Many US States Propose Their Own Laws Protecting Net Neutrality (seattletimes.com) 144
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
Lawmakers in at least six states, including California and New York, have introduced bills in recent weeks that would forbid internet providers to block or slow down sites or online services. Legislators in several other states, including North Carolina and Illinois, are weighing similar action... By passing their own law, the state lawmakers say, they would ensure that consumers would find the content of the choice, maintain a diversity of voices online and protect businesses from having to pay fees to reach users.
And they might even have an effect beyond their states. California's strict auto-emissions standards, for example, have been followed by a dozen other states, giving California major sway over the auto industry. "There tends to be a follow-on effect, particularly when something happens in a big state like California," said Harold Feld, a senior vice president at a nonprofit consumer group, Public Knowledge, that supports net-neutrality efforts by the states. Bills have also been introduced in Massachusetts, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Washington.
In addition, a representative in Alaska's legislature has also pre-filed legislation requiring the state's ISPs to practice net neutrality, which will be introduced when the state legislature resumes on January 16th.
"The recent FCC decision eliminating net neutrality was a mistake that favors the big internet providers and those who want to restrict the kinds of information a free-thinking Alaskan can access," representative Scott Kawasaki told a local news station. "That is not the Alaskan way, and I am hopeful my colleagues in the House and Senate will agree..."
The Independent also notes that Europe "is still strongly committed" to net neutrality.
And they might even have an effect beyond their states. California's strict auto-emissions standards, for example, have been followed by a dozen other states, giving California major sway over the auto industry. "There tends to be a follow-on effect, particularly when something happens in a big state like California," said Harold Feld, a senior vice president at a nonprofit consumer group, Public Knowledge, that supports net-neutrality efforts by the states. Bills have also been introduced in Massachusetts, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Washington.
In addition, a representative in Alaska's legislature has also pre-filed legislation requiring the state's ISPs to practice net neutrality, which will be introduced when the state legislature resumes on January 16th.
"The recent FCC decision eliminating net neutrality was a mistake that favors the big internet providers and those who want to restrict the kinds of information a free-thinking Alaskan can access," representative Scott Kawasaki told a local news station. "That is not the Alaskan way, and I am hopeful my colleagues in the House and Senate will agree..."
The Independent also notes that Europe "is still strongly committed" to net neutrality.
Net neutrality is the next gay marriage. (Score:4, Interesting)
The states that have it will see an increase of geeks immigrating to their states and setting up businesses there.
Fuck Ajit Pai (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's about the most wrong thing yet written.
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I think even here nobody would be desperate enough to take that offer.
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He's nothing but a shill for the telecoms and ISPs. So far as I'm concerned, once Robert Mueller is done with slicing-and-dicing Trump and his people, he should move on to some of the appointees like Pai. Bet you cash money he's getting paid large sums under the table by the big corps like Comcast/Xfinity and AT&T to fuck over the American people and prop up their outdated, greedy business models.
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No, He'll just get gigantic bonuses when he goes back to work for them or he'll become a lobbyist. 'Revolving door'.
Re: Fuck Ajit Pai (Score:2)
Well looks like Paiâ(TM)s actions resulted in potentially making things worse for big ISPs. We can thank him for being an arsehole, for inadvertently galvanising a movement.
As part of this wave should be an attempt to open up the field to new competitors, whether that is by state network infrastructure that is leased out to new players (akin to the highway infrastructure) or some other approach.
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Work around the problem (Score:3)
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Also, Interstate Commerce Clause.
There are plenty of laws that states pass that interfere with interstate commerce far more than local enforcement of net neutrality would. Many, if not most, businesses or individuals require state and local licenses in addition to any Federal Licenses they may need. Then they need to pay state and local taxes and comply with state and local regulations. In some instances you can't even sell stuff directly into a state unless you go through a local distributor. Thinking alcohol and cars, but probably ot
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They are still affecting the citizens of a state with NN laws. Those ISPs will be fined big time by the state.
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Also, Interstate Commerce Clause.
Advertising in your state doesn't go across states. In your state and the commerce clause, doesn't apply.
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Access to the internet is not an interstate action. You connect locally.
At any rate, the EPA has rules for emission standards and California has tougher ones.....Federal agencies can not dictate what laws a state can pass that goes above the regulation baseline set forth by federal law. (see minimum wage)
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States do set highway speeds. But the feds decide whether they are going to give subsidies based on whether the state is following the fed guidelines.
OTOH, there are lots of cases where the courts have declared that the feds have ridiculously intrusive powers. So it's not clear.
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Access to the internet is not an interstate action. You connect locally.
This may not mean as much as you think. If states mandate net neutrality, customers will favor local net neutral ISPs over out of state not net neutral providers. IANAL, but to me this looks like this [wikipedia.org] famous precedent, and makes the state's net neutrality law subject to federal regulation under the inter-state commerce clause.
Here's the TL;DR for Wickard v Filburn: during WW2 the federal govt had put caps on wheat production, in order to stabilize wheat prices. A farmer was growing wheat on his farm, for h
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Access to the internet is not an interstate action. You connect locally.
At any rate, the EPA has rules for emission standards and California has tougher ones
CA was given a waiver by the feds to allow them to set higher standards.
Federal agencies can not dictate what laws a state can pass that goes above the regulation baseline set forth by federal law. (see minimum wage)
Except that the state laws on the minimum wage do not conflict with the Federal one. The question would be has Congress given the FCC sole jurisdiction over internet services regulation in which case state net neutrality laws would conflict with that authority. My guess is if tehy haven't the big ISPs will push for Congress to do so.
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How about "Nothing in this law forbids an ISP from introducing "Speed lanes" or slowing down a competitors content. However if they chose to behave this way, they will be required to pay the cost of providing a physical interconnect to a competitors network-neutrality respecting service if the customer requests it.".
So basically, sure Comcast, by all means block netflix, but only if your prepared to fork up the cost of installing Google fibre in an unhappy customers house.
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"Company X blocks or throttles network traffic between X's users and X's competitor Y" is a straightforward violation of existing, well-founded laws about fair competition. The FCC's net neutrality rules did not, and cannot, change those laws or make the inapplicable.
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Yeah....handing the enforcement over to the FTC solves the problem for anyone that wants the problem to not be solved. the FTC is a toothless organization that has almost no power to enforce laws because it is understaffed and under funded....and they are a trade organization, not a technology organization. They don't know shit about the internet.
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Fortunately for you, the FTC isn't the only party that can prosecute violations of anti-trust or fair-competition laws. State and local prosecutors and even private parties can, too.
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It's not so straight forward if a company can claim
"we did our best effort, but our service x takes up so much bandwidth, so there's none left for y"
No Company can be coaxed into damaging its own services to enable a competitors. Which makes the above statement the de facto argument for each and any throttling that's going to happen.
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Content speed lanes are what big ISPs want and consumers do not want that. Currently they sell it to consumers based on the service package they buy.....I only want 10Mbps access....all my service is best effort rated at 10Mbps....I want 100Mbps service....all my access is best effort rated at 100Mbps....If Con-cast wants to extract money from Netflix, Google, Amazon, Spotify, etc. for access to me that meets my best effort rating, that is wrong and not the product I am paying the ISP for.
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To who? In general content speedlanes (i.e video streaming over gaming) has at no time ever been discussed. The problem was source based speedlanes (i.e. Netflix over Hulu). I think you'll find consumers generally do not know if they want content based speedlanes or not since it has never been on the table.
Consumers would love it, how could they not? (Score:1)
Why should someone not be able to pay for 10Mbps service that *guarantees* that service level (to 99.9% of the time or whatever) for Netflix, but is as you said best effort for other traffic? Lots of people would not care if web traffic was a bit slow, but they want non-buffering Netflix feeds.
