House Passes Amendment To Block Funds For Net Neutrality

Charliemopps sends this quote from the National Journal: "The House passed an amendment Thursday that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from using any funding to implement the network-neutrality order it approved in December. The amendment, approved on a 244-181 vote, was offered by Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., to legislation that would fund government agencies for the rest of fiscal year 2011. Walden and other critics of the FCC's net-neutrality order argue it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband. "

Comments

Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank them again if years down the road you have to pay another $50 a month just so you can stream youtube and netflix to your computer.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[QuoteMstr]

The GOP is a monstrosity. As Brad Delong says, they "lie about everything all the time." More than that, though, every single Republican initiative exacerbates inequality, smashes our dignity, and adds to the sum of human misery. There are no exceptions. There are no moderates left in the Republican party. What remains is an organization dedicated to aristocracy, superstition, and the snuffing out of curiosity. This party is a scourge, and to see its members elected against and against forces one to doubt the fundamental goodness of human nature.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[sstamps]

The problem is, though, that Google/Netflix aren't the ones "using" (as in "consuming") the bandwidth as those who are complaining about it claim. They are producers. The ones who are "using" (as in "consuming") the bandwidth are the ISPs' USERS, who are requesting the content from Google/Netflix. It doesn't make any sense to bill content providers for bandwidth consumed by users.

Well, it does make sense if you look at it from a competitive angle.. one where the ISPs so complaining have a vested interest in competing content provider services.

Google, Netflix, and everyone else pay for their access to the internet. They pay a LOT already. If every ISP who carries their content at the behest of the ISP's own users/consumers could charge an extra "fee" to carry "popular" content, then there wouldn't be any "popular" content, except from each particular ISP.

This is why I believe that true "Net Neutrality" is where content providers and bandwidth providers should not be allowed to be the same entities -- they are simply an untenable conflict of interests waiting to happen. Indeed, this is why the internet grew explosively and prospered, because, for a long time, the bandwidth providers had little interest in content, and the old "walled garden" combo access/content providers died out like the dinosaurs they became (AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve/etc). That's all changed now. Companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want to go back to that model, which might be lucrative for them, but it impacts the freedom of their customers, and the free market overall.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

As much as I agree with you politically, you are way out of line coming to a tech site and calling the participants "neck bearded dweebs" To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, why not go jack off to some snowboarding videos and let us "dweebs" worry about keeping this whole internet thing up and running for douchebags like you.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[AHuxley]

Re Please find an example of an ISP trying to charge content providers for "preferential" access.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/huge-isps-want-per-gb-payments-from-netflix-youtube.ars
Pay up or risk an "internet brownout"...

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the republican union busting bill that was proposed Friday, and they are trying to get it rammed through today. (In Wisconsin)

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[Adrian Lopez]

"Disproportionate use of bandwidth" by Google and Netflix? What a joke.

The fact is that Google and Netflix each pay their respective ISPs for all the bandwidth they use. What they *don't* pay for is the bandwidth their customers use, nor should they have to. If Google has a contract with ISP A and ISP A in turn has a contract with ISPs B and C, it's really not B and C's place to charge Google for that which is already covered by their contract with ISP A. Otherwise Google would have to sign contracts with the entire alphabet of ISPs to account for what you call their "disproportionate use of bandwidth", which I'm sure you know is bullshit.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[skids]

Most people already think both parties suck.

It's why they don't vote.

And it's a problem. What people need to learn is that they should pick the better party even if the difference is only marginal, and vote in that party's primaries to make that party better, and then do more than just vote to improve our aggregate level of intelligence when it comes to deciding who to give power to.

Just sitting there and saying "everything sucks" isn't going to get you anywhere.

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[vertinox]

The funny thing about your statement is, there are grassroots and smaller parties who would fit 80 percent of Americans more than the Republicans or Democrats do but they seem to be totally unaware of it.

Time for a history lesson...

In a first past the post two parties will always dominate. Doesn't matter what names or their policies are, but a 3rd party always has math against it.

Oddly enough the two oldest democracies that are still around today went with FFP because voting had never really been tried before (UK and the USA) while the more newer ones have gone with other forms such as proportional representation (like Germany and Israel). This was that as new countries were being formed or overthrowing their old monarchies, they realized that the FFP was flawed in someways as they could see how it was in the countries that had it (usually looking at the UK) and being more modern times (1890 through 1950s) they went with PR, IRV or STV (single transferable vote) in which 3rd parties get a greater voice in government and the change of a 3rd party actually becoming a 1st or 2nd party is greater (like the German Greens or the Israeli lukid).

