Slashdot Mirror
One Year After Net Neutrality Repeal, America's Democrats Warn 'The Fight Continues' (cnet.com)
CNET just published a fierce pro-net neutrality editorial co-authored by Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be Majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, with Mike Doyle, the expected Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, and Frank Pallone, Jr. the expected Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The three representatives argue that "the Trump FCC ignored millions of comments from Americans pleading to keep strong net neutrality rules in place." The FCC's net neutrality repeal left the market for broadband internet access virtually lawless, giving ISPs an opening to control peoples' online activities at their discretion. Gone are rules that required ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally. Gone are rules that prevented ISPs from speeding up traffic of some websites for a fee or punishing others by slowing their traffic down....
Without the FCC acting as sheriff, it is unfortunately not surprising that big corporations have started exploring ways to change how consumers access the Internet in order to benefit their bottom line.... Research from independent analysts shows that nearly every mobile ISP is throttling at least one streaming video service or using discriminatory boosting practices. Wireless providers are openly throttling video traffic and charging consumers extra for watching high-definition streams. ISPs have rolled out internet plans that favor companies they are affiliated with, despite full-page ads swearing they value net neutrality. And most concerning, an ISP was found throttling so-called "unlimited" plans for a fire department during wildfires in California.
Make no mistake, these new practices are just ISPs sticking a toe in the water. Without an agency with the authority to investigate and punish unfair or discriminatory practices, ISPs will continue taking bolder and more blatantly anti-consumer steps. That is why we have fought over the past year to restore net neutrality rules and put a cop back on the ISP beat. In May, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill restoring net neutrality rules. Despite the support of a bipartisan majority of Americans, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives refused our efforts to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Fortunately, the time is fast coming when the people's voices will be heard.
The editorial closes by arguing that "Large corporations will no longer be able to block progress on this important consumer protection issue."
The three representatives argue that "the Trump FCC ignored millions of comments from Americans pleading to keep strong net neutrality rules in place." The FCC's net neutrality repeal left the market for broadband internet access virtually lawless, giving ISPs an opening to control peoples' online activities at their discretion. Gone are rules that required ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally. Gone are rules that prevented ISPs from speeding up traffic of some websites for a fee or punishing others by slowing their traffic down....
Without the FCC acting as sheriff, it is unfortunately not surprising that big corporations have started exploring ways to change how consumers access the Internet in order to benefit their bottom line.... Research from independent analysts shows that nearly every mobile ISP is throttling at least one streaming video service or using discriminatory boosting practices. Wireless providers are openly throttling video traffic and charging consumers extra for watching high-definition streams. ISPs have rolled out internet plans that favor companies they are affiliated with, despite full-page ads swearing they value net neutrality. And most concerning, an ISP was found throttling so-called "unlimited" plans for a fire department during wildfires in California.
Make no mistake, these new practices are just ISPs sticking a toe in the water. Without an agency with the authority to investigate and punish unfair or discriminatory practices, ISPs will continue taking bolder and more blatantly anti-consumer steps. That is why we have fought over the past year to restore net neutrality rules and put a cop back on the ISP beat. In May, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill restoring net neutrality rules. Despite the support of a bipartisan majority of Americans, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives refused our efforts to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Fortunately, the time is fast coming when the people's voices will be heard.
The editorial closes by arguing that "Large corporations will no longer be able to block progress on this important consumer protection issue."
The world was fine before NN, the world is fine after it, focus on things that matter. Like going outside for once.
Didn’t the Internet come to an end? I was told it was an Internet armageddon, and I wouldn’t be able to post this comment without paying an extra surcharge to Verizon or some other bogeyman. But here I am, paying no such surcharge.
Why do you people still believe whatever ridiculous fear mongering bullshit comes your way?
Someone really needs to find and drain that personified swamp.
If not, fuck 'em. This is theater. The democrats warn 'The drama continues'. SNAFU
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Meaning the "fight continues to get some more of that lobbyist money to fight the other side". Neither party cares about the people or even knows what NN is.
you were told there would be less competition, increased prices, bad outcomes for rural communities and a general tightening of mega corporation's control of the Internet. All of this is continuing apace nicely. Now, Net Neutrality is only one, albeit substantial, part in all that.
This is what drives me nuts about right wingers. Everything has to be simple, black and white. This is why we can't do anything about climate change. Because the damage not painfully, stupendously obvious.
