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FCC Says It Will Vote On Net Neutrality In February

Posted by Soulskill on from the when-all-the-astroturfing-is-accounted-for dept.

schwit1 sends this report from the Washington Post: Federal regulators looking to place restrictions on Internet providers will introduce and vote on new proposed net neutrality rules in February, Federal Communications Commission officials said Friday. President Obama's top telecom regulator, Tom Wheeler, told fellow FCC commissioners before the Christmas holiday that he intends to circulate a draft proposal internally next month with an eye toward approving the measure weeks later, said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agency's deliberations are ongoing. The rules are meant to keep broadband providers such as Verizon and Comcast from speeding up or slowing down some Web sites compared to others.

18 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Congressional Vote? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just curious when America's elected representatives will vote to make Net Neurtrality the law of the land, not that I think they should. Just wanted to draw attention to the fact we're now living in Bureacrastan.

    1. Re:Congressional Vote? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Just curious when America's elected representatives will vote to make Net Neurtrality the law of the land, not that I think they should. Just wanted to draw attention to the fact we're now living in Bureacrastan.

      What Congress doesn't get involved in, Congress can't damage. USA has a long history of failing to repeal bad laws that clearly aren't working. The one time they got this right (Prohibition) they took ten years to admit what was obvious from day one, and still failed to learn the lesson since other forms of prohibition continue for other substances, funding the same type of gangsters.

      Congress passing on this one is a great thing.

    2. Re:Congressional Vote? by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What Congress doesn't get involved in, Congress can't damage.

      Instead we have unelected bureaucrats doing the damaging. Such an improvement.

    3. Re:Congressional Vote? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

      Congres... elected representatives.... created the FCC. You're whining about nothing. Every stupid position in government is not elected. So What. I don't need to hold elections for the clerk at the DMV.

      The "clerk of the DMV" does not have the power to regulate. The DMV merely enforces laws passed by your State legislature. Therein lies the difference, and why GP is not "whining about nothing".

      Nowhere does the Constitution give Congress the authority to delegate their law-making powers to some outside bureaucracy. The legal authority of the FCC is very questionable indeed, regardless of whether it has been accepted for many decades.

      The proper role of the FCC would be as an advisory body to Congress, which then makes the laws. Instead, it has become an extra-Constitutional, quasi-legal body in itself, which should be unacceptable to thinking Americans.

      Further: if the FCC is going to propose "NEW" rules, and vote on them without public input, I believe it would be violating the laws requiring public input for "new" major regulations.

  2. when-all-the-astroturfing-is-accounted-for dept by Shuh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's interesting how this top-down regulatory move without the input of America's elected lawmakers is being characterized as the true Will Of The People. There's serious Newspeak going on here.

    1. Re:when-all-the-astroturfing-is-accounted-for dept by Cantankerous+Cur · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, the scary thing is the internet companies and the Koch brothers stuffed the 'ballet boxes' AND that is going to be trotted out as the will of the people (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/16/one-group-dominates-the-second-round-of-net-neutrality-comments/).

    2. Re:when-all-the-astroturfing-is-accounted-for dept by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      That's not too far removed from the truth though, is it? Replace "will" with "apathy" and you're pretty much dead on the money. Then again, to really be apathetic you've got to be aware of the issue in the first place, and I doubt that the vast majority of The People are even aware that this issue might even concern them, let alone understand (or take the time to understand - we're back to apathy again) the issues enough to make an informed decision.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    3. Re:when-all-the-astroturfing-is-accounted-for dept by Shuh · · Score: 4, Informative

      It might be better that way. I know I can't out-bid $MEGACORP on the Congressperson-purchasing market, err I mean campaign contribution donations. Unlike letting Congress handle this, there's actually a chance some random bureaucrat will do the right thing. A slim chance, yes, but a chance.

      This /. story about a "vote" tries to make this agreement among bureaucrats look like something other than an executive fiat from a single Hugo Chavez. The idea is to convince you the representative democratic process is involved somehow. But rather than pick up on that, you seem to think it's more expensive to buy off half of a handful of regulators than to buy off most of Congress.

      The only big problem with the FCC scenario is the standard revolving door between the regulators and future cushy jobs in the very industry they're supposed to be regulating.

      So it's better to have bureaucrats handling everything, except for the fact that bureaucrats regularly come from and return to the industries they regulate and can be bought off rather easily. Nice bit of reasoning there.

    4. Re:when-all-the-astroturfing-is-accounted-for dept by Aereus · · Score: 2

      The problem here is Tom Wheeler, afaik, already was a corporate bigwig in the telecom industry. So he has a vested interest in helping out all his buddies. His being chairman is a pretty big conflict of interest, but such is the US today.

  3. Fox/henhouse by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The FCC is the last organization that should be "voting" on Net Neutrality.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Fox/henhouse by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

      Put it on the ballot as a national referendum in 2016, you wanna see Big Pipes shit themselves.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:Fox/henhouse by LaissezFaire · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Put it on the ballot as a national referendum in 2016, you wanna see Big Pipes shit themselves.

