US Democrats Introduce Bill To Restore Net Neutrality 535
New submitter litehacksaur111 writes "Lawmakers are introducing the Open Internet Preservation Act (PDF) which aims to restore net neutrality rules enforced by the FCC before being struck down by the DC appeals court. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said, 'The Internet is an engine of economic growth because it has always been an open platform for competition and innovation. Our bill very simply ensures that consumers can continue to access the content and applications of their choosing online.' Unfortunately, it looks unlikely the bill will make it through Congress. 'Republicans are almost entirely united in opposition to the Internet rules, meaning the bill is unlikely to ever receive a vote in the GOP-controlled House.'"
It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to see just how in the pocket of huge corporations the GOP is, and yet people continue to vote for them, against their own interests.
What will it take to wake people up? I fear it may not happen until it's too late, if not already.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
Propaganda works. Sorry.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:4, Insightful)
where are all the freedom loving tea baggers?
Apparently on /. modding ZorinLynx flamebait.
I don't get that, I see nothing but observed truth in that comment. Oh well, trolls gonna troll I guess.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if you ask a Tea Party person, they would like government out of regulations to the point of letting the market decide. The fundamental problem is, Comcast wants to charge Netflix et. al. for carrying content on their network, simply because Netflix eats all their bandwidth.
The real fix, is to allow competition for Comcast in your town/locality. Right now, Comcast, has a near monopoly to the home, so they think they are entitled to charging more than they should for a product that doesn't improve much over time.
The problem isn't the free market, it is a closed (oligopoly) markets. My fix would require local municipalities to operate the Fiber to the home, and bring it all into a COLO facility that provides Service Providers access to the FIOS lines. The COLO facility would be paid for by the Service Providers, based how many customers there were servicing.
We wouldn't need legislation, and the competition would create an environment that would drive down prices or provide better service (options) to the end users. Imagine a service provider that operated all "on demand", instead of broadcast channels. Instead of searching through 356 channels of crap, you just search for the shows you want to see. Current Marketplace is being disrupted by technology, and should be. We don't need legislation to protect the current formula, we need legislation that gives new players opportunity to create new markets, that users are demanding.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fundamental problem is, Comcast wants to charge Netflix et. al. for carrying content on their network, simply because Netflix eats all their bandwidth.
No. technology innovation over time results in more bandwidth for less money. Netflix et al do not eat "all their bandwidth". However, Netflix, Amazon Prime, et al are competing services for Comcast's movies on demand and specifically, Streampix. The real fix is to prevent ISPs from also being content service providers.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post is interesting and I don't want to detract from your interesting solution, but just to clarify:
Comcast wants to charge Netflix et. al. for carrying content on their network, simply because Netflix eats all their bandwidth.
Netflix doesn't push anything down Comcast's network. I pull it. I eat all of Comcast's bandwidth. Whether I do it with Netflix or Youtube or Linux distro torrents is none of Comcast's business. I pay Comcast for carriage, like when I pay UPS to transport a package; it's none of UPS's business (or liability) what I put in the box. They charge me by weight and/or size and distance, not what I'm sending or who the recipient is.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:4, Informative)
Except that the rest of the world doesn't have metered billing. The rest of the world rarely has monthly bandwidth caps, either. Instead we simply expect our ISPs to build so much bandwidth that there's enough to go around even with Joe Basement-Dweller torrenting 24/7, and if they can't do this, they're free to leave the market to those who can.
You crazy Americans think that big, strong corporations need to be sheltered and coddled and brest-fed from public teat like delicate babies while actual babies must strangle each other with their bootstraps to prove they're worthy of life, or whatever Reagan said. It's the exact other way around. Put your damn workhorses of economy to work, let them starve if they refuse and leave welfare for humans.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:4, Insightful)
Our regulatory landscape is not a vacuum. There are many existing regulations and many businesses take advantage of them to grow and shut out competitors. I'm sure each of us can think of 3 or 4 ways that an incumbent cable company has benefited from past regulations.
Most of these people don't really want to get rid of current regulations, they just want to hold on to the status quo, the very definition of conservative. Unfortunately, without new regulations to keep companies in check and allow competition to thrive, current and past regulations will continue to allow an unfair advantage to companies and people.
