Democrats Will Introduce Bill To Bring Back Net Neutrality (thehill.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Monday that Democrats will introduce a net neutrality bill to replace the open internet rules that were repealed in 2017. In a letter to her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said a bill called the "Save the Internet Act" will be unveiled Wednesday and will be introduced in the Senate as well. The text of the legislation has not been released, and it's unclear what will be included in the bill. Democrats have railed against the Trump administration's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) vote to repeal the net neutrality rules, which happened more than a year ago. The 2015 regulations prohibited internet service providers from blocking or throttling websites or creating internet fast lanes.

Comments

Should of done it this way in the first place

[ASCIIxTended]

Should have been law in the first place, not policy decided by 5 unelected guys in a closed room. Trump himself even said so much.

Now, the problem with the Democrats doing it is the bill will probably be 5000 pages long and include all kinds of other bullshit having nothing to do with net neutrality.

Re:Should of done it this way in the first place

[jeff4747]

When you start putting words in my mouth, I stop talking to you.

You do realize that the text indented with the little vertical line is a quote, right?

You decried rules being made by non-experts, in secret. There's an alternative where a technically-savvy entity could make those rules, and they are required to do so in public. Which would fix exactly what you described as bad. But they're bad because......well, you didn't really bother to say. (The FTC does not have the FCC's required level of public rule-making, btw. Which would make them seem a bad alternative if public rule-making is important).

Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Net Neutrality has something like 80% + positive support among voters. Trump is already having the GOP Senate OVERRIDE his emergency order, if he picks another losing position before the election like vetoing what people want he's just risking more of the moderates he desperately needs having another irrefutable example that he's all swamp, in the pocket of big money and not doing his job of protecting them. Not all Republican voters are completely stupid. Just most.

Re:Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if Congress would have done it's job instead of playing political games. The Democrats don't want to fix immigration because they'd give up one of their talking points. A talking point they've heavily invested in and that they believe gives them ownership of an entire demographic. Fixing things just isn't good for elections.

Re:Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[No Longer an AC]

Using Obama as an excuse to defend any and every action by Trump is not working.

I voted against Obama twice. I suspect die-hard Trump supporters were too busy watching reality TV in 2008 and 2012 to even know there was an election.

And while Obama did have his pen and phone, Trump is signing EOs at a faster pace and Obama never signed an EO or declared a national emergency just to bypass the power of Congress to control the purse strings.

which allows Trump to do that and more

Oh really? So, eventually you expect us to devolve into a dictatorship where we still "officially" have a Constitution and separation of powers, but in practice we don't at all.

you called us racist instead.

Nobody called anyone a racist (excepting internet trolls) just for criticizing Obama, but the fact is there was a lot of racism directed towards him and there still is.

Except he's the devil the voters know...

Interesting. I've heard many Trump supporters say he was the devil we DIDN'T know in 2016 and that's why they voted for him. They knew what to expect from the career politicians so they gambled on Trump. Except some of us knew who Trump was too and I don't mean from his TV show either. That's why we voted against him.

Re:Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[penandpaper]

Nobody called anyone a racist (excepting internet trolls) just for criticizing Obama

I remember the very next day after Obama was elected in 2008, I was watching CNN and someone said to the effect of: "What we learned last night was that there were not enough racists to beat Obama."

Forgive me, but Obama and the media were happy to pull the racism card on anything.

Re: Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[Cmdln Daco]

Do we have to put up with this crapflooding forever? Can't a few choice keywords like 'faggot' and maybe 'traitor' trigger an automatic downmod? This is pure unadulterated crapflooding, and extremely uninteresting to need to skip over.

Re: Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[dcw3]

Never really used it??? Try 364+291+276 times!

# - President - Total Executive Orders - Order Number Range - Years in Office - Executive Orders Per Year - Period
41 George H. W. Bush 166 12668–12833 4 41.5 January 20, 1989 – January 20, 1993
42 Bill Clinton 364 12834–13197 8 45.5 January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001
43 George W. Bush 291 13198–13488 8 36.4 January 20, 2001 – January 20, 2009
44 Barack Obama 276 13489–13764 8 34.6 January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017
45 Donald Trump 97[1] 13765 and above 2.12 45.8 January 20, 2017 – present

Re:Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[jeff4747]

Perhaps if Congress would have done it's job instead of playing political games.

Congress is doing it's job. There is no crisis on the border and what issues that are at the border are not affected by a wall.

First, border crossings are way, way, way down.