It's the same folks who will argue, with a straight face and without irony or ill intent, that we can repeal regulations that were put in place to stop a problem because the problem no longer occurs... somehow completely missing the point that the problem stopped occurring because we put regulations in place to prevent it.
This is how we got the 2008 market crash. Regulations in place to prevent risky investment banking from mixing with safe mortgage banking were relaxed or eliminated in the name of "unleashing the free market" and "job creation". Those regulations were there for a reason. What's worse is because removing the regulations didn't immediately crash the economy folks act like it was middle class folks buying homes that crashed the country and not the billionaires gambling on them (nevermind that most of the defaults were not on people's primary residence but were investment properties themselves).
The world is a complicated place. Bad things happen for complex reasons and if you want them to stop happening you need to listen to experts because they spend years studying a problem.
TL;DR: For every sufficiently complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Get some 'payment processor neutrality'-regulation in place. It is very desperately lacking in the here and now.
Oh, they got rid of the 'swamp'. They just built a cesspool in it's place, and called it an 'upgrade'.
Look at who's been appointed to important government posts, and how either underqualified they are, or how corrupt they are, or how much of a personal agenda they have, or all the above, and you'll see what I mean.
Always fighting, never winning. Loyal opposition.
"Continue acting like children themselves." - This is directly the intellectually bankrupt alt-reich "bro-strategy" - Pretend everything is too complex to be known by the common Joe 6-pack moron like themselves, intentionally.
"Truth is too hard, just give up and watch Fox News."
again. At this point I like to do this in every thread, specifically:
1. There's an election in 2 years.
2. Vote in your primary. Most people don't, meaning your primary vote has many, many times more power. Politicians don't fear losing in the general, they fear being primaried.
3. Vote for candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. Google "Justice Democrats" and "Our Revolution".
What follows here is pure, angry white man ranting. Stop reading if that offends you. Or just keep reading if you enjoy being offended.
4. Yes, this is a partisan issue. I know of no GOP candidates who reliably support NN. The ones that do have only done so when they could be sure no strong regulations would pass.
5. Speaking of partisan issues, I don't know a single GOP candidate who refuses corporate PAC money. I'm open to suggestions though. But until then I won't even consider voting for them. You can't serve two masters.
Folks like to act like everyone has America's best interests at heart. And it's divisive as hell to suggest otherwise. I'm sorry folks, but this is a science forum, and science is founded on evidence. The GOP has spent the last 40 years serving the rich and well connected. The Dems have been doing it since Clinton, but I can find a wing of their party who wants to serve the people (again, google Justice Democrats. Or go look up the Bernie Bros).
The GOP is at this point irredeemable. There's nothing left there except a pro-corporate, pro ruling elite engine dedicated to shifting wealth upstream. You might have some social issues that are so important to you that you're overlooking that (abortion, gun control, stopping Mexican immigration, I'm already baiting a -2 troll moderation with this post so might as well go all in and keep digging). But if we're going to sit hear and tell ourselves we're a science and tech forum dedicated to evidence based reasoning then we can no longer ignore the obvious. Folks need to realize they're making a trade. You're trading your economic and political freedoms (the real ones, not the imaginary ones where you can have guns and pretend you can somehow overthrow a government with a modern army) for whatever pet issue keeps you siding with the GOP. If folks at least acknowledge the trade maybe they can start questioning if it's worth it?
Or maybe we're about to drag all of human civilization into another 1000 years of aristocratic dystopia. We'll find out in 2 years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No it didn't. Awarding these ISPs local monopolies with insufficient guidelines and regulatory oversight is what caused that. The ISPs do not have natural monopolies. Their monopolies were granted to them by the local governments. This is a regulatory failure, not a market failure. If this regulated market for broadband internet access is virtually lawless, it's because the regulators made it that way.
Instead of Net Neutrality, why not just do it the easy way and fix the original regulation - rescind the ISPs' monopolies and allow competition. At this point, I'm beginning to suspect the politicians (both sides) don't want to do this. As long as the ISPs have a government-granted monopoly, they're beholden to the government. The ISPs will continue to donate to the parties to maintain those monopolies. Allowing competition would mean there's no more reason for the ISPs to stuff the politicians' wallets. So instead the politicians advocate Net Neutrality, which allows them to have their cake and to eat it too. The monopolies remain so the ISPs continue making campaign contributions, while the politicians appease the public by appearing to be against the "terrible ISPs and their monopolies" (never mind the politicians are the ones who gave them those monopolies).
