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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Plans Fast-Track Repeal of Net Neutrality (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is moving quickly to replace the Obama administration's landmark net neutrality rules and wants internet service providers to voluntarily agree to maintain an open internet, three sources briefed on the meeting said Thursday. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump, met on Tuesday with major telecommunications trade groups to discuss his preliminary plan to reverse the rules, the sources said. The rules approved by the FCC under Democratic President Barack Obama in early 2015 prohibited broadband providers from giving or selling access to speedy internet, essentially a "fast lane," to certain internet services over others. As part of that change, the FCC reclassified internet service providers much like utilities. Pai wants to overturn that reclassification, but wants internet providers to voluntarily agree to not obstruct or slow consumer access to web content, two officials said late Tuesday. The officials briefed on the meeting said Pai suggested companies commit in writing to open internet principles and including them in their terms of service, which would make them binding. It is unclear if regulators could legally compel internet providers to adopt open internet principles without existing net neutrality rules. As part of that move, the Federal Trade Commission would assume oversight of ensuring compliance.Three sources said Pai plans to unveil his proposal to overturn the rules as early as late April and it could face an initial vote in May or June.
Go Trump Go #MAGA
Why would a company like Comcast not want to money type traffic
Yeah, that worked great in the past. From companies honoring the "do not track" flag to people disabling adblockers when asked. Hey, while we're at it, could we finally implement the "evil bit"? I mean, if you think ISPs will honor this, you can as well expect internet criminals to set the evil bit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thank goodness the news channels will all be busy today reporting the special delivery of some missiles to Syria.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
"voluntarily agree"
I can already hear the evil villain laughs from the boardrooms of our monopolistic content masters, lighting cigars with $100 bills and slapping each other on the back with hearty gusto.
If I could take my business elsewhere, this wouldn't matter so much. In the designated local monopoly for ISPs that most Americans exist within, it's just pathetic.
If telecom companies were asked to do things voluntarily we'd all still be getting really fine service from our nationwide monopoly.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Trump's regime has failed at passing Trumpcare(ok, that IS a success!), lied about being wiretapped, golfed quite often, bombed Syria yet again(after they committed yet another war crime!), had a National Security Adviser ousted for taking money from a foreign government and not reported it or discussions with that foreign government, had a leader of a Congressional Committee that was supposed to be in charge of investigations forced to resign, taken credit for employment results that are not even that much better than last year, had to force through a Supreme Court nominee after the Senate spent almost a whole year pretending they couldn't even consider Obama's nomination, and now this.
Exactly where is the land of Milk and Honey that Trump promised? Is he even going to get the Mexicans to pay for the Wall?
...and we'll all voluntarily agree not to stab FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in the neck.
As the saying goes, elections have consequences. That said, is the current administration would send the H1-b abuses packing I'm not sure I'd care. That also said I don't have a lot of hope for that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yeah, I was reading it smile waiting for the joke. I think he was serious. This is the usual. I don't actually understand economics and game theory libertarian freshwater economist market crap.
The reality is people are stupid, or they can be manipulated. A person may be smart but on average people can be manipulated. (See voters screwing themselves for an example.)
Companies will cheat, and without any regulation or oversight they will pretty much create monopolies and this will set the US behind other countries that have saner mix of regulation and free market. For example, our internet isn't the fastest overall. Many other countries guarantee much faster internet to everyone in the country. This helps the competitiveness of the country. When you rely on the free market to build infrastructure you have hot spots and dead spots. Everyone wants to make the easy money in the cities but no one wants to build anything in rural areas.
Go Trump Go #MAGA
I'm glad the Trump administration is doing this. If we had Clinton, you KNOW she would just bow down to the her corporate masters and do their bidding!
Net Neutrality is just some liberal snowflake issue and it's bad for the economy and bad for us. The ISPs will make sure to offer us the best value for our service and we will get what we pay for!
All these government regulations do nothing but make America weak!
Thank God for Trump! And he sure did show them Syrians when he cruise missled their asses! MAGA!!!!!!
You can't repeal if you don't replace. If you don't replace how can you repeal?
Your,
Headmaster
Companies can cheat. And free-market libertarian know that, and understand that. You pretend that there is no mechanisms in free-market solutions that involve dealing with cheaters. (Yes, there's more involved than simply repeating the phrase "the market will deal with it")
....
The problem is that left wing ideologues make up straw-men; then "defeat" these straw men; the ridicule the foolishness of their opponents without ever reading about it. And, by the way, Adam Smith is most definitely not the patron saint of capitalist theory. He believed in the labor theory of wealth (same as Marx) which is why Adam Smith is being pushed as "the source."
