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GOP Congressman Introduces Bill To Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules (theverge.com)
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) today announced his support for a bill that would institute the basic outlines of the FCC's 2015 Open Internet order, which banned the throttling and blocking of content as well as harmful paid prioritization practices. He is also the first Republican to sign on to the Democrat-led discharge petition, which aims to force a vote on the House floor to roll back the FCC's December decision to repeal net neutrality. The Verge reports: The 21st Century Internet Act aims to restructure the current framework by which the internet has been governed since the '90s. Coffman's bill moves past this argument by amending the 1934 Telecommunications Act and adding the new Title VIII. This new classification would "permanently codify into law the 'four corners' of net neutrality" by banning providers from controlling traffic quality and speed and forbidding them from participating in paid prioritization programs or charging access fees from edge providers.
On top of providing stable ground for net neutrality rules to be upheld in the future, the legislation also makes it illegal for providers to participate in "unfair or deceptive acts or practices." It directs the FCC to investigate claims of anticompetitive behavior on behalf of consumers after receiving their complaints. Transparency requirements are heightened for providers as well, as companies must publicly disclose information regarding their network practices to allow consumers to "make informed choices regarding use of such services."
On top of providing stable ground for net neutrality rules to be upheld in the future, the legislation also makes it illegal for providers to participate in "unfair or deceptive acts or practices." It directs the FCC to investigate claims of anticompetitive behavior on behalf of consumers after receiving their complaints. Transparency requirements are heightened for providers as well, as companies must publicly disclose information regarding their network practices to allow consumers to "make informed choices regarding use of such services."
Yep. All the hissy fits from people the last two years has been annoying. Here's a tip, rather than pass executive orders left and right and try to govern like a fucking monarchy, try following the system and pass some fucking laws properly for a change.
Oh, wait; I know: because it's fucking retarded.
Funny, the most common thing I hear about problems competing when it comes to the 'small guys' is the 'big guys' pushing them out with every dirty trick they can think of.
Following some ground rules for being fair to your customers is probably far easier compared to competing with incumbent big name ISPs. Besides, I bet small ISPs don't do enough business to make screwing over customers a valid business strategy. I fail to see how it'd be overly demanding of a small company to expect them to provide their advertised speed and service quality, to not demand they pay extra to use certain websites, etc.
No, I think the companies that stand to lose the most are big ISPs. Perhaps they should have dealt more honestly with the American people and we wouldn't need to legislate them into behaving.
Small ISPs (are there any now) don't even have the budget for the hardware required to violate net neutrality.
yep, let the congress pass the laws, the president enforce them and the courts do there level best to interpret them to mean what they meant at the time they were passed. If someone doesn't like the way things are 'rinse and repeat'. We seriously need to start finding ways to take the president to task for not enforcing the laws ( like ignoring immigration law -Obama ) or ( ignoring health car laws - Trump) , we seriously need to take the judiciary to task for 'finding' new 'rights' in the law that the people who passed them never meant to be there. Then we can start expecting the legislatures to pass the laws they were elected to pass or get booted.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
WA, OR, and CA have already reinstated Net Neutrality, and we're half of the US GDP.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In 1992, when I first got on the Internet, I accessed it via a dial up modem which got it's feed over a Pacific Bell owned wire. There were, to my knowledge, ZERO alternatives.
Later in the 1990s I began to receive my Internet through a microwave connection offered by Sprint. At that time the cable companies probably had an offering somewhere, someway, but I did not have access.
Eventually I went to a DSL connection which utilized wires then owned by AT&T.
Today, I can get Internet via a satellite dish, cable company wire, DSL over an AT&T owned wire, over cell transmission services offered by AT&T or Verizon, Google fiber, or a WISP.
The options for internet service have only been growing under free markets. More & more & more.
I don't buy your assertion about limited Internet options.
Caution: Contents under pressure
A vote, on the floor, by the entire House - that actually passes. Until then, this is nothing more to the Net Neutrality cause than fruitless posturing.
You are conflating the sincerity of an individual with the inertia of a legislative body. This individual Rep and others no doubt will look at this and sincerely believe it is the right thing to do. The challenge will be if enough them do that overcome the inertia of the status quo.
Besides this is already more than Democrats have done to try to fix immigration.
Since the 90s I've seen my options for broadband providers go from dozens to 2. So yeah, far fewer options.
Your own argument is self defeating. The Satellite company (DirecTV) is owned by At&t, as is the DSL and cell services you mention. That's half of your options under one company. Plus, where I live (60 miles from DC) there is no fiber option, and satellite is too inconsistent + doesn't support VPN connections, DSL is too slow to be true Broadband, and cell services have data caps to make it not useful for home use. Guess what, in reality I only have 1 option, Comcast Cable, to get actually Broadband internet.
I agree that this is how things should happen, but what executive orders are you talking about in this context? To my knowledge, there haven't been any. It's just been the FCC overturning its own orders, which it is doing via the authority granted it by Congress in the Telecommunications Act and subsequent amendments to the Act.
Codifying important matters like these into law is certainly the way that things should work if we want them to have any permanence, but broadly speaking, it's not a bad thing for Congress to delegate the handling of day-to-day activities to an agency or commission. Not only can an agency act more quickly than a legislative body in response to issues that inevitably arise, but it can—when functioning properly—also have qualitatively better responses based on their awareness of and specialty in that particular field. Of course, these sorts of organizations don't always function properly, as has sadly been the case recently, so it's good that Congress retains the final authority in terms of directing the organizations towards serving their intended purposes.
