Well first of all, its me Terry.. for some reason my email name is showing up.

Not at all.  We clearly have juristiction within our own borders and we are clearly a sovereign nation.  In order to have a world of peacefully coexisting nations there has to be entity to bring that about.  An example of the system working properly was the first Iraq war.  Iraq invaded Kuwait, the world and the UN rose to the occasion, pushed Iraq back to its borders and stopped their aggression.  Another is Bosnia where they brough Malosivich to trial and convicted him on war crimes.  The UN has many faults but I believe the overall concept is a necessity.  You can write all the US laws you want with strict punishment for creating and spreading computer viruses, but someone sitting in asia or the middleast we can do nothing about bringing them to justice.  It has never been and never will be the role of the United States of America to be the policemen of the world.  So who is?  How do we stop this?  Right now, we don't unless the country of orgin brings them to justice.  Imagine if one of these guys gets good enough to spread the virus to all our computer systems and satellites and shuts us down completely.  Then someone would stand up and take notice.

The bigger problem is these non government affiliated groups that cause terrorist acts across international lines.  Either it should be the nation where the groups are living that should bring them to justice, or if they refuse, there should be some international group with the juristiction to bring these groups to justice.  Again, it is not now or ever will be the job of the United States to police the world.  I am not saying it has to be the UN but somebody.  The UN right now is the best choice, IMO.

Thoughts?

"However, the bigger picture is what to do with the illegal information.  Whose precides over the jurisdiction.  There should be strict penalties for creating and distributing harmful viruses to computer system, juvenile pornography, and instructions for weaponry.  I am not sure how it would work, maybe a part of the UN, but they should have the right to go anywhere and arrest anyone for committing these crimes."

I believe there are US statutes addressing the items that were addressed in this post.  The problem with this post, IMHO, is the last sentence.  What you propose is an extremely dangerous proposition.  Please tell me you aren't actually suggesting that the US cede any authority to the UN.  That is absolutely preposterous.  That would be a blatant infringement upon the sovereignty of this nation and should not be tolerated.

The UN is merely a reincarnation of the failed League of Nations whose sole purpose is the advancement of world government.  Such concentration of power should be viewed as a dangerous threat to the dwindling individual liberties we currently enjoy.  Go look at the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

This is a tough subject, and the net has certainly reduced the size of the world.  This is not only an American issue but an issue for the entire world.  In America we have the Freedom of Speech, therefore, nationally we can not censor any LEGAL information posted on the net.  I do think that ISP's also have the right to refuse service to anyone, just like any other business.  

However, the bigger picture is what to do with the illegal information.  Whose precides over the jurisdiction.  There should be strict penalties for creating and distributing harmful viruses to computer system, juvenile pornography, and instructions for weaponry.  I am not sure how it would work, maybe a part of the UN, but they should have the right to go anywhere and arrest anyone for committing these crimes.

It is not a matter of net neutrality but creating regulations to keep the net safe.

Government regulation and therefore a government mandated profit margin is the only way to do certain things without forming state-owned companies. Witness the build out of the copper line telephone network. Then once it was built out, the gov't deregulated it but forced the incumbent carriers to allow CLEC's to use lines that we the people, NOT the telephone company, ultimately paid for. 

The patent statement is interesting, and also makes me think of toll roads, where there is a period of advanced profitability before the road reverts to being all-access/free. Is this something that could be applied to the network neutrality discussion?

I agree.  It is a HUGE can of worms.  Your analogy is much more valid than mine in that you show the other "car mfgs" restricting access of another, rather than merely a feature of that mfg..

You are correct in pointing out the stranglehold that top tier providers can place on smaller ISPs since, in all cases, traffic from the smaller ISPs must traverse the Tier I networks.  It's a very difficult issue in the argument between government control and free enterprise.

I would think, though, that this would fall under current anti-trust laws such as those that Microsoft was prosecuted under in recent years.  Do we need legislation for this specific case, or do we merely need to enforce the laws already in place?

Agreed.  I guess I just get spun up sometimes.  

We could go back and forth on this issue, which is why I wanted to see it added, in some form, to the list of questions.  Since the list does not have any right or wrong answers (as stated at the top of the form), it will be cause for debate during meetings and other gatherings, and help decide who will be the candidate put on the ballot.

A bit off topic, but I think it would be nice to have a forum for friendly debates, if for no other reason than to see how people in other areas feel about topics like this one.

I agree that ISPs should not block access to any content nor throttle based on content requested.  The only problem that I see with Net Neutrality is it is not the government restricting or throttling access.  Since it's not the government (yet) restricting this access, it cannot be a 1st amendment issue.  It is a private company who is choosing what services to offer to their customers.  My company does not allow spammers or adult site hosters in our data centers.  I'm not sure if I'd want the government, at this point, to regulate what service a provider will or will not offer.

We always have the ability to choose a provider who will not block or throttle access, as long as competing broadband providers are available in a particular locality.  Perhaps, some entrepreneur will start a company providing an encrypted tunnel to a Citrix farm or some other type of terminal service where folks can get to neutral nets.  Unfortunately, this is at an additional cost to the consumer.

Here's a simple analogy of what I'm inferring by my initial remarks:

One car manufacturer puts sunroofs in all of its vehicles.  Should we require all car manufacturers to put sunroofs in all of its vehicles?

Certainly, that is an absurd analogy, but isn't it the same thing?

Once providers realize their customer base is willing to go to alternative providers, the issue will work itself out.  They are in business to make money.  I don't think government controls to a free market issue is the answer.

On the .xxx domain extension issue, I am in favor of it.  Unfortunately, anyone can register any domain with any domain extension.  How do you prevent that?  Also, the public Internet is global.  How do you get the rest of the world in step with this?  I like the idea because it would be no problem at all to create protection software to filter on a .xxx extension rather than having to constantly download updates from the filter manufacturer.

I see it as an issue because it would come out as a law which could allow the industry to be self regulating. Some people may be against Net Neutrality so that the companies would be able to cencor sites which are inappropriate.  Others, myself included, would prefer to have the ability to see any website, regardless of content, and allow the user to decide which types of content to block.

QoS falls along the same lines.  While it may not be blocking content, by slowing down service, or speeding service up, it has a similar effect to blocking.  Also, the ISP may be allowed to add additional fees to see more content on the internet, similar to how you would pay more to see additional Cable channels.

I have known people who are both for and against Network Neutrality.  I think that there are people who could like to know if a candidate would support Network Neutrailty.

The .xxx domain is a good question because it relates to the issue of identifying sites which are determined to be inappropriate, and lets parents know which candidates would support keeping that content away from children. It relates to censorship of websites, but the blocking those sites would be the decision of the user, and not the ISP.