Carl Menger and the Austrian School would be the place to start in case you're interest. Followed by von Mises, Hayek and (for light reading) Bastiat.
Back to the topic at hand - the solution isn't regulating every single aspect in sight.
How would you like a regulation having passed that made every website use HTML 3.2, Perl 5 and Oracle 8.
I think such regulations would have stifled development. Imagine the "abstract" argument I would have made
"if not for the regulations so many new languages and ideas would have developed"
and what would you, the big-government type have responded with?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Most net neutrality discussion center about how shaping traffic based on tcp ports or type of media transferred is not relevant to net neutrality because that is only about sources and sinks. I agree with this.
However why is it even allowed for the ISP to interpret the TCP headers. They are not necessary to transport data to some other IP. Only the target IP should be legally allowed to interpret this data and if anyone else does it it should be considered wiretapping and prosecuted as such.
Just like the post office is not allowed to read your mail past the address it need for delivery and your phone provider is not allowed to listen to in on your phone calls the ISP should not be allowed to look at your data.
goodbye Netflix!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Another Republican idea.
And still there are common people that firmly believe that the GOP is there for them. That is some cognitive dissonance of biblical proportions.
Dear GOP, let's not think about your own wallets and who fills them for awhile and when you do, please follow this maxim for a bit: "Does this idea really benefit the every man?" or "Has my idea the potential to increase the risk of corruption on a big scale?".
Ugly fucking india piece of shit
What is the argument against net neutrality ? It just seems like a power/cash grab by the ISPs. But we need to take that premise and deconstruct the assumptions that support it. What are constructive actions we can take to make our voices heard ? Anyone have any guidance ?
This has to be the most naive or idiotic bit of policy I've heard in a while. You either support net neutrality strongly or you don't support it at all. It appears that Pai is trying to uphold the idea of net neutrality, but without increasing "government regulation." But there's no incentive for ISPs to have net neutrality. This is the very reason regulations are typically called for. Asking ISPs to voluntarily give up net neutrality either 1)fails in which case you needed the regulation 2)succeeds in which case they incur the burdens that regulation would have incurred anyway.
something like this happened. Wheeler got the ISP's together and came up with various rules for net neutrality...wanting them to be involved in the process so they would be happier with it.
They walked right out the door and proceeded to sue the FCC over the idea after they'd come to an agreement.
The ISP's won't agree to it. They don't want a neutral internet. They had all the chance in the world to voluntarily run a neutral internet. This is not 20 years ago...we cannot simply change ISP's by giving a CC number to another company and putting in a new phone number. The ISP's know this; they know there's no real competition.
He's going to find out they want to fuck consumers over for all they've got...and he's just going to let them do this. This man is a former Verizon laywer who seems to feel his loyalty is with big telecom; he does not care about consumers at all.
Neutrality is dead. The free exchange of information is dead. The companies that offer OTT services will be allowed to fail as 4 or 5 big corporations decide they shouldn't be in business because it's unfair to them to have to deliver a competitor's service.
Get prepared to pay a whole lot more for a whole lot less; cuz 'Murica!
We used to say the internet routes around blockages. How about an always on VPN to a country with better policies? I know it won't work in all cases, but it will also keep the local ISP from selling anything of interest in my history.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
The US has allowed india to take over the FCC?!? Is there anything they won't sell off?
IIRC, all the stuff that was shoved down our throats in the name of Net Neutrality was completely opposite of Net Neutrality.
So here we have a situation where we all want Net Neutrality, but don't want "Net Neutrality".
Perfect way of entrenching bad legislation.
Speaking of straw men...
How would you like a regulation having passed that made every website use HTML 3.2, Perl 5 and Oracle 8. ....
Some industries have monopolistic features. These can be barriers to entry (these can be technological, or capital, etc.), low incremental costs, and network effects.
ISP providers certainly match these criteria. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build infrastructure to carry internet to peoples homes (High capital costs, and technological barriers), but it only costs a few dollars more to add a house in the same area(low incremental costs). And if everyone is using the same system you can lock out everyone else out of desired content, creating extra demand for your product (Network effects).
If an industry contains these features, it should seriously be considered a candidate for regulation.
How would you like a regulation having passed that made every website use HTML 3.2, Perl 5 and Oracle 8.
I think such regulations would have stifled development. Imagine the "abstract" argument I would have made
"if not for the regulations so many new languages and ideas would have developed"
and what would you, the big-government type have responded with?
I'd say that failure to regulate Microsoft back in IE 6 days stunted the growth of web technology by at least a decade.
I don't think "fast" and "slow" lanes even captures the horrible experience that awaits us.