They won't acknowledge this, they think it's their right.
...but it's not right.
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Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Kentucky here - Anthem blue cross and blue shield. I'm a contractor so i pay for my own insurance
My insurance went down from $900 to about $780 a month. But with that drop, the care i was getting actually went down, so overall my costs are likely to go up.
Example:
i had a max of 2,500 in deductible for ONE person, and max of 5,000 for a family - No Co-Pay. This means that when we had our first kid 6 months ago, we hit that max of 2,500. BTW, we got a magical note in the mail that said that the doctor wh
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Exercising my rights as a consumer... in a market consisting of a government-imposed oligopoly. Yeah, sure, that'll work...!
This kind of moronic regurgitation of talking points with no consideration of context or applicability is what gives libertarians a bad name. Either learn to think or fuck off, please.
Re: It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:4, Informative)
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to
Regardless of whether telcos were handed a check up front or given tax breaks equivalent to that check but possibly spread out over multiple years, they were indeed handed a large ($Billions) wad of cash specifically to wire all those people, especially in the more expensive/rural/underserved parts of the country. And they sort of did for a while, then decided they wouldn't make enough profit on those customers, so stopped and spent the money elsewhere. At the very least they should be forced to give all that money back with interest and penalties. I'd be even happier if some of their executives would be prosecuted for misappropriation of federal funds. In reality, I expect neither will ever happen.
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False dilemma, while I agree, not necessarily all objective observers will. Maybe most, or a lot, but probably not all.
But.. if they're all objective observers, how can they arrive at differing, subjective outcomes?
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Both parties suck, but they aren't the same. They are both bad for the country, and they both produce bad law and bad policy, and they sometimes agree in their badness, but they are not the same.
Libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Replying to AC troll, not for the troll's benefit, but because too many people are developing this perspective.
Propaganda works. Sorry.
Indeed - just look at the way the summary writer uplifts Democrats while lambasting Republicans, even though any objective observer will tell you they're essentially two sides of the same, evil coin.
My guess is you vote libertarian--because that's the same rhetoric I keep hearing from them, which is in reality nothing more than a rebranding of the extreme right wing of the republican party. Same party different name.
There are different types and degrees of Libertarians out there. There are some that are just as crazy as the irrational religious zealots and the tree huggers. The media is largely allied with the Democrats, and most of those that aren't are allied with the Republicans. Thus, there is a perverse incentive to cast all Libertarians in same light... as the enemy.
The truth is, sane libertarians exist, and are very centrist in their positions. They agree with Republicans on some issues, and with Democrats on others.
(disclaimer: I'm not a Libertarian, but a Republican who likes a few of their ideas. Not most, but a few.)
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
And then I won't want my hard earned money going to poor people like I was.
Also, if the government didn't force me to give any of my money to those people, then I'd be rich.
(Seriously, a lot of people think that this is the only effect of government programs designed to help poor people, even when they know people who are benefiting from those programs.)
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
~ John Steinbeck
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Ah, the typical left-wing straw man: "Republicans and the wealthy are greedy and don't want to have their money taken away to help the poor".
However, the actual argument many Republicans make is completely different, namely that these government programs actually hurt people. That is why Republicans oppose government programs even if they know people who are receiving money from them. Heck, many Republicans oppose government programs that they themselves receive money from.
If you objectively look at the kin
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is why Republicans oppose government programs even if they know people who are receiving money from them. Heck, many Republicans oppose government programs that they themselves receive money from.
Right. Those nice Republicans somehow manage to not support things like forcing NASA to build test facitilities that they don't need (because they are in the congressman's district). Or forcing the Pentagon to build out weapons systems that they don't need (because they are in the congressman's district).
If only.
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How did the Republican politicians "they themselves" receive Medicaid? Most of them are millionaires, and Medicaid is mostly for struggling women and children. And of course as politicians they are by definition employed and not receiving unemployment benefits.
So your only example still remaining is one where they made an initial blustering statement "of principle" and then mostly backed down when they realized high-speed rail is mostly corporate subsidies to benefit the companies building it, and of dub
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
This includes not charging rich people more for the same government services provided for free to poor people.
