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Trump's Pick To Be the Next Attorney General Has Opposed Net Neutrality Rules For Years (fastcompany.com)
William P. Barr, President Trump's pick to become the nation's next Attorney General, is a former chief lawyer for Verizon who has opposed net neutrality rules for more than a decade. "Barr, who served as attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush from 1991-93, warned in 2006 that 'network neutrality regulations would discourage construction of high-speed internet lines that telephone and cable giants are spending tens of billions of dollars to deploy,'" reports Fast Company. From the report: Barr's appointment would be welcome news for at least three major internet service providers and a trade organization -- including Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association -- that have spent more than $600 million lobbying on Capitol Hill since 2008, according to a MapLight analysis. Their lobbying on a key issue was rewarded last December, when the Federal Communications Commission, led by another former Verizon lawyer-turned-Trump appointee, overruled popular opinion by voting to scrap rules that banned internet companies from giving preferential treatment to particular websites or charging consumers more for different types of content.
Barr's previous employment with Verizon foreshadows credibility problems similar to those faced by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, also a former Verizon lawyer. Barr, however, is likely to face even more scrutiny stemming from his role as a member of WarnerMedia's board of directors. The entertainment conglomerate, which includes HBO, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Group, was created in the aftermath of AT&T's 2016 purchase of Time Warner Inc. [...] Barr has argued that net neutrality rules will discourage internet service providers from investing in high-end delivery systems, such as fiber-optic networks. "Companies are going to make these kinds of investments only if they see an opportunity to earn a return that is commensurate with the risk, and only if they have the freedom to innovate, differentiate, and make commercially sensible decisions that they need to compete and win in the market," he said at a 2006 Federalist Society convention. Barr also claimed that 81 percent of the nation's roughly 40,000 zip codes have three or more choices of broadband providers. A PC Magazine study last year found that to be untrue, with only 30 percent of 20,000 zip codes having three or more broadband options.
Barr's previous employment with Verizon foreshadows credibility problems similar to those faced by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, also a former Verizon lawyer. Barr, however, is likely to face even more scrutiny stemming from his role as a member of WarnerMedia's board of directors. The entertainment conglomerate, which includes HBO, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Group, was created in the aftermath of AT&T's 2016 purchase of Time Warner Inc. [...] Barr has argued that net neutrality rules will discourage internet service providers from investing in high-end delivery systems, such as fiber-optic networks. "Companies are going to make these kinds of investments only if they see an opportunity to earn a return that is commensurate with the risk, and only if they have the freedom to innovate, differentiate, and make commercially sensible decisions that they need to compete and win in the market," he said at a 2006 Federalist Society convention. Barr also claimed that 81 percent of the nation's roughly 40,000 zip codes have three or more choices of broadband providers. A PC Magazine study last year found that to be untrue, with only 30 percent of 20,000 zip codes having three or more broadband options.
The Internet is mission-critical for everything now. All roads are on the Internet. Whoever controls the Internet, controls the world.
So, naturally, the telcos believe that they should control the Internet. They desire access monopolies so they can jack the prices up (and people will pay, because they have to), as well as the ability to burn the candle at both ends. They also want control over what content everyone can consume; who can access what, so they can stack charges on top of charges without end. Want netflix? you have to pay for internet access, pay for netflix, and pay us again to allow netflix on the pipes. Want facebook too? You have to pay even more for that. And, not that you really care, but facebook is having to pay extra for every region of the world in which they want to have their services available at all.
And so on.
Apart from the king-of-the-world level of wealth they want to suck up, they also want to have influence over what news people can and can't read, and what kinds of political forums people can and can't have online. That way they can tip the political scales in their favor, to ensure that they never lose their control over everything.
They want this as badly as Sauron wants the Ring of Mordor. And they own far more politicians than you or I ever will.
He just opposes using regulation to achieve network neutrality
Network neutrality by definition is regulation. If he opposes regulation for network neutrality then he opposes network neutrality.
worrying it would harm the internet as it is - which is working fine.
Working just fine? Do you not remember what happened with Netflix? Can you tell when they paid off Comcast?
Why people want to take a perfectly good system and tart it up with regulations that can only do harm, I've no idea.
Because we've learned from the past behavior of corporations to predict future behavior of corporations. There is no incentive for them to abide by network neutrality in the same way there is no incentive for corporations to not pollute when they are allowed.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Right now the ISP's are not throttling that much because they are uncertain about the political ramifications and state-level counter-actions. However, they want to throttle because they want to charge you add-on fees for full-speed access to anything they can bilk you for.
IF there were enough viable ISP choices for the typical consumer, then the market would indeed solve the problem by itself without the need for regulation. But as most of us know, the average consumer only has between 1 and 3 viable ISP choices, and oligopolies have historically shatted all over consumers. (The big players already do.)
A rule of thumb is you need at least 7 competitors in an area to have sufficient competition to avoid OPEC-like collusion among a few companies.
Without regulation, the oligopolies will turn the Internet back into AOL, CompuServe, etc. They will control the content and control where you go, and nickel and dime you if you wander outside their compound. They'll do it simply because they can and you'll have no alternative.
Table-ized A.I.
and understands why it's important. So does Liz Warren. And Ro Khanna.
/., but at a certain point it really is a partisan issue. 3 Republicans voted for NN out of 52. Not a single Dem voted against it. We've got another election in 2020, so now's the time to decide if NN is really something important to you or not...
Here's a list of Senators and how they voted on NN. Notice all the "D"s when it comes to "for" and all the "Rs" when it comes to against? I know partisanship isn't popular on
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Net Neutrality is an attempt to fix these regulatory monopolies by requiring they behave. It's regulation trying to fix problems caused by other regulation. Which begs the question - why not just fix the original regulation? Don't give out local Internet monopolies.
No monopolies have been given out.
If one ISP intentionally degrades Netflix as a ploy to try to make Netflix pay them, their customers will simply cancel and switch to a different ISP.
Except that takes time, effort and an honest ISP in the area. What if they all behave badly?
And ISPs will strive for network neutrality because that's what their customers want.
In a perfect world with perfect information, this is correct. However, your ideal world doesn't exist and people are really fucking dumb and uninformed.
We can argue about which approach is more effective. But it's erroneous to think the only way to achieve network neutrality is Net Neutrality regulation.
We can go from ISP to ISP and blow the brain of every manager that thinks network neutrality is a bad idea all over their walls. We can reengineer humans to not be greedy. We can beg them to be better every day until they comply. However, all of these ideas are more time consuming and ultimately less effective than simple regulation.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You should really educate yourself about net neutrality, the reason it exists is to keep the ISP's in line, without it, the ISP's can literally do whatever they want to your service, charge whatever rates they want, fast lanes, exclusivity, spying, shove their ideology on you, block you from viewing sites etc etc. Government regulations were there to prevent that kind of bs from happening, without those regulations we're at the complete mercy of the ISP.
Incumbents do not always win.
George H.W. Bush for a recent example.
As far as Trump goes, I hope he loses in 2020, but I want him to serve his entire term. Trump is incompetent, but Pence is pure religious ideological evil.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable