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Republican Lawmaker Introduces Net Neutrality Legislation (variety.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced net neutrality legislation on Tuesday that prohibits internet providers from blocking and throttling content, but does not address whether ISPs can create so-called "fast lanes" of traffic for sites willing to pay for it. The legislation also would require that ISPs disclose their terms of service, and ensure that federal law preempts any state efforts to establish rules of the road for internet traffic. "A lot of our innovators are saying, 'Let's go with things we have agreement on, and other things can be addressed later,'" Blackburn told Variety. She said that she was "very hopeful" about the prospects for the legislation because "an open internet and preserving that open internet is what people want to see happen. Let's preserve it. Let's nail it down. Let's stop the ping-ponging from one FCC commission to another. This is something where the Congress should act." Blackburn chairs a House subcommittee on communications and technology.
They will keep the preemption rules and gut the rest making it so there is no NN
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Net neutrality should have been implemented via the legislative process in the first place. Anything of substance that is done by means of executive or regulatory action can be easily undone by a new administration.
Passing a law is the right way to do it. This way we'll have a stable requirement and not some 'regulation' that can be changed at the whim of any given administration. We don't need ISP to be regulated as utilities, we simply need the right neutrality laws. If this happens, we'll all be in a better place.
Let's go with things we have agreement on, and other things can be addressed later is too rational, and Democrats will block it because it was introduced by a Republican.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
This lady introduced the bill in the Senate that blew away the Internet privacy protections from our ISP's (so they couldn't monitor, catalog and monetize what you do on the internet) - which was the 1st thing the Trump Admin did after getting into office. I believe her state is the home of some big ISP. I.E. this is something the big ISP's want.
The process was, the FCC (led by former Verizon corporate lawyer Ajit Pai) throws away the Net Neutrality - causing fear and some panic. Marsha and the other lobbied Republican members of congress ride to the rescue with new "Net Neutrality" legislation - which is anything but. And gets us maybe a little ways back towards Net Neutrality, but outlaws states doing their own Net Neutrality etc. (biggest threats to this huge new profit center for Comcast), they declare victory and we're screwed.
This needs to be blocked and let the FCC's recent changes get slapped down in court.
Then government also shouldn't make it artificially hard, or even impossible, for other providers to offer competing services, which is what they are doing now.
If Acme ISP is the only providers that is legally allowed to operate in your neighborhood, then government should butt in to ensure they don't abuse their government-provided artificial monopoly.
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>government interference.
not always a bad thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Tennessee-Rep-Marsha-Blackburn-Unveils-Fake-Net-Neutrality-Law-140921
I agree the "fast lane" is a non-issue. The fast lane already exists, it is called money. As in money for faster network links, faster servers, faster CDNs, and colocation agreements.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Here we go again. Trying to tell people how to run their companies, and whom they can do business with.
Absolutely no. We are supporting a level playing field for all businesses to have the same opportunities to grow and thrive not just the few people that had cash to buy politicians to create legal precedent for their special interest.
We'll make great pets
Someone please define what they are thinking. How can you not throttle and yet have fast lanes?
I'm thinking this is just double speak and is sponsored by the broadband companies in order to block state legislation.
I'm not against certain efforts to add priority levels to internet traffic like specifically for playing games but it would have to be paid by customers to the ISP's.
Hmmm .... just heard on the radio that "net neutrality" might hurt the porn industry. . . that could be worth some votes.
Ah, that would explain why Ted Cruz is against it.
Don't trust Blackburn. It's already leaking out that Comcast's lawyers are the ones writing this legislation. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvw8k5/comcast-fcc-net-neutrality-law
Then government also shouldn't make it artificially hard, or even impossible, for other providers to offer competing services, which is what they are doing now.
Try to differentiate between local government and the federal government - it is your local government that awarded cable companies and telcos monopolies on providing service in an area to encourage them to invest in infrastructure to provide those services.
If Acme ISP is the only providers that is legally allowed to operate in your neighborhood, then government should butt in to ensure they don't abuse their government-provided artificial monopoly.
A regulation that prohibits blocking or throttling of any traffic is fine, few would object to that regulation.
Allowing Netflix to pay my isp to zero rate their traffic does nothing to speed up or slow down competitors traffic, it is purely a billing/accounting issue.
Allowing Netflix to park a caching server at my ISPs head office to provide better service to Netflix customers does nothing to speed up or slow down competitors traffic.
Depending on the implementation, allowing Netflix to pay for 'priority' service could lead to effectively throttling competitors service, but it would also throttle every other service equally as the priority service 'steals' available bandwidth from all other services.
Ken
The Republican party is in a bad place. After a disastrous year, they are desperate for a win... any win. It's why they are pushing so strongly for the tax bill, even though many of them recognize how terribly flawed it is - not only from an social and economic perspective, but also from a political one: the tax plan will cost them votes. But, they fear, not having passed any significant legislation will cost them more. So we get the this tax plan.
And yet, here we have a perfect opportunity for them to pass some major legislation that would not only be incredibly popular (some 70% of the country support Net Neutrality) but would be fairly easy to get through Congress. It has support on both sides of the aisle. It wouldn't even require much work: just enshrine the already-written pre-Ajit Pai rules as law. It is quite possible that they could have gotten this law passed in mere days.
