President Obama Backs Regulation of Broadband As a Utility

vivIsel writes In a move that is sure to generate controversy, the President has announced his support for regulation of broadband connections, including cellular broadband, under Title 2 of the Telecommunications Act. Reclassification of broadband in this way would treat it as a utility, like landline telephones, subject providers to new regulations governing access, and would allow the FCC to easily impose net neutrality requirements.

Comments

Re:Obama

[gfxguy]

Because the content providers are not the ones using the bandwidth, it's the ISPs own customers that are using the bandwidth they paid for. Netflix doesn't push it's contents onto an ISPs network - the ISPs customer pulls it, using the bandwidth they've already paid for. If the ISP wants to charge more, or renegotiate terms with all those customers they promised "unlimited high speed" bandwidth to, that's a different story. Punishing the content providers is absurd. If you could punish the spam pushers, that'd be a different story, but companies like CNN, Yahoo, Netflix, Amazon... they don't force their content onto anyone's networks.

Re:And the floodgates open

[iluvcapra]

Politics aside, how is it that republicans want to fuck over everyone but the privileged and corporate, yet get such widespread support from the people who will suffer most from their policies?

This is the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" problem. The short answer is, most rural populist types would probably fare better under a Democratic economic regime, but it really wouldn't be that much better. On the other hand, Republicans make few concrete promises economically, but they make broad promises about how they will sustain rural culture -- they fight for gun rights, and for the protection of traditional religious values, and against abortion, and gays. And in the end both parties mostly work in the interests of large corporations. In the end, Democrats promise a Starbucks in every town, and Republicans promise a cross on every door.

Also Democrats are generally supportive of state services, and things like Obamacare, which would improve the lot of poor voters in general, but a lot of poor people are simply morally opposed to accepting "welfare," and the slightly-better-off people around them are all downright hostile to the idea. This persists even if the "welfare" in question is completely pro-market, means tested, economically justified and everything else -- it's because American culture has moralistic, puritanical beliefs about thrift and work that are impervious to facts. The liberal tendency in American politics promises poor people a leg up, at the cost of their soul and their meritocratic ideals -- they'll get ahead but "everyone" will know they don't deserve it; meanwhile the conservative tendency promises a boot on your neck, but offers the guarantee that when you get the boot, you'll feel like you deserve it. People are attracted to appearance of order and justice, even if it hurts them.