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FTC Could Gain Enforcement Power Over Internet
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that under a little-known provision in financial overhaul legislation before Congress the Federal Trade Commission could become a more powerful watchdog for Internet users with the power to to issue rules on a fast track and impose civil penalties on companies that hurt consumers. 'If we had a deterrent, a bigger stick to fine malefactors, that would be helpful,' says FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who has argued in favor of bolstering his agency's enforcement ability. This power would stand in stark contrast to a besieged FCC, whose ability to oversee broadband providers has been cast into doubt after a federal court ruled last month that the agency lacked the ability to punish Comcast for violating open-Internet guidelines. The provision to strengthen the FTC is in the regulatory overhaul legislation passed by the House, and although it is absent from the legislation before the Senate, some observers expect the measure to be included when the House and Senate versions are combined."
And why can't the FCC do this? Do we need another agency's involvement? Perhaps I am a dolt buried under the bureaucracy.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
FCC is the besieged agency the summary is actually referring to, not the FTC.
The FCC has the jurisdiction, they should be enforcing the rules. But since they don't have the teeth, let the FTC do it, those guys are sharks.
Oh and the summary says FTC when it would say FCC - "FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who has argued in favor of bolstering his agency's enforcement ability. This power would stand in stark contrast to a besieged FTC, whose ability to oversee broadband providers has been cast into doubt after a federal court ruled last month that the agency lacked the ability to punish Comcast for violating open-Internet guidelines."
What are the improvements vs. IEEE 802.3af Power Over Ethernet ?
Will the old devices be compatible ?
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
and with we, i mean all internet users around the world. if the comcast bastardiness stands, more american companies will imitate it first, then the international companies in other countries will start to demand the same rights to rule over their users' traffic.
if this tide is stemmed there, that wont take off.
Read radical news here
At least a lawmaker can be voted out of office.
You guys are all gonna be crying a river when the FCC mandates all packets get cryptographically labelled with an asserted certificate before transit is allowed.
Most all of the real problems with Internet companies that can hurt users are already covered under fraud laws - no new powers are required. So, ask yourself why it is they want these new powers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As it stands now, an ISP whose CEO is in favor of political party "A" can have all traffic - to include "grass roots" campaign donations - flowing to or from any organization representing political party "B" "shaped" right into the e-toilet...
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The FTC doesnt give a crap about censoring content only regulating anti-fraud and commercial transactions. The FTC could go after internet companies
under anti-trust and anti-competitive practices laws.
While this might stop Comcast, regulation is -never- the answer when it comes to the economy. If you can mandate net neutrality over all the net* who is to say that the government can't force ISPs to block certain sites? Track 'piracy', etc.
*I believe that the way to regulate ISPs is that if the ISP has lines running through public property, the public has a say on their policies. If they don't use public land, they are free to do whatever.
Regulation usually cuts off one head of the hydra only to replace it with 2, 3 or 4 more problems. Mix this with the fact you can't vote these people out of office and they are accountable to essentially no one and you have a system ripe for abuse.
Let the citizens choose what their public land is used for. If an ISP wants to use that land to lay cable, they should be accountable to the citizens because their land is being used.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Laws that allow the finding and punishment of crooks are good for all of us. Let's hope that the agencies involved get enough manpower to really get the job done.
Yeah every packet is treated the same, so we don't have to worry about innovation in delivery anymore. Plus we won't have to worry about that pesky content getting delivered that ${current luddites in power} don't like, so more bandwidth available for approved content.
Giving governments power of the internet has -never- turned out well for the countries who have it. Or perhaps you want internet like Australia where citizen journalism is prohibited (they removed a video of Neda Agha-Soltan being shot and dying during Iran protests), satire is prohibited (they blocked a page of Encyclopedia Dramatica), and blocking video games which are 'objectionable'.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia and think if you -really- want to give the government power over the internet.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I used to work in an industry where I once heard the following (from a scumbag who ripped off many people):
"The first time you get a call from the FTC you shit your pants"
"The second time you get a call from the FTC you piss your pants"
"The third time you get a call from the FTC you call your lawyer and ask, 'How much will it cost me this time?'"
People in the spam/telemarketing/shady business/etc. industry think of the FTC as a joke. Their settlements are just a cost of doing business for them. Anything that strengthens their enforcement power gets a big thumbs-up from me, even though I'm usually opposed to big government.
The FCC should be able to do something. As a Comcast subscriber my Vonage telephone service stopped working reasonably well when they took over the cable internet in my area. When I was with my local cable system before they were bought up I never once had a problem making calls. Miraculously shortly after they took over and starting offering their own service Vonage was no longer useful. This kind of BS needs to stop. They can run out any competition by limiting or putting their service on a higher priority should be justification alone for a class action suit. Of course Vonage is in enough trouble and was of no help in getting it resolved so I discontinued their service and went cell phone only.
Any new regulations, be it financial, health insurance, fcc, cdc, whatever, has to be paid for somehow, doesn't it?
In the past 10 years the Federal budget in US has grown by a factor of 2, that probably means that the Government is twice as big now as it was then.
Show of hands who here makes 2 times the money now as they made 10 years ago? I know I don't.
What about the Economy, is it twice as big, twice as strong, produced twice as many goods, created twice as many jobs, anything at all that doubled beside unemployment?
