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House Republicans Roll Out Legislation To Overturn New Net Neutrality Rules
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and 31 Republican co-sponsors have submitted the Internet Freedom Act (PDF) for consideration in the House. The bill would roll back the recent net neutrality rules made by the FCC. The bill says the rules "shall have no force or effect, and the Commission may not reissue such rule in substantially the same form, or issue a new rule that is substantially the same as such rule, unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act." Blackburn claims the FCC's rules will "stifle innovation" and "restrict freedom." The article points out that Blackburn's campaign and leadership PAC has received substantial donations. from Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.
They know it can't get past the president's veto, and probably not past a fillibuster, but if they keep this up they PAC will keep lining their coffers.
I can't believe the bullshit I see from some of the "conservatives" I know who treat this like some kind of commie takeover of the Internet.
One guy I used to work with was trying to run an SMB network off his cable modem service from home and did nothing but complain for weeks about the runaround he got trying to get multiple static IPs due to ridiculous cable vendor policies (solved with some MAC spoofing/VLAN hackery in his firewall) and the pathetic bandwidth allocations he was able to get in addition to the general lack of alternatives in his area.
Yet this same numbskull is parroting this ridiculous "Obama takeover of the Internet" bullshit against net neutrality.
I just don't see how "conservatives" are willing to go totally rabid when it comes to government meddling yet so many (but not all) see outrageous monopoly manipulation and rent-seeking as just the good-old free market working like it's supposed to. I can't make this dichotomy make any sense.
If you see any bill with "freedom", "family", "patriot" or "protection" on it, your first inclination should be to think that there's something evil hidden in the bill. And more often than not you'd be right.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...