FCC Vote Marks Effort To Take Greater Control of the Web 323
GovTechGuy writes "The FCC voted today to open an inquiry into how the broadband industry is regulated, the first step in a controversial attempt to assert greater regulatory control over Internet service providers. In a 3-2 vote the Democratic members of the Commission voted to move forward with the FCC's proposal to reclassify broadband as a telecom service, increasing the regulation it is subject to. The move also has large implications for net neutrality, which FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski has made a focus under his watch."
Re:Bad Title (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How does this relate to the recent court ruling (Score:5, Informative)
Re:First mandate DSL for everyone (Score:2, Informative)
most of the people who don't live in an area where cable or other broadband is available already probably live way, way too far away from a telephone CO for signal attenuation not completely destroy any notion of broadband via DSL being usable.
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Informative)
Prohibition
War on Drugs
Japanese Internment Camps
National Security Letters
Register for Sex offenders
Hmm, I'm sure someone could object that one or perhaps all of these programs didn't cause any abuse... but that's just from atop of my head, and I'm not even American (as you can no doubt tell from my spelling).
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Informative)
But to get more on-topic, here's my problem with the FCC action: what problem, exactly, are they solving? I've read lots here about net neutrality and all the horrible things it's supposed to prevent, but have any of those horrible things actually, you know, happened? If not, what's the rush? Why not wait to see exactly what the abuses are, so that we can know what problems the government is supposed to be fixing?
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
I've read lots here about net neutrality and all the horrible things it's supposed to prevent, but have any of those horrible things actually, you know, happened?
Comcast has been caught actually dropping certain types of traffic. High-up ISP corporate officers have been publicly claiming that they should have a right to charge the sites that their customers visit.
Re:How does this relate to the recent court ruling (Score:3, Informative)
The law gives the FCC several categories to put things in, and gives them different powers over each category. That ruling said they were trying to use powers from category A on ISPs while ISPs were in category B. So now they're trying to move ISPs into category A.
More to the point - in the early 2000s the FCC moved ISPs from Category A to Category B, now they are trying to move them back to where they were originally.
The first (erroneous IMNHO) move to category B (aka 'information service providers') was finalized by the NCTA v Brand X [wikipedia.org] scotus ruling that said the FCC has the authority to determine which category an ISP falls into.
Re:Take Control? (Score:2, Informative)
Bullshit.
Re:Tyranny (Score:4, Informative)
Because its prohibitively expensive to be a physical plant provider for the last mile when there is already an established player?
Yeah its called a Natural Monopoly
Re:Take Control? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, this is a terrible argument. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make sense. Essentially you're implying that the government should do nothing because *some* government programs have had problems. It's not really any smarter than suggesting that we should outlaw all profit-generating companies because some of them have caused economic damage.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, how did the market become "uncompetitive" in the first place?
Oh yeah, Government interference. First by creating and enforcing local monopolies rather than simply selling right of way space to anyone that wanted it, and second by scooping up several billion in taxpayer money and just GIVING it to the big telcos to create and infrastructure.
If the government had just stayed the hell out, we wouldn't be having this discussion today as the Internet would likely already be far more built-out and with way more players in the market, each of them significantly smaller than the giant megacorps we have involved right now.
The BEST thing the government can do is to eliminate local monopoly legislation,(along with any other regulation making the barrier to entry so damned high) and demand a full refund of the money we wasted on the megacorps. Then give that money back to the taxpayers.
And before some "hair on fire" leftist comes along and tries to beat me with the "You don't want ANY regulation!" straw man argument; OF COURSE I want SOME regulation. I want the absolute MINIMUM amount of regulation possible, and ONLY those regulations put in place by elected officials. Unelected bureaucrats should not be allowed to create regulation and any regulation created by them should be summarily deleted from the record. PERIOD.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess checking Google News for Internet Kill Switch [google.com] is too much trouble.... this reply is at least as much for the person who said to get news from somewhere other than Slashdot, but it's been proposed and talked about by more than one Congressman. There are multiple bills mentioned in the below quote alone [cnet.com]:
News about the Leiberman Senate bill has been in the mainstream press recently, and they've had hearings on it:
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
A few months ago Congress did pass a law giving the sitting president power to "kill switch" the internet
No they didn't. The bill hasn't even gone to a vote of the full Senate. What you were reading about was a Senate panel passing it. The two aren't synonymous.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
Nice attempt at revisionist history. Ma Bell became a regulated monopoly after they were sued under antitrust law in 1913. They were sued because AT&T started buying up all the competition in 1907. They became "uncompetitive" all by themselves by functionally eliminating competition and purchasing as much right-of-way as possible to prevent new competitors from entering the market.
Re:Take Control? (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you insist on repeating this as if it were truth? Do you still not recognize the existence of natural monopolies? Even the Austrians recognize the existence of natural monopolies.
That has little to do with the creation or reason for existence of the telco monopolies. They existed prior to that, and would exist even without it. Massive fixed costs for providing telco service ensure the existence of those monopolies.
That is just about the funniest thing I've read today. Market actors consolidate due to economies of scale, in any market where economies of scale exist.
