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FCC Announces Plan To Reverse Title II Net Neutrality (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Federal Communications Commission is cracking open the net neutrality debate again with a proposal to undo the 2015 rules that implemented net neutrality with Title II classification. FCC chairman Ajit Pai called the rules "heavy handed" and said their implementation was "all about politics." He argued that they hurt investment and said that small internet providers don't have "the means or the margins" to withstand the regulatory onslaught. "Earlier today I shared with my fellow commissioners a proposal to reverse the mistake of Title II and return to the light touch framework that served us so well during the Clinton administration, Bush administration, and first six years of the Obama administration," Pai said today. His proposal will do three things: first, it'll reclassify internet providers as Title I information services; second, it'll prevent the FCC from adapting any net neutrality rules to practices that internet providers haven't thought up yet; and third, it'll open questions about what to do with several key net neutrality rules -- like no blocking or throttling of apps and websites -- that were implemented in 2015. Pai will publish the full text of his proposal tomorrow, and it will be voted on by the FCC on May 18th.
Its whats for dinner. The cash votes of the lobbyists are far more valuable than your ballot vote will ever be.
Trump was elected on a platform of clearing burdensome regulations. This is the result. If you're gonna take a buzz saw to bureaucracy you don't get to pick and choose the parts you like.
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Won't somebody please think of those little mom and pop ISP that represent 95% of US telecommunications? So much regulations, it's so sad.
Fucking republicans, wrecking the world and destroying western civilization, one bribe at a time.
Sayonara America, it was nice while it lasted. (And yes, I know net neutrality is just one issue, and by no means the most important, but it is important, and in the broader context of what has happened these last 100 days or the America we knew and loved is dead, and the rotting corpse feeding the fat Republican billionaires club that Trump is figureheading).
Cable company lobbyist who sleazed his way to the head of the FCC wants to make cable companies more money at the expense of consumers, more info at 11.
It's the FCC's job to regulate and enforce, not make decisions. Let Congress pass a law making internet access equivalent to telephone service and this constant hand-wringing over net neutrality will stop.
Yeah everyone's Netflix, Amazon, Apple and/or other internet costs are going to go up. Because ISP's are going to force them to pay more for the same bandwidth.
But this will somehow increase competition, because a lot more internet providers are about to come into your area. Because somehow this was holding them back...
"Small internet providers" As if that's a thing anymore.
Fuck the economy in an unrecoverable cluster fuck.
In related news, Ajit Pai is an asshole.
All of them, and make no mistake Hillary would have been just as bad. We need to get government OUT of the issue. Wheeler was the closest thing we had to a gaurdian angel. 'Money is speech' has got to be reversed.
Anyone who thought they could vote for Trump and their ISP company could raise rates, raise your hand.
Oh, all of you?
Did you guys think that Google might compete with you ISPs? Ever hear of google fibre? Can you imagine if google starts to slow traffic to your ISP? Prioritize data to their own network? No? Interesting.
Did you guys think that Google slow data to your ISP anyway unless you start paying their "special charges for high speed service?" No? Interesting.
ISP should be afraid...very afraid. (They aren't...but they should be)
Yeah everyone's Netflix, Amazon, Apple and/or other internet costs are going to go up. Because ISP's are going to force them to pay more for the same bandwidth.
But this will somehow increase competition, because a lot more internet providers are about to come into your area. Because somehow this was holding them back...
Ajit Pai was an Obama appointee, the law was a standout of overreaching jurisdiction, roundly criticised, and should have been the responsibility of a different department. The same article appeared on Slashdot weeks ago, it's nothing new today, and the opposition is showing no leadership on the issue - no proposals for change, no references to studies or data, nothing.
Also, it's important to talk about this issue and not, for example tax overhaul which is happening *right now*.
I foresee all types of possibilities for abuse here beyond the obvious "pay the toll" bullshit. I can honestly see the real possibility of some ISPs slowing some political sites down to the point where they timeout in an attempt to prevent someone from donating money to a cause they don't like.
Frankly, I would love to see them start collecting from the biggest social media sites lest they be heavily slowed because people need to stop using that shit.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This is not the first time he's been in the news lately: Remember, "Broadband Market Too Competitive For Strict Privacy Rules"? Yeah, that was him.
