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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.
"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.
There's 2 seperate problems here;
The first is allowing content distribution companies aka publishers to also own and create content on a massive scale and in turn, dictate the discussion in a democracy. We know historically how disasterous it is to eliminate the ability of a body politic to discuss their differences and figure out how to manage the economic and political system; its the whole reason we have the freedom of speech.
The second is a bigger issue with local pay 2 play franchising agreements; ISP's pay government, government grants monopolies, ISP's charge whatever they want. The fundemental engineering problem there is implimenting public wireway that anyone can pay the local government to use which is a difficult endeavour to solve because the realization is we need to seperate data as its own utility from other utility services' infrastructure. We used to have that when POTS networks were a thing; we've since replaced those POTS networks with Coaxial cable networks (still copper) and Cellular networks both of which present new engineering problems that the market has shown itself unable and unwilling to solve. States are attempting to retire their POTS cable and are finding out 911 emergency service goes away with it which is literally what keeps roving violent gangs from rampaging the countryside.
Net Neutrality is one way of approaching the problem and a step in the right direction towards preserving a functioning economy and country. However until you begin breaking up media organizations and begin seperating publishers from content producers, you won't have a workable solution.
I would further point out the issue with robocalls.
Telecoms are quite capable of clamping this down with an iron fist, but don't. There's overwhelming demand for that clampdown to happen, but --- somehow --- the telecoms just won't self-regulate like GP insists is possible.
It's almost like the proposed methodology just does not work in the real world or something.... /s
There's no need for 4k streaming of anything, IMO.
However, there *IS* a need for telecoms to stop hoarding their profits to make investors shit rainbows, and instead actually improve their networks. I wont hold my breath for that though.
I have a general net neutrality question.
Consider that 1000 of my local ISP's customers want to watch a hot new Netflix show. My ISP is 1000 km from the nearest Netflix data center. The dumb solution is that 1000 customers sent requests to ISP who sends them 1000 km to Netflix who sends the show 1000 times over the backbone connection. The smart solution is that Netflix colocates a server in my ISP's small local data center which they send the popular shows to just once over the backbone, and this server sends it to the 1000 local customers.
For the smart solution to happen, there have to be incentives for Netflix and the ISP to do it. Without net neutrality, it could work: ISP gets to advertise that Netflix is 0 rated (or 0.5 rated or whatever) towards customer data caps, and benefits from being more attractive to customers and not paying for so much backbone data. Netflix benefits by not needing so much internet backbone. Customers benefit obviously, at least in the short term. (Customers may suffer in the long term through lack of competition.) Would-be Netflix competitors are very unhappy. Possibly money changes hands between ISP and Netflix to make this work, although I'm not sure in which direction.
With net neutrality, the ISP can't offer reduced rating on Netflix data. How do the incentives work in this case? The great reduction of data going over the backbone should provide savings, but who was paying this cost in the first place? Does the ISP want to pay Netflix to colocate a server, or to charge them for it?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
It'll die in the Senate, on the plus side this puts the Republicans on record as opposing Net Neutrality.
Exactly... and that's the point.
they have to win both chambers and probably the presidency to.
2020 is coming along with another blue wave.
OTOH, I'm pretty sure it's a minor issue for even a lot of the folks on this forum; and whatever the GOP is selling outweighs the value of NN.
Fear, hate and tax cuts for the rich is what they are selling. However, they changed the intensity from being subliminal and liminal to being superliminal which has had diminishing returns.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Welcome back to your copper insulated wireline that 100% NN ready and federally approved.
Yep pretty much. They could have written a clean NN bill that addresses competition.
What they elected to do instead was continue POTS era Title II bullshit with an insane number of administrative forbearances that can be dissolved at any time by the whim of technocrats.
Everyone who is cheerleading for this bill enjoy regressive Internet USF taxes coming to an account statement near you.
Democrats blew the best opportunity we've ever had to get constructive NN passed.
What this means is that if you want NN, you have to vote for a Democrat, or at least an Independent. And they have to win both chambers and probably the presidency to.
Or, you could, you know, engage your representative and senator (R/D/wutevr), and express your point of view in a clear, reasoned manner. Believe it or not, they do listen to your calls and read your letters/emails (at least someone on their staff does. There is a populist movement on both sides of the aisle and the incumbents better pay attention to it, or they will be looking for a new job.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Telecoms are quite capable of clamping this down with an iron fist, but don't. There's overwhelming demand for that clampdown to happen, but --- somehow --- the telecoms just won't self-regulate like GP insists is possible.
I suspect that you don't have much experience in telecoms. CallerID need to be settable by the calling end. This has been explained on Slashdot many times so your argument is weak. Just do your own research on why this need to be and you will easily find.
What we would really need is some kind of tracebility/digital signature of the calling end spoofing the CallerID.
Unfortunately, I am not aware of such provision in SIP or other protocols right now although somebody might already be working on this.
If nobody is currently working on this, why don't you volunteer?
Cheers,
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
NN isn't about the consumer, it's about who pays.
This is an oxymoron. The consumer ultimately is footing the bill for everything one way or another.
Welcome back to your copper insulated wireline that 100% NN ready and federally approved.
Welcome back to your one federal NN approved monopoly telco.
No more new competition. No new community broadband. No network innovation allowed.
Federal rules and laws protecting monopoly networks all the way down to the modem.
Nothing new for your gated community. Nothing better for your gentrified neighborhood.
Want community broadband? The exisiting NN approved network is the only network allowed.
Federal laws and rules slowing your internet since 2019?
Restoring slow gov approved networks all over the USA. No more new network freedom.
You really don't have the first clue about what the Net Neutrality rules did and did not do prior to December 14, 2017, do you? All this new bill does is reverse the Ajit Pai FCC fuckery from December, 2017 and sets it back to the way it was before that. Do you recall the Internet being slow before 2017? Do you really believe there was no network innovation before December 2017?
You really are a stupid sonofabitch, you know that?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nobody in real life cares about what people call Net Neutrality.
In reality, NN is about corporations trying to force other corporations to pay for infrastructure and access. Everything else is just a sideshow, and it's pathetic how so-called geeks have gotten suckered into taking sides in this fight.
NN isn't about the consumer, it's about who pays.
Believe you me, people in real life care about the inflated bill for crappy internet service from their local telecommunications monopoly and they are pissed off about the crappy service so they care about what people call Net Neutrality even if they might call the lack of it price gouging and crappy service.
The market solution to insufficient competition is, in theory, more competition. When there's not enough competition, we have a market failure, and regulators should step in, in this case with Net Neutrality.
You are correct indeed, that's what I do too with some variation and I seldom get robocalls, say 1 a month on average and that's from direct lines that don't have to go through an IVR before ringing whichever device are close to me.
I don't use any apps although, I control this at the voip switch and most of my cell/copper line calls are routed through it in some way.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
NN is about removing extortion.
Netflix pays their ISP for their connection, I pay mine for mine. That's all there has to be. There's no reason for my ISP to care about Netflix, because whatever are the costs of my usage of Netflix should be covered by the money I pay.
The regulators have been taken hostage by lobbyists who successfully hijack state law to ban local competition.
One case where the feds *should* invoke interstate commerce to protect competition.
Did you forget where you're posting? Don't come here with your bald faced lie that the FCC NN regs prohibited QoS. Your contention that Republicans aren't "really" opposed is also severely undermined by the support of Republicans for faux NN laws that allow paid prioritization, missing the whole point, an anticompetitive tactic by an oligarchy. That support also undermines your ridiculous claim the Trump FTC would pursue it in absence of a law.
You are disingenous, posting an outright lie followed by extraordinarily misleading arguments. And shame on the upmodders who also don't recognize that bullshit for what it is.
Yeah so you sign up for the lower tier service, what does that have to do with NN or subsidizing higher tier service?
The answer to "the regulator is toothless" is not "remove the regulator". It's "give the regulator teeth". Similarly, the answer to "the regulator has been captured by providers" is "don't allow this to happen". See also: FAA & Boeing.