If someone wanted to do that and could have a cable bill $10/month less, why is that a bad thing?
Basically what is so bad about offering some QOS upgrade to my network package that would insure maximum performance to
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To use a specific example, the problem is ISPs partnering with Nextflix to slow down competitors to Netflix.
That's pretty overt, but it could also be something like the ISP offering a package where Netflix doesn't count towards your data cap, but Netflix competitors do count towards that cap. Different technique, similar results.
Now multiply by every other company that relies on the internet to reach customers, and you have a way for entrenched business to artificially limit competiti
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There are several problems with your argument that Comcast would block Netflix.
1. Comcast wouldn't outright block Netflix, they will throttle the traffic to the point where Netflix becomes useless. It's effectively blocking, not literally.
2. You claim they wouldn't do it, but they have. ISPs have been caught throttling Netflix traffic and torrents in the past. And that was with net neutrality in place. Now there is nothing to prevent them, legally, from cutting back Netflix traffic or any other competing se
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Ah looks like slashdot's regular ISP conglomerate shill is back!
At least I hope you're a shill because if you're doing this for free...
It's not even like Netflix is a competitor to Comcast: the content is nearly orthogonal.
Oh I guess I hallucinated Comcast having a TV service which is a direct competitor to Netflix then.
In fact if you think about it Netflix is a huge, huge draw for getting faster cable internet over various other network options; Netflix is helping Comcast earn a TON of money.
Costing them
I'm not doing this for free, and not a shill (Score:1)
At least I hope you're a shill because if you're doing this for free...
I'm not a shill at all; I have no connection with ISP's beyond an extreme loathing for Comcast and an inability to free myself from them as there is nothing even close bandwidth wise.
However I am not doing this for free; indeed the mental toll of constantly correcting fear-driven tech-luddites is a high one. Yet I persist, because I cannot stand to see a clear technical truth silenced or maligned.
Oh I guess I hallucinated Comcast having
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SuperKendall sometimes you are such a stupid fucking asshole.
Comcast throttled Netflix and Netflix made the problem go away by paying an extortion fee [consumerist.com].
Consumers dissatisfied with Comcast (or AT&T or Time-Warner or what-have-you) often have no choice of ISPs. I live in fucking downtown San Francisco and my ONLY choice of high-speed cable Internet is Comcast.
So kindly accept as truth when I say that you're a goddamn fucking shill for the telcos (even if you're unpaid), I mean you go so far as to ejaculate
Haters are so stupid (Score:2)
Comcast throttled Netflix and Netflix made the problem go away by paying an extortion fee.
Sad to see the day when people on Slashdot have no idea how the internet works, or what interconnection fees are.
I live in fucking downtown San Francisco and my ONLY choice of high-speed cable Internet is Comcast.
Hi, I said exactly the same thing. I'm in a different city, in exactly the same situation. Do you even read?
I mean you go so far as to ejaculate all over the screen that "my own gigabit internet service fee p
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OK, so I misinterpreted your comment about putting the shine on a yacht as some kind of deranged gloating.
The Comcast-Netflix arrangement is part of the problem and I think we see it a bit differently. My understanding is that NF was paying L3 (iirc) for its connection to the Internet. If NF is paying a company that has proper peerage to Comcast then Comcast throttling NF's packets to Comcast's customers is extortion.
NF likely paid because the legal battle would have been more costly. Plus, net neutrality w
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If Comcast blocked or slowed Netflix, they would lose around 90% of their customers and certainly be fined by the FCC and probably have a few facilities torched by angry mobs.
I guess you missed that part back in 2014 when comcast was slowing down netflix. Yet no FCC fines, (supreme court said the FCC can't fine them), they still have all of their customers and no facilities torched by angry mobs.
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It's not like my Comcast network is going to block AT&T traffic
Possibly not, but when ISPs and content producers are the same company [wsj.com] then they control both content and distribution and have a perfect incentive to block or throttle content from competing providers. This is Bad(tm), not just in a consumer standpoint but an Orwellian one as well.