The only way the military helps the poor people is when the poor people enlist. Otherwise, the poor people gain nothing from the military. Looking back to feudal times, the military battles were all for "control". The serfs didn't see any change in their daily lives. If Cuba invaded the USA and nationalized everything, do you think that someone that works in Chilis as a buss boy or dish washer would see any change in his daily life, other than the new showing more programming in Spanish? But do you think there would be any change to Bill Gate's life when his house is used by a general, and Microsoft is nationalized and handed over to Fidel?
No, for the truly poor, there would be no difference after an invasion. But the rich would see a massive change. So the rich have much much more to gain from a strong military, especially one that will fight economic wars on its behalf. The poor see nothing. So, the amount of benefit the rich sees from the government is much greater than what the poor people see. Yet the rich want the poor to pay for it while the rich don't.
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The world's governments theoretically should all have some measure of a say in how
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Well the obvious solution is to drop taxes. This is good as employers can then drop wages as they don't have to pay out as much to stay level when it comes to take home pay. Meanwhile everything can be privatized. This creates a bunch of opportunities for businesses to make money on fees, everything goes up in price while your take home pay has stayed close to the same and now you can magically save and invest.
Even if magically the employers didn't drop your wages, the resulting inflation from all the new f
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Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. Net neutrality removes a barrier to entry for the market. One that doesn't exist yet, "pay off local ISPs to allow traffic" would be a necessary step for starting a new web-based business.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ambassador Bridge (Score:5, Informative)
After all, we don't allow corporations to own real bridges to important places.
I know that a lot of people diss both Detroit and Canada, but I think any bridge that transports 25% of all merchandise trade between two first-world nations is pretty important. [wikipedia.org]
Now, the Ambassador Bridge is a good illustration of your point in spite of this, since it's a good example of why we shouldn't. While it has some competition from a tunnel which is owned (via a shared LLC) by the two city governments that it connects, that hasn't stopped it from fighting tooth and nail to prevent any other, better bridges from being built to compete with it. [wikipedia.org]
The owners have poured money into the hands of legislators and opposition candidates and into ballot initiatives to try to stop the bridge, have run political scare ads, and have tried to tie up the project in the courts for years -- to the point that the head of the company was put in jail for a short while for contempt of court for failing to obey court orders related to the construction contracts. All to protect a bridge that ends in surface streets on the Canadian side over a bridge that would directly link two highways.
Just a modern day baron trying to protect his inefficient little fief at the expense of the public.
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Democracy is not the sole cause of increases in prosperity. China and India are democracies, as are other countries that have not prospered as the U.S. has.
I never said it was the sole reason. I said it was one of the reasons.
China and India are democracies, as are other countries that have not prospered as the U.S. has.
China is not a democracy. Parties opposed to the communist party are outlawed.
Furthermore, China is actually poised to overtake the USA in terms of production. Is China more prosperous than the USA? I wouldn't say so, but I certainly wouldn't use China as an example of a non-prosperous country.
You're right, I misread your statement. What you're actually stating is worse: regardless of how much better bridges would be if they were all private, it wouldn't be worth it. I really don't understand this.
Also not what I said. There is a limit to how much better bridges can be. At some point making a bridge "better" offers diminishing returns i
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While it's not quite the same as using public airwaves, to 'build a new bridge' (new cabling), wouldn't you have to (1) use public land AND (2) likely pass over private land, even that of non-subscribers?
For #2, you could pay them (like for cell phone towers). For #1, what do you do? Pay the government (which is us)?
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
None of what you say matters. Basically all providers besides very few number of high density area ISP's are huge and effectively Oligopolies, which means 'some small company coming in and selling bwelow cost' doesn't happen. Additionally, the idea of Net Neutrality means that in this limited marketplace, we as conbsumers have no information of what kind of extortion that their companies are putting on the internet services that we use. Would you support an ISP that charged excessively high rates on a site you frequent regularly (like slashdot)? Would you ever know? How much do you want to bet that fees will be doubled+ if its publically disclosed?
I say screw it. Have the gov take pack the lines they laid and introduce a non-profit entity who's only job is to maintain the architecture and push costs on the content / service backbone carriers.
