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US House Subcommittee Votes To Kill Net Neutrality
angry tapir writes "A US House of Representatives subcommittee has voted in favor of a resolution to throw out the US Federal Communications Commission's recently adopted net neutrality rules. The communications subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 15-8 along party lines for a resolution of disapproval that would overturn the FCC's rules."
you fools gave your houses to the right wing party. right wing parties anywhere around the world, always support corporations over people.
it doesnt matter what your reasons or excuses for voting for a right wing party. you may even be quite right and correct in your reasons. BUT, a right wing party will always support corporations over people, in every way they can. even their acts which appear pro-people, will end up being pro-corp in the long run.
Read radical news here
Walden added. "These regulations will cost jobs," he said.
I know, this is the standard-issue republican response to anything they don't like, but really could we have an explanation this time? Exactly how would net neutrality kill jobs?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
you fools gave your houses to the right wing party. right wing parties anywhere around the world, always support corporations over people.
We didn't give the government to them - at least not in the 2010 election cycle. Rather several decades (or more) ago we happily sold them to them. The only difference is that now the "two" parties are openly showing that there is virtually nothing different between them. We have a (theoretically) non-right-wing president who is continuing every last executive decision of his right-wing predecessor. Meanwhile congress is doing the same thing they did two years ago, which is what they did two years before that, which is what they did two years before that, etc ...
Sure, some people with power are now more openly right-wing, but in the end we don't have any politicians who are not right-wing.
it doesnt matter what your reasons or excuses for voting for a right wing party
Sadly, some people thought they were voting for a non-right-wing party. Now that the curtain has fallen they are realizing that indeed every politician comes from the same party now.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
from TFA: "If the Republican-controlled House approves the resolution, it would then move to the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority. The Senate is unlikely to pass the resolution."
summary fails to mention how this vote probably won't actually go anywhere.
The resolution will next go to the full committee, and if approved there, to the full House. If the Republican-controlled House approves the resolution, it would then move to the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority. The Senate is unlikely to pass the resolution.
...unless if course the Democrats will support this and in return the Republicans will support some Democratic issue.
> you fools gave your houses to the right wing party.
Does America even have a left-wing party? Surely you don't mean those center-right Democrats?
This is not surprising. With a mandate to repeal all of the worker's rights that where hard-won during the early 1900's, and legislating the idea that science is witch-craft, this is not unexpected.
We are entering a dark age.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
FTA: "The FCC lacks legal authority to pass the rules, and government intervention would hurt the Internet, said Representative Greg Walden, the subcommittee's chairman and an Oregon Republican. "The Internet works pretty well -- it's the government that doesn't," he said." He's against government involvement. That I understand. But he's admitting that he, as a member of the government, doesn't really understand the problem. He's admitted to being the problem, so why should he have his way?
"On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle." -Linus Torvalds
Republicans have just killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. The replacement goose's eggs are gold plated, cracked and spoiled.
One of the republicans supporting this resolution is... Mary Bono Mack .... wife of the late Sonny Bono, the Copyright Term Extension Bonehead... so one Bono fscks up copyright, and the other Bono fscks up the Internet. "The Circle is Complete" another dark-sider would say.
Bear in mind that the recent discovery of bufferbloat we've seen inside networks all around the world could be partially to blame. According to Jim Gettys (who was the subject of an earlier slashdot story), big services are being affected by bufferbloat too. Here's the full article:
http://gettys.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/bufferbloat-and-network-neutrality-back-to-the-past/
Let's get this insidious Bufferbloat fixed first, and THEN worry about whether we really need network neutrality or not. There are apparently many things we can do to enhance and optimize queuing and sorting of packets before we add another layer.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Two competing parties and almost perfect "market efficiency", in that polling is so sophisticated that the parties have almost perfect knowledge of the electorate. Hotelling's Law says they they will end up being identical.
