Republicans Back Down, FCC To Enforce Net Neutrality Rules 599
An anonymous reader writes: Republican resistance has ended for the FCC's plans to regulate the internet as a public utility. FCC commissioners are working out the final details, and they're expected to approve the plan themselves on Thursday. "The F.C.C. plan would let the agency regulate Internet access as if it is a public good.... In addition, it would ban the intentional slowing of the Internet for companies that refuse to pay broadband providers. The plan would also give the F.C.C. the power to step in if unforeseen impediments are thrown up by the handful of giant companies that run many of the country's broadband and wireless networks." Dave Steer of the Mozilla Foundation said, "We've been outspent, outlobbied. We were going up against the second-biggest corporate lobby in D.C., and it looks like we've won."
Bring on the lausuits (Score:5, Insightful)
This is good news but the deed isn't done until Comcast, TWC, AT&T, and Verizon are defeated in court.
Re:Bring on the lausuits (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bring on the lausuits (Score:5, Informative)
POTUS doesn't need to sign it.
It's rule making by an established authority within their jurisdiction.
The only way they can undo it is through the courts, or revising the laws establishing the FCC's authority.
Because such a bill WOULD require POTUS' signature, that is unlikely to happen, at least until 2024.
Therefore the courts are the more likely option, but the courts previously established in their prior ruling on net neutrality how the FCC could or should do what they wanted to do, when they struck the previous attempt.
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Telcom companies have a lot more money to fight a legal battle than the FCC does. See also: Why it took ~35 years to get smoking under control even though the FDA declared smoking a major hazard to your health in the 1980's. Private corporations simply have more money to fight those kinds of battles than governmental organizations.
Re:Bring on the lausuits (Score:5, Insightful)
The only time the "people" win is when the Federal Government does not regulate. Regulation is strangulation and, ultimately, death.
I guess by "people" (with quotation marks) you mean corporations.
Yes, let's not have any rules or oversight on "people" who were born in a lawyer's office, can potentially live forever, are motivated purely by greed, and will gladly break the law when it suits them. What could possibly go wrong?
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But I'm sure the Free Market Unicorns will force them to change their ways or die, right?
False dichotomy. Though you're no more guilty of it than many here.
Monopoly (or oligopoly, I'm grouping them here) and free market are not the same. Free markets can lead to monopoly. But once monopoly or oligopoly are achieved, there is no "free market" anymore. So they aren't even close to the same things.
That's why, clear back to Adam Smith, we've had the concept of Antitrust Laws. It is antitrust laws which are responsible for preventing monopolies from forming, and KEEPING everyone playing within
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Could we just go straight to an artillery barrage? Please?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bring on the lausuits (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up
Pratchett said it best:
“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
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The only thing I can think of that is worse is to give the US government a foot in the door here.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
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There's a difference between Net Neutrality the voluntary routing rule (before the term was hijacked), and Internet regulations by force, >300 pages of which the FCC is proposing (and we can't even read, how are you enjoying that transparency?).
Net neutrality is fine, but don't let the FCC become the packet police.
Let's be sure that the existing court system can't handle problems BEFORE we go about adding to the pages of legal statute.
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I said the same thing. Shortsightedness because it gains you temporarily what you want, never works in the long run.
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If it were only about setting data free, you'd be right. BUT this is the government we're talking about. You believe the government isn't in this to gain more power and control over us?
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* do what you want insofar as traffic shaping, but know that you do so without any DMCA Safe Harbor protection, and get no immunity from lawsuits or crimes caused by user activity. Why? Because if you modify/inspect user traffic, you gain and share a measure of legal responsibility for it.
Great. Because an ISP assigns better QoS to VoIP or streaming video than someone's bittorrent or ftp traffic, they automatically become a co-conspirator when someone uses Vonage to plan a bank robbery.
Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds good-- but I wonder just what form that regulation will take, and what level of regulatory capture will emerge.
The republicans gave up too easily. Look how long and drawn out their battle against Obamacare was. In comparison, this measure seems to have been abandoned without much fight. I can't help but wonder why.
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The republicans gave up too easily. Look how long and drawn out their battle against Obamacare was. In comparison, this measure seems to have been abandoned without much fight. I can't help but wonder why.
