House Democrats Shelve Net Neutrality Proposal 221
crimeandpunishment writes "A compromise on net neutrality appears to be as likely as Google and China becoming BFFs. House Democrats have pulled the plug on efforts to work out a compromise among phone, cable, and Internet companies. House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, who shelved the proposal late on Wednesday in the face of Republican opposition, said, 'If Congress can't act, the FCC must,' and called this development 'a loss for consumers.' Internet companies and public interest groups say the new regulations are needed to keep phone and cable companies from playing favorites with traffic, while those companies insist they need flexibility so high-bandwidth applications don't slow down their systems." The net neutrality debate seems to have fallen victim to the extreme polarization evident in the larger political culture.
Good news (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, any legislation crammed through in the last few days of a session is bound to be crap. Which apparently this one was, as it excluded wireless providers from the rules applied to wired providers. I guess one group pays better than the other.
We are already seeing the pull back in wireless, we are losing uncapped plans. I do not doubt that if we had the ham fisted regulation we normally get out of the Fed we would soon see that popping back up on wired plans. If abusers cannot be managed away then everyone will simply get clamped down to limits.
Mismatched debate (Score:3, Interesting)
A large part of the problem about Net Neutrality is that there is a complete mismatch of knowledge between those for and those against. People who are generally for Net Neutrality generally are more knowledgeable (although not always true) about why Net Neutrality is an important issue. Those who are against it (at least the lay people and not the businesses involved) generally don't know what Net Neutrality stands for and so they believe it's some sort of shadowy government censorship of free speech or governmental takeover or interference with business or socialism or whatever. Both sides are talking past each other and there is no common grounds of agreement. As long as that's true, Net Neutrality is dead.
You? Why TF should they care about YOU? (Score:4, Interesting)
Democrats, Republicans... what's the difference? Neither one cares about the citizenry. This farce of democracy is made so evident by, well, everything they do. Even the idea of calling them "representatives" is a farce, since they don't represent us. Well, I suppose they DO represent themselves and their monied interests.
If you genuinely want to break out of this kind of rule, you need to break it from the bottom. Free software didn't compete with commercial software by asking the corporations if they would mind please changing the way they charge for things. No, free software started by people just doing it, and ignoring the monied interests.
You can do the same thing with governance [metagovernment.org]. All you have to do is contribute to one of the many projects listed there, or to the umbrella group.
Or you can just sit back and whine about how the Democrats and/or Republicans screwed you over again. Here's a tip: it is never going to stop unless you stop relying on them to make decisions for you.
Re:Bandwidth hogs should pay more.... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not what they want to do. They want money from Hulu and Youtube to give THEIR packets 'special treatment'. I don't think it's fair to charge the end user who receives the content as the user didn't make any money from the deliver. Hulu MAKES money from the content (via the commericals or their proposed pay for view system).
Re:I'll Say It Again ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I cannot support this bill, just like I can never support anything government does ever for any reason [slashdot.org].
I want gov't out of economy completely, only dealing with 2 things really: Justice system, minimum military needed to protect liberties.
That's it.
Everything else is a function of the market. Gov't creates monopolies that end up doing whatever they wish and pay gov't to help them stay monopolies. The correct fix for this 'Net Neutrality' issue is an ISP (or a few) that would offer services without any such prioritization imposed by the ISP no matter who paid it, which of-course may come at an extra cost.
This is no different actually from your cable company charging you for your connection and programming (and possibly rent of equipment) while still pushing ads onto your screen.
Re:I'll Say It Again ... (Score:5, Interesting)
While conservatives may dislike "Net Neutrality" for the reasons you state, I believe they have another reason - an undying faith in "the free market and the ability of players in the free market to come to an optimal solution for all." In other words, "Free market players need to have the maximum flexibility to arrive at market solutions which both maximize profits and deliver optimal solutions." Note that I keep using quotation marks in the prior sentence, and in this case it's not a misuse of "quotation marks," rather it's expressing a position that sounds really neat, but doesn't work that well in practice.
First off, the "free market" really isn't so free, it's loaded with large players. There have been studies indicating that when 4 or 5 major players have captured something like 80% of the market, it no longer acts like a "free market." According to those studies, even without overt collusion, a market dominated by a few large players starts to act as if there is price-fixing and market restriction happing, just by normal corporate behavior.
Second, the "free market" never developed anything like the internet, and they had over a decade of failure at it. CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, The Source, etc are all ashes of the market failure. The only reason AOL has anything like survived is because of the proprietary players it best embraced the internet. The normal corporate behavior these days is to "own the pie" rather than work with others to create a much bigger pie. Oddly enough, they continue to do that even when the cooperative pie is so much bigger that their share is bigger than their full ownership of a private pie.
Finally, I don't think conservatives understand that sometimes we do better if our actions are limited. They have complete distrust of the limiting agency - ie, the government, and do understand that sometimes their own decisions can be bad, but fail to see that sometimes, the "free market" will fail to correct them, and they fail to appreciate the damage done, while waiting for the marketplace to correct things.
Re:You? Why TF should they care about YOU? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, that's all true. The only people who do believe that the parties are equally bad (geminidomino) don't actually pay attention to politics.
Title misleading? (Score:2, Interesting)
What's up with the title of this post? "Politics: House Democrats Shelve Net Neutrality" sure make it sound like the poster is trying to imply that Democrats were at fault for this bill failing. But the summary and TFA indicate that it was Republicans who blocked efforts to move this bill forward.
Re:I'll Say It Again ... (Score:5, Interesting)
the Demofucks are pushing on "fast track" through the Senate right now, though, and you maybe see why the Rethuglicans
You know, over time I've noticed an inverse relationship between the intelligence of a poster and their likelihood to turn names into cutesy little attacks.
Just say the names. 'Democrats'. 'Republicans'. See? That wasn't hard. If your argument is presented decently we'll get the jist of who you do and don't like without the 3rd grade humor.