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FCC's Ajit Pai is Surrounded By a 'Set of People With a Very Traditional Mindset', Says Sir Tim Berners-Lee (bbc.com)
Next Monday the web celebrates its 29th birthday. Ahead of it, Sir Tim Berners-Lee spoke with BBC on a wide-range of topics. An excerpt: In Barcelona last week at the Mobile World Congress I heard FCC boss Ajit Pai mount a robust defence of the move, pointing out that the internet had grown and thrived perfectly well in the years before 2015, when the net neutrality provision came in. "He said the same thing to me," Sir Tim tells us, revealing that he had recently been to lunch with Mr Pai. He had told the FCC boss that advances in computer processing power had made it easier for internet service providers to discriminate against certain web users for commercial or political reasons, perhaps slowing down traffic to one political party's website or making it harder for a rival company to process payments. But he failed to change Ajit Pai's mind. "He's surrounded by a set of people with a very traditional mindset, which has been driven by the PR machine of the telco industry, who believe it is their duty in Washington to oppose any regulation, whatever it is." Sir Tim, however, is refusing to concede defeat in this battle. "We stopped SOPA and PIPA," he says, referring to two US anti-piracy measures which campaigners opposed on the grounds they impinged on internet freedoms.
Ajut Pai was chosen because he is very confused and will support any dishonesty he is paid to support. That's my opinion.
What was Ajit Pai's views on SOPA and PIPA? Was he for those but against Net Neutrality?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
TBL's arguments do not counter what Ajit is saying - just because companies CAN do something does not mean they WILL. TBL seems to be willfully ignorant of the tradeoffs and other much more real dangers that regulation imposes on the internet.
Basically my thought is, if you don't like the way government is going why the hell would you want any part of it overseeing your internet? My darkest schadenfreude fantasy is for people who want FCC regulation to get it, then to have Mice Pence step in and expand on it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
of the Internet in order to protect people and ensure fairness.
He's surrounded by a set of people with a very traditional mindset, which has been driven by the PR machine of the telco industry, who believe it is their duty in Washington to oppose any regulation, whatever it is.
The foolish abide by absolutist beliefs.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I guess it's no longer "corrupt", it's "traditional", which is fair if we're talking politics. Corruption is pretty traditional.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
He knows that the open web is doomed if we don't embrace DRM!
It's not money per se that causes the evil, but the excessive love of money, the dream of infinite profits to solve the unsolvable problem of not having enough money. Pursuit of happiness is a good thing, but when the boundless greed of a corporate cancer hurts or even kills actual human beings, then it has crossed the line into sociopathic behavior.
I'm SO tired of problems, even including the defense of the free and open Internet. Now I want solutions.
My first suggestion is taxation based on increasing freedom, NOT growing the largest possible corporate cancers. The taxes on corporate profits should be progressive based on market share. Detailed ideas about that suggestion (and others) available upon polite (and sincere) request.
Even better if you have a better idea. Vicious criticism is too easy, too mindless, and in a better crafted Slashdot, ought to kill your karma (AKA EPR).
In conclusion, I think Ajit Pai is a typical worshiper at today's economic church. Not capitalism or communism or socialism. How passe. He worships at the church of corporate cancerism, where the main creed is:
"There is no Gawd but Profit, and ..."
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
that we can't just call them right wing corporate lobbyists? And yeah, the right wing part matters, since it's the right wing laissez faire idealism that justifies deregulating the Internet and yes, eliminating government backed Net Neutrality regulations is deregulation...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... the new NRA.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
For cutting cables of rivals?
And that Comcast and Verizon lobbied against cooperatives such as Chattanooga and got a State Constitutional amendment banning cooperatives in Tennessee?
Sorry, but this is hardly the act of a corporation is fine with playing nice with others.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Until Bush rescinded it. And the Internet suffered when he did so. Badly.
The FCC chairman is not only corrupt but a liar. If he wants to play Venezuelan politics, deport him there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
CITATION REQUESTED
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
TB-L, aren't you the guy who basically disappointed everybody when you voted in favor of adding DRM to HTML? Pai probably ignored you because he didn't think you had any legitimacy any more. You are now primarily known as a spokesman for the media companies. Of course he's going to be ready for Disney (or whoever it is that you represent now in your pro-DRM years) to weigh in with an opinion, but maybe he's more loyal to telecoms than big media. The point is, he had no idea that you have anything to do with the public; you're just another special interest in his eyes, and one recently (about a year ago) disgraced.
Yours isn't a good face to put on issues anymore; you spent all that karma and went beyond into massive debt.
Yes, I realize a disreputable speaker doesn't make for a disreputable message, but Pai might be taking shortcuts.
Here in WA the Democrats have recently helped with this problem by adding more control of the Internet by the state government. Hopefully this will help with malicious content, especially from Redmond, WA.
That's precisely what the platform providers like the big PISaaS providers, social media, etc. are doing with their machine learning algorithms.
