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U.S. House Rejects Net Neutrality

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tiered-internet-here-we-come dept.

tygerstripes writes "A recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives has led to a rejection of the principle of Net Neutrality from the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (Cope Act), in spite of massive lobbying from prominent businesses. According to the BBC, the bill '...aims to make it easier for telecoms firms to offer video services around America by replacing 30,000 local franchise boards with a national system overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'. However, according to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, 'telecommunications and cable companies will be able to create toll lanes on the information superhighway... This strikes at the heart of the free and equal nature of the internet.'"

2 of 598 comments (clear)

  1. It's not theirs to regulate by s0abas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The biggest problem I have with this bill is that the lines aren't the telco's to regulate in the first place. Here's the sequence of events in the form of a chat log:

    Telcos: Hey congress, we want to build fiber to have a faster internet for the future. Would you please pay for it?
    Congress: Sure! That sounds like a swell idea. Here's some money!
    Telcos: (Later) Congress we ran out of money! Can we have some more?
    Congress: Sure! Just finish the daggone thing already!
    Telcos: (More Later) Congress we ran out of money! Can we have some more?
    Congress: Sure! Just finish the daggone thing already!
    Telcos: (Even More Later) Congress we ran out of money! Can we have some more?
    Congress: Sure! Just finish the daggone thing already!
    Telcos: Congress! WTF! We want to be able to charge people more for using these lines you paid for with taxpayer dollars!
    Congress: FINE JUST GO AWAY

  2. Re:Not a solution by dbitch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But, and here's the question I've been struggling with over the last few days, what happens when the connection is encrypted? HTTPS or SSH or SSL or TLS? What can you route on? Source and dest IP only, I would think. Maybe that will be the lowest on the pole - "if your connection is encrypted, it gets the lowest service, since we can't tell what is going over that connection." Seems that's a good way to keep Joe Sixpack from using encryption - "hey, my stuff is running slowly. Guess I won't use that encryption stuff." Not that he uses it anyway. Maybe that's the next step in the bill - "in order to enforce this bill, we must require that all communications be unencrypted." Kind of a scary thought, no?