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Trump Names Two Opponents of Net Neutrality To Oversee FCC Transition Team (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: President-elect Donald Trump has appointed two new advisers to his transition team that will oversee his FCC and telecommunications policy agenda. Both of the new advisers are staunch opponents of net neutrality regulations. Jeff Eisenach, one of the two newly appointed advisers, is an economist who has previously worked as a consultant for Verizon and its trade association. In September 2014, Eisenach testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee and said, "Net neutrality would not improve consumer welfare or protect the public interest." He has also worked for the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and in a blog post wrote, "Net neutrality is crony capitalism pure and simple." Mark Jamison, the other newly appointed adviser, also has a long history of battling against net neutrality oversight. Jamison formerly worked on Sprint's lobbying team and now leads the University of Florida's Public Utility Research Center. Both Eisenach and Jamison are considered leading adversaries of net neutrality who worked hard to prevent the rules from being passed last year. For the uninitiated, the rules passed last year prevent companies internet providers from discriminating against any online content or services. For example, without net neutrality rules, internet providers like Comcast and Verizon could charge internet subscribers more for using sites like Netflix. The FCC's net neutrality rules would protect consumers from paying exorbitant fees for internet use.
This is simple. They are ether common carriers or they are not.
If they are common carriers then they can not inspect the content they carry and as such are not liable for that content.
If they are NOT common carriers then they can inspect the content and charge what they like. However, they are liable for the content they carry. Thus if they choose to not be common carriers and someone is transmitting Child porn, threats, selling drugs, pirated music and movies,etc. Then they are liable for the transport of that data and we should prosecute them for it.
Do it just a few times and all the ISP's will be on board with becoming common carriers.
I have to say it, folks. Looking across the pond and seeing what's going on in the US right now is so patently absurd, words fail me. I'm seriously worried. You're having a Type A autocrat in charge soon and clear and present dangers encroaching on basic foundational structures, social contracts and rights in the US.
I acutally have a serious question regarding the most recent developments:
What are you doing about this? Personally, I mean. What are you thinking about doing?
Anybody of you guys going all-out prepper, stocking up on water-filters, assault-rifles, ammo, gear, tools and checking to buy some land in the flyovers?
Anybody else considering migrating to Canada, South America, Europe or something?
Please reply in this thread.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Please tell us how higher costs, lower speeds, less competition, and blocked/gated content will make america great again.
I for one am looking forward to paying extra for a Google and Wikipedia subscription on my cable bill. I can't quite afford the all access bundle but, hey, who needs every port. Netflix is overrated anyway.
Yes tell us how fair internet access is actually slavery and crooked government and that Veriozon(tm) Internet(tm) pure capitalist freedom.
Additionally, could you also tell me how I'm a CTR shill and that as a Liberal, that I'm actually the real racist.
I find that those who oppose any kind of societal safety net have never had to use the resources of one.
And they never expect to.
This.... is delusional. You will age. You /will/ fall ill. Be it 6 months out of work for a septic knee (like what Tom Brady had), or full disability because nobody wants to hire someone who has to go to doctors' appointments 1/4 of the days out of a month on a regular basis. BAD SHIT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU SOMETIME IN YOUR LIFE THAT YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO PLAN FOR.
I don't like wishing bad things on people. I don't need to. Because they happen anyway.
Against the safety net? Good luck to you. You'll need it.
--
BMO
It's premature to say what Mr. Trump will actually do. He has given anti-trust some lip service, which suggests he'd preserve NN in order prevent big telecoms from also controlling big media. But whether he follows through is another matter.
While he may prefer trust-busting actions, he may trade it away for something else that he wants from Congress, being the deal-maker he is. The up-side is that he may be willing to cut deals with Democrats also, but it would only work for issues that divide the GOP, for the Democrats don't have enough seats to produce a viable bill otherwise.
Trump is unlike every other president. Burn the history books and get the popcorn out. I don't know whether Trump will take us to heaven, hell, the loony bin, or something in between; but I am certain it will be an interesting ride. Don't forget to buckle up, and keep your hands inside at all times.
Table-ized A.I.
For those of you who believe that the net neutrality regulations that the FCC are trying to impose actually is what you believe it to be, you should actually go ahead and read the regulations.
Your understanding of what "net neutrality" means and what the FCC is actually doing are different. By reading the regulations you might actually understand why what the FCC is proposing is, well, bad.
It's 2016. You can go read the stuff yourself. Even the preamble to the regulations is full of inaccuracies, half-truths, and outright lies. For example, the FCC tries to say that its current regulations are what made the Internet great - except that the FCC's attempts at regulating the internet have never actually taken effect. Then it gets better.
