Do you mean, The Progressive Strategy Brain?

http://www.comw.org/pssp/PSB/

rén:

Their ultimate goal is to make the Progressive Strategic Brain the leading reference for progressive strategy.

Fortunately, two new reports — one by the centrist Center for a New American Security and the other by a liberal-leaning task force involving the Commonwealth Institute, some members of Congress and many academics — are asking those far more complicated questions. They have differences, especially on the timing of withdrawal, but they point the debate in the right direction. Most notably:

• What support does Iraq need to ensure that provincial elections set for later this year — a crucial opportunity for disenfranchised Sunnis to play a larger role in government — and national elections in 2009 are as free and fair as possible?

• What help does Iraq’s government need to resettle some two million internally displaced Iraqis and another two million who have fled to Syria and Jordan?

• What can be done to promote long stalemated political reforms and encourage reconciliation? Should there be an internationally sponsored conference?

• What can the United States do to try to persuade Iraq’s neighbors in Iran and Syria to promote rather than undermine Iraq’s stability and sovereignty?

• Should the United States seek to keep a limited force behind for targeted counterterrorism operations or to deter genocide or aggressive outside meddling?

• Would Washington have more influence — and a greater chance of enlisting help — if it completely withdrew or negotiated a slower drawdown with the Iraqis?


With two wars under way, the transition from President Bush to his successor will be riskier than any in recent memory. The presidential candidates must begin explaining, in detail, how they plan to handle both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They can start by answering the questions listed here.

You've intrigued me ren, I'll check it out. I never thought your posts were too long. I sometimes struggle with antifacist's, but I recognize that they're a valuable, almost parallel entity to the regular forum, and sometimes I think, intended as a source of information and enlightened opinion rather than to stimulate succinct discussion. Part of it I believe is generational; reading text on a computer screen does not come naturally nor easily to me, and I often find myself printing stuff so that I can "really" read it. Could have something to do with the bifocals I often wish that you'd both participate more in the broader forum.

Thank you both for your comments. I'll try. I've been on a long personal sabbatical and it seems to be ending, and I seem to be calmer, more resilient now, and of better cheer so I won't be so acerbic in my comments, I hope. I seem to have a natural knack for pissing people off that I don't always catch before I've done it, then I have to deal with the after effects, when all I wanted to do was just say something that I saw that seemed interesting.

Sometimes pissing people off, is not a bad thing.
Sometimes they NEED to be pissed off to do any good.


I would not let the actions of others be the deciding factor fo rmy actions.
If I feel I have done wrong, then I'll work to correct it. But just because someone else says i did,
doesn't mean i did.

soon2be wrote:

Part of it I believe is generational; reading text on a computer screen does not come naturally nor easily to me, and I often find myself printing stuff so that I can "really" read it. Could have something to do with the bifocals

I have yet to see you post anything here that I found in the least bit questionable.
On the contrary. My feeling is you have considerable leeway to use up before you cross that line.

I'm happy to hear that

It's not much fun being banned after creating a character and a body of work on a board over something like a four year period. It's kind of like being cut apart with a knife from your own living novel. A grotesque and unconscionable act.

The odds of that happening here are remote, bordering on impossible.
Since you've been on this forum, how many people have been banned?

I am exploring the issue of free speech on the internet. I have an essay I'm writing that I may try to peddle on the subject one of these days, or maybe it'll become a series.

Unfortunately, most of the places on the net where most people would want to express themselves, is privately owned.
Web sites are little lots of private property in the tubes. As such, each private owner has the right to regulate their own private space. This is also freedom of speech.

Property Rights Antecedent to Free Speech

It was out of this philosophical heritage that America’s founders created a new nation, based on the principle that each individual is a sovereign within’ his own right, free to enjoy the blessings of liberty, and free to realize his true potential without interference from church or state. Property rights then became the acknowledged foundation upon which other constitutional freedoms rested, including freedom of speech. It was not until this century, when private property came under relentless ideological assault, that the First Amendment was subjected to ambiguous and convoluted contention.

