Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Did you see where the summary said, "voted 15-8 along party lines"? How does that support your thesis that every politician comes from the same party?
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:
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.
DeReggi told lawmakers he may want to block services like Netflix because they take up too much bandwidth for WiMax-based broadband.
I think that about sums it up.
As soon as Verizion pays full market rate for the land their cables go over and under then we can talk. Verizon and the others love it when government forces people to let them build under / across private property but they do not want to do anything in return for that access.
Similar to, if I want to take a toll road, which is less congested than the rest of the highway system.
I think the cause for concern is that without Net Neutrality you will no longer have any choice in the matter. If you wish to visit certain destinations the toll road is the only way. I guess it is like Pay-Per-View for the internet.
Let's take Comcast and Netflix. Comcast hates Netflix because Comcast is also a content provider. They want you to pay $6 to watch their on-demand movies. With Netflix I can watch tons of movies for $6, and Comcast has to carry the traffic. Without Net Neutrality, Comcast would tell Netflix "you use too much bandwidth. We're going to throttle you down until your movies are unwatchable unless you start paying us a fee. That fee will increase until we make as much money from people watching your movies as we would if they bought them from our service".
Netflix would have to increase prices until no one would pay, thus forcing them out of business and all you would be left with is Comcast, which then jacks up the prices for their on-demand movies.
Net Neutrality provides choice.
Indeed. The corporations have owned Washington for many decades now. Even back in the 1950's, Ike Eisenhower warned that America's military-industrial complex had become too strong. Now look where we are: America has a military budget that's larger than that of all other countries combined, yet at the same time a substantial number of Americans live below the poverty line.
Even worse, many of our laws have now been drafted by lobbyists -- a fact that some of our politicians have even been happy to admit. The lobbyists continue to play the politicians and the politicians continue to play the people for whom the latter continue to vote. It's a vicious cycle that's only made worse by the poor state of America's educational system, which has been deteriorating for many decades. The electorate has now largely been reduced to a mass of ignorant, overly-religious, flag-waving zombie-consumers whose only purpose seems to be in making the rich richer.
Unfortunately, I'm not certain that there is much reason to believe that America can get out of this rut, which is like an extreme experiment in unbridled free-market capitalism that has gone badly wrong. The problem is that its people have wished this upon themselves. 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.
Oh, well...
PS -- This is a bit of a rant, so go ahead and mod it down.
His point was not that they have different party names, but that their policies are all but indistinguishable. Which is how it looks to me, too.
As a New Zealander, I have to say that the Democrats are more right wing than our current ruling right wing party. You have nothing as left as our left wing Labour party, who are not especially leftist, by NZ or world standards. I'm not sure I that most Americans appreciate just how right wing, conservative, pretty, ill-educated, reactionary, selfish, jingoistic, partisan, anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-reason US politics appears from the external point of view. I look to politics in the UK, Australia, France, Germany. I understand what's going on there, it looks similar to what's going on here. I look at US politics and I'm thinking "What the.,..."
I really don't understand how a country that purports to be a democracy has allowed its political discourse to be so railroaded into one tiny spectrum of ideas. You have two parties which are largely indistinguishable. You change the name of the party in charge, but the ideas don't change. You guys really need to ditch first past the post elections - most of the rest of the world has already figured this out.
I'm not sure I that most Americans appreciate just how right wing, conservative, pretty, ill-educated, reactionary, selfish, jingoistic, partisan, anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-reason US politics appears from the external point of view.
From your external point of view, or from the point of view that's been sold to you by your own media and politicians? I'm sure it's pleasing to imagine that you hold some privileged frame of reference, but maybe it's possible that the people telling you these things are telling you the things you want to hear, and the things they want you to believe.
Unless you are looking at us from his point of view, you have no means by which to criticize his point of view. And as a matter of fact, most of what he says is true, something you'd realize if you looked at the U.S. system objectively. Our politicians ARE all right-wing. That's the only way that abortion of a "health care" plan could possibly have been passed last year. You know, the one that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars to the insurance companies? And the fact that all politicians in both parties will only ever talk about cutting taxes, never about the need with our huge deficits to, oh I dunno, INCREASE income to pay for things? Or how it's impossible to get elected in this country if you are an atheist or agnostic? And how those in both parties are all too eager to cut spending on education. Or how our "liberal" president is perpetuating the abomination that is Guantanamo? Or how no politician will get rid of the "Under God" clause in the Pledge of Allegiance (or even get rid of the Pledge at all)?
A true "liberal" would fix at one or more of the above, and we haven't had anything resembling a liberal in the White House since Carter. And he has somehow been demonized as "the worst president ever" when the evidence (if anyone bothered learning it) clearly says otherwise. So don't even try to claim we Americans aren't anti-intellectual or any of the other things claimed above. We're guilty of all of it.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I can't speak for the GP, but as a Canadian I agree with the GP. My source(s) of information:
- I read news from sources in the Canada, the US, UK, and Germany. Somehow they all seem to make some level of sense, except for the American version.
