House Votes To Overturn FCC On Net Neutrality

suraj.sun writes with this quote from CNet: "House Republicans voted unanimously today to block controversial Net neutrality regulations from taking effect, a move that is likely to invite a confrontation with President Obama. By a vote of 241 to 178, the House of Representatives adopted a one-page resolution that says, simply, the regulations adopted by the Federal Communications Commission on December 21 'shall have no force or effect.' 'Congress did not authorize the FCC to regulate in this area,' Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.), said during this morning's floor debate. 'We must reject any rules that it promulgates in this area... It is Congress' responsibility to delegate that authority.'"

Comments

No Force or Effect

[Sonny Yatsen]

It's a good thing, then, that a House Resolution, by itself, also has "no force or effect". It seems our current House of Representatives thinks that it is good to waste time and money passing House Resolutions defunding or outlawing everything that they don't like, all the while knowing that each resolution they pass has no chance to get past the Senate or the President. Why are they wasting time with this? Isn't there a governmental shutdown deadline this Friday? Shouldn't they be working on the budget instead of killing time with small-fry legislation that goes nowhere?

Re:No Force or Effect

[Presto Vivace]

It may not have any force or effect; but it is still a very bad sign.

Re:No Force or Effect

[countertrolling]

...everyone should be coming together to support the Rule of Law.

That will require a complete purge of the entire system and starting over. I'm game for that. Otherwise we're in for a bureaucracy that would make India blush, and maybe envious.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

It seems our current House of Representatives thinks that it is good to waste time and money passing House Resolutions defunding or outlawing everything that they don't like, all the while knowing that each resolution they pass has no chance to get past the Senate or the President.

Get this: it is now being reported that the most recent "compromise" offered by the House Republicans on the budget is if the Dems agree to an additional $13billion in budget cuts (above the $33 billion already agreed to which was their last demand) and if they agree to provision to the budget bill that will outlaw the use of federal funds for abortion even though it is already federal law that funds cannot be used for abortion, then they will go for that compromise.

It's a hostage situation where the ransom demands keep going up. And "abortion"? Really? I thought this was a "budgetary crisis". Why are they demanding this provision (which is already the law) unless the whole thing is just theater?

Next, they will demand that there be a special provision which makes it illegal to be President if you're black and all muslims required to eat pork chops.

I'm really glad the voters are getting a chance to see this play out. Yeah, most of them are oblivious, but between this "budget battle" and the terms of the new Ryan budget, we're getting a rare opportunity to see the GOP dropping pretense. A rare exposition of the stark difference.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Sonny Yatsen]

The House Republicans kept none of their campaign promises, really. They promised to "repeal and replace" the Healthcare reform bill. The only thing they've managed to do is vote to defund portions of it, which isn't a repeal at all. A repeal requires the Senate and and the President to sign on board, which Congressional Republicans haven't managed to even come close to achieving. Secondly, they've failed to "replace" the Healthcare reform bill with their own reform bill, because there is no replacement bill proposed by the House thus far. Remember, the promise is to "repeal and replace", not "make an attempt at repeal and replace".

Oh, and their other major campaign promise of cutting $100 billion for fiscal year 2011? Yeah, that looks like it's going nowhere as well. Right now, the House Republicans are playing the "lower your expectations game" with their base right now.

Thirdly, laws must be made by the House and Senate - so that the House and Senate must work together and compromise in order to get a law passed. Just because the House passed a budget doesn't mean their role is over and it's completely up to the Senate. Both houses still need to negotiate on the total number of budget cuts to be done, which is what is being done right now, although all indicators point to stalemate.

Re:No Force or Effect

[jmorris42]

> Currently the democrats control the senate, they're not going to vote for this.

Don't bet on it. When Network Neutrality was attempted the legal way both houses of Congress were in Democratic hands. Didn't pass. And I don't think you can filibuster one of these bills which assert Congressional oversight on the rulemakings of the Executive branch agencies.