Just wait, you'll see in a few years. Wailing & gnashing of teeth to follow.
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Interesting)
Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt, right here folks.
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Insightful)
You say that, but you have no idea what they are about to do.
Don't you wonder why they don't release the proposed regulations? Not even a bit curious?
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Informative)
Actually I do know what they are about to do. The FCC released a 4 page summary of what the regulations were going to accomplish earlier this month. Just because you have no idea what's going on doesn't mean the rest of us are as uninformed.
http://transition.fcc.gov/Dail... [fcc.gov]
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing you posted refutes anything at all.
And surprise, surprise I still have the same doctor & (a better) health plan, but my fiance w/ an expensive sleep disorder was actually able to get insurance.
So you can fuck right off with your F.U.D.
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Informative)
"Congratulations, I'm glad it worked out for you. For many others, not so much."
I don't think there are many legitimate cases where it did not work out. People who had junk insurance (insurance where you pay money but get nothing of value) had to drop it. Sure. I'll give you that.
In my particular case, I was denied insurance. And I did not even have any existing conditions. I went 8 years without insurance or having to see a doctor. I guess I saved some money. But now they can no longer deny me insurance. I fail to see Obamacare as a bad thing.
Oh, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look. The only reason you wouldn't be able to keep your insurance that the ACA could even *vaguely* be named responsible for is if it was so bad that it didn't meet the minimum standards of the ACA, and your insurance company didn't upgrade the policy accordingly -- most likely, they cancelled it in favor of new policies that *did* meet the minimum requirements. The whole *point* of the ACA was to see to it that people were *sufficiently* insured.
Otherwise, the only reasons you would lose your current insurance would be if the insurance company cancelled your policy -- and in that case, the blame lands squarely on the insurance company; or your employer decided to take the opportunity to cut your benefits and blame it on the ACA. In that case, look to your employer.
As for your doctor, the only ACA-related reason you might not be able to keep your doctor is if they don't bother to register with the pool you chose -- and all you have to do there is tell your doctor which one it is. And if they fail to register, you can blame your doctor. My doctor did the right thing, and she's still my doctor. I specifically asked, and she said there was almost nothing to it.
Now, let's look this issue right in the face. Are there conditions where you couldn't keep your doctor? Sure. For instance, if your doctor got run over by a bus. Or retired. Or committed suicide. Or moved to Botswana. Or switched jobs. So "Obama lied", right? But of course, if you're a sane person and not trying to shill your way through a bout of Obama-hate, you would understand that there will be some exceptions, and generally, they're going to be related to the doctor's circumstance -- just as the bus incident would be. Because there isn't one damn thing in the ACA that says "this here doctor can't be used."
As with the previous poster, my circumstances were enormously improved by the ACA. I did get to keep my doctor (it was no problem at all, she just did a little paperwork, that was it) and my coverage is now excellent.
Is everything perfect? No. Republicans are blocking the medicaid expansion here, so many no- and low-income individuals who were intended to be covered by the ACA, aren't. While this goes on, the taxes we paid here to cover them go to another state as the already-allocated funds are disbursed elsewhere. Consequently, our medical and insurance costs here are rising because we are paying the hospitals for uncompensated care for people who should have been covered, and for which the funds were already allocated.
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I don't think there are many legitimate cases where it did not work out. People who had junk insurance (insurance where you pay money but get nothing of value) had to drop it. Sure. I'll give you that.
My position also. I know several people who had this problem. They were forced to pay insurance premiums through their work, but the employer chose really bad companies that would fight everything you attempted to submit. Even then, it would take them 6+ months to process anything, so enjoy having collection agencies after you while you try to get your insurance to pay.
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If you had done a bit of research, or DEITY$ forbid, read the very thread you are posting on, you'd know that what you are parroting is disingenuous drivel.
It's 8 pages of regulations. The bulk of the document is responding to the millions of FCC comments as they are required to do by law.
https://twitter.com/GigiBSohnF... [twitter.com]
http://transition.fcc.gov/Dail... [fcc.gov]
Also, the text of the ICC/USF was 751 pages, so as regulatory documents go, this one isn't anything special.
