US House Subcommittee Votes To Kill Net Neutrality 607
angry tapir writes "A US House of Representatives subcommittee has voted in favor of a resolution to throw out the US Federal Communications Commission's recently adopted net neutrality rules. The communications subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 15-8 along party lines for a resolution of disapproval that would overturn the FCC's rules."
Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
it doesnt matter what your reasons or excuses for voting for a right wing party. you may even be quite right and correct in your reasons. BUT, a right wing party will always support corporations over people, in every way they can. even their acts which appear pro-people, will end up being pro-corp in the long run.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:3, Insightful)
you fools gave your houses to the right wing party. politicians anywhere around the world, always support corporations over people. .
FTFY
This doesn't mean much (Score:5, Insightful)
summary fails to mention how this vote probably won't actually go anywhere.
Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
We are entering a dark age.
Re:It does what, now? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a wonderful internet while it lasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I think you are being over specific. These people cede their "free will" to whom they deem to be most powerful. That may be a talking head, a god, a politician, a rich person. I believe it comes from a lack of cynicism.
Keep the bad legislation coming. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638 [opensecrets.org]
Re:What's Wrong With That? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Enjoy. (Score:2, Insightful)
And left-wing parties put government over people. You sound like a high school kid who just discovered political parties.
There was no reason for "net neutrality." There was no example its proponents could point to that warranted its existence. Having politicians in Washington dictate how sysadmins are supposed to regulate their private network traffic is insane. Media lobbies would have a field day influencing politicians to "regulate" torrent traffic. The fact is that ISPs are private organizations, and you only pay for an IP address on their private networks. They can regulate the traffic on their own networks however they wish.
P.S. You come off as more intelligent if you capitalize your sentences.
Why are we at all surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny. The FCC has the ability to regulate telecommunications companies, and that is what they are being asked to do. Not the Internet. THE CARRIERS. The greedy, manipulative pieces of shit that hate the internet for what it is.
They could have marked them as Tier II carriers, and didn't for reasons I cannot fathom.
And fuck what is with this long-ass timer between comments on Slashdot?
Re:What's Wrong With That? (Score:4, Insightful)
Similar to, if I want to take a toll road, which is less congested than the rest of the highway system.
I think the cause for concern is that without Net Neutrality you will no longer have any choice in the matter. If you wish to visit certain destinations the toll road is the only way. I guess it is like Pay-Per-View for the internet.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
That list adds up to less than $14 million. Of the $388 million he raised. Less than 4%? Not really proving your point there.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
NN is not regulation. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry but there seems to be a discrepancy with regard to how representatives view NN. It is not a government regulation anymore than the first amendment 'regulates' that speech must be free. Likewise, NN 'regulates' that information must be unbiased. This notion of forced freedom as a form of regulation is probably the most far fetched form of 'regulation' that I have seen. But it should be clear that NN merely forces information to be unbiased. Regulation is a form of constriction on some greater pool. In other words, regulation selects a subset of options from a grand set. NN could not be regarded as regulation because it restricts corporate regulation. NN is, therefore, the antithesis of regulation.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bear in mind of course that anywhere else in the civilised world the US Democratic Party would be regarded as ultra-right religio-fascists. They're only "left wing" to Americans.
Re:It does what, now? (Score:2, Insightful)
being naive must suck... You wouldn't know.
Re:What's Wrong With That? (Score:0, Insightful)
Net neutrality is necessary for the same reason why "be neutral" is applies as a rule to the phone service, or electric company, or natural gas provider.
They are government-created monopolies and need to be regulated so they don't abuse their position (as Comcast has done multiple times over the last twenty years).
Although: I'd sooner have this solution:
- Government owns cables that are 50-optics bundled together, and runs them under (or alongside) the government-owned roads. The companies like MSN or AOL or Apple or Comcast or Verizon then lease those lines. That way customers would have upto 50 different companies to choose from - a true free market.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Greens. You are misrepesenting greens. Those "narrow interests" that they support are basically the interests of functioning, diverse, healthy eco-systems worldwide and all of the inhabitants of those ecosystems. Yep. Pretty "special interest". Pretty radical. Definitely evil. Those bastards are supporting life over money. They are supporting sense not dollars. It's a good thing Guantanamo is still open.