Re:No Force or Effect

[DJRumpy]

Only if the Republican party gains more power in the next election. They currently hold a third of the cards, not the whole deck. I agree it's a bad sign but expected. The republican party has always looked out for business interests and this is no exception.

I'm just surprised that they got 10 Democrats to vote with them. That's just as troubling.

Also, wasn't the FCC key in getting the special treatment these broadband companies now enjoy?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20004392-266.html?tag=mncol;txt

Re:No Force or Effect

[thaylin]

Wait so the FCCs job is not to regulate communications, and the EPAs job is not to protect the enviroment? Then what are they for?

Re:No Force or Effect

[stinerman]

Well...that's kind of what happens. The Hyde Amendment is put in just about every appropriations bill, but Republicans still demand each individual law have anti-abortion language in it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next appropriations bill for highway funding has some anti-abortion language in it.

It's all a racket to get votes. If you really believe that life begins at conception (which is a rational view to have), then you have to believe that any abortion is murder and the abortion provider along with his staff and the mother should all be arrested for 1st degree murder and conspiracy to commit 1st degree murder. Abortions performed to save the mother's life should still go to court so that the mother can plead self defense. You can't just take the mother or doctor's word for it. They might be secret libruls who like to kill babies.

You won't get but 10% of the country to believe that, but that's what you have to believe to be consistent.

Re:No Force or Effect

[dch24]

Hate to break it to you, but the entire congress, all parties, are in on the power grab and race to the bottom.

I don't think Congress should have the power to play favorites with the internet at all. To paraphrase: the internet sees meddling as damage and routes around it.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no more moderate republicans. The ones you could consider Moderate have been marginalized, thrown under the bus, or left the party in disgust.
Were you paying attention during the last election? Moderates found themselves with new, and aggressively funded ultra-conservative opponents thanks to the effective uncapping of campaign contribution limits.

The party has been purged. All that remains are yes men.

*Preemptive response - No, the Democrats don't do it too you fake grassroots shill.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Wyatt Earp]

Yes, I was paying attention, my Representative, Don Young, won without a problem.

And he is a moderate Republican, as am I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Young#Political_positions

Re:No Force or Effect

[fermion]

The D's tried to build a responsible budget. A budget requires two things: Income and expenditure. From 1990-200 these two things were relatively balanced. Bush, Sr rejected the devastating parts of Reagan's tax cuts allowing Clinton and the republican congress to develop an economic plan that lead to a period of prosperity and growth. However, Bush/Cheney implemented even more devastating tax cuts with massive increase in the budget. NCLB cost untold additional billions in local taxes, and expanded the department education to the bloated level it is now, with a budget, at time, double what it was under Clinton. The unfunded war effort, which could have been paid for with increase gas taxes or reduction in other military spending, remains 100% deficit funded. Department of homeland security, which again expanded government, just like department of education, eats an additional 50 Billion a year, or half a trillion since it's inception as a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable. And let's talk about social programs. Medicare part D, which allows pharmcos to charge excessive prices for drugs because who cares when the government pays, costs 40 billion a year, or half a trillion over 10 years. As we say, a half trillion here, a half triliion there, and pretty soon we are talking about big money.

So what is the solution to the runaway budget and big government. A simpler tax system in which the rich pay a little more, the middle class pays a little less, and even the poor pay a little more. A country can't run when half of it's wealth is concentrated in a small minority of the people, especially when the minority refuses to capitalize. Microcredit is not efficient, we need real banks. Cut the size of government. Bring DOE back levels when it advised local education, not mandated what states were allowed to do, in clear violation of the constitution. Get rid of Homeland Security. The US is not a socialist country, and should not have socialist institutions. Cut military spending. If the military admits to wasting $178 billion, cut 300 billion. These things in itself will reduce the size of government and save at least $500 billion, 5X the amount that the coward tea party says they want. Cowards because they will cut Obama programs, not Bush programs.