But, by all means, keep on being a useful idiot
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Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm also concerned partially because at its root, the problem with broadband in this country is a lack of local choice. I believe competition (such as Google Fiber) going up against the phone company and the cable company would help lower prices while raising speeds far better than regulation that explicitly acknowledges monopoly status and exchanges (easily watered down) performance demands for guaranteed profit margins on (easily manipulable) books. I mean, the real problem with explicit acknowledgement of monopoly status is an implicit guarantee that the phone company and the cable company may not fail--and if they make poor infrastructure investment choices, they're insulated from failure.
I'm not suggesting this can't work. Only that there are a bunch of ways in which this can go haywire, so to me, the FCC's actions is simply the first step in a very long battle.
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I also agree that competition is the solution, but we may not agree on how it should come about. There are very few Googles out there that can afford these sort of high capital in
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Insightful)
The monopolies already existed, and were already protected. The only difference was that before, they were allowed to have their cake and eat it too. We're actually going from the "monopoly without regulation" state to the "monopoly with regulation" state, which is a strict improvement.
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Insightful)
I see a few main reasons:
1) BECAUSE Obamacare was such a long drawn out fight which they ultimately lost. I think that's gotta be a bit demotivational.
2) They want to focus on the immigration fight right now, because their voters actually understand that one.
3) It is just possible that opposing net neutrality is so stupid even Republicans could figure out it was stupid.
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Everyone's at the bipartisan Regulatory Capture Caucus right now, so the real news will have to wait.
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The republicans gave up too easily. Look how long and drawn out their battle against Obamacare was. In comparison, this measure seems to have been abandoned without much fight. I can't help but wonder why.
Because nobody cares by comparison. Everyone cares about health care. Not everyone even understands net neutrality. The part of government that you perceive is about 99% theater.
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulatory capture is a form of corruption. What you want is regulation without corruption.
With no regulations, worse abuses than regulation capture occurs: domination by oligarchy who abuse consumers and smaller players. With no recourse. Because there's no regulations. And there's no magic free market fairy who fixes things another way.
It's important to note this because there persists this economically ignorant nonsense that regulations cause problems. No, corruption causes problems. Regulations are the only way you get any fairness.
We need to fight *corruption* not *government* on the issue of regulation. I do not love government, but when it comes to markets, government regulation is the only thing that keeps the playing field fair so the magic of capitalism (efficiency via competition) can work.vMeanwhile, an unregulated marketplace left to itself becomes abusive.
There unfortunately persists this quasireligious faith based economic illiteracy in the USA, on the same intellectual level as creationism and antivaxxers, that unregulated marketplaces are magically free and fair because magic.
1. unregulated marketplaces: hell
2. corrupt government (regulatory capture, rent seeking parasites, oligarchy): hell
3. truly fair government regulation: the only way capitalism can work. without a fair playing field with referees, there is no fair game of capitalism. players cheat
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Precisely. Since the regulations the FCC have in mind have yet to be implemented, regulatory capture is still an unknown. I WORRY about capture, because it leads to hell, as you pointed out.
I said this decision "Sounds good"-- Regulation is better than no regulation, as you correctly stated.
Our goals are perfectly aligned in this matter.
I was noting the seemingly short level of resistance that the political group with the most incentive to cause regulatory capture problems has put up. To me, this suggest
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thank you, well said
and apologies if i sounded like i was ranting at you. i was using your your comment as a launching point for me to rant at other fools, free market fundamentalists, not hurl abuse at you
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Right because FORCING everyone to purchase a product they might not want and at the same time exposing some of their most private information to half the government is anything like applying title II regulations to small number of companies.
Companies that are still free to exit the market anytime they choose, charge essentially whatever they'd like etc. The reality is these regulations bar these companies from engaging in a practice, that outside a few relatively high profile exceptions they don't do much
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You misunderstand my political affiliation.
I am unaffiliated. (and centrist)
I like the concept of the ACA, but not the implementation. (which as you correctly stated, is currently little more than compulsory spending.) There are better methods than the one used by the ACA to achieve the goal of universal healthcare. I would have rather it had taken one of those other forms. It didnt. That's the way it is now.
