One Year After Net Neutrality Repeal, America's Democrats Warn 'The Fight Continues' (cnet.com) 152
CNET just published a fierce pro-net neutrality editorial co-authored by Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be Majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, with Mike Doyle, the expected Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, and Frank Pallone, Jr. the expected Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The three representatives argue that "the Trump FCC ignored millions of comments from Americans pleading to keep strong net neutrality rules in place." The FCC's net neutrality repeal left the market for broadband internet access virtually lawless, giving ISPs an opening to control peoples' online activities at their discretion. Gone are rules that required ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally. Gone are rules that prevented ISPs from speeding up traffic of some websites for a fee or punishing others by slowing their traffic down....
Without the FCC acting as sheriff, it is unfortunately not surprising that big corporations have started exploring ways to change how consumers access the Internet in order to benefit their bottom line.... Research from independent analysts shows that nearly every mobile ISP is throttling at least one streaming video service or using discriminatory boosting practices. Wireless providers are openly throttling video traffic and charging consumers extra for watching high-definition streams. ISPs have rolled out internet plans that favor companies they are affiliated with, despite full-page ads swearing they value net neutrality. And most concerning, an ISP was found throttling so-called "unlimited" plans for a fire department during wildfires in California.
Make no mistake, these new practices are just ISPs sticking a toe in the water. Without an agency with the authority to investigate and punish unfair or discriminatory practices, ISPs will continue taking bolder and more blatantly anti-consumer steps. That is why we have fought over the past year to restore net neutrality rules and put a cop back on the ISP beat. In May, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill restoring net neutrality rules. Despite the support of a bipartisan majority of Americans, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives refused our efforts to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Fortunately, the time is fast coming when the people's voices will be heard.
The editorial closes by arguing that "Large corporations will no longer be able to block progress on this important consumer protection issue."
The three representatives argue that "the Trump FCC ignored millions of comments from Americans pleading to keep strong net neutrality rules in place." The FCC's net neutrality repeal left the market for broadband internet access virtually lawless, giving ISPs an opening to control peoples' online activities at their discretion. Gone are rules that required ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally. Gone are rules that prevented ISPs from speeding up traffic of some websites for a fee or punishing others by slowing their traffic down....
Without the FCC acting as sheriff, it is unfortunately not surprising that big corporations have started exploring ways to change how consumers access the Internet in order to benefit their bottom line.... Research from independent analysts shows that nearly every mobile ISP is throttling at least one streaming video service or using discriminatory boosting practices. Wireless providers are openly throttling video traffic and charging consumers extra for watching high-definition streams. ISPs have rolled out internet plans that favor companies they are affiliated with, despite full-page ads swearing they value net neutrality. And most concerning, an ISP was found throttling so-called "unlimited" plans for a fire department during wildfires in California.
Make no mistake, these new practices are just ISPs sticking a toe in the water. Without an agency with the authority to investigate and punish unfair or discriminatory practices, ISPs will continue taking bolder and more blatantly anti-consumer steps. That is why we have fought over the past year to restore net neutrality rules and put a cop back on the ISP beat. In May, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill restoring net neutrality rules. Despite the support of a bipartisan majority of Americans, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives refused our efforts to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Fortunately, the time is fast coming when the people's voices will be heard.
The editorial closes by arguing that "Large corporations will no longer be able to block progress on this important consumer protection issue."
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The world was fine before NN, the world is fine after it, focus on things that matter. Like going outside for once.
Where do I go to find shilling opportunities like this? How well does it pay?
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The world was fine before NN
You mean before the Internet as a whole? Sure... for some people, at least.
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Forget about fire. There was a world before fire. People used to bang rocks together for a living, and it worked for them.
Re:How are you even posting this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn’t the Internet come to an end? I was told it was an Internet armageddon, and I wouldn’t be able to post this comment without paying an extra surcharge to Verizon or some other bogeyman. But here I am, paying no such surcharge.
That you know about. Tell how much of your Netflix monthly fee goes to pay off the likes of Comcast and Verizon? What about Amazon Video?