Didn't think so.
The US Government at this point is living on borrowed time, so does the US Dollar and the entire country. Question is, what is going to happen when the time runs out? I dread to think of the possibilities, wars, dictatorships, hunger, sickness, mass exodus.
Bright side? It also could be fun shooting.
You can't handle the truth.
Show me a single instance of government regulation of the internet -ever- increasing freedom and having a truly positive end.
Since the government sort of took the initiative in creating the thing in the first place, I'm not sure how to comment to that. I can tell you an example where deregulation had the opposite effect, where telling carriers that they didn't have to lease their lines to competing companies set up local monopolies and discouraged further development beyond high-rent urban areas. It's also sort of funny that we're discussing giving the FTC power to restrict throttling on certain content, and you're trying to tell us that this is what leads to... the FTC censoring certain content. That's a bit like telling me I need to go South to get to Canada from Houston, because eventually I'll swing all the way around the globe.
Regulation breeds monopolies and big businesses that are 'too big to fail'.
It's just the opposite, unless you don't consider antitrust laws to be regulation. We have large investment banks in control of much of our trading sector because we stopped deciding at some point that too-big-to-fail entities were in violation of monopoly laws. You should see how we used to break up large companies, even if they didn't control 100% of the market. It's sort of amazing that after a heavy downturn in the market that came about largely because of commodities being traded unregulated in a sort of a shadow market that people somehow believe that government regulation NEVER improves the market.
Daniel Gross does a decent job of highlighting the Chicken Little effect of regulation on Wall Street here. But of course, this was a discussion about the internet, not Wall Street. In order to believe that further regulation will hurt the development of the internet, you sort of have to believe that there's already healthy competition in the American broadband market, that local monopolies don't exist, that customer service isn't getting worse as the ISPs get lazy on lack of competition, and that the rest of the world isn't slowly smoking us on improving network speeds. But obviously if we'd just get out of Comcast's way, then the internet will be just fine, right?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
FCC needs power to stop comcast from makeing NBC like CSN Philly and makeing it cable only and lock out dish and directv.
Also why can't CSN Philly be like CSN CHICAGO and be on all systems?
or we could just declare ISPs to be telecoms like they are and be able to enforce against them the same as we do for the other companies
'If we had a deterrent, a bigger stick to fine malefactors, that would be helpful,' says FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz,
So what are these cases where your bigger stick (schwartz?) would have been helpful? What would have turned out better? This is nothing but a power grab.
The Internet is just a glorified digital telephone line. If the FTC takes over regulation of the 'net, it should also take over regulation of phone and cable TV. Which sort of makes sense -- the FCC should only be regulating information transmitted via RF in free air, including WiFi, Bluetooth, citizen's band, broadcast TV, HAM, wireless handsets, mobile phones, radiation from all electronic devices... uh, since the FCC regulates practically everything having to do with computers, why don't they just regulate the internet too?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If state and local government did their fucking jobs, there would be real competition between ISPs and the shitty ISPs would die off or change.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
With FTC regulating the internet, does that mean that they get the power to impose standards for non-offensive content the way they do with broadcast TV ?
the FCC should regulate the internet in america. the internet is a lot more than commerce, and that's why the FTC is the wrong organization to put in charge of our wires & wireless
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
No Wyatt Earp it's not in the FCC's original mission statement. Oh by the way have you seen that mission statement lately? No?
The FCC was supposed to regulate POWER and FREQUENCY, not network communications!!!
Look how wonderful they have managed power and frequency....
Nearly ALL the public spectrum is Corporate Owned!
Before you give the FCC the authority to do anything keep in mind their failed mission statement!
Also keep in mind once they gain new authority, they will make things worse, and it will be forever into the future.
Teh FCC will NEVER GIVE UP NEW AUTHORITY!
I'm all for net neutrality, but this will be a fucking nightmare!
Make the ISPs beg for the FCC to take over regulatory responsibility over the Internet.
Have gnu, will travel.
I would add that the minimum guaranteed bits/second must be prominently shown in any ISP advertisement. Heads should roll (not just wrist slaps) if they're caught either filtering anything below that rate, or without the build-out required to sustain that guaranteed minimum rate.
Any ISP is free to advertise " gauranteed zero bits per second" but I doubt that would garner much business.
It's just simple consumer protection, just like every box of cigarettes prominently warns that smoking causes cancer. We deserve to know what we're buying.
A bigger stick is always helpful (at least, that's what my inbox keeps telling me daily)
'If we had a deterrent, a bigger stick to fine malefactors, that would be helpful,' says FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz
Translation: "If you would just make me king, I would be able to solve all the problems."
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
"Indeed, BitTorrent can be used to transfer large files such as online video, which could threaten Comcast's cable TV business.
But broadband providers such as Comcast, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. argue that after spending billions of dollars on their networks, they should be able to manage their systems to offer premium services and prevent high-bandwidth applications such as BitTorrent from hogging capacity."
- perhaps cable companies shouldn't offer a competing business. perhaps they should get out of the internet thing altogether. let the local communities offer wireless.
- comcast gives you 250GB a month. people pay them for unlimited(up to 250GB, so really limited) so what does it matter how people use that 250GB? i don't get it.
I, for one, welcome our new fascist overlords.