Rather than try to read some party slant into the comparison, instead see it from a foriegner's po
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Interesting)
Party support isn't the same. I'm a Republican myself - I'm against Obamacare, and every other Republican I know is too.
Compare that with Net Neutrality. I completely support Net Neutrality, as does almost every other Republican I know that is younger and/or understands the internet. The only ones really against it are the old guys who don't even understand it but simply say "Regulation is bad, mmmkay.".
Like it or not, everything doesn't boil down to corporate donations and dollars. Popular support weighs in too, and the right just isn't as united in this position vs Obamacare.
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't ALL republicans. I am a pretty hard core republican, but I wanted net neutrality from the start.
Republican is a party, it's not a belief system. If you're not aligned with the republican leadership, then you're not a hard core republican.
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? No, all Republicans hate Republican leadership. We call them "The Establishment" and wonder how the hell Boehner and McConnell get reelected. We were pretty giddy about collecting Eric Cantor's scalp, though. See, party leadership manipulates primaries and "crowns" our candidates for us. Romney, McCain, Dole, even GWB were the least liked of all candidates in their respective years. The problem is the "Anybody but X" crowd never settles on one person, so the leasst-liked guy with the plurality of votes gets the nomination. The party is pretty fractured, and there is a lot of dissent.
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
The party is pretty fractured, and there is a lot of dissent.
But who are ya gonna put forth? Your primary was selecting for kooks. At various times, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann,, Herman Cain, Rick Perry were your top pollers, and hopeful whispers about Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, and other kooks.
Your elected officials signed a prom promise to Grover Norquist, who last time I checked was not an elected official or could make anyone bow to his wishes.
And it looks like they are going to do it again. At the Iowa convention recently, it was more of the same. Out comes Trump, and then th idealogical heart and soul of the party comes out, and treats us to an incoherent rant - This was a woman who Republicans put forward as Presidential material.
And how soon we forget that the party has been making efforts to unseat moderate Republicans, to replace them with politically correct candidates. And yes this is why I haven't voted Republican for a long time, and a lot of us don't. A political party that thinks that it's continued adoration of Sarah Palin will attract anyone who can think , simply isn't going to get the vote of anyone who actually thinks once in a while, and just isn't lving on hate.
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Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly don't like most of your list, but all of them "kooks?" The choice of Sarah Pailin made my choice to vote third party pretty easy, but if you think they are all kooks then there is no one the republicans can pick that you will not call a "kook." You're simply being a blinded partisan.
I'm a registered independent who voted mostly Republican until the mid nineties. Partisan? Nah. Just paying attention.
The only person I would drop off that list if pressured would be Herman Cain. I get the impression that he's actually a likeable guy I could have an intelligent conversation with.The rest of them have severe baggage issues:
Santorum - a baffling preoccupation with anal sex.
Palin - just baffling - at this point, I'm beggining to think she is ill or something.
Bachmann - another person whose speech is fascinating in the wrong way. She strikes me as a nice person with weird beliefs.
Trump - His fixation with the current occupant's birth certificate requires a belief in precognition, and probably time machines. Not good leadership material.
Huckabee - probably a decent person, but his association with Fox News sinks him.
Perry - Just a belief structure I cannot stand. I was raised in a Strict Catholic household, with Fundamentalist grandparents. I know firsthand what the religious right will do to you if they get their hands on you. And it ain't pretty.
Which is why we recently ended up with McCain, and then Romney. Both were more or less electable, and would have probably done a passable job, but were saddled with toeing the party line, as shaped by the primary process. And as you note, Palin's inclusion on the ticket with McCain really sunk him.
As for me? Jesus Christ, I miss Barry Goldwater.
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The point of a nomination process is choosing a candidate who reflects YOUR values, not everyone else's. I would never in a million years expect or demand that democrats choose a Republican as their candidate of choice. A vibrant democratic republic requires a choice between well defined positions. The problem is that the core Republican base does not believe they are being represented in the general election (and so often stay home, as they did for McCain and Romney). Whether you believe they deserve repre
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At the general election level; yes, you'd need a constitutional amendment. At the party primary level, however, such a system as you describe would be incredibly helpful, and probably for all parties.