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I say that as a point because,once again, i have to point out that the restrictions on local/municipal ISP's being built out HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH NET NEUTRALITY. You're right though, some of these carriers have taken billions in tax money to guarantee rural development of lines and haven't done it. Those companies should be fined 10times what they took and didn't follow th
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I say that as a point because,once again, i have to point out that the restrictions on local/municipal ISP's being built out HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH NET NEUTRALITY. You're right though, some of these carriers have taken billions in tax money to guarantee rural development of lines and haven't done it. Those companies should be fined 10times what they took and didn't follow through on, but.... THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH NET NEUTRALITY.
Sometimes (well quite often) people confuse correlation with causation. They see the results of bad government, and assume the correct answer is less government. As with most things, the answer can be complex. Sometimes less government is the answer. Sometimes, however, you simply need competent government. Let's presuppose net neutrality is a great idea. It is, but I'm not going to spend time on it here. Let's presuppose that some ISPs avoid offering service in some areas because NN cuts into their
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Open up the last mile to competition so that everyone can have multiple choices in ISPs again.
Won't work without extensive regulations to make it happen.
Regulation #1: The last mile provider is not allowed to own any source of content for the web other than a web page for their customers to interact with them.
Regulation #2: The last mile provider must allow any entity that is a source of content for the web access equal to what any other content provider receives.
I think that about covers it but I could be missing something.
Re:How are you even posting this? (Score:4, Insightful)
So the answer to government monopoly making mess...is MOAR government? Does that make ANY sense?
And your answer is THE WILD WEST! Everyone will police themselves right?
Open up the last mile to competition so that everyone can have multiple choices in ISPs again!
And how would that be possible considering? That's like saying we should solve world hunger by making more food.
The US taxpayer paid paid over 200 BILLION dollars for nationwide services we did NOT get [reddit.com] so just like anyone else who gets paid and rips off the customer we should take them to court and they can either give us what we paid for or we seize the last mile.
And yet you advocate that the same ISPs are not regulated? That makes no sense.
The answer to this is not NN because that isn't gonna mean shit if you don't do anything about the duopoly (or in many areas monopoly) controlling the last mile as without competition they have no reason to improve service or give a flying fuck. Make it easier for towns to start their own broadband, open up the last mile, and you'll see all this nastiness dry up and blow away like a fart in the breeze because if your ISP starts acting like a douche?
Your entire argument is a strawman argument. No one has every said Net Neutrality is the solution to monopoly. Net Neutrality is the only way the Internet can really function.
Just walk across the street and go somewhere else!
Do you live in my neighborhood because if you did you'd know that isn't the solution to the problem.
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Two little words: common carrier
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Wrong, common carrier (A neutral net) allows anybody to host anything. They are there to sell bandwidth, if they want to sell content, that's fine too, they just can't prioritize or block anything. That would be like allowing an advertiser to interrupt a phone call to sell you some life insurance. Give the service provider a switch, not a router. You filter the content at your end.
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If having to spend an extra couple of dollars each month to watch TV is too onerous for you then why don't you try not watching as much? Read a book instead you will be better off.
So you don't mind paying extra money means that everyone who does should read a book? Why does everyone have to do what you want them to do?
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Tell how much of your Netflix monthly fee goes to pay off the likes of Comcast and Verizon? What about Amazon Video?
Why do I care about Netflix's gross profit margins? Why should anyone care?
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I'm not talking anything about how much money Netflix makes. I'm talking about how much the Verizon surcharge to Netflix affects your monthly fee. Sure Netflix could just eat the surcharge but as a company they have to make money or they won't survive.
Poor little Netflix is just barely hanging on in this story.
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...what you pay for service will go up to maintain the profit.
Versus paying the same dollars to my ISP.
The world-endingly important thing is a made-up story about how someday I might have to pay Netflix an extra $1 instead of paying that $1 to my ISP. Then (the story goes) Netflix will pay my ISP that $1. It's breathtakingly, Earth-shatteringly important.
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It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!
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That’s a lot of people complaining that the sanctity and purity of their net neutrality ideal may not be being perfectly respected.
No armageddon, just the usual Internet bitching about anything and everything.
Do you think it’s a world-ending crisis every time someone on the Internet has a complaint about something?
You were told nothing of the sort (Score:5, Informative)
This is what drives me nuts about right wingers. Everything has to be simple, black and white. This is why we can't do anything about climate change. Because the damage not painfully, stupendously obvious.
