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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.
There are a lot of issues with it.
I'd like it if the whole thing were nothing but unicorns and rainbows. But the secrecy is not a good sign and we need to think to the future... the FCC might do something good with this today... but the government has a tendency to push the bounds of their authority.
They get some power to take the goods away from drug dealers and before you know it they're confiscating the homes of poor people with basically no justification.
They get the mandate to go after terrorists and a few years later the NSA agents are spying on ex girlfriends using the government terror databases and NSA agents are putting ex wives on no fly lists.
The internet is a big deal. And I just don't want the FCC to ruin it.
I hate the big ISPs too. Everyone does. But the solution to them is competition. Not government regulation. Just remove the stupid laws that make it illegal for rival companies to lay cable in their territory.
Here someone will say those laws don't exist. Both Google and Centurylink were recently complaining about just such laws. So either they do exist or those companies were lying.
Its a real thing. Possibly the new FCC regulations will settle that issue. Which if that was all they were doing would be fine by me. But I worry about the unintended consequences and the long term power creep. The FCC could be a white knight today... but tomorrow? You don't know.
The whole thing could be a devil's bargain. You get something you want today... and later... your soul is forfeit.
You can't say it isn't going to happen... they're keeping the regs secret. That in and of itself is suspicious.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The fact that putting "Freedom" or "Patriot" on shit laws helps them just shows me how gullible and irresponsible the electorate is and why they do not deserve to live in a free country.
We have an electorate that is easily swayed and think they are informed while they parrot talking points they see and hear in the media.
I'm rather Libertarian about most things in life, but I applauded the FCC's decision to attempt to "stifle innovation." That is, of course, only if you consider "innovation" to be new forms of rent-seeking.
Seriously, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. Stop trying to wring money out of both content providers and customers. This shit is getting so old.
They're stripping away Comcast's freedom to shake-down content providers for more money and screw over their customers! What is this, the Soviet Union??
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
Campaign Donations Appreciation Act
Corporate Fascism Reinforcement Act
Fuck the People Act
Other than for the media companies, I can't see a downside to treating broadband access like a utility, especially since the FCC has waived the right to regulate prices. A broadband service routes packets into and out of your house, just like a water, electric or gas utility. AT&T's packets should not be any different than Verizon's packets, or Comcast's packets...it's the equivalent of the local loop from a CLEC.
It seems to me that shaking up the incumbents in some markets would be a good thing. It would probably operate the same way "competitive" gas service does now -- if someone hates their provider enough or finds a cheaper price for the exact same service, they can sign up to have another company provide it. This would be a good model to keep decent providers running, but put some limits on the Comcasts and Time Warner Cables of the world. Also, forcing some kind of universal service would mean that rural customers would get better network access. Carriers only upgrade networks when forced, and only like to operate in places where it's easy to operate...other than profits, this is probably one thing they're worried about. That, and Comcast is probably worried that Joe's Cable Shack is going to take all the business from people who don't need TV with their Internet service.
I'm also not really buying the "innovation" angle. At the core, networks are plumbing. DSL, DOCSIS, and of course Ethernet are pretty mature standards. Occasionally materials and computing advances allow for faster data rates, but these are open standards that every carrier would have access to.
These rules prevent that. Without these rule that is possible, with these rules it is not possible. The ISPs are not allowed to slow down content or charge for faster delivery of content (same thing in practice) but they can still charge end users in a tiered manner.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You are hoplessly naive. In order to compete with incumbent ISPs you have to have massive resources. If you start with small, local deployments, the incumbents will make local price cuts to drive you out of business. Even if you have the resources to make deployments across most population centers in a short time, the result will be lower prices and no profits. If you just built out, your equipment costs will be much greater than incumbents.
The only way to get competition is to force unbundling of local loops. This means more regulation.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
There is no gag order. The Republicans on the FCC committee have refused to file the correct paperwork to allow this go forward. Pretty sleazy, but the Republicans have become pros at that.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
But users end up paying the subscription fee to those content providers, do they not?
Not for the service they're getting. Let's say I'm a Speakeasy customer, and I also pay for Netflix.
You're a Comcast customer, and you also pay for Netflix.
Speakeasy is network neutral, so Netflix has no disadvantage compare to any other provider. If Speakeasy has congestion, Netflix and Amazon will be just as slow. To relieve this, they increase their bandwidth do their peering points, and all networks are again running fast. I may have to pay more to Speakeasy for this speed increase.
