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The Republican Push To Repeal Net Neutrality Will Get Underway This Week (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: Federal regulators will move to roll back one of the Obama administration's signature Internet policies this week, launching a process to repeal the government's net neutrality rules that currently regulate how Internet providers may treat websites and their own customers. The vote on Thursday, led by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, will kick off consideration of a proposal to relax regulations on companies such as Comcast and AT&T. If approved by the 2-1 Republican-majority commission, it will be a significant step for the broadband industry as it seeks more leeway under government rules to develop new business models. For consumer advocates and tech companies, it will be a setback; those groups argue that looser regulations won't prevent those business models from harming Internet users and website owners. The current rules force Internet providers to behave much like their cousins in the legacy telephone business. Under the FCC's net neutrality policy, providers cannot block or slow down consumers' Internet traffic, or charge websites a fee in order to be displayed on consumers' screens. The net neutrality rules also empower the FCC to investigate ISP practices that risk harming competition. Internet providers have chafed at the stricter rules governing phone service, which they say were written for a bygone era. Pai's effort to roll back the rules has led to a highly politicized debate. Underlying it is a complex policy decision with major implications for the future of the Web.
You fools elected a nightmare scenario government. Decades of progress in human rights, science, and technology getting wiped out. Congratulations.
Do not send an email. Call their office. Let them know you'll be watching their actions.
Repeal? Should that not be unpeal? Maybe depeal? Better yet, IMPEACH! IMPEACH the lot of them! Send them packing to their homes where all the stupid people who voted for them roost.
...or earlier, for prosecution!
It's too bad a tech billionaire didn't find a way to bribe Trump or leverage is Russian masters to save net neutrality.
It's amazing that the Republicans are focusing rolling back old policy rather than making new policy with all the issues going on in the government right now!
Anyone else having fun yet?
I sure love being subject to an unaccountable GOP congress with their clueless voter base mainlining far-right news, egged on by degenerate basement dwellers who huff brietbart and jerk off to fascist fantasies.
Oh well. The internet was fun while it lasted. When the cable-ization of the internet becomes complete I'll probably not subscribe to the "full and unlimited internet" package required to access Slashdot's IP address. It's been real.
Trump: A loser president, supported by losers, elected by losers.
PS: Fuck you. We told you so. Fuck you once more for the road.
The FCC (who created the phone company monstrosities) took over and neutrality regulations were released in 2015. They have never been enforced yet. So those decades of innovation building the world wide web - that was all without net neutrality micromanaging networks, with just FTC regulations.
"Pai's effort to roll back the rules has led to a highly politicized debate. Underlying it is a complex policy decision with major implications for the future of the Web"
There is no debate here. This is an ISP cronie trying to repeal a policy shoved down government throats by the collective voices of most of the people in the country. R's whore for big business and D's sell out to tech and media companies. At best net neutrality is a wash for D's with as many policy buyers in the tech and media area willing to bribe them to do it as not.
That is what you call actual Democracy. When public support is so overwhelming that it forces the hands of politicians on the things which benefit us, which almost universally neither party supports. Net neutrality, castrating domestic wiretapping, protecting whistle blowers like Snowden, spreading military power among the states, actually enforcing parts of the constitution the limit federal power, redistricting in a way that reflects the 51-49% split between urban and rural population WITHOUT trying to lump any particular special interest or minority group together, making it illegal to accept jobs or money after leaving a public office for any entity that was under the authority of that office, including indirectly (i.e. the president can have no income source but his salary for life after office and the FCC chairman can't be paid by ISP's afterward).
* Price-gouge consumers for slow, unreliable service
..yeah, the GOP can shove it up their fat asses. If what they do fucks the internet worse than it already is, I'll just refuse to play anymore. I got along without it for decades, I can get along without it again if I have to. Bastards.
* Man-in-the-middle attacks to spy on all their web traffic, collect the data, sell it to advertisers so they can spam the fuck out of everyone
* Break into customer emails for the same reasons as the above
* Effectively break the Internet by crippling competing services
* Push consumers into walled gardens 'for their own good' (and for greater profit)
* Become both content creators and content providers, effectively creating a monopoly, raise prices even more
Given their druthers:
* Make all OTA broadcasts illegal, all content reception must be PAID for
Of course Trump will probably be arrested before the year is out, and in the next general election, Republicans will be run out of town on a rail, too, for fucking everything up, so it might take a while but everything might just get set right again before they manage to blow it all up.
LOL!
Trump and his supporters are FUCKING TRAITORS!
yeah and democrats wanted (and still want) to sell us out to marxism.
Better German Marx than Russian Putin. Germans now have a better democracy than the Americans.
Net neutrality is in fact unfair and kind of racist. We need progressist internet plans to ensure everyone has bandwidth, regardless of their socio-economic heritage.
Where road ownership will be privatized and each owner will get to set its own rules regarding who gets to drive on the roads, what brand of cars are allowed on the road, which destination you are allowed to go to when using said road, and where both the person driving the car and the owner of the destination where he is driving to will have to pay for the privilege of using the road.
just like they're taking it away, we can get it back. Vote the other side in 2018. Then Vote the other side in 2022. Tell all your friends and family to do the same. We can take it back. It's not theirs.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Here is a good representation of the reasoned and classy arguments, that the well-informed Progressives put forth to advocate their position.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm a huge newbie when it comes to American politics, but how is this even a partisan issue? Which party is standing on the platform of "Less internet and higher bills for every man, woman, child, and business"? Do Republican constituents strongly believe that there is too much opportunity on the internet and fairly competing for market share is ruining the country?
The whole Trump thing I get, I think. I can appreciate the situation even if I don't appreciate the man. But this I just can't understand, is there a silent majority of US citizens that are internet service providers whose rights are being trampled by the elite minority of Netflix watchers?
Does anyone, anyone at all truly, honestly believe that any of this can be fixed without revolution?
Look what our strongly worded letters have gotten us. Look what trying to vote for "the other side" has gotten us. Look at exactly how overbearingly callous every last one of these monsters have gotten, rubbing our faces in their decisions with sneers and mockery, on video for *everyone* to see for years to come. These "legal persons" lie, cheat and steal even in direct violation of laws with nary a mild finger tap on the wrist, and then defend themselves from any attempt to obtain justice or even just an explanation with the full force (and emphasis on 'force') of the law.
What's left? What haven't we done that would magically fix all of this which doesn't involve a violent uprising? And why would they ever stop until it happens, when every day they get ever closer to such a level of automation that even the armed forces may eventually become impossible to simply turn against them? What is it going to take, for us to be hunted in pens for sport? Because they're *already* having their goons pretending it's open season in the streets!
Why do you call this a Republican plan? Trump is not paying one iota of attention to what is going on in the FCC. I doubt if he can even name the FCC commissioners. Pai took over automatically when the White House switched parties, Trump did not put him there. Also, when you poll voters on this 70% of people are for Net Neutrality and 30% don't know what it is. Republicans and Democrats poll almost identically on this. This is not a party line issue.
Pai is a member of party Verizon with constituents Comcast, Charter, AT&T, etc. Pai is not representing any block of voters.
What we should be hoping for is that he attracts the attention of Trump by throttling his Twitter, and then I'm sure Pai will get a "You're Fired!". And, by the way, he was appointed by Obama and approved by a Democratically controlled Senate.
As with anything it seems to me that this is a choice of live with it or live without it. I don't want to live with a service provider selling all my browser searches to marketing departments to allow me to be spammed by targeted marketing for flowers when I look up gifts for Mother's Day. The alternative would be to go dark or move to another country. The alternate options are not options that I can live with, so I am stuck with living with it. This another of those situations and I am really disturbed by it coming so close on the heels of the ruling that allows ISPs to sell information about my use of the internet. Net neutrality prevents ISPs from ratcheting up the cost on companies that have an online fee for service business model (ex Netflix). My fear is that one day I will have to explain to people about the golden age of the internet when it was an open community of people sharing ideas and information and watch their eyes glaze over because they can't imaging a world like that.
Technically true, Obama appointed him to the committee, but he was just one of five members, not the chairman of the FCC. Only three members of the committee can be members of the party currently in power, the other two must come from the other side. So Obama had to pick a republican.
Tom Wheeler was chairman of the FCC during Obama's second term. Pai did not take over automatically, the chairman is appointed by the president. Because this issue is essentially one group of powerful corporations fighting a second group of powerful corporations, it tends not to be a partisan issue so much as a "who gave which politician the most money recently" issue.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lets see what happens. Was this happening before net neutrality? Then it will happen again. If not, why should we expect it too.
Vote it in the next election.
deny reality all you want. this is 100% Republican agenda.
> that the outcomes from an academic exercise will be remotely similar
Regulation by the FTC, without net neutrality regulations, isn't an academic exercise. It's what we had until late 2015. It's what built the goddamn internet. I don't have to predict how that make work, that's the past. And I wad there, a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force drafting protocol standards such as HTTP (aka the web). I'd say our little web project went pretty damn well without Washington telling us how to route packets.
So, is there some specific reason to think net neutrality can never be re-established? Aside from the fact that under the next administration, we'll still have millions of idiots who think lol liberal big government and comcast monopoly still funneling money into key legislators? I mean there's nothing structural to say the FCC can't turn around and say "And net neutrality back now"?
If you consider blasphemy laws and media silence on religiously-motivated crime "democracy" then yes.... they have a better democracy. I'd rather keep the 1st amendment intact.... the one that lets me speak no matter who I offend or how much of an asshole the majority thinks that I am.
