I don't think you should show up to argue against federal regulation unless you know what that regulation will be. There is a lot of b.s. floating around the web and on Fox News about how horrible government is, and if only we could destroy it, then we'd all be free. This is baseless rubbish being promoted by powerful people who want to be more powerful. If you don't want police, fire departments, roads, public schools, state universities, a postal service, or a military, then you don't want a government. As you said, without our federal government you wouldn't have an internet. So I don't think it's wise to simply presume that whatever the government might do will be bad. It can go either way and you just have to know what a policy is before you oppose it. If someone wants to discuss specific policies that are being considered and the probably consequences of adopting those policies, I'd be very interested to learn more about it. One thing I wouldn't want is for ISPs to reduce user access to certain sites at certain times, etc., forcing content providers to pay for access to users. We know that the market doesn't always take care of such problems by providing us with what we want for some higher price. Mike On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Harry Penner wrote: > At the risk of flames: the Internet as we know it has flourished in > large part because its original sponsor, the federal government, has > mostly left it alone. Why do we think adding government regulations > to it will make it better (or preserve the freedom we enjoy on it)? > Generally speaking, doesn't regulation take away freedom rather than > increasing it, by definition? I'm no futurist but it seems to me that > putting restrictions on the big guys is likely to affect us little > guys in some unforeseen but unpleasant way. > > Sorry if the above sounds trollish but I just think we should be > careful what we ask for. With companies you can usually vote with > your feet to try to change or avoid their bad behavior, but > regulations are usually universal and forever... And the regs will > surely by written by people not nearly as close to or as thoughtful > about the problem as we tclug'ers... > > Seems to me we ought to show up and tell the FCC to keep their paws off us. > > -Harry > > On Aug 19, 2010, at 9:52, Brian <goeko at Goecke-Dolan.com> wrote: > >> There will be a hearing on the Net Neutrality here in the Twin Cities. >> >> >> http://savetheinternet.com/mnhearing >> >> >> I am not associated with this, just thought people would be interested >> to know. >> >> ==>brian. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >