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Government The Internet United States

House Calls 'Save the Internet Act' One of Its Biggest 2019 Accomplishments (dailydot.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the stalled-bills dept.
House Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee listed the Save the Internet Act, a bill that would restore net neutrality rules, among their accomplishments in 2019. The Daily Dot reports: Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) said in a statement that the Save the Internet Act and other bills passed by the committee "worked to put consumers first and strengthen our economy." The Save the Internet Act would codify the 2015 Open Internet Order, an order by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that brought about net neutrality rules, which was repealed by the now-Republican controlled agency in 2017. Pallone and Doyle called that decision "disastrous" in their statement.

The bill passed through the House by a 232-190 vote in April. Since then, the Senate has yet to take up a vote on it. Around the time of the House vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the Save the Internet Act "dead on arrival" in the upper chamber. The White House has also threatened a veto if it were to pass in the Senate. [...] Pallone and Doyle also listed bills that aim to "stop the onslaught of annoying robocalls," improve the country's broadband maps, and holding two oversight hearings for the FCC as its other accomplishments.
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House Calls 'Save the Internet Act' One of Its Biggest 2019 Accomplishments More

House Calls 'Save the Internet Act' One of Its Biggest 2019 Accomplishments

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  • Accomplishment? (Score:3, Informative)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @09:11PM (#59534734)
    What did it accomplish?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It would accomplish the goal of entrenching wired cable Internet companies over wireless Internet. Because with wireless, everybody is sharing the same airwaves and thus the total capacity of bandwidth is limited. During times of high use, it would be good to be able to throttle back users that are hogging the airwaves and making it impossible for anyone else to get a small email message through or text web page loaded. With net neutrality though, throttling different traffic types is against the law, thus

      • If the problem is "to get a small email message through or text web page loaded" during peak times, then set up the queuing to limit each subscriber to a certain rate in megabytes per minute. This way, the light user can pull 100 KiB bursts six times a minute, while the video user who tries to sustain 100 KiB a second (0.8 Mbps) for the whole minute gets throttled. This traffic management is based solely on volume up and down to each subscriber, so as to apply evenly regardless of the source, port, or conte

        • Of course the bill didn't pass, so it doesn't matter what it said.
          They voted on it knowing it wouldn't pass, so knowing that what it said didn't matter. Having said that ...

          > Or does the bill define "different traffic types" broadly enough to ban different treatment of "burst traffic" or "sustained traffic" in general?

          Unfortunately, at the level of a national ISP things get really complicated. Some traffic needs low jitter - you WANT to increase latency on any packets that are coming too fast to avoid

          • you WANT to increase latency on any packets that are coming too fast to avoid turning "Trump" into "Tprum" because the P arrived too soon

            Thats why TCP packets are numbered. I'm not sure you understand whats going on at the low level.

            • VoIP isn't carried over TCP.
              TCP is for when you want to stop, wait, and try again when you lose a packet. That would make VoIP unusable.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by amorsen ( 7485 )

                That still does not mean you want to increase latency on any packets. VoIP endpoints have no trouble dealing with packets arriving "too soon". They do not like packets delivered too late.

                And yes, if your network is sufficiently sucky you can get around the dynamic buffering of VoIP endpoints by adding a bit of latency to ALL VoIP packets. However, you are unlikely to do a better job than the dynamic buffering, and you will introduce walkie-talkie effect. This is of course handy if you sell competing voice s

        • No, in that use case you don't use limits. You use round robin.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by amorsen ( 7485 )

        With net neutrality though, throttling different traffic types is against the law

        This is not true. I know you have somehow been modded insightful, but it is simply incorrect. You can discriminate on traffic types all you want. You just cannot dump Netflix traffic while letting Disney traffic through.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        With net neutrality though, throttling different traffic types is against the law, thus making wireless Internet much more prone to becoming unreliable/unusable during periods of high network usage.

        No, you treat like traffic like. So you cannot give Netflix any more bandwidth than YouTube - just because Netflix paid you off and YouTube didn't. Likewise, you cannot delay Gmail traffic while letting Hotmail/Outlook online traffic go through at full speed.

        The network is neutral - which just means no one type o

      • Stop talking ur smack dummy.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I would love to see this pass into law and I too believe it's the right thing. However, an accomplishment in my opinion is something that's been completed. Sadly, this was not and probably never will be.

    • What did it accomplish?

      Obviously, it saved the Internet. I just can't believe we've working all this time without hitting save. Just think what we would have lost in a power outage! On second thought, maybe it wasn't that great of an idea. ;)

    • nobody can pretend they're in favor of it now. The Democratic party is now the party of NN.
      • Which is not that bad of a position to be in. All they have to do is show that recent video clip of the person using an IoT device to talk to that minor and that under NN ISPs would not be able to block that or SPAM. NN is a dumb thing to push, unless they water it down, Application Neutrality is the what should be pushed for.

      • Let's face it, the NN for ISPs thing is so 2005. The real battle is Big tech censorship and control of the Internet, and the GOP has a much better position on the record for that than Democrats, who massively support Big tech censorship because it happens to favor them.

        • I'd argue that neither party is dealing honestly here, and we have a mountain of quotes from leaders on both sides that make it clear that they are clueless about tech business or how to regulate it.

          Expecting more ruinous behavior for the industry in the near future, and a cleaning of the House and the Senate before things can get better.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hduff ( 570443 )

      What did it accomplish?

      Given that the Senate will never pass it, the House "accomplished" nothing.

  • So what! (Score:3)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @09:11PM (#59534736)
    for good or bad it means nothing since it will never become law.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
  • I'll bet they will give a different answer today.
  • please please please leave politics out of this. We can talk about the bill, but please please lets not talk about politics.

    • No. The passage - or rather, the near-certain non-passage - of the bill is an inherently political subject. When support for any bill is split along near-perfect party lines, as so many are, the reason for this has to be undeniably political.

  • Senate won't even vote on bipartisan bills (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Thy have yet to take up any bills that aren't backed solely by Republicans.

    They're too busy confirming hack judges en masse.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by blindseer ( 891256 )

      Thy have yet to take up any bills that aren't backed solely by Republicans.

      Unlike the House, where the only bills that pass are the ones that no Republican voted for.

      No, wait, that's exactly like the House.

      They're too busy confirming hack judges en masse.

      Like Obama said, "Elections have consequences." Here's an idea, instead of bellyaching about how the election didn't go your way maybe you should get more like minded people to vote. I'm thinking that the current Democrat tactic of trying to "correct" for a past election, and trying to sabotage the next, with an impeachment will blow up in their faces. Voters don't like elect

      • Here's an idea, instead of bellyaching about how the election didn't go your way maybe you should get more like minded people to vote.

        Someone famously said the elections are rigged.

        If there is gerrymandering and voter purges how can we expect fair dealing in our democracy?

  • I just checked the definition of accomplishment (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @09:38PM (#59534828)

    " Something carried out or completed successfully; an achievement."

    It isn't an accomplishment, it's more of an attempt, and a lame one at that, when you consider all the issues with the privacy, data security, tracking, bending folding and mutilating of users of Internet services that Congress seems to be unwilling to address.

    • It isn't an accomplishment.

      The bill passing sub-committee review is their accomplishment, not its imminent failure to become legislation, or hold technology-based corporations accountable.

  • Here's a bad car analogy.

    I want to build a city with an optimal traffic system. To do this I place priority on vehicles, because priorities keeps people happy and safe.

    If there is a vehicle with more people in them then I want them on the best path. This encourages ride sharing and lowers the total numbers of vehicles, therefore making everyone get where they are going faster. I'll put in bus only lanes in certain areas, so that cars with only one person isn't holding things up. I'll set rules on car po

    • This is still a bit of a disagreement and/or misunderstanding about what "net neutrality" means. It doesn't necessarily mean that there can't be any kind of traffic shaping or prioritization, but that such shaping/prioritization can't be based on the endpoint or vendor. For example, you could potentially have QoS that prioritizes VoIP, but then that QoS shouldn't favor particular VoIP products or services. They could throttle web traffic, but they shouldn't be allowed to throttle all web traffic except f

      • What you describe would be bad, but has that ever happened? Would an ISP that blocked any traffic like you describe attract or maintain any customers? Don't we already have laws on fraud and anti-competitive behavior to stop such if it did happen?

        What net neutrality does, as I've seen it described, is prevent an ISP from providing services that a customer would find exceedingly valuable. One being something like AT&T that wanted to offer DirecTV streaming that did not count against the customer's dat

        • What you describe would be bad, but has that ever happened? Would an ISP that blocked any traffic like you describe attract or maintain any customers?

          *sigh*

          Yes, there have been several instances of abuses along these lines, and they have been discussed many times on this forum.

          And your question as to whether an ISP can attract or maintain customers is rather obtuse considering the fact that ISPs aren't an actual free market, but rather monopolies or duopolies in virtually every area of the country.

          https://www.freepress.net/our-... [freepress.net]

  • subject says it all

  • Dems, you may think you've done a tremendous service to the American public. Think again. Keep pushing for open borders, $50 trillion health care plans, $90 trillion green new deals, rampant socialism, other ridiculous, dangerous, and unobtainable goals. Keep forgetting about the forgotten man and woman. You will guarantee the reelection of Donald Trump.

    • Is that soap box you stand on your own or is it community property? I can't really abide by unregistered use of socialist taxpayer property.

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