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The competitors should make each other nervous.
The government squatting more regulation on us all should make us all nervous.
That only works if you actually HAVE competitors.
Even then, not always.
The hand isn't invisible, much like every other religion, it was never really there to begin with.
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The irony in these two sentences is the size of a mountain.
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>I don't know, what we have *is* working with basic freedoms. I'll take liberty over cheap speeds any day.
There is NO impact on liberty here, in fact, regulation almost NEVER impacts on liberty. Business aren't people and don't HAVE freedoms - you can't take away what isn't there.
When government laws are controlling YOU - you get a right to complain.
When they are stopping monopolies from fucking people over, you do not get a right to complain just because fox news told you big corporations are people too
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How do Republicans still manage to keep convincing themselves the ACA was this huge failure ?
Do you people read any news EXCEPT Fox ? Because, on the ground, it's been one of the most successfully and all-round good pieces of legislation your country achieved in about 40 years.
It wasn't universal single-payer healthcare, that would have been better, but it's way better than what you had - which was a system that literally couldn't be be made worse. Seriously, what you had before was at the point where if ho
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Funny)
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Do you people read any news EXCEPT Fox
Taking my parents as an example: Not on your fucking life.
Unintended consequences (Score:3, Informative)
Name some (Score:2)
You're problem isn't with the laws, it's with the yahoos writing them.
Take your losses (Score:2)
The hired help can claim to have been doing their job all along, but it was really hard, what with all that public opposition and all.
Who wants to fight for lobbyist's interests when the cause is clearly lost and 4 MILLION AMERICANS WROTE TO VOICE THEIR OPINION DIRECTLY TO THE FCC? But the hired can certainly say they tried hard to serve 'their interests' to those that might come calling in the future.
It is not as if the hired help actually believed they ever served the public's stated interests.
I hope this wasn't a trojan horse (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people are gleeful about the FCC stepping in to shut down the nonsense from the likes of Comcast. However, those same people forget that this is the same government has demonstrated an indifference to due process, personal privacy, and basically just does whatever it wants whenever it wants... and if you complain you'll just get stonewalled until you die of old age.
The internet has been largely unregulated and that has been a really good thing. Most of the growth and innovation we've seen has happened there. With the FCC stepping in to regulate it, we should consider what happened to other industries they've regulated.
Look at radio and broadcast TV. Notice the innovation and dynamic response to changing circumstances? Me neither.
The issue is that it always starts out with good intentions. But ultimately they start spelling out what you're allowed to do and not do in extreme detail to such an extent that you can't do anything that they haven't thought of... and that means you can't change because it is literally illegal.
I hope I'm wrong. But this could be the beginning of the end of the internet as we've known it.
What is more... when the FCC starts regulating the hell out of it... we can expect the likes of China and the EU to be right behind the US... the whole network will clap down on itself.
Hopefully some measure of freedom can survive in the deep web but I imagine they'll make that illegal at some point if only because it tends to draw the drug dealers and pedophiles.
Re:I hope this wasn't a trojan horse (Score:5, Informative)
This is not regulation of the Internet, but regulation of the means by which the Internet is accessed.
There are more than a few comparable regulatory actions which helped create the growth of the Internet. Significantly, there was the Carterphone action [wikipedia.org], which allowed modems to be connected to the Bell network, against their wishes. There was also state regulation of the Bells, which prevented them from charging exorbitant rates for those modem connections. There are the common carrier regulations, by which telco providers receive free or very low cost access to public rights-of-way, avoiding the costs of negotiating and renting land wherever they run their lines. Similarly with cable - they're given access to public rights of way and a monopoly position in exchange for being subject to regulation.
If any of them want to build out services entirely in the free market without making use of public resources, negotiating and paying for all access rights, then I'll support that service being unregulated.
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This is not regulation of the Internet, but regulation of the means by which the Internet is accessed.
Wow are already in public office or just practicing before your campaign. I mostly agree with your post but that line is right up there with Clinton's It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is
Seriously man this is regulation of the Internet, it gets to the very core of how the networks is structured, this will over the long term impact all sorts of things like peering agreements. Lets at least be honest about what we are doing here.
