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.

Comments

Talk about stuck

[SuperKendall]

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...

Re:He's talking about Republicans.

[SuperKendall]

The foolish abide by absolutist beliefs.

Says the man who harps constantly about regulation he has never read, just because of the label on it.

Your tactics are transparent

[SuperKendall]

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.