Indeed, it is the failure to recognize property rights as the antecedent of free speech that has led to uneven, conditional application of the First Amendment in the twentieth century. Why is this so? First we need to look again at what “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” really means. By having the right to “life,” we own, from the moment of birth, our life, which no one has the right to take away. Since infants and children cannot sustain their lives without support from adults, parents and/ or guardians have an obligation to sustain that life with their labor. That does not mean, as it would with inanimate objects and animals, that adults, by mixing their labor for the maintenance of children, have a “property” in the child. That would make children slaves, and would deny them their unalienable adult rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How ever, it does give parents and guardians the right to restrict a child’s freedom until the child reaches sufficient maturity where it is possible for him to make decisions about his own welfare and where he at least has the potential to be self-supporting.

Not surprisingly, freedom of speech, as with most other freedoms Americans take for granted, is perched on an increasingly shaky foundation. Without a comprehensive philosophical base built on the sanctity of property rights, the vagaries of each First Amendment Supreme Court decision are as uncertain and unpredictable as a loose cannon on a rolling deck, and the task of protecting First Amendment rights in the face of a growing public sector seems to become ever more difficult. As I shall argue later, a counter-trend is developing which is slowing, and now seems to be reversing this otherwise inexorable process.

In the tubes, I don't know if there is actually a place, any place that is considered Public. A cyber version of public places like exist in the real world. The closest that I can imagine are Government web site. However, as we all know, those are among the most regulated of all!

isp's being just an example of free market that mostly works, in that, if those who pay for the service are not satisfied, they'll get the service from someone else. Problems is, in most markets you can't switch if you're not happy. For instance, where I live, if you want broadband you only have one option. However, this isn't a new situation/problem. Phone and power companies have also been granted solitary rights for large area's. Competition wasn't allowed and complaining to the regulatory body was always cumbersome, and who really knew who worked for who?

As to isp's. There is another option. You could always buy your own server and become your own ISP. That then becomes an example of money buying freedom. And I don't think that's right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/technolo...;pagewanted=all


F.C.C. Chief Would Bar Comcast From Imposing Web Restrictions
By SAUL HANSELL
Published: July 12, 2008


Federal regulators are prepared to take action against sellers of Internet access that want to restrict what their customers can do online.

Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said Friday that Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, should be sanctioned because it had interfered with the Internet connections of users who were exchanging files with other people.

Mr. Martin’s recommendation is a strong push for network neutrality, the idea that Internet access providers like Comcast should not be allowed to favor some uses of their networks over others. Internet companies like Google and free speech advocates have backed this approach.

The cable and phone companies that provide most of the nation’s Internet service have argued that such rules were not needed. They have said that they should be free to run their networks as they see fit, and that there had been no cases of problems with such discrimination.

Comcast’s practice of slowing the use of BitTorrent, a method of trading video, music and software files, provides such a case. The practice was intended to prevent frequent file-swappers from clogging up the company’s network.

Under Mr. Martin’s recommendation, which would need to be approved by the full commission, Comcast would not be fined. But it would be forced to change its practices and give the commission more details on what it did in the past.

Mr. Martin wants to set a standard that will make it difficult for an Internet provider to discriminate against users based on what they want to do online.

“The Internet is based upon the idea that consumers can go anywhere they want and access any content they want,” Mr. Martin said in an interview. “When they show they are blocking access to some sort of content, they have the burden to show that what they are doing is reasonable.”

Mr. Martin also said Comcast did not explain to its customers what it was doing. “If they are going to put limits on individual customers if you use a certain amount of bandwidth per month or per hour, they have to be willing to tell their customers more about how it works,” he said.

But Mr. Martin said the issue went beyond simple disclosure because Comcast’s approach was not tightly related to the problem it said it was trying to solve. For example, BitTorrent users who were not exchanging large files were also blocked.

Mr. Martin said that the commission wanted to protect legal activities, and that the rules would not apply to an Internet service that tried to block the unauthorized transmission of copyrighted material or child pornography.

Comcast argues that its approach is legitimate, and that the commission does not have the authority to impose any sanctions.