I'll take a constitutional republic over a democracy any day of the week. Too bad the republicans have become the Christian Nationalist party instead of real republicans.
That's right. Let's ignore all the attempts by ISPs to throttle competing traffic. Because those facts are inconvenient to our story that the Internet will remain as it always was.
Absolute control is too easily hated, opposed, and extremely visible.
Working control lets lesser issues distract the peasants - like having gladiators fight for entertainment and giving the crowd input on who to kill -- by showing it's the authoritarians decision but Caesar sides with the people (symbolically.)
As the wealthy screw over more and more people (class wars have NEVER stopped) they need bigger drama and bigger distractions. You can't have people SEE that on the important matters, it's a good cop vs bad cop ACT where both cops have the same goals. THE MORE ALIKE, THE MORE PARTISANSHIP is required.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Which attempts are you referring to?
Trump 2020!!
Thats it! Alexa!: Destruct sequence 1, code 1, 1-A!
This is an argument rather than an article. A few of the biggest corporate opponents of Net Neutrality - whose arguments this article echoes (while also vulgarly invoking political partisanship) - sit on stockpiles large enough that they could build their own infrastructures if they so chose. The competitive clout wielded by the Silicon Valley crowd makes them vulnerable to no real risk in a free market situation. One could easily advocate that Net Neutrality instead harms the consumer, by depriving infrastructure providers of the option to choose how they dispense or regulate their services - limiting their pathways to organic growth. It certainly benefits the GoogleFacebookNetflixarchy by eliminating what might be a major component of their cost of distribution.
And if the ISPs had the ability to do things like deep packet inspection back in 1998, do you think we'd have the relatively free internet we do now?
The FCC didn't decide to impose regulations randomly because they were bored one day. They saw that things were looking to turn bad and they tried to head it off at the pass.
The big ISPs are not going to give you an open internet of their own free will -- there is zero incentive to do so and a huge profit incentive to lock it down as much as possible. There is little or no competition outside of a handful of major cities, and most of the competition that does exist are, if not colluding, at least all looking at taking similar measures so there's no real "voting with your dollar" available either unless you plan to go entirely off the internet.
And you can't blame the companies. Their job is maximizing profit at any cost. There are two balances against "any cost" ballooning into "untenable cost": Competition and regulation. As already noted, competition just doesn't really exist. That leaves one option.
OK there is actually another option: accepting a pinky swear that they'll take a profit hit because its the Right Thing To Do for the little guy. That's a plan that works out every time.
People are concerned that a few major ISPs will provide just their content or make deals with a few content companies to provide the content. That is as opposed every ISP providing access to all web sites and internet services. That *could* happen. That *did* happen. The ISPs were called AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy. When others offered free and open access to everything on the internet, that beat the pants off the "ISP as content provider" model. People did in fact abandon Prodigy and instead signed up with companies that provide open access to everything.
We need not predict how things would go if ISPs favored sponsored content, that already happened. AOL and Prodigy are the past, so we can see that idea did fail. Open internet access did win in the market, without any fiat from Washington.
Yes. It was.
The whole net neutrality debate began with ISPs trying to charge netflix a surcharge not to throttle them.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Pai was appointed FCC chair by Trump, which is what makes this a Republican (pro big corporation) initiative. Pai has been a vocal proponent of killing net neutrality, and he was appointed Chair by the president.
Too bad the republicans have become the Christian Nationalist party instead of real republicans.
They are transitioning out of it.
If the recent claims are correct it is becoming the party of people paid by Russians.
Flynn on the other hand have transitioned form being the guy working for Putin to be the guy working for ISIS.
You people keep using the term "Marxism" without even the slightest inkling of what it means. Hint: it's not liberalism and the closest we have to a Marxist is Bernie who's more a social democrat than a Marxist
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
in 3...2...1....
*Net neutrality disabled*
*Fizzle*
*Blank screen*
And thereby make deep packet inspection a crime.
If any machine on the route parses anything that is not addressed to it that should be illegal.
The routers on the way only need the IP header everything else is none of their business. That isp's are allowed to sell customers browsing history is not the real scandal. The real scandal is that they are allowed to even collect it.
I have said this on other forums, but the only way to get John Q. Public's attention is for many high profile websites (I'm looking at you, Google along with others) to go dark. I'm not talking a black banner or some such at the top - I'm talking TOTAL blackout - with nothing more than white text explaining why. Trying to bypass the home page (Thinking it's just window dressing) redirects you back to the blackout page. NOTHING works. Pull the proverbial plug.
That's how you get action.
Okay so apparently your theory is that although the FCC regulations hadn't gone into effect, they still had some great benefit on the internet. 2016, which had NN regulations written, was somehow much better than 1992-2014, with no such regulations, right?