A corollary is that your vote is meaningless, since you have a choice between two sames. You cannot bring about change at the ballot box. The only ways to change things are:
Why should Verizon, for example, be forced to prioritize gaming traffic at the same rate as, say, high speed internet for a Doctor's Office that is looking up records in a central database?
Now that the government is off our backs, there's plenty of room for mega-corporations to fuck us in the ass.
One of these days, "we the people" will have to agree on enough to get these fools out of office. I refer to both of the parties; neither one seems to act in the interest of the people as a whole. They represent corporations, special interests, etc. But they don't represent the average Joe at all. Whether we can galvanize a vote to get them out someday, or it comes down to replacing the government by stronger measures - at some point folks will need to agree that something must be done to get government of the people for the people back in the US.
Every story like this gives me even more motivation to get my degree. That way when the effects of all of this shitty legislation in favor of the super wealthy begins to really take effect I won't have a problem emigrating to another country.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Just remember, politics don't code, administer, or run network cables. If people really want net neutrality they will get it. It's really only a question of time.
Seeing as how doubtful it is that the House Members could implement this change themselves, it would need to be performed by us geeks. Geeks of the world Unite! As long as none of us aids them, it simply won't get done.
Republicans represent the interests of very very wealthy people. They are against changes, innovations, new ideas and anything that benefits anyone who isn't in the club. Because from a rich person's viewpoint, everyone is out to grab some of what they have. (oh, and I am not claiming that Democrats got it all right).
Regulatory Capture is why we don't want to have 'Net Neutrality'. It amazes me that all the people who claim they hate big corps and never stop complaining about how big corps own the government tend to be the same people who want bills like this to pass. This is a way for Internet companies to control their industry, that's all it is, and this is not good for the little guy and will do nothing to protect consumers.
I'm sorry but there seems to be a discrepancy with regard to how representatives view NN. It is not a government regulation anymore than the first amendment 'regulates' that speech must be free. Likewise, NN 'regulates' that information must be unbiased. This notion of forced freedom as a form of regulation is probably the most far fetched form of 'regulation' that I have seen. But it should be clear that NN merely forces information to be unbiased. Regulation is a form of constriction on some greater pool. In other words, regulation selects a subset of options from a grand set. NN could not be regarded as regulation because it restricts corporate regulation. NN is, therefore, the antithesis of regulation.
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
Buying a pol is the greatest return for any corporate investment. The fucking revolution on elected whores in America is long overdue.
Defensive much? All of your posts in this thread are silly attempts to downplay the bad side of the GOP or equate big sellouts like this to dishonesty over a bj. You sell out just like your party. So be it.
Pro-corp is the same as pro-consumer. We see "big companies" and we reflexively envy the big sums of cash they control, since they're so much bigger than the sums of cash we control. We all want to force them to give us more for less, sure (and in a democratic society, it's fairly easy to leverage the political process to seemingly do just that).
But you never actually take anything away from corporations in the long run; the most well-intentioned regulatory burdens still increase entry barriers, reduce competition, and favor the larger and more well-established players in a market. Costs are simply passed along to consumers in higher prices or reductions of other product features -- whether or not they would have voluntarily payed the same additional amount for whatever the regulation guarantees.
Saying that the FCC has no authority to impose regulations on the internet doesn't "favor corporations over the people." It simply says that a) regulatory bodies can only impose rules where they have jurisdiction, and b) in this case, companies and individuals are free to barter for bandwidth in whatever manner they see fit.
Broadband is a network industry, much like air travel. In the 30+ years since airline de-regulation in the US, prices have dropped over 38%, and service has tripled in terms of man-miles. Since then, a number of new low-cost carriers have been able to enter the market and challenge the oligopoly, offering consumers greater choice than they ever had before. The same dynamics are in play here; the less regulation there is, the more unthrottled, source-neutral and content-neutral bandwidth you are likely to have access to five years from now for the same dollar. Under regulation, you may force all providers to offer source-neutral and content-neutral bandwidth, but nobody said they have to offer you anything over 5 megabits without a huge surcharge.
