FCC Tosses Petition Challenging Its New Internet Regulations

A petition submitted to the FCC by several of the players (including AT&T, CenturyLink, and USTelecom) who would be most affected by the agency's recently asserted Internet regulatory powers has been rejected by the agency's leadership. The Internet providers, along with the CTIA trade association, asserted that the FCC's Open Internet order is aganst the public interest. Per The Verge, the Commission last Friday "denied the petition, issuing an order that states its classification of broadband internet as a telecommunications service "falls well within the Commission's statutory authority, is consistent with Supreme Court precedent, and fully complies with the Administrative Procedure Act."

Comments

pro government insanity

[roman_mir]

It is curious to observe the pro government mania taking place at this time, the time of the biggest economic downturn pretty much in history of the USA, the downturn caused by the government power grab and destruction of individual freedoms. It looks like this case, like in so many before it, the people will be looking towards the very entity that caused the destruction of the economy for solutions, 'solutions' that cannot solve anything but make it worse because the reasons for the problems are so completely and utterly misdiagnosed. It is not surprising but it is nevetherless unfortunate to see it happen again after so much history showing that this is the worst way to go about trying to fix the problems. This will not fix anything, will make things worse in the long term. But who is really capable of thinking long term? Very few, and nobody wants to hear the actual solution or indeed the problem.

Re:pro government insanity

[roman_mir]

Now you are getting it (sarcasm).

The bubbles are created by the Federal reserve (has no reserve by the way) pumping fake money into the system (inflation) and manipulating interest rates that let USA 'Treasury' (should be called Debtory, it has no treasure but debt) to sell debt that will never be repaid. This inflation pushed savings and as a consequence pushed productivity out of the USA and somewhere else. Without savings and productivity there is no way for banks to find yield. At the same time FDIC creates fake impression of insurance, which doesn't exist, only Fed's printing exists. Combined with the laws that destroyed lending standards the system invited banks and everybody else to gamble rather than to save and be productive. The bubbles are created by the governments. Greed is good in the free market, there greed creates the economy. In centrally planned and controlled market it is only a tool of the government, destroying the economy.

Re:how long until the internet dies?

[Cafe Alpha]

The corporate controlled right wing zombie force, like (including?) the Koch brothers neo John Birch Society KKK, are actually being indoctrinated to believe that and have been for months. These are people who can barely figure out flip phones, mostly. And they're all writing letters to congress opposing net neutrality. I wonder how many of those letters are on paper. How many came out of typewriters. Or are hand written.

Re:how long until the internet dies?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way is net neutrality a bad idea? An example of a violation of net neutrality principles was the Internet service provider Comcast intentionally slowing uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing applications. And in 2007, Plusnet was using deep packet inspection to implement limits and differential charges for peer-to-peer, file transfer protocol, and online game traffic. Research suggests that a combination of policy instruments will help realize the range of valued political and economic objectives central to the network neutrality debate.

There is a bigger issue at stake here and although some might say otherwise, the truth is most of the problems in the world happen because of niggers.

Ad hominem attacks & category errors

[LaissezFaire]

I didn't see a single pro-net neutrality comment that talked about The Fine Article. Lots, though, that stated anyone who opposes net neutrality is in the KKK, demonized the right wing, complained about corporate personhood, and complained that corporations have purchased the votes of Congress. The article talked about how a specific bureaucracy received a petition from those it now regulates, and told them "We thought about it and decided we're right. Go away." Normal discussions about the article would talk about strategy, "This seems like just a first step in the ongoing litigation so the corporations can say they tried to play nice," or the underlying legal aspects "wow, this administrative law thing is kinda cool, I hope we can pull more from the regular court system and get everything we like tried by the administrative branch and not the judicial branch, at least until Evil Republicans get the White House back."

You're embarrassing your own side. Please keep it up.

Re:government insanity (regulatory capture)

[IBitOBear]

The government policies didn't "encourage" loaning to such people. They specifically _forbade_ it. The problem was that the deregulation regime didn't provide any "stick" to back up that prohibition. So on one side it offered a financial carrot of massive proportions, the other side just said "it's your duty to not do X and Y and to make sure that you are being good."

The people who bought, paid for, and essentially wrote the legislation, that is the banks, didn't put any "and for every time you fail your duty by doing X and/or Y you will be charged $Z language.

This is called Regulatory Capture, or it's an eventual but certain outcome of regulatory capture. The law was balanced in "intent" and wording, listing things that were good and bad to do and ordering that none of the bad things be done. But it had no teeth to bite bad behavior.

Much as the entire libertarian and "small government republican" agenda, the "we all know what's right so the market will fix it" stuff falls apart in the trenches because without penalty all business and behavior becomes a choice between "do I eat the ice cream now or do I make an ice cream sandwich and then eat that"? If there is no "bad boys get their ice cream taken away" there is no reason expressed by market forces to not be a bad boy.

Example: the theory is "the market isn't going to buy his stuff if he is a bad man polluter of his river" is, in practice, "the people down stream _might_ not buy his stuff because he's polluting their water, but there are lots of people upstream who don't even want to know about the pollution and will buy his stuff."

So the "mortgage lenders" knew that they could make toxic loans and sell them upstream to banks knowing that the government who lived down stream would have to deal with the shit in the financial river eventually. But why would the mortgage broker care, the "free market" already paid him for his product.

"Free Market Capitalism" is the worship of the carpetbagger and the insistance that nobody can escape forever, but if you give everyone a head start thats longer than the statue of limitations, and you don't even make it against the law, nobody is even chasing the crooks.

Re:A victory

[BlueStrat]

A victory for THE PEOPLE'S network

Since it's now the "People's Network" I guess AT&T, CenturyLink, and USTelecom should just power down all their gear and put employees on leave for a a couple of weeks, and tell the government to go pound sand.

Let's see how the "People's Network" gets along without them.

Strat