Attack of the Freeloaders

On January 6, 2010, in General, by Neil Stevens

Every time I mention at Red State that freeloaders are the driving force behind the Obama-Google Net Neutrality plan, the freeloaders flip out. Those leeches contribute nothing but demand everything from others: Free downloads of music, free downloads of movies, and free downloads of games are what they already take from the Internet and of course the idea of Net Neutrality is to create a government mandate for free use of all that download capacity itself.

Freeloaders benefit because, hey, free stuff! Google benefits because the freeloaders drive up ad rates at Gmail, Youtube, Blogger, Google Maps, and of course the constantly rumored GDrive storage service. Obama benefits because he finally gets to throw his base a bone, he gets power over the Internet, and he gets a step closer to Single Payer Internet in fact.

The problem with this is that the rest of us lose. That fact is becoming ever more apparent to even the left as it studies phase two of the Obama Internet agenda, the National Broadband Plan. Proponents of such a plan are increasingly opposing Net Neutrality, creating a broad left-right alliance against the Obama-Google agenda, and in favor of liberty, choice, and markets.

Says Brent Wilkes, national Executive Director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, no arch-conservative by any stretch, in the San Jose Mercury-News:

Some net neutrality advocates argue that the FCC should adopt rules that would insulate Internet applications companies such as Google, Yahoo and Skype from bearing any of the burden of these costs. The result would mean a de facto regressive “broadband tax” on consumers. That would hit non-adopters in the Latino community and elsewhere particularly hard, as considerable data show that such cost-shifting onto consumers would deter adoption.

Net neutrality rules should prevent broadband providers from engaging in anti-competitive behavior, but they should not be commandeered to insulate wealthy Internet applications companies from paying their fair share of the broadband bill.

Translation: Net Neutrality is a transfer from poor people of color to rich people of pallor. And this is no Republican, no conservative saying it. Wilkes went to bat against Senator Cornyn for Justice Sotomayor, yet now he goes to bat against Google against Net Neutrality.

That’s how far out of the mainstream Net Neutrality is. Even left Democrats can’t endorse it. Net Neutrality is a pure payoff to wealthy Internet companies that back Obama, nothing more, nothing less. We must keep the pressure on to defeat it at the FCC.

Government must not be used to enrich Google fatcats at the expense of kids in cities trying to work hard and get ahead. Net Neutrality is un-American.

 

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