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Ajit Pai Backs Out of Planned CES 2018 Appearance (techcrunch.com)
New submitter sdinfoserv writes: Ajit Pai, the most hated person in tech since Darl McBride, backed out of a speaking engagement at CES 2018. Apparently he lacks the spine to justify himself before the group of individuals his decisions affect most. Consumer Technology Association head Gary Shapiro announced: "Unfortunately, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is unable to attend CES 2018. We look forward to our next opportunity to host a technology policy discussion with him before a public audience."
Best case scenario, he would only get pelted with rotten tomatoes. I can't imagine why he wouldn't show...
>>Apparently he lacks the spine to justify himself before the group of individuals his decisions affect most.
I'm guessing it's more like he fears for his life at this point. Never underestimate what a group of angry people will do. If society can justify punching out people they disagree with then they can just as easily justify beating the crap out of Pai.
An individual in Federal agencies that has broad rule-making powers has unilaterally decided the freedom and business landscape for _the_most_revolutionary_method_of_communication_used_by_humans, and you bring race into this?
Piss off.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity. - Charles Gates Dawes
Ajit Pai and Martin Shkreli are very similar characters. Pai seems a little more eager to please his masters, whereas Shkreli would unabashedly throw a baby off a bridge for a dollar.
Pai has a family that might miss him, but who knows. Maybe not. Nobody in the world would miss Martin Shkreli. I'll bet his mother has his number blocked and changed her last name.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Prior to 2014 the FCC had the authority. Verizon spending a ton of money in court got the FCC's authority narrowed significantly because ISPs weren't common carriers. But that the FCC could reclassify ISPs under Title II, make them common carriers, and essentially gain back that authority.
Which is what they did. That has now be undone. There was only a brief window of 2014-2015 where ISPs weren't regulated. There is an extensive history of ISPs doing sketchy shit and getting taken to court by the FCC since the early 2000s to get it stopped. They no longer have this authority. This is a brand new world of unregulated internet and it's going to suck.
the market's not very good right now trying to find someplace to unload crates of rotten tomatoes and eggs....
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Or you just don't understand the far-reaching ramifications.
"Ajit Pai, the most hated person in tech since Darl McBride"
Evidence for this assertion? None.
No evidence? Millions of citizens voiced their disdain and advocated for him NOT to do the very thing he arrogantly went off and did after ignoring every damn one of them.
And then he rubbed it in by making an it's-all-good promotional video so vapidly stupid it makes reality TV look like a Nat Geo documentary.
If you can't see how he earned his moniker, you're as ignorant as he is.
You're almost right.
This is a brand new world of the Internet being regulated by ISPs rather than the technical principles which have guided the deployment and development of the Internet since its DARPA days.
Hacks from Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have no interest in the proper functioning of a packet-switching network. They just want to make money off it.
I don't know a single tech person (I live in the bay area) who likes that fuck-wad.
yes, I truly do agree that he's the most hated guy in tech; maybe next to the orange one.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Since this is being touted as an economic issue, I'm more right-wing than anything else... and I could also find a few good reasons to abruptly perform a manual realignment of his septum.
Since the issue has arisen, yes, let's follow up with a discussion of why you'd bother bringing politics into a discussion of a hubristic asshole undermining the democratic process that is the foundation of our country. I do, in fact, disagree with the decision to allow government-sanctioned monopolies to add arbitrary fees, but moreso I disagree with the entire process surrounding the vote.
This isn't a political decision of whether we want a society-focused or a individual-focused government, which is usually the core difference between conservative and liberal ideologies. Rather, this is a very straightforward ruling to let private companies increase profit by harming individuals and other companies, and thanks to the existence of municipal monopolies, the competition that might drive is essentially outlawed across most of the country. If the legality of local monopolies was also on the chopping block, I'd have more concern for the chairman's countenance, but under the current conditions, I must oppose.
The net result is that ISPs are free to extort other businesses, and their position of power is being backed by government enforcement. This is the antithesis of the highly-competitive conservative ideal, and it's also contrary to the community-focused goals of a liberal government. It does, however, align with the goals of a kleptocracy. The politicians get their cushy jobs and revolving doors leading to the decision's benefactors, and those who engage in honest competition are left paying the bill.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
He can't justify his decisions, they're unjustifiable. He is Verizon's stooge, pure and simple. I wonder if the other telecoms are chipping in.
Calling his appearance a discussion is laughably generous. He was going to get curb-stomped, at least figuratively.
The rules are still in effect until some time after the changed rules are published, and they haven't yet done that - despite voting them into effect, they are still editing them. Don't know how that works.
