Can Democrats In Congress Restore America's Net Neutrality Rules? (nbcnews.com)

"Democrats are expected to use their upcoming control of the House to push for strong net neutrality rules," reports NBC News: "The FCC's repeal sparked an unprecedented political backlash, and we've channeled that internet outrage into real political power," said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights-focused non-profit organization. "As we head into 2019, net neutrality supporters in the House of Representatives will be in a much stronger position to engage in FCC oversight...." Gigi Sohn, a former lawyer at the FCC who is now a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, said she expects Democrats to use their new power to push for the restoration of strong net neutrality rules -- and for the topic to be on the lips of presidential hopefuls. "I have no doubt that bills to restore the 2015 rules will be introduced in both the Senate and the House relatively early on," Sohn said....

Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner who has been a vocal supporter of net neutrality, noted that it has become a national issue -- and one that has broad approval from Americans. She pointed to a University of Maryland study that found 83 percent of people surveyed were against the FCC's move to undo the rules around net neutrality... Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation...said he is "extraordinarily confident" that proponents of net neutrality will win. "It really just boils down to how one side of the polling is in this space," Falcon said.

Comments

1% have heard of it, 0% can define it. 40% hate Tr

[raymorris]

Of the roughly 1% of American voters who have ever said the words "net neutrality", most want it. Most Americans have never uttered the phrase. As far as politics, most Americans have one focus. They either like Trump or dislike him - and they don't really know why. Network neutrality is hyped on Slashdot, not on CNN and Comedy Central, where most Americans get their "news".

Of those 1% who have even thought about net neutrality, so far none can define it in any meaningful, actionable way. It's a set of general, foggy concepts. Unfortunately the technical details of how carrier networks are configured is very, very complex, so it would take 500 pages (probably more) to write net neutrality rules that a) aren't full of loopholes and b) don't effectively shut down the internet if they are actually followed.

The most basic premise of NN, according to most advocates, is "carriers can't require payment before carrying a site's traffic".

One specific problem - just like you are a customer of an ISP, just as you get your internet connection from someone, so do web sites. Web sites pay carriers to take their traffic. That's often called "hosting". Down time kills their business, so sites pay multiple carriers, in order to have multiple redundant connections to the internet.

Remember the basic premise of NN, according to most advocates, is "carriers can't require payment before carrying a site's traffic". But if the site isn't paying at least one carrier, they aren't online at all. So while their heart is in the right place, actually implementing the simple rule most NN advocates ask for would simply take down every web site. It's way more complicated than that to actually implement.

On the other hand, 40% or so of Americans dislike Trump. The Democrat politicians hate him. Compared to 1% who care about net neutrality. The Democrats will focus on pretending to impeach Trump. 40% of Americans will love watching that show.

Another 40% of Americans like Trump and will be angry about the impeachment show. Another 6% will see that snce there is 0% chance that the Senate will convict Trump for paying off a lady had an affair with, before he was President, the whole impeachment show is a waste of time. They'll wish the politicians we're doing something useful instead.

So the Democrats will spend all their time putting on this circus that 40% of Americans like and 46% of Americans don't like.

Not Democrats, _Clinton_ Democrats.

[rsilvergun]

E.g. the kind of economically right wing Dems that road Bill Clinton's coattails into office in the 90s.

Meanwhile Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the actual left are busy pushing legislation like Medicare for All, tuition free college, ending wars and yes, restoring net Neutrality.

Register Democrat, show up at your primary in 2020, and vote the Clinton Dems out and you can have the government you deserve. Stay home or worse, vote in more of the Clinton Dems or the GOP (same difference really) and, well, you'll get exactly what we've always had.