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'We Are Disappointed': Tech Companies Speak Up Against the FCC's Plan To Kill Net Neutrality (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report from Business Insider: The FCC is planning to kill net neutrality -- and some tech companies are starting to speak out. Pro-net neutrality activists, who argue the principle creates a level playing-field online, are up in arms about the plan. And some tech companies are now speaking out in support of net neutrality as well, from Facebook to Netflix. Business Insider reached out to some of the biggest tech firms in America today to ask for their reaction to the FCC's plan. Their initial responses are below, and we will continue to update this post as more come in.
Facebook's vice-president of U.S. public policy, Erin Egan, said: "We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the FCC fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone. We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle."
Google spokesperson: "The FCC's net neutrality rules are working well for consumers and we're disappointed in the proposal announced today."
Netflix via a tweet: "Netflix supports strong #NetNeutrality. We oppose the FCC's proposal to roll back these core protections." [...] "We've been supporting for years thru IA and Day to Save Net Neutrality with a banner on Netflix homepage for all users. More info in Q4 2016 earnings letter, as well. This current draft order hasn't been officially voted, so we're lodging our opposition publicly and loudly now."
Reddit spokesperson: "Reddit is actively monitoring the FCC's proposed rule changes that could dismantle net neutrality as we know it. From farmers in South Dakota to musicians in Kentucky to small business owners in Utah, net neutrality is just as important to redditors as it is to Reddit and we will continue to advocate for and work constructively to maintain a free and open Internet. It is crucial to innovation and the health of our economy that small businesses have equal access to the internet, with winners and losers chosen by consumers, not ISPs."
The Internet Association, an industry body whose members include Amazon, Dropbox, Ebay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, Uber, and others: "Chairman Pai's proposal, if implemented, represents the end of net neutrality as we know it and defies the will of millions of Americans who support the 2015 Open Internet Order. This proposal undoes nearly two decades of bipartisan agreement on baseline net neutrality principles that protect Americans' ability to access the entire internet. The 2015 Order created bright-line, enforceable net neutrality protections that guarantee consumers access to the entire internet and preserve competition online. This proposal fails to achieve any of these objectives. Consumers have little choice in their ISP, and service providers should not be allowed to use this gatekeeper position at the point of connection to discriminate against websites and apps. Internet Association and our members will continue our work to ensure net neutrality protections remain the law of the land."
Facebook's vice-president of U.S. public policy, Erin Egan, said: "We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the FCC fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone. We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle."
Google spokesperson: "The FCC's net neutrality rules are working well for consumers and we're disappointed in the proposal announced today."
Netflix via a tweet: "Netflix supports strong #NetNeutrality. We oppose the FCC's proposal to roll back these core protections." [...] "We've been supporting for years thru IA and Day to Save Net Neutrality with a banner on Netflix homepage for all users. More info in Q4 2016 earnings letter, as well. This current draft order hasn't been officially voted, so we're lodging our opposition publicly and loudly now."
Reddit spokesperson: "Reddit is actively monitoring the FCC's proposed rule changes that could dismantle net neutrality as we know it. From farmers in South Dakota to musicians in Kentucky to small business owners in Utah, net neutrality is just as important to redditors as it is to Reddit and we will continue to advocate for and work constructively to maintain a free and open Internet. It is crucial to innovation and the health of our economy that small businesses have equal access to the internet, with winners and losers chosen by consumers, not ISPs."
The Internet Association, an industry body whose members include Amazon, Dropbox, Ebay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, Uber, and others: "Chairman Pai's proposal, if implemented, represents the end of net neutrality as we know it and defies the will of millions of Americans who support the 2015 Open Internet Order. This proposal undoes nearly two decades of bipartisan agreement on baseline net neutrality principles that protect Americans' ability to access the entire internet. The 2015 Order created bright-line, enforceable net neutrality protections that guarantee consumers access to the entire internet and preserve competition online. This proposal fails to achieve any of these objectives. Consumers have little choice in their ISP, and service providers should not be allowed to use this gatekeeper position at the point of connection to discriminate against websites and apps. Internet Association and our members will continue our work to ensure net neutrality protections remain the law of the land."
Pro-net neutrality activists, who argue the principle creates a level playing-field online, are up in arms about the plan. And some tech companies are now speaking out in support of net neutrality
Donald Trump -- the guy who gets to appoint the FCC commissioners -- said he was opposed to Net Neutrality when he first started running for president. The third-world goat-herder who is now the head of the FCC openly opposed Net Neutrality when the rules were instituted two years ago.
And you're just now "disappointed"? Where the fuck have you been for the last two years?
Love him, hate him or don't give a damn about him, Weev made some great points against the policy, the best one of which is: Many of the companies screaming the loudest are the biggest advocates of censorship. (Then there is the fact that as he rightly points out no one is stopping state and local monopolistic practices)
Of course they don't call it that. They pretend that it's some balance to protect civility, feelings and ensure that cowards are not driven to silence by hearing disagreement, but that is precisely what it is. Censorship.
And one of the greatest ironies of the whole issue is that the sort of people who love to throw this XKCD comic out there are the ones shitting themselves the hardest at the idea that ISPs might take their platform away, but when it is GoogleFacebookTwitterYouTube doing it we are invited to a lecture on how we are not entitled to a soapbox.
It's not just about ISPs getting too rich, although they are, and for little value added considering their monopolies compared to other countries and what is technically feasible for them to deliver on an honest basis. Pai's plan a horrible thing for democracy, consumers. But it is also likely to cause massive damage to American competitiveness in the future. Why?
Two reasons: Killing STEM / open education, and 2) Killing open innovation. And I believe this is something that could cost the U.S. the $500 billion dollars in cash that its biggest tech titans have amassed, as outlined below.
1) Killing open education, STEM, innovative software and media developers and entrepreneurs before they hatch.
It is going to be more difficult if not impossible for individual experts to share their knowledge by creating videos free for access to all. How do they pay for the bandwidth? Currently there are a very small number of altruistic organizations and then most like YouTube which for the moment are free because they make money from advertising to offset storage and delivery costs. Will a university be able to pay for hosting a huge number of streaming 4K videos by themselves? No. If high quality, free open courseware could be developed on a serious ongoing basis it would require net neutrality to reach a maximum of viewers, let alone making it economically viable to even contemplate starting such a service. In reality a publically funded educational institution ought to be able to deliver its knowledge freely over the Internet and take advantage of the latest technology. Public education could be changed from a backwater to a leading world-class disseminator of the highest quality educational materials and it doesn't require a Harvard-sized endowment. At least, it wouldn't now but without net neutrality it might not be possible at all. The goals of STEM are also going to be recalculated when students and their advisors become sophisticated enough to consider how the cost-benefit equation concerning the massive investment needed for education in the sciences at present will change for the worse when they are forced to pay extra for communications fees and can expect more difficulty repaying without becoming beholden to a major corporation.
Also Internet based technologies with open APIs, open manuals, open source code and freely deployable are typically learned by study online, and are deployable by low cost hosting companies at the present. This freewheeling opportunity is like a petri dish that has all the nutrients needed for an organism - a startup or just a couple of guys in a garage - to land in and take off exponentially. This ability to freely self educate and continue learning and deploying new technologies as they appear is part of the innovation engine and this experience is also likely to be weakened when net neutrality means all sites hosting the technology and the blogs about it are not going to be on an equal footing. So Pai's plan is anti-STEM and damages the potential for education, self-teaching, and growing up our home-grown inventors and investors most of whom started out young and insolvent once upon a time.
2) Killing the innovation engine that allowed post-cold war Silicon Valley to enter the modern age, and later caused a small network to spark and explode into the public Internet.
Because successful brands and innovation has up to now been coming from individuals and small ventures. Some from larger companies but my perception is that after making their core money they are unable to grow fast enough to use it all by investing in themselves, instead they grow by gobbling up smaller innovative ones and even then have huge cash positions. They have too much cash and are not able to invest fast enough in high enough quality ventures. In addition, advertising and media delivery need to be affordable to startups in order to enable digital distribution in this attention-driven economy that has grown ascendant. When the playing field is not level, there will be fewer players a
The third-world goat-herder who is now the head of the FCC
Wow, brazen racism and elitism. Of course, it's ok because it's targetted at someone who disagrees with your "right-think" ? This is part of the reason Trump got elected in the first place.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
And remember we're not allowed to call them idiots (even if they are) because presumably (/ironically?) that'd be "right-think" too.
Oh look, the tolerant left that screams discrimination and "protected classes!" wanting to discriminate an entire set of individual based on politics.
How about you stick to calling people idiots based on their individual idiocy, instead of lumping everyone into some "basket of deplorables" based on who they voted for. There were legitimate reasons to vote for Donald Trump, one of them being deregulation, and moving power from the Federal government back to states, which he is doing. It was not an "idiotic" choice in and of itself.
And this screeching you're doing is one of the reasons he was elected. This contempt for "the masses of uneducated idiots" you're showing. That very arrogance of a few journalists and politicans on the left and yes, some of their militants too. You guys need to prop up your tolerant and reasonable voices, instead of constantly shoving your hysterics in the media.
How 'bout this for a 2020 slogan : Make Liberalism Great Again.
We're living in a post-truth society,
Yes, and the push towards it is coming from the Left wing and Academia. Trump is a push back against it.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
That's right! Brazen racism and elitism is only OK if it is targeted at someone who disagrees with alt-right think! If you think Trump got elected because he is a big fan of foreigners and hates racists you have to be the most stupid motherfucker on the planet ... besides Trump I mean. As stupid as you are, I don't believe you could possibly be as stupid as you seem.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yes, and the push towards it is coming from the Left wing and Academia. Trump is a push back against it.
You have to explain this to progressives. Trump was elected for two things: Gutting the piss out of the republican party(aka neocons and RINO's out), by people on the left, center and right. And pushing back against the bullshit they've been pushing for 35 years, which has grown far worse in the last 20 years. Democrats on the other hand just voted in a new leader who's pushing more of the same(Obama/Clinton) identity politics rationals. I'll also remind democrats/progressives that during the lead-up for the race, you had open racists proclaiming that their job was to "shut white people down" as part of their reasoning to be elected for leadership.
And if you are a progressive and think that you guys aren't causing problems in society or academia? You only need to look to Canada, where a TA was put through circus because she dared to show neutrality and both sides of an argument in class. That's the bullshit academia is pushing and it's that same post-modernist garbage that's used to label someone a "nazi" or "literally hitler" for wrong-think. You can listen to the entire circus here if you want. It's very much worth the listen to.
Om, nomnomnom...