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Speed lanes are a good idea and what people want
Even if people want them, it doesn't mean that they exist. All there can be is as fast the network can handle and traffic that gets needlessly throttled because they didn't pay an extortion fee. We just want to network to pass all traffic as fast as it can handle it. Is that so bad?
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You can't have a system that allows a private business to effectively function like a utility without requiring it to also behave like a utility. Since it does not appear e
Re:Work around the problem (Score:4, Informative)
"[W]hether the FCC can govern intrastate commerce" is not a very accurate description of the question before the Supreme Court, or that court's decision. That case was an extremely narrow ruling on whether two particular sections of the federal law establishing the FCC gave the FCC authority to preempt state rules on depreciation schedules for equipment where both the FCC and the state had jurisdiction over setting telecom rates.
Contrast that to the rulings in Wickard and is progeny, through Gonzales v. Raich (2005), where federal law can govern even intrastate activities as long as the local effects are part of an overarching scheme of national regulation.
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That is what courts are for. My hope, and my bet, is that SCOTUS will say the FCC can not regulate what states do over and above the rules they set forth.
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In any event, under the current administration, there has to be ways to leverage things, no matter how fucked-up they are (and they really are); Trump made a big deal about "giving power back to the States" as part of "MAGA", so guess what? Allowing the FCC to dictate to the States on this is
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They also know what their priority must be for now: Policy and influence entrenchment. They need to not only achieve their objectives, but achieve them in such a way that they cannot be overturned for many years no matter what happens electorally. One key means to do this is appointments, especially to judicial positions - they successfully stalled a lot of appointments during Obama's second term and created a substantial backlog of empty positions, so Trump is now in the process of filling them up with peo
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states should always have the ability to kick companies like Comcast and AT&T out completely.
I say keep increasing fines until they leave. That way the states can pay off more debt.
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Furthermore, it's not clear to me why anyone thinks it's a good idea to allow ISPs to meddle with EVERY OTHER ACTUALLY FUNCTIONING free market that already exists on the internet.
If you want to protect free markets, we should prevent ISPs from picking winners and losers, no? Don't we want the market to do that?
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Net Neutrality is NOT anti business, it is PRO business and PRO consumer.
What it does is shift much of the massive costs for bandwidth for companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc onto other ISP customers like you and me by raising their prices, since they cannot charge those high-bandwidth users at different rates than other ISP customers.
What, you don't think the ISPs are just going to eat the costs, do you? The original NN rules were written by Google! Do you believe Google primarily has your best interests in mind, or their own?
As to TFS/TFA, this is just State
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Even under Net Neutrality Wheeler said that zero rating was fine. Though he also said it might not be fine of they changed it in the future under the 'general conduct rule'.
http://www.multichannel.com/ne... [multichannel.com]
Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler said Thursday (Nov. 19) he thought T-Mobile's Binge On zero rating plan was the sort of highly innovative approach the FCC's new network neutrality rules were predicted to thwart, but clearly didn't.
Wheeler, in a press conference following the FCC's November meeting, appeared to endorse the Binge On offering, calling it pro-competitive and innovative. "It is clear in the Open Internet order that we are pro-competition and pro-innovation and clearly, this meets both of those criteria," he said. "It is highly innovative and highly competitive."
He then said that it appeared the plan does not violate the bright-line no paid prioritization rule, but took something off the endorsement.
He said the FCC would keep an eye on Binge On per the general conduct standard in those new open Internet rules, which allows the FCC to look at such business models on a case-by-case basis.
That rule, he elaborated, says a carrier "should not unreasonably interfere with the access to someone who is trying to get to an edge provider and an edge provider who is trying to get to a consumer. So, what we are going to be doing is watching Binge On, keeping and eye on it, and measure it against the general conduct rule."
"The Commission staff is working to make sure it understands the new offering," said FCC director of Media Relations Shannon Gilson, of Binge On following the chairman's press conference.