Soon you will offered internet channels instead of speeds. You will be able to buy internet service that provides access to youtube and msn.com. Or maybe another package that provides unimpeded access to fox news and breitbart. Or maybe you want the "sports internet" which provides access to NFL-related sites and ESPN.
Any other sites will have ads overlaid by the ISP, or they may not be available at all.
The days of ordering just "internet service" are numbered.
I'll take fewer regulations any day.
Anything that is valuable requires protection, or it will be ruined.
Humans are just like that.
Ajit Pai made the news just two days ago for saying ISPs didn't need privacy rules because they were "more competitive" than search engines.
This is guy is obviously a huge problem. Is there any way we can make him lose his job? As FCC chairman, is he in charge of anything important?
Carl Menger and the Austrian School would be the place to start in case you're interest. Followed by von Mises, Hayek and (for light reading) Bastiat. ....
Austrians. Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of the Chicago school, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
Perhaps readers do not understand that this removes the tilt toward big corporations, and allows competition for start-ups and small companies. This is a good start.
Bad, fewer regulations me more power to corporations. The only way this might give power to the people is if we had a choice of 5 or more ISPs to pick from. Even then those ISPs would probably come to some secret agreement to all do the same nefarious things, so it wouldn't matter witch ISP we picked. Other types of competing corporations have made secret deals before to keep prices high for their products.
He is the proverbial fox in hens' cot.
Then move someplace where they don't have them. Here in America, they do a lot of good.
If common carrier classification is rescinded that means the FTC will again have rule over ISP's right? Should help a bit towards that whole "sell all your data for $$$" thing. I would have rather had the rules set up under Wheeler though....
Economist Joke: The Austrian school has predicted 8 of the last 4 recessions.
This joke is "imaginary" and the Austrian school isn't? HA!
Ignore the overreach aspect of this. Read the actual regulation. The "net Neutrality" regs are anything but. They're exactly what the ISP's paid for. They can't degrade a particular competitor's service, but they most certainly are allowed to degrade an entire class of service to protect their product. What the Obama administration gave us was nothing close to net neutrality; it was incumbent protection with buzzwords for marketing.
How would you like a regulation having passed that made every website use HTML 3.2, Perl and Oracle 8.
This would be a good argument against the government mandating that every ISP use only 100 megabit Ethernet, or DSL lines only.
But, speaking of straw-man arguments, that is not what net neutrality is about. Net neutrality is about preventing ISPs from leveraging their near-monopoly position as last-mile gatekeepers in order to price their non-ISP competitors out of the Internet-content market.
Net neutrality laws do not specify what technologies an ISP may or may not use; it only specifies that an ISP may not privilege some content above others by charging different content-providers different rates for the same number of kilobytes of content.
If you think that's an unreasonable restriction, feel free to describe why. If you think the ISPs can be trusted not to abuse their monopoly position in short order when given the opportunity to do so, explain why you think so.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
look whose running google and microsoft
all your tech is belong to india
Ajit Pai Plans Fast-Track Repeal of Net Neutrality
Seems fitting that he doesn't want to give this equal priority.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Very nicely done.
I can't think of a more surefire way to start a war than this right here. Will this be the breaking point for nerds? The point where we stand up and say fuck you to politicians ruining the internet? Maybe even take up arms to defend internet?
... we'll probably just make a new one since this one is obviously getting raped.
nah
However why is it even allowed for the ISP to interpret the TCP headers. They are not necessary to transport data to some other IP. Only the target IP should be legally allowed to interpret this data and if anyone else does it it should be considered wiretapping and prosecuted as such.
Just used the last of my mod points. Can someone else mod this up? It is an interesting way to view the issue.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Thank good need for Google broadband! Oh...wait.
That's called 'collusion' and it's illegal. Other types of competing corporations have been charged, tried, and convicted of it, and levied massive fines.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Seriously, where is the EFF and ACLU?
This would not be an issue if the DOJ would enforce the Sherman act.
We should never have allowed municipal monopolies for phone and cable.
I suggest we take it one step further and repeal the criminal code, replacing it with voluntary agreements to act in a civil manner.
Companies: "Lets screw the people for profit!"
People: "That sounds bad"
Old FCC: "Companies, you aren't allowed to do that!"
Companies: "But we waaaaannnttt to"
Old FCC: "Tough"
New FCC: "Psych! You're allowed to do it after all, but can you please pinky swear that you won't? There's no way you'd ever go back on a pinky swear right?"
People: "MAGA!MAGA!MAGA!"
Yes, somehow those other countries have trains that can go over 220 mph, and soon higher, without the HyperLoop, hyper. I'm 70. I will never see high mph trains in USA. I will also never see nuclear fusion, outside a bomb. Oh wait, with dingbat in office, maybe I will.