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Republicans Introduce a Bill To Overturn Net Neutrality
New submitter grimmjeeper writes: IDG News reports, "A group of Republican lawmakers has introduced a bill that would invalidate the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's recently passed net neutrality rules. The legislation (PDF), introduced by Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, is called a resolution of disapproval, a move that allows Congress to review new federal regulations from government agencies, using an expedited legislative process."
This move should come as little surprise to anyone. While the main battle in getting net neutrality has been won, the war is far from over. The legislation was only proposed now because the FCC's net neutrality rules were just published in the Federal Register today. In addition to the legislation, a new lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by USTelecom, a trade group representing ISPs.
This move should come as little surprise to anyone. While the main battle in getting net neutrality has been won, the war is far from over. The legislation was only proposed now because the FCC's net neutrality rules were just published in the Federal Register today. In addition to the legislation, a new lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by USTelecom, a trade group representing ISPs.
Here is some basic information about the legalized purchase of the relevant legislation:
Lobbying:
https://www.opensecrets.org/in...
Contributions:
https://www.opensecrets.org/in...
If you care to read the actual ruling, you'll see that it is all about routing packets. The rules say, in short, that all traffic is to be routed equally without regard to source, destination, or content. It prevents Comcast, who effectively has monopoly power in most of the markets it serves, from charging Netflix extra simply to route packets from their servers to their subscribers. The ruling also prevents service providers from rerouting web requests to competitors' servers. It also prevents outright denying access to competitors. In fact, the ruling states quite clearly that ISPs are to act as common carriers and no censorship of content is to take place at all. You would know this if you actually read the ruling and stopped reading propaganda coming from right wing "news" sources.
In my state Republicans are:
-against net neutrality
-forbids Tesla dealerships
-want to rescind even partial deregulation in the electric and gas industries
http://michiganradio.org/post/...
It's sickening.
Get up!
That's not really what happened here though. Congress long ago gave the FCC the authority to classify communications, establish rules for them, and enforce those rules...which is exactly what the FCC has been doing all along.
Congress didn't bat an eye when the FCC used their authority to (re-)classify cable, DSL, and wireless broadband in 2002, 2005, and 2007, respectively, under Title I of the Telecommunications Act, even though Title II had applied to some of those previously. After all, it was a burgeoning industry, so the lighter touch afforded by Title I made more sense, and there were other laws on the books to prevent the worst of the nasty things those companies might do.
Congress didn't bat an eye when the FCC used their authority to establish policy regarding net neutrality in 2005, establish ancillary regulations piecemeal over the years, or establish stronger protections for net neutrality in 2010. After all, as these companies were getting bigger, it was becoming more and more important to ensure that they acted in ways that were fair, and with the previous rules protecting against nasty things expiring, it was time to establish new ones.
Congress didn't bat an eye when the FCC used their authority to enforce fines against ISPs in response to nasty things they were doing. After all, them's the rules.
But then the Supreme Court slapped down one of the rules over a procedural issue, saying that if the FCC wanted to enforce that rule, they'd first need to reclassify those communications under Title II. The FCC attempted to work with the ISPs to come up with a middle-ground, but the ISPs refused to budge, so the FCC finally went and did exactly what the Supreme Court had suggested: they used their Congressionally-granted authority to reclassify those communications under Title II.
And now, suddenly, Congress is throwing a hissy fit. Why? Because, as it turns out, it isn't a burgeoning industry made up of companies like Prodigy and CompuServe still. Instead, it's made up of massive media and telecommunications conglomerates like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon with hundreds of billions of dollars on the line, and they are not happy with having an appropriate classification applied to them, given that it's a lot more fun to be a misbehaving behemoth.
The text of the rules has been public for months, even though it hadn't been added to the Federal Register yet. This isn't a "we have to pass it to see it" situation at all. And Congress has no good reason for sticking their noses into this situation, unless you consider the millions and millions of dollars they're receiving to be a good reason.
Do you just not understand how history works?
Before regulations you had to RENT your phone. You were only allowed 1 provider for your local phone and could pick a long distance carrier.
Insert Title 2, phone lines became dumb pipes, then all the cool stuff you posted about like internet, answering machines, caller id, modems, DSL etc came in to being. Regulations and breaking up AT&T so there was competition is what got everything going.
I say bring back the government that had a backbone and a set of balls. Break up some of these banks! Break up the cable companies! Fuck em. You will hear all the people scream about how the government shouldn't meddle in private business, but its the only thing they listen to. Start breaking them up and see how all of a sudden they start to play nice, so they don't get broken up as well.
love the taste, hate the texture