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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.
The GOP have been and will be re-voting to overturn ACA and Net Neutrality so often they need ACA for their carpal tunnel syndrome.
Table-ized A.I.
So:
Some Federal agency serves up some rules on whatever
Congress, who is actually in charge of passing laws, says, "Hey, wait a minute. Shouldn't we have looked at this first?"
This seems to be one of those "We have to pass it to see what's in it." type of deals.
I am NOT saying the Republicrats are all above board in what they're doing and why ($$$), but it does kind of seem to be in their bailiwick to investigate before things like this are approved or passed.
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...
Rep. Doug Collins
Top Contributing Industries, 2013-2014:
1. TV/Movies/Music $52,500 $11,500 $41,000
http://www.opensecrets.org/pol...
"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".
Sorry I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of US law/politics, but aren't these republican politicians actually breaking the law by representing the interests of national corps instead of what is in the best interest of their own consituency's voters? (and if not why not?)
I used to be a republican, back in the Reagan days. But these days (hell, since Bush Jr.) my "traditional" views have all but been marginalized. The democrats aren't much better.
Although I don't (yet) feel ashamed of the D's, as I do about the R's like when shit like this occurs. Can they make it any more plain they're bought and sold??
(Well past) Time to find a new party...
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
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.
What's at issue is if the FCC's unconstitutional, unregulated expansion of power. Without identifying any previous violations, without even utilizing the courts, and without any act of Congress, they single-handedly declared their authority over one of the most free realms of commerce we have today.
People can keep saying that, but it's clearly untrue. Title II is part of the Communications Act, which is law passed by Congress. Now you can argue they misinterpreted that law and I'm sure someone will in court soon, but to say there was no law is either ignorant or lying.
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.
Does nothing to open up the last mile to competition.
Manages to insert the government even more in the internet.
Can't be certain what it will actually do at this point.
Still I have more hope in this than I do Comcast to do anything but completely screw things up.
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."
No, they wouldn't ban cars. That would be perceived as accepting Climate Change, and we can't have THAT, now, can we, reTHUGs?
Your ignorance of the enabling legislation, the 1934 Communications Act, disqualifies your opinion and renders it trash.
Net Neutrality is a routing rule that has been with the Internet since the beginning. You don't "overturn" it with an act of congress.
No. But the courts overturned it which is why the FCC went back and came up with a different approach to prevent predatory practices.
How the Internet is designed is a job for engineers and no one else.
That's a nice sentiment but it's terribly naive. When content producers buy out the service providers, they make their engineers do all kinds of stuff to the design of the network to jack up profits and otherwise abuse their monopoly power. This is why the FCC ruled that the service providers must act like common carriers.
The Restoration of Internet Freedom Act. Let freedom ring.
Nope, the FCC specifically declined to intervene in peering agreements like Netflix-Cogent-Comcast:
You were saying?
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?
Last time I checked, the Internet was an Information Service. That designation was created by Congress for some reason... You can't have it both ways.
I'm not even going to start on the fact that you think sending data is somehow not "information service."
Wonder what the public key field is for?
You mean the same Congress that delegated power to the agency in question to make just these sort of rules??? If Congress wants to pass new legislation to revoke that authority (or the budget of the agency under the Executive), it is free to do so - but that does nothing to change the fact that Congress approved it in the first place. You can find similar examples on everything from pot to DADT.
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.
There's nothing magic or shady about paying for more bandwidth and getting more bandwidth.
The degradation in speed is consistent with a continued growth in Netflix subscribers on a fixed amount of bandwidth.
Do you think it's strange that you get higher performance upgrading to a 6 Mbps DSL plan from a 1 Mbps DSL plan? Use more, pay more.
Funny, the Internet doesn't look like the PSTN to me. And I had no clue it was invented in 1934, Al Gore looks pretty young! But I'm a VoIP professional, what do I know?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
"Extortionist Appeasement Lanes"?
I'm trying to work in some combination of WWII rhetoric plus mafioso activity...
AC doesn't know what a natural monopoly is. AC probably thinks they are an expert on economics. AC only reads a certain kind of website.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Last time I checked, the Internet was an Information Service. That designation was created by Congress for some reason... You can't have it both ways.
