Beck says Net Neutrality would 'destroy the free market that created the Internet'. Oh really?
By David Neiwert Friday Oct 30, 2009 1:00pm
Glenn Beck unveiled his master conspiracy theory yesterday on his Fix News show, essentially claiming the Obama Administration is conspiring to control the media and bring everyone under government control. A key to this, he claimed, was its advocacy of Net Neutrality -- since, as we've already observed, Beck prefers corporate control of your content to government regulations preventing such control.
He displayed just how well he understands these Intertoobs things, too:
Beck: Anyway, you may remember, FreePress is the group pushing for Net Neutrality, which would take the Internet out of the private hands of private business and into the hands of the government. It would create a level playing field. It would help diversity. It would destroy the free market that created the Internet.
Yeah, that sounds real scary Glenn. Except, of course, that the "free market" didn't "create the Internet". It was, in fact, originally a creation of those things that Glenn Beck hates so much: a government program. As Wikipedia explains:
The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life.
Sure, the "free market" has played the most significant role in the massive expansion of the Internet since those origins, but it didn't "create" the Internet.
Meanwhile, Beck has yet to explain how regulations constraining the mega-corporations that provide our Internet infrastructure from deciding what content we can and can't access would actually take the system "out of the private hands of private business".
Maybe Beck can explain to us why Comcast was attacking peer-to-peer file sharing on its network system.
Maybe he can tell us why Verizon Wireless was able to deny a pro-choice group access to its text service.
Because those are, you know, actual issues involving real free speech -- not just imagined possible hypothetical scenarios wargamed out by that crack Glenn Beck Research Team.
If Beck were serious about defending not just free speech but freedom of thought, he'd be fully in favor of Net Neutrality. But he's not.
Though we already knew that.
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Trying to follow his rationale is like going into a house of mirrors only worse. I'm going to go watch him now as he shoots down that communist theory about the earth warming. This should be enlightening, kind of like hiting ones head with a hammer.
And, who better to speak about global warming than John Bolton. This is going to be a long hour. Before cocktail hour too.
Next thing you know you will tell us the free market did not create Adam and Steve...I mean Eve.
I believe that was Adam and St. Eve.
You can't make girls from guy ribs.
guys and girls, and nobody wants to be ribbed by government.
and other Beck-isms.
Now I'm confused, I thought Al Gore invented the internet /s
That didn't take long.
>
.
"/s" is shorthand for "/snark"
/s is usually for sarcasm ... so /s, sarcasm off
That created the Internet. Got that? OK? Because Gore left out one word in his statement, the right jumped all over him. But in fact, he had a lot of foresight in sponsoring the legislation that took a government computer system and made it the World Wide Web.
I knew that.
Gore never said he "invented" it either, that's another falacy of the right.
Maybe if you read the "/s" at the end of the post also, you wouldn't look so foolish now
on the internet. Anonymity means never having to say you are sorry, though.
It was a dumb comment, with or without the "/s"
Dang neutrality
Always fudgin' up freedom!
i kept waiting for him to literally pull back some kind of curtain...
I guess you haven't been watching him lately with his blue curtain over his chalkboard. I believe he pulled it off yesterday to expose something that came to him during a brain fart storm.
yeah, i cant stomach watching him for real... only in clips and snippets. i guess i'm not getting the context of crrrrrrazy.
Better yet, he trained it to fart?
Everyone has some natural talent or talents. In Beck's case, pitiful as it is, that is his only natural talent. His brain does not appear to be of any other function.
I can't take his show today. Lord Who-Flung-Dung is on and he's spouting off nothing but shit. Of course Beck agrees with the afore spouted shit and Bolton comes off as the saner of the three.
At one point yesterday Beck about went up his own ass in his furry about net neutrality. It was like he was for it before his argument was against it.
Oh lord, hearing these defenders of fat cats, you'd think the government shouldn't regulate anything.
Like safe food, air or drinking water. I wonder how long Beck would last with "free market" meat.
The proper question is how long would the meat last, Beck looks like the kind who trades his fork for a shovel.
than an eater in my book...