Re:Hotelling's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
there's a third option you missed that is having some success in the middle east.
Re:You overlooked something... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. The corporations have owned Washington for many decades now. Even back in the 1950's, Ike Eisenhower warned that America's military-industrial complex had become too strong. Now look where we are: America has a military budget that's larger than that of all other countries combined, yet at the same time a substantial number of Americans live below the poverty line.
Even worse, many of our laws have now been drafted by lobbyists -- a fact that some of our politicians have even been happy to admit. The lobbyists continue to play the politicians and the politicians continue to play the people for whom the latter continue to vote. It's a vicious cycle that's only made worse by the poor state of America's educational system, which has been deteriorating for many decades. The electorate has now largely been reduced to a mass of ignorant, overly-religious, flag-waving zombie-consumers whose only purpose seems to be in making the rich richer.
Unfortunately, I'm not certain that there is much reason to believe that America can get out of this rut, which is like an extreme experiment in unbridled free-market capitalism that has gone badly wrong. The problem is that its people have wished this upon themselves. In this way America are kind of like Afghanistan; a country to which we've tried to introduce democracy, but whose citizens do not recognize the value of it and are thus not willing to fight for it, i.e. a horse that has been led to horse to water, but will not drink. Americans, of the other hand, had their freedom, but then gave it away willingly to the corporations... and continue to do so. Like the poor Afghans, they don't understand that their usual behavior is not in their best interest either.
Oh, well...
PS -- This is a bit of a rant, so go ahead and mod it down.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a quick look at the campaign finances of President Obama and see if you can still make this comment with a straight face
That's easy. The USA doesn't really have a party that is liberal.
There is a party on the political right, and another to the right of them.
Those who scream "left wing" and "socialist" at the Democrats don't seem to know what those words mean.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it's too bad that business, particularly for-profit corporations, has too much power. But they at least have an interest in society and its functioning
Seriously?
Corporations only care about how much money they can get from anyone who isn't them.
The only function of society they are interested in is it's ability to supply them with customers with money who can be easily persuaded to part with it.
A well functioning society tends to have better educated people who can manage some amount of critical thinking.
Re:You overlooked something... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I that most Americans appreciate just how right wing, conservative, pretty, ill-educated, reactionary, selfish, jingoistic, partisan, anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-reason US politics appears from the external point of view.
From your external point of view, or from the point of view that's been sold to you by your own media and politicians? I'm sure it's pleasing to imagine that you hold some privileged frame of reference, but maybe it's possible that the people telling you these things are telling you the things you want to hear, and the things they want you to believe.
Unless you are looking at us from his point of view, you have no means by which to criticize his point of view. And as a matter of fact, most of what he says is true, something you'd realize if you looked at the U.S. system objectively. Our politicians ARE all right-wing. That's the only way that abortion of a "health care" plan could possibly have been passed last year. You know, the one that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars to the insurance companies? And the fact that all politicians in both parties will only ever talk about cutting taxes, never about the need with our huge deficits to, oh I dunno, INCREASE income to pay for things? Or how it's impossible to get elected in this country if you are an atheist or agnostic? And how those in both parties are all too eager to cut spending on education. Or how our "liberal" president is perpetuating the abomination that is Guantanamo? Or how no politician will get rid of the "Under God" clause in the Pledge of Allegiance (or even get rid of the Pledge at all)?