As an additional measure, one that with small tax increases and a some other cuts can save us a trillion dollars a year in federal budget, cut the funding to states. Limit additional funding to 5% of revenue from the state. There is no reason why states like ID, MT, ND, SD and Alaska should be allowed to rob the federal purse while honest states like NY, TX, and CA suffer. If a state can't live within it's means, then let the local population solve that problem. It should not be up to the federal government to support incompetent local government.

Of course since this has nothing to do with responsible government, and everything to do with panicking white people realizing they are losing their gravy train, none of these things are going to happen. All we will hear about is how great Bonercare is going to be, and how awful affordable health care is, and at the end of the day we will have 30 billion cut from the budget not by any real change, but by accounting tricks.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

It seems our current House of Representatives thinks that it is good to waste time and money passing House Resolutions defunding or outlawing everything that they don't like, all the while knowing that each resolution they pass has no chance to get past the Senate or the President. Why are they wasting time with this? Isn't there a governmental shutdown deadline this Friday? Shouldn't they be working on the budget instead of killing time with small-fry legislation that goes nowhere?

No, it's more important to do things that look good, while not really changing or improving anything. That's how politicians show their constituents that they're doing something. Obama's a master of this: just look at all his campaign promises that he's broken or succeeded in. The ones he's succeeded with are small-fry stuff that doesn't really affect many people, while all the ones he's broken are the big things (like oh, shutting down Gitmo, getting out of the expensive and useless wars in a timely manner, etc.). It isn't just the Republicans currently in the House that do this, it's ALL politicians. What's funny about Obama is that his supporters will vigorously defend him and his spinelessness and inaction, usually blaming it on the Republicans (even though they were a minority in Congress for two years, during which time the Democrats should have reasonably been able to get through anything they wanted). I'm sure the Republican voters will do the same for these do-nothings in the House right now.

Meanwhile, while the politicians "fight" over small-fry, inconsequential stuff, the deficit goes further and further out of control, while we continue to waste trillions of dollars on useless wars on the opposite side of the planet, bloated and ineffective social programs that pay people to not work and have lots of kids out of wedlock, hand-outs to giant corporations, and a gigantic "war on drugs" that's repeating all the same mistakes as the first Prohibition including making us #1 in per-capita incarceration, which again is highly beneficial to corporations.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Goody]

Wrong. There's no place for that term in political debate or intelligent discourse. Thugs threaten bodily harm and the characterization is totally repugnant. It pretty much invalidates whatever else he has to say. It's high time more people called out these perverse misrepresentations and fallacies that everyone loves to throw out to infuriate and scare people in American politics.

Re:No Force or Effect

[AlamedaStone]

Next, they will demand that there be a special provision which makes it illegal to be President if you're black and all muslims required to eat pork chops.

I think facetious and unwarranted accusations of racism ought to be condemned just as harshly as racism itself. Despicable.

Racism has been a powerful tool for Republicans for ... well, ever. Or anyway, at least through the 20th century. Obama birthers are frothing at the mouth based on race, and another fantastic example is immigration debate. I mean, let's be real here: many Americans are pretty effing racist, and Republicans have shown themselves perfectly willing to manipulate their base using any tool available, irrespective of ethical concerns.

Re:No Force or Effect

[gtbritishskull]

I know you're a troll but I will reply to you anyway...

Libya is about oil? Ghadaffi had no problem selling us oil. I see no way we benefit in the short term from supporting Libya. The long term benefit being that they become a democratic country.

The healthcare bill is terrible. I supported it because it is better than what we had, but I welcome improvements to it. Republicans had all whole year of dragging out the healthcare bill debate to figure out what they wanted to do. So, where are their ideas. I will not support a repeal until I see what they want to replace it with. But you will never see it repealed because they have no idea what to replace it with. That was just them lying to you so you would support the repeal.

