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Congressman Introduces Bill To Limit FCC Powers
An anonymous reader writes "Representative Bob Latta (R-OH) introduced a bill on Wednesday that would limit the FCC's power to regulate ISPs in a supposed effort to keep the internet free. The bill's text is currently not available on the Library of Congress webpage or on congress.gov, but a purported copy has been spotted on scribd. Representative Latta's press release nevertheless indicates that the bill is intended to prevent the FCC from re-classifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II. Latta is one of the 28 representatives who lobbied the FCC earlier this month and were shown to have received double the average monetary donations given to all House of Representative members from the cable industry over a two year period ending this past December."
If one of the largest telecom shills in congress is introducing anti-FCC legislation, this means the telecoms might be fearing a potential turn-around at the FCC.
Just a month ago it seemed like this was all but impossible to think - maybe some home for REAL net neutrality rulings from the FCC?
The congresscritters are owned by lobbyists at this point, without question. Lock, stock, and barrel.
Even if things don't go the way they want, they'll just keep introducing legislation to try and get what their masters want. CISPA is the most blatant example of this.
Power and Money have no borders. USA, North Korea or Russia makes no difference for oligarchs. They want it all and don't care where the peasants live. As long they are compliant, work hard for a small change and don't ask too much in return. Welcome to XXI century where oligarchs around the world hold hands together.
to line his own pockets, actively work against his constituency, and claim it's for the good of the people.
His Twitter feed makes for interesting reading, the replies tend not to be supportive...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
This is not going to end well.
I went to his Facebook page and it looks the like comments on this issue are about 30:1 against his position. He's really being hammered there as a sellout. Yeah, I know, he really doesn't give a damn, but I'm glad people are speaking up.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Be honest now. When you read this, and how a congressman was trying to limit the power of the FCC, the entity that tried to eliminate net neutrality just recently, did you think "yay" or was your first thought "now how is this going to be used to fuck us over"?
Am I the only one who feels like ANY kind of law being introduced today is aiming at screwing the average voter over in favor of the interest of a few corporations?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wrap him in cat6 and dangle him off the brooklyn bridge.
Look, if Ben Franklin had understood this "electricity" thing better, he'd have defined the Post Office program -- that allowed "a Republic, if you can keep it" to work, by putting every citizen within equal reach of every other citizen -- to include it explicitly.
That's Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, that gave us the Post Office.
In his day, they did it with horses.
Now, we do it with electronics.
Same difference. Ought to be the same anyhow.
IMHO this is yet another example of the national Republicans being out of touch with real people on Main Street (unlike the 'true' Republican party that existed for decades.) They are listening to the lobbyists for the big cable providers, etc. - those whose present business model is based on having local monopolies, while being allowed to act as if they were in competitive markets. This even extends to liability for content - these companies are arguing on the one hand that they are 'common carriers' and so are not liable for illegal content, but then act as enhanced information providers, who can be liable.
Since it's inefficient to run numerous separate cables down each street, the 'last mile' at least should be treated as a utility - a simple transition point might be the location where Akamai, Google and NetFlix put their cacheing servers, and/or where all of the trunk lines come together into the router(s) that ship the data to/from the consumers. This is analogous to what the phone systems do. The fact is that the entire purpose of the Utility regulations was to avoid two things: massive duplication of infrastructure (wiring), and unfair marketing practices.
Ideally the last mile providers of IP and TCP - both cable and phone - would be required to split off and operated as independent divisions from their 'enhanced services' business, to avoid any opportunity to use unfair means to create an advantage, such as what they are explicitly doing now. In fairness, they should provide the fastest available data transmission between the central office at a regulated price. Then their information provider division would have to compete along with everyone else for access - including TV and data. If Home Shopping Channel wants access, they can pay the user (through the last mile provider). In this model, any company could put together a package of services and sell it to the home user. The last mile provider would not care what it is or where it's from.
IANAL, but IMHO there is ample cause for a national class action suit or DoJ action against these monopoly practices. Use of their control over the 'last mile' to force other information providers to pay more than their own partners seems to me to be an obvious violation of the Sherman Act. They assert that they don't have a monopoly, because their is also a phone line there. However they also have monopoly licenses for cable services and the associated digital services from each town and county jurisdiction, and the cost of the infrastructure is such that it's been uneconomic for the phone companies to build out a competitive network. The cable network started off as a high-bandwidth delivery system, which was easy to upgrade to digital, while the older, low bandwidth phone network has to be built out almost from scratch.
As a rural resident I'd even advocate a deal where the last mile utilities to be created were given subsidies, perhaps in the form of low-interest loans, to run high speed internet to every residence. I'm not in general an advocate of government subsidies - i.e. corporate welfare. But historically, the Rural Electrification project subsidized rollout of electricity to rural communities, which provided a historic economic boost and paid for itself. The Bonneville Power Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority built dams and power lines. Local power was handled by both public and private entities. Similarly, even today your phone bill includes a tax/fee infrastructure that helps to subsidize rural telephone companies - big city companies hat this, and it's the basis for those Free Conference Call vendors.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Personally, I am glad Congress may vote on it, as it should for any significant or novel regulatory change, rather than regulators being praised for coming up with a new rationale to take something over Congress never anticipated.
The correct solution here would be truth-in-advertising to force Comcast to highlight at the beginning of their contract with you that they are demanding a kickback from Netflix of a part of the money you pay Netflix or they will make your Netflix viewing crappy in violation of their contract with you that you have a minimum guaranteed bandwidth.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
He's working hard to justify that bribe he received.
http://latta.house.gov/contact/ His number is Washington DC is Phone: (202) 225-6405. His Ohio toll free number is 800-541-6446.
Send him an email, or ring him. Please be polite.
With an election due later in the year, this guy is presumably up for re-election. Is there anyone here who can comment on how hard it would be to vote him out? Anyone know who his opponent is and what their position on net neutrality is?
US campaign laws are tissue paper.
SO thin you wouldn't want to wipe with them.
and you managed to turn your post into an obamacare post... great job. Stay on topic.
History lesson: ISPs were regulated as common carriers. Things were good. competition existed. The FCC reclassified. They ISPs started pulling shenanigans. They FCC said to stop. Verizon took the FCC to court. The judges said "hey man, YOU classified them as information services, just reclassify them as common carriers". The FCC didn't do that. Now we're fucked.
It's in the nature of any large organization to aim for monopoly power. That's what corporations do, if they can get away with it. Microsoft did it. Intel did it. Verizon is doing it. Comcast is doing it. Etc etc etc. I know you hate government, but it does serve a purpose. There is a balance to be struck here. We do need cops. We do need laws. We need those laws to work toward the betterment of our society.
No one is proposing a government takeover. We're simply proposing we go back to the laws we had that worked well. Now we have NO laws, and it's pretty shitty.
Also, seriously, you don't need to turn everything into an Obamacare discussion. Sheesh.