What *exactly* was so great, what did the new regulations accomplish that was better than what we've always had? Added expenses certainly slowed price reductions, what eas this great benefit that was worth it?
Why do you call this a Republican plan? Trump is not paying one iota of attention to what is going on in the FCC.
Cause he already has commented on it? https://m.facebook.com/DonaldT...
He obviously was very confused by the term net neutrality or since Obama was pushing title 2 he had to be against this funky title 2 crap!
Spin, crazy wheel, spin spin spin. Far Left and Right put you in the same place.
I'm sticking with him not having a clue as to what is happening in the FTC. Seems like Trump is in that 30% that doesn't know what Net Neutrality is.
Trump is never going to stop Pai on technical grounds, Trump is going to fire Pai after he anger millions of voters. That's something that Trump will pay attention to.
nobody listen to this troll.
Trump is vocally in support of, and pushes for, this repeal:
http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/donald-trump-net-neutrality-reversal-1202019819/
> You just can look at all the worried lobbying telcos
So you're thinking is that if the people who actually run the networks, the people who know what they are talking about, think it's a horribly stupid idea, that proves that it's a great idea?
One early draft of the rules made it illegal to block spam - all smtp traffic had to be treated equally. Ensuing drafts were dumb in a similar, but more complex way. All traffic is NOT the same. Sometimes you WANT your packets delayed, because early packets are dropped in real-time streaming. Yeah they would have had effects - effects like prohibiting proper handling of real time flows, thereby worsening the customer experience.
I'm sticking with him not having a clue as to what is happening in the FTC. Seems like Trump is in that 30% that doesn't know what Net Neutrality is.
Trump is never going to stop Pai on technical grounds, Trump is going to fire Pai after he anger millions of voters. That's something that Trump will pay attention to.
Doesn't matter if it is a technical understanding or not. Trump has been told and has parroted the anti-net neutrality talking points and has made it apart of his campaign and his administration staff have stated they will start reversing Obama era title 2 see here for references to the Spicer press release statements. The administrations/Trump's tact is that it was an overreach. No matter how you cut it, Trump is involved and has talked about it multiple times.
So yes, this is a Trump goal and a Republican goal.
So they should shut themselves down to bully people into supporting something that did nothing and was pushed by people who didn't even understand what they were pushing.
So many people pushing Net Neutrality talk about these scary scenarios that never happened before NN, and then talk about Netflix and Comcast while failing to realize that Net Neutrality wouldn't have mattered since the issue was network traffic management of an abusive peer, something specifically allowed under Net Neutrality rules.
Nah, just unplug the entry nodes for Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Snapchat, and add a redirect to a notice saying that without net neutrality, it's staying off. THAT will get net neutrality signed into law TODAY.
Most of the wealthy backers of the Republican Party win when government does nothing, because they are wealthy incumbents who want to fend off competition or any change to their business environment or see an opportunity to make money from privatizing protected public assets. They are trying to roll back Obama era changes because they are recent, but they are often happy with no government. Now the Republican Party can't obviously do *nothing* because they would not get votes. So they need votes by manufacturing issues like abortion, which allows them to put a "constitutionalist" on the bench (aka a business friendly judge who will curtail the power of government to regulate businesses but expand the power of government over what you do in your bedroom).
Which attempts are you referring to?
I was using an independent VOIP service on a basic slow and cheap broadband service from my ISP. The ISP began to offer their own VOIP service. The ISP forced me to upgrade to a faster more expensive broadband service for a trial. After the trial ended, I requested to return to my original plan. Once back on basic broadband, my VOIP no longer worked. I could hear voices all backwards, like the packets were being mixed and sent in improper order. When I spoke to the ISP, they told me that I would either need to upgrade my plan or pay an additional monthly fee to use my VOIP over basic broadband. They assured me that they had not changed anything. I know they lied, because I reached out to others online and found that they were traffic shaping data for others too and blocking voice calls that were previous and should now be working. VOIP is not a high-bandwidth service. It is about latency and that can easily be manipulated.
This is my personal story and I approve it.
Without net neutrality, ISP's will shape your traffic to guarantee that profits flow through them even when the service has nothing to do with them.
ISPs would have you believe that they bring you twitter, facebook, youtube, etc. And you can bet that whatever the new thing is that arrives over your internet connection in the future will require additional fees to receive it.
Why do you call this a Republican plan?
Because "no net neutrality" fits very well with the Republican plan to eliminate or greatly reduce government regulation on businesses. Net Neutrality is one of the very few regulations that I've seen which has a cute name that people like and has a lot of people interested in it.
Thats it! Alexa!: Destruct sequence 1, code 1, 1-A!
Sorry, but you'll need Scotty and Acting Science Officer Chekov to give their codes as well.