So if you want change... Real change with 3rd parties, you need to change the constitution. Of course the vested parties won't really be too keen on that but from my understanding a few states passed STV last year in some local elections so you'll start seeing 3rd parties on grassroots levels in some places.

For more info: http://www.fairvote.org/

Re:Thank your neighborhood republican

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh pretty much all since there exists NO competition in a good 80%+ of the USA? I'll use myself for an example: Here I have the "choice" of Cox cable (boy did they choose a perfect name, since they are dicks) AT&T DSL which MAXES at 768k and which I've been told "tough shit, take it or leave it" because they have NO intention of upgrading the lines, or the local WISP that if you are lucky your connection works maybe 6 hours a day and who pulls your plug if you use close to 1Gb a day.

So where EXACTLY would my "choice" come from if Cox decides to fuck me out of Youtrube/Netflix/etc? Because while you may have piles of money in the bank to afford to abandon your place of residence and start over in some other state just for better Internet, most of us frankly can't afford that. We have wives/GFs, family, jobs, etc that simply don't allow us to just walk away and without net neutrality the ISPs know they can do anything they want while sending you a bill that is crazy priced and has a full color Goatse under complaint dept and you can't do shit because you've got nowhere to go.

So while I'm all for the free market the simple fact is there is NO free market for Internet access for the majority of us. Hell look up the broadband report article and see how many were like me complaining the numbers were an outright lie. You simply can't "vote with your dollars" if the choice is take it or enjoy dialup.

The House, Not The House & The Senate

[WrongSizeGlass]

The Senate won't pass this so it's merely symbolic on the part of the House. Way to manage your time well, boys and girls. Now get back to work on real problems!

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Don't be so sure they won't pass it. It's an amendment, not a bill; IIRC, that means they would have to vote specifically to strip the amendment out before they vote on the entire bill, and I'm not at all confident that enough members of the thin (and historically spineless) Democratic majority in the Senate have the will for that fight. Adding riders to "must-pass" bills is a time-honored technique for sneaking all kinds of looniness into law.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[Xacid]

"Adding riders to "must-pass" bills is a time-honored technique for sneaking all kinds of looniness into law."

And this nails precisely why this technique needs to be abolished. It's dishonest politicking. Each section of a bill ought to be required to be voted on.

Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate

[DarkOx]

Not only that if they amend the bill to remove the amendment it will have to go back to the House. As it stands this morning I doubt the final bill can even get through the House. There is possibility of a Government Shutdown at this point because the Speaker has stated he will not let an temporary extension of current funding bill go to vote. Personally I'd like to see that!

I don't know how I feel about Net Neutrality being forced by government. I am pulled in multiple directions on that but I do know that I don't like an executive agency like FCC deciding to do it on their own, it should be done or not done in the legislative branch. The FCC should just enforce whatever the Congress decides. So I am for Congress preventing the FCC from acting, in the mean time.

The usual.

[SuricouRaven]

Sneaking an amendment into an appropriations bill. Everyone says it's an underhanded cheat, but it's just too *useful* to prohibit.

Re:The usual.

[Black Parrot]

Sneaking an amendment into an appropriations bill. Everyone says it's an underhanded cheat, but it's just too *useful* to prohibit.

It's only an underhanded cheat when the other party does it.

Re:The usual.

[phantomcircuit]

That's not at all what they're doing here. The article is intentionally misleading.

This is a bill HR. 68 "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. "

Further they didn't even pass this yet, they merely referred it to committee. Indeed there isn't even any pork in it. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.68:

Re:The usual.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

This is a bill HR. 68 [loc.gov] "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. "

That seems unconstitutional. It seeks to strip the 2014 (and beyond) house of representatives of an ability that is specifically mentioned in Section 8 and clause 1 of the constitution which states "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States" not to mention clause 3 which states To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"

What I'm trying to say is how can the current house of representatives take away a future's house of representatives ability to fund anything (which in this case being the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) which is described as one of the functions of that body by the constitution without a constitutional amendment?

I suspect they can't.

It's well within their power to allocate the government's money during this session, but trying to dictate what a future congress can do seems like a stretch.

Funny how the party that sells themselves as adhering to the constitution always seems to be the ones that do everything possible outside the bounds of the constitution...

whores.

[unity100]

"it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband"
wait. it did NOT. it was de facto rule of internet up till this day, until you corporate whores had been instructed to kill it.

land of the !free! *rich ... give me !freedom! *dollars or give me death ...

Re:whores.

