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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.
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...
"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?)
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.
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?
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.
That's actually not true. There were three significant decisions in the same week, only one of them was about Title II (aka "Net Neutrality"). Another had to do with pre-empting state laws forbidding local communities from setting up their services...laws that were passed on behalf of telecomm lobbyists. I can cite from recent observation that a local Wireless ISP is, in fact, using two 1GB/s Comcast backhauls for servicing all their customers (in rural Northern California, where Comcast and AT&T have only spotty service). The third issue that week was they raised the definition of Broadband to be at least 25 Mb/s; below that is no longer considered "broadband" Internet access. Good decisions all, I assert.
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.
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.
And such classifications are at the discretion of the FCC.
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.
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.
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 FCC answers to Congress. When your boss is not happy with your work, your boss is not throwing a "hissy fit".
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.
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.
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.