Putting aside politics...can these jokers calm down for just a second? Apparently EVERY action by the Obama administration, whether good or bad, is a "sweeping government takeover" and an "end to freedom."

Please guys...give it a rest.

Net neutrality and internet regulation is an important issue - a hugely important issue - and it deserves serious discussion and debate. While I'm in favor of net neutrality, I'm not going to automatically sign on to what Obama's FCC has in mind until I know more about it, although I'll certainly take his word, and Google's, and Amazon's, over AT&T and Comcast's any day.

But apparently this is what passes for serious policy discussion among these guys:

The dangers of the administration’s Net Neutrality plans are not theoretical: Innovation will suffer, and America will no longer house the leading edge of the Internet technology. Wealth will be redistributed, as cash-rich, massive market valued Internet firms will bully and get a free ride on capital-intensive, smaller market valued telecommunications firms. Government will be deeply entrenched and be a costly burden to anyone who conducts business or pleasure on the Internet. One of the drivers of American economic growth will be crippled in a time when we most need new jobs.

What a freaking joke. At least the Republican opposition to health care reform could claim some semblance of a valid critique - they don't want government intervention in their lives even if it brings down costs and expands coverage. Well, OK, fine.

But supporting the right of monopolistic telecoms to discriminate against you is the height of idiocy. It's like saying we shouldn't have a first Amendment because it's a "government takeover" that will force them not to censor you.

And "innovation will suffer," really? We've had, in essence, net neutrality for the entire history of the web. Has innovation suffered?

Allowing old media companies to put restrictions on bandwidth and content, at the whim of some AT & T or Comcast exec, is exactly the kind of behavior that will kill small business-driven web innovation as we know it. No wonder venture capitalists (yep, actual capitalists) are weighing in decisively on Obama's side.

This commenter on a TechDirt article hits the nail on the head:

Do you feel the same way about telephone service? How about if AT&T bought an interest in Pizza Hut and then began redirecting calls to other pizza shops to Pizza Hut instead? (A similar situation led to the invention of the automatic telephone switch.) Or how about if the local power company bought an interest in Pizza Hut and then began cutting power to the other pizza shops? Fortunately, big bad "regulations" don't allow that.

And just in case you thought I was picking on one blogger from Red State, I've seen this viewpoint, and these talking points repeated more than a few times over the past couple days. The telecoms are clearly launching a PR offensive here, just like the insurance companies did with their "death panels." Let's hope this is the moment when the lobbyist-Republican complex jumps the shark even for its own base and at least a few conservatives realize that arguing for corporations against their own free market rights is downright idiotic.

In a rare moment of dissent, in fact, one of the commenters on Red State expressed a shadow of a doubt about the post's framing:

I'm confused. I thought that Net Neutrality was the idea that data is treated the same wasy by the fabric of the network, regarless of the origin or destination (withthe exception of time-dependent data, which the internet protocol really doesn’t handle well). In other words, the system that’s in place now. It seems to me that the carriers and ISPs are making money from the current arrangement; maybe not as much as they’d like, but lets face it, no one EVER makes as much money as they’d like. If they’re currently operating at a loss, they need to either get more efficient, or they should get out of the business and open up market share to people who can do it more efficiently - a little thing I like to call "captialism" (I know, it’s a radical concept in this culture). I’m NOT in favor of altering the rules of the network if the only purpose is to protect inefficient carriers, or to transfer profitability from the content providers to the carriers. I’m a fan of the current arrangment because it has, for the first time, made "freedom of the press" a reality for everyone, not just people who can afford a press. It’s offered the possibility of new forms of communication - which means that we’ve been freed of dependence on the traditional media (and as conservatives, we should REALLY be celebrating this!!).

To which the original diarist replies:

The confusion is intentional. The left is using the Net Neutrality banner as the crisis with which to push through sweeping socialist action.

(end of message)

Well he is right about one thing. The confusion IS intentional.