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FCC is Hurting Consumers To Help Corporations, Mignon Clyburn Says On Exit (arstechnica.com)
Former Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who left the agency this month, has taken aim at it in an interview, saying the agency has abandoned its mission to safeguard consumers and protect their privacy and speech. From her interview with ArsTechnica: "I'm an old Trekkie," Clyburn told Ars in a phone interview, while comparing the FCC's responsibility to the Star Trek fictional universe's Prime Directive. "I go back to my core, my prime directive of putting consumers first." If the FCC doesn't do all it can to bring affordable communications services to everyone in the US, "our mission will not be realized," she said. The FCC's top priority, as set out by the Communications Act, is to make sure all Americans have "affordable, efficient, and effective" access to communications services, Clyburn said. But too often, the FCC's Republican majority led by Chairman Ajit Pai is prioritizing the desires of corporations over consumers, Clyburn said. "I don't believe it's accidental that we are called regulators," she said. "Some people at the federal level try to shy away from that title. I embrace it."
Clyburn said that deregulation isn't bad in markets with robust competition, because competition itself can protect consumers. But "that is just not the case" in broadband, she said. "Let's just face it, [Internet service providers] are last-mile monopolies," she told Ars. "In an ideal world, we wouldn't need regulation. We don't live in an ideal world, all markets are not competitive, and when that is the case, that is why agencies like the FCC were constructed. We are here as a substitute for competition." Broadband regulators should strike a balance that protects consumers and promotes investment from large and small companies, she said. "If you don't regulate appropriately, things go too far one way or the other, and we either have prices that are too high or an insufficient amount of resources or applications or services to meet the needs of Americans," Clyburn said.
Clyburn said that deregulation isn't bad in markets with robust competition, because competition itself can protect consumers. But "that is just not the case" in broadband, she said. "Let's just face it, [Internet service providers] are last-mile monopolies," she told Ars. "In an ideal world, we wouldn't need regulation. We don't live in an ideal world, all markets are not competitive, and when that is the case, that is why agencies like the FCC were constructed. We are here as a substitute for competition." Broadband regulators should strike a balance that protects consumers and promotes investment from large and small companies, she said. "If you don't regulate appropriately, things go too far one way or the other, and we either have prices that are too high or an insufficient amount of resources or applications or services to meet the needs of Americans," Clyburn said.
To the contrary, it was the old FCC under Obama that was writing business friendly legislation under the guise of regulation, far outside the FCC mandate.
The new FCC is the one aiming to protect privacy.
In almost every case we've seen, anything from the Obama years was painted as if it were good for the people instead of his friends... everyone ignoring that Obama is very much a child of the Chicago political machine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The FCC is a shill for ISPs... pretty much as we suspected.
Well, there's always regime change to look forward to.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
What's the point of slashdot if most of its posts are for ArsTechnica?
...dog bites man. Film at 11.
We are here as a substitute for competition.
Surely a catalyst for competition? Or is regulating a market an alien concept in this discussion?
This guy is just full of it. More regs, more government, more abuses is what you get. This fool is just looking for a fat government paycheck and pension, that by the way few outside of government ever see. But the bureaucracy benefits from this 4 trillion dollar budget and intends to keep you in chains in order that those tax revenues keep flowing. Those in DC believe you are their slaves. You are not.
Get rid of all the current regulation and simply force the companies to split in to wholesale and retail and regulate the price of wholesale.
You'll then get healthy competition in the retail market due to a low entry barrier.
And in America we worship the almighty dollar. Say AMEN! if you agree.
On federal monopoly telcos using paper insulated wireline.
Let different parts of the USA who are innovative design their own community broadband and escape federal NN rules.
Why should every part of the USA be held back by federal NN rules when amazing new community networks could be funded?
Why is the USA getting held back for decades on affordable, efficient, and effective wireline?
What not let local communities build their own affordable, efficient and fast new networks? Attract new investment with new networks and grow a city?
A city does not grow with "affordable, efficient, and effective" networks protected by federal NN rules..
Cities need the freedom to expand fast new networks that can make a brand select that city over the rest of the USA.
