House Panel Wants Google, Facebook, AT&T CEOs To Testify On Internet Rules (reuters.com)

The chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday asked the chief executives of Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon.com, AT&T, Verizon Communications and other companies to testify at a Sept. 7 hearing on the future of net neutrality rules. From a report: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is considering tossing out 2015 Obama administration net neutrality rules that reclassified internet service like a public utility. The rules bar providers from blocking, slowing or offering paid prioritization of websites. Many internet providers want Congress to step in and write permanent rules. Other chief executives asked to testify include the heads of Comcast, Netflix and Charter. Some companies including Facebook said they were reviewing the letter but none immediately said if they will testify.

Comments

Notice how everyone is invited...

[wizkid]

Accept the users of the internet. Our government for the people!

Re:Notice how everyone is invited...

[gnick]

[Except] the users of the internet. Our government for the people!

We need to institute a system where we, the people, elect individuals to represent us. We could call them Representatives.

Re:Notice how everyone is invited...

[John.Banister]

They needed someone who would speak sentences that legislators could actually comprehend. Plus, they feel more important while talking to the CEOs who they consider to be the most important people in the companies. Can you imagine them asking the companies to "send someone who is knowledgeable about your position on this topic and competent to tell us about it." The testimony would move from CNN to C-Span, greatly reducing the number of voters watching the Representatives' attempts to sound like they're providing benefit. Plus, "knowledgeable person who is good at communicating the company position" is a job description for lobbyist. And, regardless of the truth of the words, listening to lobbyist testimony in an official hearing doesn't sound to the idiot public like Representatives doing their job. It sounds like a future exposé waiting to happen.

Re:Notice how everyone is invited...

[Opportunist]

Hmm... judging by the dupes you've been voting into office lately ... nope, you're not.

Some people fear a world government, but when I see what we got instead, I can only say it cannot happen soon enough...

This is cute and all

[rsilvergun]

but with the Republicans in control of all branches of government this is a dead end. They should spend their time defending what's left of our tattered healthcare system. It'd be one thing if the Dems presented some kind of unified opposition and/or a few of the other side were willing to jump rank. But right now the only way Net Neutrality is coming back is if a law passes and unless the Dems win the House _and_ Senate (almost impossible with Gerrymandering no matter what the polls say and that's before the effects of voter suppression are felt) then we're done.

Face it, America isn't a Democracy. We never have been. Hell, there's talk on the Right of eliminating our right to vote for Senators. They're not even pretending anymore.

Re: This is cute and all

[denis-The-menace]

I think you meant REMOVE healthcare .

Re:This is cute and all

[TFlan91]

"Hell, there's talk on the Right of eliminating our right to vote for Senators. They're not even pretending anymore."

Source? I mean, I know they are pretty crazy, but cmon... They revere the Constitution like their bibles...

Re:This is cute and all

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

To better protect our citizens and our member States, the President has superseded and suspended the Federal Senate for the duration of this emergency. We are sure you shall all do everything in your power to assist us during this time of crisis.

Re:This is cute and all

[rsilvergun]

Here you go. ALEC is a pretty big deal. The fact they'd even talk about it openly shows how far we've come.

Re:This is cute and all

[rtb61]

Reality is the end of net neutrality would hugely negatively impact the majority of businesses. Any company that wants to deal directly with consumers is under threat, any company. All can have their traffic crippled to favour competitors, especially those competitors with investments from the telecom executive team. Their traffic can be strangled right off, made to be intermittent, be interrupted by commercials for competing product and that is regular product not content. Anyone distributing high volume content can be put out of business. Make your own music and wish to sell it, nope not without the approval of the ISP publishing arm, either they publish your content for a cut or you get strangle.

The end of net neutrality favours something like 5 companies hugely and disadvantages say few hundreds thousands companies enormously. Those companies are already seeing the customer data being syphoned off by US telecoms, now those telecoms will be able to listen in and cut off traffic if the ISP taxes have not be paid. It is mind bogglingly corrupt to listen to a handful of companies whilst hundreds of thousands of companies are going to be screwed over, their customer data being pried into and sold to competitors and that is when traffic is allowed to flow through. No net neutrality and not only go you be extorted to pay for any normal speed but you can pay to take out somebody else's speed, buy up the bandwidth on the line that connects them to strangle them out of business and it can happen real fast, a month or two is enough to cripple many businesses.

Re:This is cute and all

[q4Fry]

The constitution was "reversed", as you say, to make senators elected rather than appointed by state governments in the early 1900's, so its not something that is really even close to unprecedented. Senators were meant to represent the interests of state governments in Washington, and not general citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

I recently learned about this as well. AC beat me to the post, though. I frankly think the Senate is kind of weird as a concept, but that's a topic for another time.

Not really

[rsilvergun]

you're thinking like a small biz owner. A big biz wants to kill Net Neutrality because it hurts their competition (who can't afford the fees).

Re:Not really

[Opportunist]

I think like a business owner that isn't an ISP. Because their train of thought would certainly be "Hey, cool idea. I'll make my own version and yours, well, sucks to be you because your traffic will now be very, very slow because I need to convince your customers to use my flavor".

And in other news...

[Zemran]

... the ministry of agriculture has arranged a meeting of wolves to discuss lamb security in preparation for next spring.

Re:And in other news...

[Opportunist]

Where I am from, we shoot and pelt wolves for fun and profit.