Binge On is a zero rating plan in which video streaming services including Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu do not count against data allowances.
Commissioner Ajit Pai said following that statement that nobody still knows whether Binge On will pass muster under the general conduct standard. "I don't think it should give any company comfort to know that the state of the law is so unsettled."
Pai said following Wheeler's qualified endorsement that the question remained: "Does T-Mobile's Binge On and any other offerings like it violate the net neutrality order." He said that under the Internet conduct standard nobody can get certainty, which he suggested was illustrated by Wheeler's statement that is was pro-competitive, followed by the signal that it still needed to be vetted under that general conduct standard.
Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said that if someone was looking for a blessing, the chairman appeared to have given it. "someone is looking for a blessing and everyone is kind of holding their breath waiting for a decision. It wasn't an official issuance by the General Counsel's office or the Enforcement Bureau, but they just got the blessing they were seeking and I imagine now we are going to see a lot more offerings like it."
But he also said that holding up those innovative offerings for a moment like the chairman's statement was just the sort of problem he had pointed to with the general conduct standard.
"Tom Wheeler's comments regarding T-Mobile's new BingeOn zero-rating plan calls to mind the good familiar cop/bad cop routine," said Randolph May, president of free market think tank, the Free State Foundation. "On the one hand, Wheeler's statement that the plan is pro-competitive and innovative is commendable. On the other hand, his further elaboration that the FCC will monitor the T-Mobile plan for compliance with the Open Internet Order's 'good conduct' rule is disturbing. This is because the vague 'good conduct' standard means anything that Wheeler's Enforcement Bureau says it means on any given day."
The EFF had concerns about the vagueness of the 'general conduct rule' too
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]
Unfortunately, if a recent report from Reuters is correct, the general conduct rule will be anything but clear. The FCC will evaluate "harm" based on consideration of seven factors: impact on competition; impact on innovation; impact on free expression; impact on broadband deployment and investments; whether the actions in question are specific to some applications and not others; whether they comply with industry best standards and practices; and whether they take place without the awareness of the end-user, the Internet subscriber.
There are several problems with this approach. First, it suggests that the FCC believes it has broad authority to pursue any number of practices-hardly the narrow, light-touch approach we need to protect the open Internet. Second, we worry that this rule will be extremely expensive in practice, because anyone wanting to bring a complaint will be hard-pressed to predict whether they will succeed. For example, how will the Commission determine "industry best standards and practices"? As a practical matter, it is likely that only companies that can afford years of litigation to answer these questions will be able to rely on the rule at all. Third, a multi-factor test gives the FCC an awful lot of discretion, potentially giving an unfair advantage to parties with insider influence.
Basically it allowed the FCC to rule either way on things like BingeOn.
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Why can't they charge high bandwidth users more? That's how it works here with net neutrality, you pay different amounts depending on how much data you're likely to use. I pay for a 250 GB cap, which I can use to watch Netflix or a webcam of a fire. I could pay for 10GBs or 500GBs as well. It is none of my ISP's business what I watch, just how much bandwidth I use.
Just like the phone company shouldn't be able to stop me from phoning someone whose politics they don't like, my ISP (and there is only one servi
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Net Neutrality is NOT anti business, it is PRO business and PRO consumer.
What it does is shift much of the massive costs for bandwidth for companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc onto other ISP customers like you and me by raising their prices, since they cannot charge those high-bandwidth users at different rates than other ISP customers.
That's just absurdly wrong, as it implies that companies like Netflix use bandwidth entirely on their own. That's not the way it works. Netflix (for example) sends the data for a movie only when a user requests it. Therefore, the Netflix user was solely responsible for that data traversing the ISP's network, through his or her direct action. If Netflix didn't exist, that same user would have watched content from someone else, which means Netflix didn't actually cause that traffic to flow through that li
That may or may not work (Score:1)
The only reason we don't have net neutrality now is because there is no competition. The far better solution would be to outlaw exclusive franchises. The market has to be pried open. And a good way to do that is to make the companies compete against a municipality/state provided service. Net neutrality should naturally follow.
