FCC To Vote On Net Neutrality On December 21

GovTechGuy writes "The FCC just released its tentative agenda for the December 21st open meeting, where the Commission will vote on whether to adopt rules to preserve net neutrality. According to the agenda the FCC will consider 'adopting basic rules of the road to preserve the open Internet as a platform for innovation, investment, competition, and free expression.' House Republicans have already promised to oppose any solution put forth by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski."

Comments

There it goes.

[geminidomino]

Well, we're boned.

(No, I have no faith that the Right Thing(TM) will be done given the number of asshats involved. It's only a question of where it goes wrong)

Re:There it goes.

[dkleinsc]

You've been seriously misinformed about what "net neutrality" actually means.

Net neutrality basically means that ISPs can't throttle traffic for any reason other than maxing out a connection at the advertised download/upload rate. It says nothing about the content. It gives no extra power to the FCC or any other government agency. What it takes away is the ISPs ability to censor content, or say something like "that's a nice website, real shame if it were unable to be viewed by any of our customers."

Re:There it goes.

[Enderandrew]

I'm not sure this the case here.

I think most Republicans in the Senate have no clue what Net Neutrality really means. McCain said in the Presedential debates that he didn't understand the issue completely, but he was against more government regulation of business.

This is more ignorance than evil.

Overall I believe both parties support big business. There isn't a political party that doesn't love money.

The massive difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats want social freedoms, but want to regulate the hell out of everything else. Republicans want financial freedoms, but want to regulate social issues.

It seems the public just wants freedom period, and neither party is really interested in delivering that.

Re:There it goes.

[haapi]

You have it backwards. Nobody is imposing fees on ISPs. Net Neutrality is to protect ISPs from imposing fees on content providers.

Cue gangster voice:

"Nice content you have here.. Would be a shame should anything untoward happen to it during delivery over our networks."

Re:There it goes.

[rezalas]

House Republicans have already promised to oppose any solution put forth by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski."

Yes, because our tax dollars need to be pissed away into the wind fighting anything and everything one person suggests 'just because'. I'm always amused that politicians talk about intelligence and maturity and wisdom but then they act like a three year old who would rather rip the head off a doll than share it.

Re:There it goes.

[hedwards]

A couple of things, one the Republicans are not the Democrats. And the Democrats of today are not the Democrats of the 50s. Secondly, The Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail against whatever the President has wanted to do since their exile. It's got nothing to do with what's good for the country it's about screwing over the Democrats. That didn't happen during the Bush administration. You can claim that however like, but the reality doesn't fit the facts. President Bush made precisely zero effort at including the Democrats and regularly went out of his way to pick a fight with them. In spite of that he regularly got votes from Democratic politicians even on controversial items like the Patriot Act.

I realize that a lot of people on the right have a hard time understanding things, but President Bush got 6 years of softball questions from the press, nearly a full year before anybody blamed him for anything. And you're full of it if you're seriously suggesting that Obama has gotten even a small fraction of that support. The more realistic observation is that the Republicans don't love this country or are at least so mind blowingly incompetent as to believe that screwing over the citizens is the best way of expressing ones patriotism.

At least in recent years the Democrats have been trying to do the right thing, the Republicans at this point aren't even bothering to pretend like they care about the country, it's more important to screw over the Democrats and win the Presidency in 2012 than it is to enact good legislation. It's really, troubling that it's coming out of their own mouths without any prompting by left wing operatives.

Re:There it goes.

[T.E.D.]

Wait, the Republicans are dead-set against that too. Now I'm way confused...

That's really kind of a contorted way to look at things in order to make Mitt Romney-style health care setups look evil though.

I'm not a huge fan of the fine myself, but I think it makes sense. If you are not going to buy insurance at all, that means whenever you (or a certian percentage of folks like you) get really sick (which is more likely, since you'll be avoiding those full-price doctors), you'll end up at a really expensive emergency room, since they can't legally deny you treatment. Then you'll most likely declare bankrupcy when you get the >$10,000 bill, effectively sticking *me* and everyone else with insurance with your bill. It seems perfectly fair to me for there to be an extra fee on *your* tax bill to recoup some of the extra costs you will be incurring.

Re:There it goes.

[jhigh]

As well they should, don't you see the danger of internet providers controlling content?

Don't you see the danger of the GOVERNMENT controlling content?

why havsn't Obama called out the republicans yet

[vxice]

This is one of my major problems with our president. He barely calls out republicans for stuff like "House Republicans have already promised to oppose any solution put forth by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski." They are not looking at the issues they are rejecting it without looking at it. Not that dems have never ever done this but Obama ran on a platform of ending this kind of thing and only seems to bend over backwards continuing to let republicans to run him over.

An ounce of prevention

[Ichijo]

If it's already the government's job to break up monopolies, then why is Net Neutrality needed?

Re:An ounce of prevention

[dwandy]

Net Neutrality is a bit of a red-herring: as long as the last-mile is owned by the retailer there will never be competition in the market.
With true competition there would be no need to discuss net neutrality as those that offered unimpeded access to the web would be the ones people would use. More specifically, there would always be a competitor who offered up neutral access for those of us who cared.
Like streets, communication access is a natural monopoly (oligopoly at best) and should be either directly state owned (like our streets) or set up as a non-profit stand-alone with a mandate to maintain and upgrade the wires. Retailers would then connect and be charged for connection + (time-of-day?) bandwidth. Retailers would be free to make price plans as they see fit.
Fighting for net neutrality is working on symptom and failing to cure the problem.