Moving to Detroit?
America is doing just fine thanks. Trump just released a video saying what he will be doing, so you don't have to wonder or believe what a bunch of media guys who detest him CLAIM he will do.
Among them:
TPP cancelled. Enjoy whatever country you are in joining that!
More shale production - vast reduction in CO2. We are doing our part, how about your nation?
Two regulations have to be removed for every new one created - while you strangle as regulations pile up.
Ethics reform - five year ban on administration officials becoming lobbyists, can never lobby for foreign nations. I wonder how cozy corporations are to YOUR government...
Investigation of visa program abuses (read: companies bringing in lots of foreign programmers and then severely underpaying them as they hold the green card over them).
Energy grid to be hardened against attacks. As your countries power grid fails over the coming decade you can think back on this as you are sitting in the cold with a flashlight...
The funny thing is many of these items (like TPP being cancelled, or visa abuse) were once darlings of the Slashdot liberals. But now that Trump supports them... well I guess they decided fascism is better than Trump? Oh well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look who's lecturing us: YOUR country Brexited your asses into recession.
That should give you an idea just how fucked you really are. When even Boris Johnson is all like, 'what a muppet!' you should probably take note.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Net Neutrality as proposed is like saying your State has "Right to Work" laws. If you believe those laws give workers Rights, you are grossly mistaken. As GP stated, read what is being proposed and then make up your mind.
If you want another example, what exactly Patriotic about the "Patriot Act"? Yeah, this is not a new political trick.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You mean like a CDN?
ISP's have been playing games with content providers and backbone internet companies for years. Netflix offered to install a FREE CDN on all the ISP's networks that would have decreased their network traffic to the backbone by over 50% but they refused because they wanted Netflix to pay to get to their customers. Ultimately Netflix caved and paid the toll and raised their rates to compensate. Net Neutrality would make this type of extortion illegal. Right now AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, et al own the last mile AND competing VOD services. This is a complete conflict of interest.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
We are building a better one. Without Your bullshit walled gardens. Without your ads. Without your monitoring. Without your grand regulations. Without your clumsy meddling. Without your consistent need to monetize every damn thing see. Without your little carrier fiefdoms and exclusive hardware monopolies. Without the insanely low barrier of entry that allowed all the dopey phone-addict people who cant think for themselves to flood in and cause exactly this.
You can eavesdrop on your army of buffoons while they try to puzzle out why "just reset the router" is not working anymore. Spy on them while they pay for the privilege of being watched by their allies and overlords while being incessantly attacked by everybody else.
The old guard looks cross about your new hotness bullshit. You've found a way to ass up a simple communications and data moving tool. While you argue over how best to fuck us all over, we may just take our ball and go home. Youtube can kiss my ass. Netflix can fuck itself, and all the ZOMG4KULTRASTREAM24/71000DOLLARTV zombies can have the lot of it.
I'll meet you in the "Unlicensed spectrum".
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
So killing net neutrality is not necessarily a bad thing if it's coupled with forcing local governments to allow competition in the last mile.
Why is it bad to be able to pay more for higher speeds to some selected destinations?
Because no proposal I have ever heard for "preferred traffic" has ever involved letting me decide what those destinations are.
Overall your cable bill could be lower if you just need browsing speed for most sites but want to have a very fast connection for a handful of streaming video sites you use regularly...
Has your cell bill gone down since carriers implemented data caps? This graphic is years old, but please provide literally any evidence that it is not the logical conclusion of such a plan.
That would actually make 4k streaming practical, for example.
What would make 4K streaming practical is for the backhaul to be upgraded to the point where 100mbits/sec down is a de facto standard, with 300mbit/sec remotely affordable. Comcast isn't hurting for a buck, and even if this was the case in "selected cities" to start with, it's not the kind of thing that needs cooperation from everyone, everywhere, all at once. Then again, it's not like the general public is clamoring for 4K content - 1080p is so heavily compressed that good picture quality is still more dependent on Blu-Ray or 1080p file downloads than streaming.
You say that's bad, I say that's progress which is something we've not seen in a while. Under existing laws our network speeds are stagnating, Google is pulling out of fiber now...
