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NYTimes Editorial Board: The FCC Wants To Let Telecoms Cash In on the Internet (nytimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the everyone-agrees dept.

The New York Times' Editorial Board writes: The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission wants to let Comcast, Verizon and other broadband companies turn the internet into a latter-day version of cable TV, in which they decide what customers can watch and how much they pay for that content. That's essentially what would happen under the proposal by the chairman, Ajit Pai, to abandon the commission's network neutrality rules, which prevent telecom companies from interfering with how their customers use the internet. Net neutrality prevents those companies from having companies like Amazon pay a fee to get their content delivered more quickly than their rivals', and from having the firms throttle other services and websites, even blocking customer access to, say, Netflix or an online newspaper. Under Mr. Pai's proposal, telecom companies would effectively be allowed to sell you a basic internet plan that might include only limited access to Google and email. For Facebook and Twitter you might need a slightly more expensive deluxe plan. The premium plan might include access to Netflix and Amazon. Oh, and by the way, media businesses eager to gain more users could pay broadband companies to be included in their enhanced basic or deluxe plans. Further reading: Associated Press fact check: Net-neutrality claims leave out key context; The death of the Internet.

12 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. The U.S. government has become weak and abusive. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We need strong, caring, logical people to join the U.S. government. One way to help that happen is to take the money out of being elected. Could there be free TV channels for those who qualify and are trying to make themselves known before an election?

    Another way is to pass a law that says anyone who tries to influence legislation must make all documents public, and must have no personal involvement with lawmakers or their staff.

  2. Oh well.... by cayenne8 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Oh well...Hey, the internet was fun while it lasted, eh?

    Glad I got on about '92-'93 while it was still a bit of the old "wild west" and anything went.

    I guess you couldn't expect it to last forever...it caught the govt types off guard and it took a long time for them to catch up to it.

    I guess they'll be happy letting the corporate world do what they really never seemed to be able to do and kill it for the masses.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:Oh well.... by Green+Mountain+Bot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the government (in the form of a Republican Congress decades ago) made a deliberate decision not to let the government regulate the Internet.

      That lasted until the Obama administration finally found a way around the laws (after losing several court cases) by reclassifying Internet access under Title II so they could start regulating it.

      You're conflating regulating the internet (ie, the content and services on the internet) with regulating internet service providers (ie, the effective monopolies that give access to the internet).

      Now we're just talking about repealing that and returning it closer to the "wild west" you remember so fondly.

      No, we're not. We're giving the ISPs the ability to regulate content. That is exactly the opposite of the "wild west" approach.

      Somehow we never had any irresolvable issues in the decades before the FCC had Title II authority to regulate the Internet, but after only a couple of years of validity (and use mostly to investigate charges of free Facebook access for people) repealing it is suddenly all going to doom the Internet forever.

      You don't think that the consolidation that's occurred since then has changed the landscape at all? You don't think the reports that we're seeing about the type of plan seen in TFA have any weight behind them?

    2. Re:Oh well.... by Immerman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And Net Neutrality laws were passed in response to ISPs beginning to implement censorship and "cost maximizing" shenanigans. Do you really think they'd pay to have the laws repealed if they didn't plan to resume (and expand) their exploitation?

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    3. Re:Oh well.... by Narcocide · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He sees it. He's just hoping desperately to confuse anyone new to the conversation. Probably he's being paid to do it, too.

    4. Re:Oh well.... by coastwalker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is interesting to reflect that we just lived through the Internet equivalent of the swinging sixities "where anything goes". Future generations will have Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Netflix and the MSM and that will be it for the Internet, all the rest, including this site will be history.

      Fascinating how capitalism fucks everything just as assuredly as totalitarianism.

      --
      Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
  3. Re:More NYT Lies by UdoKeir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    AT&T blocked access to Apple's FaceTime for customers on their unlimited cellular data plan in 2012. Are you being willfully ignorant, or are you the regular kind of stupid? https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

  4. Big entity controlling by DrYak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you want a free and open internet, the very, very LAST thing anyone should desire is government regulation. The internet has been as free and open as it's been so far precisely *because* there has been no government regulation

    To be more precise, you do not want under the control of *ANY* bit entity.
    Be it governments, or be it huge corporation.
    And here liese the problem...

    If it's so terrible, why hasn't all those bad things already happened?

    ...because it took some time for the big corporation to be big enough and vertically integrated to be able to pull off easily the kind of shit that forced the creation of net neutrality regulations.

    There's a difference between what was once just a bunch of universities communicating with each other on equal grounds, and a huge corporation basically having a monopoly on internet over a whole region and deciding what every one will be able to see or not.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Big entity controlling by Dorianny · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At that point there was no other way to regain regulatory authority

      We don't WANT the internet "regulated" by the FCC under Title II as Title II comes with a boatload of additional regulations, like CALEA compliance.

      Yes we do!

      Let them fight it out in the courts one case at a time under FTC general trade rules and regulations.

      I prefer my taxes be put to better use then paying lawyers in unecesssary lawsuits

      Allow the markets to decide.

      That assumes competition. Unfortunately there is no competition. DSL is far too slow to be real competition. Most of the U.S doesn't have a serious alternative to the cable company franchised in their town

      This is simply a government attempt to control what you can see and read and who can say what on the internet along with gaining the ability to legally mandate the ability for LEAs/TLAs to spy on whoever they wish without an individual warrant.

      It's government tyranny writ large.

      You are either ignorant or in favor of authoritarianism when it supports "your side".

      Strat

      Wrong! This was the FCC using its authority given to it by law, to prevent Corporations from abusing their power to the detriment of a service you are paying for

  5. Re:They should have done it right the first time by Green+Mountain+Bot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When Obama decreed Net Neutrality he of course fucked it up. Instead of getting new laws passed, he simply had the FCC implement rules treating them like Common Carriers.

    Instead of getting new laws passed? How exactly was he supposed to do that with a congress that stated in no uncertain terms - and backed it up with their actions - that they would not work with him on anything? Stop pretending that this is a bipartisan fuck up. It's not. One party, and one party alone, has been pushing for the end of Net Neutrality, and now that that party has full control of congress and the white house, guess what we got? Hint: it's not new laws to preserve Net Neutrality.

  6. Re:I Appreciate the NYT Chiming in on This by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, it wasn't. Paying an extortionist for the rest of your life is not a resolution. What people always miss is that the government is ALREADY involved in that it gave the power these telcos turned ISP's have in the first place by granting them exclusive rights of way. If you want to make it right then the infrastructure needs to be taken back and given to a third party to maintain much like the electric grid was when it was deregulated.

    --
    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
  7. Re:They should have done it right the first time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    stop covering up, Obama fucked up cuz he wasn't a good leader, if he had majority, he would have the congress and senate, clearly he didnt, which means he was governing from a position of minority, which means he should better acquiesce to their demands of him and compromise. Trump, having a majority senate and congress rules from a position of majority, and sets their mandate. That is democracy after all, what Obama did was underhanded, and is subversive to the Tradition of Governance.