This isn't the first time this congressman has taken this position. He also stepped up to try and delay a time sensitive NN vote citing "unanticipated negative consequences". Those weren't the actions of a poser. If you genuinely cared about this issue more than silly partisanship, you wouldn't be making accusations like this against someone who is clearly sympathetic to the NN cause. The GOP has not been on the right side of this issue, but attacking any of them regardless of what they do (right or wrong) is both typical and sad.
that is a series of paper insulated tubes.
Now with more federal paper work.
With some extra big federal rules.
No new network innovation for you.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And it just happened to get done right as GOP representatives became anxious to distance themselves from Trump?
Don't get me wrong, I think the bill is a good thing. I'm just answering the question "why wasn't this done in the first place?".
As for the ACA, you do realize it was implemented legislatively, right?
Everyone doesn't live in the Bay Area.
There are places where the only viable option is the cable company, and the cable company knows it.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Back when DSL was the main option for those without cable, there were lots of DSL providers all sharing the same physical copper lines. It would be great if congress would declare that cable company cables were common carriers so we could get some real competition again
Never forget that elections have consequences, and the consequences of the Democratic ramming through of the ACA was handing the speaker's gavel to the GOP and a whole bunch of Tea Party douches being given an outsized influence over budget bills and "social issues" that the government shouldn't be within 200 miles of. The consequences of the administration attempting to usurp power from a gridlocked Congress by way of signing statements and executive orders / memos is the Senate and the White House being given to the GOP. And now we end up with a steaming heap of douche at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mitch McConnell may be an obstructionist jackass, but don't forget the obstructionism of Harry Reid - NEITHER of these guys would work with the other to craft legislation the country needed, in favor of pounding each other through sound bites on cable news and horse shit headlines on Drudge and The Huffington Post. They are / were both more concerned with holding on to a majority and squeaking in unpopular riders onto first-class legislation in order to advance a massively partisan agenda, or be a poison pill to block the other party from getting a win at all costs.
Remember the 1980s when we had a "reactionary GOP president" (who looks more and more like a moderate Democrat each day in comparison to today's GOP), and a DNC-controlled House, but shit still got done? That's because the cameras turned off and they could sit down and talk, and work out compromises that moved the country forward. Today everyone is so afraid that if they try to compromise even a little, it turns into a hashtag internet meme that a primary challenger will beat them to death with from their own party's flank, and the seat goes to some even-more-extreme shithead who thinks running for Congress (and taking fat checks from monies special interests) is a good gig, not because they actually have any good ideas or burning desire to make a difference.
Moderates are an endangered species on Capitol Hill, and they are the most effective legislators. I might be a bit cynical though.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
shame on you, fool me twice... you can't... you can't fool me again.
Seriously though, I'd like to make the point that while the Democratic Party has a wing that refuses corporate PAC money forget a wing, I don't know of a single GOP politician who does.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but actions speak louder than words. The Republican party have done a lot of bad to me and mine. They're currently working on eliminating the protections for pre-existing conditions for Obamacare and argue that we should end Social Security & Medicare for people under 55 (they're careful not to piss off their base of older voters until it's too late). Their tax cut is causing out of control inflation and interest rate hikes. They just repealed Dodd-Frank (albeit with the help of several right wing Democrats). They cut funding to my kid's schools. They tried to take away my Type-I diabetic buddies insulin for christ's sake (seriously, I'm not even exaggerating here, the ACA and Obama made them back down when he threatened to pull Medicare for the old folks in my red state). I can go on and on.
When I see real, positive actions from them I'll give credit where it's due. But after 40 years of policy that has a demonstratively negative impact on my life you'll forgive me if I'm just a wee bit distrustful.
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The parent post was criticizing the congressman for pretending to want to support net neutrality and the sarcasm was obvious when they said as long as it gets abolished. My point was that after liberals railed against the GOP for trying to abolish NN, it seems hypocritical and counter productive for them to then criticize someone who shares their own views (in other words, regardless of what they do). This is a pervasive pattern in American politics right now. I can only hope that people see NN, not as another partisan wedge issue, but as a serious topic worthy of genuine consideration, and putting politics aside.
You really couldn't be more wrong here.... Net neutrality most definitely protects him when Comcast eventually starts throttling and demanding fees for not doing so from various internet content providers they may or may not be in competition with. Sure, it doesn't allow him more choice in terms of ISP, but does protect him from anti-customer business practices that would be deterred by competition if there was any.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
You seem to have missed the parent poster's point entirely.
While you only had access to one provider for your physical phone line, you almost certainly had access to many providers for internet access (local ISPs, Prodigy, AOL, etc).
In the early 90s (and before) I lived in tiny town in Northern California (6k people, 20+ miles to the closest real city) and had Pac Bell as well. However within my "local" calling distance I could reach several small ISPs and all of the major national ones.
Pac Bell only got paid for access to that physical line, a base charge for local calls and per-minute charges for long distance. Their rate didn't change depending on who you called, only where. And they had zero influence on which internet provider you went with.
This resulted in lots of competition in my area and prices going from around $5 an hour for access in 1990 (Compuserve) to around $20/month in 1994 (Sonic.net) to practically free by 1998 (NetZero, AOL free trials for hundreds or even thousands of hours).