Slashdot Mirror
California Bill Would Restore, Strengthen Net Neutrality Protections (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: With the FCC order to repeal net neutrality rules set to take effect next week, a bill that would restore those regulations in California will get its first hearing Tuesday (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). SB 822, written by State Sen. Scott D. Wiener, D-San Francisco, is backed by big names including Tom Wheeler, the Obama-appointed former Federal Communications Commission chairman who wrote the 2015 Open Internet Order. Wheeler is joined by former FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Gloria Tristani in advocating for SB 822, which would in some ways be stronger than the net neutrality rules put in place under President Obama's administration after more than a decade of legal and political wrangling. Those rules required equal treatment of all internet traffic, and prohibited the establishment of internet slow and fast lanes. Wiener's bill would also prohibit "zero rating," in which internet providers exempt certain content, sites and services from data caps. In addition, it would prohibit public agencies in the state from signing contracts with ISPs that violate net neutrality principles, and call for internet service providers to be transparent about their practices and offerings.
Net Neutrality ftw!
Nobody cares about the flyover states, right?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
California: showing the rest of the US how to do it since 1850.
You are welcome on my lawn.
are shitting themselves in fear and have begun dumping a ton of lobbying money into the capital. They've likely screwed themselves much as they did in court before the FCC dropped their action against them. By arguing out both sides of their mouth and also through their ass, they've put themselves into the unenviable position of dealing with a patchwork of laws instead of a single set of regulations. It's not as if this was an unforeseen outcome. It's quite the opposite given public opinion on the issue.
However, for reasons of nothing but plain insatiable greed the biggest ISPs decided to try anyway.
There's already Federal bills working their way through Congress to preempt yours. Internet is a global thing, at the very least it needs to be regulated nationally.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I love the fact that (THOSE GUYS) are now arguing for national regulation.
A Senate committee recommended serious cuts to the bill:
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2018/04/california-senate-committee-recommends-cutting-key-net-neutrality-protections
And, of course, the ISPs have been fighting the bill _hard_:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/att-and-cable-lobby-are-terrified-of-a-california-net-neutrality-bill/
If you're in CA and you support effective net neutrality legislation, let your local legislators know you want the original bill.
I would like to meet California Bill and shake his hand!
Those rules required equal treatment of all internet traffic
Please tell me my phone call packets can still get precedence over pornhub traffic.
Do you have ESP?
Neutrality was never in effect.
It's worked quite well in NZ before.
Currently we have zero rating available for mobile customers, you can buy a "socialiser" pack for your mobile plan, so Facebook et al. don't count towards your data caps.
Many many years ago I had a cable plan where NZ traffic was counted at 10%, so if you used local services (back in the day where DC++ was popular) and you effectively had 10x your data limit. Most local traffic between ISPs went through free peer exchanges while international traffic was costly for ISP's.
I'm sure there are ISP's that offer other zero rating plans for the likes of TV streaming.
I guess it would be different if an ISP had a monopoly in any area, but wholesale and retail has been split by with government regulation. Any ISP can serve any customer, whether it's via DSL or Fibre. It's only wireless ISP's that run their physical networks.
The 10th amendment works as designed !!!
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Nah, they'll just build out municipal broadband that's ten times as fast for half the price.
That's when those same carriers that won't touch the state with a ten foot pole will run crying to Uncle Sam and moan about unfair competition (in a market they refuse to enter).
Yeah, because all of the earlier governmental undertaking proved so superior to private enterprises. To wit:
Yeah, let's build even more success on that glorious track-record — all the while letting the governments know even more about our online behavior and policing any misbehavior not as ToS-violations, but as civil infractions. What can possibly go wrong?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
OTOH, municipal broadband has consistently kicked private offering's asses in spite of having to fight lawsuits and captured state legislatures just to exist.
Public transit works OK for the level of funding it sees. In many cases, semi-privatization is what ails it. Care to point to a fully private service that doesn't suck or cost too much for most people using public transit?
Show me those private roads paved with gold!
Citations needed.
Local governments wield undue powers over Internet-service provision. To allow them to compete with private providers is to enable corruption on an even worse scale. There is nothing magical about it — the same group of people setting up the local ISP could do it regardless of whether they are incorporated as a private entity or a town government's department. If they "kick ass" as the latter, that's evidence, that something did not let them do the same as a former. Socialism tends to cause this kind of corruption because it reduces (and eventually eliminates) competition.
We do not have private public transit, unfortunately. I wish we did, but we don't — not in the US. Tokyo has competing subway lines, but American cities do not — not in the traditional sense. But, if you count Uber and Lyft, then your request is answered. They are cheap and people prefer them so strongly:
big-government socialists blame them for the ever dropping popularity of public transit:
Now, try WiFi on the government-owned Amtrak for a personal preview of what government-provided Internet-service will be like. Meanwhile, privately-offered LTE consistently works. Oh, yes, it costs more — but you were willing to excuse poor performance by inadequate funding, so, yeah, pay more for the LTE.
So, yes, the point stands — whatever government does, is done poorly. So poorly, people even suggesting, yet another aspect of our lives should be handled by the kind and omniscient government instead of by greedy and selfish KKKapitali$sts, should be strongly suspected of not just stupidity and ignorance, but of criminal conspiracy to defraud the rest of us too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The AC post is mine. Sorry about that, /. apparently decided to forget I was logged in even as I was typing the reply.