Google is pulling out of fiber because they are Google, and pretty much everything that isn't Search, Mail, or Android is a 'pet project' to them...and also because being an ISP delivering gigabit is not the kind of thing they were charging properly for. Meanwhile, what online destinations besides Netflix aren't served 'well enough' by a 25/5 connection for 7 out of 10 Charter customers, and is my cable company's 300/35 tier not enough for 7/10 slashdotters? I'm not saying that progress should stop marching on or that the first round of Carbonite backups isn't going to be a pain, but internet speeds are well within the region where the router can very well be the bottleneck, and though the 300/35 tier is relatively new for my cable company, their standard level is 60/25, up from 25/5 about two years ago, and up from 15/2 from five years before that - and I'm nowhere near a Google Fiber area. Admittedly, my cable company is somewhat-regional and I know that AT&T hasn't done its customers any favors recently, but now we get into the classical argument of whether everyone's speeds need to go up in order for progress to be considered 'reached'.
Tell the ISPs (Comcast, Verizon, AT&T etc) that all the regulations they dont like will go away but in return all the laws, agreements, regulations and other things all over the USA (at all levels of government) that restrict competition also have to go away.
They get to do whatever they want on their own networks but they dont get the right to prevent someone else from comming in and competing with them.
Here in Australia we have a competitive market for broadband in most parts of the country and because of that, very few (if any) ISPs do the kind of crap they do in the USA.
Uhhh the US taxpayers paid to the tune of 200 billion for a nationwide upgrade to our intertubes during Clinton and all we got for that money was a low res Goatse from the big corps.
This is why we should give them 90 days to either provide what we paid for, give us back every cent with interest, or we nationalize the whole thing and open it up to competition like we did when we first broke up Ma Bell. If they want exclusives in an area? Let them run 100mbps FIOS to the door and we'll be happy to give them a 15 years exclusivity deal but as it is now? They owe us a shitload of money and we should demand we get what we paid for!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
He's draining the swamp - into his cabinet positions. Soon he'll employ all the lobbyists. After all, he has never said where to he's going to drain it.
There's an old saying in politics...nobody ever voted to repeal an entitlement. I don't disagree with what you are saying but I doubt the telcos would let that happen and it would take a miracle to get enough politicians to actually approve.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
This honestly sounds like the sort of thing you could goad Trump into promising on Twitter. This is your one big chance to directly influence policy before they take his Twitter account away again.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fuck that... they'll steal the nails too.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Ah yes, what a glorious future it will be when 90 % of current low to minimum skill jobs are entirely automated and quite a large chunk of normal office jobs as well. Have you not followed the projections on the effects of technology to employment: there is no way there will be jobs for everyone in the future in industrialized nations, because pretty soon we'll reach a point in which a low-skill human is simply inferior/less efficient in most jobs compared to a machine. Do some actual reading::
And that's just the estimate for the next couple of decades, the nu,ber will only increase as time goes on. Once we hit AI it will effectively make all human labor pretty much obsolete.
So where does this saving come from where the chances are that there simply isn't work available for a majority of non/low-educated individuals in a couple devades? How do they save when they have no marketable skills, and in your vision of plutocratic america I assume getting an education that would offer the a slightly better (but not guaranteed) employment also costs a fuckton of money?
Ah, so in your vision of an idela society most people who aren't born into a wealthy family simply die off unless some rich asshole manages to have some pity for them. What a place to live in, truly.
I live in a modern social-democratic country (Finland) in which my tax money is used to fund the education, health care and other basic needs of my fellow citizens. I don't consider this oppression in the least, and I fail to see why anyone sane would. I mean, firstly, the wealthy individuals who run companies here are only able to do so because they enjoy a population of highly educated, healthy individuals and a stable infrastructure. Without these things commerce itself would be impossible, so it makes complete sense, from a both indvidual as well as corporate perspective, to rpvide such base level fundamental services with tax-funds. There's nothing oppressive about societies pooling resources and collectively funding essential services, that's the very reason societies are born in the first place and we don't live in a state of anarchy.
Ah yes, the age old 'b-b-b-but the soviet union was horrible' card which conveniently ignores the last half a century of development in northern and western Europe in which socialism is implemented entirely differently from the soviet union and has by all possible metrics achieved vastly superior results.
Have you ever been to the Norodic countries? Germany? France?
Yeah, we aren't exactly living in the soviet union here you doofus, and just because countries like the USSR and others have managed to fuck up socialistic ideals by turning into tyranies doesn't mean that the only feasible way forward is some weird ancap plutocracy in which you have no social mobility whatsoever unless you suck enough rich CEO dick to make them fund your education/living..
Is that really your vision of an ideal society in an age when we're nearing the end of humans as the main factors of production? Because unless you're someone with a doctora
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead