US Lawmakers Propose New Net Neutrality Bill

An anonymous reader brings news that Net Neutrality legislation is making another comeback. A new bill, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), would make ISPs who fail to provide service in a non-discriminatory manner subject to anti-trust violations. From the NYTimes: "'The bill squarely addresses the issue of the enormous market power of the telephone and cable companies as the providers of 98 percent of the broadband service in the country,' said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. But broadband providers and some congressional Republicans have argued that net neutrality legislation isn't necessary. The broadband market is becoming more competitive and net neutrality regulations could hamper investment in broadband networks, some Republicans said during a hearing this week."

Comments

Re:Not necessary?

[rukkyg]

I don't think that's a valid comparison. In your example, there is one PHB. In the net neutrality example, there are many people.

I can draw an analogy to pharmacies. Currently, there are fundamentalist Christians who won't fill prescriptions for contraception. This should be illegal. A pharmacy should be drug-neutral. I think the same thing applies to ISPs. If fundamentalist Christians started their own ISP, they might block things on the internet as being anti-Christian. And what if this company was the only one in a certain area. Since ISPs are a natural near-monopoly, this is almost certainty. Then there are people who are denied rights. What's to stop Comcast from deciding that youtube is too good of competition to its cable offerings and then just throttling or cutting off access to youtube? Nothing! And if Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, etc. all decided at once that YouTube was evil, and blocked it. What could anyone do to stop it under current laws? Nothing. YouTube is dumb though. What if they cut off all anti-corporate sites, democratic and/or republican sites, foreign sites... There's nothing to protect the public from the corporations' huge ability to basically cut off the country from information for all practical purposes. Just because they haven't done it so far, doesn't mean that we don't need a law to protect us from it.

This is racism! NO! THIS IS SLASHDOT!!!

[Travoltus]

Seriously, though, morgan greywolf's response is it's not about race. Conyers just happens to be black ergo Conyers is always thinking about race. QED.

White people never think about race when they make their political decisions, and all that.

Just wait'll you read the bill, you'll see what morgan greywolf is talking about: it has "think of the black children" literally encoded in ROT-32 in the text.