Conservatism, as I understand it, is all about preserving the values of the past, not the lack of technological convenience. I see no contradiction whatsoever in being a conservative and a technologist. (Technologist: someone who supports new technology, especially relating to computers and the Internet) Yet when it comes to issues like Net Neutrality and the dire need for comprehensive intellectual property law reform, I find that other conservatives fail to even understand what is being discussed, let alone to raise valid (or at least relevant) arguments for or against any of it. There are a deluge of posts from people who run conservative pages on Facebook about how Facebook is allegedly targeting conservative pages for censorship and various instances of unfair treatment, but on examination, most of these are explained by how Facebooks impersonal algorithms work for all pages without regard for political affiliation and the complaints are a result of just not understanding how computers work. On Net Neutrality, people say ridiculously stupid things like, A neutral Internet is a Communist Internet or Net Neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet. There is this complete failure to recognize that the success of the Internet we have now has so far depended on the Internet being mostly traffic-neutral -- that Net Neutrality is not something new, but is something we already have and want to preserve. It has so far been an informal rule kept up by a gentlemens agreement within the industry that some parties are starting to break in a really sinister way that will help no one long-term and will grant corporations a completely unreasonable level of control over everyones lives. The real center of the anti-Net-Neutrality side is not grounded in American conservative political philosophy: it is the very worst kind of corporate cronyism. At the same time, under the guise of Net Neutrality, the Obama Administration has tried to sneak in various provisions that go beyond how Net Neutrality is understood in technology circles AFAIK, which conservatives ought to be calling them on, but arent because they dont understand the issue. On intellectual property law: there is a failure to understand that every digital transaction involves making a copy, a failure to understand the difference between copyright, patent and trademark and a blanket condemnation of file sharing while not realizing that every Web page access online is downloading at least one file and usually several. Pirates are identified as the enemy by people who, at the same time, are just fine with owning a VCR and making mixtapes on cassette from vinyl records. And DRM is blanket endorsed. First sale doctrine? Fair use? Whats that? Its crazy how out of touch I find other conservatives are on these issues. Ive tried to explain Net Neutrality to people by using the audio stream of the Rush Limbaugh Show as an example. What if a new Air America type company came out which, in order to get you to switch to their left wing talk radio, started bribing your ISP to slow down your Internet whenever you wanted to listen to Rush Limbaugh so that it wasnt fast enough for you to listen? And the worst part is that you wouldnt even know that was why - youd just know the Rush Limbaugh stream wasnt working. They wouldnt have to tell you why, and you might not have any competing ISP you could switch to in your area because of geography. That could ruin conservative talk radio on the Internet! Getting rid of the Net Neutrality rule would enable the creation of a powerful political propaganda machine which could control what you kind of news you are allowed to know about! What else can be done to fix this mess and get conservatives on track with how their own political philosophy demands individual private property rights, freedom from interference in what you decide to read or watch or listen to and limited government in the area of intellectual property law?
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 18:37:20 +0000
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