And for how this will effect us - take a look at the very important promises that have been recently removed from the ISPs websites. It is a clear promise to make the life of any current provider of a service on the internet hard, and anyone creating a new service, impossible.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Or perhaps you are just another one of those suffering from confirmation bias, with the inability to assimilate any information no matter how scientific or well thought out that does not apply to your point of view.
once more into the breach
Seems like the only clever thing he's ever done.
Of course he's cancelled. He won't be able to do neutral networking amount such a biased crowd.
I'm just curious what the difference between a "fiat decision" and a "non-fiat decision" might be.
In this context, roughly fiat = authoritative.
Parsing it more carefully, I suppose it means a command or decree based merely on authority, without further obligation or justification.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Or maybe he doesn't want to be assassinated by the loony people you find here on Slashdot in droves, that have blown the Network Neutrality regulations vastly out of proportion.
And maybe you need to supply some examples of "the loony people you find here on Slashdot" who have committed assassinations.
None? Thought so.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
WRONG.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
I suggest you wait 6 years. It's going to take a few years for the current backbone infrastructure to adjust to the new regulatory status. Then expect to see far more siloed services., and far more pernicious monitoring built into the systems that are doing throttling, as part of the package. I'd estimate 3 years as the half life oof the most powerful backbone routers to really see traffic alter.
Gosh, I hope instead of attending in person, he sends a humorous video which will calm the audience carrying torches and pitchforks...
Clearly, you don't understand the Wheeler shift to Title II, its impact, and why the change to a free-for-all model clearly sucks. Local monopolies have zero, nothing, nada, zip, and sweet fuck all to do with the decision and any connection or allusion to municipal utilities is a ruse and facade to carrier domination. This was bought and paid for.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Millions of citizens
Means nothing. Most people are idiots.
And yet they vote. Does that mean nothing? For better or for worse, I don't.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
When my dog craps on the rug, he goes and hides in shame. I interpret this to be similar. Bad Ajit. Bad.
What the fsck are you talking about, dummy? You have absolutely no sense of context or what?
Godwin's new corollary says if people are comparing you to Martin Shkreli, you're a horrible person and should reverse what you've done.
Y'all can still hold your three minute hate. All you need is a photograph.
This reads like nonsense. Why shouldn't Verizon get to send Netflix a bill for clogging their tubes. And why should I care?
stepped into a system that was working perfectly well with some occasional oversight by the FCC
Bullshit. They were classified as Title II by the pressuring of Verizon in court case after court case that the FCC took major ISPs to court over. Like seriously, the FCC IMHO gave ISPs every single chance they could to clean up their act and they just kept saying, "nope, we'll see you in court."
No, sir. No I will not. I will stand here forever, guarding against your toadying ilk that would destroy true freedom
You have zero clues. You lack so much knowledge on this topic, you literally have no clue what the term "freedom" means. You say these words with conviction and all I can say is that I'm glad you believe every word you speak but you have zero clue as to what you are talking about. There's no point in trying to show you where you are wrong, I've come across several zealots like yourself in this discussion and even when shown the court cases, the actions of the ISPs, and piece of evidence after piece of evidence that this claim that the Internet was "working great" before is purely false. It all falls back on the brain dead argument of "well I don't like the government telling me or companies what to do." To which I say, go fuck yourself and your uneducated arguments that lack any resemblance to actual fact.
In short, you've come to the wrong place on the Internet to spew this fiction that the Internet was "awesome and working perfectly" back in the day. Everyone here is well aware of what went down, we were all there. We all understand that once you peel the layers of your argument back it just reveals itself to be one of subjective matter on how you feel governments should work. No one gives a shit about how you FEEL things should work, we all saw ISPs give middle fingers to operators, protocols, networks, and other end nodes on the Internet that they felt just went against their business priorities. And that is the entire point. ISPs aren't created to make a business they're the gateway to the Internet, they are utilities not companies, but they want to convince folks that underneath they're businesses. They can all go suck a big cock with that idea. And then these companies bitch and moan about not being able to roll out because of regulation and how they welcome competition but when cities actually want to treat the gateway to the Internet like it should be treated "a utility" they start getting up in arms and suing the shit out of everyone, every where. That's the failure, that's the core point that people like you don't understand. Being an ISP is not a business. When you think of it like that, then you might as well privatize cops, fire departments, and the army itself. Because whatever made up line in the sand you want to create for why that isn't so, is just some subjective BS that a population of "just you" in that mindset.
To quote: The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
(guess who said that....)
This is patently false. The FCC had in fact tried leaving well-enough alone, but, as it turns out, companies were going out of their way to screw their customers no matter how many times that they kept getting caught.
2005 seems packed but only because prior to this there wasn't really much investigating in that field at all. However, major telecoms had spent money they'd been paid for fiber and cable infrastructure - broken promises of fiber in half the homes of America by the early 2000s - on lobbying to deregulate and lower the standards. That's how you had fiber if anywhere at all somewhere in your connection it eventually became fiber, no matter your dialup speeds and broadband bill due to the bottlenecks.
Madison River in 2005. Comcast *SINCE* 2005 but only completely proven in 2007 by the AP and EFF. Telus in Canada blocking entire servers (with hundreds of different websites) just to snuff out leaks about a strike their workers were having. AT&T degrading and/or blocking VOIP traffic that competed with the service it was trying to push in 2007, continuing this practice when Google Voice appeared in '09. Windstream was using injection and browser hijacks on their customers to steal ad revenue from other search engines (a practice copied several times by other ISPs since then). AT&T, Sprint and Verizon vs Google Wallet. Verizon screwing with apps, AT&T as well both on phones and on PCs.
They never stopped. Every time they'd get caught, every time they'd bog down the legal system to keep any rulings from being achieved against them, and Wheeler only finally brought down the hammer with the classification after their lobbying had gotten every other bloody thing struck down, claiming all the while that there didn't need to be any rules on how they act because they were good companies.
The fact that the entire C-level of every last one of these companies hasn't faced the firing squad is a travesty of everything our country was founded on.
An individual in Federal agencies that has broad rule-making powers has unilaterally decided
It was a vote, same as the action that imposed Net Neutrality.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Why would the FCC step in? Didn't you just say yourself that they are trying to let the market settle this? How will a new ISP that respects its customers be able to start up and thrive when they won't be able to get past the tollbooth installed by the ISP that already control the market and don't respect customers? How does that allow for market correction? I guess you think being contrarian to the generally well understood concept that monopolies ruin markets makes you look like you know something that others don't?
Maybe they should interview a chair.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
The day that everyone has free access to competing providers is the day we no longer need to pursue legislative net neutrality. Unfortunately, many individuals are under the rule of a government mandated monopoly and have no choices for broadband access.
"... stepped into a system that was working perfectly well with some occasional oversight by the FCC.."
Working perfectly well for whom??
Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Corporations and their shills, like Mr. Pai, are not individuals. They should _never_ have a say in law or rule-making. That's the domain of flesh and blood humans with checks and balances to prevent a mob rule.
Ajit Pai is the voice of the 3 wolves in the 'democratic' discourse on what to have for dinner. Fortunately we don't live in a pure democracy.
Now, Piss Off and go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
All goods need not be allocated in response to the human-choice-driven price mechanism of the marketplace. Goods and services can also be allocated by political means. That is, states, employing coercive means can seize goods and services and allocate them according to certain political goals and the goals of people in positions of political power. There is nothing “neutral” about this method of allocating resources.
In the net neutrality debate, it’s almost risible that some are suggesting that the FCC will somehow necessarily work in the “public” interest. First of all, we can already see how the FCC regards the public with its refusal to make its own proposals public. Second, who will define who the “public” is? And finally, after identifying who the “public” is, how will the governing bodies of the FCC determine what the “public” wants?
It’s a safe bet there will be no plebiscitary process, so what mechanism will be used? In practice, bureaucratic agencies respond to lobbying and political pressure like any other political institution. Those who can most afford to lobby and provide information to the FCC, however, will not be ordinary people who have the constraints of household budgets and lives to live in places other than Washington, DC office buildings. No, the general public will be essentially powerless because regulatory regimes diminish the market power of customers.
Most of the interaction that FCC policymakers will have with the “public” will be through lobbyists working for the internet service providers, so what net neutrality does is turn the attention of the ISPs away from the consumers themselves and toward the regulatory agency. In the marketplace, a firm’s customers are the most important decision makers. But the more regulated an industry becomes, the more important the regulating agency becomes to the firm’s owners and managers.
The natural outcome will be more “regulatory capture,” in which the institutions with the most at stake in a regulatory agency’s decisions end up controlling the agencies themselves. We see this all the time in the revolving door between legislators, regulators, and lobbyists. And you can also be sure that once this happens, the industry will close itself off to new innovative firms seeking to enter the marketplace. The regulatory agencies will ensure the health of the status quo providers at the cost of new entrepreneurs and new competitors.
Nor are such regulatory regimes even “efficient” in the mainstream use of the term. As economist Douglass North noted, regulatory regimes do not improve efficiency, but serve the interests of those with political power:
Institutions are not necessarily or even usually created to be socially efficient; rather they, or at least the formal rules, are created to serve the interests of those with the bargaining power to create new rules.
