Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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...
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.
this has nothing to do with TRUMP specifically.. this has NOTHING to do with "clearing burdensome regulations".. this has NOTHING to do with being a 'burden' on small providers (if anything, it *levels the playing field)...
it has EVERYTHING to do with campaign funding of republicans from major ISPs and EVERYTHING to do with the republican's fucked-up desire to simply UNDO everything obama championed for, regardless of what it was.
(and before you toss health care into this.. obama wanted single payer. what we got, 'obamacare', is actually modeled after 'romneycare'.. a republican created fuck-up put in place in Massachusetts, the passing of which ENDED a 16 year hold that party had on the governor's office in that state).
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.
> Ajit Pai was an Obama appointee
At the suggestion of Mitch McConnel. Trump is the one that made him Chairman, not Obama.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
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!
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.
Let Congress pass a law [...]
They did. It was the FCC charter. It explicitly gave the FCC the task of and granted them the authority to make decisions about how to classify companies. If Congress wants to pass a law doing what you say, they can, but in the meantime they've said that it is the FCC's job to make those decisions.
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?
No. F**k it. Internet pipes in your country are like the road network or the telephone network. It should be considered public infrastructure with egalitarian access.
It's pretty F'ing simple.
Getting rid of net neutrality regulations is like saying "It's ok. Just set up your highway robbery checkpoint in the middle of the on-ramp to the highway, but make sure to let your business partners limos through without paying the ransom."
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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.
How soon? Are you kidding? We already pay more for Internet than any other industrialized country, and some second world countries:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/up...
Here's the truth that other countries have already figured out: when the government provides a service, it's cheaper. When private companies provide the same service, it's much more expensive, because they have to make a profit. And while it might have once been true that private industry could do a task better than the government, now private industry has realized that doing a poor job yields higher profit, so we end up getting worse services for more money when private industry provides them.
The federal government should provide all funds for education, for Internet access, and for healthcare. We can start paying for it by cutting the Department of Defense by 10% every couple of years, and eliminating corporate welfare. No more privatized intelligence, no more privatization of military services, no more military, intelligence, or security "contractors".
And eliminate DHS, what a fucking waste of money.
If that's not enough money, let's return to a top marginal rate of 91%. It worked great in the 50s, and the economy was booming.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
obama wanted single payer. what we got, 'obamacare', is actually modeled after 'romneycare'.. a republican created fuck-up put in place in Massachusetts
Actually, what we got was based on, and followed very closely, the proposal put forth by the Heritage Foundation in 1989.
As the above article shows, there were two key parts:
1) All citizens should be guaranteed universal access to health care
2) Mandate all households obtain adequate insurance
And this article goes into more depth about how Republicans like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich were pushing for mandated health insurance which required people, not employers, to buy insurance.
In other words, Republicans got exactly what they wanted, and they're pissed.
pissed they got it...
and pissed it actually does work.
not as well as single payer.
but better than the status quo before it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
AMEN! Best AC comment ever.
"If that's not enough money, let's return to a top marginal rate of 91%. It worked great in the 50s, and the economy was booming."
WHY was it booming ?
Give you a hint. Name a large, highly populated 1st world country, with large amounts of natural resources and mature industrial sector and infrastructure that was NOT bombed during WWII. So the USA was able to build stuff for the rebuilding of Europe and Asia. It could invest in R&D rather than in schools, hospitals, houses, roads, rail, water, electricity.
Its not about America being great again, its about the rest of the world no longer being dependant on America.
In the 1950s the USA was about 60% of the entire worlds GDP, now its about 20% and falling.
The USA only makes up about 4% of the worlds population, so there is still a lot of room to fall yet.
Build your walls, have a trade war, stop immigration, its just going to hasten the fall.
The rest of the world agrees with Trump "No deal is better than a bad deal", and few countries (if any) now have to accept a bad deal from the USA.
Sure loss of trade with the USA will hurt, for a wee while, but other countries will step in and life will continue as before.
No one HAS to buy from the USA anymore, there are alternatives.
No one said the republicans were bad politicians. What they are, is shitty on policy and ideas. Which is what you get when you elect people who's critical thinking skills are fundamentally broken. You want a litmus test? How about blind unwavering faith in a fairy tale without any evidence. Once you have boxed that up, you can convince them and their voters of anything. A presidential candidate is running a child prostitution ring out of a pizza chain? Yup, that isn't any stretch of the imagination when you believe in an all powerful, vengeful being that spends all its time making sure you aren't saying bad words, or having premarital sex, eating pork, or the rest of the laundry list. Plus, its so needy that it wants its creations spending their time "worshiping" it.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That BS might get you a +5 on Slashdot, but it is false on the face of it. ...now STATE SPONSORED MONOPOLIES have realized that doing a poor job yields higher profit, so we end up getting worse services for more money when STATE SPONSORED MONOPOLIES provide them... (FTFY) Let me know when Apple or Samsung start making shit phones that rake in the cash, then your statement would be accurate...
The problem that we have in the US right now is that MONOPOLIES sponsored by the state and local government are controlling the internet access. If we had 3 ISPs competing head to head in every major market and a law that they must offer access to all the market and surrounding rural areas at the same prices, quality and speed would go up and prices would go down. That is just the way the market works. Right now ISPs have their infrastructure built out with 10 year old hardware and paid off. Their cost to provide internet service is somewhere around $15/month, yet they are charging between $60 and $90/month and the cable MONOPOLIES are laughing all the way to the bank. In some areas, internet service is propping up Cable TV companies that would otherwise collapse from lack of users. However, look at cities where Google fiber has come in (or even threatened to come in). The cable internet and DSL providers have built up their infrastructure, improved service and cut their rates (i.e. competition). Where I live, I have one choice of cable internet, or I would have to use dialup... and I live surrounded by 240,000 people (like within a 5 mile radius) and still I only have one choice...
" when the government provides a service, it's cheaper. When private companies provide the same service, it's much more expensive, because they have to make a profit."
Bullshit. Have you been to your local DMV? Government is in the same boat as these monopolies and their gross incompetence eats up more than any private company would make in profits. There is no market forces for them to provide better service or cheaper service. Whats worse is government has lethal force backing it up (don't believe me? try not paying your taxes and disobeying the armed GOVERNMENT agents that they send to your door.) You will likely end up dead.
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.
In many cases, those aren't even competitors - AT&T owns all three now.
You can also move. And that's not me being flippant, Ajit Pai himself suggested it.
Nothing says privilege like arguing that a viable option for switching to a different ISP is to just move to a different city.