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Net Neutrality Bill 38 Votes Short In Congress, and Time Has Almost Run Out (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Legislation to restore net neutrality rules now has 180 supporters in the U.S. House of Representatives, but that's 38 votes short of the amount needed before the end of the month. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution, already approved by the Senate, would reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules. But 218 signatures from U.S. representatives (a majority) are needed to force a full vote in the House before Congress adjourns at the end of the year.
Net neutrality advocates previously said they needed 218 signatures by December 10 to force a vote. But an extension of Congress' session provided a little more time. "[Now that the Congressional session has officially been extended, members of Congress could be in town as late as December 21st," net neutrality advocacy group Fight for the Future wrote yesterday. "This means we have until the end of the year to get as many lawmakers as possible signed on to restore net neutrality." A discharge petition that would force a vote on the CRA resolution gained three new supports in the past two weeks, but even if all Democrats were on board it still wouldn't be enough to force a vote. Republicans have a 236-197 House majority, and only one House Republican has signed the petition.
Net neutrality advocates previously said they needed 218 signatures by December 10 to force a vote. But an extension of Congress' session provided a little more time. "[Now that the Congressional session has officially been extended, members of Congress could be in town as late as December 21st," net neutrality advocacy group Fight for the Future wrote yesterday. "This means we have until the end of the year to get as many lawmakers as possible signed on to restore net neutrality." A discharge petition that would force a vote on the CRA resolution gained three new supports in the past two weeks, but even if all Democrats were on board it still wouldn't be enough to force a vote. Republicans have a 236-197 House majority, and only one House Republican has signed the petition.
the Senate passed it while they could be content in the knowledge that it couldn't pass the House. Now that the House is flipping to Dems it'll die in the Senate next. And in any case it doesn't have a super majority to overcome a Presidential Veto.
I say this on every NN forum, but if this matters to you then you're going to have to change your voting. That means showing up at Primaries, voting against both the GOP _and_ the Clinton Democrats and putting actual, left wing candidates in office who are in favor of government regulation like NN.
Because make no mistake, Net Neutrality _is_ a government regulation on a private industry. The libertarians can argue that it's only a psuedo-private industry and that everything would be fine if the government just deregulated completely (because that worked so well when AT&T was in charge) but it's _still_ a government regulation. If we keep voting for folks who don't believe in government this is what we're going to get.
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If it passed the Senate, which the summary says it did, then it had at least two Republican Senators to support it
The only real opposition for the war in Iraq came from Democrats, and very few outlier republicans.
Obama opposed it, as did most Democrats.
And it was the republicans in the Bush / Cheney that intentionally cooked up the intelligence on WMD that ensured the biggest war of the last generation was fought on a lie.
But again, you would have to be able to see the obvious and distinguish between vastly different actions from different parties.
The cable monopolies stopped throttling data when Net Neutrality was enacted because it became illegal.
Are you really this stupid or are you just pretending to be?
You're off. Way, way off. Without Net Neutrality, one side's ISP can hold the other side hostage and refuse to deliver the data they've already paid their own ISP for. It's like if the mailman decides he doesn't like one house on the block and won't deliver their mail, even if the sender already paid postage.
That's not at all what it's about. It's the concept that your ISP should be considered as a telecommunication utility rather than a content provider. As such, they should not be allowed to selectively throttle your connection based on what media you consumed, but rather treat all bits as equal. We're paying for the connection already, and the entities we're connecting to are paying for theirs -- nobody is trying to get anything for free.
They can still have data caps, but things like 0-rating to make their own content more desirable would also be illegal. Since most consumers only have 1 or 2 broadband choices, letting them take advantage of their natural monopolies does not lead to a competitive market.
The repeal has far-reaching implications, as with it providers are free to throttle their competitors or even block any content they want to discourage -- we have to take them at the word for it that they won't. And we've actually seen them throttle competitors before, which is the entire reason NN was enacted in the first place.
What you described has nothing to do with net neutrality. NN is what keeps Microsoft from paying Comcast so that Bing loads faster than Google. It's horrible for start ups, as it puts a giant cost in the way of using their service. Plus, who wants Comcast deciding which sites they get to use at regular speeds, and which get arbitrarily slowed down.
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Why do you need "net neutrality"? The internet became what it bacame without this junk.
Is it because people with vested interests and lots of money propagandized you into wanting it?
Will the Obama-style "net neutrality" level the playing field and make the internet wonderful and free for you? Nope. Its loudest backers are some of the worst entities on the net: Google, Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc ALL of which want the telcos to transport their data cheaply and without discrimination while THEY de-platform, censor and discriminate based on any arbitrary criteria they choose at the moment.
Just what good is "fair" data transport to you if nobody will store your data, serve your pages, serve your videos, allow you to monetize your activity and so forth? Do you TRULY want this phony neutrality enforced by federal government bureaucrats? You might like it with somebody like Obama in control, but would you still want it if the bureaucrats were all Trump acolytes faithfully doing HIS bidding? That's what you get when you give that sort of power to the government - sooner or later it ends up being controlled by the other party. The internet is best preserved by keeping it as far from ANY government power as possible.
The Democrats are pushing this form of "net neutrality" because their huge backers at Google, Apple, Netflix, Facebook etc want it. They will never support a true net neutrality that applies both to the people operating the clouds and other servers as well as the telcos; they are only interested in the sort of faux neutrality that serves the interests of their corporate masters, just as the Republicans in DC would only support a neutrality that would apply to Google, Facebook and the rest without applying to the telcos that support them. The Democrats are NOT "looking out for [your] interests".
If you are truly interested in a massive layer of permanent government control over the internet in the interest of protecting you from some imagined future possible internet where the telcos censor and throttle you unfairly, then try advancing a non-partisan (or bi-partisan) form of net neutrality that the bought-off politicians in DC in BOTH parties would hate. As long as you are on the side of the fake Obama-Pelosi-Schumer-Google-Facebook version you are not for neutrality at all and you will certainly never get half of the country (and the politicians representing them) on board - this is why Obama could never implement it as an actual law.
Trying the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result...
It looks like the recent kick in the teeth Republicans got at the polls wasn't enough to educate them about what happens when Americans get annoyed with their government. Perhaps in a couple of years another electoral kick, this time straight to the balls, will get through to them.
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Based on this response it doesn't sound like you do know what net neutrality is.
The lack of Net Neutrality rules does nothing to protect your scenario that medical data or teacher/student interaction. You seem to think that NN somehow allows Netflix to get away with more profits. Without NN there is just as much of a probability that the medical data and/or teacher/student interaction could be throttled. If your ISP decided they could make more money from throttling that data they possibly would.
The main reason that ISPs throttle Netflix (and similar commercial content) isn't to make the other "critical" data move through the system faster. The reason that they throttle companies like Netflix is so they can either charge them to get better access on their networks (not really how the Internet was setup to work) or more likely because they have a competing service so they want to stifle the competition.
As an example, let's say that Comcast is your ISP. They are happily carrying the data of Netflix without throttling it. Then one day they decide that they would like to start a streaming service of their own. They start the service (let's call it Comflix) and offer it alongside Netflix without throttling either stream. Unfortunately very few subscribers are signing up for Comflix. Comcast decides that instead of competing head-to-head with Netflix they will throttle the Netflix stream to 50% and leave Comflix at 100% bandwidth. To further profit from this Comcast also goes to Netflix and tells them if they pay Comcast a small fee (several million dollars) they will open up the bandwidth and only throttle them to 75% of the bandwidth.
You still may not think this is too much of a problem but... change Netflix in that example to a medical service that is providing you that medical data from your doctor. If Comcast decided to start up a competing medical data service would you still be happy with them throttling the data from your doctors medical data service provider.
Making "data transport fair for cloud providers and video streamers and search engines" via NN is also making data transport fair for the individual.