Are you still throwing that bullshit around? The last time you checked, it was an "Information Service" because the FCC reclassified it as an Information Service in 2003. It was under Title II before that, and moved OUT of that classification by the FCC.
You'll need to provide a citation, but in any event, the FCC would have been incorrect, as it is now.
Wikipedia provides a nice write-up of the state of affairs since the Telecommunications Act of 1996:
The Act makes a significant distinction between providers of telecommunications services and information services. The term 'telecommunications service' means the offering of telecommunications for a fee directly to the public, or to such classes of users as to be effectively available directly to the public, regardless of the facilities used.' On the other hand, the term 'information service' means the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications, and includes electronic publishing, but does not include any use of any such capability for the management, control, or operation of a telecommunications system or the management of a telecommunications service. The distinction comes into play when a carrier provides information services. A carrier providing information services is not a 'telecommunications carrier' under the act. For example, a carrier is not a 'telecommunications carrier' when it is selling broadband Internet access. This distinction becomes particularly important because the act enforces specific regulations against 'telecommunications carriers' but not against carriers providing information services. With the convergence of telephone, cable, and internet providers, this distinction has created much controversy.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
And such classifications are at the discretion of the FCC.
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.
No reason to downvote - once your argument/reasoning devolves to "BULLSHIT" in all caps and then throw in "liberals" and "regulate" as if the last two were the equivalent of the first, you identified yourself quite clearly as on of those hyper-partisan types who intellectually (and I use that term very broadly) subsist on the cargo-cult, talk-radio crowd who feel at their best when engaging in loutish, barron-stool rantings accompanied by your favorite sayings/slogans of the day. You really should consider doing this: listen-to/watch/read *only* the following for one month. 1) PBS/NesHour for real news and *sane* discussion of current events. 2) Economist magazine for world perspective, outstanding, deep-thought analysis (of which I occasionally disagree, but still respect their perspective) of current events, including America. PS - Economist magazine is the one news/analysis source that is equally respected by Ds and Rs who have a brain. The Tea Pary types like, sadly, you, I suspect, only do Fox and talk radio.
If that were the case, then Congress wouldn't have a law that says "Here's a description of one type of commerce, you get $amount_of_authority over it. And here's a description of another type of commerce, and you get $substantially_more_amount_of_authority over it."
If they can just always pick the latter, why even bother describing the former, and the subset of authority that goes with it? The FCC has zero self-interest in regulating its power.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Net Neutrality is a routing rule that has been with the Internet since the beginning.
Wrong. It's a concept that was first given that name in the early-to-mid 2000s and was first put into writing by the FCC in 2005 in a non-enforceable policy document. The principles that are central to the concept of net neutrality were first enacted as rules in the mid-90s as part of Congressional "open Internet" legislation. Prior to that, they were the de facto policy, rather than a de jure policy, given that the small-time players back then lacked either the incentive or the ability to break net neutrality.
You don't "overturn" it with an act of congress.
Actually, you do. Those open Internet laws that were created in the mid-90s and that were protecting what we now call "net neutrality" had an expiration date on them, which is why the FCC took steps in 2010 to protect net neutrality, given that it was, quite literally, set to expire because of an act of Congress.
How the Internet is designed is a job for engineers and no one else.
If only. Were that true, we'd all be a lot happier, I suspect.
What's at issue is if the FCC's unconstitutional, unregulated expansion of power. Without identifying any previous violations, without even utilizing the courts, and without any act of Congress, they single-handedly declared their authority [...]
What expansion? The FCC exercised the same Congressionally-granted authority to classify communications that they always have, as per the Telecommunications Act of 1996. They do it all the time. Congress had no problem when the FCC classified cable, DSL, and wireless broadband companies in 2002, 2005, and 2007, respectively. Re-classifications can and do occur (including some of the ones I just mentioned), and what they've done recently is just re-classify them again in a way that is within their authority as stated by the federal appeals court in the 2014 Verizon v. FCC case.
Or maybe I'm wrong. After all, you said that the courts haven't been utilized at all and that no Congressional acts were involved. If only my claims could be substantiated...
Just because you can send copyrighted material over p2p protocols, doesn't make them illegal. And just because you can send VoIP over the Internet doesn't make it a telecommunications service.