Nominally I am opposed to regulation. The trouble is these carri
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Normative citations (since you claimed "sections"), or it's made up.
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Once again you prove your ignorance.
-The internet already operates on the principles of net neutrality, but its always been an informal thing.
-The fact that the big companies have been trying to chip away at that is what has prompted the desire to codify it in stone.
-They aren't regulating the internet, they are regulating the companies' business practices in providing it.
-The rules are clearly spelled out
-Are you seriously unaware of the regulations already in place in China and the EU? OR that one reason
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1. The system has run under the assumption of net neutrality to a certain extent, however there has always been prioritized communications. What I'm talking about are mostly QoS issues. If a network gets congested, then I'm going to try and prioritize some communications. Lets say someone has a VoIP call going and you're trying to download emails. Who gets hurt more if I slow someone down? Obviously it makes sense to slow down email and websites before I slow down VoIP or video streaming.
2. You are correct
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Indeed, actions like this should go through congress rather then through some unelected government body.
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And these net neutrality laws do nothing to change that situation.
Rather then focus on the monopolies, this regulation accepts the monopolies as unavoidable. That is bullshit. Google is laying wire in cities already served by the existing monopolies and doing well by it. What is more, you find various ISPs TRY to lay wire in competing networks on occasion. Centurylink which is a Qwest Communications company tries to compete with Comcast but as you said they're not allowed to lay wire.
THAT is what should hav
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"and it looks like we've won." (Score:2)
Yeah... well I'll keep the cork in until we see just how many hidden scams are added to any legislation.
What the hell happened? (Score:2)
Re:Congratulations (Score:4, Interesting)
It remains to be seen if the resulting regulatory action will be detrimental.
If your only concern is the financial costs, and/or, the reduction of hypothetical profits, then this discussion is over before it even started. The issue at hand is over the continuance of the internet as a viable medium for the kinds of exchanges it has historically facilitated. This action simply preserves the golden goose, and keeps greedy companies from gutting it.
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congratulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Those 300 pages of regulations codify how the internet has always been. These regulations were necessary becasue the ISPs embarked on a new plan to squeeze content providers. They wanted to be paid both by the subscriber and by the content providers. But by nature these ISPs are utilities because they rely on access to the public domain in the form of conduits, telephone poles, street rights-of-way, and municipal owned fiber. Bu using Title II regulation, the FCC ensures that competitors like Google Fiber will have the same access to the public domain assests. That is the only way to have competition for the last mile of the network.
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Informative)
Oh look, yet another low info voter.
Gigi Sohn, a special counsel for Wheeler, said the text of the actually net neutrality rules are only 8 pages. She said the other pages responds to the millions of public comments, "as required by law."
https://twitter.com/GigiBSohnF... [twitter.com]
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Informative)
There are only eight pages of new rules. The rest is explanation, history, legal justification, and commentary. More here: http://e-pluribusunum.com/2015... [e-pluribusunum.com]
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Actually, it WAS a policy. Title II is NOT new. We had it in the ... God Damnit, I'm tired of typing this shit. You !@#$ers should !@#$ing know that we had title II regulation and that it was knackered back in the !@#$ing 90's by a bush appointed FCC head. This isn't NEW. This is OLD, and it worked AWESOME back in the !@#$ day.
This is PRECISELY how the internet was ran back in the day. I'm old enough to !@#$ing remember it too. Get off my !@#$ lawn.
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This is good in both interpretations.
The first way, it prevents companies from extorting money from the public.
The second way, it prevents companies from treating the public like a second class customer, and forces providers to improve service globally, when they offer improvements in connectivity.
I fail to see the downside, unless you think that people with shittons of money should get treated differently than people without shittons of money.
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Re:Or... (Score:4, Informative)
That's not entirely truthful, from what I remember reading.
The links were allowed to become congested alright, because Verizon and Comcast refused to upgrade them when they did upgrades elsewhere, and told Netflix in no uncertain terms that they would not upgrade them unless the extortion payment was met.
It also glosses over what I read, in that neflix offered co-location of local cache servers INSIDE those networks, to reduce the effects of congested links, whch both verizon and comcast refused.