However, in your case, Comcast segregates Netflix's traffic and slows it down to relieve congestion, instead of treating all networks as equal. Comcast says their networks are not the issue, because they show you perfect speed from Amazon. You complain to Netflix, who must pay Comcast to get their speed increased.
Now, this is where the bullshit starts: Netflix passes the cost for the Comcast toll on to both you and ME, even though I'm not a Comcast customer, and this toll did nothing to increase MY speed. In fact, I already had to pay extra to my ISP to get my speed fixed.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
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...
This a thousand times. Everybody needs to understand that it is not the FCC that is hiding the rules, but REPUBLICANS, because they know if you saw the rules you wouldn't be likely to think they need to be repealed. And of course, like Marsha Blackburn, the Republicans responsible are bought and paid for by Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.
I hate the big ISPs too. Everyone does. But the solution to them is competition. Not government regulation. Just remove the stupid laws that make it illegal for rival companies to lay cable in their territory.
Those laws don't exist in general. The primary thing preventing Time Warner from running cable to my house is the fact that Comcast already has a wire there. Comcast has already spent the millions of dollars required to wire my neighborhood, and the tens of millions required to wire my town. Whatever price Time Warner can offer, Comcast can beat, because they've already sunk costs. Time Warner can, optimistically, hope to get 50% of cable subscribers, meaning at most half the revenue that Comcast projected to pay off their capital. There is no way for a new cable company to compete effectively with one that's already laid out the major capital expenses. The only reason DSL is competitive is it doesn't require laying new copper to every home.
Likewise, there's no way multiple electric or gas companies could compete with an incumbent who had already wired/plumbed a neighborhood. When cities deregulate gas/electric service, they do so by transferring the wires to one company, and forcing that company to sell transit to all comers at regulated rates. If you want to see competition among ISPs, nationalize the coax, copper and fiber, and let the ISPs rent bandwidth to subscribers' homes and manage their access.
The text making up the net neutrality rules comprises 8 pages. The remaining 290+ pages are legally mandated responses to questions and comments the FCC received during the public comment period. There are not 300+ pages of rules.
Why hasn't it been released? Because two FCC commissioners, Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly (the Republican ones) are refusing to submit their comments of record. Nothing is made public until either those commissioners make their official statements of record or the time window for them to do so expires. Taking the usual obstructionist page out of the Republican playbook, Pai and O'Rielly have decided to wait for the clock to run out instead of helping to move things along. They're the ones making us all wait to see the text.
The gag order is dependent on the last commissioners submitting their comments of record, so the chair can not release it till those last two GOP holdouts let him. I agree this is not 'the republicans', but it is two republicans creating a situation which the party is then benefiting from by painting it as a 'FCC problem'.
Damn they are good, since people tend to write it off, as you did, as republican bashing.
Net Neutrality say if X service (lets say Netflix) is killing your entire network's performance you have to live with it. You can't partition Netflix into it's own walled garden....But the mom and pop shops have to take months to buy more bandwidth.
Keep something in mind here. Netflixs is not sending a SINGLE PACKET to Mom and Pop's ISP that their paying customers didn't ask for.
Those customers are paying Mom and Pop for a service, which in your example, seems to be getting to Netflix.
Now, if Mom and Pop don't like that and can't afford more bandwidth, they have a few choices. They can reduce the speed to all customers, thereby reducing the demand for Netflix. Their customers won't be able to stream an HD movie, for example, because the customer pipe isn't big enough.
They could also allow 30-minute full-speed bursts, followed by 30 minutes of reduced speed. This would allow all non-streaming customers faster downloads in most cases, but would limit streaming video equally, because after 30 minutes your movie quality goes to crap.
They could also prioritize ALL video as lower priority than ALL VPN or HTTP traffic. NETWORK neutrality does not mean PACKET neutrality. It just means I can't give preference to Netflix and screw Hulu over.
As for your Walmart comparison, the reverse is also true. If you allow ISPs to slow traffic from a content provider unless they pay more, only the Walmarts of streaming video will be able to pay more.
The up and coming Mom and Pop streaming video company won't be able to pay off Comcast and AT&T, so Netflix and Hulu will be the only ones that live.
Network Neutrality means NOT picking winners and losers.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.