So, if populists think net neutrality will somehow give “the people” greater voice in how bandwidth is allocated and ISPs function, they should think again.
The bookies were offering something like 7 to 1 on Trump. There's not much more to say.
Where I come from, rabid dogs are being shot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The older ones here will remember that this scenario is not new. Remember dial-up? In the good ol' days of the internet, landlines used to have flat rates. You could make local calls without being charged by the minute. Why? Because phone companies knew that you wouldn't do that 24/7. Who in their sane mind would be on the phone all the time? Well, except for some old hags who don't have anything better to do, but old hags were few and far between. They could easily oversell 50:1 or even 100:1 (50 phones sharing 1 line) because people simply didn't use the resource as much as they technically could.
Then came the internet and suddenly, being connected 24/7 became increasingly interesting. And that model of overselling phone lines was put under severe stress. To the point where telcos either had to run more cable or see their business fail. Some tried to return to metered lines but the resistance to something like this was immense, mostly because people felt the pain themselves, it cut into their own bottom line (unlike now where the loss of net neutrality mostly hits the other side directly, the content provider).
These unmetered, flat-rate phone lines had a very beneficial effect on the internet in general, though. Unlike in Europe where metered local calls were the norm, the adoption of internet use outside of universities took off in the US almost a decade before anything close to it happened in Europe, where only in areas serviced by cable TV providers you could get affordable internet at home during the 90s. It took well into the 2000s for Europe to catch up, mostly due to the standard of metered local calls (with prices of about 5 bucks an hour, you just couldn't stay online for more than a few minutes to check mail).
The second push, the move towards DSL, came from the telcos that wanted to get people off the overused and severely strained dial-up lines. The idea was that with faster speeds they could start introducing transfer limits, and the plan actually worked (mostly), until they had time to catch up with the hardware roll-out of more cabling and routing.
If phone lines had been metered all the time, the internet would probably still be the pastime of a few university students and people rich enough to not give a shit about 50-100 bucks a day for their hobby.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're right. If I had them both in a room and only one bullet in a gun...
I'd start looking for rope.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's an easy fix for that: Don't be an asshole. You'll notice that a lot less people want you dead that way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He's one of those people that are still alive for the sole reason that he's just not worth a second of jail time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mind if I bookmark this for later use?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's amazing to think that this towering edifice of words is something you find genuinely convincing. I've got some really bad news for you: the vast majority of humanity prefer to live in societies where the goods we purchase are regulated. You go ahead and tell yourself that's because we're all dupes, if you like. Whatever gets you through the day.
You can't handle actual historical, completely documented facts so you choose to make up your own it seems.
The parties DID swap ideologies when the civil rights bill was passed, and the racists of the democrat party switched to the welcoming arms of the republican party where they remain to this day, with liars like YOU still trying to frame the democrats for republican actions.
Republicans exploit and use people, period. Republicans also try to scapegoat their behaviour anyone they don't like, especially if they have darker skin tones. Just like YOU have done here.
The democrats voting record on actual freedoms is solid. Republicans? not so much.
Again, typically everything you've claimed is actually opposite to reality...and you're not a very good liar.
If only his ass was kicked he can count himself lucky. Shows what a coward he is, forces an unpopular decision and then is too afraid to defend it in public.
> The internet was going along quite well WAY over six years before network neutrality regulation passed.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." (From John Philpot Curran, often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson,)
The difficulty with the loss of network neutrality is not an immediate collapse of infrastructure. It's the economic and social bars to new speech and new endeavors. We can expect throttling of content on a massive scale, and preferential treatment of "preferred partners" to favor their content. _By itself_, I would not see that as so dangerous. But the infrastructure used to improve quality-of-service for that protected content is precisely the same infrastructure that can _filter_ and _monitor_ traffic. The relevant routers to violate network neutrality with are ideal locations for illicit monitoring. ISP's can, and have, violated civil rights with law enforcement installed monitoring. Room 641A (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A) existed.
You mean the tens of millions which were less than the millions that voted for her?
To quote: The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
(guess who said that....)
Works as intended. Bug closed.
This is what happens when schools are no longer required to teach civics. (Or apparently history)
He knows that he will get mercilessly trolled at best, murdered at worst.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Wrong. A majority of people in the USA did NOT want her to be President. The majority of people who voted did...but not a majority of people. Trump/Johnson/Stein supporters certainly didn't want her and all the people who didn't vote didn't want any of the candidates.
I know what "fiat" means; I just don't know what the poster thinks it means.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Wrong. Democrats switched their strategy from suppressing the black vote to winning the black vote by buying them with welfare and food stamps. Robert Byrd, a sitting Democrat Senator well into the 21st century, was a known KKK member. The declassified JFK Assassination files finger Lyndon B Johnson as a KKK member. No Democrats switched to the Republican party, and no Republicans switched to the Democrat party. So how exactly did the hoods and crosses switch party ownership? If you want to see what the Democrats have done for black people in America, look no further than Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago. These three cities have been dominated by Democrats for over four decades, they lead the US in blacks being murdered and have a black unemployment rate that is triple the unemployment rate of the white population of those cities. Planned Parenthood sets up their abortion shops in predominantly black communities and abort black babies at much higher rate than any other race. And then they sell those aborted fetus organs to rich white people. Who supports Planned Parenthood? The Democrats.
All this commentary about Ajit Pai and not one mention of the giant Reese's candy coffee mug that Pai so ossentatiously flourishes?
Gosh, you'd think that that prop does not establish him as a bona fide "regular guy"! What's a predatory CEO, now fox-in-the-regulatory-henhouse handing out favors to his former (and again future) employer, to do?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Wrong. A majority of people in the USA did NOT want her to be President.
by that reasoning - a majority of the people in the USA did NOT want Trump to be President either.
You're kinda proving my point. :-)
I'm just curious what the difference between a "fiat decision" and a "non-fiat decision" might be.
"Fiat", like "communism", means "something I don't like".
The internet was going along quite well WAY over six years before network neutrality regulation passed.
Six years before the first court case that established the basic principle, nearly everyone at home was still on dialup.
the vast majority of humanity prefer to live in societies where the goods we purchase are regulated.
You don't buy a good, you buy a service. That's a fundamental difference: if you buy a good, you spent your money and are stuck with that decision for the rest of your life unless you can find a good reason to return it, and the merchant accepts the return.
As for internet broadband services, you are effectively leasing bandwidth on a network owned and operated by someone else. If you are no longer happy with the value of the service you receive in exchange for your hard-earned dollars, euros, rupees or rubles, you have the option to cancel your service and stop spending.
Twenty years ago you happily paid $60 for 2 megabit downstream bandwidth. Today 2 mbps is not even considered broadband and you would be complaining if you would get only 2 mbps on your iphone in the middle of a large city. However, the same $60 vacuum cleaner you bought 20 years ago might still work today. Ask your grandma.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Boy, if you believe that, you're stupid.
Yeah, like I said: stupid.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Something *I've been told* I don't like.
That too. Thanks for the correction.
That's a distinction without a difference. FMCG doesn't work the way you describe, and food is regulated for safety and quality reasons, for example. By contrast, there are plenty of one-time services where there comes a point where you can't change your mind until it's too late -- an operation, for example.
And many services of the type you describe have exit penalties, to discourage switching. And switching itself is not cost-free (time and effort, if not money). And notoriously, there's no point in attempting to switch if there's a local monopoly or more broadly a lack of a meaningfully different offer in the market.
TFW your first guess gets confirmed a few days later: "Ajit Pai canceled his scheduled appearance at a major upcoming tech industry trade show after receiving death threats, two agency sources told Recode on Thursday." After a Bernie supporter tried to kill a bunch of Republican politicians and staffers at baseball practice, it should not surprise anyone that people take death threats seriously.
Wow, I cite the NY Times (not exactly a right-wing haven) talking about a scholarly book based on actual voting records and your refutation of all that evidence is... well, nothing at all.
Apparently the point is proven.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
lol, if he was so bad Obama should have ignored McConnell's recommendation. Or are you saying that Obama has no ability to choose and his successes and failures are not his own? Sounds kinda racist.
Is not false equivalency when it is the law to keep the commission bipartisan. Pai did exactly what Wheeler did. Just because you agree with one doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. Congress should be the one to act.
You can't? Here in the UK you can bet on just about anything. I had a few pounds on Clinton - far shorter than 2:1 odds though.
Corporations and their shills, like Mr. Pai, are not individuals. They should _never_ have a say in law or rule-making.
100% incorrect. People don't lose their rights when then decide to organize as a corporation. Multiple U.S. Supreme Court decisions have affirmed this.
The Dixiecrats formed their own party for the 1948 elections. They WENT BACK TO THE DEMOCRAT PARTY for the 1952 election after agreeing to pledge loyalty to the party. Nice try liar
Trump losing the popular vote is kind of irrelevant when talking about people who expected Hillary to lose.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Can a corporation cast a vote?
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells