time they’re crying about net neutrality ending:

The FCC’s own filing against net neutrality cited Gab being banned from the Google Play and Apple stores for “hate speech,” Twitter banning an ad from Tennessee Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn, and the Daily Stormer being banned from numerous domain registrars as examples of how edge providers have abused their power in order to control thought and speech online.

These companies hold a monopoly on worldwide Internet communication and use: it is virtually impossible to most people to get by without using at least one of them in some capacity. And yet Google, Twitter, and Facebook want to manipulate and censor information online while claiming to be defenders of a free and open Internet? The chutzpah is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

The reality is that U.S. law already has a precedent for forcing both edge providers like Google and Twitter as well as ISPs to allow any and all speech on their platforms, making net neutrality completely unnecessary. Contrary to the leftist/libertarian argument that these corporations can ban whoever they like due to the “free market,” the Constitution establishes set limits on how private entities can behave towards those who use their property.

In 1946, the Supreme Court decided the case of Marsh v. Alabama, in which a Jehovah’s Witness was arrested for trespassing because she was distributing religious literature in Chickasaw, Alabama, a town that was wholly owned by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation. Marsh argued that because the town’s roads and sidewalks were the only means by which she could exercise her freedom of speech—and because the town of Chickasaw had been open to public use in all other respects—the trespassing arrest violated her rights under the First Amendment.

In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Marsh’s favor. Justice Hugo Black decreed that private entities do not have the right to ban speech on their property if they happen to own a monopoly on the means by which speech can take place. Black also argued that the more that private entities open their property up to public use, the fewer rights they have to control or ban what people do on that property.

Given that Google, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, and other edge providers are publicly-accessible entities that have deliberately pushed for monopoly control over the Internet, it’s clear that Marsh v. Alabama prohibits them from censoring right-wingers. The statute also applies to ISPs, since they wield a monopoly over Internet access. All it would take to shut down online censorship is a halfway-decent lawyer arguing that these left-wing Big Tech companies are literally violating the Constitution. 

Indeed, Ajit Pai’s comments attacking Twitter and Google have scared leftists into thinking that the FCC will go after edge providers next. For example, here’s a Tweet from Sleeping Giants, the leftist pressure group that successfully convinced several companies to drop their advertising from Breitbart:

From a freedom of speech perspective, net neutrality laws are completely unnecessary, since free speech rights on ISPs and edge providers are guaranteed by Marsh v. Alabama. Given that net neutrality completely failed to keep Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley giants from censoring the Internet—and their current howling in support of net neutrality—it’s possible that the existing regulations have done more harm than good.

Not My People, Not My Problem

Unlike in years past, it is unlikely that net neutrality defenders will be able to win over the FCC. While the cause of a free and open Internet used to unite leftists and right-wingers, the heavy-handed censorship by Google et al. in the name of fighting “hate speech” in the past three years has woken countless people to the fact that net neutrality is a fraud.

Ultimately, the net neutrality debate is not a battle of free speech vs. censorship, or consumer rights vs. corporations: it’s two groups of crony capitalists fighting over who will exercise more power over the Internet. The outcome of this fight doesn’t matter to the average American since it will have little if any impact on our lives. If you’re an advocate for net neutrality, you are a tool of corporate interests and nothing more.

Read Next: Did Microsoft Commit Voter Fraud In Iowa To Ensure Donald Trump’s Defeat?

51 thoughts on “Why Net Neutrality Is An Unnecessary Fraud”

  1. Google, Apple and Facebook support Net Neutrality.
    Leftists support it as well.
    Andrew Anglin is right: leftists are in cahoots with the greedy corporations they claim to hate.

    1. “Andrew Anglin is right: leftists are in cahoots with the greedy corporations they claim to hate.”
      Two words, one name: Anthony Sutton
      Can’t say I care for Anglin or his site but he is funny

      1. If ur white u should care about our ethnic interests, which Anglin’s case represents.
        If not ur just a cowering c-u-c-k.
        The spectrum is stretching in both directions fast. There is no neutral here. Choose ur side.

    3. There’s super irony in how the “anti-fascist” left is often funded and backed by large corporations. Historically, “fascists” were opposed to “communists” not only over nationality agendas but also economic. The “fascists” handed out favors to ideologically favored corporations to administer their agendas. Ever drive a Volkswagon or use a Braun toothbrush? You support fascism!
      I love to educate the average mushy brained leftist on these distinctions and watch their heads spin.

