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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.
The pay for speed guidelines cover content providors, not end users. Also what is there to pay for?
But users end up paying the subscription fee to those content providers, do they not? What is to stop an internet provider from throttle back bandwidth unless the content provider pays extra, which then gets past on to the consumer? What's to stop an internet provider from partnering with Amazon to provide videos and and Netflix and everyone else must pay a premium for their data to be streamed, thus causing their services to cost more? What's to stop Comcast from throttling content they don't control, causing it to be more expensive to the provider/consumer than their own content?
Data is just electrons flowing down a pipe. It doesn't "cost" any more if those electrons are emails, webpages, videos, or whatever.