When you feed a creature like that I believe the proper word is to say you are "slopping" it.
Glenn has this Lord somebody on who, like I said above, is spouting shit. Glenn did a fact check on something this guy has said in the past in a speech, and his claim was given a "pants on fire" untruth. Now there's a way to give your guest credibility when he is on the show to argue your points.
It's amazing what they'll say to justify their dislike of the president.
Incidentally, something that always makes me laugh:
No other legislation has done as much to rid our country of addiction as the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. They wanna be tough on drugs, and espouse the virtues of the free market? Sorry, the two are mutually exclusive.
That legislation also clamped down on the original snake oil salesmen, who were poisoning people with their toxic "cures". Another example of the gubmint interfering with the free market.
to get the cheapest hollow points, eh Glenn?
Not to mention, range time in your hometown...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the internet created by the Defense Department and several universities? In other words, the government and academics funded by the government? Corporations didn't get involved for almost 20 years after Arpanet was up and running.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_I...
Not that facts mean anything in GlennBeckistan . . .
Absolutely right. Beck may be one of the stupidest creatures ever to crawl across the earth.
A potential turning point for the World Wide Web began with the introduction[47] of the Mosaic web browser[48] in 1993, a graphical browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (NCSA-UIUC), led by Marc Andreessen. Funding for Mosaic came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a funding program initiated by the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 also known as the Gore Bill .[49]
from you link, concerned...
He is an Alex Jones copy cat, with a twist of corporate manipulation.
this reminds me of what another computer genius had to say about the internet:
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got...an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material"
-Ted Stevens (R-AK)
TUBES! A SERIES OF TUBES! TUBES!
Had no idea my jaw could drop that far. Such a sad case this guy is. Makes me feel so bad for my country that so many of us take what this poor ignorant sod says as truth....Where's 'sniff' my hankie..?
Beck has his own reality. It doesn't need to be sequitur. It can be circular, but above all, Beck's reality starts with an agenda and works backwards from there. He goes from his conclusion to looking for his evidence. Nothing wrong with that - the problem is that he finds his evidence even where it doesn't exist. That's where the madness is.
He finds his evidence with his right hand as he reaches down and extracts it from a lower orifice.
It's Beck as usual , a lie is the truth and the truth is a lie . What a pathetic human being .
At least to me, it's this particular issue that proves Glenn Beck really is just a corporate shill, and doesn't honestly care at all what he's actually saying.
See, a lot of the crazy crap he spews could, at least theoretically, be the product of a hugely screwed up, but basically honest, worldview. Concentration camp paranoia, fear of government health care, etc, have at least some connection to a burning hatred of government and misplaced fear of... well, everything, pretty much.
This, however, is an issue that any conservative (small "c"), no matter how extreme or crazy, should be completely on the side of. Beck should be so afraid that the Liberal Media Elite (after all, don't the liberals control all the big corporations other than News Corp and try to prevent people from finding out his "truth"?) are going to use their vast power to make his information inaccessible and shut down Red State or whatever.
His argument (or rather, complete bass-ackwards lack thereof) pretty much proves it's all about what somebody else tells him to be outraged about.
I think it would be hilarious if some ISPs blacklisted the DNS of his website and got some readers to write in about how his free speech is being silenced. Wonder what his response would be.
That's almost exactly what I was thinking when I watched the show yesterday. If he really knew what he was talking about and how the loss of it could effect him, he wouldn't go down that road. Someone told him which side of this argument to take but they didn't give him good talking points. As a result you got this mixture of stupid and absurd.
Yes, clearly this is proof that the big money is now seriously flowing towards this issue. Soon we'll hear sound bites from preachers down south who never touched a computer saying that net neutrality is bad for our kids and our generation.
From Google Public Policy Blog:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/search...
I doesn't matter how wrong Beck is, if liberals are for it, he's against it. What a dick.
Net Neutrality WOULD destroy the 'free market' that 'created the Internet.'
Just like the Fairness Doctrine would destroy Rush Limbaugh's 'marketplace of ideas.'