Pi Ran Out
...who voted GOP/Libertarian, enjoy paying a lot more to Comcast or Time Warner for your high speed Internet access and throttled to death P2P bandwidth.
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This is a vote for freedom. Freedom of the organizations that INVEST in the infrastructure to be the ones who get to decide how that infrastructure is used. Freedom for you to set the rules for the use of the thing which you built with your money and sweat.
The less the government regulates the Internet, the healthier the Internet will be.
In this way America are kind of like Afghanistan; a country to which we've tried to introduce democracy, but whose citizens do not recognize the value of it and are thus not willing to fight for it, i.e. a horse that has been led to horse to water, but will not drink. Americans, of the other hand, had their freedom, but then gave it away willingly to the corporations... and continue to do so. Like the poor Afghans, they don't understand that their usual behavior is not in their best interest either.
Like Dr.Phil Says, "You can't fix what you don't acknowledge"
but YOU DO ACKNOWLEDGE exactly this ironic, universal, flaw of human nature. Civilization-at-large has perpetuated and permeated this myth across all ethnic, political, temporal, historical, cultural and other designations of humanity since the dawn of reason. That would include us peeps now. Therefore, it makes complete sense to me that if we the people keep acting just like people usually behave, then we should continue to get comparable results. And if you really look at it all closely, objectively and/or subjectively, within the context of a mortal human lifespan, it looks like all human development from an infancy to the grave: Potty training will continue to be necessary for civilization until we no longer exist. The Sphinx learned this riddle and the Nile went to straight hell, yet again. So, like all neurotic behavior, humans will continue to ruin a perfectly good empire, civilization, dynasty, or Renaissance. Its what makes us so successful at being human, in spite of our denials and accomplishments. Nature and God just don't care how much we flail around like goof balls and visionaries. And perhaps thats exactly why everything that you state above is precisely as you have wisely observed with stunning clarity. You have seen the light, in spite of all of the stunning darkness that persists. Don't let the turkeys get you down, no matter the futility of reality. Bravo. Encore Lather, rinse, repeat.
If they're libertarians, they should be perfectly okay with that - "what the market can bear" and all that.
After all, they can always start a new ISP if it gets real bad (funny how it never does, apparently).
That the GOP is Pure Evil^TM.
The GOP = the enemy of the middle class
The GOP = the war machine of the rich and super rich
I have to admit I don't understand the business model that allows the internet to work. I do understand that it was started by the government. Why did the government do that and interfere with the marketplace. I remember at the time that companies like AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy were attempting to start their own networks. If the government hadn't stepped in with the government supported service, mightn't those companies have succeed? Woiuldn't competition between them have led to a better way of doing the internet? You can raise your questions about interoperability between systems, or about this service or that service, but we all know that competing firms work hard to offer things the users want. They would have met these demands.
Which brings me to the biggest "what if..". What if those companies in trying to compete with each other had made a determined effort to show that their network was free of viruses and malware? What technologies would they have developed? With the internet being "free" and everyone using the same protocol, there is no competition to see who can build the best network.
People often point to the internet as an example of the benefits of a government sticking its fingers into everything. But think the internet would be better if the government had not gotten involved.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Sounds like you, like many here, still have no ideal what Net Neutrality entails. Please go read up on it instead of taking FUD as reality.
Wish I could mod you up, both for your comment and sig.
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Welcome to the Apocalypse. Let the monopolies restrict and reduce access to near nothingness.
Is there a site or something that gives the vote records for subcommittees? If these articles are saying it was along party lines someone must have a list. If we can put names to decisions that's a lot more useful than blaming the entire party.
Assuming this was strictly on party lines here is the site of subcommittees, but some apparently didn't vote.
For the lazy here is the table of members. Take note of whether your representative is on the naughty list.