Re:No Force or Effect

[gtbritishskull]

The Republicans have done nothing of worth since they were elected besides cut a couple of tenths of a percent from the budget. And in response all you can do is talk about the Democrats. If you want me to argue how the Democrats did NOT go back on all of their campaign promises then I will. But I just want to point out that the fact that you are trying to shift the conversation away from the original debate shows that you know you will lose it.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Mitsoid]

I love politics, it brings out stupidity on both sides

yes, the republicans are 100% in agreement with their stance.... so are democrats... WORK IT OUT, instead of accusing each other of being idiots or uncooperative. As an independent I ignore most politics in congress because neither side views independent voters as people anyway (when it's not an election year)... All I see from here is both sides bickering over a few million dollars when last year congress approved over $40 billion in earmarks... Great, issue one less earmark on the next bill and this budget crisis is solved keeping all currently passed laws valid and funded...

Stop holding citizens in fear (terror), to promote either sides religious, political or ideological goal.... and deliberately target or disregard the safety of civilians unless your sides demands are met (Sorry for the paraphrased plagarism, public editors on Wikipedia)

Pass a budget now.... Then later chip away at the costs/budget going forward by passing laws to remove laws or costs from the budget. Not by financially starving a passed law you don't agree with (in 2-4-6 years, it's going to be reversed, and they'll get payback.... This does not help out country any at all as we're now risking millions of peoples jobs for a political agenda by one party or the other (Remember, I'm independent, I see both parties pull this stunt)

I suspect a shutdown would actually lead to what I am saying they should do anyway.. If one in 5 federal workers risked not getting a paycheck (80% of the government does not get "shut down" in a "shut down" anyway), they would want their party to compromise. Right now there's not enough of it

Re:No Force or Effect

[jrroche]

Sorry, care to explain how defunding planned parenthood counts as "looking out for people instead of businesses"? I mean I guess it's neutral to businesses and hurts many, many people, so you could say the Republicans are focusing more on people in that sense.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The civil rights act of 1964 was passed primarily due to Republican support, over strenuous objections of Democrats.

That's a misleading half truth - ain't no "primarily" about it. In the house, 152 Democrats and 138 Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the Senate 44 Democrats and 27 Republicans voted to end the filibuster against the bill. Furthermore, votes were mostly correlated with region, not party with southern members of both parties voting against the bill and northern members of both parties voting for the bill.

However, the act was a turning point for both parties with many of those who did vote against it migrating to the Republican party and essentially chasing out the liberal faction. Afterwards Nixon adopted the "Southern Strategy" of race-baiting that has lasted in some form or another ever since.

Essentially any significant republican support for civil rights ended with that vote - most of the people who supported the act ended up being chased out of the republican party and bolstering the democratic party instead. That sequence of events does paint a pretty picture for republican party support of civil rights.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

The civil rights act of 1964 was passed primarily due to Republican support, over strenuous objections of Democrats

You're talking almost half a century ago.

There certainly were a lot of Southern racists in the Democratic Party back then, but over that time they have abandoned the Democrats. Any that still might be around certainly left in 2008 when a black man became the head of the Democratic Party. Tell me, what self-respecting (sic) racist would be a member of a party that had a black man at the top?

And where do you think all the racists that left the Democratic Party went? Do you think they all moved to Montana to live in the back woods on armed compounds? No sir, the majority of them became Republicans. If you can come up with any other explanation for where the racists who left the Democratic Party went, I'd love to hear it.

Here's a quiz: There were 400+ Republican candidates for national office in 2010. How many of them do you think were black? If they're not the party of white people, then where are all the people of color?

Re:No Force or Effect

[Lord Kano]

One guy does not a political party make, and Byrd seemed to have changed his ways before the end anyway.

He quit saying nigger in public, otherwise he was the same piece of shit until the day he died.

LK

Re:No Force or Effect

[flaming error]

The government is funded exclusively by debt.

Every dollar spent by the US government since 1913 was borrowed from a privately owned banking cartel that calls itself the "Federal Reserve."

