Net Neutrality Will Be Repealed Monday Unless Congress Takes Action (arstechnica.com)

With net neutrality rules scheduled to be repealed on Monday, Senate Democrats are calling on House Speaker Paul Ryan to schedule a vote that could preserve the broadband regulations.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).

Comments

Talk to Trump last

[tsa]

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.

Re:Congress is run by Republican self-denying swam

[geschbacher79]

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.

Re:I hope so. Net neutrality isn't.

[Pfhorrest]

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.