Second, Drugs and immigrants would not be stopped by a wall, because those are coming through the official ports of entry. Drugs are smuggled in other shipments (or using things like tunnels that aren't affected by a wall). The immigrants are refugees, and federal law (and treaty obligations) require that we let them into the country while investigating their claim. So they don't sneak in, they walk up to customs and say "I'm a refugee, please help". And before you declare this to be false, this is according to the Trump-run Department of Homeland Security. Also, those refugees show up to all of their court dates 96% of the time.

Third, immigrants, legal or not, commit violent crimes at a rate far lower than the native population. So no, there are not a massive wave of super predators streaming over the border.

So, why spend billions now and billions on maintenance for a wall that does not address the actual issues on the border, and requires the government to steal land from citizens? It seems like a really dumb waste of money and a violation of US some citizen's rights. Which means Congress is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing by not appropriating the money to build the wall.

Re: Trump overruled by the Senate already.

[jeff4747]

All illegal drugs come thru legal ports of entry. Right, the cartels think it's easiest to send containers of drugs into the hands of customs and border patrol agents than to, say, loadvit on a boat and have cigarette boats go off-shore and get the drugs to bring it in.

That isn't according to me. That's according to the Trump administration. The vast majority of illegal drugs are smuggled within legitimate shipments. The second most common method was via tunnel.

You'll note that neither of these are affected by a wall.

You'll also note that your fantasy of using "cigarette boats" would not be affected by a wall either. It also can't deliver the required volume of drugs, which is why they smuggle through ports-of-entry.

(Btw, they weren't named cigarette boats because of smuggling. They were named that because the long, thin shape resembled a cigarette, compared to the wider, shorter 'cigar' of typical boats. Cigarette boats as smuggling tools is a media invention. Their cargo capacity is incredibly tiny, and the Coast Guard has aircraft, so they are not suitable for large-scale smuggling.)

If we had a consistent presence along the border and tracked every capture, then we could say how the drugs are coming across

Good news! We already have a consistent presence along the border and track every capture. That's why Trump's DHS is reporting most drugs arrive via smuggling through ports of entry.

It turns out you don't actually need a wall in order to patrol a border. Heck, there's these nifty inventions called "cameras" too!!

Everyone that crosses the border is a refugee

Nope, just the vast majority. It turns out people don't abandon their homes and most of their possessions to walk 3000 miles for fun.

Walls work

I eagerly await your description of how a wall will stop your seaborne drug delivery scheme.

What if the Democrats ......

[Proudrooster]

What if the Democrats actually "got smart" and were trying to woo the tech community back into the fold with real net neutrality legislation?

Re:Pai's position is that Congress needs to do it

[SirAstral]

Pai is Constitutionally correct.

The constitution makes it clear that only congress can make laws. They do not have the power to create a law making agency. They can only create agencies to enforce law and that's it.

Read it and weep

[SuperKendall]

I do hope everyone here will read what the bill ACTUALLY SAYS, rather than merely the claims that are going to be made about the bill...

Re:Read it and weep

[dgatwood]

Unfortunately, this is true. It's a safe bet that it was written by lobbyists for their corporate masters, and that the American public will get totally and thoroughly screwed. I mean, I could be wrong, but statistically speaking, I'm probably not.

Re:Veto by trump

[ASCIIxTended]

Does anyone think Trump will allow this to pass?

After all, he did put Patel in to power. Would he sign a bill that disagrees with Ajit's position?

Actually, Obama put him into power May of 2012.

when the republicans vote against this

[cats-paw]

can we forever dispense with the "both parties are the same" nonsense ?

my guess is not.

and BTW, if you give a shit about the environment, they are most definitely not the same.

Doesn't solve the problem

[Solandri]

The ISPs do not have natural monopolies. They have government-granted monopolies. Instead of passing Net Neutrality, which only attempts to address one of the symptoms of these monopolies, why not just solve the problem altogether? Pass legislation prohibiting local governments from granting monopolies. Require at least two cable and two phone companies in every local jurisdiction. Then if one of them tries something stupid like throttle Netflix as a ploy to extort Netflix into paying them, their customers will simply cancel and switch service to the competitor ISP.

Re:Doesn't solve the problem

[dgatwood]

The ISPs do not have natural monopolies. They have government-granted monopolies.