"Our tax dollars" go back to that cartel as loan payments. The "deficit" is basically the amount we are behind on our payments.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

Health Care Reform? You mean that giant giveaway to giant insurance companies that didn't actually decrease prices for anyone? I don't call that "success", unless you're in favor of fascism.

Re:No Force or Effect

[TheEyes]

Unfortunately, the courts do not agree with you. It specifically said that congress did not give the FCC authority over the internet in the way that net neutrality is concerned. Don't confuse a life guard who has authority over a pool areas with the cops who have authority over the city or county. They are not the same.

But it does; it just didn't have the power under Title I, where the Bush FCC decided to place the ISPs. See, the FCC decided almost a decade ago that ISPs weren't Title II common carriers, like phones or mail carriers, which require a certain level of scrutiny to prevent the company from interfering with the communications of private individuals in violation of the First Amendment. They instead decided to regulate ISPs as Title I information providers, like a newspaper or a TV station, who are free to do whatever they want on "their" networks because they're not handling other people's communications so much as distributing information to people. In other words, the FCC decided that the Internet is not a network of people talking to each other, but rather a content distribution network where the ISP gives information to its customers.

Back in 2004 this was appealed, and it was ruled that the FCC can choose to do this (even if IMO it makes no sense), but that they were free to change their minds at any time. Now they have done so, and have decided to grant First Amendment protections to people who access the Internet through private networks (that is, everyone). This is what Republicans object to, because in their mind the FCC should keep thinking of ISPs as top-down information distribution nodes rather than neutral information carriers.

Re:No Force or Effect

[theillien]

They currently hold a third of the cards, not the whole deck.

Even when they control everything they're not working with a whole deck

Re:No Force or Effect

[Omestes]

The myth that voters vote in their own self-interest has been busted a very long time ago.

I know an ultra-right wing, ultra-conservative, ultra-christian man, who thinks the tea party is the greatest thing in the universe, who probably has a tattoo of G.W. Bush somewhere on him, and who actually sends money to Israel to "immanentize the eschaton" (ahem). His daughter has four kids, and supports them all through welfare, food stamps, and some church handouts, and whose wasted a large chunk of money on failed attempts at college using Gov't grant money. His son is in prison for various drug related charges and has three children while he sits in prison, to an unwed mother, who has another 3 children to other men (she works at Walmart) . He's been milking unemployment since his job disappeared, and admits that he is just waiting for the point he can get Social Security and Medicare. His wife also went to school on the governments dime to be a teacher.

And he votes to destroy the programs that support him and his family. He hates labor, even while his business died because he couldn't compete with businesses who used illegal immigrants to keep costs down. He wants to gut Social Security and Medicare while wanting to benefit from them. He hates Planned Parenthood and reproductive freedom (though it could have saved him from adopting 3 of his kid's kids since they can't support them, and probably never heard of birth control). He supports the war on drugs, even though it got his child in prison the first time (and probably lead to the next two times). He hates welfare and food stamps, though they keep his daughter and her children from starving.

He'll vote for anyone as long as they let him keep his 100 guns, and keep the gays away.

This is the average American voter. Yes, the agenda changes, but it pans out about the same.

Even the "ideologically pure" Libertarians and Greens vote against their own interests by holding an ideology above consequences. In the end they have the same problem as the guy above, they hold a pretty fiction above the actual gritty, shades-of-gray, world, and would force that world, by force, into their silly ideology, consequences be damned. Its for the "greater good", or "they know better".

I'm getting about as much contempt for American voters as I do the politicians we vote in. And continue to vote in even after they screw us the first time. I'm sick of partisanship and people claiming some divine political truth on the basis of what letter they support. I'm so sick of this "us vs. them" bullshit. I'm sick of politics turning into a rerun of Highlander (there can only be one... political party).