Ok, first off, the one does not imply the other. Second, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 specifically grants the FCC authority in these areas, regardless of what you decide to call it. Third, the Communications Act of 1934 was around before that and was used by the FCC to regulate these things (albeit, with crufty laws in need of updating). No matter how you cut it, those analogies add up to a lot of nothing.
Let's play a game.
One is "Telecommunications service" and one is "Information service". But I removed the actual term from the definition, and randomized the order at the flip of a coin.
So which one describes the Internet?
So does the Internet fall under section $A, or section $D?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Sadly, Congress can actually overturn FCC rules, and this Congress, with its Republican majority may succeed where their predecessors failed.
This net neutrality is not what everyone things it is. It should be overturned. Hopefully congress will not be afraid to assert its authority.
And comcast should be able to satisfy the upstream demand generated by the plans they sell.
Since I happen to be a constituent of Mr. Collins, I decided to write a letter. Feel free to copy and send it to your legislator if you so choose. Mr. Collins, I am appalled that you would introduce a bill to stifle free trade in Internet Services. Specifically I am talking about your bill to overturn Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is a major step toward allowing free trade to compete with large special interest groups such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, Netflix and so forth. By stifling this FTC action you will kill the Internet for innovation and expansion in the United States. No company is going to invest the amount of money needed to truly bring broadband into this nations homes without Net Neutrality backing up the endeavor. This means that Comcast and AT&T which are the only two providers in my area of Gainesville will never bring prices down and speeds up to par with what other countries now have to offer. Comcast currently charges me $99 a month for 50Mpbs speeds. If Google fiver were to be available, I could get 1Gbps speeds for $70 a month. That is a significant difference in speed versus price. Not only will backing major ISP's bid to kill Net Neutrality hurt Internet expansion, it will also kill off any new companies that wish to compete with large existing businesses such as NetFlix, Amazon and others. When you open the door to businesses being able to pay for preferential treatment, you have stifled the small company which has been the cornerstone of American growth. This bill seems to indicate that you are more interested in backing big business and not at all interested in your constituents. If you do kill off Net Neutrality, you will be doing more harm to the growth of this great nation. Please stop and think about the ramifications of what you are about to do. Whether big business agrees or not, Net Neutrality is good for the consumer by encouraging competition in the marketplace.
Hah. As if there is only one school of economic thought with rules written in stone.
Newsflash buddy: Laffer is a sick joke.
And you also prove you know nothing about the Economist magazine.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
So you apparently believe that liberals exist only to engage in self-destructive behavior? Why do they do so? Do you believe just because they are evil?
Keep throwing around blanket terms of ignorance too, like statist and SJW. It really helps you look intelligent, acting as if having a functional government and caring about equality under the law are bad things to be opposed.
Here's the dose of reality you need:
The internet already operates by and large under the ideals of Net Neutrality.
And it's not just some leftist plot, but a fundamental preservation of free market ideals.
Other than congressional republicants (and a few dems) who are bought and owned by the industry,
it's a concept that enjoys broad bipartisan support. Even the creators of the internet support it.
Net Neutrality isn't a new thing being pushed on the internet. It's how it already operates,
minus a few attempts by the likes of Comcast to get away with various shenanigans.
Net neutrality is the preservation of the status quo.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Do you want to send a message that to be a Republican is to be ignorant of the internet and be accepting of bribes?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
It's just an empty gesture until January 2017. President Obama is an outspoken proponent of the net neutrality rules and he will veto anything that reaches his desk. Yet another reason it's important to keep the Republicans out of the Oval Office.
The Internet is a utility. That is all.
....Freedumb!
And comcast should be able to satisfy the upstream demand generated by the plans they sell.
If you don't understand how networks operate, you don't have any business saying how they should work.
Individual subscribers don't get unlimited upload bandwidth as part of their Comcast network access. That does not change just because one is a popular commercial business pushing massive amounts of content over Comcast's network.
Netflix needed to buy a better upload pipe to Comcast. They did, and enjoyed better network performance after the fact.
Looks like nobody on /. has figured out that the Obama administration nationalized the whole internet yet.
Check out what it says. Check out the "logic" behind what the FCC did - what a load of crap and they know it.
Blew over everyone's head just like Hope and Change did. Guys, he's fooled you once, twice, thrice... now he has to be on the 40th time or something.
wake up.