Republicans
Greg Walden (OR) Chair
Lee Terry (NE) Vice Chair
Cliff Stearns (FL)
John Shimkus (IL)
Mary Bono Mack (CA)
Mike Rogers (MI)
Brian Bilbray (CA)
Charlie Bass (NH)
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
Phil Gingrey (GA)
Steve Scalise (LA)
Bob Latta (OH)
Brett Guthrie (KY)
Adam Kinzinger (IL)
Joe Barton (TX)
Fred Upton (MI)
Democrats
Anna G. Eshoo (CA)
Edward J. Markey (MA)
Michael F. Doyle (PA)
Doris O. Matsui (CA)
Jane Harman (CA)
John Barrow (GA)
Edolphus Towns (NY)
Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ)
Bobby L. Rush (IL)
Diana DeGette (CO)
John D. Dingell (MI)
Henry A. Waxman (CA)
I couldn't get past the stupidity. Since when do free people let their government make any rules about how they communicate? And, in a government that explicitly gives the power to the people and not the government. Not to mention, this is a part of the government that doesn't have the power to make rules like this. If you don't like the corporation, don't buy from them. "It's the only game in town". Whine some more, or do something about it.
It's apt and no one will vote to kill that.
Other than possibly throttling services specifically hosted in USA territory, how will the possible passing of legislation stifling net neutrality in the US affect the use of Internet for other nations?
My friend who works at the FCC always reminds me that the FCC is not controlled by the White House but by Capital Hill. He says the Commissioners don't seem to always remember that. I am not sure what this means for this dispute. Perhaps Obama cannot veto their moves? Could they remove the Commissioners from office?
I will admit I am ignorant of how this works.
It's spelled "you're."
Funny thing: they didn't agree about spelling in the days of youre.
The "jobs" that the Republicans are looking to cut are those jobs funded by taxpayer dollars. Most have been added in the past four years. The budget has to be cut somewhere, so somebody is going to cry foul. As for "costing jobs", they are referring to the impact on private sector jobs, This is where we need growth at the moment, not more legislation, rules and regs to have a more negative impact.
(who is pretty right wing by Canadian standards, but basically a flaming commie pinko by US standards)
Ah, I see Canada is yet another one of these western world countries that does have a left wing ;-)
no one builds network infrastructure all by themselves. it is done in tandem with government rules and agreements. and no, that is not a freedom destroying convention that should also change: you want people just laying cable willy nilly wherever they want?
the truth is, any network, cable, telco, whatever, is a government enterprise, built of government grant and monitoring and debate and licensing. yet you imagine it to be the work of some ayn randian captain of industry who wills the whole thing into being by himself, and gets to decide everything that happens on it, and if anyone complains, they are a communist, right?
where do you idiots get this bizarre mythology that bears absolutely no relation to how things actually work in reality?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
if I want to take a toll road, which is less congested than the rest of the highway system.
From this statement I can tell that you have never taken a toll road.
Does that mean that if the toll road is congested you don't have to pay? Of course not, don't be silly. Oh, and due to factors X and Y, now we have to raise the tolls. So sorry. Your alternative is to take side-streets, because these toll roads are the only major roads that get you from A to B.
Yeah, I used to live in the Chicago area.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Am I really the only person here who sees the obvious solution? What do we have here? Programmers. Network Designers. Hackers. Sounds to me like we have the groundwork for your own internet. The simple fact of the matter is the things you were told in high school about democracy are false. Voting gets you nothing. If it did no one would be president, no one would be a senator and no one would be in charge on capitol hill (As if that was such a stretch of the imagination). The reasons are simple. 12 humans in a room can't agree on what to have for lunch. I've been on enough jury's to see this first hand. In fact we have to have an electoral college in the US to fix this problem. The only people in a democracy who have any real power are those who are willing to seize it at any cost. Don't believe me/Don't want to believe me? Test it. If you want a corporation to do something, never threaten them with legal action. They have a collection of lawyers to deal with people like you. If you really want action from a corporation there are 2 things you can do. 1, Expose them and don't stop. The more they threaten the louder you get. This has happened many times across the internet since this century started. Many of you reading this now and know what I'm talking about. 2, Unionize them. I've found this threat works particularity well with groups like Wal-Mart and CosCo. Your results may vary. For increased results, leave Marxist literature laying around company grounds. That being said if you really want to eliminate power from these monopolies, create your own co-op. Keep in mind when and if you do they will come after you. They will threaten you. They will attack you. But they will do so with blunted swords. When they do get louder. Don't hide, shout from the mountain tops. Make sure you can't turn on the TV or radio, or open a newspaper, or read a website, without hearing about how the media monopoly is stepping on your rights. As Jello Biafra famously said "Don't hate the media. Become the media." There is no law in the US which prevents a groups of individuals from starting a corporation. There is no amount of litigation that will allow a corporation to arrest an entire town with the excuse of protecting profits. They may cut off services. You may have to do without some things you are used to. People may get hurt. That's what happens in a revolution. Until you people are will to take action, whatever the cost, no matter how long it takes, You have no right to complain. They have already won.
Well, I didn't vote GOP or Libertarian. But I also didn't vote Democrat during the last election cycle. See, the Democrats around here have some odd positions. They have been waging a continual war on anyone that doesn't want to send money to Hollywood. They have a great track record of dismantling the agricultural industry (one of the larges industries in my state). They detest on of the cleanest, greeenest, most efficient forms of power generation that we know of today. They seem to think that everyone in my state can afford to live an upper-middle class lifestyle, and seek to regulate which items we can and cannot purchase in order to impose that lifestyle on us. And there are a few other grievances I have.
So I didn't vote GOP. I didn't vote Libertarian. I didn't vote Democrat. Who the fuck should I have voted for? (For the record, I pretty much voted for local Indpendents and wrote in some intelligent folk for the higher-up offices).
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
That sounds like a bug with the "net neutrality" bill! Why shouldn't ISPs be allowed to sell QoS? Net neutrality should stick to dealing with filtering, which is the real problem. So long as they let the traffic through, it shouldn't matter if they do QoS on it. For example, I would very much like, as a consumer, to be able to purchase internet service with 10-50 mbps bandwidth, but maybe only 5 GB of low-latency bandwidth. I can then set the proper QoS flags on my VoIP packets for realtime phone conversations, while leaving bittorrent running with standard/bulk QoS flags.
Luke-Jr
Democrats are only evil when they are in power.
Republicans are pretty much evil all the time.
I still remember Reagan talking about making the government smaller, while during his two-term presidency the US government expanded at the highest rate in recent history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
As you can see, Reagan and Clinton were President while the spending was reduced, and all the others saw spending increase during their terms (as a percent of GDP).
"I'm done with this guy."
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
the lesser-known Futball.
I think a few billion people would disagree with you.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
"The real split here in the US is bigger government versus smaller government."
This canard is the generally accepted BS for the doctrine that somehow ignores the reality that there will be some kind of government large enough to do the job.Those too small will be displaced by larger governments elsewhere in time, such as is now being seen in the transition from a US dominated world to a Chinese dominated world.
The real question is whether public policy, call it government or whatever you like, will favor those private interests who can carve out special exemptions, privileges, and special benefits not available in general to other members of society, or those who believe that they should be dispensed more equitably, with laws designed to insure such equality. Corporations will gladly accept dollars from Uncle Sam, just as they would from your pension or health plan, so don't expect "big government" to go away as corporations want Uncle Sam as a captive customer. There only role in society for corporations is to take money from those who have any. "Small government" is just another name for the idea that if you don't have any money, you don't have any roll to play in public policy. Instead those rolls, whether it be managing the global ecosystem that supports life or other "economic" issues, will be "privatized" to be run by those with the right business connections and economic leverage.