It's the same folks who will argue, with a straight face and without irony or ill intent, that we can repeal regulations that were put in place to stop a problem because the problem no longer occurs... somehow completely missing the point that the problem stopped occurring because we put regulations in place to prevent it.
This is how we got the 2008 market crash. Regulations in place to prevent risky investment banking from mixing with safe mortgage banking were relaxed or eliminated in the name of "unleashing the free market" and "job creation". Those regulations were there for a reason. What's worse is because removing the regulations didn't immediately crash the economy folks act like it was middle class folks buying homes that crashed the country and not the billionaires gambling on them (nevermind that most of the defaults were not on people's primary residence but were investment properties themselves).
The world is a complicated place. Bad things happen for complex reasons and if you want them to stop happening you need to listen to experts because they spend years studying a problem.
TL;DR: For every sufficiently complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong.
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Fearmongering is not complex.
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Fearmongering is not complex.
No, it's an effective political tool which works all to well on left leaning voters.
It actually works across the political spectrum. People should grow the fuck up and stop letting themselves be manipulated by anyone who tells them a story. Being fooled into mindless states of emo anxiety every day is a waste of humanity.
Yes, and I still am being told it (Score:2)
Even the other people who responded to my comment are still saying (or implying) the most exaggerated bullshit arguments are all secretly true.
That's the argument style of fearmongering:
1. Make up bullshit stories
2. Bullshit stories don’t happen.
3. When someone points out bullshit stories were bullshit:
3a. claim "no one ever said" the stuff in the bullshit stories
3b. while simultaneously also saying "yes, it all happened" and
3c. "it will all happen, just wait".
"The Internet without net neutrality will [nbcnews.com]
So none of that has come to pass, as we said (Score:2)
you were told there would be less competition, increased prices, bad outcomes for rural communities and a general tightening of mega corporation's control of the Internet.
There is more competition (I just recently FINALLY got unlimited data hotspot service on T-Mobile via an MVNO). That's for a rural user so that's a twofer form your list there....
My prices have not increased at all.
The mega corporations control over the internet has increased. But what was Network Neutrality going to ever do about users
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:-) Your appeal to authority precedes you. Regulating the ISP as a common carrier will solve most of the problems. They have no business prioritizing content over the internet. That's like telling you who you can call on the phone.
Re:You were told nothing of the sort (Score:4, Informative)
Not true. Community Reinvestment Act was never about making loans to people with bad credit. The "regulations being ignored" started 2002 by George W. Bush:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Furthermore like I menationed in my post (Score:2)
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It's bitztream the custom EpiPen-hating, autism-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!
So, (Score:2)
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If your only response has to come by way of strawman arguments or outright lying, you probably should just shut the fuck up from the get go, because you're absolutely useless to the conversation. Why is it worthless fucking idiots like you lie so much?
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That's pretty rich coming from an incel like you who hangs on every lie Trump says.
We need some sort of Godwin's law for mentioning Trump.
Trump says ridiculous bullshit all the time. Who would have imagined such imperfect veracity from a politician? Politicians are known for being faultless truth-tellers, aren't they?
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Look at who's been appointed to important government posts, and how either underqualified they are, or how corrupt they are, or how much of a personal agenda they have, or all the above, and you'll see what I mean.
Re: In before SuperFaggot Ken Doll blathers apolog (Score:1)
You mean like when Obama appointed a man to head up saving the auto industry who a) never held a drivers license, and b) never actually worked in the auto industry in any capacity?
Yeah, trump needs more experts like that!
Do democrats call for common carrier? (Score:1)
If not, fuck 'em. This is theater. The democrats warn 'The drama continues'. SNAFU
What has gone wrong with NN "gone"? (Score:2, Troll)
Since you've the highest rated post, I'll just drop the question here for all - since NN was dropped a year ago, what are the bad effects that have happened as a result?
I see absolutely none so far. So why did we need 30 pages of regulation that NO ONE here understood, at all.
Re:Fight continues (Score:4, Interesting)
Neither party cares about the people or even knows what NN is.
What annoys me, is that both parties have transformed the NN issue into their own political football, which they both kick around, trying to score points for their party, while making them look better, and the other party look worse.
