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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.
The open internet is one of the most democratizing things we have in a modern society, why is this even up for debate? What benefit would society have in enabling "Fast lanes" or "premium" connections or other nonsense? What do we get protecting commercial interests?
I say this as a conservative. The Republican establishment are dumbasses who saw that the Democrats support NN, so the Republicans feel they need to oppose it by default. If the D's came up with a bill abolishing 50% of welfare spending, and affirming individuals' rights to carry arms at all times in all locations, the R's would oppose it just because.
"We found a way to reframe the debate from 'Republicans vs. Freedom' to 'Republicans vs. Big Government', so we're going to do that both to hammer home that 'Democrats are Dictators' meme and because we're getting fat stacks of cash from the people who stand to profit from it".
Just because you can hook a modem up to a phone line and send data over the copper doesn't mean that your phone company is an ISP then, either, right?
I don't know if you know what "tele" and "communications" are but when you put them together, the name alone indicates communication at a distance which is exactly what the internet was created to do. Having ISPs regulated as telecommunications services makes perfect sense to me.
This one goes out to all you libertarians who've been lining up behind the "New GOP", the Republican party that says it's looking out for individual liberties rather than corporate greed.
And yeah, I know what the truly die-hard among you are about to say: that the people who own Comcast have a right to assemble and agree to strangle internet commerce if they want to. But I say, if you allow wealthy corporate interests to accumulate far more power than the weakened government, they effectively *become* the government, and when they "exercise their liberties" it's indistinguishable from tyranny.
I'm not sure what it looks like from where you're sitting, but there were some pretty obvious shenanigans at play with the whole Comcast/etc vs Netflix deal. Traffic to/from a particular site doesn't suddenly degrade in quality only on a particular ISP, and only when an argument about getting paid extra starts, only to magically vanish the moment that site agrees to pay up, all on its own. And that's after all the lawsuits that were launched to overturn previous, far less extensive regulatory attempts.
Unregulated? Without any act of Congress? You do know that "Title II" refers specifically to a law, passed by Congress, as updated to cover modern telecommunications, right? And you do know that they tried doing stuff before, and the Courts told them "you have to use Title II classification to do this," right?
I'm not even going to start on the fact that you think sending data is somehow not "telecommunications."
As opposed to what happened at the FCC, where a bunch of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats just made up a whole bunch of new rules?
I mean if you want to frame the argument in hte worst possible light concerning how shit gets done, at least congress is electable. Which is a far cry from what the FCC is. Even if you like what the FCC did here, it should scare the shit out of you, assuming you care about preventing tyrannical bureaucracies.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Came here to ask this. Found it second post. Well done, sir.
It's gets silly these days to think of congresscritters as "Democrat" or "Republican" on issues like this. Who represents Comcast? Who represents Google? For damn sure none of them represent voters.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There are no more Republicans. There are "Corporate 1%" and "twist the Tea Party away from it's foundation into stupid fundamentalism".
Democrats occasionally operate ok at the local level, but incompetence and socialism destroys them at the national level.
Unfortunately, the "outsider" running for 2016 is a nut without any respect that his father earned.
I'm writing in "Mickey Mouse" for president in 2016. And maybe most other offices.
As if you don't know who Comcast is charging here.
Any more Comcast propaganda you want to regurgitate? You also know perfectly well that Netflix has offered to place storage services within ISP networks. But even if they weren't, it's none of Comcast's concern as Netflix is already paying for their access and Comcast's customer's are paying for theirs.
As little as possible to these morons means even local politics should do nothing. But it won't work in this case, because telecom is not a local issue, it's not even a state issue. You can't tell Comcast what to do when you're in a little town.
And don't forget, these hardcore politicians with their "states rights!" mantra were the same ones who manages to get several state governments to forbid their municipal governments from bypassing Comcast to have their own internet service. True hypocrites.
There are such people but it is disingenuous to describe them as "not very libertarian". The idea is to understand the difference between a right and a privilege and it is something this group do rather well.
It is the "your rights online" Slashdot crowd that have a warped sense of liberty. A typical commentator usually applies a utilitarian approach with, subconsciously, their own value function. This leads to support of a mix of both positive and negative rights designed to give the typical internet user a more comfortable existence. They rally against closed source software, corporate data retention, and ISP freedom. They fail to respect the masses and take the view that the world would be better if they were able to mandate certain ways of doing things, things which the general public is too ignorant to demand itself.
Consider authors, that view coryright as their right to own their work (rather than the removal of rights of others to the free peaceable use of their property). They are routinely attacked for this here. Net neutrality supporters can be attacked for precisely the same reason. I, apparently, am not free to build network infrastructure and charge people for using it the way I prefer. This is a loss of real freedom.
You may consider net neutrality a net positive (utilitarianism again) but it is most clearly not a position of liberty. It is very much: your rights, and privelages, online; fuck all offline rights.
This is a 'troll'? Somebody must have changed the moderation guidelines again.
No, somebody just works for a telecom company and thinks net neutrality is a bad idea, so they're resenting the fact that bribery played a part in the legislation and are reacting to the presence of a fact they don't like.
Either that, or it's a paid proxy for a telecom company downvoting it. I believe I've noticed a trend on slashdot of downmoderation of comments opposed to institutions of the sort who hire propaganda people, but haven't done a thorough analysis so it's only anecdotal.
The FCC answers to Congress.
No, it doesn't. The FCC is an independent agency of the United States. While it may have been established and granted its authority by Congress, and while it may fall under the Executive Branch, it answers neither to the President nor to Congress, except inasmuch as the President nominates individuals to fill vacancies for commissioner seats and the Senate confirms them.
Also note that there are corporations both for and against Net Neutrality. I hope you don't think that Google, Netflix, and Facebook pushing Net Neutrality is purely out of the goodness of their hearts. They're pushing rules that benefit themselves ... and not necessarily the end-users.
Oh, sure, and that's a fair point that I entirely agree with. That said, what I was getting at is that Congress is getting involved this time around because there are major political contributions influencing decisions, and if you use those links I provided to see how much the companies you listed have been contributing, what you'll quickly find is that Google is the only one in the ballpark of the telecoms. Facebook is barely a blip and Netflix isn't even listed. These ISPs are pumping massive amounts of money into Washington to buy votes, and it's working.
This assumes that the private sector has a vested interest in helping the citizens. In practice it does not. The private sector is very often the enemy of the citizens. Once they've got a monopoly or trust in place then they'll cheat and steal more than most governments will. Even without the monopolies they do their best to extract as much as possible out of people's wallets.
In reality you can't vote with your wallets if you're poor, or even if middle class. The only way the citizens have managed historically to rein in the power of the private sector is by electing governments to do this. Sure, it's not a perfect system but there has been no other system in history that has done it better.
What we've got now is not a system of reduced regulation or of high regulation. What we have is a mixed up system where the big economic interests are given a free pass to be abusive, or the ability to write their own regulations. Everyone else though has to follow the regulations and rules. The internet infrastructure within the US should follow the same guidelines and principles that are in place for telephones and broadcast media (the internet of last century).
There are a few people who use the notion of "shills" to counter criticism of their point - they seem to believe that the only way people can disagree with them is by being paid to disagree. Slashdot simply isn't large enough any more or has enough reputation for people to really care about this stuff.
You notice how the person you replied to didn't even entertain the notion that a few people who might not agree with him simply moderated the way they saw fit.
Shills are the alien-carrying UFOs of slashdot - loads of people passionately claim they exist, but no evidence has surfaced pointing to their existence.
the federal government SHOULD be doing as little as possible.
One thing they should do is stop companies from raping the population hand over fist. A lot of people over there seem to like being charged (or charging) extra for everything because it's the American way, also mumble mumble competition
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