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I'm not referencing that, I'm talking about what they could (and WOULD) do if net neutrality was killed. They'd throttle the shit out of connections for both businesses and home users and if you complain "Well, you're not paying for the `high speed' option on your 50 Mb connection, that's why you can't stream any videos!".
If net neutrality was killed, they would nickle and dime the shit out of customers and force internet businesses to raise prices or be cut off from their customers.
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And Comcast actively refused to upgrade the links, despite having fucktons of spare money to do so and demand from their own customers telling them it was necessary -- that demonstrates "intent" too.
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This is the government preventing "rape", as you call it. Large corporate monopolies don't get elected. You are so misinformed I wouldn't even know where to begin educating and ignoramus like you.
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Congress makes laws, executive runs the government. Please tell me when you think Congress lost the ability to make laws. While you're working on that, maybe you can explain why you feel that corporate monopolies should be allowed to dominate our access to information? Could it be because your favorite corporate information outlet told you so? Yeah, thought so.
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Independent regulatory agencies aren't really Executive.
They are and they aren't.
They're actually somewhat outside the basic 3 Branch Paradigm you were taught in school with its clearly defined boundaries.
If Congress actually had to sit down and create all the necessary regulations themselves for our modern world they would never get anything done (I know...I know...). Plus they can't be experts at everything, and even going back to the 1800s committees and hearings were often more about making political po
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They will be published when they are finalized.
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We have to give the government the power to regulate the internet before we can know what they'll do to the internet.
Wait, this sounds sickeningly-familiar....
Oh well. I'm sure it'll be fine.
After all, it's only the same FCC that has pursued a "wardrobe malfunction" for nearly 8 years, pushed for the Fairness Doctrine, and whose "Diversity Czar" Mark Lloyd was quoted as admiring the way Chavez seized control of radio/TV/
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Which is how the FCC has been making rules for the last forever. This is nothing new & *by law* it has to be done this way.
You are just another pathetic low information voter.
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Where did you get that number? Also, please explain how new taxes will be levied and on what they will be spent.
You can't answer any of that because you just blindly believe Fox News or whatever corporate shill you prefer to worship.
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Out of his ass.
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Yup, just another low info voter. Way too many of them on Slashdot these days.
Re:The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
>The same one that dictated the IRS to audit and kill off as many tea party people and groups as it can while not doing the same to leftist orgs.
Actually, I never got why that was an issue. Republicans mostly support profiling by law enforcement when it's based on race and religion. Why should it not be based on publicly stated philosophical beliefs then ?
Tea-party groups were vocally anti-taxation, this makes them prime profiling targets for the tax-man to double-check, by their own public statements they are highly likely to have cheated on their taxes.
Much more so than the leftwing organisations who tend to defend the services that taxes pay for.
Why is it okay to do extra checks on Muslims at airports, or to stop cars driven by black people 6 times more often than white people - but not to check anti-tax-lobby-groups' tax records more thoroughly ?
Of course, the leftwing VOTERS who oppose all profiling would agree that tax-man profiling is bad too, but I don't get why rightwingers think they have a right to complain about that at all. They DEFENDED profiling, until it happened to them - and they they continued to defend it for everybody EXCEPT them.
Sorry, you can't have your cake and eat it to. If you back off from the idea (which to my mind flows logically from "equal before the law") that NOBODY should be under additional suspicion based on their race or religion, then you have ALSO backed of from the idea that they shouldn't be under additional suspicion based on the political beliefs.
Re:The real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
But you can't defend one and not the other.
Opposing both is logically consistent but the rightwingers have been defending one.
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misrepresent and misunderstand what is happening (it's not a bill)? check
mention page length along with a statement and implication of ulterior motives? check
mention the IRS non scandal? check
hyperbole and fear monger? check
hypothesize in direct contradiction to what is actually known ("im just asking?")? check
complete ignorance of the role of independent regulatory agencies and their authority? check
complete and total ignorance? big check
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How twisted do you have to be to believe that, to prevent the government from tyranny, you have to try to prevent it from fulfilling its proper function? I ask you seriously. If your government has turned against the people, your society is in deep doo doo, and worrying yourself sick about little details like this is not just silly, it is failing to face the real problem.