Even the other people who responded to my comment are still saying (or implying) the most exaggerated bullshit arguments are all secretly true.
That's the argument style of fearmongering:
1. Make up bullshit stories
2. Bullshit stories don’t happen.
3. When someone points out bullshit stories were bullshit:
3a. claim "no one ever said" the stuff in the bullshit stories
3b. while simultaneously also saying "yes, it all happened" and
3c. "it will all happen, just wait".
"The Internet without net neutrality will be a Wild West of extra fees and censorship."
The consumer should be the one reaping the benefits of watching all the crap online. Get youtube to pay the consumer for hours spent watching them, get FB to pay a portion or the add revenue to the consumer ect.
[($)]
as soon as legislators wake up to the reality that connectivity is a pipe and is treated the same as any other public utility. Let them sell users features users care to purchase, but don't touch the pipes contents. Treat packets like water, gas or electricity, without the owner of the pipe able to modify content carried.
How hard is that to understand?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
You so woke bro!
They are a major hazard to the whole world...
Since you've the highest rated post, I'll just drop the question here for all - since NN was dropped a year ago, what are the bad effects that have happened as a result?
I see absolutely none so far. So why did we need 30 pages of regulation that NO ONE here understood, at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if you'd bother to read it. Vote in your primary for the candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. At the moment that requires you to vote Democrat because there is literally no GOP politician who doesn't take bribes in the form of campaign contributions. There are plenty on the Dems side.
Any time you want you can end political corruption by committing to vote against anyone who accepts corporate PAC donations in their primary. You just don't want to because guys like Donald Trump tell you want you want to hear and make you feel good about yourself. They appeal to your baser emotions.
Thing is they have consistently left you high and dry with a nasty cocktail of trickle down economics, winner take all crony-capitalism and overt racism used to keep you divided from your fellows in the working class so that you'll excuse to gross wealth inequality they desire. Face it, you've been had. Sooner you admit that sooner you can show up at your primary and do something about it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
fat lot of good it does me. I don't want to just be right. I want to be successful. I do what I can in my personal life to make that happen, but there's only so much you can do when the system is built to crush you. I've got family with illnesses, and thanks to the GOP's corrupt healthcare system (which the Clinton Dems went along with) I've spent the last 10 years struggling.
/. with nonsense like "you so wolk" and realize that, as a member of the working class, the right wing who's taken you in and made you feel welcome while they roast you over a fire and dine on your flesh aren't your friends? I hope so. God I hope so.
In another 2-3 years I _might_ finally get out from under all of it, I might not. It depends on what folks like you do next. Will you stop uselessly insulting me on
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
you were told there would be less competition, increased prices, bad outcomes for rural communities and a general tightening of mega corporation's control of the Internet.
There is more competition (I just recently FINALLY got unlimited data hotspot service on T-Mobile via an MVNO). That's for a rural user so that's a twofer form your list there....
My prices have not increased at all.
The mega corporations control over the internet has increased. But what was Network Neutrality going to ever do about users being banned and deplatformed from social media?
It's the same folks who will argue, with a straight face and without irony or ill intent, that we can repeal regulations that were put in place to stop a problem because the problem no longer occurs...
Wrong. It's because the problem NEVER EXISTED. The few times any ISP's got out of hand the FCC slapped them down, under the same rules we all live under right now.
Also, the regulations were set to create way worse problems - but thankfully they were repealed so none of that came to pass.
The world is a complicated place. Bad things happen for complex reasons
So your argument appears to be, let's make it way the fuck more complicated for ISP's to operate, and sit back and watch the carnage. Brilliant.
For every sufficiently complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong.
I find it HIGHLY amusing how very perfectly this describes the supposedly simple, *30-page* network neutrality regulations you keep trying to force down everyones throat.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's hope the sheriff is not named John Brown, even if Bob Marley is dead, Eric Clapton is still much alive.
is because capital costs and profit margins are too high. That sounds like a contradiction, and that's the trouble. Like a lot of things it doesn't work the way you'd expect it to.