Want a free/libre internet? Take back control of the last mile.

Re:why havsn't Obama called out the republicans ye

[bunratty]

What do you want Obama to do about it? It's up to the people to not vote for politicians that pull those stunts. Obama agreed to work with Republicans, but if they dig their feet in and say they refuse to cooperate, what can he do? At least when the house and senate had Democratic majorities he could simply ignore them, but apparently that wasn't the right thing to do either.

Greedy People who Run Things

[digitaldc]

Greed is the driving force behind politics, the economic mess we are in, and now anti-consumer measures like the tiered-internet that companies like Comcast are proposing.

Does anyone else think that the relentless pursuit of money-at-all-costs mentality is greatly hindering science, freedom, innovation and technology?

Re:Greedy People who Run Things

[Anonymous Coward]

Greed is the driving force behind being alive. Every single person is greedy to an extent.

It's not specific to politics.

Re:So why?

[chemicaldave]

Probably a little of both. They're against govt. regulation and pro business. Of course this will hinder potential profits for telecoms, but they don't have the foresight to see the damaging effect this will have on any new Internet businesses in the future. And when they have to stand-up for their actions the inevitable answer will be

"Well, the American people don't want government regulation and I am required to abide by their wishes instead of actually making a sensible decision. Besides, these friendly telecom funded studies have informed me of the dangers to our fragile economy that this new regulation will surely impose on the hard-working middle class American people.

Yet more blatent hypocrisy from the Republicans

[l0ungeb0y]

For as much as they rile up their constituency about how America has lost all it's jobs, the economy being in the tank and how China is taking over, they do their best to constantly oppose new job creation and assist large corporations in stifling competition and innovation. Opposing Net Neutrality shows that the Republican party is against innovation, against American competitiveness and only seeks to put more money in the hands of their friends and contributors, the Nation and the people be damned.

But hey, when your core voter base is a bunch of pisswater guzzling, bible-banging, NASCAR fans who get their news from Glenn Beck and social opinions from Reality TV, I guess you don't even need to attempt to hide your hypocrisy since the majority of retards who voted for you are too dumb to think.

Net Neutrality assures more jobs, more innovation and continued competitiveness in an open marketplace. Opposing it will only benefit Comcast, Verizon and AT&T while preventing new startups who can't pay the extortion fees if they aren't blocked all together for daring to compete with their own "premium services"

America is already falling far behind in internet infrastructure. Asians can get Gigabit lines for what we pay for standard DSL, yet AT&T and Comcast are still stumbling around dragging their feet with IPv6 and it's taking an act of Congress to FORCE them to get internet access speeds to 1/10 of what Japan has today by 2020! Yet they have spared no expense suing municipalities who wanted to offer free wifi services and opposing Google's plans for municipal WiMAX offerings. Opposing Net Neutrality will only insure this situation grows exponentially worse.

Comcast's overreach might help the cause

[GodfatherofSoul]

The timing *could* be right since they've just tried extorting content providers.

Re:Why?

[pitchpipe]

What does the FCC have to do with this, again? Last I checked, internet was not transferred directly over the air like traditional television, so they have no more jurisdiction over internet than cable TV.

God damn there outta be an IQ requirement to post here! What part of "Federal" or "Communications" or "Commission" equates to only "over-the-air"?

Here is a formula for figuring out whether things will pass in the US: Does it pander to a moron's sense of morality? pass Does it benefit only the super-rich? pass Does it look like it benefits the middle class but really does nothing or actually just benefits the super-rich? pass Does it do something to really strengthen the US? fail

Ask yourself: what does not having net neutrality do? It benefits the super-rich. Net neutrality laws will fail. No matter what you do. No matter what you think. No matter how many "middle class" do-gooders you have on your side. It will fail. The super-rich will somehow convince the silent majority (morons) that it is somehow in their best interest that net neutrality does not succeed. Don't believe me? Just watch.

Re:Not even there's to legislate.

[commodore64_love]

>>>So the same governing body that allows me to be forced to a single ISP

What the hell are you talking about? The FCC is part of the national government, and it's your *local* city or county government that gave Comcast a monopoly. Wakeup man. We live in a federalist system which means power lies at different levels.

You can't blame the national FCC for something controlled locally. Go to your townhall meeting and bitch at them about the monopoly they've created.

Re:why havsn't Obama called out the republicans ye

[commodore64_love]

>>>only seems to bend over backwards continuing to let republicans to run him over.

Not correct. The Republicans only had ~40% of the congress and zero power to stop anything. It was the Blue Dog DEMOCRATS that have been opposing Obama. They are the ones that were blocking health reform and opposed single payer. They also demanded Obama write an XO forbidding the funds be used for abortions.

Obama had problems these last two years, but those problems existed *within* his own party, since many Dems are quite conservative & not agree with Obama's agenda.

Re:why havsn't Obama called out the republicans ye

[MBGMorden]

It's up to the people to not vote for politicians that pull those stunts.

The thing is, partisan politics have totally screwed up the ability for people to truly vote in representatives that do what they want.

I can vote in a Republican who wants to grant mega-corporations the right to extort each other (and us by proxy).
Or I can vote in a Democrat who wants to take my guns away (in addition to promoting a welfare state).

There's no balance in issues. Closest thing to a sane party I've found is the Modern Whigs, but they're not going to win an election in my lifetime. Being presented with two choices, both of which you detest, isn't an opportunity to "do something". It's just teasing the voter and reaffirming the powerlessness.