Net Neutrality to Win Big on Capitol Hill?

The New York Times has weighed in again on Net Neutrality, this time with a hopeful message of change in the near future due to the shift of power in the House and Senate. The opinion piece takes a look at Ron Wyden in the Senate and Edward Markey in the House who have both promised to lead the charge to pass a net neutrality bill in the coming months. Lessig, on the other hand, has a somewhat more cynical view of the new Congress.

Comments

We really should start thinking of the 'net...

[PurifyYourMind]

...as less a commercial/military enterprise and more as a public utility that everyone should have a right to access, just like water or electricity.

Re:We really should start thinking of the 'net...

[paranode]

And the phone and cable companies too? Like how the government essentially creates monopolies through subsidies and then 20-30 years later decides that the monopolies are bad and to disband them to create actual capitalistic competition again? Keep the government away, please.

Vetos

[Frequency Domain]

This president has used the veto less than any other president in history. I suspect that's about to change, now that Congress isn't his lap dog but the loyal opposition doesn't have veto-proof majorities. Don't get your hopes too high for massive changes. If anything, the biggest changes are likely to be in Congressional hearings - we might actually see some committees try to hold some of the "deciders" accountable for their decisions.

Re:Vetos

[almeida]

This president has used the veto less than any other president in history.

Wikipedia says you're wrong.

Vital to net existance

[Warbringer87]

2 tiers is a step backward, not a step forward. Internet companies didn't create this content, in fact the content is the reason people pay them, to be able to access it. If you couldn't access the net for the stuff that you want, why bother with it? Companies that do this run the risk of users migrating to companies that don't, but not everyone has an alternative(ie, the whole wikipedia/qatar thing recently)

From TFA

The cable and telephone companies have fought net neutrality with a lavishly financed and misleading lobbying campaign

A good reminder that every politician is in someone's pocket, regardless of political affiliation.

That's because of signing statements

[BitterAndDrunk]

He doesn't have to veto, as he uses signing statements as a pseudo-line-item veto.

More signing statements in history than any other president, including gems such as (paraphrased) "I'm signing this bill into law but I don't like it so it won't be enforced"

I'm probably way off on grammar as the statement shouldn't be in quotes as it's not exact. . . but the gist is there.

Government is a puppy: Dangerous when bored.

[Kadin2048]

I would thoroughly support a Constitutional amendment that did something like this for the Federal legislature; there's no reason those people need to be sitting in the same room together more than once about every five years or so. Maybe ten. At least then, by the time they got around to making laws, they'd have a nice thick stack of citizen complaints to work though and problems to solve. The real problems always seem to occur when you have politicians looking for things to do, to make themselves look useful.

It's ironic that although the Founders of this country realized the dangers that having a standing Army presented, they evidently never realized those posed by a sitting Legislature.

Re:Government is a puppy: Dangerous when bored.

[MillionthMonkey]

No Congressional legislative action or Congressional oversight for ten years? Sounds like a great idea. You could fit two whole presidential terms in there!

If the country were only facing Texas-sized problems, this would be a good idea. Unfortunately our real problems are bigger than the ones they have in Texas.

The real problems always seem to occur when you have politicians looking for things to do, to make themselves look useful.

Look at us right now. We currently have a lot of stuff that needs doing. No politician needs to be looking very far. Just think of all the things we need to get moving on yesterday- federal budget deficits, global warming and environmental issues, water shortages, accelerating economic stratification, trade deficits, housing bubbles, energy crises, a pending transition from an oil-based economy, etc. And what has Congress been up to during this time?

This is what the 109th Congress thought was important:

• Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act
• Randy Cunningham's Flag Desecration Resolution (thanks, Randy!)
• Public Expression of Religion Act of 2006
• Pledge Protection Act of 2006
• The CheeseBurger Bill
• Terri Schiavo Incapacitated Persons Protection Bill
• Independent Review of OSHA Act of 2005

And that's not even counting their legislation that actually addresses real problems but incompetently, like the Medicare prescription drug bill. The problem isn't that we have a Congress in session; it's that we elect Congresses that like to pander to us on stupid issues while Rome burns.

But the 109th Congress shares your opinion that the 110th Congress is best tied up. So they closed their doors after the election without doing their mandated job of closing out their own spending bills. They left behind a half-trillion dollar mess of budget bills so that the next Congress will have to waste time unraveling all of it. Good work if you can get it.

Re:Balance of power

[BWJones]

Did it ever occur to you that net neutrality legislation is also a power grab and is being done in the name of fear?

Please explain to me how legislation to protect equal access and prevent multi-tier implementations that favor big business and big government are a un-Constitutional power grab. After all, conceptually, net neutrality goes far back in US history to the mid 1800's to preserve equal access to telegraph lines with the only exception being made for war or emergency purposes. The purpose was to encourage impartial use of the new resource and promote economic development in a democratic manner. I think that perhaps you are confused about the status of the current proposal to break up limits on net neutrality.

Re:Still not a fan of the idea

[hey!]

Actually, you've got it backwards. Net neutrality is the "state of nature" for Internet services. Non-net neutrality is the hypothetical solution. The problem is imposing your choices on users so you can lock them into your proprietary services.

If you want to see how a non-neutral net works, look no further than your cell phone. Chances are it has a camera, and for many users the camera can only be used with your network provider's lame "picture mail" service. You may even access your own email service from your phone, but it still doesn't matter. You have to use their picture mail service to ship the picture to your regular email, then use your regular email to forward it to where you want it to go.

Try getting basic information on how to use your phone to give your laptop network access. Sure, it's on the feature bullet list, but if you call tech support to find out how, you'll get an earful of bad attitude. Seriously, I had to go through several levels of technical support to find out the number to dial to access network service, and the guy I got literally screamed at me as soon as the world "Bluetooth" was out of my mouth. Now at the time I worked for a company that resold this vendor's service, so I called a manager we worked with to report a serious breach of professionalism. As soon as he found out what it was about, his attitude was anybody to tried to access Internet services other than his company's was on their own, even though Internet data access was a listed feature of their cell service.

This shows you what the network provider's natural attitude is towards interoperability, when they start to get into the content business. They want to lock you into their inferior proprietary services, and put road blocks up to your accessing the services you want, then grudgingly allow you to use the services you paid for if you can beat the basic information you need out of them.

A non-neutral net is the beginning of the end of competition in Internet content services. It will soon become like broadcast radio: a wasteland of redundant "formats".