The NN football and the people are the ones that always lose in this match.
I get to trot out my Net Nuetrality comment (Score:5, Insightful)
1. There's an election in 2 years.
2. Vote in your primary. Most people don't, meaning your primary vote has many, many times more power. Politicians don't fear losing in the general, they fear being primaried.
3. Vote for candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. Google "Justice Democrats" and "Our Revolution".
What follows here is pure, angry white man ranting. Stop reading if that offends you. Or just keep reading if you enjoy being offended.
4. Yes, this is a partisan issue. I know of no GOP candidates who reliably support NN. The ones that do have only done so when they could be sure no strong regulations would pass.
5. Speaking of partisan issues, I don't know a single GOP candidate who refuses corporate PAC money. I'm open to suggestions though. But until then I won't even consider voting for them. You can't serve two masters.
Folks like to act like everyone has America's best interests at heart. And it's divisive as hell to suggest otherwise. I'm sorry folks, but this is a science forum, and science is founded on evidence. The GOP has spent the last 40 years serving the rich and well connected. The Dems have been doing it since Clinton, but I can find a wing of their party who wants to serve the people (again, google Justice Democrats. Or go look up the Bernie Bros).
The GOP is at this point irredeemable. There's nothing left there except a pro-corporate, pro ruling elite engine dedicated to shifting wealth upstream. You might have some social issues that are so important to you that you're overlooking that (abortion, gun control, stopping Mexican immigration, I'm already baiting a -2 troll moderation with this post so might as well go all in and keep digging). But if we're going to sit hear and tell ourselves we're a science and tech forum dedicated to evidence based reasoning then we can no longer ignore the obvious. Folks need to realize they're making a trade. You're trading your economic and political freedoms (the real ones, not the imaginary ones where you can have guns and pretend you can somehow overthrow a government with a modern army) for whatever pet issue keeps you siding with the GOP. If folks at least acknowledge the trade maybe they can start questioning if it's worth it?
Or maybe we're about to drag all of human civilization into another 1000 years of aristocratic dystopia. We'll find out in 2 years.
Thanks, I am (Score:5, Interesting)
In another 2-3 years I _might_ finally get out from under all of it, I might not. It depends on what folks like you do next. Will you stop uselessly insulting me on
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I understand how badly you need someone/something to blame your problems on but its not helping you. "The GOP's corrupt healthcare system"? Start with the insane over-regulation of the industry, the AMA's absurd limits on the number of medical licenses they allow to be issued, the crazy cost of med school driven by the non-dischargable loan industry, burdensome malpractice liability/costs put on med professionals by the trial lawyer racket and most recently the mandated ACA laws that have done nothing but
I covered all that in my comment (Score:2)
Any time you want you can end political corruption by committing to vote against anyone who accepts corporate PAC donations in their primary. You just don't want to because guys like Donald Trump tell you want you wan
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You can also volunteer to canvas and phone bank for a candidate whose views you support. If that sounds like it sucks, it does kinda, and it's fun at the same time. In other words its an interesting experience and I think you should try it.
Here's why: the dirty little secret of popular democracy is that most voters are apathetic and don't pay much attention. About half them don't even show up in any given election, and many those that do aren't really clear on what's at stake and end up voting out of hab
For the umpteenth time (Score:5, Insightful)
No it didn't. Awarding these ISPs local monopolies with insufficient guidelines and regulatory oversight is what caused that. The ISPs do not have natural monopolies. Their monopolies were granted to them by the local governments. This is a regulatory failure, not a market failure. If this regulated market for broadband internet access is virtually lawless, it's because the regulators made it that way.
Instead of Net Neutrality, why not just do it the easy way and fix the original regulation - rescind the ISPs' monopolies and allow competition. At this point, I'm beginning to suspect the politicians (both sides) don't want to do this. As long as the ISPs have a government-granted monopoly, they're beholden to the government. The ISPs will continue to donate to the parties to maintain those monopolies. Allowing competition would mean there's no more reason for the ISPs to stuff the politicians' wallets. So instead the politicians advocate Net Neutrality, which allows them to have their cake and to eat it too. The monopolies remain so the ISPs continue making campaign contributions, while the politicians appease the public by appearing to be against the "terrible ISPs and their monopolies" (never mind the politicians are the ones who gave them those monopolies).