What most people don't understand is that corporations are effectively small groups of people, who use their insider status and asymmetric social and economic relationships to simply put, "have things their way". Consequently, it is not a choice between big government or small government, but rather between those who want to see human affairs to be dictated by a special few and those who want to see a more equitable and reasoned dispensation of the riches of the natural world. Unless, you are a corporate insider, voting for more privatization (ie more corporate power) is just a way of saying that rather than a system where all the public gets to decide, only a few will decide and reap the cream. Its no accident that the "Tea Party"/anti-big government crowd primary benefactors and think/tank steering committees are the pet projects of billionaire corporatists.
Ignore reality and the perils of republicanism/corporatism at your peril.
The irregularity of global weather patterns that are transitioning to a climate of a warmer world are rapidly reducing crop yields globally. Your diet will become a lot less diverse, whether you keep your auto or not. Keep in mind the contradictory nature of your response, since keeping your auto, which probably will cost you $5-6/gallon to fill up, thereby also reducing the diversity of your diet by virtue of diverting your income away from food and to the Koch Brothers and Exon Corporation.
In the future the price of living in a healthy environment will be extremely high, because there will be so little of it left to go around.
Ignore the consequences of republicanism at your peril.
No Libertarian is okay with this because broadband is not a free market. If there were a true free market in broadband access, it would be any operator's right to manage their networks however they choose. What we have now are monopolies created by government, so it's no violation of Libertarian principles to say I should be allowed to do whatever I want on the network I was forced to pay for.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
This what happens when the lazy liberals did not get out and vote this last time. There was not excuse for not voting with early voting except for laziness. And you know who you are. A democracy government cannot be ran by a few but a totalitarian government is ran by a few.
Multiple independent citations for all that pugwash up there or it didn't happen.
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http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Markups/Telecom/030911_HJRes37/passage.pdf
Same sight you linked to had the vote buried in some text. Quick glance at the vote does indeed show 100% republicans in favor, 100% dems against, with a few of the dem's not voting.
Spoken like a true exploitational egotistic self center person who refuses to believe the science of global destruction being caused by greedy corporations putting profits over the existence of the human race. The infrastructure, which was built by the progressive and liberal people, of this country is crumbling because of people who think like you. You think you can have all your luxuries with accountability. It is immoral to enjoy your way of life on the backs and death of others.
I refuse to believe anyone smart enough to register for a Slashdot account is that dumb. You got me though, good troll. 8/10
first of all they didn't"Kill" net neutrality. the net is already neutral. did anyone actually read those"net-neutrality" rules?????? Those FCC "rules" gave the Isps free reign in "managing" their bandwidth. that includes permission to set up a two tiered fee structure...that is if you want to do business or set up a website, they can jam whatever fees they want up your ass. if you're a large corporation that can afford their fees you're good to go, but if you're small,in direct competition, or set up a political website that they don't happen to like your screwed. Those "rules" were written by the ISP's and rubberstamped by the FCC. the net is ALREADY NEUTRAL!! the "rules would've killed that. the repubicans actually got this one right.
Net neutrality is one of the most fundamental things separating the web from the real world. In the real world (as it actually is, not as politicians say it is), anyone with more power will have their voice heard more. That's just the way society works. But when the internet born, a new society was born with it, a society in which every person, every domain has an equal chance. Nowadays you don't even need the money for a domain to be heard; we have places like Youtube, Facebook, and other hosting sites where anyone can put up their work or their message, and have equal opportunity to attract viewers. Congress, as well as big business, is threatening to destroy this revolutionary and idealistic society. They want to have an advantage everywhere, not just in the real world. Don't let them. Write a letter. Tell them that net neutrality is essentially a perfect example of what the founding fathers wanted. Tell them that ending net neutrality will make a lot of people start picking up signs and yelling outside their offices. But most of all, tell them that net neutrality is just the right thing.
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