Someone please fire this prick!
Time to switch back to dial up.
As Nelson would say "Ha ha".
The US already pays more for "health" by a VERY large margin than anyone else. How soon will it be before the "internet" follows suit.
The rest of the world will be happy to stick with its Net Neutrality , get the same (if not better) service for a lot less money.
Unlike health though, it is easier to host servers in other countries, which is all that will happen.
Will this encourage investment, sure, just not in the USA.
Since this came up I started using Tor for just about everything. It's a pain in the ass sometimes but it's worth it to give the middle finger to Comcast and any data collection they're doing.
So then we can expect removal of the burdensome, ineffective regulation of psychotropic drugs such as cannabis etc etc to quickly follow, I am confident. (By your logic).
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Why would you suppose the ISPs wouldn't just blacklist those and claim it is THEIR freedom of speech not to tell you what is on the other side of the wire.
because all good cable companies (and gubments) know that what consumers want is to be spoon-fed Pay TV, not to have general, flexible, peer to peer, decentralized (let's just come right out and say it "COMMUNISTIC") Internet. Please tell me I don't need sarcasm quotes around that.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Don't forget the TSA please!
and abortion... when is that happening.
Said the Kettle to the Pot "Hey, you are black!" This repeal is a politically motivated action, but is said to repeal just that. It's going to make your Internet Slower and more costly. next we'll have another monopoly to slow us down, and more cost-add bullshit between my browser and my Url. Plus it creates more confusion for something that already works great. A working Internet. Making money and not adding value.. wonderful. My information is now for sale to anyone with money, Thanks Mr Ajit Pai. Now we can all pay more and have less privacy. This is complete reversal of logic... dont know about you, but I think we need a name for this brand of carefully crafted deception. What are we going to call it?
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
Here we go, websites will be like channels organized into tiers. You need to go to Slashdot.org, not in your package? That's just a little extra.
I see more money and free time in my future when I drop all the ISPs as soon as they start bundling websites. I'll readjust my life back to only having net access at the library. I grew up with that, so I can die with that too.
and the Republican party. We elected someone who took, as a pillar of his campaign, the notion that the free market can and would sort all this out. We gave him a Congress of 60% like minded individuals.
Yes, I'm well aware of the campaign donations and who's paying them. But that doesn't change the fact that the Republican party takes as a basic ideological concept the notion that government interference with the market is inherently bad. If you're going to accept that as a truism then you're going to have to follow it to it's logical conclusion, which is that Net Neutrality stifles competition, innovation and raises prices by constraining how ISPs run their business.
What I'm saying is that Net Neutrality is incompatible with one of the basic tenants of the Republican party. If you agree with Net Neutrality you disagree with the Republican party. Maybe not individuals, but with the party's ideals.
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and they'll tell you that with a straight face. A lot of them will believe it.
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By destroying net neutrality, the internet becomes another supermarket where the high paying companies get the end caps and the really cool stuff doesn't even get stocked. We used to go to the internet to order the cool things we couldn't find at Walmart, or the local store. But you won't really be able to keep a business going because the rents that the ISP's will charge for traffic to your site will put all but the most profitable out of business.
This will also apply to non-commercial uses of the internet. No one will be able to keep a small site going because you will be charged a service fee for all of the traffic that comes to your sight. So the only ones that will be able to say anything on the internet will be people with enough money to pay to say it.
This will render the internet less interesting because it will be an expensive place to buy things, a propaganda forum for large monied interests, and devoid of any quirkiness. Basically, it will be Network TV all over again.
Ditto. Toss him out.
Fuck you. Seriously, just fuck you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Can I keep my Title II protections if Iâ(TM)m using Dial ip instead of broadband?
He argued that they hurt investment and said that small internet providers don't have "the means or the margins" to withstand the regulatory onslaught.
Right, because just letting your customer's packets move without any special treatment is just SOOOOOOO HARD.
William Buckley long advocated legalisation. He is dead now, but a lot of the main people at National Review, a publication he founded, are pro-legalisation.
