House Democrats Refuse To Weaken Net Neutrality Bill, Defeat GOP Amendments (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday rejected Republican attempts to weaken a bill that would restore net neutrality rules. The House Commerce Committee yesterday approved the "Save the Internet Act" in a 30-22 party-line vote, potentially setting up a vote of the full House next week. The bill is short and simple -- it would fully reinstate the rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015, reversing the repeal led by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in 2017.

Commerce Committee Republicans repeatedly introduced amendments that would weaken the bill but were consistently rebuffed by the committee's Democratic majority. "The Democrats beat back more than a dozen attempts from Republicans to gut the bill with amendments throughout the bill's markup that lasted 9.5 hours," The Hill reported yesterday. Republican amendments would have weakened the bill by doing the following: Exempt all 5G wireless services from net neutrality rules; Exempt all multi-gigabit broadband services from net neutrality rules; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that builds broadband service in any part of the U.S. that doesn't yet have download speeds of at least 25Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3Mbps; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that gets universal service funding from the FCC's Rural Health Care Program; Exempt ISPs that serve 250,000 or fewer subscribers from certain transparency rules that require public disclosure of network management practices; and Prevent the FCC from limiting the types of zero-rating (i.e., data cap exemptions) that ISPs can deploy. An additional Republican amendment "would have imposed net neutrality rules but declared that broadband is an information service, [preventing] the FCC from imposing any other type of common-carrier regulations on ISPs," reports Ars Technica. "The committee did approve a Democratic amendment to exempt ISPs with 100,000 or fewer subscribers from the transparency rules, but only for one year."

Comments

Great

[Major_Disorder]

Nice to see the Democrats showing some balls. But it is pointless grandstanding at this point, as it will never get to Trumpy's desk, let alone him signing it.

Re:Great

[BringsApples]

Nice to see the Democrats showing some balls.

I certainly don't mean to start a political discussion over this, but I don't think there's anything to do with balls when it comes to politicians. Had they balls, they'd be doing more along the lines of reason. No, these guys get paid to push laws/regulation.

If there are balls out there, it's Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Twitter that're bribing, I mean lobbying, to keep net neutrality. With the way things have gone so far, it's a wonder why anyone even cares. The next president can just wave a pen around words on an executive order and bring it back, or visa-versa.

Sometimes I wish they'd just turn the internet off and we can all get back to real life.

Re:Great

[harrkev]

If there are balls out there, it's Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Twitter that're bribing, I mean lobbying, to keep net neutrality

But some of these are the same companies that try to censor certain viewpoints on their own platforms. So neutrality of data is fine, but neutrality of opinion isn't.

And before anybody says it, no, their censorship is not limited to "hate speech," unless you have a very broad definition of "hate" to include "anything that I disagree with."

Re:Great

[mcl630]

If there are balls out there, it's Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Twitter that're bribing, I mean lobbying, to keep net neutrality

As opposed to Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T that are bribing, I mean lobbying, to end net neutrality.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeals homicide law

I'm not dead yet, so no biggie!

Re:Great

[jeff4747]

You have no right to use their platforms. The right of association means they have the right to choose who uses their platform.

Don't like it? Well then you really want net neutrality, so your new platform that accepts your speech has equal access to the Internet.

Re:Great

[Immerman]

Mueller explicitly did NOT exonerate Trump. There's a world of difference between "he didn't do it" and "there's not enough evidence to justify trying to impeach a sitting president, when the Senate that would have to convict him obviously has no desire to do so".

Not to mention, we have NO idea what's actually in the report itself, since Barr refuses to allow it to be released, while misrepresenting its contents in a laughably short summary.

Re:Great

[ilsaloving]

I don't think it's so much about balls, as a critical realization:

The Republicans have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will do their best to fuck up anything that the Democrats try to do, no matter how constructive and needful an idea it is.

Republicans think they have a mandate to block anything Democrat, and that mandate overrides everything else includes basic good sense.

Obama's greatest mistake (in hindsight) was that he tried to create a bridge with the Republicans. Republicans do not want to bridge the gulf. They don't want compromise. They want to "beat" the Democrats no matter the cost. Hell, they had the majority and spent almost all of their time undoing anything and everything the Democrats wanted, no matter how inane, rather than actually governing the bloody country.

And they proved it again with this legislation by trying to hamstringing it to the point of uselessness, despite literally the entire country (not counting telecoms) wanting it.

The Democrats did the right thing.

Re:Great

[youngone]

That sounds like an awful way to run a country.
You guys should try something different.

Re:Great

[Darinbob]

Big players want net neutrality, and different big players do not want net neutrality. It's basically a fight between two different groups of corporations.

Re:Great

[Darinbob]

Jesus, get over it already, Obama won in 2008 and the same people who bitched and moaned about him for 8 years and declared from the highest pulpits that they would keep him to a one term president and now the mental giants who declare "now that our guy is in office, we want you to shut up!"

So which is, we're only allowed to criticize Democratic politicians who win but have to keep quiet about Republican presidents? There's so much hypocrisy out there it's ridiculous, but that's the nature of politics. Spend four years in a investigation of Bill Clinton with nothing substantial to show for it, but literally some of the same people who were cheerleading that witchhunt were the ones insisting that there should have been no investigation this time. More hypocrisy.

The only real political ideals anyone has these days is "our guys good, your guys bad!" Anyone sane in this country is opting out of politics.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

No he didn't, Barr did.

Prosecutors from Muellers team says that Barr is full of shit.

Re:Member when?

[sjames]

That's not how you boil a frog...

Bad Congress / Good Congress

[SomePoorSchmuck]

Bad Congress -- I think government control of internet content and data transfer will be a net loss for society.
Good Congress -- if it's going to be done, under the American system, it ought to be passed as a bill in Congress, not decreed by a President or a President's appointee.

Real problems like : Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me preface this post with: Shut the fuck up ivan.
The difference between you and literally every slashdot poster 10 years ago is obvious.
"stop regulating business"

Regulating business has been central to every society with laws since 1776 bce with hammaburi's first 300 or so laws. ^^^ . This is the sort of statement I expect from the typically well educated posters who hang out on Slashdot.
You sound like this:

Durrr govanment isn't supporsed to be messing with business. Y don't they do imporannt work like bring back coal jerbs

Which is exactly the sort of retarded argument I'd expect from the sort of poor unwashed prole that would have zero interest coming here unless you paid him.

I do

[rsilvergun]

right after Pai was in and signaled he would kill NN my ISP started metering my bandwidth. They hadn't done that for a few decades (literally, I've had high speed cable since the 90s when it was only $40/mo. I got it because it was literally cheaper than dial up and a second line). That wasn't a co-iniki-dink. Pai emboldened them.

They're also busy fucking with Netflix. The only reason they haven't started charging a Netflix tax is they're worried if they do it too soon folks will rebel and elect a Democrat in 2020. The mass of voters respond consistently to very, very little, but there's one thing that _always_ moves them: Price increases. 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (depending on if you consider $1000 bucks in the bank as "not paycheck-to-paycheck") so it's no damn surprise. Hell, I'll say this, I know folk who'll admit to living paycheck-to-paycheck. Lots of them. It's so pervasive that it's not a stigma anymore. We're not "temporarily inconvenienced millionaires" anymore. We know which side our bread's buttered on and it's the wrong side.

Raise the cost of internet & NetFlix and make sure every damn body knows Trump & Pai were responsible and you'll have a revolt at the polls. Metering you can get away with because it's tough for the rank and file to get their heads around. But make no mistake, the Netflix tax is coming and much, much worse.