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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.
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
If Pai is trying to compel service providers to put the principles of an open Internet in their service contracts, why not just mandate net neutrality by law? This seems to be a way to allow net neutrality to die a slow death. Begin by getting ISPs to do it voluntarily so it appears we're maintaining it, but then over time you will see companies back down from that and net neutrality will be eroded.
"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."
...and we'll all voluntarily agree not to stab FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in the neck.
Of course the ISPs will agree to this and they won't even cheat. But your Internet service is going to have a 10GB cap on it and everything else is going to be "zero rated". And of course you'll be paying $100/mth for this 10GB to get "connectivity". Then the ISP will charge those other companies another $100 to zero rate and escape the ridiculous cap. If you want more "neutral" bandwidth, that'll cost you $5/GB.
I don't even think it would be "over time". Pretty much the instant one major ISP starts charging for premium access (or whatever the fuck they end up calling it) the rest will jump on that bandwagon like nobody's business.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
That would be the second this has been signed. You can bet the private airplanes are already booked and flying to the meetings with the CEO's.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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/
One thing you can be sure of, they'll go out of their way to ensure as painful experience as possible for those using services not in the "fast lane". Notice the key text in TFS "to not obstruct or slow consumer access to web content" (emphasis mine) but you can guarantee that there will be no limits on how slow the base service will be, and certainly the minimum speed will be so slow as to be ludicrous. Want more than 256kbps access to our select bundle of websites included in this premium package? Pay for the fast lane!
Telcos already pulled crap like this in past decades. Back in the 90's we had a house in a rural area, and there was some big push to get phone/dialup service to rural residents. We had a 28k modem at the time, and after upgrading to a blazing fast 56k we discovered no increase in speed. After some back and forth, and numerous technicians concluding that the issue was in the external lines and not because of a wiring issue in hour house, the phone company ultimately refused to do anything because, apparently, they were only required to provide up to 14kbps! Even by 1995 standards that was slow enough as to be practically unusable.
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?".
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.
The whole point in this would be to punish the customers who use VPNs.
Mr Customer, nice access via VPN you have here on you exorbitantly priced 15Mbps access. Will be a shame if something happened to it to run at 30KB/s. Now give us you internets histories
You have it backwards. It'll be "want the people accessing your content or service to have more than 256kbps access? Pay us a monthly fee!" (a-la Netflix)
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Pai does not represent Republicans voters, in a recent poll 77% of registered Republicans disagreed with his proposals. Pai has been bought by lobbyists and represents his corporate constituency, not voters. Trump does not seem to care about FCC so I doubt if he has a clue what is happening there.
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!
By today's standards this is not the worst trolling I've seen, but it's still too heavy handed and lacks the finesse of old days.
Or more likely it will be both. Netflix pays a fee to be included in a bundle, then charge consumers to subscribe to the bundle.
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
If Pai is trying to compel service providers to put the principles of an open Internet in their service contracts, why not just mandate net neutrality by law?
Because by making the ISPs pinky-promise to not do what they will inevitably do in the absence of net neutrality, Ajit Pai can avoid looking like a mustache-twirling cartoon villain. He's not responsible for tying that lady to the railroad tracks! He just llfted the overreaching, oppressive law that kept the Traintrack Killer from owning ropes and made him pinky-promise not to tie any women to the tracks.
Republicans always set up a weak excuse for their actions to avoid earning the image of mustache-twirling villainy that they should rightfully have.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Lets not forget, Obama did not do net neutrality voluntarily it took an enormous amount of pressure across the board to force it. Everyone said then, even though working together we had won, that they would not stop and would try again. Reality is net neutrality favours 99.99% of businesses, getting rid of it favours 0.01% of businesses at the expense of 99.99% of businesses. It is up to the majority of businesses to force it's retention, forget the general public, this will cripple businesses across the board.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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....
77% of Republicans polled thought his name sounded foreign and assumed he was an immigrant.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
This is America.
We don't execute criminal billionaires
We steal elections for them via the FBI director
Republican politicians acting against the wishes and interests of their constituents isn't isolated to this issue. Republican voters are worse than badly informed, they're maliciously informed by far-right media that borders on an Orwellian parody of actually news. - Just how many variations of "freedom is slavery" and "ignorance is strength" do you need to see before you clue in. C'mon. Connect the dots guys.
For that matter Trump is grossly incompetent and if asked, probably can't tell you even vaguely what the FCC does. And that's part of the problem. There's a real leadership vacuum and it's being filled by opportunistic sharks that know all they need to do is get in favor (meaning bribe) someone who Trump trusts (Today that seems to be his immediate family). Drain the swamp indeed.
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.
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. . . .
I can't tell if GP was sarcastic or not. I was pretty sure it was, but the Syria comment sounded like they might not realize they were actually making fun of Trump (because this is definitely a parody, whether intentional or not).
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.
Unless there is legislation passed that requires you to pay for Internet service, we still have the ability to vote with our dollars. If people stop using the internet because it's just not worth it, they'll have to change or go out of business. It's never too late for the Internet to be 'just a passing fad', if they screw it up bad enough exactly that could happen. In all seriousness, do you really believe that your life would end without the Internet? If you do then you need to re-examine your priorities in life, and that's what I really believe.
I don't know about anyone else, but if it comes to that, I'll start thinking seriously about skipping Internet completely, or just scaling it back to the cheapest, bare minimum I can get, or just using free access from public libraries or coffeeshops or something, because that would be rediculous. I think we're well past the point of being able to roll things back to the 90's, where it was all 'walled gardens' with little to no interconnectivity. I honestly believe if they tried that, they'd kill the whole idea of 'The Internet' completely. So far as I'm concerned, they're already doing a great job of that.
This was definitely one of:
a) Sarcasm;
b) Someone typing this while Bannon held a gun to their head; or
c) Bannon.
Choice a seems most likely to me, can't tell the odds between b and c.
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.
Anything important? Such as the entire EM spectrum? And all regulations over telecommunications and broadcast services?
Nah, nothing important.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yep. Keep in mind the former FCC chair (Wheeler) was literally a cable industry lobbyist. Repealing everything he did can only be a good thing.
For a cable industry lobbyist, he sure passed a lot of measures that worked directly against the cable industry's interests.
I suggest we take it one step further and repeal the criminal code, replacing it with voluntary agreements to act in a civil manner.
I don't know about anyone else, but if it comes to that, I'll start thinking seriously about skipping Internet completely,
Sure you will.
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!"
Unless there is legislation passed that requires you to pay for Internet service, we still have the ability to vote with our dollars. If people stop using the internet because it's just not worth it, they'll have to change or go out of business. It's never too late for the Internet to be 'just a passing fad', if they screw it up bad enough exactly that could happen. In all seriousness, do you really believe that your life would end without the Internet? If you do then you need to re-examine your priorities in life, and that's what I really believe.
Do you really believe your own bullshit?
You must be under 30. Perhaps even under 21.
Are you really so dependent on the Internet that you can't imagine life without it? Like you'll curl up and die unless you can see and post on Facebook, or play online games, or see the latest memes? If so then I pity you, I don't think you're a survivor, not at all. You'll pay through the nose to your ISP no matter how shitty they treat you, I guess, be sure to enjoy that.
Trolololol.
You must be lost, friend, here, let me redirect you back to where you belong: http://www.4chan.net/b
You must be under 30. Perhaps even under 21.
Are you really so dependent on the Internet that you can't imagine life without it? Like you'll curl up and die unless you can see and post on Facebook, or play online games, or see the latest memes? If so then I pity you, I don't think you're a survivor, not at all. You'll pay through the nose to your ISP no matter how shitty they treat you, I guess, be sure to enjoy that.
LOL.
I will be 61 next month.
I don't have any social media presence. I think the last time I played a video game was nearly 20 years ago. Email and web surfing are about my speed.
But I was perhaps speaking on behalf of the 21 year olds. Most of them can no more live without the internet than they can live without food.
Trolololol.
You must be lost, friend, here, let me redirect you back to where you belong: http://www.4chan.net/b
Sorry. Never been there. But thanks for ASSuming.
I'm more likely to visit
http://www.aarp.org/
But not really that, either. Just the right and group...
This is true. Note how retailers got around the prohibition from charging extra for credit by raising prices and giving a discount for cash.