“We believe that the network management technique we chose at the time was reasonable,” said Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokeswoman. She added that Comcast had already said it planned to change its approach to dealing with heavy use. It is developing a system that will slow the Internet connections of people who are moving large amounts of data at busy times.

Ms. Fitzmaurice was nonetheless concerned about Mr. Martin’s approach. She asked: “Does this create some broader precedent or authority for the F.C.C. that would be asserted in other cases?”

She said that if the action was approved by the commission, the company would have to examine the order before deciding whether to appeal.

Spokesmen for Time Warner Cable and Verizon, two other large providers of Internet access, concurred that their preferences would be for the commission to limit its scope to ensuring that providers properly disclose their practices to their customers.

Some advocates of network neutrality are hoping that the commission uses this case to establish a broader principle.

“The normative message is that it is wrong to block the Internet,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School who is the chairman of Free Press, an advocacy group that filed the complaint about Comcast for which Mr. Martin is proposing a resolution.

“The deeper message he’s sending here is that users are sovereign. If two people want to send a file between each other, the carriers are not to get in the way.”

Professor Wu said the issues at stake go back to the common-law concept of a common carrier, which defined certain businesses — from blacksmiths to ferries — as so essential to commerce that their owners could not discriminate against any paying customer.

These ancient concerns are increasingly relevant to the Internet as an ever-greater share of commerce is conducted online. Companies that sell products or offer content over the Internet have worried that without regulation, the Internet access providers might chose to offer better and faster service to some companies — perhaps those that pay for preferred treatment — than to others.

Many are particularly concerned that cable and phone companies, which are in the pay television business, will choose to inhibit the growth of free video over the Internet from sites like YouTube, which is owned by Google.

“If it turned out that the system accidentally or deliberately discriminated against online television, that would be anticompetitive because online television competes with Comcast,” said Marvin Ammori, the general counsel of Free Press.

Other Internet experts say that Comcast is simply trying to compensate for the limited capacity of its network. On Internet connections delivered over cable systems, there is much more capacity for users to receive information than to send it, so uploading large files can quickly overwhelm the sending capacity.

Some are concerned that if Mr. Martin presses these rules, the Internet providers will move away from offering unlimited Internet service. Already Time Warner is testing a system that would impose significant caps on how much its users could download.

B. Private Regulation of Internet Speech Forums

Despite its potential as a forum for expression of unprecedented scope and importance, in actuality today’s Internet is one in which private actors wield the vast majority of power over Internet speech -- power that is unchecked by the First Amendment. While it is often presumed that speech on the Internet will be – consistent with our First Amendment values – “unimpeded, robust, and wide-open,”14 in fact the private entities that own and control the forums for Internet speech enjoy and often exercise the unfettered and unchecked power to impose substantial restrictions on such speech. Internet access, service, and content providers enjoy the power to regulate the content of the speech made available within such privately-owned forums, and under current First Amendment doctrine, such power is insulated from First Amendment scrutiny.

---->

Internet users seeking stronger protection for their expression might turn to an Internet service provider other than AOL. They will find, however, similar restrictions on speech imposed by many other major Internet service providers. Yahoo!’s Terms of Service, for example, prohibit users from making available content that is, inter alia, “objectionable,” and specify that Yahoo! may pre-screen and remove any such “objectionable” content.19 Similarly, Comcast prohibits users from disseminating material that “a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, embarrassing, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful.” And Comcast, by its Terms of Service, “reserves the right to refuse to transmit or post and to remove or block information or materials . . . that it, in its sole discretion, deems to be . . . inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful.”20

What I saw was the FCC, (Bush's FCC no less) doing something to apparently keep the net wide open and unregulated.

Now, consider the potential shift after Obama becomes president, a man who has used the net quite well and could not have done so with a highly regulated Internet, how his presence in the house will effect the FCC as well as internet regulations.

It's content is about opening what is already closed, not "keeping" it open. Also, note that the gist of it is aimed at commerce, so that's really not a surprise.

Regulation is not the issue, control by private owners (ie, private property rights) is the issue I'm raising.