      Since there is no such thing in the U.S. as a national referendum on laws or regulations, do you have any other suggestions?

      The thing that net neutrality advocates fail to do is to describe the regulatory system they want to put in place. Take the comic from The Oatmeal, for example (http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality). "And I'm going to do that by being a super terrific A+ dude and explaining to you exactly how Net Neutrality works." There are lots of panels describing the goal, and none showing the way it would work. How is it run? How are complaints logged? How are ISPs monitored? What reporting mechanisms to ISPs have? What features will be mandated or forbidden in network devices? How is good versus bad traffic shaping to be defined? What are the penalties? What are the exceptions?

      Ah, the exceptions. Once VOIP 911 calls are mandated to be prioritized over other data, then you'll get medical data prioritized, which makes sense, because we don't want to kill people, and then ... the same big bad companies will lobby for their data, and net neutrality becomes the opposite of net neutrality. Whoops.

    3. Re:Fox/henhouse by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Since there is no such thing in the U.S. as a national referendum on laws or regulations, do you have any other suggestions?

      Since you asked, yes. A constitutional amendment ending corporate personhood and establishing that money is not speech.

      The thing that net neutrality advocates fail to do is to describe the regulatory system they want to put in place.

      That's horseshit. We have a very nice regulatory model to put in place. It's called, "common carrier".

      Ah, the exceptions. Once VOIP 911 calls are mandated to be prioritized over other data, then you'll get medical data prioritized, which makes sense, because we don't want to kill people, and then ... the same big bad companies will lobby for their data, and net neutrality becomes the opposite of net neutrality. Whoops.

      Good job inventing red herrings. "Net Neutrality is bad because bad people might do bad things in the future."

      Free markets have utterly failed when it comes to infrastructure. Why should we trust it with something as important as communications?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Fox/henhouse by khallow · · Score: 2

      A constitutional amendment ending corporate personhood and establishing that money is not speech.

      How about let's not start with something stupid like banning speech you don't like and destroying the most successful business and non profit organization system humanity has come up with to date.

      Free markets have utterly failed when it comes to infrastructure. Why should we trust it with something as important as communications?

      Because you don't have anything better to replace it with? Free markets have "failed" here because they haven't been tried.

  4. Re:Just reclassify them by Shuh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is easier to reclassify the broadband companies than to get them to play nice with the Internet. If there is REAL competition, they will get in line, because some new start-up can quickly state they have 'true' Net Neutrality.

    Ironically you may have have hit on the real reason for passing Net Neutrality. The feelgood parts of the regulation touted on /. will be toothless. Meanwhile the fine print of the regulation will outlaw new start-ups and anything else approaching "REAL competition."

  5. Re:Why the big Pipes doesn't want Net Neutrality by causality · · Score: 2

    They want to charge more! Remember when they wanted to charge for every byte? One big pipe is one cost, a hundred little pipes are individual billings. Imagine them charging for access to every site. If access to a site is too slow, you won't use it. If you want it bad enough you will pay. Sounds like Cable and Satellite TV. They control the Pipe, they control your access. And without their PIpe, how will we get access to the Internet?

    What would go wrong with classifying them as common carriers? Don't want to be held liable for every illegal use of your network? Then don't screw with the traffic in any way. What downside would there be to treating ISPs this way?

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  6. The courts already said the FCC had no ability... by whistlingtony · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is stupid. The FCC proposed the Open Internet rules a while back, and we already took those to court in 2013 and 2014. A US Circuit court stated in 2013...

    "That said, even though the Commission has general authority to regulate in this arena, it may not impose requirements that contravene express statutory mandates. Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. Because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order."

    I can't find a quick link to the 2014 decision, but it said basically the same thing.

    So, are they common carriers? If so, they should be Title II regulated. Are they not Common Carriers? Then they're responsible for what goes over their networks, and they do NOT want that....

    The FCC can throw out all the rules it wants. We've done this. They GAVE UP the ability to regulate these companies, and all it takes to get it back is for the FCC ITSELF to decide to do so once again. It's easy. They could do it tomorrow....

    but Tom Wheeler, head of the FCC, is a former cable lobbyist... so....

  7. What's disturbing... by Glasswire · · Score: 2

    ... is that all the the commentary on the FCC vote seems to define net neutrality as not interfering with "web sites" from other parties (good, but... ) however, this is opening up a potential loophole where traffic to and from apps could be limited because they are not "web sites". We can only hope this is result of FCC trying to make their intentions more understandable to the public and that the actual proposal will be what it should be:
    ISPs should not be able to prioritize/ deprioritize IP traffic to or from the ISP client hosts with other internet hosts not affiliated with the ISP .
    This covers web site, app, OS, device and any other traffic. There probably should be an exception for traffic the client customer EXPRESSLY requests to be prioritized eg. VoIP or VPN to a particular hosts. Note that this all about the relationship with the consuming end-point, last-mile, customer. It should not impose any restriction on commercial connection, peering or other upstream contractual arrangements.