Slashdot Mirror
FCC Chairman Calls Net Neutrality a 'Mistake' (theverge.com)
FCC chairman Ajit Pai said today that net neutrality was "a mistake" and that the commission is now "on track" to return to a much lighter style of regulation. The Verge adds: "Our new approach injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market," Pai said during a speech at Mobile World Congress this afternoon. "And uncertainty is the enemy of growth." Pai has long been opposed to net neutrality and voted against the proposal when it came up in 2015. While he hasn't specifically stated that he plans to reverse the order now that he's chairman, today's speech suggests pretty clearly that he's aiming to. [...] Pai's argument is that internet providers were doing just fine under the old rules and that the new ones have hurt investment.
The job of the government shouldn't be to make sure companies can make as much money as they possibly can but to protect the citizens. Net Neutrality aimed to make the playing field even for everyone. I guess he's okay with Comcast/Charter/etc reaming us.
-SaNo
"Pai's argument is that internet providers were doing just fine under the old rules..."
This tells you everything you need to know about Pai's priorities. When the customers don't even merit a mention in a position statement, you know the FCC has been entirely co-opted to a corporate agenda.
The lobbyists have won. Kindly tell me where the nearest lobbyist pocket is so that I can fill it with cash, cocaine and hookers. Who will think of the poor, poor lobbyists?!
Charging content providers for bandwidth in addition to end users is the opposite of the right idea.
We now have a man under Russian influence appointing people everywhere he can who are dismantling our system of government, government agencies, constitutional rights, and basically anything under the "common good" from arts funding to health care access.
We're being dragged back to the "good old days" of robber barons and into a bold new era of corrupt foreign influence thanks to an alliance of racists, dominionists, terrified old people, nihilistic young people, and those who are so bitter and ignorant they would sacrifice anything at all to "piss off the left".
It's only going to get worse, especially as Trump continues to attack the foundations of everything that let's us fight back.
I've been flagging every as I could as "covering content".
You see ads? I have them all blocked and never see any. No I don't give a shit about slashdot's bad business model. I'd happily pay a subscription but they can't be bothered to give me the option. So fuck 'em and the ad networks they rode in on.
Net Neutrality calls Ajit Pai "a mistake". I'm with Mr. Neutrality on this one!
uncertainty is the enemy of growth
Unchecked growth is a cancer - it needs a few more enemies. Besides, uncertainty favours innovation.
Pai’s general philosophy is that the commission shouldn’t involve itself with basically anything unless there’s a huge market failure
Umm... shouldn't you be trying to prevent "a huge market failure" Mr. Pai, rather than getting involved after the fact? Also, if you ask your constituents, (you know, the people whose interests you're supposed to protect - not to be confused with the corporations from whom you're currying favour), I'm pretty sure they'll tell you that the market is already in a huge state of failure.
Ajit Pai - just another self-serving disaster on the American political scene.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I disagree with point 3. There are filtering measures required to combat spam, botnets, DDOS attacks, etc.
You want to move those costs as close to the source as possible to put pressure on them to eliminate the problem. A totally unfiltered Internet just means the consumer pays for a choked pipe they can't actually use.
You just broke the net.
Any net neutrality law that make QoS illegal breaks the net. Any law that doesn't, has to micromanage what QoS is. Which means that the trustworthy folks in DC are in charge of yet another thing.
Your ISP can't control how fast the server you connect to is. How are they supposed to guarantee end to end speed?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Net Neutrality was the de-facto law of the land until ISPs began to upset the balance, beginning with the Comcast/Netflix debacle. This is the functional, traditional way it has worked, and that is why we cannot point to many distinct problems yet, but if you look just below the surface it isn't hard to take this to it's logical conclusion and see that ISPs will jump at the chance to use this as another way not to provide more or better service, but in fact to provide less or worse service, so that they might hold decent service at a premium (or restrict it to their own sites, applications, various new corporate sub-internets that will emerge as a result of this preference for restricting traffic).
Random Citizen Calls FCC Chairman a 'Mistake'
Oh God I just had a vision of the ISP's acting like the post office and offering bulk discounts for junk mail. Imagine if the spammers paid ISP's to punch through spam filters.
Yes... but now anybody with a piece of hardware in the middle can set up a toll booth. It's the opposite of a free and open internet.