This is an important sign as it the speed of the action because SAFE seems to have a destiny on end user owned and controlled mesh and this, over the complains of in the pocket Republicans, is telling municipalities and states that they cannot have laws that restrict citizen communication efforts or forbid them.
And its funny too, because think about these supposedly pending useless legal challenges. What are they going to argue? Oh yeah, what the GOP always argues, what their whole party is based on, that money should be allowed to shut other people up and that competition is only good when it makes the rich richer and bad when it doesn’t. Transparency is going to kill that party and the world will be so much better for it.
You really can’t make this up (snip from the article):
“Why is it states’ rights to tell local communities what to do?” he
asked, and added, “these laws prohibit communities from controlling
their own destiny.”
Yet they welcome the feds to tell the states what to do? Hahaha priceless.
On the contrary, when states move more in the direction of slavery, which is all States rights claims have ever amounted to so far, and when States want to impede free speech for profit, that sure as hell should be blocked.
This is another Katrina for the GOP and their platform of inequity. This is worth more than Santa Clara, Buckely and Citizens combined going hard back in the other direction. The Republican party and even US conservatism will not survive an open internet for any duration.
The history of states pushing back on the federal government is far more interesting than states “trying to keep their slaves” - description of the Fugitive Slave Act (wikipedia):
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. This was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a “slave power conspiracy”. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Law” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves.
Now the good part, those dastardly states trying to excerise power (also from wikipedia):
In 1854, the Wisconsin Supreme Court became the only state high court to declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional, as a result of a case involving fugitive slave Joshua Glover, and Sherman Booth, who led efforts that thwarted Glover’s recapture. In 1859 in Ableman v. Booth, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state court.
In November 1850, the Vermont legislature passed the “Habeas Corpus Law,” requiring Vermont judicial and law enforcement officials to assist captured fugitive slaves. This law rendered the federal Fugitive Slave Act effectively unenforceable in Vermont and caused a storm of controversy nationally. It was considered a “nullification” of federal law, a concept popular in the South among states that wanted to nullify other aspects of federal law, and was part of highly charged debates over slavery. The noted poet and abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier, had called for such laws, and the Whittier controversy heightened angry pro-slavery reactions to the Vermont law. Virginia governor John B. Floyd warned that nullification could push the South toward secession, while President Millard Fillmore threatened to use the army to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in Vermont. No test events took place in Vermont, but the rhetoric of this flare-up echoed South Carolina’s 1832 nullification crisis and Thomas Jefferson’s 1798 Kentucky Resolutions.
I snipped the part about jury nullification, which was just below and, and includes more fascinating history.
I actually agree with what the right is saying here as it’s none of the state’s business. We need less government not more and quite frankly I don’t trust the government, especially the Amercian government, going anywhere near the internet. It’s the consumer’s own damn fault for buying from ISPs that have such draconian policies and not reading the privacy policies. But people want their internet so bad that they’ll sign anything to get it and then they turn to legislation and force instead of voluntary organization of one kind or another to create competition for their despised ISP. This is yet another reason I love maidsafe: because it creates compeition for the established internet and ISPs while at the same time allows for a voluntary environment. People can choose to opt-in or out. People can choose to use internet 1.0 or internet 2.0. People can choose to use their ISP and use the regular ISP or encrypt and surft the SAFEnet. I think the response to companies that infringe on net neutrality shouldn’t be legislation but rather to create a new company that didn’t and then for consumers to patronize it and therefore demonstrate their values. I mean my God people look what allowing the gov’t to regulate health and food has done for us? Corporate corruption backed by police.
All that holds for me too. But we had group in the US bent on breaking what worked about the current internet because it would mean it was harder for them to install crack down puppets. We have people who would gladly hand us WWIII if they thought that would hand them a better chance a gaining or retaining power. With Romney we seemed to have a group that was chomping at the bit to do so. They will say anything and do anything to get power, its their drug. The internet was a inconvenience they would gladly break to get their fix and they seemed quite bent on it. The want control by money, they don’t want choice and that’s what neutrality was about. It was about staving off increasing control by hereditary money. We still have a lot of work.
We still need SAFE global and running on open source hardware mesh owned and controlled by end users.
Well, whatever the people think about why things are the way they are and whom deserves just retribution, we all seem to agree that SAFE is at least a big part of what’s needed to make a better future. That’s heartening, even if the left/right arguments drive my blood pressure up.
Let’s all admit it: at the heart of it, one of the biggest reason we all love the idea of the SAFE network is that (even if we haven’t put the label on it) SAFE supersedes politics. That’s baked in, in the very nature of the platform.
All in all, I think it is funny that the Right is so riled up over “free market interference” Broadband delievery is a Government Sanctioned monopoly and always has been – as such free markets don’t apply and government does deserve some say in what the “Public good” is that the monopoly was intended to achieve.
MaidSAFE makes all of the politics irrelevant though… It certainly will be nice to see it finished…
