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Colorado's 'Open Internet' Bill Would Punish Internet-Providing Violators By Taking Their Grant Money Away (coloradosun.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Colorado Sun: Now that Democrats are in charge, Colorado's second attempt at its own version of a net neutrality law passed the General Assembly and now heads to Gov. Jared Polis for his certain signature. Keeping internet speeds consistent regardless of whether a customer is streaming video from Comcast or Netflix wasn't the only intent of the Senate Bill 78. The bill also makes internet service providers pay back state grants to build broadband infrastructure if those companies use paid prioritization to favor some internet traffic over others, or slow down speeds for some users.
The Colorado law is similar to the former federal one in that it would prohibit ISPs from prioritizing certain content. It would also force violating ISPs that benefited from state broadband grants to refund all money received in the previous 24 months. After the governor signs the bill into law, Colorado's attorney general would by Oct. 1 create guidelines on how consumers can file complaints about net neutrality violations. "What I was really looking for in this year's bill was the appropriate nexus of action. A lot of the bills we saw getting in trouble in other states, or bills that were facing a lot of opposition, were more about sending a message of net neutrality instead of looking for a fulcrum point for state action," said Sen. Kerry Donovan, a Democrat from Vail who sponsored last year's bill and wrote this year's bill. "This bill says that if you're going to ask to be funded by the people in Colorado directly out of their paycheck then you need to adhere to these principles."
The Colorado law is similar to the former federal one in that it would prohibit ISPs from prioritizing certain content. It would also force violating ISPs that benefited from state broadband grants to refund all money received in the previous 24 months. After the governor signs the bill into law, Colorado's attorney general would by Oct. 1 create guidelines on how consumers can file complaints about net neutrality violations. "What I was really looking for in this year's bill was the appropriate nexus of action. A lot of the bills we saw getting in trouble in other states, or bills that were facing a lot of opposition, were more about sending a message of net neutrality instead of looking for a fulcrum point for state action," said Sen. Kerry Donovan, a Democrat from Vail who sponsored last year's bill and wrote this year's bill. "This bill says that if you're going to ask to be funded by the people in Colorado directly out of their paycheck then you need to adhere to these principles."
The problem isn't traffic management..it's that just about every ISP in America operates on a very huge conflict of interest: We have very few stand-alone ISP's anymore; they're all rolled in to some kind of cable/television provider. The problem is things like Netflix and Hulu hurt your video business...and the high-speed internet connection you sell is allowing people to view your competitors. In captialistic America...this is bad. It's a conflict of interest for them to sell you a service that will let you access a competitor. The companies want all your money, they won't get all your money that way. So there's a LOT of interest on them to block, throttle, or degrade competition. It's not an issue of "different lanes"; it's the fact the ISP's don't want you to use all those lanes. They absolutely want to deny you the video-streaming lane. And hey..while we're at it. WalShart paid us a whole bunch of money to direct customers over there...so we're going to give 100% priority to WalShart's website and we're going to restrict access to Amazon as per our agreement. Hey...Faux News is offering us even more money to make sure all our customers can only consume their news online...so we'll make sure Faux's website loads in two seconds but everyone else will time out. This is not playing favorites against YouTube and Netflix...this is saying "We don't want you using either so you'll have to pay for our services." 5G is apparently going to focus on home internet as well. Just about every wireless provider owns a TV service in some way or another. You think a customer on TMobile will be able to subscribe to Sling? Hell no! They're going to block every other streaming video service so you will take their Level3 or nothing. Verizon will do it with their TV...hell...AT&T is already walking down the path of making DirecTV an exclusive product that will require their network. Sure, that's a few years down the road...but they've effectively launched the very last satellite. Once the current fleet is dead...they'll be streaming only. None of this will really be competition. The providers will collude to keep prices high. The consumers will once again be getting fucked by big corporate thanks to the backing of a government that feels consumer rights don't exist.
When the goddam federal government is a fucking loony bin, the states step up and say, "Hold my beer."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.