© Mike Judge
On February 1st, 2004, the nipple of Janet Jackson was accidentally uncovered by Justin Timberlake during the halftime show of Superbowl XXXVIII. The event would later be described as a "wardrobe malfunction."
The FCC would go on to fine CBS $550,000 dollars for the accidental dissemination of a nipple, and though the fine was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court, the FCC actually fought to reinstate the fine later in 2012.
On November 6th, 2005, Hollywood darling and Orville mastermind Seth McFarlane produced an episode for his then-fan-favorite television cartoon Family Guy, titled PTV. In the episode, the main character, Peter Griffin, decides that television is too tame and politically correct and decided to make his own TV programming.
At one point in the episode, he is reported to the FCC by Lois, his wife, which leads to this infectious and giddy number:
Throughout my youth, the FCC was the enemy. They were the modern-day censors. They made sure that television was clean and unthreatening, that radio songs had ridiculous sound effects peppered throughout their lyrics, and that the world was presented to you as filtered as they could get away with.
In the land of so-called Freedom of Speech, the FCC had always been something conspicuous and illiberal. One of the key factors, especially around 2004-2005, that grated on so-called liberals is that the brazen acts of censorship by the FCC depended largely on who was in the White House, and during the Bush years with John Ashcroft as Attorney General, the FCC was gleeful to be leading the charge of censorship in the land of the free.
The image that came to my mind when people began agitating for the FCC to be involved in the discussion of Net Neutrality and internet free speech was a sharp-toothed fox standing guard outside the chicken coop.
What the FCC does
The FCC was one of the many government growth spurts post-1929 Crash. The FCC purports to be a regulator of wire communications, but what it really functioned as was a guarantor of monopolies, specifically AT&T's. While the FCC was ultimately brought to heel and involved in breaking up "Ma Bell", they had also been instrumental in helping things get to the point where an anti-trust lawsuit was necessary.
Like any government commission, they are ultimately just the enforcement thugs of whoever is in power in Washington. If the tune of the day is traditional family values and decency, then nipplegates will come hard and fast. If the current policies are about political correctness, that will be what the FCC throws its weight behind.
Initially the FCC did not consider the internet to be in any way equivalent to telephone, TV or radio, and so did not attempt to "regulate" it. In a certain sense, this allowed for the explosion of the internet and its rapid growth.
In 1996 (you know, The Clinton Years), the congressional brain trust passed the Telecommunications Act, which set in motion the consolidation of media companies in the US by removing most protective measures that limited the amount of radio that could be owned by a single company.
This consolidation of media power happened under the watchful eye of the FCC - in fact, it facilitated it. There are two permanent contributions to American life made by the FCC: the first is that you can't say the 'seven dirty words' on radio or television, and the second is that everything is owned by ClearChannel. Great job, guys!
Net Neutrality - What's in a name?
We all know that the form of something matters more than the substance. That is the nature of Political Correctness, that you use the right words, not the right meanings. In fact, it's even better if you can manage to use words in such a way that there is no meaning at all. If there is no meaning behind what you say, then there is no real possibility of offending someone.
Who could argue with something called "Net Neutrality?" Me, that's who. Here is completely impartial cultural critic Mark Zuckerberg (a true man of the people) explaining what Net Neutrality is:
It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the internet is, what an ISP does, what an ISP could do, and who should be doing something about it.
Zuckerberg's definition is a jumble of nonsense. ISPs, or Internet Service Providers, are in the business of infrastructure. They are pipe layers. They are interested in bigger and better pipes, and in charging more or less for different sizes of pipes.
ISPs have almost nothing to do with content. Facebook is content. Think of Facebook like water. Verizon lays pipe to your house and Facebook (water) comes through. Twitter, on the other hand, is chicken soup. Verizon doesn't really care whether you get water through your pipes, or chicken soup through your pipes. ISPs are concerned with how many cubic meters of fluid can be shoved down your pipe.
The people who care about the content are from the government, not the ISPs. ISPs don't actually want to police their networks for 'wrongthink'; it is entities like the FCC that hold ISPs liable for the content of their network traffic, which compels them to punish their subscribers. It is in fact the very regulations that people are calling for which cause the damage they fear. Truly, they have learned that freedom is slavery, peace is war, and censorship is free speech.
Why in the world would an ISP want to block you from one type of fluid over another? Why would an ISP want to block certain content? The ISP doesn't see your traffic as content, because they are in the business of something called "packets." Data on the internet is broken up into millions of tiny, almost indistinguishable, bits called packets and sent down these 'pipes'. Your computer has special software (a browser) that reassembles these packets into a funny meme, the latest Salon.com puff piece, or the latest #MeToo accusation.
In order for the ISP to even know what you are looking at, it would have to listen in to the complete transmission, then reassemble the data and view it (even if only by an AI program) to decide whether or not to sensor it. Why bother? They simply don't care.