The Republican party would have been seen as working for the people, standing up against huge telecoms, and able to work and lead the country as a whole rather than satisfying a small base. It would have been a home-run, a Christmas Miracle. It would have been that desperately needed success the GOP has been selling its soul for.
And then they go and do this.
Oh, GOP.
You would think so, but reality is often far more convoluted than theory. Theories are nice and clean until you start building in exceptions. This is no different that a program. You code based on a simple function, but as you add features, exceptions, business logic, and error handling; your code becomes this monstrosity where you begin to wonder what the original intent was in the first place.
Net Neutrality is in the same way not as clear cut as you might think. That's not to say that I am not in favor of Net Neutrality. I am. Yet there are some things that clearly benefit from lower latency such as voice communications or video to video conversations or even remotely controlling devices from afar. Even electronic gaming and our own stock market would pay for a lower level ping if given the opportunity.
Place something witty here
The biggest issues that the GOP had with Net Neutrality is it goes against their idea of having government control over business.
However we are starting to see what I expected to see. 1 simple to follow rule being overturned being replaced with many complicated rules.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
She voted with all her GOP colleagues on the deeply unpopular tax bill, and now she's trying to show that she cares about her constituents - rather than just her owners. We'll see if this is enough to keep her in her seat come November.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Even with the fcc rules fast lanes existed.
Google paid for fiber directly into the larger isps backbones. The bought dark fiber than pay to have it terminated at the isps major and some not so major pops.
Netflix paid to have cache boxes installed and fiber directly to comcast.
Many of the acceleration and distribution networks pay for cache boxes and have direct fiber connections to all the large pops of even the midsize isp networks.
The FCC ruling did not change that at all.
1 whenever there is not a signed SLA in effect and as a minimum an ISP must provide not less than 75% of advertised speed/bandwidth 90% of the time or better (so if you advertise up to 20MPS speed 90% of the time all of your users should have not less than 15MPS available all the way to the next peer)
2 any bandwidth shaping or service restrictions must be part of a signed and notarized contract (copies to be on file in the local office and original STAMPED copy to be on file at the corporate office).
3 any ISP that owns directly or indirectly any content service may only promote said content as part of a "bonus"
where any future charges for said service must require an affirmative action on the part of the client to begin (any free %service% package must automatically cancel at the end of the promo period unless the client performs a clear action like checking a box on a physical bill or checking a box in an electronically presented bill)
In order to implement "fast lanes", an ISP must throttle non-"fast lane" packets, which is a negation of net neutrality.
Comcast sells you 20Mbit, 50Mbit, or a 200Mbit connection. Then they have that Boost thing, so you start downloading a file and grab the first 100MB at like 500Mbit/s.
I imagine it'd be like that: you never get less than your baseline service, and they can't throttle a particular service (netflix, google, etc.) below your baseline service. 200Mbit means you get 200Mbit to Google, to Netflix, to Spotify, to everything; getting more doesn't violate your contract.
Of course, I imagine things being done in a way that makes sense, and the GOP has shown they have no sense.
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There is only one single thing needed in the law, proposal, act or regulation that is absolutely necessary, you can write it down, and only accept when it’s included there: Internet Service Providers are forbidden by law from discriminating types of data that goes through their services. Period.
It is this simple. Nothing open to interpretation, no double speak, no pretense.
If this is not explicitly there in the proposal, it’s bullshit. In this particular case it’s at best fluff... everything she is proposing there is already guaranteed. At worst, it could be opening an opportunity for anyone to block or reduce access to whatever they consider unlawful content, unlawful Internet traffic and “harmful devices”... it’s broad and clearly has some second intentions embedded there.
By the way, get ready people... you can bet that with the corporation friendly environment that this administration has created, SOPA will come back full force. This bullshit Open Internet Preservation Act might be the start of it.
We get it, you're an anarchist who doesn't believe in market failures. That others are resistant to your lies is unsurprising.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
No, because you've got it backwards. Netflix isn't "pushing" anything - neither is slashdot. The customers of Netflix are pulling content, and those customers are also ALREADY PAYING their providers for bandwidth. Those providers shouldn't be able to charge Netflix for the bandwidth the provider's customers are already paying for.
I think the root of this thread has it wrong, though. If a provider is providing the speeds it claims, then Netflix should have no problems playing. Outside of that, if the provider wants to provide "fast" (or "faster") lanes for an upcharge, then I really have no problem with that as long as providers are providing the speeds they advertise to their customers.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The NN regulations were extremely light handed, they expressly permitted QOS and packet inspection and threw in a huge waiver and about network maintenance. What the regulations did was give the government a way to intervene of an ISP or backbone provider was discriminating on package based on the service they provide. For example, providing not interference with video streaming when it originates with the ISP's own service and slowing down and deprioritizing video packets from other providers.
These regulations were implemented because Verizon, ATT and Comcast had begun to give services they controlled better access, eliminated caps and other prioritization that made their own provided service better and degraded others. The biggest example being Comcast's games with Netflix early on. Without NN these same people will block any upstart streaming provider from providing good service. They will do this to try to eliminate competition to a product they offer.
This is the heart of NN, ISP's and backbones deciding the winners and losers in internet provided business. Once they gain that power they gain the ability to toll these independent services and that will effect everyone using the network.