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 announced Monday that Democrats will introduce a net neutrality bill to replace the open internet rules that were repealed in 2017.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

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: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.

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.

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.

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: 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