Anti-Net-Neutrality “Fast Lanes” Are Bullshit

Marco Arment with some strong language about the gross marketing campaign to rebrand the destruction of net neutrality as allowing ISPs to create “fast lanes”:

Be honest.

This is not building anything new — it’s discriminating and restricting what we already have.

This is not making anything faster — it’s allowing ISPs to selectively slow down traffic that they don’t strategically or financially benefit from, and only permit traffic from their partners to run at the speeds that everything runs at today.

It’s ostensibly the FCC’s job to see through this bullshit language and do what’s right for the country and the people, but only the fool who believed that ISPs are trying to build something beneficial here would believe that the FCC gives a damn about what’s best for American citizens.

Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

Ars Technica:

The Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules were partially struck down today by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which said the Commission did not properly justify its anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules.

I have an extreme and intense dislike for the FCC (an unconstitutional entity which has done nothing but make itself important and block my favorite artists from appearing on TV or radio) but I was just glad ANYONE was standing up to the cable companies on Net Neutrality. Looks like we’re going to have to do it on our own. Again.

Hunger Striking at Guantánamo Bay

Our children will look upon Guantanamo Bay with the same sheepish, embarrassed, confused, eye that we look upon the rounding up of Japanese Americans in camps like Manzanar during World War II. If we’re lucky.

It is brutal, it is inhuman, and it is the antithesis of the very ideals our country was founded upon. The existence of America’s (torture) detention facility in Guantanamo Bay makes me feel sick to my stomach and rotten to my core. We should be ashamed of ourselves, and so much more than that.

Feds force Oregon to surrender medical marijuana patient records

Federal agents have forced the Oregon Public Health Division to turn over an untold number of patients’ medical marijuana records, according to court records recently uncovered by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

These people just want to be able to have their medicine and not be afraid, and this is EXACTLY why a lot of people on the lefty fringe are against legalizing Marijuana in the first place. They’re afraid of being on “some government list” just like this one.

Now that they know where you live the feds can break down the door at any moment and arrest you, charge you with a federal crime, seize all of your property, etc.

Every Time You Torrent, Feds Log Your IP in Just Three Hours

Gizmodo:

Anyone who has downloaded pirated music, video or ebooks using a BitTorrent client has probably had their IP address logged by copyright-enforcement authorities within three hours of doing so. So say computer scientists who placed a fake pirate server online—and very quickly found monitoring systems checking out who was taking what from the servers.

A honeypot for government and entertainment industry (aren’t they basically the same now?) spies that they just couldn’t resist.

U.S. Ninth-Circuit Court Rules Against Right of First Sale

If the clickwrap EULA forbids sale, then you can’t sell it, no matter how much you don’t want it anymore.

In other words, goodbye to used game sales. How long before they classify films and TV show files as Software? What do I do with the Xbox games I don’t want anymore? Throw them out? Give them away? Somehow I think they’d have a problem with that, too. Some Blu-Ray releases of films contain games. Are they covered?

The ruling makes note of a “license” .vs. a “sale”. Are we allowed to own anything anymore? The software in question, AutoCAD, costs $4000. That makes a $4000 invisible license to use software that you throw away if you don’t want it anymore. Hell of a way to make money.