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Their monopolies were granted to them by the local governments.
...
Instead of Net Neutrality, why not just do it the easy way and fix the original regulation - rescind the ISPs' monopolies and allow competition.
Unless you are suggesting regulation to rescind the ability of local governments to grant monopolies in the first place (I can already hear the screams of government overreach) then you are saying we should fix the law in 89432 local governments (and then maintaining and protecting them forever) instead of fixing the law in only one government, the federal government.
One's a fool's errand and the other is possible. If you can't tell the two apart then you are the fool.
The reason you're not seeing competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say you decide to compete with Comcast. You're gonna have to spend billions of your own dollars on infrastructure. You might be tempted because Comcast charges $100-$140/mo for something that costs maybe $10-$15/mo to actually provide. You could, over time, do it for $50/mo and make a killing.
Except Comcast knows this. They can and will drop their price to $20/mo and still make good money. Meanwhile you need to charge $50/mo for a decade or more to cover the interest on the loans you took out to finance all that infrastructure you built.
The real problem here is you're trying to put a square peg into a round hole. We _all_ want telecommunications. It's as essential and valuable as food and water. We couldn't live without it. Our civilization would collapse without the ability to spread information. For one thing we couldn't make enough food.
When something's that important and that universal you stop letting private corporations handle it. That's why we have a post office. But don't take my word for it, here's a much better list [youtube.com] of the reasons not to privatize industries and how to tell the difference between something that belongs in the public and something that should be private.
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Can you please explain why I have three different fiber options then? According to your theory, it was impossible for the 2nd and 3rd fiber plants to get built in my area.
Because several fiber options were rolled out (Score:2)
The rest of the country isn't so lucky. Nobody's rolling out much fiber anymore, and the ones that are are the major players (AT&T & Comcast) doing it here and there when they're paid by a specific municipality and that municipality is one of the rare ones that doesn't let them take the money and run.
Re: The reason you're not seeing competition (Score:2)
'It's as essential as ... food' & 'that's why you don't let private companies. Intros it'
Did I miss something? When did the public sector take over food production in America?
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That and market consolidation that will leave you with a single provider in the end anyway. Like how AT&T reconstituted itself [vox-cdn.com] in the decades since it was broken up in an anti-trust lawsuit.
Civilization yes (Score:2)
And thanks to robots & automation we don't need very many to generate concrete value. The lack of work for people to do in a society built around trading work for food is a major problem. 86% of the manufacturing jobs lost to the US were to rob
For the umpteenth time - a Zombie talking point (Score:2)
But of course they do. Aside from rsilvergun's point on the high capital costs of rolling out a network and the enormous advantages held by an established player - there's also market consolidation. Which will leave you with a handful (or less) of providers in the end, anyway. Case in point: AT&T was broken up in an anti-trust suit decades ago, but has totally rebuilt [vox-cdn.com] itself via acquisitions and mergers.
Re: For the umpteenth time (Score:2)
No, you became the monopoly, you aren't competing with a monopoly.
NN Sucks... kinda (Score:2)
The consumer will benefit (Score:2)
as soon as legislators wake up to the reality that connectivity is a pipe and is treated the same as any other public utility. Let them sell users features users care to purchase, but don't touch the pipes contents. Treat packets like water, gas or electricity, without the owner of the pipe able to modify content carried.
How hard is that to understand?
Without the FCC acting as sheriff (Score:2)
Let's hope the sheriff is not named John Brown, even if Bob Marley is dead, Eric Clapton is still much alive.
In other news (Score:2)
In other news, download speeds up 35.8%, upload speeds up 22.0% in the year since the repeal.
https://www.speedtest.net/reports/united-states/ [speedtest.net]
But yet, Internet speed has gone up. (Score:2)
Why? I can attribute it to Comcast.
Yes, that "hated" company. Comcast has rolled out DOCSIS 3.1 gigabit Internet to much of the country over the course of 2018, and most Comcast service areas should offer it in the next few months. With gigabit speeds, stutter-free 4K video streaming becomes normal even on multiple channels being streamed. And it may lead to the beginning of the change to mostly on-demand watching of scripted content (with the exception of sports and certain other events that demand "live"