    4. An interesting, valuable and valid alternative analysis. That said, while the author maintains that Marsh v. Alabama will protect access, that doesn’t mean that the Edge Websites and the big ISPs won’t try to limit and throttle it anyway.
      And therein lies the problem. Doubtless the various ententes named – stage 5, 6 and 7 companies all, and with the associated pathologies – will try and game the system for maximum profit, political control, social control (i.g. porn) and power. A their running wild and testing the limits will cause damage. And that damage will remain until and if it is finally solved, perhaps years later, as a Federal Tort slowly works its way up to the Supreme Court. And all that takes time, years usually. And meanwhile the consumer – that’s you – is being jerked around.
      Further, even if some ISP comes out of nowhere and, sensing an market opportunity, says in so many words “Nope, we won’t throttle or censor or charge extra for access: please use our service,” it remains that an ISP, at present anyway, is pretty much a local monopoly. And monopolies are hardly free market. Hence the Public Utility Commission laws that exist.*
      As it stands now the Internet is and remains the biggest information game changer since the invention of the Printing Press in 1440. Like the early days of the Press, it remains wild and woolly. And just like the early Press, the powers that be and their favoured personages are trying to – will continue to to try to – restrict content, license and control it.** Hence these gyrations by all parties, and all of questionable trust.
      This is still going to be a wild ride when it happens.
      Just a thought.
      VicB3
      *And maybe somebody – or better yet several somebodies- will come up with portable 100mbs ISP. Monopoly problem solved for the short term anyway.
      **At least with a Press – and unlike an ISP -you could pick up and move it if the local governments got too enamoured of censorship and control. Hence the rapid growth of Printing in the Netherlands. The Dutch Government didn’t give a damn what you printed, who read it or who you sold it to. So let’s hear it for the free market.

  2. I always thought the whole thing was fishy and as soon as I looked into it it became obvious that it was all nothing but propaganda to benefit tech giants.
    Too many people are gullible enough to base their judgment on a policy on how well meaning or “nice” sounds its name without really knowing jack shit about what it actually does. The Affordable Care Act was not affordable, and Net Neutrality you can be damn sure it isn’t neutral.
    I for one welcome the demise of ObamaNet.

    1. The paperwork burden is that when a company has to answer a net neutrality complaint, they need to have all their log files available and prove they’re compliant. Pretty easy for a big corporation but kills the mom and pop shop trying to compete with the biggies to LOWER internet pricing for the area.
      In Poland, it’s not uncommon to see about 5 of these around. They go to big apartment complexes and sell Wifi. I’m astonished that this doesn’t happen in the states more. I’d be happy to sign up with someone selling wifi in my condo complex by basically splitting up service from a large provider and scaling it out. But they’d face immense hurdles here and net neutrality is part of that.
      Some small cities have tried to do this and are succeeding.

    2. Remember when the anti-nuclear power kooks created an organization called Mothers for Peace? Who could oppose anything that group said? Which are you hating, mothers or peace?

  3. I am waking up for work in 4 hours, so I have to keep this short and go after more than few of your points.
    When it comes to the protection of free speech, as long as you have access to mobile internet providers, you will never be able to argue protection of freedom of speech in cases of single provider in court. Sure if that is the case, you will still have access to whatever the service you want to express yourself on, but the whole point of net neutrality is to prevent situation where you have to shop around for internet connection that allows access to that one particular website you want to engage with. Bottom line, there is one Internet. You either provide connection to all of it, or you don’t call your service an Internet connection. This is still perfectly legal, and nobody has trouble with that.
    The same goes for buying other utilities. The company cannot dictate the flow of the water you use for your shower vs the flow of water for your sink. It is the same water in both cases. They can’t ask the manufacturer of your coffee maker to pay extra fee to access *their* water. The service provider can only limit how much water in total can flow into your main water connection, which you paid for.
    Plus, the verdict does not protect your right to access a service, which is the main point.
    Comcast has been caught throttling Netflix traffic to its subscribers, when it first started offering streaming service, because it was a direct competitor of its own streaming service. Effectively taking its paying customers as hostages. In the end, Netflix paid the ransom. This was before the net neutrality was introduced:
    https://qz.com/256586/the-inside-story-of-how-netflix-came-to-pay-comcast-for-internet-traffic/
    To put this short. Netflix pays their Internet provider, to ensure connectivity to Comcast and other providers. You pay Comcast to ensure connectivity access to the other providers. But then Comcast comes in, and says no. You have to pay extra to have access to our clients. At that point, you become a product being sold to Netflix by Comcast.

    1. Addendum:
      Imagine having Google fiber as your ISP. If cucks decided to, they could block access to ReturnOfKings.com, because it disagrees with their leftist propaganda. And still claim you have access to the website through other providers, so they are exempt from the single provider rule.
      You would then have to run out and buy a fucking AT&T mobile contract, to be able to access it. Freedom of speech preserved!

    2. I agree. The article complains about Google et al. as “not paying their fair share”. The issue I take with that, is that when I use Google, FB, or whatever I’m paying for it to come in by virtue of the fact I paid to have an ISP install a service and I’m billed monthly for the service.
      What the article (and the new FCC rules) suggest (by analogy) is not only the person making the phone call, but the person receiving the phone call both must pay up.
      Sure ISPs must be drooling over all the advertising money the social media giants get. As cable TV providers they double dip all the time. They charge you for cable, then charge advertisers.
      Don’t be fooled.

  4. Refreshing to hear a take on “net neutrality” that doesn’t echo the deafening cacophony from nearly all quarters of teh interwebz, attempting to make Ajit Pai the “most hated man in the internet”. The big issue no one mentions is that “net neutrality”, among all the other characteristics, involves the supposed “equal access” for political content. So a group of bureaucrats would determine if there was just way too much right-wing news, and they’d have to even it out with a crap-load of left-wing news. Of course anything to the right of extreme left wing communism would be considered “right-wing” by a converged set of bureaucrats.

  5. google has just hired 10,000 new moderators to root out “extremism”. I have no problem if they root out terrorism and child abuse but I wonder how many of them will be SJWs. Oh, I guess all of them, without exception.

  8. Big deal. The Net was never designed to be secure so any halfwit with an IQ in the lower 3 figures can find away around ISP’s attempts at blocking…mainly because they do it halfheartedly anyway. But the point regarding the corporate self-interest in it is salient.
    As with absolutely everything in life, if the very richest among us espouse support or disapproval of something, you can be damn sure it has to do with them protecting their profits and not the interests of the plebs.

  9. When will the free speech-supporting (or conservative) versions of google and facebook be created? There’s at least 100 million Americans who would switch asap.

    1. A ‘conservative’ version of those sites wouldn’t work unless they were as effective as the liberal originals. People use these websites *despite* their liberal bias, not because of it. So when they google ‘closest sandwich shop’ and Google reliably returns valid results every singe time, people keep using it. Same with facebook – to the extent that people still use it, it is because essentially everyone they know is on facebook. Any other social media site would have to compete with that kind of ubiquitous presence.

  10. I had my suspicions about global warming being a scam but it wasn’t until climategate in 09 that my suspicions were confirmed.
    I had my suspicions about net neutrality but it wasn’t until this article that my suspicions were confirmed.
    Good work Mr. Forney.

    1. Global Warming must be one hell of a scam, all the data that has had to have been forged not to mention making unprecedented heatwaves worldwide via some other means than dipshit humans fucking with the atmosphere….

    2. You had vague “suspicions”about the concept of net neutrality, and THIS lame piece sealed the deal and confirmed the specious notion that the doctrine of net neutrality is a ubiquitous though clandestine conspiracy to enslave the white man? Hahaha.
      You work for the Russians, you don’t even know it.

    3. I’ve never understood what the supposed catch is with global warming being a scam. Playing devil’s advocate, what’s the worst outcome that would happen if global warming were indeed a lie… we all get slightly cleaner air to breathe, water to drink, and pay slightly more money for it? Sounds quite reasonable to me.
      Compare that to anything the government does and it seems like a bargain. You want to talk about a real scam? What about the BILLIONS of dollars we paid for an Afghan Democracy?
      I just don’t see the motive to lie about the environment being worse than it actually is…

  11. Google, facebook, twitter, etc… Sites that censor things they don’t like and play favorites…
    Don’t want isps to censor things they don’t like and play favorites…
    Can’t spell liberal without hypocrisy.

  12. Whether anything else is accurate other than Twitter, Google and Facebook being supporters of neutrality is unimportant in comparison. There are few indicators of something better than seeing who its’ supporters and detractors are.

  13. Good article, I was confused as fuck by this issue, and figured it was yet another instance of leftist policies meant to achieve the opposite of their stated goal. As others have mentioned, just reading a list of supporters raises big red flags.
    I am hoping that Trump promotes the idea of sanctioning Google and Facebook like public utilities. It already has support with millions. We need to stick it to the man good and hard, now that the man is a bunch of leftist twats. We can take all the work and money they spent advancing their marxist causes through the Supreme Court, and use those same rulings against them.

  15. Why would anyone be offended at a site like Chimpout? It is almost funny.
    Not to be fair the Jews run the mainstream media so they do not have to start websites or blogs

  16. Either way YOU LOSE! Since Obongo signed away ICANN provision last October you have NO Constitutional rights whatsoever on the Internet. When Net Neutrality disappears it will be replaced by a ‘global standards’ rule of free speech, bandwidth, and access. Sure you will be bathed in 5g radiation that shows crisp and speedy clips of Judge Judy.. but so what? The minute you post a ROK article-reaction style comment like “hey, this sucks”… Boom! your net access will be disabled until you beg the (((ISP Authority))) to gingerly allow your sorry ass back on. It’s over. Get used to a slow, painful, inglorious death. 😛

  18. Leftists are only upset because they’re worried they’re going to have to pay extra for porn and Netflix. These are the same leftists who didn’t give two shits during the NSA scandal, so I could care less what happens on the 14th.

  19. Good Summary.
    Net Neutrality = Diversity is our Strength
    Net Neutrality = Affirmative Action
    Net Neutrality = Title IX aka Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act
    Net Neutrality = Equal Employment Opportunity
    Pending: Net Neutrality = Common Sense Immigration Reform
    The progressive religion of death is the useful idiot en masse for the corporatist-State powers. The feelz-driven implementation of interventionist policies under the guise of solving a (nonexistent) “problem” based on a false premise is nothing new.
    And once again we can see the power of branding these efforts. “Neutrality” like “affirmative” like “equal” like “opportunity”, etc. is how they pre-empt any logical, rational, or even practical inquiry. What are you anti-neutrality?
    Once this hurdle is cleared, the torrent of State/Corporate power rages toward the disastrous downstream effects of implementation. It’s a race of fingers into the pie. Except, unlike the simplistic goodfeelz of blindly demanding “equality”, the policy and legislation that follows is remote, boring, and devilishly detailed, so the sheeple retreat to their mancaves and iphags.
    The amygdala-swollen progs pat themselves on their backs over their victory against some imagined threat and go back to muh Netflix. That is, until the Prog machine tells them about the next “problem.”
    In the meantime, bake those fucking fairy-wedding cakes you homophobes.

  20. 1) Leftists, the elites and the social engineers want to go back to the 50’s! Let’s hear it for the fifties; when there were only three over the air networks – CBS, NBC and ABC and they were controlled, used by and monopolized by the above groups. the Internet destroyed the control they had. Now they are in cahoots with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Netflix – not so much (no news or commentary) because they want to go back to the 1950’s model of a few monolithic organizations and the self appointed groups in control of the media and it’s dissemination.
    2) The problem is the internet structure, decentralization and reduplication – no specialized license, no owning of spectrum, no control over who can buy, own, construct the equipment necessary to create the backbone of the Internet. It begs for individuals and groups to go around the big players.
    3) Without the FCC protection and meddling I will forecast the overreach of the bigger Silicon Valley players will cause a second Internet structure to begin to emerge which will preclude these corporations based on decentralization and the interests of individuals and smaller organizations looking to avoid the entanglements and examination of the old Internet.
    4) It is possible to avoid these entanglements now, it takes willingness and intention and choosing not to consume – the hardest decision.

  21. Well maybe, but who knows, Google, Facebook and the like are free for the end user, but if they have to pay to the ISP-s, who knows they might transfer those extra costs on to the user base through some premium packages fees or something alike.Services like Netflix can also increase fees.
    But considering free speech and ” net neutrality ” correlation.It’s true, it’s like apples and bananas.Nothing in common.

  23. I still don’t see the problem with net neutrality. You’re arguing that it’s unnecessary? That a 90 year old supreme court ruling makes it unneeded? What’s the harm in passing it. Why is it a bad law? At worst it seems like it is merely restating what is already the current law.
    Remember the “Defense of Marriage Act” That Bill Clinton signed? It was just defining marriage to be what we all already knew it was. A religious pact to join as an exclusive couple as husband and wife. Would it also be unnecessary because we all knew what marriage was? Guess what.. fast forward a few years later and gay marriage is the law. We need net neutrality to protect whatever free speech and open internet we still have.

  24. This article is nothing but a word salad of two unrelated concepts — net neutrality and freedom of speech. Proponents of net neutrality are wrong because Google and Twitter are censoring right-wingers? WTF. I don’t see any logical connection between the two concepts.
    Without a neutral Internet you’d still be buying audio CDs and going to Blockbluster to rent DVD’s. So yeah, net neutrality does benefit average Americans by maintaining the Internet as a vibrant marketplace and remove barriers for innovation. The author sounds butt hurt because the tech companies are making tons of money and he is not.

  25. Baby Huey talking out of his ass again. Like a typical bootlicker, you gotta follow the right wing echo chamber even though this issue will screw us all equally. I’d like to see what you say when you start losing followers once they get charged up the ass just to look at a picture of your ugly, fat, bald headed egg face.

  26. Go back to praising that degenerate shithole that is the Philippines while crying about white genocide simply because white chicks want nothing to do with your fat ass.

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