[commodore6502]

>>>it was de facto rule of internet up till this day,

Since when was net neutrality the defacto rule? I don't recall that ever being the case - in fact I remember the earliest ISPs like AOL, Compuserve, Genie, and so on used to put the internet behind a wall and charge extra. Then they opened the wall, but filtered which websites or newsgroups you could visit.

Re:whores.

[TubeSteak]

YES competition is always more innovative than a government monopoly. That is a self-evident truth, because the many produce more ideas than the one.

Was the steel industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
Was the oil industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
Was the railroad industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
I could go on and on.

Most of the giant corporations competing with one another are left over from the trust busting era in the early 1900s.
Maybe you meant to say that "regulated competition is always more innovative than a government monopoly"?
Because, while it may not be self evident, history has shown that truly free markets will lead us directly to monopolies.

Re:whores.

[Jay L]

AOL, Compuserve, Genie, and so on used to put the internet behind a wall and charge extra.

Wait, what? AOL never charged extra for Internet access; it was part and parcel of the AOL client. ("AOL is the Internet and so much more!") I don't believe the others charged extra either.

Then they opened the wall, but filtered which websites or newsgroups you could visit.

You have your history reversed. First AOL offered newsgroup access without any client changes, via a server gateway; once it was technically feasible, we built a browser and then a sockets library into the client so you could do whatever you wanted (short of connecting to port 25, which we redirected for spam filtering). I don't remember if we filtered out the porn newsgroups from our server gateway, though it wouldn't surprise me - we thought at the time that it was important for us to remain a "family service", though we were simultaneously developing automatic newsgroup-to-binary download capabilities, and of course you could use your own newsreader and a commercial news spool like giganews if you wanted full newsgroup access. We didn't filter any web access that I recall.

Jay Levitt, AOLer, 1989-2001

Seems Legit

[Flyerman]

Remember, these are some of the smartest people in the country. They have evaluated the issue from all angles and determined that "net neutrality" as regulated by the FCC is not in the interest of their constituents.

They know exactly how it works and what it means for various businesses and especially in terms of the First Amendment. They have been completely unbiased in their review and I applaud them for their actions.

Re:Seems Legit

[19thNervousBreakdown]

I'm pretty good at Internet.

Re:Seems Legit

[Osgeld]

jeez the op was so ripe with sarcasm that I think I got some of its juice on my desk, and yet somehow, someone had a woosh, good job

Re:Seems Legit

[iluvcapra]

You laugh.

But of course, lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the simple possibility that it might not be possible to pay for a non-tiered, flat-rate, uniform quality-of-service internet of sufficient capacity to deliver on-demand HD video or SIP telephone from any particular content provider in the US, independent of geography and service provider, to every terminal in the United States with flat monthly or even per-byte pricing on either end. The costs of building and maintaing the system simply don't map to consumption of the system's resources. Some parts of such a price structure are really lucrative for a network operator and some of them don't pay off for decades.

And if there were ways of doing it this way, it would require a hell of a lot more regulation than mere mandatory "Net Neutrality."

Re:Seems Legit

[BJ_Covert_Action]

... lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the simple possibility that it might not be possible to pay for a non-tiered, flat-rate, uniform quality-of-service internet of sufficient capacity to deliver on-demand HD video or SIP telephone from any particular content provider in the US, independent of geography and service provider, to every terminal in the United States with flat monthly or even per-byte pricing on either end. The costs of building and maintaing the system simply don't map to consumption of the system's resources....

Well than that thought needs to be purged from everyone's mind like puss from a zit on a HS kid's prom night. It is not impossible to build and deploy a nation-wide infrastructure capable of delivering high quality service to every part of this country. We've done it before. We've done it multiple times before. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) electricity network in this country that could reach every single home, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) water delivery infrastructure to every home and business in this country, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) interstate and state level highway system that could deliver transport goods to just about anywhere in the country. We build the rails before that and (at the time) they were very high quality. We built and deployed the telephone network, and managed to rig it to deliver high quality analog voice signals to every damn place in this country!

There was a time (there were multiple times) when the United States invested in developing itself. There was a time when we weren't piss scared to spend the money to connect every freakin' corner of this country to the latest technology of the period. We have the man power. We have the resources. We have the know how. We can and should build and deploy a high capacity, high speed network system of computer (internet) because it is the next great investment in the future. Internet access, hands down, is the world-changing infrastructure of our era. As the leaders of the free world (supposedly) and the premier technology power in the world (supposedly) it should not take this much politicking, bullshitting, and corporate cock sucking to deploy free (as in libre) and open internet access to the whole fucking country!

How the hell has our population been convinced that this is somehow acceptable or normal? America used to be capable of seizing upon a new invention (rail, steam engine, internal combustion engine, electricity, telephony) and deploying it, broadly and fairly, to the whole fucking population. And yet today we piss away one of the greatest infrastructure opportunities (cheap, open, frree (as in libre) access to the world's whole sum of knowledge) all because a few sacred telco monopolies have convinced us "It's just too hard, nigh, impossible to undertake such a large project."

Fuck That!

We built the transcontinental railroad. We built the interstate system. We let Ma Bell build the telephony system and then broke them up when they abused their monopoly powers. We have built nuclear power plants and the Alaskan pipeline. We built the California Aqueduct. We put a human being on the fucking moon for Christ's sake and we're going to accept the notion that we, as a country and society, cannot get fast, unfettered access to the internet like every other first world country?

Bullshit!

Will it cost money? Yes! Will it take a lot of hard work? Yes! Will it take time, higher taxes, and the spine to tell the multinational telco's to go fuck themselves? Yes!

But will it pay off in the end? Anyone who thinks it won't is stuck in the stone age, fooling themselves, or just downright lying.

You bet your sweet ass that we could build and deploy a strong, open access platform for the internet nation wide. The only problem seems to be that people are too chicken shit scared or stupid to push for it.

It's a MONOPOLY dummy

[commodore6502]

Monopolies need to be regulated Mr. Congresscritter.

Jeez. Maybe we can appeal to our Member State Legislatures to regulate the Comcasts, Verizons, and other monopolies inside their borders.

Just to be clear...

[Anubis IV]

This lack of funding is aimed at the FCC's version of "net neutrality", not to block net neutrality in general. This is a good thing. That version of "net neutrality" was in name only. Obviously there are interests on both sides of the aisle at play here (Big Business wants even less restriction, consumers want what they've always had), but we all agreed that the FCC's current idea sucked, so this is a win.

Re:Just to be clear...

[hedwards]

And once the Republicans repeal the health care reform bill, they'll be replacing it with a new reform package, right? Just because the current idea sucks, does not mean that if it gets repealed we're guaranteed something better. At least with what we have we can fix it and adjust it as needed, whereas if we repeal it then we have to start over and every interest group and corporation is going to be eyeballing it to see what they can get slipped in.

Re:Just to be clear...

[commodore6502]

>>>This is a good thing.

It is? What was wrong with the FCC's latest rules? I didn't see anything objectionable about them, and I'm usually anti-government. The rules seemed reasonable - block ISPs from discriminating against sites or charging extra to reach them.

a proposal

[Black Parrot]

There is an interesting proposal in an essay in the latest Scientific American: allow differential charges on the basis of quantity of traffic, but not on the basis of content.

That would all the (IMO) reasonable approach of charging the heaviest users more and/or throttling their bandwidth, but wouldn't allow Comcast to put competing Netflix out of business.

Real Problems

[Tmack]

Like making sure "Obama is a one term President!" Yeh, gotta get priorities set right, cause thats what the people want! Conflict and inaction to make sure someone else is elected, not any actual work on any real issues... ugh, makes me sick

-Tm

Exasperating

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point. They never, ever seem capable of doing anything useful, or beneficial for the citizens of this country anymore. It's exhausting. Every single time a story pops up (on Slashdot or anywhere else) that involves politics or a political decision, you can basically just assume that it's going to screw over everyone in the country that isn't already a politician.

Being a U.S. citizen today feels just like playing the role of Sisiphus, consistently pushing a boulder uphill (trying to improve the world by being a responsible citizen, voting, jury duty, etc.) only to realize that you have to push it up again when you reach the top (Congress critters keep passing bills that fuck things up even more). It's exhausting, to keep reading about how those folks we elect to power just stumble around and fuck things up so badly....It's so consistent that it very nearly serves as a dataset to debunk that old meme of, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

Our leaders are just fucking terrible. It's exhausting.

Re:Exasperating

[Nidi62]

Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point.

Politics HAS become a profession. You work in politics for years, make 6 figures per year, then retire to the lecture circuit, or work for one of your supporting corporations as a lobbyist. Back when this country was first founded, politics was a calling, a sacrifice. Representatives were lawyers, farmers, merchants, doctors. A couple months out of the year they would give up their time(and therefore their money) to go to the capital and legislate. But politics was not how they made their living. But we've gotten away from this. People no longer see public service as a sacrifice. They see it as a tool for personal enrichment, a way to gain power for their family, and(this is the worst part) a means to an end. That end is power and influence, both while in office and once out of it.

Basically, it's not the system that is broken. It is the people within it.

Bullshit

[SmallFurryCreature]

What produced the Internet in the first place? The government or private industry?