Bill That Would Restore Net Neutrality Moves Forward Despite Telecom's Best Efforts To Kill It (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Last month, Democrats introduced a simple three page bill that would do one thing: restore FCC net neutrality rules and the agency's authority over ISPs, both stripped away by a hugely-controversial decision by the agency in late 2017. Tuesday morning, the Save the Internet Act passed through a key House committee vote and markup session -- despite some last-minute efforts by big telecom to weaken the bill.

"Net neutrality is coming back with a vengeance," said Evan Greer, deputy director of consumer group Fight for the Future said in a statement. "Politicians are slowly learning that they can't get away with shilling for big telecom anymore," Greer said. "We're harnessing the power of the Internet to save it, and any lawmaker who stands in our way will soon face the wrath of their constituents, who overwhelmingly want lawmakers to restore these basic protections." Greer told Motherboard that several last minute amendments were introduced by lawmakers during the markup period in an attempt to water down the bill, but all were pulled in the wake of widespread public interest in the hearing. "It seems like the GOP retreated a bit given after the huge swell of public support," said Greer, who told Motherboard that 300,000 people watched the organization's livestream of the markup process. That attention "really emboldened the Democrats and shored up the ones that were wobbling," Greer said.

Comments

Re:It'll die in the Senate

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It'll die in the Senate. On the plus side this puts the Republicans on record as opposing Net Neutrality.

The Republicans aren't "opposed to Network Neutrality". They're opposed to using a broken fix that will break things further.

As I've been saying for years (often on slashdot):
- Treating all packets the same breaks things (because TCP will ramp up until it eats streaming.)
- The real issue is not "non-neutrality", but several kinds of anticompetitve behavior by oligopolist ISPs (in vertically-integrated conglomerates with providers of services carried on their pipes.)
  - The right fix is to move the issue from the FCC (with its technical bent and cluelessness about competition and market issues) to the FTC (which has a big hammer and is not afraid to use it on big companies).
  - This will just require a minor tweak (to convince the FTC that they're hot banned from going after internet-related companies, and perhaps another to insure they can afford to do so).

The Trump administration is the first one that sees things the same way. (Try actually READING what Ajit Pai has said.)

= = = =

Now if they only do HALF of it - slap down the FCC but not sick the FTC onto the problem - THEN you'll have the problem so many slashdotters are wringing their hands over. (That would be like California's experiment with moving the nonviolent mentally-ill out of asylums to outpatient treatment - then doing only the first half, resulting in the start of the "homelessness problem".)

But Trump's administration has a STRONG incentive to do both halves: The mainstream news media have treated him very badly - and they're parts of the same vertically integrated conglomerates as the ISPs. FTC action against anticompetitive ISP practices could easily result in a breakup of each of the handful of vertically-integrated conglomerates in question and/or other penalties, causing their pocketbooks commensurate pain.