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The government represents the people. They have just as much right to compete as anybody.
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Hosting companies were not the only ones to block the racist morons: registrars also did, which is what OP was complaining about. Exactly where does net neutrality say that ISPs can't discriminate, but hosting companies and domain registrars are free to discriminate, and why? Because "net neutrality" is largely being pushed by hosting companies and other people who want to force ISPs to carry their content?
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Uh, no. Net Neutrality is not about who has a right to put shit on the internet. It is about what the rights are of those who access the internet.
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That is conclusory and unconvincing. If net neutrality's best argument is "nuh uh, net neutrality means you have the right to be spoken to, not to speak", no wonder the FCC canned it. Are you so new to the Internet that you do not remember the way people accessed the Internet before corporations tried to lock people into their walled gardens? People who access the Internet have a right to speak, but the net neutrality crowd doesn't like that for some reason.
Municipal broadband/WiFi (Score:5, Insightful)
I see Comcast cable dangling over my backyard, suspended on utility poles I pay for with my tax money. I don't see any reason to allow that if they get frisky. How about my town does competitive bidding to get a backbone hookup and maintain local routers and wires? If Comcast wins fine, but Silicon Valley has lots of startups who would love to land a big gig.
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Those cables and poles are surely placed in an easement that has been recorded against your property. The government will fuck you with a pineapple if you do anything to interfere with services in that easement.
Americans overwhelmingly support the idea (Score:2)
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Well, now access is granted to one company with no competitive bidding. I am for private enterprise myself, but think of a town like one big HOA where land deed gives HOA a grant to provide certain services and in turn HOA is obligated to contract these services in the most efficient manner. Like it's well understood that competing swimming pools are not practical, so the board needs to choose a specific poolman to maintain the single one. I don't see how broadband is that different from water or electricit
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i'm just sitting here waiting for one of these idiots to actually pass this stuff, then realize that because All of these so far are worded horrendously. it means they can't block or filter the Bad stuff. Like child pornography. Or DMCA violations. Or fake pharmacy sites.
Kneejerk legislation in response to uninformed opinion is _Always_ awful.
Are you saying that net neutrality stops a court order? Or are you saying that an ISP should be able to play at being a court?
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Then stop blocking it and instead arrest the assholes doing it.
Blocking content never solved a problem. The people dealing in it just found a new way to do it. Usually less public and in ways that made it harder to catch them.
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Good point. Fifty sets of laws written by state politicians will most certainly have serious problems.
In addition, having fifty different sets of byzantine NN rules.is a huge barrier of entry for a new competitor and only helps the big guys like Comcast.
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OTOH, ISPs used to be local outfits. I don't see why they couldn't be different ISPs in different states.
This Is How It Should Be (Score:1)
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No, the Interstate Commerce clause was written for a good reason, along with the Full Faith and Credit clause. Without them, you end with legal anarchy, preventing large scale economic growth. There wouldn't BE an internet if the Federal government hadn't used the FCC and FTC to regulate long distance communications.
The Founders had just seen the first attempt at creating a nation fall apart around their ears, and wanted to make sure it didn't happen again. So they introduced or strengthened the powers o
Quit trying to bring back NN (Score:2)
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Otherwise, it will happen slowly.
This is why I want to see them go ahead and destroy their customer base by our removing NN as well as monopoly.
This is how it should have been implemented (Score:2)
Those of you pissed at Ajit Pai have only yourselves to blame. He only had the power to revoke net neutrality because you gleefully supported his predecessor when he implemented net neutrality in what was a total run-around of the legislative process this country is founded on. By allowing Tom
Geoblocking, VPN blocking (Score:2)
This will probably lead to more implementations of geoblocking and VPN blocking shenanigans
Which Six States? (Score:1)
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Which six states are working on this?
They're listed in the article.