What is particularly interesting is that it is Zuckerberg, along with other tech moguls who, under the "net neutrality" rules established under Obama, have been the ones actually censoring content. They censor the content because they produce the content, so it's easy for them to do that. They know what it is BEFORE it's broken up into packets and sent down the pipes.
They have admitted to using AI programs to scan content that is uploaded to their servers, and to decide who sees what, if at all.
Essentially, they are claiming that ISPs will do tomorrow what they are doing today! All unless the censorship arm of the US government takes control of the ISPs! If anything, the FCC should be taking over them!
Observing the hysterics over Net Neutrality, I am so utterly gobsmacked by the inversion of basic reality.
The Next Human Right
Of course, the reason why all of this anti-censorship nonsense is being thrown into the discussion is because the people behind Net Neutrality are hoping to catch the free speech-loving classical liberals off guard.
Mr. Assange should really keep to fields he understands. The locus of censorship on the internet is not at the ISP level, nor will any ISP -- EVER -- target something as discreet as a single tweet. It is so mind-bogglingly stupid to even suggest as much, that to do so is bordering on paranoid schizophrenia. This is tin-foil hat crazy.
This is all to conceal the fact that the primary concern of these people is not censorship; it is human rights. They want to assert that the internet should be free; it should be another entitlement. That's consistent with their ideology. If you're a socialist, of course you want single-payer internet. Of course you want everyone to be at the same speed.
If that's your goal, more power to you. I think you're a filthy communist, but this is a free country - so free, in fact, that you're allowed to be a pinko.
The New and Improved FCC
Ajit Pai of the FCC is doing exactly what everyone in the Trump base wanted him to do. Downsize government's role; roll back Obama-era regulations.
Of course what he has done will help Verizon, and other ISPs - people say that like it's a bad thing. Yes, ISPs will now be able to have different types of offerings with different speeds. They won't just create a two-tier internet; they'll create a thousand-tier internet.
The internet will probably end up being a bit more like the car industry. Some people will have Ferraris, and some will have Ford Fiestas, and it will depend on how deep your pockets are.
If you're a socialist, capitalism and markets scare you because you think you should be entitled to other people's equipment and services. I'm not going to argue with you about that. If that's your values, that's your values, and nothing I say will change your mind.
So half of the scare-mongering with Net Neutrality is absolutely true, and if you're of the Marxist bent, it's a terrifying prospect. The other half is pure, unadulterated BS.
The only reason Obama tasked the FCC to "ensure Net Neutrality" was so that the Democrats could continue to practice their special brand of Fascism, the one that allows them to control the means of production through committees and regulations.
If companies play along (including censoring content), then they get licenses and good regulatory grades and can have their mergers and acquisitions. If they get bad grades, then suddenly their license is revoked, or a merger is blocked.
The protection of the people against censorship is not the FCC; it's the first amendment. As Ajit Pai says, the more competent guarantor of fair business and trading practices is the FTC, not the FCC.
Conclusion
A lot of hay is being made with the observations that 83% of Americans want the existing FCC regulations to be kept in place. That only proves that 83% of Americans are being duped by the activist media. In reality it proves nothing. Polls have been completely discredited at this point. It's a shoddy attempt at social proof.
What this really means is 83% of the people polled - who were probably unrepresentative samples that were largely left-leaning - want more government intervention. Color me surprised.
If 83% of people thought we should all jump off a bridge, I wouldn't do that either. I like to think for myself.
The plain fact, from my admittedly conservative, right-wing perspective, is that the name 'Net Neutrality' was picked to conceal the fact that the policies and practices of the government vis-a-vis 'Net Neutrality' were just fascist controls. What the hell did you expect them to call it? "Internet Fascism?" That'd be giving the game away. Spin, baby, spin.
The Obama regulations didn't stop Youtube Bannings, the Ad-Pocalypse, the Twitter Purges, the anti-Russia campaign, the snowflake-bubble-AI of Google, or the James Damore firing. Not only did they not stop it, they encouraged it.
Internet speech has been under attack for years now by the very same conspicuously mega-rich liberal tycoons who are supporting "Net Neutrality."
Net Neutrality is nothing more, or less, than the attempt to wrest "the internet" from the hands of the "owning class" and to put it in the hands of government. That is the project of all socialists. They want to present the internet as a kind of utility that must be regulated and managed as a human right, like air or drinking water.
That will essentially kill the internet as you know it. Now, in fairness, the other side wants to turn the internet into an industry like car manufacturing. That will also kill the internet as you know it. Because, really, the internet I grew up with died a long time ago. The one we have now is, for the most part, full of half-baked nonsense and the inane and subjective scribblings of narcissists.
Sott.net excepted, of course. :-D
There goes my donation. I don't support right-wing bigots who pimp western capitalist imperialism.