- first hand opinions expressed by Americans on online fora. To name an example, I don't think you'd get a significant number of people from any other western country to have a Democracy vs Republic debate along the lines of what just happened in the parallel Utah thread. Sometimes I have to resign to just look in awe about the level of collective brainwashing that seems to be going on in the US.
You have freedom to use what you paid for within the terms of the usage agreement you've got with your provider. If they say "we may filter or traffic shape your traffic", then you're free to accept that or find some other carrier with preferable terms.
"What? You're not a slave! Why, You have the choice of being told what you can & can't do here, or at my neighbor's plantation -- Or you can die, see, you have plenty of freedom."
You're correct about having the choice to accept draconian licensing terms or not have the Internet at all... I can go with a different provider, but the only other provider in town has shitty service & licensing too. The "freedom" you describe is the freedom of a catch-22. I suppose that I'm not supposed to complain about, or support legislation that combats, the bad business practices of the telecoms that put me in this position?
BTW, It's more profitable for them to have shitty service, more on that in a few...
And besides, EVEN IF there were subsidies, etc., (as the other AC replier mentioned), blame your congress-critters for not negotiating better terms before they gave your money away. EVEN IF your local municipality is granting a monopoly, blame your local town-board for doing so and not insisting that the cable provider accommodate competitive content providers on the outside plant.
Yeah, no. Although I do despise the corrupt congressmen, I ultimately blame the LOBBYISTS that pay the congress critters -- The Lobbyists that are funded by the Telecoms -- for making it financially beneficial for the congress critters to agree to the shitty terms... (Boy, some folks are clueless about how it all really works -- Money talks, bullshit walks.)
I have done all that's in my power to fix this -- One of the things I do is support network neutrality, but the corporate lobbyists have far more money than I do to donate (hint: Still in a recession -- I can eat, or use my $$ to fight a loosing battle against more powerful opponents who already have a history with their pocket politicians (the ones I need on my side to win).
So, in all actuality, I don't have much freedom of choice, I can either accept the crappy service & terms or not have any at all (Isn't 0Mbps WORSE than any crappy amount they decide to give me?)
Now that the consumer ISP monopoly / duopolies are in place they are turning their sights on the content producers (who already pay for their own access to the web, BTW). One way that an ISP can double dip is to force a content company to co-locate servers and charge them rent. The claim is that the servers are closer to the end users and therefore you get faster connections.
This is very true, you do get better connections, but it costs the content providers more (then they drive my bill up? so it ends up costing me more?). However, the co-location wouldn't be necessary if Comcast would run their links at less saturation -- Level3 tried to give them more hardware so they could do just this (Improve the Comcast service for everyone!), but Comcast refused... Comcast demands Co-Location instead of fixing the problem (It is a problem, come 5:00, my Internet speeds drop drastically). Comcast is holding my connection speed hostage -- Even when I paid to get faster service, the Netflix stream still sucked, and it will continue to suck unless Netflix/Level3 pays the ransom and co-locates servers with Comcast.
During the middle of the day my Netflix streaming on Comcast works almost acceptably... But when peak usage times hit, the streaming stutters all to hell because Comcast is dropping my Netflix packets (I pay both Comcast and Netflix to access them).
How does NN fit in? Well, if Comcast wasn't allowed to lower my Netflix traffic QoS so much (esp lower than their own competing Video service's priority) then their own Video delivery service would have to suck more... Comcast would have to fix the damn problem and
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)
Ummm, no, not from my external point of view nor a view "sold" to me by "your own media and politicans". For a start, New Zealand is too small to produce all our own media for world stories, so it sources media from all over the world - BBC, CNN, Al Jazera et al. But personally, I don't watch a lot of TV news - I compare sources online and see what the US channels are putting out from their own feeds directly. It's mainly Fox & Glenn Beck that gives me an insight into how warped America has become. So if you want to blame the media for my point of view - blame your own. When I was revolted at Tea Party members hurling abuse at Muslim Americans in Orange County, that was entirely brought to me by YOUR media. MY media didn't cover it at all.
Furthermore, my point of view is not external. I have been to America before - admittedly, just the south, mainly Birmingham, for work and even then, that was quite a few years back. I have also lived with Americans before and seen and discussed their viewpoints and heard their comments on the difference between American politics and the rest of the western world's politics. In fact, one of the really interesting comments I got was from a lovely Bostonian girl who said the difference between democracy in the US and in NZ was that in the US, everyone was free to make all the money they wanted (regardless of whether they had any actual ability or chance to do so) whereas in NZ, it was more of a democracy of opportunity, where everyone (relative to the US) had the opportunity to succeed.
You say "I'm sure it's pleasing to imagine that you hold some privileged frame of reference". Well, I'm sure it pleases you to denigrate my point of view by imagining motives for me... but I wasn't claiming a privileged frame of reference, I was claiming that politics in the rest of the western world makes sense to me. I know, having talked to many other Australians, British, French and German people that we all share broadly similar views on how democracy should work and we all pretty much think American politics is mad. My claim wasn't that my point of view was right (although, knock that strawman over if it makes you feel better) but that represents a very common western view of American politics.