Watch the FCC Vote On Net Neutrality Live At 10:30am Eastern

New submitter giltwist (1313107) writes "Very shortly, the FCC will begin its vote on proceeding 14-28 regarding Chairman Wheeler's highly contentious Net Neutrality proceeding. Senator Al Franken called Net Neutrality the free speech issue of our time. The vote begins at 10:30am Eastern time today. Make sure to watch it live at the FCC's live stream." "A particularly full agenda" is right; it's a rambunctious crowd, too.

Comments

Irony?

[NuAngel]

Ironically, without net neutrality, I imagine the FCC's website would be in the slow-lane and we wouldn't all be able to stream this at the same time. Just sayin'.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's entirely secondary to keeping the public uninformed. It is not in their interests to accelerate any of the arguments to be presented into the public discourse.

Re:Will there be a transcript linked somewhere?

[Sperbels]

It's closed captioned.

Interesting?

[denmarkw00t]

So far it's not bad, but a lot of people advocating for congress to step in instead. Not sure how I feel about that vs unelected people making decisions - if only there were some way for the common people to decide what we should do...

Re:Interesting?

[FlyHelicopters]

What is a shame is that Congress doesn't make decisions based on what is in the best interest of the general public.

If it comes down to it, a single large company making another billion in profit or millions of people getting better and lower cost internet access, I vote for the millions of people.

Shame Congress doesn't vote that way.

Re:Interesting?

[PvtVoid]

"if only there were some way for the common people to decide what we should do"

That's called the free market.

If it were left entirely to the free market, net neutrality would have been gone years ago. Careful what you wish for.

Vibrant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Comissioner Pai believes the Clinton administration and congress at the time's decision to allow the free market to allow internet growth through "unfettered and vibrant competition" was the correct one.

Vibrant competition. His words, not mine.

Re:Vibrant!

[Anubis IV]

Yeah, I got a laugh out of that too. Even so, at least he dissented, though at the end of the day, it sounds like the vote will be 3-2 in favor of passing it, with both dissenters doing so because they believe it should be left to Congress to decide, and they both seem to be in favor of eliminating net neutrality.

Re:Vibrant!

[Bob9113]

with both dissenters doing so because they believe it should be left to Congress to decide, and they both seem to be in favor of eliminating net neutrality.

Don't kid yourself. The dissenting votes were theater, just like Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel saying they favored net neutrality. If Clyburn and Rosenworcel had voted against and the two R's had voted for, it would have broken the "along partisan lines" story that our one political party relies on. This is the only way the vote could go to achieve the three goals:

1. Kill net neutrality.
2. Maintaining the pretense that Obama and the dem's are fighting for net neutrality.
3. Maintain the "bitter partisan divide" story that keeps the one party (the D's and R's) from having any competition.

I wanted to believe in Rosenworcel and Clyburn. I posted here in support of them. But they are as full of shit as Obama. The Republicans are worse, because they don't even claim to support non-discriminatory communication networks, but they are all selling our future down the same river.

It's official - it passed

[Anubis IV]

11:30am EST, it passed the vote, 3-2.

Re:It's official - it passed

[Aelanna]

Ah, here it is: http://www.reuters.com/article...

Re:It's official - it passed

[QuietLagoon]

Wow, what a surprise.

.
This was destined to pass from the day it was first proposed. All the public commenting was merely window dressing to make it appear as if there were public involvement. The ISPs control the Internet (and apparently the FCC) in the United States, and this is their way of assuring they will continue to do so and profit handsomely in the process.

Re:It's official - it passed

[organgtool]

On the plus side, the money this brings in will allow the ISPs to back off their threat to stop innovating!

Re:Will there be a transcript linked somewhere?

[mellon]

You're better off not watching. I watched for about five minutes and wanted to punch somebody. The eloquence with which these spindocs are explaining why black is white is disgusting.

Re:It passed.

[interkin3tic]

Don't act as if the war is over just because this battle is lost. This wasn't a resolution "Forever and ever for the rest of time the end." It wasn't even a real fight anyway, the outcome was already known. The "chairman" of the FCC is a lobbyist for the cable industry remember. This was just a show to make it seem like the issue was considered fairly and openly. The first real chance at correcting this is congressional action.

And before any other cynics pipe up, cram that defeatist talk about lobbyists and partisan politics up your ass. Yes, that will add to the difficulty, it might delay it, but no, that will not forestall any possible action on it. The real barrier is public apathy. Your mother doesn't know what net neutrality is or how it will affect her. And cynically telling yourself it's an impossible fight is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you called your congressman? Don't say it's a lost cause just as an excuse not to try to win.

Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope

[symbolset]

Now would be a great time for Google Fiber to announce their nationwide rollout. "If the FCC won't fight for a free and open Internet then we must."

Media fail

[jfern]

The media said that "net neutrality" fast lanes passed. Morons. We need media neutrality, too.