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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?
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.
If you think NN is about censorship, you're looking at the wrong issue.
It's about charging for preferential treatment on what should be public infrastructure. Net Neutrality is what stands between an even playing field for businesses, and gated information communities built by large vertically integrated conglomerates controlling what people in their service area are allowed to see and hear (in order to extract more money from them).
Propaganda and censorship will come with that, but they're more like a bonus than the primary goal of abolishing the regulations.
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.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If you think that nothing is going to change by killing net neutrality, then there's no reason to kill it.
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.
You mean like back when ISPs were throttling Netflix unless they paid?
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.
I remember Netflix (and others) being throttled, while the ISPs preferred (read owned) streaming service was not. I remember mobile carriers giving unlimited streaming access to one music streaming service but not others.
NN isn't necessarily about paying extra. It's absence can mean that the service to other sources is degraded to such a point you end up using the one your ISP preferred. Which one that is depends entirely on if they own it, or which other company is greasing their palms the most (and passing the expense on to the subscribers.)
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
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/net-blocking-a-problem-in_b_5695997.html
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage.
COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest Internet provider, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies
TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company
AT&T: From 2007-2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services
T&T, SPRINT & VERIZON: From 2011-2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis,
VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering
These are just the things they did WHEN FCC regulated net neutrality in one way or another. Now its a free for all.
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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