A true "liberal" would fix at one or more of the above, and we haven't had anything resembling a liberal in the White House since Carter. And he has somehow been demonized as "the worst president ever" when the evidence (if anyone bothered learning it) clearly says otherwise. So don't even try to claim we Americans aren't anti-intellectual or any of the other things claimed above. We're guilty of all of it.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are demonstrating the original point that Americans don't even know what socialism means.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which doesn't really describe the US very well. The vast majority of voters are not pro-corporation. The Tea Party movement itself would never describe itself that way, they're very much pro-citizen. The party leadership may use corporate funding but that does not make the party's platform right wing. In other words, if the voters are left leaning and they vote into power someone who's right leaning, this does not make the original voters right wing.
The real split here in the US is bigger government versus smaller government. The old French model doesn't apply here, since both left and right wing were in favor of strong governments they just had different ideas about who the leaders of the strong government should be.
Of course the old ideas don't die out very easily. Thus the complaint from US conservatives that liberals are "elitists", aka aristocratic.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This Is A Vote For Freedom (Seriously) (Score:5, Insightful)
You have freedom to use what you paid for within the terms of the usage agreement you've got with your provider. If they say "we may filter or traffic shape your traffic", then you're free to accept that or find some other carrier with preferable terms.
"What? You're not a slave! Why, You have the choice of being told what you can & can't do here, or at my neighbor's plantation -- Or you can die, see, you have plenty of freedom."
You're correct about having the choice to accept draconian licensing terms or not have the Internet at all... I can go with a different provider, but the only other provider in town has shitty service & licensing too. The "freedom" you describe is the freedom of a catch-22. I suppose that I'm not supposed to complain about, or support legislation that combats, the bad business practices of the telecoms that put me in this position?
BTW, It's more profitable for them to have shitty service, more on that in a few...
And besides, EVEN IF there were subsidies, etc., (as the other AC replier mentioned), blame your congress-critters for not negotiating better terms before they gave your money away. EVEN IF your local municipality is granting a monopoly, blame your local town-board for doing so and not insisting that the cable provider accommodate competitive content providers on the outside plant.
Yeah, no. Although I do despise the corrupt congressmen, I ultimately blame the LOBBYISTS that pay the congress critters -- The Lobbyists that are funded by the Telecoms -- for making it financially beneficial for the congress critters to agree to the shitty terms... (Boy, some folks are clueless about how it all really works -- Money talks, bullshit walks.)
I have done all that's in my power to fix this -- One of the things I do is support network neutrality, but the corporate lobbyists have far more money than I do to donate (hint: Still in a recession -- I can eat, or use my $$ to fight a loosing battle against more powerful opponents who already have a history with their pocket politicians (the ones I need on my side to win).
So, in all actuality, I don't have much freedom of choice, I can either accept the crappy service & terms or not have any at all (Isn't 0Mbps WORSE than any crappy amount they decide to give me?)
Now that the consumer ISP monopoly / duopolies are in place they are turning their sights on the content producers (who already pay for their own access to the web, BTW). One way that an ISP can double dip is to force a content company to co-locate servers and charge them rent. The claim is that the servers are closer to the end users and therefore you get faster connections.
This is very true, you do get better connections, but it costs the content providers more (then they drive my bill up? so it ends up costing me more?). However, the co-location wouldn't be necessary if Comcast would run their links at less saturation -- Level3 tried to give them more hardware so they could do just this (Improve the Comcast service for everyone!), but Comcast refused... Comcast demands Co-Location instead of fixing the problem (It is a problem, come 5:00, my Internet speeds drop drastically). Comcast is holding my connection speed hostage -- Even when I paid to get faster service, the Netflix stream still sucked, and it will continue to suck unless Netflix/Level3 pays the ransom and co-locates servers with Comcast.
During the middle of the day my Netflix streaming on Comcast works almost acceptably... But when peak usage times hit, the streaming stutters all to hell because Comcast is dropping my Netflix packets (I pay both Comcast and Netflix to access them).
How does NN fit in? Well, if Comcast wasn't allowed to lower my Netflix traffic QoS so much (esp lower than their own competing Video service's priority) then their own Video delivery service would have to suck more... Comcast would have to fix the damn problem and
Re:Enjoy. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only function of society they are interested in is it's ability to supply them with customers with money who can be easily persuaded to part with it.
