New Net Neutrality Bill Headed To Congress (theverge.com)

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said today he would "soon" introduce a bill to permanently reinstate the net neutrality rules that were repealed by the Federal Communications Commission, led by chairman Ajit Pai, in 2017. From a report: Markey's announcement comes as a federal court is set to hear oral arguments over the FCC's repeal of net neutrality regulations in 2017. Markey, who is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, has previously introduced a bill that would permanently reinstate net neutrality as a member of the House of Representatives, although the measure ultimately failed.

It's unclear when the bill would be formally introduced, but Markey said it was imminent. "We will soon lay down a legislative marker in the Senate in support of net neutrality to show the American people that we are on their side in overwhelming supporting a free and open internet." Further reading: Net Neutrality Repeal at Stake as Key Court Case Starts: Oral arguments are set to begin Friday in the most prominent lawsuit challenging the federal government's repeal of broadband access rules known as net neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission approved the rules in 2015 to ensure internet users equal and open access to all websites and services. The commission, under new leadership, rolled the rules back in 2017. The plaintiffs in the suit to be argued Friday, led by the internet company Mozilla and supported by 22 state attorneys general, say the commission lacked a sound legal reason for scrapping the regulations. The government is expected to argue that the rules were repealed because of the burden they imposed on broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast.

Comments

Net Neutrality is a red herring

[Solandri]

Would it solve the problem of Comcast throttling Netflix unless Netflix paid their extortion fee? Yes it would. But that problem is actually a just a symptom of a greater problem.

The real problem is that there's next to no competition among ISPs. If there were competition and Comcast throttled Netflix as a ploy to extort money from Netflix, Comcast customers who watched Netflix would simply cancel and sign up with a competing ISP. Comcast would be slitting their own throats with such a bone-headed move. We wouldn't need Net Neutrality. The only reason they have the gall to throttle Netflix, the only reason Net Neutrality helps, is because they have a monopoly or near-monopoly in most areas. They know their customers cannot flee to a different ISP, so they're free to do things which intentionally degrades the quality of the service their customers receive.

Why do Comcast, Verizon, et al have near-monopolies? Because the local goverments gave it to them. Often in exchange for service guarantees (e.g. to cover low-income areas) or financial kickbacks. The governments like it because it gives them control over the telecoms (who happily make campaign donations to retain their monopoly). The telecoms like it because the government gives them a monopoly so they can over-charge their customers (more than enough to offset the cost of they campaign contributions they have to make to maintain this arrangement). That is the real problem that needs to be fixed. Not only does it cause the problems Net Neutrality aims to fix, it causes a host of other problems like excessively high prices, excessively low data caps, poor repair service times, incentive money being spent on executive bonuses instead of improving the network, etc.

Net Neutrality is the politicians' way to have their cake and eat it too. They can pretend to be on the customers' side by striking a blow against the big, bad cable monopolies. But since the monopolies are government-granted, they retain control over those monopolies so the telecom companies continue to give campaign contributions to them. It just cements in place this terrible monopoly ISP system we have in place, by taking one of the biggest customer complaints off the table.

If you want to fix this, just rescind the government-granted monopolies. You don't even need national legislation to do this. Just elect people to your city or county government in favor of allowing multiple cable companies to compete in your area. Then it can't be countered just because some bozo gets appointed head of the FCC.

Re:Net Neutrality is a red herring

[HornWumpus]

Netflix wanted free rackspace at the ISPs.

The ISPs said, No, you pay like everybody else. That or you stream HTML5 video and we can cache for you.

Netflix hired publicists instead. How you heard about it.

Also note how Netflix has changed their backbone provider several times. Netflix having so much traffic it breaks the peering agreements for their ISP. They've burned all the low bidders and will soon be paying for their traffic by spreading it around. That's not anybodies problem but Netflix and their ISP. But as you say, 'dominant positions'. Netflix traffic would break peering limits for any single backbone. The whole thing isn't simple. Beware those who claim it is. They are full of shit.

Re:Net Neutrality is a red herring

[dimmthewitted]

Nice sentiment, but you have grossly understated the genesis of ISP monopolies and what it would take to foster competition.
Saying that the monopolies are government granted is misrepresenting the problem.


I agree that there are many anti-competitive laws pushed through by kickbacks that lead to court battles and delays such as the Google Fiber rollout.

But the problem with monopolies is that they can leverage other monetary streams to lean on smaller competition.
Fixing a few regulations isn't going to miraculously solve the ISP open market dilemma that America faces.
This lack of an open market is stifling growth and innovation and we need Net Neutrality to ensure a level field for startups and small business.

If they put back what was there before...

