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California Senate Votes To Restore Net Neutrality (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The California Senate voted on Wednesday to approve a bill that would reinstate the net neutrality regulations repealed by the Federal Communications Commission in December. The bill, S.B. 822, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), was introduced in March and passed through three committees, all along party-lines. The bill was approved 23-12 and will now head to the state Assembly. The bill would reinstate rules similar to those in the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order. It forbids ISPs from throttling or blocking online content and requires them to treat all internet traffic equally. But the bill also takes the original rules further by specifically banning providers from participating in some types of "zero-rating" programs, in which certain favored content doesn't contribute to monthly data caps. If the bill goes on to pass in the Assembly, providers will no longer be able to obtain government contracts in the state of California without obeying the regulations.
To put it another way, Netflix will have to compete directly with DirecTV, rather than making exclusivity deals with cell providers. Right now, Netflix (to pick a party at random) gets a chunk of customers (in turn improving its negotiating power and company value) just by having a deal with T-mobile, and they don't have to actually improve service for it. Long-term, consumers still lose, even though it's promoted as being a "free" deal.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
AND, Trump hasn't signed it...
To reverse the FCC on this is basically the same as making a law. Both houses must pass the bill and the president must sign (or the veto over ridden in the senate)...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Actually, This is exactly what being a Republic is all about.
States can do this. So now what happens is we get to see how this affects the speeds and the revenue. If it is overall positive, then it can be reconsidered at the Federal level. If it turns out to suck, then maybe not.
It's how America was designed to work.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm not actually sure if he expected to win, BTW, or if it was a reality TV stunt gone too far... Flag as Inappropriate
With his ego? No doubt in my mind when he came down that escalator in 2015 he expected to win.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
..no, that's not what it's about, it's about T-Mobile and AT&T prioritizing Netflix and DirecTV traffic over all other traffic, or, alternately, slowing all over traffic intentionally in favor of Netflix/DirecTV. It's also about throttling or blocking competitors' traffic as it traverses their networks (i.e. you're a Comcast/Xfinity customer trying to access some site that is hosted by AT&T, and Comcast/Xfinity slows or even blocks access -- or vice-versa). It's also about not allowing ISPs to create the 'Walled Gardens' you've heard mentioned before (i.e. 'tiered service') where you'd have to pay extra to access some areas of the Internet; example: you're a Comcast/Xfinity customer, and you want to watch something on Netflix. You find you can't access it at all unless you pay Comcast/Xfinity extra on your bill every month. That's what Net Neutrality laws are intended to prevent. Essentially, without them, the big ISPs could chop up the Internet. If it was bad enough, they could even break it in significant ways. That's why it's important to stop them from doing that.
Omnipresent regulation and laws detailing all aspects of life
Burdensome regulation is bad. But regulation to prevent abuse of monopoly power is justified. If I had a choice of a dozen ISPs, then the market could sort this out. But I have a "choice" of one.
Could you elaborate? I'm not sure how preventing ISPs from omitting services from their data caps or treating services differently otherwise through throttling or QoS methods has anything to do with what you mentioned.
Netflix isn't an ISP, it's a service. T-mobile isn't an ISP, it's a cellular network and is exempt from these rules as it's "different." DirectTV isn't an ISP, it's a satellite TV / psuedo ISP that plays by different rules as well as far as I can tell. This should only affect landline phone, cable, and fiber customers. (ATT Uverse, Comcast, Charter, Google Fiber, etc)
All it should mean is if say... Comcast has a data cap for service tiers, they can't exempt their own programming or Hulu from that cap but include Netflix or others in data for that cap. They also can't throttle Netflix.
Am I missing something?