This sentence says a lot. They need money and a market with rules that lets them trade without being robbed or scammed. They need customers with that money. They need to provide something of value (which in turn may require skilled employees and other implications) to that their customers will part with that money. In other words, the interests of this hypothetical business coincide in a large number of ways with a healthy society. And all that implied from one sentence.
So what do you want? All I can tell is that you want "change". Well, you get it in spades with an active, competitive economy. But that requires a healthy business environment.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that would be excellent if all the government did was ecological regulation, but it does a lot more than that. If the ostensible foundation of a political party is promoting the environment, what exactly is their social policy going to be? Or their defense policy? What about foreign policy? When you're talking about something as diverse as a national government, yes, a party that focuses on ecology is a narrow, special interest group.
What kinds of compromises in economic policy would such a party make in order to accomplish stated ecological goals? Historically, that answer has been quite a lot in the short term (which is typically what people are concerned about, right or wrong). When you're talking about "life over money" you certainly sound noble, but all money is for most people is a tangible, quantitative representation of work or effort. In that light, it might be more accurate to say the Green party emphasizes "quantity of life over quality of life". Then their platform becomes much less appealing. I'd like to "save the planet", but I wouldn't be happy if I had to give up my automobile, diverse diet, or electrical luxuries to do it.
Re:This doesn't mean much (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You overlooked something... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm, no, not from my external point of view nor a view "sold" to me by "your own media and politicans". For a start, New Zealand is too small to produce all our own media for world stories, so it sources media from all over the world - BBC, CNN, Al Jazera et al. But personally, I don't watch a lot of TV news - I compare sources online and see what the US channels are putting out from their own feeds directly. It's mainly Fox & Glenn Beck that gives me an insight into how warped America has become. So if you want to blame the media for my point of view - blame your own. When I was revolted at Tea Party members hurling abuse at Muslim Americans in Orange County, that was entirely brought to me by YOUR media. MY media didn't cover it at all.
Furthermore, my point of view is not external. I have been to America before - admittedly, just the south, mainly Birmingham, for work and even then, that was quite a few years back. I have also lived with Americans before and seen and discussed their viewpoints and heard their comments on the difference between American politics and the rest of the western world's politics. In fact, one of the really interesting comments I got was from a lovely Bostonian girl who said the difference between democracy in the US and in NZ was that in the US, everyone was free to make all the money they wanted (regardless of whether they had any actual ability or chance to do so) whereas in NZ, it was more of a democracy of opportunity, where everyone (relative to the US) had the opportunity to succeed.
You say "I'm sure it's pleasing to imagine that you hold some privileged frame of reference". Well, I'm sure it pleases you to denigrate my point of view by imagining motives for me... but I wasn't claiming a privileged frame of reference, I was claiming that politics in the rest of the western world makes sense to me. I know, having talked to many other Australians, British, French and German people that we all share broadly similar views on how democracy should work and we all pretty much think American politics is mad. My claim wasn't that my point of view was right (although, knock that strawman over if it makes you feel better) but that represents a very common western view of American politics.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:4, Insightful)
contradiction exists only in your mind that perceives world in black and white, democrat and republican colors.
Libertarians are classical liberals - imagine that. They are pro-freedom, both economic and social. Economic freedom is often associated with conservatives but social one is labeled liberal/progressive. If anything, libertarians are consistent which can't be said about everybody else.
Re:Why is the government involved? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, that's the most ignorant post I've seen in a while.
The government didn't interfere with anyone's business model in creating the Internet. The ARPANet project was a public funded initiative to establish military command-and-control network. This allowed faster and more reliable communication in times of emergency and war. More and more research and educational facilities joined the network.
Eventually, commercial companies decided to expand on the network and provide services to the public. This started out as business networks and eventually home service. The AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, and other service providers established and grew this market.
The market exploited and expanded a government supported project far beyond the original projects goals. What's not to like?