Let's say you decide to compete with Comcast. You're gonna have to spend billions of your own dollars on infrastructure. You might be tempted because Comcast charges $100-$140/mo for something that costs maybe $10-$15/mo to actually provide. You could, over time, do it for $50/mo and make a killing.
Except Comcast knows this. They can and will drop their price to $20/mo and still make good money. Meanwhile you need to charge $50/mo for a decade or more to cover the interest on the loans you took out to finance all that infrastructure you built.
The real problem here is you're trying to put a square peg into a round hole. We _all_ want telecommunications. It's as essential and valuable as food and water. We couldn't live without it. Our civilization would collapse without the ability to spread information. For one thing we couldn't make enough food.
When something's that important and that universal you stop letting private corporations handle it. That's why we have a post office. But don't take my word for it, here's a much better list of the reasons not to privatize industries and how to tell the difference between something that belongs in the public and something that should be private.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Back in the dialup days.
Why are all those companies gone today? Why is there no choice? A combination of broadband, and telecom companies buying/starting their own ISPs. Prior to this there were up to dozens of ISPs in an area, plus amateurs running small ones for their friends off dedicated lines. There were still lots of issues back then, oversubscribe (not enough lines for everyone to dial in), peak hours, etc. But there WAS choice. Today most of that has gone to the wayside. Quotas have become bigger and even more popular (back in the old days if you could get online there wasn't an effective quota, although some places would disconnect you after more than x hours to give someone else a turn. Try that with modern websites where you can't restart a download!)
The point being: a combination of lack of regulation in some parts of the market, and over regulation in others caused the ISPs to disappear into a few large providers who owned physical infrastructure and could undercut them on price. If they had been kept under telco restrictions back then, and if cable hadn't been able to end-run around it, not being telephone based, then the current diversity of ISPs might be much higher. But thanks to market capture, it was not. I don't blame any of the companies who sold out back then either. They were not in a position to do something better, except in a few up and coming rural markets (See Sonic.net)
And worst ... applying CALEA to the internet was shoved off until we get another Democrat for president. That was the entire intent of shifting the internet from a Data service to a Voice service. Yes, those are the titles of the two articles. That power grab of Obama's did nothing that you would consider network neutrality. It just required a better justification for blocking competitors, did nothing about the cost of peering, did nothing you like at all. However, it intentionally forced the ISPs to give up data. That was the whole intent, and you idiots bought it.
"Where is there a current famine anywhere on the planet?" Many parts of africa, large parts of the middle east, asia, several impoverished carribean islands, south america in pockets all over, the US in poverty areas, etc.
You would literally have to be a fucking moron to not know about all of this.
For the rebirth of the republican party. The evangelical base is dying off - reinventing themself could be the real change we need.
See subject & proof of it in ARTH1's bullshit I totally destroyed using FACTS he RAN fromhttps://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13033860&cid=57784442 trying to BS me "Linux distros default to DNS" (STUPID & DANGEROUS to do per ISP's DNS = unpatched MOSTLY vs. KAMINSKY flaw redirect poisoning & the SHITMODEMS they give users that don't even ALLOW DNS change in them from CHINA https://slashdot.org/comments....
Which I have even MORE PROOF OF THIS YEAR (2 days ago & the L1/L2/NOC techs @ spectrum agreed w/ me on no less, hopefully SAVING THEM A PROBLEM & certainly their users too).
swillden GOOGLE SECURITY ENGINEER = even WORSE (started up w/ me "defending" arth1 up there, lol, to be EXPOSED in it & his fails vs. me before) https://slashdot.org/comments.... AS AN ADVERTISER CRONY for Google no less.
APK
P.S.=> They only "believe" it because THEY ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM ... apk
The fact and truth is that Net Neutrality act was NEVER used. It was repealed within days of it going into effect. Since then, NOTHING horrible has happened. Nothing that the doom and gloom generation has claimed would happen has. No, the earth is still here. It hasn't caused more global warming. The bees are still buzzing. The birds are still alive and flying. Oh NO, The sky ISN'T FALLING. Oh, Henny. What do we worry about next?
How about 5G causing cancer? Now THAT is something to think about with those microwave frequencies.
Free market competition drives innovation. Imagine that? https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/14/study-u-s-internet-speeds-skyrocket-one-year-after-net-neutrality-repeal/.
or
https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/14/net-neutrality-us-ranking/
Sorry.