Application of the First Amendment to my speech on the internet is my primary concern. The government does not regulate that, private sites do. If the government does anything it protects their rights to do so.

Again, we must distinguish here between positive and negative rights. Regulation and government enforcement is a "positive" vehicle. Free speech is a negative right, it's protected, not regulated.

It focused on Comcast. As the paper I cited indicates, Comcast is only one of many, AOL is noted as in many ways even more restrictive than Comcast. I've already stopped using Google because I've heard that it restricts its search in ways I don't appreciate (a hard one to test), which is also a form of repressing free speech.

I'm concerned with free speech now, and what is in place to restrict it now.

I'm concerned with the potential to share the many issues I found in the Progressive Strategy Brain.

Regulation, can prohibit such activity as is determined to be counter to the law as it relates to the constitution.
These are issues currently open for debate, many of which will go all the way to the SCOTUS.
As such considering Obama's personal lean is essential as he will likely be in the house for 8 years.

Yes, potentially the FCC could tell private owners they cannot set rules on their message boards. That means TJ can't ban anyone.

I don't agree.

They could and should regulate ISP's so that they can't regulate content.
However, individuals should retain their right to control their private spaces.
Otherwise this same thinking could be applied in the real world, and private citizens might lose control over their private spaces there as well. And this would also be counter to the constitution.


Corporations (isp's) are not people. Only people should have the rights of personhood.

You don't agree with what...

Hate to disillusion you Sky, but what you wish and what gets defined in legal terms don't always turn out to be the same thing. That's why this will probably end up in court.

You may not like applying the 14th Amendment to corporations, but your Republic form of government does. Your voice and mine was carefully minimized at the Federal level by the Founders when they set up the Constitution.

first, I highlighted the comment I didn't agree with
Second, that's what this thread is about, discussion of ideas about freedom of speech and the web.

It is my understanding that only in recient years has the law been changed to give corporations rights of personhood.
And to me, that is the issue in play here when deciding who has (or should have) the right to regulate content. (internet free speech)

Regulating comes in the form or rules, the rules don't always work out the way you want them to, especially when legal rights issues are involved. Lawyers are funny about those things.

I'm certainly not disagreeing with this aspect, and if this were not true, you and I would have nothing to discuss here.
My argument is about my opinion of what should be. I didn't realize the discussion was limited to the law as it actually is.

What does your NYTimes article have to do with the problem of free speech protections that I've been addressing?

I personally do not see a relationship. I guess I should have said that right up front.

Does your opinion of what "should be" in terms of that article affect my concern about protecting free speech?

I don't see how it does. Maybe you can explain it for me.

It's an aspect of the issue of net neutrality, and as such is an issue of free speech on the internet.

Explain how the movement of information has to do with setting rules, as described in the law review paper.

But I am exploring the issue of free speech on the internet. I have an essay I'm writing that I may try to peddle on the subject one of these days, or maybe it'll become a series. Or maybe I'll find a way to connect my thinking to this very complicated "Progressive Brain" which also fascinates me -- the potential to say something complicated through this medium compared to sound blurbs on a television set just sets my imagination on fire.

What's your point?
In other words, where are you leading?

Net Neutrality

Network neutrality (equivalently net neutrality, Internet neutrality or simply NN) is a principle that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.[1][2][3]

The possibility of regulations designed to mandate the neutrality of the Internet has been subject to fierce debate in various fora. Though the term did not enter popular use until several years later, since the early 2000s advocates of net neutrality and associated rules have engaged in mutual campaigns with broadband providers over the ability to use "last mile" infrastructure to block opposed internet applications, and content providers (e.g. websites, services, protocols), particularly those served by competitors. Neutrality proponents also claim that telecom companies seek to impose the tiered service model more for the purpose of profiting from their control of the pipeline rather than for any demand for their content or services.[4] Others have stated that they believe net neutrality to be primarily important as a preservation of current freedoms.[5] As Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, has stated, "The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. A lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive."[6]

Net Neutrality

What is Net Neutrality?
Presentation by Earl W. Comstock
President and CEO
COMPTEL

What COMPTEL means when it calls for Net neutrality is reinstatement of the basic legal requirements that the Internet was founded on - nondiscrimination, interconnection on reasonable terms and conditions, service upon reasonable request, the right to attach devices to the network, and the right to innovate and provide service without having to obtain the permission of the network operator.

This is not to say that the network operator is without rights - many COMPTEL members are themselves network operators, and in order to remain in business they all expect to be paid for their services. Under Net neutrality network operators are entitled to charge, on a non-discriminatory basis, for the transmission services they provide and to charge more for the use of larger amounts of bandwidth. Network operators are also entitled to offer consumers whatever content and services they want.

What Net neutrality would not allow a network operator to do, however, is to favor the transmission of their own or affiliated content or services, to act as gatekeepers on who can provide content or services, to discriminate against unaffiliated content and services in the allocation of transmission capacity, or to force consumers to buy unwanted content and services in order to obtain basic transmission services.



Ways Network Operators Can Discriminate

There are many ways in which a network operator can discriminate. As a result, the concept of Net neutrality must deal with each of them. Some, like bit discrimination and port blocking, are addressed by both the narrow FCC approach and the broader neutral network approach. However, the FCC approach stops there, far short of what is needed. To ensure that the Internet we have today continues to grow and flourish, there are several other discriminatory tactics that need to be addressed. These include:

Attachment of devices is a concept that refers to the ability to attach devices to a transmission network. Telephone network users generally have the right to attach any device to the network without obtaining the network operator's permission so long as the device will not harm the network or other users of the network and conforms to certain minimal specifications. In contrast, cable network operators can control what kind of devices are allowed to attach to their network, and that is the reason there is limited competition in set top boxes and cable modems and why many cable users still rent their devices. The ability to attach devices without approval or interference from the network operator is essential for continued innovation.

Bit discrimination is a term used to describe actions by the network operator to either favor its own content and services or to degrade the content or services of other providers by using information conveyed in the individual bits of a message to identify which messages to favor or degrade. Bit discrimination can be accomplished in any one of several ways. A network operator could, for example, instruct its routers (machines which direct the flow of information to its destination) to delay all traffic bound for Google.com by sending it to another network operator rather than carrying it directly to the address. In the alternative, the network operator could use the sender's address to favor its own services by instructing its routers to give priority to all packets that originate from a Verizon.net address.

Port blocking is a term used to describe a specific form of discrimination in which the network operator uses information in the message header which tells the receiving computer which software application to use to open the information. The computer knows which software to use by the "port" through which the message enters the computer's communications hardware. If a network operator wishes to block a particular application, for example a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone call, it can do so by blocking messages destined for the port used by that application.

Quality of service is a term that is generally used to describe service offerings in which the transmission component is managed with respect to bandwidth, latency, jitter, priority, or other technical aspects of the transmission in order to ensure the quality of a particular service offering. Quality of service (QoS) is used to differentiate service offerings from the baseline standard for Internet transmissions, which operate on a "best-efforts" basis. In cases where bandwidth constraints or other factors result in congestion in the transmission network, QoS can be used to prioritize the delivery of certain types of services (for example VoIP or video services).

Many network operators are attempting to market QoS as an alternative to the "best efforts" approach of the Internet. Best efforts means that all traffic has the same priority, and the network uses its best efforts to deliver all of the traffic. The problem created by QoS is that it requires additional protocols and network management software in order to provide it, thus increasing the cost and complexity of the network.

Perhaps more importantly, QoS negates one of the key benefits of the Internet, which is the use of a common protocol (IP) to allow unimpeded transmission across multiple networks. When QoS is added, it helps balkanize the Internet because transmissions across multiple networks require cooperation among the network operators to ensure that each is using the same QoS protocols. Six years ago Internet2 (an organization tasked with designing and testing next generation Internet technologies) took a close look at QoS technology, and concluded that the cheaper solution to congestion problems was to add bandwidth and continue to use best efforts.

