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

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

The big players on the Internet don't actually want net neutrality. Much like privacy regulations and Warren's dumb "data breach" law, these are laws that are intended to keep new players from harming established players. Net neutrality would help new players, so the big players don't really want it. They have to keep up appearances, so they'll claim to like it as an advertising push, but they don't really care any more. They can afford to put pressure on ISPs and even with the ISP monopolies the US has, no monopoly is going to block Google or Amazon.

Net neutrality is dead and will stay dead because you can bet the instant the Democrats have the ability to pass such a bill they'll all of a sudden forget about it. Voters don't really care about net neutrality, as long as their Facebook and YouTube works. And since no ISP would be insane enough to block those, voters don't care. New comers are screwed though, and that's just the way established players like it.

Re:Great

[Trailer Trash]

Exactly. The whole thing is a shit-show of money being more important than reason, those who have investors, and which "side" they're on. "The People" are like muted pets on the side of it all.

Yep. When we were fighting the superdmca bill 17 or so years ago here in TN, the cable lobby was buying both Republicans and Democrats. Actually, the bill's sponsor in the senate was a Republican who happened to be the father of the head of the TN cable lobby. The house sponsor was a Democrat with long family ties to politics around here.

Re:Great

[PopeRatzo]

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.

You're not being clear. Are you saying every company with a web presence has to have a "neutrality of opinion"? Are you sure you want that?

Re:Information service?

[WaffleMonster]

If broadband is considered an "information service" which now prevents the FCC from imposing any regulations on ISP's, why does the US government give $$$$ away to broadband carriers to offer higher speeds such as the Connect America Fund (CAF) ? If the FCC is the government's form of regulating communications services in the United States how can they offer CAF funding to promote faster internet speeds but at same time the FCC claims it can't regulate it?

The FCC maintains multiple contradictory definitions of the same terms used interchangeably to get away with whatever they please.

For example according to the FCC broadband Internet counts is 200kbit/s in either direction AND at least 25/3 mbit/s. To a normal person it's plainly obvious both definitions can't concurrently be true but hey if your the FCC anything goes.

Re:Great

[Immerman]

You're assuming we're able to flip the Senate in 2020, which would need a far more decisive turnaround than we managed in 2018.

Also, that voting would go along party lines, which seems questionable for the Democratic party, given the resistance it's putting up against the progressives.

The GOP isn't just screwing with the Dems for fun

[rsilvergun]

they have a very specific agenda, to wit:

1. Cut taxes on their donors.
2. Cut regulations, which sounds good in theory, until you remember 2008 and how cutting regulations got us there. Or safety regs on mines. Or live in a place like Flint, Mi, or any one of the thousands of regulations that help you personally that folks like to forget about or pretend won't be cut.
3. End Social Security & Medicare. It's at the point where they'll have to raise the cap on taxable income to pay for it, and that would mean cutting into their donor's profits, again.
4. Give the Evangelicals anything they want so long as it doesn't inconvenience their donors. Overturning Roe v Wade, allowing discrimination against the folks evangelicals don't like and yes, that's up to and including theocracy. Look at Saudi Arabia and how the ruling class lives large and without moral constraints while the working class follows the Koran to the letter. Think that but with King James.
5. More war, more empire building.
6. And while all this is going on take as much money for themselves as they can

There are others, and yes you'll find right wing Dems like Joe Biden and Beto O'Rouke going along with most if not all of the above (both Biden & Beto have got behind a program to end Social Security and replace it with a means tested welfare program, and Chuck Schumer & Pelosi have been selling us out to their donors for years. ).

It's always the same damn thing though. Our ruling class is clawing back the ground they lost post WWII. What I find so frustrating is how obvious they are about it and how nobody seems to give a damn. Especially if they've got theirs (fuck me).

But getting back to my point, the GOP is _not_ just being contrarian. They have a very specific agenda, long term and well financed. The sooner we figure out that their agenda isn't compatible with our continued well being the sooner we can do something about it.