Two Bills of Interest Advancing In Congress

pgn674 writes "While the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 failed to pass in the House of Representatives, two other bills of interest to this community are currently moving through the US lawmaking process. One is the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which Communications Workers of America claims will help us towards bringing high-speed Internet access to all Americans. It will have the FCC increase their granularity in reporting the Internet accessibility of an area in the US, and redefine broadband measurements. It has passed through the House and the Senate, and differences in the passed versions are currently being resolved. The other bill is the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008. Pandora is excited for this one as it will give them time to negotiate with SoundExchange (i.e. the RIAA) for new, more affordable royalty rates. The bill is currently in the Senate, and is expected to pass with ease."

Comments

Legislation is not free

[Chairboy]

What's the deliverable for things like the 'Broadband data improvement act'? Nothing, as far as I can tell, except some congressional reports about which areas of the country have high speed internet access. This is data that should be collected by the companies looking to know where to invest. That's how commerce works.

The cost? $40 million a YEAR. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8587/s1492.pdf

This isn't $40 million out of the ether, it's YOUR money (if you're a US taxpayer, anyhow).

What in blue blazes are we doing? The economic crisis we're in is multi-faceted, and mad crazy spending is a big component, both privately AND governmentally.

Re:Legislation is not free

[explosivejared]

Well this is the whole problem. We have adjusted to having such easy access to credit and capital and money in all its forms that once the credit markets seized up, the resulting deflationary pressure would be multiplied and reek havoc. The thing about the market though is that it sort of gets itself into spirals, or apparent spirals, where the exact thing that caused a problem is what we expect to solve it. Inflation of the currency and ungodly overspending results in a deflationary bomb, well the only thing that can save us is... uh more inflation of the currency and more ungodly spending. Maybe pork is the cure? I don't know anymore.

Re:Legislation is not free

[lysergic.acid]

investing in infrastructure isn't "mad crazy spending."

communications networks are already heavily subsidized, at least this will ensure that such investment is providing adequate returns. if a particular provider is not providing return value on this public investment, then they should not continue to be subsidized. likewise, these reports will allow statewide grants to be used more efficiently/effectively by focusing attention and resources on areas that are lagging behind in broadband infrastructure.

the ideal solution for this type of infrastructure is to nationalize it, but create a decentralized structure similar to the Department of Education. funding and general development goals/initiatives are set by federal and state level government, but each area's ISP and local infrastructure (like municipal wi-fi) should be managed by municipal governments.

subsidizing commercial corporations doesn't give the public any control over the management of vital public infrastructure. this has been demonstrated with the telecoms, and again with ISPs. we pay for the infrastructure, but they still charge us extortionate prices made possible by their natural monopoly.

with public utilities, which are always natural monopolies, the only ways to protect public interest is through industry regulation or have the government provide the utility. but with a pro-business government that is constantly pushing for industry deregulation, subsidizing private industries is not a viable option. so the only real way to establish a communications infrastructure which serves public interest rather than corporate interests, is to nationalize our communications infrastructure and provide broadband access through locally-managed municipal wi-fi.

Re:Legislation is not free

[Firehed]

Very few people are going to be willing to pay more for faster access - the few who do already are, the vast majority of internet users are still just doing web browsing and email, which really doesn't improve all that much with faster broadband.

That may be true today, but once you start considering high-bandwidth content (480p+ video, etc) and it's rapid growth since the availability of broadband, the demand for even faster connections will absolutely go up. With companies like Apple, Amazon, and even NBC completely legitimizing the practice thanks to iTunes, Unbox, and Hulu respectively and indeed pushing their online services, the need and desire is there. Granted NBC and the other big TV companies are a lot slower to adopt, but they are catching on and they have a hell of an influence once they REALLY start pushing it.

Of course the ISPs would absolutely hate this. Not only would it increase their bandwidth and infrastructure costs, but many of them are also TV service providers (all of the cable ISPs, and probably some of the bigger DSL companies) and that would directly target not only their cable revenues but also other services like TiVo. This heads towards the whole net neutrality issue, since content-providing ISPs would without question have financial incentive to throttle (for example) Youtube and Revver in favor of either Hulu/etc or their own tv.comcast.com type of thing.

Re:Legislation is not free

[jlarocco]

I'm not following. A lot of people don't think faster broadband is worth paying for. So the ISPs don't provide broadband in those areas. But you're saying that everybody else should be forced to pay the cost of installing broadband in those areas? Why?

It's peanuts. My family's share is forty cents. I'll pay it, just for the information, which ought to be available under the Freedom of Information Act.

If you really think it's that important, and you really consider $40 million "peanuts", why don't you fund it yourself? There's nothing stopping you. That way those of us who don't think it's worth even forty cents don't have to pay for it at all.

Re:Legislation is not free

[CrimsonAvenger]

A lot of people don't think faster broadband is worth paying for. So the ISPs don't provide broadband in those areas. But you're saying that everybody else should be forced to pay the cost of installing broadband in those areas? Why?

You should try reading with your prejudices turned off.

A lot of people don't think faster broadband is worth paying for. Absolutely true.