Bandwidth starvation is a term used to describe actions by a network operator to degrade or block applications or services by limiting the bandwidth (capacity) available to provide those services. One way to think of bandwidth starvation is in terms of trying to drink through a straw instead of a garden hose. Bandwidth starvation can be accomplished in a number of ways. At the consumer end, network operators can limit the upstream (sending) capability of user equipment in order to prevent consumers from providing content to other users, or can limit the bandwidth available for downstream content in order to prevent consumers from being able to access competing content. Examples of this would be limiting upstream transmission so that large bandwidth transmissions like digital video content takes much longer to send, thus limiting consumers ability to send movies, or limiting downstream transmission so that video streaming can't compete with the network operator's cable offerings. On the network end, the network operator can create bandwidth starvation by limiting the capacity of its interconnection points, so that content coming from a competing network provider has to squeeze through a narrow choke point, or by creating a two-tier network (as some Bell company officials have proposed) where the bulk of the bandwidth is reserved for the network operator's "private" network and remainder is allocated to the "public" network.

Interconnection is a term used to describe the physical linking of two transmission networks. The Internet is a series of interconnected transmission networks that all use a common addressing protocol (the Internet Protocol or IP) to facilitate seamless transmission across the disparate networks. The primary issues with respect to interconnection are the bandwidth (capacity) of the interconnection and where the interconnection will occur. If the connection between the two networks is too small for the amount of traffic being sent from one network to the other, congestion will occur and transmissions can be degraded or lost. Likewise, if a network operator can only interconnect with another operator at a single location or at distant locations, congestion and/or degradation can occur because of the concentration of traffic across a single point or the additional distance traffic must travel. Historically, if a network operator is under no legal obligation to interconnect its network, voluntary interconnection rarely occurs.

Caching is a term that refers to the local storage of information that is frequently requested by an end user. By storing frequently accessed information, in particular large files like pictures or graphics, at a local storage site near the end user, caching allows the content provider to reduce network congestion (to the extent there is any) and reduce the time needed to run an application (for example, web pages appear faster and file downloads take less time). Caching arises as an issue in net neutrality discussions in two ways. First, because caching must be done on devices located closer to the end user, in general these devices are physically located in a facility under the control of the local network operator (for example in a central office or a cable head end). In the alternative, if the caching is done at a physical location not under the network operator's control, then the local storage device needs to be interconnected with the local network. As a result, in the absence of a right for competitors to physically collocate equipment or to interconnect with a local network, a network operator could use local caching to favor their own content and services.

Each of these potential discriminatory actions by themselves would be sufficient to seriously inhibit, if not prevent entirely, competition in the provision of information services. This diagram illustrates in red the many different potential choke points that can come into play in the absence of strong Net neutrality requirements. Interconnection issues occur at the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) central offices (numbers 2 and 4) and at the interconnection point with the ILEC network (number 3). Bandwidth starvation is illustrated by the narrow red "ILEC public Internet" lines connecting homes to the central offices and the central offices to the interconnect point. The broader blue pipes of the ILEC illustrate how the ILEC reserves more capacity for itself and its service offerings.

Net Neutrality

A Definition of Network Neutrality

"Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days. Indeed, it is this neutrality that has allowed many companies, including Google, to launch, grow, and innovate. Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online. Today, the neutrality of the Internet is at stake as the broadband carriers want Congress’s permission to determine what content gets to you first and fastest. Put simply, this would fundamentally alter the openness of the Internet.”

Source: Students for Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality - An Overview Video from Public Knowledge

Definition of Net neutrality

Net neutrality is the principle that data packets on the Internet should be moved impartially, without regard to content, destination or source. Net neutrality is sometimes referred to as the "First Amendment of the Internet."

In the United States, high-speed Internet carriers, including AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon, are seeking legislative support for a two-tiered Internet service model. In a two-tiered model, carriers would be able to charge owners of Web sites a premium fee for priority placement and faster speed across their pipes. Those opposing the carriers argue that the Internet was designed to work in a traffic-neutral way and has become what it is, to some extent, because of that neutrality. They would like to see Congress pass a telecom reform bill that contains language in favor of Net neutrality.

Critics of the two-tiered model fear that the extra costs incurred for premium service would be passed down to the consumer in fees for sites, applications and services. They point out that small, independent sites, such as personal blogs, are on an even playing field with large, corporately-owned sites in a Net-neutral environment but might be unable to compete in a tiered service model. Editors at the popular SaveTheInternet.com Web site explain, "The Internet has thrived because revolutionary ideas like blogs, Wikipedia or Google could be started on a shoestring and attract huge audiences simply because their users found the sites valuable. Without Net neutrality the pipeline owners will choose the winners and losers on the Web."

Proponents of the two-tiered model point out that a tiered business model already exists: consumers have a choice of using a slower dial-up service or paying a premium price for faster speed over cable or DSL. Providers argue that if that two-tiered business model is applied to site owners as well as users, carriers will be able to offer more services like Internet-based cable TV programming and video at competitive rates. They maintain that legislation protecting Net neutrality would be a unnecessary barrier to the Internet tradition of innovation and free enterprise.

Organizations and individuals that support Net neutrality include Amazon.com, Earthlink, EBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Skype, Vonage and Yahoo, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Seattle Times, St. Petersburg Times and Christian Science Monitor, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the World Wide Web), Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps.

Sky: I didn't consider Your link to be the entire subject. To some degree the thread has drifted to expand to cover other concepts and issues of free speech on the internet.

I'm trying to make sense of the words we are using in an effort to communicate. "Net neutrality," for instance, does not translate into the free speech problem I'm concerned with. So I asked you to specify how you see it related. I am working from a number of net neutrality definitions, none of which describe the problem I'm concerned with.



You've indicated we are discussing something here, I'm trying to understand whether it's "something" or "somethings" and whether the information feedback is going to the wrong things.

So far I feel something like it's been a feedback system where two people in bed have an electric blanket with two heating units, and they each have the controls for the other's. I get feedback from my side that I'm cold, I turn up the dial, you get feedback from your's that you are hot, you turn down the dial. I get colder, you get hotter.



We moved from the broad introduction to "the Progressive Strategy Brain" into a subdiscussion of free speech and private property. I'm not sure how your mind has worked with that, at this point. I've tried to maintain a consistent theme for my side of the feedback loop.

Sky, I know why it went off track, I know where, and I know what I did from that point to try to keep my theme alive in the discussion. I can detail it for you if you wish, but I don't really see the point.

I'll just ask this, in the future if we are having a discussion, when you decide to cut and paste an article into it, would you be so kind as to explain how it relates to my point I may have just made in the previous post? Or if you are simply dismissing my points and starting something new, could you at least clue me in?

ren:

What does your NYTimes article have to do with the problem of free speech protections that I've been addressing?

I personally do not see a relationship. I guess I should have said that right up front.

Does your opinion of what "should be" in terms of that article affect my concern about protecting free speech?

I don't see how it does. Maybe you can explain it for me.




Explain how the movement of information has to do with setting rules, as described in the law review paper.

Personallity differences.

You seem to be much more linier, while I tend to be quite fond of the tangent.

Many people like to do this knee jerk "linear" response when they come across someone who's taken the trouble to put some order in their mind.

please excuse me, but here your assumption is mistaken in that you very clearly imply by the statement that you have taken the time, meaning others haven't bothered, that your way is somehow superior. When in fact at best it's only different. The simple reality is that there is no wrong way.

My order is as superior as yours is, even though it might be different!
Your frustrations, are not my problem. You made them, so you own them until you decide to discard them.

A little personal anecdote here: my mother was a paranoid schizophrenic. But I didn't know that as a child. I had no idea what that meant until much later. However, the result of that was, keeping track of whatever she was talking about was a real challenge more often than not, and I took it upon myself to keep track of at least what I was thinking and saying. Sometimes keeping track was what I had to do simply to maintain my own grounding, which one might call sanity. It was a hard, long lesson, but a good one after all is said and done. Her insanity actually brought out the writer in me when I was still in grade school.

