Where did you get the idea that Chavez is a dictator?  He's was democratically elected and has always had the popular support of a majority of the people in Venezuala.

I think you need to question not only why actors and directors may support chavez, but also why the US govt and it's large business interests despise him.  You can't honestly believe it has more to do with his human rights record than it does with the fact that he nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry.

Yeah, I'm not happy they excluded wireless from the more stringent requirements.

Even the more stringent requirements don't seem to block anything they were planning to do in the first place.

The district court has slapped down this sort of power grab by the FCC once before. I don't see why they wouldn't do so again.

Chavez also virtually controls the media in Venezuela, the election counting may be fair but the campaigns leading up to them certainly aren't. So he's not exactly a dictator, but he's hardly a paragon of democracy either. He falls somewhere in between.

I don't disagree with this at all.  My point was that Chavez is neither as good as his supporter suggest nor as bad as his detractors portray.  Living in the US all we get is one side and I was just saying that people shouldn't accept that portrayal at face value.

Ok, I am back again.  Here we go.... I am ASTONISHED how net neutrality has been spun into some sort of power grab by the government to control the Internet, when it says that data on the Internet is not supposed to face ANY form of discrimination.  Here is a video on it.  It would be wise if the spin stop, but won't....

And Fox News and others in the supposed "conservative" blogosphere have things spin this way.  Nope, the Internet is not supposed to be regulated in any way... unless it involves gambling or wikileaks or porn or anything else that might be seen as objectionable.

You really cants regulate the internet as the protocols cant be controlled past what the ISPs already have control over. IPv4, IPv6, IPv8, TCPIP, etc all have set standards that have no frequencies or anything like tv and radio that can ben regulated. IPv8 is usually medical, Google, and major server hosts. IPv6 is smaller server hosts, and some general users now as ISPs upgrade standards before IPv4 runs out of numbers. IPv4 is an old standard used for us the users that will be hitting a brick wall soon (under 200? days till we run out of IPv4 IP addresses). TCPIP protocol is what controls everything.

Also, all the USA, China, etc have the power to do is setup firewalls and destroy domain names. IP addresses and proxy servers handle all these quite well. And they cant make it illegal for an individual to use either of these.

Only way to stop things would be to shut down the internet, which cant happen do to how things work, and even if they could a black internet would take its place. I;m fairly sure we can figure out how to modify things to create protocols like IPv5 and IPv7.

As for TV, it had to happen. Analog signals were jamming up radio and cell phone waves. Selling off analog tv signals to radio and cell phone providers is actually a smart and financially responsible move for the government (shockingly).

Jesus Christ, anyone who is against this net neutrality law should have their head checked.

The FCC is protecting consumers, small business owners, and keeping the internet fair and balanced but somehow they're the BAD GUYS?

/facepalm

I just don't know what to think about this country any more. This is ridiculous.