The elephant in the middle of the room you so clumsily step around is that the massive capital required to achieve economies of scale in the telco world is a bigger barrier to market for would-be entrants than anything the government adds. Without the guaranty of monopoly, there wouldn't *be* a telco provider in a lot of areas. No one wants to sink millions in up-front costs when they can't be sure of having customers.
That's a recipe for disaster. The people writing the regs would have even less understanding of the industries they are regulating. So we'd have even MORE regulations written by lobbyists for the industries that are supposed to be regulated.
Re:Take Control? (Score:3, Informative)
Frankly, I'm happy for the FCC to step in. Why? Because business-as-usual isn't cutting it.
I live in a major metropolitan area, and my broadband access is *abysmal*. I have two basic choices:
DSL from AT&T (perhaps resold) and cable from Time Warner. Both are horrible. Exactly how horrible depends from year to year.
Currently, I'm on Time Warner, and my experience is oh... 50% of the time its just fine. 20% of the time, it doesn't even work at all for an hour or two. As for the rest, its slow. These bad times don't just match up to peak times either-- I'm aware of the shared nature of cable connections.
What the FCC is talking about doing is not just a question of "net neutrality", but doing some light regulation on the infrastructure -- and it needs it. The companies are content with their balkanized monopolies, each carving out their chunks of the nation and sharing their customers with what is likely only one real competitor in each market.
I'm desperately waiting for Sprint's WIMAX to roll out into my area just to have another chance of something. I really don't want to have to pay to get some dedicated fiber to my house just to be able to use the internet *reliably* in 2010 in a major metropolitan area.
20% of the time it simply doesn't work.
And the other 30% its just very slow.
And these numbers don't go with "peak" hours regularly, either.
Re:Take Control? (Score:2, Informative)
Two words, "sovereign immunity".
This means that citizens of a government can't sue the government unless something expressly gives them permission- generally the government itself through laws or by nature of charter (constitution). This would also go for foreign powers too. They would have to find a court willing to take the case that the US would recognize as surrendering part of it's sovereign immunity over to. To date, there are very few courts this has happened to and when the situation came up, we just ignored it anyways.
all that would more or less happen is that people would get pissed and the people who already hate the US would have one more reason.
Re:Well, it's not like we didn't see this one comi (Score:3, Informative)
That's because he's lying.
It's not recent.
It's from 2001. 9 bloody years ago.
Go read the other message in the thread that demonstrated this.
Seriously, this is why you stay the fuck away from prisonplanet, because it's conspiracy lunacy, with shit taken out of context and presented in a manner designed to frighten you. Because fear sells.
Jesus Christ.
--
BMO
Re:Incredibly misleading headline (Score:4, Informative)
moving us closer to socialism and the end of The American Way of Life.
Yeah, I know! That would be so horrible!
Instead, you'd have socialism, where your ability to get a good education and a good job doesn't depend on how much money your parents have but how skilled you are at what you do. When you get sick, you get cured instead of gouged. When you buy a cell phone, you get serviced by well-regulated telephone companies---you don't get gouged*.
(* seriously---you're on the hook for 2 years?? I'm on the hook for 6 months, paying 10$/mo. for internet on my N900. My operator doesn't care whether I tether, use skype, or run my landline through asterisk on my laptop via the internet onto my cell; they just give me 1 gig / mo. and 0.10$/minute; and once I'm off the expensive contract, I'm back to getting 50 free minutes and 50 texts per month. That's *free*, zero charge).
I'm not really sure why it works, but Danes are the happiest people on earth (or were in 2007): http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=4086092&page=1 [go.com]
Re:Take Control? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah if you ignore FedEx and UPS and the Intenet, all of which provide me with better, faster, cheaper mailing service than the Government service does. So yeah you're right. USPS is the best in the world - if you ignore the ones that are better. ;-) .
Show me how UPS or FedEx can afford to send a letter across the country for $.44. Yeah, didn't think so. And don't get me started on the "but UPS and FedEx can't deliver first class mail". Even if they could, they can't do it for $.44.
A private company would eliminate unprofitable lines that lack customers (like how Circuit City disappeared), but government keeps foolishly running lines that are losing money. That needs to stop. ----- Also in my personal opinion, Amtrak's time has passed. Passenger trains are an old 1800s technology that should disappear like the wagon train disappeared, other than for limited usage in cities (metros, subways, etc). Trains are fine in heavily-populated cities, but when going long distance most people would rather travel by car or bus, not train. Let's give them want THEY desire, rather than run mostly-empty trains that they don't desire. .
You're detached from reality. The Acela line in the northeast is in heavy use and ridership has been increasing over the past few years, with 27 million people riding it in 2009. It's be in more use if Amtrak was able to get priority on the lines, but private industry owns the rail lines and thus Amtrak has to work around CSX's schedule to get you from point A to B. As for amount of money, the FAA got $14 billion dollars in 2009. Amtrak got $2 billion. How expensive do you think airflight would be if the FAA had to be self-funded? How well could Amtrak do if they got $14 billion?
Re:In before... (Score:1, Informative)
If you live in Maryland like another of your posts would seem to imply (trialling something in Baltimore), then were is the correct tense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_Electric_Deregulation