"The idea of critique is a product of the Enlightenment. The term is older still. It was first used by the Humanist and Reformers to describe the art of informal judgment appropriate to the study of ancients texts., whether the Classics or the Bible. For a time this critical activity was a weapon in the hands of the warring religious parties. But it was a double-edged weapon.
Critical Sociology: Adorno, Habermas, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Neumann, Penguin Book 1976, page 15.

That is a very interesting anecdote. I know you have touched on this subject before but it is only now that I clearly understand it's impact on your personality. Philosophical persons, or more accurately, critical thinkers' personal history have always interested me because becoming a critical thinker is not a natural evolution. There has to be some unique circumstance that caused a person to be hyper reflective, or hyper analytical like special educational training, or an obsessive interest in an issue or problem, practical or abstract, that forces a person to intensively focus analysis on given assumptions.

This last group seems to be your, and my case. It is not unusual. If we were to look at history one would find many documented cases of famous scientist and philosophers who started out as theologians, (Kant, Newton, and even young Karl Marx was trained in a religious gymnasium) that were obsessed with religious questions like "Does God exist? What is ethics? Is the Soul immortal? What is Reason? Each thinkers came to different conclusions on this question, but what is interesting is that analysis resulted in some intellectual serendipity.

Kant is the best example (one could find many other examples like Einstein's interest in Light) of the unintended consequences of analysis in one field leading to an revolution in another. Kant wrote the "Critique of Pure Reason" in his effort to test arguments for the existence of God and if knowledge of God is possible. This required an in depth exploration of "What are the conditions of possible knowledge and how far does the knowledge extend?" and his conclusion put Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology on a whole new foundation. The mind did not obtain knowledge like the sun warming a stone (a passive mind), but rather the mind was active and it organizes sense impressions according to a priori categories of understanding (like Space and Time) so that reality is possible. In other words, the mind colonizes the world of impressions into meaningful mode of experience or "phenomena" (things as they appear to us) but we can never know the thing-in-itself which is beyond experience.

It was Kant's obsession with these religious questions that lead to a Copernican revolution in epistemology.

Critical Sociologist Paul Connerton wrote an interesting introduction to Critical theory and he traces the origin of Critical theory all the way to the Enlightenment and even before:



I laugh to myself when I debate conservatives or religious fundamentalists that see Critical theory as some Humanist evil when it really has its roots in the critique of biblical text and theological councils.

The Kantian critique has a meaning of critique as "reconstruction." We try to reconstruct a process to see how its component parts work and to know the anonymous system of objective rules working behind the scene so we can use them competently.

But there is another meaning of critique that is pure "Criticism." Here the focus is on the "constraining" system of rules that "distort" reality and are humanly produced. Critique here means trying to free ourselves from coercive illusions and, therefore, coercive forces on human action i.e. "what is free speech?" Here the analyst critiques the ontology (a social construction of reality) of a false situation. The critique can be aimed at a specific experience (mental illness and psychoanalysis), or ideology (Hegel and Marx) which leads to "the experience of an emancipation by means of critical insight into relationships of power, the strength of which lies, at least in part, in the fact that these relationships have not been seen through."

Pure Criticism does not attempt to reconstruct objective data, on the contrary "objectivity" is in question. We are not trying to apply the rules of the system, but remove the necessary preconditions not of knowledge but of what is false and distorting reality: not reconstruction, but deconstruction.

Feurbach once said, "All Theology is Anthropology." It seems to be a further truth that the critique of one has leads to the critique of the other.

...Thanks for your thoughts. What sent you off, care to say? Or you could email me. (Still enjoying your rendition of Koyunbaba, btw.)

That is a very interesting anecdote. I know you have touched on this subject before but it is only now that I clearly understand it's impact on your personality. Philosophical persons, or more accurately, critical thinkers' personal history have always interested me because becoming a critical thinker is not a natural evolution. There has to be some unique circumstance that caused a person to be hyper reflective, or hyper analytical like special educational training, or an obsessive interest in an issue or problem, practical or abstract, that forces a person to intensively focus an