While some states and cities select to stay with "affordable, efficient, and effective" paper insulated wireline more advanced parts of the USA should have the freedom to network with their own new and faster networks.
Remove federal network rules and let innovative US cities network at their own pace. Let the rest of the USA stay on their own affordable, efficient, and effective for decades if they want to project that existing wireline will provide the needed bandwidth.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Remember that. It doesn't matter if the "Democrats" or "Republicans" are in charge, they have not represented the average American citizen for a long while.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
I am an old trekkie
blatent pandering to the slashdot crowd, deduct 10 points for misappropriation of star trek
Nullius in verba
because the only notable things that came out of the Obama administration was Net Neutrality and stopping several anti-consumer mergers (that are now going through under Trump).
The article you link to just say that Obama was bad because the FCC regulated the info ISPs could gather but that it's mostly Facebook abusing your privacy and Obama didn't do jack about that. You're basically saying Obama didn't go far enough, which is fair. He never did. If he did, we'd have single payer healthcare and a fully regulated Wall Street banking system now. But to be fair to Obama he was saddled first with a Congress full of right wing Corporate Democrats (Pelosi, Schumer, I'm looking at you) and then the Republicans took over every other branch of the government, even stealing a Supreme Court seat from Obama.
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and I'd argue it made no difference which one he appointed. To be blunt, while the Dems often side with mega corps over the working class I literally can't think of a single time when a Republican, any Republican, didn't unless they knew it was safe to do so (e.g. the Senate vote on Net Neutrality when they knew damn well it won't pass the House let alone get signed by Trump). The Republicans are completely pro corporate. If you're OK with that, then carry on. But if not you'd better start voting for the Bernie wing of the Democratic party, because they're the only credible threat to the status quo. I think after Trump staffed his cabinet with the same Goldman Sachs people, got caught making deals with the UAE to get elected and started supporting TPP it's pretty safe to say he's not doing jack for shaking things up.
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they're the "Bernie" Wing of the party. They're the only ones that refuse corporate PAC money. It's a requirement to join. Show up at your primary. There's plenty of candidates there and your vote is incredibly powerful in a primary because hardly anybody votes in them.
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2012 called. It wants its "last mile monopolies" rant back.
Ajit Pai is on point that CDNs and walled gardens are a bigger threat. Google kicked all the gun videos off Youtube as part of their consensus pogrom against the NRA, and continues to put videos they don't have sufficient excuse to censor but whose views they don't like in "Youtube Jail," something they invented to thwart as many as possible of the political goals of free speech without technically censoring the video. Twitter is outsourcing censorship to (((SPLC and ADL))). Die Luegenpresse is constantly talking about "the line between free speech and hate speech," a nonsense excuse for demanding "evil" tech monopolies do more to shut down non-Luegenpresse news. Edgy bloggers are worried they will be banned from registering domain names, renting housing, hiring taxis, and buying food as retaliation for their political speech. At the same moment publishing is more democratized than it's ever been in the history of the world, free speech is in worse shape than it's ever been in the United States's history.
The Chinese idea of censorship for social harmony, decided by the "consensus" of a thin, elite, isolated caste of party insiders, is now mainstream within the tech monopsonies that are the gatekeepers of political discourse, and they relentlessly pursue anyone who slips through their fingers once they start to get an audience through DDoS, registrar fuckery, BGP tricks, recursive DNS poisoning, any means at their disposal regardless of mandate or due process. Look at their actions, not their words, and when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Seriously. Who? Again, I can't think of a single viable candidate (remember, he still has to get them confirmed by the Senate) who's pro-Consumer. I suppose he could have found a Democrat, had them switch party affiliations and go from there, but that would have been sniffed out right off the bat.
I think it's just time to face facts, the Republican party is completely, totally pro-Corporate. There's a few who are at least indifferent to workers (John McCain comes to mind) but when a decision is made they _always_ side with the mega corps. And often they go out of their way to screw workers to benefit their real masters.
Again, this isn't that Democrats don't have problems, but there are at least _some_ members of the party that refuse corporate and PAC money and side with workers. This makes the Dem party at least _potentially_ redeemable. Can you name one Republican who has refused Corporate PAC money? The Dems have an entire wing of their party (the "Justice" Democrats) for who that's a litmus test.
