House Passes Amendment To Block Funds For Net Neutrality 393
Charliemopps sends this quote from the National Journal:
"The House passed an amendment Thursday that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from using any funding to implement the network-neutrality order it approved in December. The amendment, approved on a 244-181 vote, was offered by Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., to legislation that would fund government agencies for the rest of fiscal year 2011. Walden and other critics of the FCC's net-neutrality order argue it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband. "
The usual. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thank your neighborhood republican (Score:3, Informative)
I swear to you, we have a bunch of nutjobs in the House. How on earth could these people know enough to make such a complex decision in such a short period of time? It's not possible. Most of them don't know the slightest thing about the internet, how it works, and what drives it. It baffles me to see them making such a statement.
Just to be clear... (Score:5, Informative)
This lack of funding is aimed at the FCC's version of "net neutrality" [slashdot.org], not to block net neutrality in general. This is a good thing. That version of "net neutrality" was in name only. Obviously there are interests on both sides of the aisle at play here (Big Business wants even less restriction, consumers want what they've always had), but we all agreed that the FCC's current idea sucked, so this is a win.
Re:whores. (Score:3, Informative)
Not just whores: temple whores. It is an article of their faith that the free market is always more innovative than the government and no government program has ever done anything good for the economy. The fact that this belief serves the interest of the people lining their pockets is a nice bonus. In other words, they're whores, but they'd be happy to do it for free, because God in His form of the Invisible Hand told them to. I'm not exactly sure how this dogma fits in with the Christianity so many of them so loudly profess, but apparently enough money buys indulgence for a multitude of sins.
Re:Thank your neighborhood republican (Score:3, Informative)
The GOP is a monstrosity. As Brad Delong says, they "lie about everything all the time." More than that, though, every single Republican initiative exacerbates inequality, smashes our dignity, and adds to the sum of human misery. There are no exceptions. There are no moderates left in the Republican party. What remains is an organization dedicated to aristocracy, superstition, and the snuffing out of curiosity. This party is a scourge, and to see its members elected against and against forces one to doubt the fundamental goodness of human nature.
Re:whores. (Score:5, Informative)
>>>it was de facto rule of internet up till this day,
Since when was net neutrality the defacto rule? I don't recall that ever being the case - in fact I remember the earliest ISPs like AOL, Compuserve, Genie, and so on used to put the internet behind a wall and charge extra. Then they opened the wall, but filtered which websites or newsgroups you could visit.
Re:Thank your neighborhood republican (Score:1, Informative)
This is true. Democrats are not all that much better in practice, but republicans are unfathomably evil to me.
Re:The usual. (Score:5, Informative)
That's not at all what they're doing here. The article is intentionally misleading.
This is a bill HR. 68 [loc.gov] "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. "
Further they didn't even pass this yet, they merely referred it to committee. Indeed there isn't even any pork in it. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.68 [loc.gov]:
Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate (Score:5, Informative)
"Adding riders to "must-pass" bills is a time-honored technique for sneaking all kinds of looniness into law."
And this nails precisely why this technique needs to be abolished. It's dishonest politicking. Each section of a bill ought to be required to be voted on.
Re:The House, Not The House & The Senate (Score:4, Informative)
Not only that if they amend the bill to remove the amendment it will have to go back to the House. As it stands this morning I doubt the final bill can even get through the House. There is possibility of a Government Shutdown at this point because the Speaker has stated he will not let an temporary extension of current funding bill go to vote. Personally I'd like to see that!
I don't know how I feel about Net Neutrality being forced by government. I am pulled in multiple directions on that but I do know that I don't like an executive agency like FCC deciding to do it on their own, it should be done or not done in the legislative branch. The FCC should just enforce whatever the Congress decides. So I am for Congress preventing the FCC from acting, in the mean time.
Re:Thank your neighborhood republican (Score:5, Informative)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/huge-isps-want-per-gb-payments-from-netflix-youtube.ars [arstechnica.com]
Pay up or risk an "internet brownout"...
Re:Thank your neighborhood republican (Score:3, Informative)
Or the republican union busting bill that was proposed Friday, and they are trying to get it rammed through today. (In Wisconsin)
Re:Just to be clear... (Score:5, Informative)
>>>This is a good thing.
It is? What was wrong with the FCC's latest rules? I didn't see anything objectionable about them, and I'm usually anti-government. The rules seemed reasonable - block ISPs from discriminating against sites or charging extra to reach them.
Re:Thank your neighborhood republican (Score:5, Informative)
"Disproportionate use of bandwidth" by Google and Netflix? What a joke.
The fact is that Google and Netflix each pay their respective ISPs for all the bandwidth they use. What they *don't* pay for is the bandwidth their customers use, nor should they have to. If Google has a contract with ISP A and ISP A in turn has a contract with ISPs B and C, it's really not B and C's place to charge Google for that which is already covered by their contract with ISP A. Otherwise Google would have to sign contracts with the entire alphabet of ISPs to account for what you call their "disproportionate use of bandwidth", which I'm sure you know is bullshit.
Re:Thank your neighborhood republican (Score:3, Informative)
The word "dweeb" is telling. It confirms my theory that the GOP mindset is just aged and distilled schoolyard bullying.
Re:whores. (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, what? AOL never charged extra for Internet access; it was part and parcel of the AOL client. ("AOL is the Internet and so much more!") I don't believe the others charged extra either.
You have your history reversed. First AOL offered newsgroup access without any client changes, via a server gateway; once it was technically feasible, we built a browser and then a sockets library into the client so you could do whatever you wanted (short of connecting to port 25, which we redirected for spam filtering). I don't remember if we filtered out the porn newsgroups from our server gateway, though it wouldn't surprise me - we thought at the time that it was important for us to remain a "family service", though we were simultaneously developing automatic newsgroup-to-binary download capabilities, and of course you could use your own newsreader and a commercial news spool like giganews if you wanted full newsgroup access. We didn't filter any web access that I recall.
Jay Levitt, AOLer, 1989-2001