The ISP's don't provide broadband in those areas. Well, no. They don't provide FASTER broadband in those areas. Note the "faster", which allows the second statement to talk about the same thing as the first, unlike in your post.

That said, there are areas which have NO BROADBAND. My parents' house, as an example. It's about six miles outside town, and won't get broadband within the lifetime of the universe, if only market forces apply. Hence an equivalent to the Rural Electrification Act.

Which I support. Faster broadband for the people who already have broadband? I'm not interested in having the government provide that - if there's a demand, it'll happen. If there's not, it won't.

Re:Legislation is not free

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nothing, as far as I can tell, except some congressional reports about which areas of the country have high speed internet access.

If the Congress is going to do something about broadband deployment, they ought to at least be making decisions based on good data. Until very recently all the broadband availability reports were strictly by ZIP code, so that if somebody in a ZIP code had broadband, all residents in that ZIP were counted as having broadband available. This recently changed to ZIP+4, but the data doesn't yet exist, at least publicly. So, every statistic you've heard about broadband deployment rates is likely to be wrong, to some degree, unless it was a locally-collected local report.

If the government wasn't granting telecommunications lobbies, and the government couldn't save money by using the Internet for governance, and the government wasn't regulating any viable options away (yeah, FCC, I'm looking at you), then it would be best for them to be completely hands-off on this. That would be the best solution. But, coming out of my dream world (deferred to a future release of World), a few reports could actually be useful for deciding proper policy.

I'd much prefer this to Hank "We needed a really big number" Paulson-style legislative efforts.

Re:Legislation is not free

[Anonymous Coward]

it would be best for them to be completely hands-off on this. That would be the best solution.

Sweden, Japan and Korea beg to differ.

Re:Legislation is not free

[jlarocco]

That said, there are areas which have NO BROADBAND. My parents' house, as an example. It's about six miles outside town, and won't get broadband within the lifetime of the universe, if only market forces apply. Hence an equivalent to the Rural Electrification Act.

That's my point. If your parents were willing to pay enough, they could get broadband. They don't think it's worth paying, so why should we pay for them?

Maybe they want it but can't afford it? Well, sucks to be them. Wanting something really bad doesn't give them the right to force other people to buy it for them. I want a Rolls Royce, a beach front mansion and a trophy wife, that doesn't mean the government should buy them for me.

Re:Legislation is not free

[electrictroy]

>>>My parents' house, as an example. It's about six miles outside town, and won't get broadband within the lifetime of the universe, if only market forces apply.
>>>

Nonsense. My house was situated similar to your parents' house, but last year Verizon started selling DSL over the existing phone lines. No upgrades required; I'm still using the same lines I've always used. Verizon did this, not because they had to do it, but because they wanted to do it. They saw an opportunity to make money. The free market worked.

BTW that electrification act is the greatest mistake.

It encourages suburban sprawl via government subsidies. It should be repealed and the tax removed from everybody's phone bill. If you want to live 50, 60, 70 miles away from the city, then YOU pay the costs of running the electrical wires out to your house. Or setup your own private electrical company. (Or better yet, live closer to town and discourage the environmental destruction caused by wasteful suburban development.)

Re:Legislation is not free

[CrimsonAvenger]

AND raiding your neighbors' wallets for $3 a month to cover your costs. If I did that, I'd feel guilty of theft. If I live in no man's land, then *I* should be the one to pay for the cost of running the wires out to my home, not my neighbors.

Plus the additional fact the the electrification act encourages suburban sprawl which encourages environmental destruction & needless paving-over of valuable farmland.

Note that without the Rural Electrification Act, most farms would not have electricity to this day. My grandfather didn't get electricity until I was a teenager, as I recall.

Note that the REA didn't actually cause the spread of the suburbs. Suburbs are densely enough populated that it is quite profitable to provide electricity and phone service to them without the REA. The REA was for the benefit of country houses in Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado. You know, those physically large States with so few people that you need a car to visit your next-door neighbor?

Yes, I'm aware that very few /.ers are aware that people still live in the country. Fact is, the food you eat was pretty much grown by people who live in the country. Mostly far enough out in the country that they'd have no phone service and no electricity without government intervention.

Don't know about you, but I'm not terribly bothered by the idea that the government required industry to provide basic amenities like electricity and phone service to ALL Americans, not just the ones who live in cities.

Note, by the way, that the REA hasn't actually provided those services to ALL Americans, though it pretty much covered the parts of the country that were part of the country when the Act was passed. Alaska is still a place where electricity and phone service can be problematic outside the cities. And given that Alaska has the fewest people of any State, and the largest land area of any State, it's likely to stay that way for a long time to come.

Re:Legislation is not free

[CrimsonAvenger]

Yes, the racists were Democrats. They left en masse for the Republican party leading to its current make up of the bottom of the barrel of our society. Welfare leeches

Read more history. The racists stayed with the Democratic Party for several decades, until they just couldn't stomach some of the things the left was doing. Then they left, reluctantly.

Also, note that, traditionally, the "welfare leeches" were, and are, staunch Democrats to this day. Remember, Welfare was also an invention of the Democrats.

You're a typical loony lefty

Wow, that's the first time I've ever been called a lefty! I'm not sure whether to applaud you, or suggest that you're not bright enough to pour sand from a boot with instructions printed on the heel, since I've been posting here for years and years, mostly to the right.

Though perhaps, if you're as far right as you sound like (just a tad right of David Duke), I look like the left from there.

Oh, you should also read enough history to know what you're talking about when you discuss religion in this country. From your rant above, you haven't a clue in the world about the subject.

Even if it was symmetrical, it simply isn't true. I'm not asking them for shit except to stay the fuck out of other people's business.

Oh, nonsense! You use those neat, government supplied roads. And those neat, government supplied raillines (yes, I know the government didn't build them, they just gave away enormous tracts of land to the railroads to get the railroad companies to build them). And that neat, government supplied electricity in your house (don't know where you live, of course, but there's not anywhere in the country that electricity isn't regulated by the government). And that neat, government supplied sewage and water and waste pickup thing (again, don't know where you live, but unless it's way out in the country, you use government supplied services for all that). And that neat, government supplied police/fire protection.

I could go on for a long time about how dependent you are on the government. But I don't feel like wasting any more of my lifespan on the subject. Suffice it to say that most everyone (you included) considers the government services you use to be just part of the background of life. The government services you don't use are for the "leeches". So kindly take your brain out of "park", and look at the real world, not your delusions about it.

A nice change

[Lord Byron II]

In contrast to the many "doom and gloom" postings about the US government's actions, it's nice to see a story where they are doing something "right" for a change.

Re:Gotta be against at least one

[postbigbang]

It's more onerous than that. The NTIA, which has been hobbled by the Bush administration, actually is the Commerce Dept wing that's supposed to be doing something, not the FCC.

The NTIA has had more Under Secretaries than (insert bad metaphor here), all of whom have paid lip service while the telcos bring out useless new wireless 'broadband' schemes while converting the US slowly to DSL in the face of cable data competition.

While keeping track of broadband penetration and use might be nice, it's in the wrong department and not charged with doing much with the data. Instead, we can get reports that will motivate Congress to take more telecom lobbying money so that they can continue to make the same decisions that got us to third-world-country status in terms of broadband.

Vote in November.

$202 Million kickback to a 700000+ member union?!

[GlobalColding]

Hey I love giving out money as much as the next guy but isnt this just a little blatant? Why are we kicking down this $202 million dollar gift to the biggest communications and media labor union in the USA?! Seriously, RTFA and you will see this thing is of no real substance just another payola to whoever got these parasites elected.

Slashdot, we just don't talk like we used to.

[arrenlex]

We didn't have any stories on the bank collapses, we didn't have any stories on the bill itself, we didn't have any stories on Canada preparing for election... why isn't the politics section used for politics anymore? It seems we only have stories directly relating to tech these days, which is a shame as there are other categories on Slashdot and people have lots of insight about them and would like to discuss them.

Can we stop trying to artificially narrow Slashdot's audience and actually discuss things of more general interest than new developments in number crunching?

Re:Don't you people ever learn?

[GodKingAmit]

Yes, by allowing the evil government to intervene we will have the same piss-poor broadband that the citizens of Japan and Finland have.

Plus the idea that the government would allow any non-trivial network operate without oversight and regulation is rather hilarious.

Why is this a legal matter?

[Reivec]

Can someone explain to me why being able to negotiate royalty rates is even a matter of legislation? Why wouldn't this just be agreed upon in contract with the parties involved? Bit confused here.

Re:On the Bailout plan

[cayenne8]

"Without the Federal Reserve? No wonder no one voted for that crackpot in the primaries."

Well, there are some pretty good arguments put forth, that the Fed. should never have been put in place...it is not a constitutional body, in fact some argue it is actually against what the constitution says with regard to issuing/printing money.

Re:On the Bailout plan

[cayenne8]

"In stead of bailing out wall street directly, why not help them indirectly? With a bail out of $700,000,000,000, they can pay toward mortgages, up to a limit, for people who are in standing; since say January. People with paid off mortgages suddenly have new disposable income which can go back to both main and wall streets. Paid off mortgages means no more for closures. Better yet, it creates cash flow back to the banks, making them solvent again without rewarding them for them criminal behaviour which created this whole situation in the first place."

But paying off people's mortgages isn't fair...especially to those who were fiscally responsible and didn't buy homes they could not afford!!

What of those people that have been out there, saving for a home they could afford...waiting for housing prices to adjust to more reasonable levels....you actually want their tax dollars to pay for people who jumped in over their heads and pay off their houses?

That is just not fair. No, the govt. isn't there to bail you out of personal stupidity, let those houses be sold, when the price is reasonable, people that are responsible fiscally, that are good credit risks, will be there to buy them back off the market.

Hell, if anyone had known the US gov. would be buying houses...then everyone would have jumped into the market, and gotten in to wait for the free payoff. That just isn't fair, and would be rewarding bad behavior.