Great, you disagree, and sit down and talk about it like adults, and stop acting like idiotic two year olds. And stop thinking that you "won" by shoving something down the throats of the 49% of the population that didn't vote for you to make the 51% happy. Gr... sorry for the rant.

how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[xzvf]

For some reason, conservatives are equating or selling net neutrality as equivalent to the fairness doctrine. What is the connection? or is it just a talking point and they are paying back their supporters?

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't bother to find out what it actually means, the term "net neutrality" sounds something like the fairness doctrine. The Republicican base is pretty much defined as those who don't bother to figure stuff out. The GOP knows this, and shamelessly exploits it at every opportunity.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[ArsonSmith]

because they were both advancing regulation into an area it wasn't previously and into an area where it was unneeded. Sort of the solution looking for a problem.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[xzvf]

Listen to Glenn Beck for a week.

Article is wrong

[Goobergunch]

Today, the House voted to adopt the resolution (H. Res. 200) that will allow it to consider the actual resolution to overturn the regulation tomorrow. Note the words "Providing for consideration" in the title of the actual vote.

Granted, the House is still likely going to vote for the measure, but saying it's already passed is inaccurate.

slightly off-topic, but

[Presto Vivace]

this is a great video on why usage based billing is a scam.

Merger of Corporations and the State

[catchblue22]

When I watch the seemingly flagrant way that Republicans seem to turn away from the Public Good these days, for example in network neutrality, financial regulation, or global warming, I am reminded of this quote

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[catchblue22]

Dems are just as bad.

Which is why they brought in the original net neutrality rules in the first place?

Re:Odd Paradox

[TheRaven64]

So essentially the president can send troops anywhere for 60 days regardless of how anyone feels about it, as long as they are there for only 60 days and withdraw within 30 days after that.

Does this include Capitol Hill? If so, I don't think he'd have a problem getting the congressional support he needed after the 60 days expired...

I don't understand.

[NeutronCowboy]

Isn't the regulation of an electronic communications medium the entire reason the FCC exists?

*Googles "Defund FCC"*

Oh. Right. Never mind.

Re:I don't understand.

[Grishnakh]

Exactly right. In fact, we need to eliminate the FCC altogether, since as you said, it's moronically stupid to regulate industry. We don't need any regulations on radio spectrum; whoever has the higher-power transmitter should be the winner, and there should be no laws against jamming other peoples' transmissions.

Re:Odd Paradox

[lonelytrail]

I know more forces than the Marine Corps are acting in Libya right now, but I was a Marine and the President most certainly has the authority to exert military force without declaring war any time he wants to.
I also know wikipedia isn't an authoritative source, but here's the WP discussion on the USMC on that topic.

Mission
The United States Marine Corps serves as an amphibious force-in-readiness. As outlined in 10 U.S.C. 5063 and as originally introduced under the National Security Act of 1947, it has three primary areas of responsibility:

• The seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and other land operations to support naval campaigns;
• The development of tactics, technique, and equipment used by amphibious landing forces; and
• Such other duties as the President may direct.

This last clause, while seemingly redundant given the president's position as Commander-in-chief, is a codification of the expeditionary duties of the Marine Corps.

I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[asylumx]

I don't think this is the FCC's place, either. They already spend too much time & money deciding what can and can't go on our television and radio airwaves, for example. The FCC should be regulating communication so that providers aren't stepping all over each other's signals and that's pretty much it. Maybe I misunderstand the original intent of the FCC so please correct me if I'm wrong there.

On the other hand, I also don't want Big ISP regulating my internet connection, deciding what I can get and when I can get it. I want an internet connection without artificial limitations. I already pay Comcast far too much for their less-than-consistent service (and the reason I don't switch is because where I am the competitors fastest speeds aren't even close to as good as Comcast's slowest) and I don't need them practically filtering my connection based on how much the company I'm trying to connect to has paid them. I'm already paying Comcast! That's enough!

So... I guess I don't really know where I should stand on this issue. Any advice?

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[nrozema]

The FCC should be regulating communication so that providers aren't stepping all over each other's signals and that's pretty much it.

I see great overlap between this statement and proposed Net Neutrality regulation. One could argue that ensuring Comcast or any other ISP doesn't "step all over" my clear and unobstructed path to various Internet destinations ("channels") is much the same as doing it for the public airwaves.

The question to answer is whether or not we want to treat the Internet as a shared public resource like we do radio spectrum or a free-for-all controlled by government endorsed regional monopolies.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Radical Moderate]

Here's your choices:

Trust Comcast, who wants every penny they can get from you
Trust Congress, who wants every penny they can get from Comcast

At least you get to vote for Congress, so that makes them the slightly lesser of two evils.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Radical Moderate]

The real question is, why is the competition so much worse?

Because satellite is inherently slow, as is DSL, and Comcast has a government granted monopoly on cable. So, surprise, Comcast has the "best" service. Ain't the free market great!?

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Anonymous Coward]

quote from wikipedia:
As specified in section one of the Communications Act and as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (amendment to 47 U.S.C. 151) it is the FCC's mission to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges."[sic] The Act furthermore provides that the FCC was created "for the purpose of the national defense" and "for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications."[2]

So the FCC making a statement that corporations must not create communication ghettos where only the wealthy get high speed access (that will be the top 20%) and the other 80% get second or third or tenth class access is part of their charter. The FCC wasn't established to support business.

I hope you like walled gardens..

[hairyfeet]

Because that is exactly what you have without net neutrality. look upon my present and see your future! i'm on Cox (perfect name since they're dicks) and the caps are 36Gb residential, 76Gb commercial and the commercial line is nearly $200 a month, any going over? That's $1.50 per Gb please. Oh and Vonage, Linux and Mac updates? They all count against your cap. The "offerings" by Cox and Windows? they DO NOT.

So I hope you like walled gardens ala the old AOHell, because at $1.50 a Gb it doesn't take too many $200+ bills to put your ass in your place. And before anyone uses the old "vote with your dollars!" meme I'd point out my choices are Cox, AT&T DSL that MAXES at 756Kbps and which they've said they have NO intention of ever upgrading, or a WISP whose security is so damned bad you can surf the shares of everyone on a node through network neighborhood (and the head tech is so dim I never could get him to understand why that's bad, he still swears its a "feature") and who has a worse TOS than HughesNet.

So all you Time Warner and Comcast users, better be filling your boots, your time is running out. Once Cox rolls this out nationwide and the others see they get away with it? that's your ass Mr User, you are well and truly fucked. While the rest of the world surfs the information superhighway we are gonna be on the short bus to walled garden shittown. But hell the corps won't be happy until the USA is a third world country, so why not just pull the plug? More profits in walled gardens anyway!

Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Does the regulation allow shaping for largely content-neutral reasons? I favor a little shaping to keep non-netflix flowing--Wikipedia and plain text should always work.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

In whatever forms they eventually take, regulations will be adjusted periodically to allow prioritization of 'pretty packets' (meaning "Important" packets, and packets belonging to large campaign contributors). Latency problems will oscillate every few years from NPR to Fox News and from GE to Walmart.

Indecent, incendiary and potentially infringing packets will be inexorably deprioritized to make room for more of the prettier packets. Everyone's traffic experience will get better and better over time under benevolent, centralized, adult supervision of everyone's traffic management practices. You won't have to think about it personally.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Grishnakh]

Everything should always work, it's just a matter of speed and priority. The only reasonable argument for non-neutrality is that certain services should get higher priority than other services: for instance, VoIP and streaming video (Skype, Netflix, etc.) should have the highest priority because they're very latency-sensitive, while BitTorrent and other P2P should have the lowest priority because they're not and are normally done in the background, and everything else should be in the middle. But lower priority doesn't mean "doesn't work", it just means it takes a little longer to complete downloading.

The problem, however, is that unless this traffic shaping or QoS is done in a completely neutral manner, so that, for instance, Comcast's video-on-demand service doesn't get higher priority than its competitor Netflix, then it's going to be a ripe target for abuse by the ISPs, since the ISPs frequently have their own services they want to plug (like Comcast and its video-on-demand). Even if it were neutral by legislative fiat, how do you enforce that, and what do you do when, inevitably, the ISPs break the rules? When do you ever see corporations get anything more than a slap on the wrist for any kind of malfeasance? (In China, they do: they take their executives to an open ditch and shoot them in the head with a rifle.)

Also, even if it were completely fair and neutral, I can see someone taking advantage of the situation through technical means, by, for instance, making their P2P traffic look like VoIP traffic. All it takes is a few people making P2P programs that look just like Skype, and these programs becoming popular, to wreak havoc.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Silly me. Of course, I only speak of some hypothetical dystopian future. I'm not saying there's any observed tendency of things like making unelected bureaucrats the arbiters of fairness, or enabling them to collect millions for indecency violations. And of course this is America, not some dictatorship like Canada where they might ban a song from the airwaves for sarcastically quoting a politically incorrect statement as a way of criticizing it. And the American government would never try to extend its broadcast control into paid content mediums like XM radio or cable tv either. I guess I'm just being paranoid. People who seek and attain authority are usually content with it; at least they don't continually try to expand it. I mean, when a government starts out just establishing official weights and measures, it is nice that they stick with just that, and they don't go expanding their purview to include food labeling, cigarette packaging (and even what can and can't be used as a brand name) or fat content. I'm also glad nobody tries to enact outright bans on fast food.

I'm sure someday excessive regulatory authority could lead to officials engaging in crony capitalism and abusing their authority in ways that happen to favor political allies, exempt favored groups from the more onerous requirements of their regulations, and/or handicap their friends' competitors, but you're right, that's not the kind of thing that regulatory authority has been known to open the door to in the past.

Sorry for bringing my tinfoil hattery into this.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[GameboyRMH]

The only ovelap between net neutrality and QoS is that on a neutral Internet, QoS may not be used to differentiate between services from different providers. The concept of net neutrality doesn't cover much on QoS, but allowing the ISP to specify QoS rules would create loopholes big enough to drive a truck though (they could give all VPN services a way higher priority and then offer ComCastVPN accounts to effectively do an end-run around net neutrality), so it's probably best to only allow QoS rules to be set by end-customers. Also QoS is not a huge deal. VoIP works fine no QoS whatsoever.

Net neutrality doesn't cover oversubscription at all. You can oversubscribe all you want as long as you don't break neutrality rules - do it too much and your service will just be shitty.

What changed in the last year or two is that providers are no longer content-agnostic and destination-agnostic - airlines allow free traffic only to participating social networking sites, ISPs allow cap exemptions for Windows updates and participating VoIP services, cell networks allow cap exemptions for participating social network sites...the Internet is very much tiered now.

Why we need Net Neutrality

[EmagGeek]

Let's say your only options for Internet service are to buy it from one of two companies, each of which is also a content provider.

Let's say that you buy your content from an online streaming provider, such as Netflix, and decide not to buy content from your ISP.

Let's say your ISP gets pissed and decides to meter your Internet service, except of course data traffic from their content farms.

This effectively kills all online streaming providers except for theirs. We're dealing with this here where AT&T just put caps on their DSL service in our area. We can no longer effectively use Netflix for movies as it only takes about 5 movies to exceed our cap.

Of course, we can buy cable TV from AT&T UVerse if we want...

See how that works? Net Neutrality, from what I understand, forbids ISPs who are also content providers from making moves such as this, right? Or, do I have it wrong?

In what language is this "unanimous"?

[borrrden]

Um...sorry but "unanimous" in English means:

1. (of two or more people) Fully in agreement

2. (of an opinion, decision, or vote) Held or carried by everyone involved

So for that particular to vote to be unanimous it would have to be 419-0.