It's Official: Maine Rejects Net Neutrality

[crud76]

Source: PRNewswire-USNewswire

Gov. John Baldacci today signed legislation asking the Maine Office of the Public Advocate to monitor federal activity to ensure Mainers continue to have free and open access to the Internet. The resolve, sponsored by Senator Barry Hobbins and fully replacing an earlier bill that attempted to implement onerous net neutrality requirements, put to rest an effort to institute state level regulation of the Internet and in doing so acknowledged federal preeminence and the potential harm net neutrality legislation could have caused to the citizens and economy of Maine. <snip>

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20070621/pl_usnw/it_s_official__maine_rejects_net_neutrality;_ylt=Ap6T0WxD34qcmNKAzLdnOHayFz4D

[benh57]

1. Not really a news story

Extremely biased PR news release.

[Lance_Boyle]

2. Dumbass Maine.

Net neutrality = good. Opposing Net Neutrality = "let's let the (heavily subsidized) infrastructure owners double bill for bandwidth - after all, we think 'the market' will bear it."

Look at the members of this "Hands off the Internet" coalition... AT&T, Cinergy Communications, the American Conservative Union.

Bad move, Maine.

[lazyriver]

4. I say dumbass Baldacci. Some of us here in Maine

understand the issue of net neutrality and why it is necessary for the future of a fair and equally accessible internet. Unfortunately, I also know way too many of my fellow Mainers who can be pretty easily duped and would read (or have read to them)this piece of propaganda and believe stopping any net neutrality movement would make the internets more accessible to them.

Baldacci has made some very questionable moves in his tenure. IMHO, he's a corporate whore who can be counted on to follow the money in almost every case. I'd still take him over any of the Republic candidates for governor I've seen here lately (and did in the last election with a taste of bile in my mouth as I voted) but only because of the lesser of two evils principle.

[Thaddeus]

3. This isn't news

This is telecom industry PR spin

[blogslut]

5. This is a press release

Doe it really belong in LBN?

[Javaman]

6. Bah, it's only a series of tubes anyway.

:sarcasm:

[AdHocSolver]

7. Net Neutrality is needed to prevent corporate ability to have de facto censorship of content.

Net Neutrality is NOT about allowing government regulation of the internet - it is about PREVENTING corporate de facto control of internet CONTENT.

The corporations want to be able to invoke a multitier pricing scheme so that bandwidth and speed will be given to those who can pay for it. This means an advantage to large corporations over smaller corporations and an advantage to heavily funded right-wing blogs over progressive and Democratic blogs like our own DU.

If the union leaders support this because they think it will "save" jobs, then these guys haven't a clue as to the economics or the politics involved in this. Such thinking on the part of union leaders goes far in explaining the collapse of the union movement in the U.S. over the past 25+ years.

[mainegreen]

8. Weird, we just passed LD 1675 days ago which *enforces* net neutrality in Maine

See here.
Something stinks


Edited: Contacted my Senator who sponsored the original bill in the hopes of finding out what the hell happened.

[brentspeak]

9. Is there a reason why a press release is posted on LBN?