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Montana Becomes First State To Implement Net Neutrality After FCC Repeal (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) signed an executive order on Monday requiring internet service providers with state contracts to abide by net neutrality principles. The order makes his state the first to push back on the Federal Communications Commission's decision to repeal the open internet rules last month. The order says that in order to receive a contract with the state government, internet service providers must not engage in blocking or throttling web content or create internet fast lanes. Those practices were all banned under the Obama-era 2015 net neutrality order. Bullock's office said the executive order goes into effect immediately, but there will be a six-month grace period for companies to ensure that they're in compliance. The governor said on Monday that he is encouraging his counterparts and legislators in other states to follow suit, promising to personally email a copy of his order to any who ask for it. Further reading: The New York Times
Every word in that last sentence is wrong.
I live in Montana. Not an American citizen, but proud of being here. Best place in the world.
Have you noticed that this is an executive order signed by a DEMOCRATIC governor?
That's funny because the FCC wants to big-government-regulate away the rights of states to write their own Net Neutrality protections!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Sorry, but why can't the local gov org that doles out monopolies do this? This is exactly what they should be doing, your lic is not renewed without guaranteeing to net neutrality and gets yanked when you fail to do so. Hells our first line defense should be truth in advertising anybody blocking content without a court order should be having the state AG breathing down their necks.
No sir I dont like it.
Why is it that strange, conservative legislature with a liberal governor should end up more centrist with less stupid left or right wing bits.
No sir I dont like it.
When it comes for renewals, the clauses will be part of it, resulting in the state losing it's current connections too.
No..... that would be easy money for whoever is bidding against them. That could even make it worthwhile to start a brand new ISP; just to be the ONLY ISP that can service the state government.
So a executive order implemented and repealed at one level of government has been replaced with an executive order implemented and repeal-able at another level. When will these people learn? You're supposed to shop like-minded judges until you get one that will find a right in the Constitution. Just kidding! Use the legislature for this kind of thing, please.
this is embarrassingly stupid
This is fine; you might want to actually read beyond the pure BS clickbait title and into at least part of the summary. All Montana is doing is setting contractual requirements; ISPs are free to accept the terms or not. If the state can't find anyone willing to accept the requirements they can change them or do some other thing that makes them happy. Either way it's all volitionary and entirely reasonable.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
They're a rural state and the governor knows damn well he won't survive reelection if his constituents are getting screwed over by big city folk. It's the same reason the FCC backed down on reclassifying Mobile internet as broadband and didn't lower the speed caps for it. The Republican party is heavily dependent on rural voters. The American political system is built in such a way as to grant them disproportionate amounts of voting power; most notably the Senate and Electral college but there are other examples. What's more rural voter's interests often don't align with city voters, making them prime candidates for politicking. OTOH, there's lots of good reason for rural voters to oppose the Republican party. The Republicans have to be careful right now or they'll lose those voters and with them the country.
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How would your group of ISPs handle defectors? All it takes is for one of them to be a for-profit business, and then instead of closing in Montana like all the other ISPs, they just comply with the law and get all the business.
Imagine you ran one of the ISPs implementing your plan. You kiss your wife goodbye that morning, knowing that when you come home later, you'll be unemployed, but at least you'll have had the spiteful last word and Montana won't have any ISPs anymore. You'll win. All that copper and fiber will be silent. You arrive to work for the last time. Your company is in violation of the terrible law, and you wait, and finally: there is the mailman with the certified letter! You open it, as a mere formality: "Yadda yada, cease and desist, fines will accrue, yadda yadda" IT'S ON!!
You compose your devastating reply to the state government: "my way or the highway. So long, suckers!!" and you pull the plug. There's an eery silence when you realize all the fans that you used to ignore, are now silent. Montana does not have Internet. You chuckle sadistically. You won. You would check with your partners to see if they pulled their plugs too, but you have no connectivity at the office anymore, so you have to just assume that everyone kept faith.
You go home. Gonna be a stay-at-home-dad now. No internet to amuse you, but no unfair regulations either. Gonna live Ted Kaczynski style. Yes, you won. You pull into the driveway.
Huh. That's funny. There's a flyer on your door. "Sign up for Cajun Net, Montana's only ISP!" That bastard Cajun Hell. He said he was going to go out of business too, but instead he decided to comply with the law and take all the money. GREED. Fucking greed. Why does greed have to ruin everything?!?
You decide, "We'll see about this! I'll just give Cajun Hell a call. We had a suicide pact and he fucking welched!" (And yes, this is exactly the kind of thing I would do to you. I'm a bad man!) You're about to angrily stomp through the door before you realize the phone isn't going to work, and your mobile should be down too-- wait, you pull out your mobile phone and it's up. Shit, did Cajun Hell already buy all the accounts? Is he taking all the mobile money too? Fuck!! "Well, I'll just make one last phone call on this thing, to cancel my account!" Oh, this is going to be good. You are going to give the customer service rep such a berating. Ha!
After your phone call where you abuse my innocent CSR, you remind yourself: You won. You tear up the flyer. You explain to your wife and kids that we don't need any stinking Internet access. They're a distraction anyway. It's time to get back to your bible studies. You won!
And whereever I am, whatever I'm doing, I feel the pinprick of your spite on my neck. Your anger has physically manifest. Finally, I will pay for my treachery! But just then, I use one of your former customers' hundred dollar bills to rub my neck. Aaahh, it's gone. You lost.
Don't let this happen to you. No suicide pacts!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
It's hard to see how states could lose such a case. They aren't forbidding companies from operating in their state, they are stating conditions for companies to have state contracts.
Are you stupid, trolling, or being malicious? Do you not recall the whole Netflix throttling issue that brought this to prominence? Or Comcast blocking all Bittorrent (not just illegal torrents, the entire protocol)? Here's a list with those and a dozen more. It's very clear where the internet was heading without net neutrality in place
Then of course there's simple logic... you don't spend millions lobbying and buying ads to get a rule overturned unless you plan on breaking it.
Rogue One was a reasonable sci-fi movie. Last Jedi was a good Star Wars movie.
the country far right. Way right of anything Nixon or Reagan ever did. Clinton wanted to be president but needed Wallstreet's money. He formed an alliance of social progressives and right wing economists. This didn't hurt too much since the .com boom was going on so the massive tax cuts and funding cuts to social programs and education largely went unnoticed.
Thing is, when he was done shifting the Democratic party to the right he put the Republican party in a bad spot. They were little more than Democrats with a mild streak of bigotry. So to maintain their own identity they moved right themselves. Meanwhile all the corporate money pouring in was just gas on the fire.
Bernie & his crew are trying to shift the Dems back to the left, but the corportists have their claws pretty deep in the DNC. Even the election of Trump wasn't enough to shock them loose. Not sure what's gonna happen, but if the country keeps moving to the right we're gonna get authoritarianism.
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