Rick Boucher To Chair House Internet Committee

Misch writes "Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) will be taking the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Rep. Boucher has been an advocate for consumers rights, is a co-founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus, and has participated in a Slashdot Interview. He was instrumental in defeating key escrow, back in the day."

Comments

He needs to look out...

[Urger]

A piece of advice to him, before calling anyone wearing a black hat before the committee make sure to check the sub basements for bouncy balls.

Re:He needs to look out...

[idontgno]

Perhaps the most on-topic xkcd soundbite ever:

"...it's like herding lolcats."

Not posting anonymously, 'cuz it's not whoring if you do it out of love.

Hopefully

[MikeRT]

He will not support net neutrality, but rather will support federalizing and then heavily deregulating franchising laws so that cable, telephone and wireless companies don't have to really pay any taxes or face any regulatory burdens when they decide to set up shop in a new market. In addition, hopefully he will support the first half of Lessig's suggestion that the FCC be abolished, but will stop short of creating the "iEPA" (innovation Environmental Protection Agency) replacement. These laws and agencies only serve to enrich the well-connected at the expense of competition.

Re:Hopefully

[eln]

See, and here I thought the CEOs of the major cable companies would be too busy to post on Slashdot...looks like I was wrong.

Re:Hopefully

[JesseMcDonald]

The entrenched cable and telco companies wouldn't argue in favor of reducing regulatory barriers. On the contrary, they willingly accept such minor restrictions as they can't work around in exchange for effective protection from competition. An invasive regulatory environment best serves the incumbent providers.

Let me be the first to say...

[verbalcontract]

Let me be the first to say that I, for one, welcome our new sane, Slashdot-answering, fair-use-aware internet overlord.

Good for Internet and Environment

[stomv]

Boucher is great for this post, and I'm thrilled that he'll be there. I'm also thrilled that he'll be giving up leadership of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. Boucher is a coal guy from a coal region of southwestern Virginia. He was weak on energy and environmental standards relative to the Democratic caucus.

So, this is good for Net Neutrality and other Internet issues.
It's also good for climate change and other environmental issues.

P.S. Like Boucher? Click on my sig link and send him some bucks!

EXCELLENT CHOICE

[rlp]

He's honest, smart, knowledgeable. Yet despite those handicaps he's served in Congress for many years.

You may know his brother

[Foolicious]

His brother is Bobby Boucher -- who was a standout linebacker and special teams player at South Central Louisiana State University.

Tell me about it.

[Balinares]

Over here, they created telco regulations at the turn of the century, at a time the incumbent providers were already very few and very entrenched.

It was horrible.

The regulations got used. When the entrenched telcos tried to stifle the growth of up-and-coming providers with underhanded tactics, they got punished -- I kid you not! The mind boggles. Those guys were only trying to keep making money!

So now we got up to 20Mbps (in the countryside, don't know about cities) with no cap, with such things as custom reverse DNS and IPv6 as free options, installation on Linux officially supported, TV-over-DSL with hundreds of channels, and, oh, free phone to half the planet, too, all for a fixed monthly rate of about $22. The horror! The former entrenched telcos weeped a lot as they lost the marketshare they were rightfully entitled to.

Some silly liberals are probably going to bring forth some silly theory about the point of regulation being to prevent attempts by private interests to stifle competition, but that's a silly notion, of course. And probably a little subversive.