This stupidity and greed will hurt small businesses that rely on Internet connectivity, but cannot afford (or have need for) a leased line. We cannot use any "cloud apps" in our business because we simply cannot get good connectivity in our part of town from our two providers (AT&T, Time-Warner). Our VPN's are severely limited because we cannot get reasonable, reliable bandwidth. The US is quickly turning into a 3rd world country.
I don't respond to AC's.
This change is badly needed to bring some free market competition back to the industry. I guarantee we will all be paying less for our internet access in a year. Big Government ALWAYS makes things cost more. Remember that.
This person is the son of illegal immigrants from India and has no business here in the first place. Why the bloody hell is he in our government making laws that screw the American people?
Can someone please, please find a way to deport his ass back to the swamp he came from?
Let me start by saying fuck Trump and all the shills that voted for him. You can't have a Nazi in power without thinking his minions wouldn'tâ do whatever they could to make sure only their powerful allies control information. PedoBart news for everyone on a high speed connection while legitimate news sources get slowed down. You dumb asses were too busy hating everyone that wasn't you to see the Nazis taking over. When the Net we know is dead, I hope you will remember what a dumb shit you were.
because (in their own words) private industry can't compete with a heavily subsidized government one. Not because the gov't industry is better, but because it's got the full weight of the government behind it. The little guy running his business will get run out by the government and the government will cock it all up with waste and inefficiency because it has no incentive to improve. After all, the government can always use violence (aka 'laws') to prevent competition. What's the definition of a government again... An organization with a monopoly on violence.
Everything I just wrote is straight from the GOP's platform, and it's all utter bollocks. The government doesn't have a monopoly on violence because a) self defense and b) the government is only allowed to use violence either in war or self defense (cops don't get to shoot you for the hell of it... well unless you're a minority). Private ISP aren't little guys, they bought their own monopolies. Infrastructure is always going to be a monopoly because you need eminent domain to run cable/roads. etc, etc.
But, none of this matters once you've accepted as a truism that government interference with the market is inherently bad. That's the trouble with the GOP. They've already come to that conclusion and they have to warp their world view to fit it. Here's another saying: Reality has a liberal bias.
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that's what you get when you base policy on ideals instead of goals. You're start with a truism (government interfering with the workings of the free market is inherently bad). You're going to wind up with simplistic policy when you start from ideals instead of goals because you're always going to be trying to stretch reality to fit into your ideal. The real word is messy and hard. It's like trying to get good sound out of a 2khz sample rate. You're lucky if you get beeps and boops. Most of the time you get horrible screeches.
:) ).
:(...
Also you're either falling into false equivalency or strawman arguments. I don't know logic well enough to say which or both. GPL'd software is not public domain. That's a fact. It's copywritted and licensed. Public domain means not copywritted. Those are facts. You're bending facts to fit your narrative (probably without realizing you're doing it, it's easy and temping to do, see
I stand by my post. The notion that government interference in the free market results in inherently negative is a central feature of the Republican party. Paul Ryan himself (who is the defacto leader of the GOP) said exactly that when questioned on Net Neutrality. You can't reconcile that ideal with implementing a massive government regulation and requirement like NN. At best you're engaging in double think and at worst being outright hypocritical
That's a hard thing to face, BTW. These are deeply held ideals that feel good (freedom, personal responsibility, personal strength, etc, etc). It's tough to turn away from them towards a more tightly governed world. It's scary too. It means recognizing that the powerful tool that is government needs constant watch and that no manner of systems or ideals will free you from that labor. Didn't Ben Franklin or Tom Jefferson write something about that? I'd disagree with them though, I think folks still deserve freedom even if they screw up and get lazy from time to time...
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They're gonna turn the internet into cable TV.
He means, those regulations stop companies from leveraging their unkept promises about broadband extensions in exchange for taxpayer money in order to make this kind of cursed auction where every bidder has to pay his bidding but only the last one to bid gets the bandwidth he already paid for as a taxpayer.
That is, those rules hurt the _income_ of the companies they can derive from _not_ investing money.
But "investment" is the money the companies spend on bona-fide structure, not the money can steal by making the customers fight over the consequences of their lack of investment.
Where have all the Trumpeters gone? There were so very many of them, not so long ago.
And I for one am perfectly happy with that.
Well, no shit. And to imply that Ajit Pai's move is neither "heavy handed" nor "all about politics" is also bullshit. Calling Obama era BS for what it is (though I liked it) doesn't mean the Trump era isn't pulling their own similar BS (that I don't like). Of course, the only thing the Trump administration seems to be capable of is reversing Obama era rules. They've no actual thoughts for themselves beyond reversing the Kenyan Muslim's work. Idiots.
It's not just movies and browsing. Without Net Neutraility, Telcos (and by extension, the government) will be able to spy and censor/block/charge separately for every e-mail, tweet, text, telephone call, VPN, OS update, itunes purchase, yelp review, GPS and mapping queries, antivirus checks, time and date corrections, any and all DNS queries, token authentication, bank and paypal logins, health alert heartbeats, civil and criminal court lookups, you or your friend's blogs, Driver's License renewals, security alerts, wikipedia checks, etc. etc. etc,etc,etc.
Too bad the Internet can't be GPLd. Maybe it's time to fork the "web".
The FCC saying "fuck it, everyone do what you want" sucks, but the most significant reason this is a problem is the monopolies that local municipalities authorize. If the state/county/city levels of government where prevented in interfering, then competition would be an actual market balancer. Smaller ISPs would happily take the droves of pissed consumers.
With the Internet being an service that inherently crosses state lines, the Federal government has every right to tell these government levels that their rules/laws are invalid.
The fight for Net Neutrality should start by freeing the last mile. Give us real options for which net we get on.
I could see this bolstering public terminals and potentially the written word again. ALSO I wager we should wage a PUBLIC CAMPAIGN that calls on businesses, and individuals with extra bandwidth to offer free wifi or access to people in their area.
The market is squeezing people from every side: My rent is out of control, internet would be insanely expensive (from a personal data as well as monetary point of view) if I hadn't lucked out and gotten Google Fiber, healthcare is... my lord I hope I just never get sick again because it's BAD here in Atlanta and I am paying out the NOSE for the "privilege." I'm glad I could get rid of my car because if not? I'd be saddled with practically living month to month, and I'm a fucking PROFESSIONAL who is getting paid a reasonable amount of money.
Consume less, I guess. I'm apt to do what others have mentioned: ditch the internet, see if that's doable anymore.
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If you can't withstand a little regulation that prevents you from contaminating the quality of the service that you offer for sale as a MONOPOLY, you are just incompetent and deserve to go bankrupt and be taken over by municipal ISPs..
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
The US doesn't need to be 60% of the world's GDP, or even 20%. Assholes like you need a history lesson though.
We took our 60% GDP in that era and fed and clothed and rebuilt your ungrateful ass (and/or that of your parents and grandparents) through direct financial support, as well as imbalanced trade agreements. The goal was never to rule the world (or America would have immediately after WW2, we exclusively had nuclear bombs, as well as the world's largest industrial base and strongest military). But we didn't want to then and we don't want to now. Instead we used our economy to support democracies throughout the world and the spread of peace and democracy abroad. However, that task is largely completed, as you say, the GDP of the rest of the world has risen significantly (the GDP of the US has not fallen, contrary to your implication, others have just risen which in turn changes the fraction.) Making America great again has to do with returning to the posture of strength both financially and militarily as well as eliminating extraneous constraints on our economy internally. If you don't like that posture, by all means, do what you can to subvert US efforts abroad. You are subverting the nation that behaved as described above when it could have taken over the world. Conversely, I hope you like speaking Russian or Mandarin, because those are your two other options in the real world.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
there's plenty of alternatives for Internet Service. Some are better than others. There's cell phones, Satelites, etc. You can also move. And that's not me being flippant, Ajit Pai himself suggested it.
The Republicans also argue that we'll see innovation out of this. That as prices skyrocket new services will move in to compete (balloon delivered internet?).
Now, the other side would argue that we don't need innovation here. That we have an optimal solution and should rely on that and support it with municipal efforts. But that's the other side. We didn't elect the other side last time around.
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take the power away from the regulators and there's nothing to capture. At least, that's the argument...
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I tought the FTC, not the FCC, has jurisdiction over Net neutrality.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.