What Beck really means is his crying jags and paranoid schtick would quickly lose traction if there was a predominance of reasoned, educated discussion instead of wackaloon fantasies.
Exactly. Beck shills for those who would control the content. Not HIS content, but the content of those who would oppose him. He wants the best internet his money can buy.
But just how anyone with half a brain would see the twisted logic of his as a rational arguement is mind boggling.
..that porn was, and still is, a primary driver of the technological improvement of the internet.
"Even technology leaders like Bill Gates acknowledge that porn was a driving force in consumer demand for bandwidth increases, thus helping his company sell faster and more efficient machines.
It has been the shrewd managers in the adult industry that have put together all of the synergies of content and distribution to make the Internet work for them. Unparalleled content combined with unparalleled access is a powerful value proposition, but must be tempered with reasonability."
Source Link is SFW. http://www.fadvrecruiting.com/Publication_Det...
How's that for a reality check, Beck!
He's such a greedy liar.
Porn stocks always rise. Why are we not a porn-based economy?
thanks to the free internets
Creepy Weepy simply doesn't care about the dementia he's inducing in the minds of his vulnerable victims, and what fear and violence results in America from catapulting the propaganda of this country's worst political and corporate criminals. As long as he keeps getting those multi-million dollar checks...in 2009, $10 million for radio, plus $18 million for TV. For $28 million dollars, how many tall tales will Glenn Beck deliver in his best rodeo clown fashion?
He just doesn't care. Remember Vicks VapoRub.
Why are Republican's so fricking STUPID?
their sheer hatred of America in favor of perverted ideology blinds them to the reality that preserving net neutrality is not a change.
I swear, Glenn Beck gets up every morning, after hoovering up a few lines and knocking back a fifth of vodka, dreaming up new ways to destroy the United States of America in favor of the Conservative Republic of America.
... if idiots like Beck actually think they'll be allowed to retain power once the corporations have used him to subvert government.
Corporations need useful idiots to do the dirty work. You really think they'd deign to do that themselves? How positively gauche.
and redirect Beck with the: 1 Million Strong Against our SOCIALIST Fire Departments
I think you need a trip to the cemetery...
While I'm here, lets not forget those SOCIALIST Police Departments as well. I mean, if GOD has given you marijuana to grow and smoke, who are these Godless Socialist Police Officers to interfere with His Will?
without it, only sites with deep pockets will be able to afford to pay service providers for the access to us users. A small start-up business, blog, news site, etc. will be locked out of the market.
THIS is why Beck and other conservatives oppose net neutrality. They figure News Corp can afford to pay the service providers and sites like Crooks and Liars, Media Matters and the zillions of smaller sites that call their b.s. won't.
short and simple, to the point.
the absolute truth!
... the internet also discredits the continued justification for both the Electoral College *AND* for power itself to be uber-concentrated within Washington D.C., especially if our internet infrastructure was capable of providing 1Gbit over both the up and downstream to *EVERY* home and regulated like a utility. Once America's internet reaches such a stage, it would theoretically be impractical and costly to require politicians to bilk tax-payers for their traveling and living expenses in Washington D.C. -- they'll be able to work and govern from home ... provided they can stop taking surveys for grocery coupons that inject all sorts of trojans and spyware on their computers, trying to win that damned free Nintendo Wii, and playing Farkle on Facebook! :)
Insists the market should be free for monopolies to stifle competition.
For Glennbeck to understand the issue he would have to understand what Net Neutrality means. He doesn't. He says he does, but he doesn't. Typical for a gasbag who likes to hear himself talk.
a caller to randi rhodes today was quite concerned with some FCC language concerning net neutrality... i only caught a part of his comment, the gist of it... he asked that randi look over it to advise and opine, as the open comment period is closing soon...
did anyone hear that, what it's about?
the free market created isps, like compuserv...left to the free market, very few would have had access to the internets, for these early portals charged by the hour, and funneled you first through their system...
if net neutrality doesnt pass...that is the system where we will return to....where the isp is king and there will be very little choice
Clearly freedom is something that can only be expressed in the context of a giant corporation screwing the rest of us. Thus a 'free' market is one where the players collude with one another to fix prices, create exotic 'investment instruments' and lobby the government to make the most unethical practices legal.
See: Petroleum Cartel, Wall Street, Health Insurance Providers..
is dangerous.
This man is making a lot of money being stupid.
And people complain about athletes being overpaid.
However, in my defense, I also complain about Beck being paid to spew at all. :o}
It's when ONLY highly-paid dopes are allowed on the net/airwaves.
amazing things surfing the internet. I confess I did not know that Beck's research team was principally interested in crack. But it explains a lot.
That using the internets could show you that SOME PEOPLE SAY that Glenn Beck "may" have raped and murdered a girl in 1980. I saw it on the intertubes! http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1...
I'm talking about the purely commercial networks that were around in the 80's.
Compuserve, GEnie, Prodigy and also the private nets-on-the-net: Delphi, AOL and The Microsoft Network (as it was originally conceived).
Unless you're a geek like me, you probably don't know them. They all failed.
Lest someone think this is an argument for why net-neutrality would be unnecessary - "net-neutral ISPs would beat the competition", it's not.
The difference is that the services mentioned were trying to deliver their own set of services, which were rarely better than what already existed on the 'vanilla' internet. The current net-neutrality issue is an altogether different situation - where ISPs would be able to negotiate directly with third-party 'content providers'. Which would mean there can be no 'neutral' ISPs.
Say, ComCast goes out and strikes a deal with Google/YouTube, that gives higher rates of data transfer to 'selected' ComCast users, and lower to everyone else. The bandwidth gets controlled at both ends.
I thought the internet was an off-shoot of the hadron collider project, designed so associated researchers scattered around the globe could have instant access to the latest information.
Seriously Glenn Beck... You are a smear of shit.
Yes Democracy is being transformed.
No Democracy is not a bronze statue.
Oh, fuck Glenn Beck already. He sure knows what will get people to watch him. In Beck's case he truly is insane but knows that watching insanity is like watching a car accident.
Beck is a lying sack of shit.
*
LIKE ALWAYS, THIS moron, er ah Mormon MAN IS dead WRONG! What a tool, he is so friggin off base that he can't be that stupid, he's just making up shiite in order to create a stir... fishing for ratings, that's all. No one is that stupid. Net Neutrality is EXACTLY what we need. And if the Telcos were serious about infrastructure then why the hell haven't they done something for the last 5 - 8 years? They don't want to spend money on fiber.. they want more gold toilets and yachts.
Beck is just a ignorant shit. The Internet was CREATED BY THE GOVERNMENT for the military to communicate with research institutions, colleges, etc. It turned out to be so useful that it was opened to the public, NOT JUST BUSINESS, but opened wide. All business has done is take a ride on the Internet. The only reason telcos invested in the tubes is TO MAKE MONEY, not share knowledge, except about products, or to enlighten the world. Now they want to limit access TO MAKE MORE MONEY.
Beck is such a dumb shit; how did he ever get a TeeVee show. He's an idiot.
During the Bush administration, the FCC ruled that the ILECs (Bells) didn't have to resell network elements at government mandated rates, which led to reduced competition in the local phone/internet space. For example, after the decision, the former AT&T and MCI were swallowed up by SBC and Verizon. Now, for the most part, we have a duopoly of one dsl provider, or one cable provider. We have a restraint of competition already.
The broadcast media operates on an FCC mandated restraint of competition model which drives up the price of mass communications. Hence, only corporations can afford to get their message out.
With the introduction of the internet, mass communications has become cheaper. As Justice Stevens noted, the internet has enabled people to be "a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox." Other court decision have noted that democracy is aided by "an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail" - a marketplace where there is a "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources".
The perfect example is the current health debate. The single payer option (HR 676) is not only off the table at the Federal government, but is also for the most part, off the table at the corporate broadcast media. For example, I was watching CBS, which noted that large businesses offer insurance to their employees more often than small businesses, omitting the fact that costs are lower for large businesses because most are self-insured.
I want the net neutrality issue decided in a manner that preserves a "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources". And that includes receiving video feeds. Given the restraint of competition in reducing the providers of broadband to a duopoly in most instances, I do not want the internet to morph into a cable television situation, where the subscriber receives a set line-up of internet sites that they can view.
But...net neutrality may not be appropriate in live streaming high-definition video situations. I don't need high-def to get my news. I see bandwidth caps coming if net neutrality extends to allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to stream high-def onto ISP networks, which is what Google's support of net neutrality is all about. Of course, there is the issue of phone service, and causing latency in low bandwidth voice communications if not subscribed to the ISP's voice service.
So, there's lots of issues, and it's not a simple yes or no. But if it's going to be reduced to a simple yes or no, then I'm all in favor of net neutrality. We must preserve "an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail", and that includes video. As always, the devil is in the details.
There's lots of internet television here:
http://wwitv.com/portal.htm
Alzajeera-English is available, and it's a whole lot less partisan than Fox News/Agenda. These stations currently stream at a bandwidth that I would want protected under net neutrality. I don't need my news in hi-def, but I need my news. I play it on the TV-video out on my video card on the TV where this kind of content belongs.
In my long-winded post, I forgot to address one aspect that need addressing, and that is the reluctance of the FCC to maximize the use of wireless spectrum. I think it's time to digitalize radio, CB and any other analog uses of the wireless spectrum and get these frequencies out to be used for wireless internet. The restraint of the use of spectrum by the FCC has curtailed competition. There's no reason for it. If, later on, spectrum needs to be reclaimed, it can be done so by an eminent domain type approach. There's no reason to be saving spectrum.
I've sat around for decades, wondering why there was not a channel on television on every channel from Channel 2 to 83 (not 69). Even back then, I knew that restraint of competition was what the FCC was all about.
hi guys,
This is one of the best analyses attacking Fox News that I’ve ever seen. Here is Richard Bey, calling Chris Wallace a sham as a journalist and attacking Glenn Beck for implying that Americans should use violence against the President. He actually baseball bats a balloon with Glenn Beck’s image on it. I’d be anxious to get your take on it. Enjoy!!!
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bc...
Best,
Frank
The argument against net neutrality as a populist position doesn't even make a bit of sense.
I mean, it's as if some company wanted to come in and regulate the supply of air available, the government stepping in to stop that, and people like Beck screaming, "the government is trying to take over our air supply!!!!"
This guy is out of his mind. Or perhaps he's just being paid a shitload of money by Americans for Properity. The government isn't trying to "take over" anything when it comes to net neutrality... if anything, the whole point is to preserve the status quo - the very definition of conservatism - to prevent corporate interests from taking over the Internet.
This lunatic needs to develop cancer of the tongue that requires it to be removed, so he no longer has the ability to speak and spew his vile reactionary nonsense. He is actively trying to start a race war and trying to get the president killed.
Again the ANTI AMERICAN noise Nit Wit net Work, drops on its knees to throw a double lip lock on the love muscle of the Big SOCIALIST CORPORATIONS.
Why is my tax dollars allowed to be regulated or even asked to be regulated by the SOCIALIST CORPORATIONS, these unconscious clown didn't have a clue to what the Internet was or is, in fact case and point if it wasn't for the Clinton administration these SOCIALIST would probably be on the other side of the fence trying to ban it. Further proof a good SOCIALIST never lets a CONTROL object that they never paid for or contributed to go by without either trying to STEAL it or justify when in there small SOCIALIST minds they should profit from it.
Then you have the ANT AMERICAN FAUX Noise Nit Wit Net Work as usual trying to work AGAINST America for further SOCIALIZATION and Control of the American Free Market. With the Commutation being delivered by a total irrelevant brain Dead mouth pieces that only understands what he is told and when he questions it he is told he understands it, And this ANTI AMERICAN Noise nit Wit Net Work wants to know why they are so despised.
So Beck has the free market inventing the internet? And I thoughtthi swhole time the bat crazy rightwing said that Al Gore invented the internet. Wonder who will have invented it tomorrow.
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