This morning I received an email that my FIOS was getting a free upgrade from 50/50 to 75/75. Verified it with google speed test. Competition is still active in my area of the country (New Jersey)
In other news, download speeds up 35.8%, upload speeds up 22.0% in the year since the repeal.
https://www.speedtest.net/reports/united-states/
See that "Preview" button?
the vast majority of bad loans were on investment properties. It was boomers buying houses to rent and flip with their life savings because they hadn't been able to save enough to retire on. That's what made the bubble burst so bad. The bubble wasn't driven by loans on people's primary domicile, so there was no effort to keep the properties. When it became clear they were going to lose money everybody bailed at once and the whole scheme collapsed. It might have lasted long enough to get to the next big tech boom if it was only low risk mortgages instead of rental and investment properties that made up the Credit Default Swaps out there.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
humanity no. We need more and better information and technology (and yes, technology is really just information that's been applied) or eventually our civilization will collapse just like all the prior ones did. It's like a race you're trying to stay ahead of.
And thanks to robots & automation we don't need very many to generate concrete value. The lack of work for people to do in a society built around trading work for food is a major problem. 86% of the manufacturing jobs lost to the US were to robots, not Mexicans or the Chinese. We're wasting our time fighting outsourcing when we need to come up with new ways to distribute wealth.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, especially ones like this that are pretty likely just foreign nationals stirring up trouble. On the plus side even I can spot this one. It's not nearly as good as the ones I saw during the last two elections.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Fortunately, the time is fast coming when the people's voices will be heard.
Unless a Social Justice Wanker deems you unworthy of being heard. Then its deplatforming time.
You mean like when Obama appointed a man to head up saving the auto industry who a) never held a drivers license, and b) never actually worked in the auto industry in any capacity?
Yeah, trump needs more experts like that!
Ken
But of course they do. Aside from rsilvergun's point on the high capital costs of rolling out a network and the enormous advantages held by an established player - there's also market consolidation. Which will leave you with a handful (or less) of providers in the end, anyway. Case in point: AT&T was broken up in an anti-trust suit decades ago, but has totally rebuilt itself via acquisitions and mergers.
before folks figured this out, and you got lucky and are in a major city where they were rolled out.
The rest of the country isn't so lucky. Nobody's rolling out much fiber anymore, and the ones that are are the major players (AT&T & Comcast) doing it here and there when they're paid by a specific municipality and that municipality is one of the rare ones that doesn't let them take the money and run.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Why? I can attribute it to Comcast.
Yes, that "hated" company. Comcast has rolled out DOCSIS 3.1 gigabit Internet to much of the country over the course of 2018, and most Comcast service areas should offer it in the next few months. With gigabit speeds, stutter-free 4K video streaming becomes normal even on multiple channels being streamed. And it may lead to the beginning of the change to mostly on-demand watching of scripted content (with the exception of sports and certain other events that demand "live" coverage). And opens the possibility of high-definition virtual reality.
And this is only the beginning: the arrival of 5G wireless by Verizon and AT&T and SpaceX's Starlink system in 2021 could make gigabit Internet available everywhere in the USA without the enormous expense of the "last mile/kilometer" connection to the user's residence or business location.
HURR DURR Omaba this
HERP DERP Hillary that
You Trump supporters are like a goddamned broken record -- in fact you ARE broken records, I don't think a single one of you fucks has had an original thought in decades. You don't like blacks because they're actually making headway and making you Great White Male types look bad (which isn't hard to start with), and what really burns you hard is they're taking your white women away from you (as if you could get any of them in the first place, being fat, inintelligent, and no personality to speak of), and because you can't get women (because you're disgusting) you HATE women now, too. Then the white supremacist fucks get a hold of you (if you weren't already) and channel your butthurt into anyone that doesn't look like you. So now you're a completely disgusting waste of oxygen. Speaking of oxygen because you clearly and objectively can't just keep spewing filth into the air with your 5 mile per gallon shitty SUV anymore, actually have to stop shitting where you eat and be (shocker!!!) RESPONSIBLE, you piss and moan about 'LIBTARDS' and want to tear down anything and everything they do just because it doesn't suit you and never mind the FACT that everyone else wants it and you're completely wrong. Just go grab one of your assault rifles, put the barrel in your mouth, and pull the goddamned trigger, you'll do the world much better as fertilizer instead of wasting oxygen.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Self-delusion, look it up.