[GregMmm]

This is a useless. Ask 10 people what NN is and you will get 10 answers. If the government simply puts back the NN rules as before, then it's broken. This is simply a political ploy. Here is the scenario:

Dems bring bill to reinstate (makes sound good) NN rules. Reps don't vote for it, and it goes no where (Reps say same reasons for broken NN rule that were there in the first place) Dems rave about how Reps are in it for the big corporations (gee where does all of the money from both of them come from) and they don't want equality. People this is this true because no one has any idea what NN is and if something is good for them or not. Next, Reps will bring out their own. Dems will say it's not good enough and vote it down. And around we go.

Nothing gets done. By the way, did anyone actually check with some networking experts on these rules they want to implement. With how the original rules were written, that would be no. But if they did, they paid a pretty penny for it.

sad. This is just a waste of energy

[WindBourne]

Seriously, it would be far better to spend efforts on getting rid of dark money, balancing the budget, taking care of massive student debts, etc.
THis issue is easily solved by de-monopolizing communication.

Re:My internet still is working fine.

[OneHundredAndTen]

from hostile invaders threatening our borders.

You people are always scared of something. What a miserable life, to be permanently in fear. Don't forget to put your gun under your pillow. And to change underwear often.

Re:Good

[gtall]

"Death to the regulatory state." I see. So airlines should compete on how few of their passengers they kill per year? Or drug companies like Ma and Pa Kettle's Beans and Cancer Drugs should be able to hawk anything they like, competition will stop them if enough of their customers die. Those nice food companies should compete on how few salmonella cases they have per year. Need I go on?

More than that...

[Junta]

In a scenario where power is split, both parties love to go to town with heavy rhetoric and the bills to back it up, safe in the knowledge that the other party will block it and take the blame. They get to largely throw any semblance of nuance out the window on divisive issues and *appear* to be ready to go all in to get that bill passed. Like a dog chasing a car being very loud.

Then when the dog catches the car, suddenly things are different. When one of the parties control the legislature and executive branch all that rhetoric can finally go. Well, actually they are not really a fan of those seemingly simplistic perspectives, and suddenly things grind to a halt. We want socialized medicine say the democrats that know they will be vetoed. They get power in congress and the executive branch, things get watered down and Obamacare happens. On the flipside, Republicans with a president that will absolutely veto anything that would threaten obamacare: 'we have passed many bills that would dismantle obamacare'. Republicans win congress and the presidency, 'oh... well, we don't *really* want to repeal it....'

It's a large cause of the seesaw. The tough reality is that some nuanced approach is generally best but the voters are bored by that so they vote for the energized oversimplistic view that sounds straightforwarde enough.

I don't think it's a red herring

[rsilvergun]

it's just a different issue. There can be more than one problem with the internet. Yes, if there was a massive amount of competition you could just switch to an ISP that supported NN, but given the centralized nature of internet access and how much it costs to build out a network you're more or less stuck with natural monopoies.

Now, if you want to talk about red herrings, I'd say the real red herring is this notion that Internet should be provided by public companies in the first place. In 2019 it's too valuable a service. It's up there with water and electricity. My kid couldn't do her homework in bloody high school without it. I don't mean because she needed google, I mean because half her homework was delivered online and maybe 1/4 of her tests. And that got worse with college.

Here's a good video on privatization. Lots of things shouldn't be run by private companies because they're so universal that it's not just everybody wants them it's that society and civilization is improved when everybody has them. You can save more money giving stuff away sometimes.

The point is to get the GOP on record opposing it

[rsilvergun]

so it can be brought up during elections. Not just national ones either, but state ones. The point is to make the GOP the party that opposes Net Neutrality (they are, after all).

As for how you get folks to understand NN, you don't. All Joe Schmoe needs to know is that NN == Lower Cable Bills. Hammer that point home.

We're a democracy, and a pretty corrupt one. But it's fixable if we try. I agree it's frustrating we can't just fix something this simple, but the way to do it is not throwing our hands up in disgust and giving up.

Re:Still completely unimportant to the voters

[dryeo]

When your max bandwidth hovers between 1998 and 2005's definition of broadband depending on how many hundreds of dollars you're willing to pay, does it really matter if you don't get things delivered with the same priority as someone else?

There's a lot more at stake then how fast Netflix loads. Commercial considerations, retailer a pays ISP to degrade retailer b's site or because retailer b didn't cough up more money, their site doesn't load in a reasonable time. Political considerations, replace the retailer with political parties a and b. Things like voter registration sites can be degraded in certain areas where people don't vote the right way. Competing services like VOIP or possibly VPN gets degraded without paying protection money. Collateral damage, my ISP blocked the unions web site during a strike, this also included blocking a few hundred other sites that were on the same server.
With limited choice in ISP's (I have one choice), it is important for all legal content to be treated equally. Think roads, as long as a vehicle is legal, it should be allowed to use the road, even a toll road. There can be general limits, high occupancy lanes or VOIP lanes as long as they're not discriminatory.