A small town in NC was able to start an ISP on their own until the state stepped in. So please tell me again why we need net neutrality at the infrastructure level instead of at the application level. Why should Verizon be required to be a common carrier, but Facebook and Twitter get to have "standards" and ruthlessly shut down content they don't like that is otherwise legal?
Oh right, because their politics align with most of the ardent net neutrality advocates.
when Republicans are in power. All they have to do is point out how their POV means less "burdensome regulation", and the appointees will fall right in line, if they haven't already (although Pai was himself an ex-Verizon shill, so lobbying wasn't necessary).
"... pointing out that the internet had grown and thrived perfectly well in the years before 2015, when the net neutrality provision came in"
I hate this argument form Ajit. Net neutrality existed before 2015 and most carriers followed the practice. What happened in 2015 was the FCC had to reclassify broadband as a common carrier under Title II to be able to enforce the principles it had in place. This was because Verizon won the ruling in Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC (2014).
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair, and I think it applies here.
Ajit Pai was elevated to his current role for the specific purpose of doing this thing. Mostly because net neutrality was Obama's thing, and therefore part of the taint that the Holy Trump needs to cleanse from the land. Consequences, practicability, even money - all are secondary concerns at best. Erasing Obama from history, that's the goal.
Service Provider != Content Provider
NN prevented service providers from discriminating against content providers.
The only way one content provider can affect another content provider is by competing for users. Unless of course, the content provider is also a service provider, and then it would have been subject to NN.
Clarifying the wording: Why should government oversee the Internet?
Because someone has to act as the honest referee. The FCC should be acting impartially to balance the interests of the public (AKA the actual human beings), for example their desire for increased freedom, against the "virtualized lusts" of the corporate cancers (AKA the inhuman corporations) for infinitely larger profits.
If the corporate cancers had their way (or rather were able to execute their programs without any constraint), they would grow and consume each other until there is only one survivor, one humongous corporation that owned everything--but which was still driven to increase its profits towards infinity. Of course the reality is that the host (AKA our society) would die.
However based on my vague memories of the handle, I think no reply can convince you of anything. I think the question was purely rhetorical, with no sincerity or intellectual honesty underneath. It would be nice if I were proven wrong, though it seems increasingly unlikely on today's Slashdot.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I honestly did not know that about Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
It's quite a thing isn't it? Convincing people that rules or regulation that would actually benefit them are somehow evil
That's because I've studied history, and know for a fact that in the end the regulations will NOT help anyone, they will hurt.
Honestly I don't care for myself because I have enough money it doesn't matter to me if NN truly takes hold, I can always buy the vastly more expensive monopolized internet, for VPN around the inevitable government roadblocks, or even move to a (more) sane country.
It just pains me to see supposedly intelligent people embrace them with open arms, I guess like France at first embraced the Nazis... oh yes I went there, because that is exactly the kind of evil YOU are championing while painting a facade of peace. So I warn others of the danger, and hope they can help themselves - as we seem to have done so far in this case by rejecting the government chains you and others want to shackle us with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seems to me that Pai is only half baked.
NN prevented service providers from discriminating against content providers.
How did Title 2 do that?
Why is the FCC better able to pre-emptivly handle anti-competitive behavior over the FTC on an individual basis?
How would the NN rules open up competition?
Sir Tim Berners-Lee literally pushed DRM with EME. Not much of a saint himself. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/amid-unprecedented-controversy-w3c-greenlights-drm-web
You're right. Corporations always act benevolently.
I know you are being sarcastic, but that is totally wrong.
Corporations will never be totally benevolent, they are more like wild animals, prone to strike randomly in a way you did not except, that can do harm.
But here's the thing - when that has happened in the past with regard to the internet, it was dealt with by the FCC on a case by case basis and all was well. So why not continue doing that until there is a real problem to solve?
Instead what you and others propose is a massive set of regulations mostly written by "Big ISP", in large part to help them maintain a monopoly. You know what companies given more power by regulations DO with that power? They do worse things than if they had less power, only now they cannot be stopped because the regulations (that they helped write) expressly allow them to do what they want.
The face of your argument makes it LOOK as if you think corporations are dangerous; your actions make it seem as if you believe a marriage of corporation and government can do no wrong. How is that in any way a sane position? How do you reconcile the disconnect?
How do you espouse the principals of net neutrally in a sentence or two, then proceed to back a set of regulations that is 30+ pages of six point type. How do you do that?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In fact, some might say they are practitioners of the world's oldest profession!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Enjoy the revolution, Ajit.
You're no longer in charge.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Beacuse the FTC kicked this to the FCC.
Beacuse mega conglomerates would not be allowed to block, or degrade the traffic going to an upstart content provider that competes against their television service. JUST LIKE THEY TRIED TO DO TO NETFLIX.
Gawd. HTH
Every market need some kind of regulation to work properly. Only blind fools believe that "the free market" will solve everything by itself. If you don't believe this, find a market that you think is working. Now look up the regulations regarding that market. There will be regulations, believe me. More than you would have expected. I dare anyone to find an unregulated market working perfectly over time.
The "free market" is not about being free of regulations, but rather from being free of unfairness by creating a level playing field. We, the people, are the ones that legitimize the government, a government that allows corporations to exist. There is no natural law that gave birth to corporations, they are solely a product of society. So it is natural for us, through our government, to restrict what is allowed and what isn't. Those are laws and regulations.
I know that many people, and seemingly many Americans, are very distrustful of their respective governments. That just means that you are screwed. You were stupid enough to allow for the creation of a government that doesn't represent you, and now you reap what you have sown. And just because you don't trust your government, you shouldn't put MORE trust in corporations, they have even LESS interest in representing you. Don't let distrust make you an even bigger fool.
Can you over-regulate? Sure you can, but net neutrality isn't over-regulation. And if there is one thing the internet isn't, it is being over-regulated.
News for nerds? FFS drop the politics and get back into nerd schtuff.
Are a very traditional mindset.
Net Neutrality is the mechanism by which the biggest and most powerful internet companies (Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc) who depend on cheap data transport fool millenial idiots into pressuring government to force other huge companies (the telcos) to provide that cheap data transport. The scam revolves around predictions of some uncertain future scheme, seemingly plucked from a horror film trailer, in which the telcos, being big OBVIOUSLY EVIL corporations, start abusing their own customers unlike the companies who support net neutrality (the aforementioned big OBVIOUSLY GOOD corporations Google, Facebook, etc) who would NEVER DREAM of abusing THEIR customers.
Of course, this all only carries a minor price tag: inviting the federal government into internet regulation and creating a bunch of bureaucrats with the authority to create and enforce whatever rules they want, affecting the public in any way they want, with no voice from the at least partially accountable elected representatives of the people.
That price is why right wingers are so opposed to the "net neutrality" scam. Some people prefer freedom to government control, and would rather allow businesses the freedom to experiment and compete and innovate (with all the ups, and downs, and hiccups) over the plodding athrosclerosis of federal bureaucracy and the sort of unfireable and unaccountable malfeasance we have seen over and over and over again from federal employees who were either on personal power trips or playing purely partisan politics. The right wing saw the way the Obama admin weaponized the IRS against the TEA Party and NONE of the federal employees paid any real price as the abuse continued for YEARS. They also saw the way the FBI and DOJ were weaponized againsts the Trump people, with partisan political dirt being used to get FISA warrants to spy and leak, while numerous bureucrats claimed none of this was happening, and still NO ACCOUTABILITY for numerouse felonies, and they conclude that giving such federal employees power over the internet is one of the worst possible things for free speech, fair politics, competative markets, etc.
The biggest part of the net neutrality argument problem is that supporters of Obama's ploy have a quasi-religious attachment to the un-democratic actions Obama took and thus they refuse to even see ANY validity to any opposing views or alternative solutions to the imagined future problems the scheme was pretending to preemptively fix. Just as with Global warming, the left thinks it can define an issue, demand a letist-friendly big government solution, and then win the day by bullying and hurling insults at anybody who disagrees. When you choose bullying over dialogue and compromise, as the net netrality people did, you create an atmosphere where your "solution" will NEVER be accepted. "Net neutrality" is now toxic.
they are in court over this.
The system is working. Let it play out before you go demanding NEW laws and regulations. Let the system decide the degree to which current rules and regulations are or are not adequate.
As a TRUE conservative, I'm skeptical of ANY large collective of fallible human beings (fake conservatives fear big government but love big corporations). I fear big corporations, which concentrate lots of financial and market power in the hands of a few flawed people AND I fear big government for almost exactly the same reason. My fear of big government is more severe because it has all the problems of big business PLUS it has the authority of law and the guns and jails too. When big corporations run wild, we can go to government for relief. When big government runs amok, we're screwed - there's nobody to turn to other than some fantasy armed citizen mass-uprising.
Certainly evil corporations have done dastardly things, like making and selling toxic/dangerous products people were then free to use or not use (like cigarettes, bad cars, and more), but remember: the single largest cause of unnatural death globally in the 20th century was governments. Governments, worldwide, intentionally targeted and killed hundreds of millions of people via genocidal massacres, political "cleansings", and wars and mostly did it without anybody being truly held to account for the bloodbaths.
Make the words 'ajit-pai' be a noun for (corporate) 'shill'.
Do you think he has a working sarcasm detector?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Zontar the mindless..... decides that both a liberal and a conservative are asses, but has no actual rational argument with anything said by either of the two whom he/she/it criticizes. By having no argument and simply hurling epithets you have outed yourself as a "progressive".
Yes, we did, and now we're trying to stop another government power-grab: Net Neutrality.
What I don't understand is why you swapped sides from freedom to authoritarianism.
I'm not a fan of Pai (and can't stand conservatives), but I'll take a traditional mindset over whatever madness is going on in the minds of the left these days. I don't even care if you were instrumental in the creation of the internet, I will resist oppression.