Just beginning. Now they can regulate what we say and do. It's coming. First amendment rights are on the way out too.
Netflix do not peer with comcast. Netflix demonstrably has enough bandwidth available to get the data out there (onto the pipes so to speak). Comcast refused to provide the bandwidth from the transit providers to their own network. You know the one that their customers pay for.
I'm not saying that all their customers should always get all the bandwidth they have purchased. Overselling keeps prices down. But if you oversell you should not be surprised if you eventually have to make good on the claims you made. And in this case it did not even involve a massive infrastructure upgrade.
Netflix do not peer with comcast. Netflix demonstrably has enough bandwidth available to get the data out there (onto the pipes so to speak). Comcast refused to provide the bandwidth from the transit providers to their own network. You know the one that their customers pay for.
Netflix chose an ISP that did not have enough bandwidth to Comcast. Getting bandwidth "out there" is only half the problem.
Comcast's customers paid for X Mbits access from Comcast's network. It doesn't guarantee they get X Mbits access from some dinky server on the Internet that has 128 Kbps upload. Neither does it guarantee that all Y Netflix users on Comcast's network get Y*X Mbps access to Netflix content, when Netflix's network's connection to Comcast does not have that much bandwidth.
If Netflix was a customer of Comcast's network, that'd be one thing... but they weren't, at least until they created their agreement.
Netflix streaming is at times 30% of the Internet's total traffic. If they don't pay those bandwidth costs, then it's going to be paid by the people who aren't Netflix users ... how is that a better solution?
Pay for what you use - meaning Netflix should pay.
And you are claiming that this is not comcasts problem? How?
Comcast customers pay for X Mbit access to Comcast's network. They got it.
Netflix did not have the upload to Comcast's network to handle all Netflix users on said network. That lack of upload is Netflix's problem, which is why the correct solution is for Netflix to pay Comcast to remedy this.
Failing that, they could have found a different ISP that had a better peering agreement with Comcast.
where did this go wrong? People pay for access. Not as much as they should but how can you deny them the access Paying for
Not as much as they should but how can you deny them the access Paying for
Here's your error. Comcast subscribers are not paying for access to Netflix. They're paying for access to Comcast's network. When their download speed from Netflix dropped to a "measly" 1.5 Mbps, there has been no denial of access.
That did result in a worse user experience - and that's entirely due to Netflix's choice of ISP and network plus their continuously growing user-base. By creating an agreement with Comcast, they kept their existing ISP and bypassed the network bottlenecks, improving their users' experience and fixing the scaling of their bandwidth use.
Scaling up solutions cost money. When Netflix is using up the bandwidth with their content, it's correct for Netflix to pay.
Comcasts customers are already paying to access Netflix. They are paying netflix and paying comcast. How comcast can not cope I do not know. As someone earlier pointed out End points will never provide symmetrical data transfers. It is always downloads. But then they are not stupid so they know that. I know they have a big network but how did they not give netfix a chance. Almost like they deliberately chose to mess around.
Comcasts customers are already paying to access Netflix. They are paying netflix and paying comcast. How comcast can not cope I do not know.
Yes, Comcast's customers paid for what they deserved.
The issue is that Netflix was failing to deliver as well as it could to them; and that was rooted in Netflix not paying its share of bandwidth costs.
Contrary to what you said earlier, there was no denial of access. There was degrading quality of access rooted in Netflix's continued growth in subscribers and bandwidth usage.
I know they have a big network but how did they not give netfix a chance.
What do you mean by "give Netflix a chance"?
This is business. You get what you pay for. Netflix got the bandwidth they paid for, and then they paid more to have the bandwidth to serve their growing number of subscribers on the Comcast network.
Thankfully I am not in the US so it does not affect me. And I do not subscribe to netflix
Netflix did pay for their bandwidth. Comcasts customers also payed. Somewhere in the middle there was an argument.
Thankfully I am not in the US so it does not affect me. And I do not subscribe to netflix
Then you are advised to learn more details about a dispute before taking a stance.
Especially when the outcome does not affect you.
Netflix did pay for their bandwidth. Comcasts customers also payed. Somewhere in the middle there was an argument.
Bandwidth is a quantity. The amount of bandwidth Netflix paid for is not equal to the amount of bandwidth Comcast's customers paid for.