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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."
The regulations are only 400 pages long at this point, pretty sure that firing the entire thing into the sun and restarting from scratch is the best thing that can happen for US internet users at this point.
Might I suggest that you beat the corporations with tungsten bars, then bind them with silver to keep them away and fucking this all up again? Then take a page out of the playbook from the CRTC and create plain simple rules.
Om, nomnomnom...
Think back to a couple of years ago, before the current net neutrality rules were created.
Remember how you had to pay extra to access Slashdot, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix? Remember how some websites were faster than others?
Nope. Me neither.
Think back before that.
Where under government regulation phone systems progressed from rotary all the way to touch-tone dialing.
The internet and smart phones didn't happen UNTIL GOVERNMENT GOT OUT OF THE WAY.
How the hell do you introduce smart phones under the rules the government had for phone service when AT&T was a monopoly? What regulatory category would they fit under?
Yeah, NONE. So things like cell phones and the internet simply didn't happen.
The scariest thing about net neutrality is the both Google and Facebook WANT IT. Probably because they'll use regulatory capture and the complexity of government rules and rules-making to make damn sure their strip-mining of your privacy remains legal, AND ALSO BLOCK STATES FROM REGULATING THEM.
Care to bet that rules preventing states from regulating Google are part of net neutrality?
by refusing to approve this asswipe's new term on the commission (which passed earlier this year, and denying his new term would have ended is chairmanship as well), and refusing to approve the appointment of a replacement until trump himself is replaced.
This is simply more legislation that helps a few at the expense of the many.
Party line item issues like net neutrality are, and always have been, planks that political platforms are constructive of. Record voter turnout in 2012 (63.6% of eligible voters) was only slightly down in the 2016 election cycle (61.4%), so we can't blame voter malaise; perhaps the two-party system itself is becoming untenable. I suspect even the most ardent supporters of party line voting have some difficulty agreeing with every tenet proffered by an individual party line.
Perhaps it's time to cease defending your voting choice as the lesser of the two evils and demand more from our governors. Until there is a legitimate threat to the illusion of choice administered by the Big Two, these freedoms we too often take for granted will continue to find themselves at the whim of a pen stroke of the next administration.
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Ernest Hemingway
So ISPs can now demand money from websites to permit those companies to have access to the ISPs customers. i.e. double selling, selling the connection to the customer AND selling the same connection to the website.
i.e. they can selectively censor websites in order to demand money from those website, aka tortuous interference in business dressed up as innovation in ISP pricing.
And you are pretending that the websites wanting access are the ones censoring the internet, aka the "accuse the accuser of the same thing" approach. Well at least you accuse Google of being one, but this applies to every website with money.
When exactly did the Republicans become anti-business, anti-free trade, Putin apparatchiks? Their position seems very fluid.
From /r/askaconservative:
Alternative Right.
This ten million times. I'm not sure if I am more baffled by the fact that someone would spew the ridiculous line of reasoning that says repealing NN will not have an effect that favors the corporations, or if I'm more baffled that so many morons seem / claim to believe it.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Nice reality distortion field there. Netflix was very much throttled, in effect, just not explicitly. Specifically, Comcast refused to upgrade their bandwidth to the nearest peering point to ensure an adequate experience for their customers unless Netflix paid them an extortion fee, all the while ensuring that their competing streaming services worked well, in what was, IMO, a deliberate, illegal, anticompetitive violation of antitrust laws. No Netflix did not throttle themselves. They paid for fast service to a peering point adjacent to Comcast. Comcast deliberately refused to upgrade things on their side even if Netflix paid for the upgrade, because it was never about the cost of providing the actual network connection; it was always about Comcast wanting an ongoing income from Netflix to make up for losses caused by competition with their paid streaming services.
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