For the majority of the country, the monopoly is, indeed, a natural monopoly. The average lifespan of a second cable company in most of America is measured in single-digit years. We've seen it time and time again. A new company comes in because the old cable company is charging extortionate prices. The existing company drops their prices, undercutting the new company and preventing them from getting enough subscribers to pay off the interest on their physical plant (all those cable lines). After three to five years, the newcomer gives up and sells off its assets to the incumbent, who gets a new (often government-subsidized) network infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of building it themselves.

A local government can "require" two cable companies all it wants to, but in practice, the only way that is ever going to happen is if that government steps in and pays for the cost of running the cable lines. Otherwise, there is way too much first-mover advantage for a second company to ever succeed. And this is true very nearly everywhere, with the possible exception of major cities.

And if the government is building out the infrastructure anyway, then doing it for a for-profit company is just corporate welfare. Why not instead create competition the right way — by leasing the use of that infrastructure non-preferentially to any competitor that wants to do business in your community? This approach, unlike competing wire providers, actually works in practice.

Re:Doesn't solve the problem

[thegarbz]

You're viewing this to narrowly. Yes the ISP's monopoly is government granted, but it is also most definitely natural. Being an ISP has an incredibly expensive cost of entry which creates the natural monopoly. How do you fix that by legislation? You can't legislate a company into existence. Mandating competition where naturally none exists doesn't work. The only alternative is for the government to enter the field directly and pay for the infrastructure which is how countries get into this situation in the first place when the result gets privatised.

There's a word for that: Duopoly and it's no better than a monopoly.

Re: The real story - Republican apologizes for lyi

[GLMDesigns]

Serious Question.

I still don't understand Net Neutrality.

Does this mean that companies cannot deplatform websites and people?
Does it mean that companies must treat all data as the same? (So data from an email and a netflix video must be treated the same?
Does it mean that companies cannot come to agreements with content providers? After all if TMobile give free data access to Netflix it is promoting that company above Hulu.

As a Democrat I completely disagree

[rsilvergun]

data is data. Whether it's your voice or bits. Common carrier applies because it's for the same thing. They're both just communicating over a wire. We wouldn't even be having this conversation if it was still all modems since it would literally _be_ voice. The point is the intent of congress, which was to force what was then the principal means of telecom to behave.

Re: The real story - Republican apologizes for lyi

[Dragonslicer]

Serious Question. I still don't understand Net Neutrality.

The goal of Network Neutrality is to prevent ISPs from abusing their monopoly position in the ISP market to affect other markets, such as movie/television content.

Does this mean that companies cannot deplatform websites and people?

No, unless you mean ISPs blocking certain legal websites. YouTube and Facebook are not ISPs, and anyone that gets kicked off YouTube or Facebook is free to use some other similar service.

Does it mean that companies must treat all data as the same? (So data from an email and a netflix video must be treated the same?

No, the part of the packet that can't be used for prioritization is the source/destination address, whichever is the remote end. Quality of Service is still allowed for prioritizing packets that require lower latency in order to function correctly. ISPs can prioritize VoIP over BitTorrent, but they can't prioritize VoIP packets to the ISP's service over VoIP packets to Google.

Does it mean that companies cannot come to agreements with content providers? After all if TMobile give free data access to Netflix it is promoting that company above Hulu.

There's some debate on this point, but by the strictest definition, yes, agreements that make e.g. Netflix's data not count towards your data cap would be prohibited. Such an agreement would result in the ISP degrading Hulu's performance in a way that it doesn't do so for Netflix, which would be using their position in the ISP market to influence the video streaming market. Something like your ISP paying for your Netflix service is also debatable; obviously it's favoring a certain video provider, but other video providers would still work equally well. It's also less of an issue when the "free" video streaming company is completely separate from the ISP, because it isn't as clear a case of monopoly abuse for the benefit of the abuser.

Re: The real story - Republican apologizes for lyi

[Shotgun]

A) If the Democrats bill goes into any sort of details like this I will be both surprised and excited. I fully expect it to be more along the lines of their Green New Deal (ie, a ridiculous wishlist of unrealistic fluff). If the bill mentions "packet" I'll be happy.

B) Blocking marketing agreements may not be desirable. What happens when Spectrum negotiates to get Netflix and Hulu to build co-lo centers within their network areas. Netflix agrees, but Hulu resists. Spectrum will now have a lower cost for delivering Netflix vs Hulu. What if, to save money, Spectrum cuts back on (or decides not to upgrade) their peering connection with the partner that DOES have the Hulu co-lo?

Again, I fully expect any bill put forth to gloss over these sort of technical issues.