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Net Neutrality Will Be Repealed Monday Unless Congress Takes Action (arstechnica.com)
With net neutrality rules scheduled to be repealed on Monday, Senate Democrats are calling on House Speaker Paul Ryan to schedule a vote that could preserve the broadband regulations. From a report: The US Senate voted on May 16 to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, but a House vote -- and President Trump's signature -- is still needed. Today, the entire Senate Democratic Caucus wrote a letter to Ryan urging him to allow a vote on the House floor. "The rules that this resolution would restore were enacted by the FCC in 2015 to prevent broadband providers from blocking, slowing down, prioritizing, or otherwise unfairly discriminating against Internet traffic that flows across their networks," the letter said. "Without these protections, broadband providers can decide what content gets through to consumers at what speeds and could use this power to discriminate against their competitors or other content." The letter was spearheaded by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
He'll do whatever his leash-holders say. He's a bitch.
Whatever happens the person who can influence Trump to keep net neutrality intact must make sure to be the last to talk to him before he decides. That usually seems to do the trick.
-- Cheers!
I think you have it backwards. > The Internet is doing damn fine as it is. It became ubiquitous without net neutrality. Keep the government out as much as possible. The net has always been neutral. Corporations want to eliminate the neutrality, so government is intervening to allow that. If you want to keep government out, then you should support neutrality, and be against this repeal.
Well that's how democracy works. We elect representatives to pass legislation. If they don't pass legislation, then that might reflect the actual wishes of the voters. New reps can be elected (and will be in a few months), and those priorities can change.
Just because legislation isn't passed doesn't mean you can subvert the legislative process with unelected bureaucracies assumed responsibilties that aren't theirs.
Drug legalization is happening across this country NOT by bureaucracies or Supreme Court decisions, but by the legislative process. That's the way it should happen in a republic.
Cars keep getting more power, faster, new materials, new bells and whistles - and they are kept accountable by a Gov agency.
Safety is. Cars aren't. The government, ARBITRARILY mind you, just set unreachable CAFE standards. Just set them to what they wanted. You think your powerful and faster car with more bells and whistles will hit those standards? Nope. It'll be a one ton box of tissues that gets crumpled when a car from the 70's hits it. The car industry is FIGHTING the government's capriciousness.
Televisions got more popular to the point where each home often has more than one, all content via radio/satellite/cable is regulated by the Gov. Electricity?
Do you think TV technology is where is is due to government FCC regulations? Are you kidding me? The FCC has little if anything to due with the explosive growth of the TV. Do you honestly think government regulations are why a 60" 4K TV is $500 now? Really?
Gas/Water? Also Gov regulated.
When hooked up to government supplies. Sure there are some safety standards for wells & septic tanks, but not like what you're suggesting. Government run utilities should have government regulation. But if that is so great, why can't people in CA shower and wash clothes at the same time? Or citizens drink tap water in Detroit? Or Puerto Rico have power? I'll not point out the common political party that has been in power for decades.
You get another Ma Bell, exactly what we are seeing with Comcast, Google, Time Warner, and others.
You obviously don't remember Ma Bell. Tell you what. Sure, things are cheaper now, but you go ask someone who was around when Ma Bell was around and they were under government regulation as well. They were required to spend a certain amount of service and maintenance. You won't find anyone who complained of their service then. Sure, things are better now, but not if you're talkign about service.
Without net neutrality we *could* end up paying for "Social Media" internet packages to speed up access to FaceBook, or "Streaming" packages to get faster access to Netflix or Hulu. I'd rather pay my ISP for a one-size-fits-all x mbps, NOT a-la-carte based on my browsing habits.
Wait a sec... You mean people could actually have to pay for what they use? Whaaaa? Why that's crazy talk.
What people want is competition. Net neutrality isn't competition. It's a "ok govt, you control everything and I'll shut up as long as I can stream every fucking thing I want right now." That sounds fine. But then the prices go up for everyone with everything. It always happens.
Your state is a failure because it is either red or blue.
I am absolutely so glad I left America with no intention of ever going back. I now live in a country with so many political parties that none of them have the ability to do anything based on party lines. They actually have to sit, discuss and convince others that what they are doing is the right thing to do...not for the people or for the party or for the corporations... they have to convince each other that it's actually the right thing to do.
That said, just like in America, the politicians are uneducated frigging idiots that lack the knowledge to make decisions on what they're supposed to decide and they believe that the experts are the people who dress and speak like they do... which leaves them extremely poorly informed and therefore prone to believe the right thing to do is the idiotic thing.
For the most part though, they are relatively harmless because they can't sign any bills of any real importance into law because no one will ever agree on a large enough level to do so. As such, they have no power and cannot fuck things up too badly.
You on the other hand live in a blue state which means that at a state level, decisions are generally made by a club who all agree with each other because of the team they play on as opposed to on the issues themselves. The same would go for red states.
After all, why would you need to take the time to understand the issue and consider how it would affect the people when you can just vote on party lines and be frigging idiots. Heaven forbid the politicians took the time to understand what net neutrality actually means.
Here's one for you... make a simple case with simple drawings and gartner graphs to explain this :
Revoking net neutrality in the U.S. would make several American corporations stronger, but would make America as a whole weaker. It would hurt the schools, the military, the space program, the content producers, the politicians... it would actually hurt almost everyone except the few companies positioned to better exploit higher tariffs. And because non-US countries that all have net neutrality are not effected, it will give them an edge in every category upon which the U.S. claims to want dominance. Revoking net neutrality would basically place the U.S. on equal footing with Turkey.
The internet became ubiquitous WITH net neutrality, which was enforced at the beginning by two factors: the telecoms that owned the last mile were regulated by Title II as common carries for the phone service they provided, and internet piggybacked on that phone service; and because internet was piggybacking on phone services, ISPs did not own the last mile but rather offered a service on top of it, so it was much much easier to start a competing ISP without having to run new line, and that competition forced them to behave.
With the advent of phone companies themselves, and cable companies, BECOMING the ISPs, you suddenly had regional duopolies directly offering something that was not phone service and so not regulated by Title II. Then they started doing away with the until-then-defacto net neutral practices. Then laws started being passed saying they can't do that, and those laws were overturned because internet service was not categorized under Title II, so the FCC went ahead and made it that way, which it should have been all along. And now that's been reversed in turn, and this bill is just Congress ordering them to put it back.
TL;DR: This bill is Congress ordering the FCC to classify ISPs the same way that phone companies were always classified and thus how the dial-up internet was classified in the beginning, to make sure that things stay the way they always were and not how the new-ish local monopolies want to make them.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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