Am I reading this wrong? This appears to support the public domain, the opposite of what the article says. 

“Ron Paul: a true People Person!! (paid for by the Corporations are people fund for Paul 2012)”

The others are uncivil libertarians.

This is not entirely accurate. It is indeed true that huge ISP’s already almost hold monopolies over internet access and do indeed receive special permits, subsidies, and various government help. HOWEVER, Ron Paul or his son Rand are not inconsistent in their opposition to Net Neutrality laws, nor do they endorse monopolies, natural, or unnatural.  Libertarian view , and by extent Ron Paul’s , is that no business at all, no ISP, not PG&E (America’s electricity and gas provider) should receive any aid or a single dollar from the government. Not a cent from the tax payer.  If the subsidies and aid by the government to these big ISP was not there in the first place they would not have become monopolies.

Net Neutrality in itself sounds like a good idea because it sounds like it is designed against discrimination of internet users no matter how the latter use the internet access.  However, this enforcement would have to come from the same government that created the monopolies in the first place. Net Neutrality would not prevent creation of unfair government funded monopolies, nor destroy the existing ones. BUT what it has the potential of doing is creating a precedent that will suggest that the government as an entity has even more control over internet or how it is provided to the user in the first place.  This means, when horrible people come to power they’ll be able to use Net Neutrality as a precedent for government control of the internet.

Tolls are inefficient in practice(because you have to slow people to collect them), so other ways of paying for the road are usually better; but they are applied relatively even-handedly to road users, not too unlike typical $X/YMb/s/month charge for a data line.

ISPs, by contrast, have significantly more sophisticated ways to distinguish one flavor of traffic from another, by protocol/destination/etc, and they also tend to have business interests that they can advance by taking advantage of that. Cable companies losing video business to netflix suddenly discover that streaming video is destroying the intertubes!!! and telcos hit by VOIP begin suffering mysterious jitter problems, never mind all the fun to be had with having site operators bid for priority.

If roads operated like that, you’d pay the supplemental Toyota Toll on GM roads, and vice-versa, commercial establishments partnered with your road vendor would be readily accessible, while those competing with them would be locked in 25mph zones or simply off the map entirely, and the toll to use a given road would change dramatically based on the classification of the contents of your car. Happy times.

Edit: Irony noted, but seriously, can anyone point me to a good, decent politician anymore who even attempts to work for their constituents beyond the absolute bare minimum?

The same words get thrown at all sides as if one government wouldn’t be the same as one multinational conglomerate. (In other words, “left” vs “right” and “socialism” vs “capitalism” are not arguements. They are both the same destination if you drive them all the way.)

Quote: “But, ironically, just as decentralization has unleashed the potential for free markets andindividual freedom on a global scale, collectivist special interests and governments worldwide are now tirelessly pushing for more centralized control of the Internet and technology”

Ironically, since copyright is a government-endorsed monopoly that I am also against, I don’t feel too bad about the collectivist dig (even though it is the rhetoric of monopolies). Since I’m also against the government “regulating intellectual property” on the Internet (as in enforcing something that wouldn’t otherwise exist), I don’t mind that line either.

Quote: “We do not need to reinvent our principles for the web; we only need apply our coreprinciples to it. When faced with Internet regulation, we should ask these key questions:”

To pick out the key questions:
 
“Does it protect property rights?”
“Does it protect individual rights?”

I think his and every other politician’s answers turn into mystery-meat here. In effort to apeal to all sides, they resort to irrefutable ”common sense.” The same common sense that has
 nourished hatred of anything different, from racism, to electric cars.

I strongly believe tangible property rights are different from intangible rights (to whatever degree you supprt them), and anywhere the two ideas might meet, tangible property must be preserved. This means intangible rights will not exist at some extremes (for example, they should not prevent physical use of any equipment you own, subject to everyone else’s physical rights), and that is fine: because real things matter most.

If he really does think the two are equivalent then he is stuck in the same mud as every other “good old country boy” politician out there who’s arguing from analogy and completely out of touch with reality.If so, it’s a shame. I thought Ron had clarity on some other issues.

The thing about infrastructure is: it exists for all of us, not just those willing to pay more for premium service.

Copied directly from the above manifesto, too. Reading the whole thing, it seems to indicate he is considering imaginary property rights – like the digital echos you mentioned – to be identical to regular property rights that he apparently fights for.

They’ll defend this. They’ll stand against anyone who says Net Neutrality is a good thing – hell, there are already people in that crowd who believe it’s evil collectivist nonsense without any prompting, it isn’t going to be a hard sell for Paul.

And the reason? Because they DON’T think it’s a strike against them, they think it’s a blow for their personal freedom, and they’ll be livin’ in a libertarian wonderland if he manages his goals.

They think that the people fighting FOR Net Neutrality are the ones trying to restrict their freedoms, who are working against them.

There are very few places on Reddit where Ron/Rand Paul are terribly well liked anymore, pretty much only the libertarian or Ron Paul supporter subreddits – admittedly, they had a big thing with spamming other reddits for a while, but they’ve really cut down on that annoying bullshit of late, except for a small handful few exceptionally loud users, and even they mostly seek out places where people are speaking ill of Paul, and trying to start fights.