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outweigh the needs of the few.
I really had hope this would work out.
But...
Trump and his ilk have sold America to the highest bidder.
We exist now to feed the profits of the few; is it so mysterious that the suicide rate is thru the roof, and opiate drugs are sweeping the land?
Birth rates are down, because what sane creature would bring a life into this world to be so exploited?
Trump is a symptom of the rotten core of what used to be America; I'm just waiting for all the kids to take themselves out, then who will they have?
Welcome to Trump's America. You earned it.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
It disgusts me when I hear about people talking about how we "need" regulations because of the lack of competition. Regulations have and continue to hamper the free market and have caused these issues in the first place (and if there was any hope of getting people to understand this issue I wouldn't be supporting any regulations; ie net neutrality- but I know ending the monopolies is a near-imposable challenge at this stage in the game at the legal level because of stupid people and because of the now entrenched monopolies/duopolies now are). Most of the reason we don't have competition in the markets where we don't have competition is because we've handed companies monopolies via various means.
People have such short memories. What did you think was going to happen when city governments literally granted cable companies monopolies in the late 1970s and 1980s? You said "But they won't run cable if we don't give them a monopoly!" and you said "Well, we can't have any old body dig up our streets!" to arguments against this insane practice (when in reality there aren't enough companies in the first place interested or able to cause a problem explicitly because its so expensive to run cable! literally your own arguments contradict each other).
And these monopolies weren't going to magically go away because because you put a time limit on them. The plain fact of the matter is government fucked up the free market here and did exactly the opposite of what they should have done which is ensured everyone who wanted to play in that market had equal access to the rights of way. And don't get me started about the billions the entrenched monoplies and duopolies were handed in the 1990s. Instead the governments ensured not only that these companies would get a first mover advantage- but that they'd be guaranteed profits and the only competition-ever. And the response to those who pointed this out was regulation (regulations to make regulators that would then put limits on how much the cable bill could be raised a year). Problem is regulations tend not to stick around for ever (they didn't) and tend to be written by the companies they're supposed to regulate. And even if these companies get hurt at first (ie some how we get a good bill through) it is in these companies interests to keep coming back to kill the regulation.
We can't win by regulating our way out of this mess. This is not the only reason we have monopolies- but we find governments putting up barriers that only the established players can possible comply with too or otherwise increasing the cost of getting into that industry thus minimizing competitions (barber licenses anyone?).
Patents, copy"rights", and "trademarks" are another major issue. Investors literally won't invest in businesses today if they don't have an edge due to these sorts of violations of our human rights. Trademarks that protect the consumer may be reasonable- but trademarks that enable companies to prevent competitors from utilizing a competitors name isn't right- at least where the competitor is making it clear that they are not the *actual trademark owners*. For instance Keurig used trademarks to bully companies into paying royalties such that they could indicate compatibility with the Keurig coffee maker and used digital restrictions in an attempt to prevent non-certified coffee cups from working despite being otherwise fully compatible. The DRM is another use of violence to interfere in a free market. And if you recall they made it illegal to break DRM! So much for free speech.
learned this years ago (in germany): the Federal Ministry of the Environment does not exists to protect the environment, it is here to allow the max amount of damage and the maximum amount of exploitation of the enviromnent by private orgs before people start to riot against the current government. translate to other agencies and you know whats up.
The FCC was created in response to the WRC back about a hundred years ago, to regulate all those radio frequencies from interfering with other countries.
Not to provide 'net neutrality' for big browser and company.
Clyburn said that deregulation isn't bad in markets with robust competition, because competition itself can protect consumers. But "that is just not the case" in broadband, she said. "Let's just face it, [Internet service providers] are last-mile monopolies," she told Ars. "In an ideal world, we wouldn't need regulation. We don't live in an ideal world, not all markets are competitive, and when that is the case, that is why agencies like the FCC were constructed. We are here as a substitute for competition."
This guy gets it. Neither is an absolute, what's necessary is a balance. It's still difficult to agree on where to draw that line though.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
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I think you need to contact APK.
Capitalism is the country's prime directive. Any true patriot would be happy to be fucked over by a corporation. The rest of you are commie bastards.