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Different charges will only benefit small business if the charge is *smaller* for them than for large established companies. If it is *larger* then it hurts small companies. There is a large bridge in Brooklyn I need to unload quickly, and anybody who believes the charge will be smaller for small businesses is probably an ideal owner, so please make an offer.
Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to see just how in the pocket of huge corporations the GOP is, and yet people continue to vote for them, against their own interests.
What will it take to wake people up? I fear it may not happen until it's too late, if not already.
I don't buy that the GOP is necessarily in bed with corporations any more than the Democrats, it's just more of a position of political posture. The GOP takes care of their corporate masters by fighting against regulations, while the Democrats handle the tax breaks, subsidies and programs that ensure their campaign contributors are happy.
The anti-regulation dogma of the GOP is disheartening because while I agree with a decent number of GOP principles around spending restraint, tax reform, etc.; I don't agree that the free market can be trusted to handle finite public resources like spectrum and last-mile connectivity. This is especially troubling given the nature of the last-mile providers (COX, Time Warner, AT&T, etc.) who have vested commercial interests in maximizing their bandwidth performance at the expense of others (Netflix). It's too simplistic to say that all regulation is "bad", just as it's too simplistic to say that any social or green energy program is "good".
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Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score:4, Informative)
umm, the GOP handles "tax breaks, subsidies and programs that ensure their campaign contributors are happy" as well, just look at NC, our GOP overlords want to drop the corporate tax rate to like 3%,less than individual tax by almost 50%.
If you think that sort of behavior is exclusive to the GOP, you don't pay attention to campaign finances. Obama's top donors were almost identical to Romney's, with few exceptions.
Judging by that metric, Goldman Sachs runs America, regardless of who gets elected.
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...to see just how in the pocket of huge corporations the GOP is, and yet people continue to vote for them, against their own interests.
What will it take to wake people up? I fear it may not happen until it's too late, if not already.
Its even more infuriating when people don't understand that there is a huge difference between this bill and the one the Republicans voted for in 2011. And its yet more infuriating when some biased blog doesn't even mention the regulations the FCC was trying to impose in 2011 were things that a lot of people here on Slashdot were complaining about vociferously back in 2011. Those regulations went way past what the common man understands as "net neutrality". Those regulations essentially made the interne
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Its depressing to see how many people automatically think that if a Democrat authors a bill its automatically good for the people. Have you learned nothing in the last 8 years?
Well sure! We've learned how to be even more divisive and vitriolic, we've learned how to subjugate others via insults and marginalization, and we've learned that, right or wrong, we must defend the party line to a T.
Oh, you meant "have we learned anything useful in the last 8 years..."
Debatable.
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Those regulations essentially made the internet like a telephone carriers or tv station, which would need FCC licenses just to operate.
Care to explain this, in detail with reference to the actual items in the bill?
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It's pretty simple:
1) The majority of them are older
2) The majority of them don't understand what this issue means
3) The majority of them have to get back to Duck Dynasty and hate gays.
They also need some takeout from Chik Fil A.
Wrong fight (Score:5, Insightful)
You've oversimplified it ... (Score:2)
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Call it the "Save Netflix Act" or the "Internet Video Protection Act." Nobody outside of /. understands what "net neutrality" means, but "neutral" sounds like you're some kind of pansy. What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were they just born with a heart full of neutrality?
There's no need for a new bill ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's no need for a new bill ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the ISPs really want is all the benefits of being a common carrier without any of the responsibilities. And that's exactly what they got with the Net Neutrality ruling. Given that AT&T is in the running for the top campaign donor in the country [opensecrets.org], it's unlikely that will change anytime soon (Seriously, it would be easier to list the politicians not on the take from AT&T).
Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
What is needed is not a reestablishment of the "rules" the FCC set up for what they called "net neutrality", what we need is for the FCC to declare the internet common carrier and to make all ISP's honor that.
This bill not that. When these policies were in place at the FCC before being struck down, there were huge loopholes that companies (especially wireless) could drive giant trucks full of money through.
We need the internet classified common carrier now!
Business sat down... (Score:2)
Business sat down and discovered it had a big lump in its pocket, upon inspecting the pocket found it contained the GOP.
Nothing new here.
Look at the History (Score:4, Insightful)
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If this is purely a Republicans versus Democrats issue as it presented here, then how come the Democrats did not pass it from 2008-2010 when they controlled the presidency, house of representatives, and the senate (by filibuster proof majority). They could have passed it without a Republican vote.
Because had they done that, they would not be able to use this bill as a weapon against the party they'll be running against.
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Because there was an existing classification that covered it so it wasn't needed.
Re:Look at the History (Score:4, Insightful)
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Filibuster-proof majority for 2008-2010 is a myth (Score:5, Informative)
This idea that the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority from 2008-2010 is a myth.
I believe that the problem is that Al Franken wasn't sworn in until well after that session was well under way, Senator Ted Kennedy was missing for many votes due to his brain cancer, and Arlen Specter didn't switch sides until much much later. There were a few other Democratic Senators who were either out or "Blue Dog" and "DINOs". The Democrats had the seats, perhaps, but nothing more, for a total of 72 days. [sandiegofreepress.org]
Add in the wrinkle that the Republican definition of "compromise" (as a sibling post notes) became "my way or the highway" - candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana as a vocal, but failed, example of that. Republicans who followed him went on the record unwilling to take even $1 of new taxes for $10 of cuts, and the Speaker of the House is generally unwilling to bring a bill forward until he has a majority of his party behind it - aka "The Hastert Rule", which Dennis Hastert himself disavowed.
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With the health care law being a priority, small items like Net Neutrality (which there was already an FCC rule for) weren't a priority.
Whitehouse petition (Score:5, Informative)
A petition [whitehouse.gov] of the White House to `Restore Net Neutrality By Directing the FCC to Classify Internet Providers as "Common Carriers" just attained the 100k signatures required for a response.
I'm sure a number of you would have liked to have known about that and signed it at the time... but the story submission was declined. Guess there were too many terribly important climate change stories or something.
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Remember the times? (Score:2)
Remember when the GOP stood for unfettered liberty, not only for economy but also for you, when your personal liberty was paramount?
Today, it's a breeding ground for cronyism, where the ancient creed of the free market has been replaced by a corporate mantra of "who pays the most can have the most rights". Mix in a bit of backwards conservativism without substance (aka "new stuff - bad") to appeal to the change fearing mouth breathers and, well, there you have it.
I kinda wish some of the old GOP heads were
Aggravation (Score:2)
Simple solution (Score:2)
To any congressman, Congressman's aid, or anyone sleeping with a congressman. Here is the solution to net neutrality.
Append a rider to an existing bill that modifies the Telecommunications Act and redefines a data provider as a common carrier.
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Append a rider to an existing bill that modifies the Telecommunications Act and redefines a data provider as a common carrier.
I think that's the best idea posited so far, one that ensures neutrality and access to most if not all Americans.
Which means that it's against the interests of someone who can afford to bribe Congresscritters, both D and R, which means it's not going to happen.
Net Neutrality WILL get a vote! (Score:2)
If it's not fixed in congress or elsewhere such as using common carrier status regulation, entrepreneurs will "vote" with their feet...
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How, someone is going magically create a separate ISP in areas where the cable-coms essentially have a monopoly? Where they'll sue the city if they try to set up free wifi they get sued?
Sorry, but from what I can tell the major ISPs often have no competition, and enjoy the use of public easements nobody could compete against.
As long as the cable companies can simply decide what they want to carry and what they don't, there can't be network neutrality.
These things need to be deemed common carriers so they n
Misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
Being someone who usually votes conservative, I find that net neutrality among conservatives is largely misunderstood. I continually hear that it requires content to be neutral. Meaning that if one opinion is present on a web page, all opposing opinions must be present as well to maintain neutrality. Everyone here should understand that is false. The source of that misinformation seems to be that the bill could be interpreted to let the FCC dictate content requirements. If the FCC were to do something crazy like that, it wouldn't hold up in court due to free speech, so it's not a reasonable concern.
To prevent misinformation, here are the two views to net neutrality.
1) Pro Net Neutrality: Internet Service Providers (ISP) should not dictate which data sources are allowed, how much bandwidth is allowed from each data source, or charge differently for data sources. For example, Netflix creates up to a third of internet traffic in the evening hours. As a result, ISP's are temped to reduce bandwidth allowed from Netflix to free up resources. Net neutrality would not allow this. This is usually the consumer point of view.
2) Anti Net Neutrality: The ISP's own their equipment, pay for their bandwidth, and can do what they want with it. If they want to shape network traffic to make overall service better, it's their right. This is usually the business point of view.
There are lots of details associated with either option. There can be a hybrid approach taken by the FCC as well. For example, if YouTube traffic gets so bad that I can't load a web page in a reasonable amount of time, then limiting YouTube would be in my best interest. In the rare cases such as that, bandwidth limiting is a good idea. Illegal activity such as child pornography could reasonably be blocked as well.
Here's the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
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2) Anti Net Neutrality: The ISP's own their equipment, pay for their bandwidth, and can do what they want with it. If they want to shape network traffic to make overall service better, it's their right. This is usually the business point of view.
and if you could freely choose which ISP you want to connect to, that would be fine. but most of the time, there is ONE choice for internet and so you can't take your business elsewhere! ie, there is no competition and whoever services your area is who you can buy
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2) Anti Net Neutrality: The ISP's own their equipment, pay for their bandwidth, and can do what they want with it. If they want to shape network traffic to make overall service better, it's their right. This is usually the business point of view.
and if you could freely choose which ISP you want to connect to, that would be fine. but most of the time, there is ONE choice for internet and so you can't take your business elsewhere! ie, there is no competition and whoever services your area is who you can buy from and that's it.
this is why they don't deserve to control the network traffic. we are forced into a monopoly (effectively) and so this HAS to be a common carrier arrangement.
give us choice in carriers and we can talk about letting them throttle. until then, they dont deserve to be able to control us like that!
You're right, but the better solution isn't to build up extra regulation, it's to remove the barriers to allowing competing firms from entering the market.
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You miss a very important point on both sides. Let me reword that for you:
1) Pro Net Neutrality: Internet Service Providers (ISP) should not dictate which data sources are allowed, how much bandwidth is allowed from each data source, or charge differently for data sources. For example, streaming video creates up to a third of internet traffic in the evening hours. As a result, ISP's are temped to reduce bandwidth allowed from streaming to free up resources. Net neutrality would allow this.
Net neutrality w
Re:Misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, Netflix creates up to a third of internet traffic in the evening hours.
Netflix does not create any traffic. ISP customers create the traffic by telling the Netflix servers to send them a stream.
Net neutrality is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Publicly-Owned Cable Providers (Score:2)
In a grocery store, the store makes the manufacture pay for product placement. If you want your product to get placed in the middle of a shelf, you have to pay the store money for it.
Without neutrality, the Internet will be the same way--those that cut sweet deals with the provider (cut him in), will get the best bandwidth for their services.
We need non-discriminatory municipally owned cable. Such a service NEEDS to be content-neutral, because of the constitution.
Net Equality (Score:2)
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First, Understand Peering (Score:3, Informative)
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I believe Network Neutrality legislation will do more harm than good. Quality of service and IP transit costs are governed by complex market forces today.
You may be or may not be right about the complexity. However... as a paying customer for Internet service, why should dealing with this complexity be my concern?
You really think Network Neutrality will destroy the Internet? I'm rather inclined to think that there are technical solutions and there will be carriers willing to implement them and continue to survive.
I highly recommend 'The 2014 Internet Peering Playbook' by William B. Norton.
Maybe, just maybe... it is actually the carriers that should read it and find the solutions the consumers need/want?
Don't seem like a good thing to me. (Score:3)
Net neutrality as it's described here seems like a good thing. Net neutrality as the government would implement it is not necessarily a good thing. From day one I've found the whole thing to be murky and have trouble understanding why it's inherently a good thing. The impression I get is that one group of corporations profits from it going one way and another group profits from it going the other way. If we operate from the assumption that they're all looking out for their own bests interests, then the people are screwed either way.
The ridiculous thing I'm seeing here on Slashdot is the persistent claim that ISPs are exclusively in the pockets of Republicans. They're equally strong supporters of Democrats. Late last year a Comcast executive held a fundraiser for Obama, which he attended and gave a speech at. Doesn't seem like Comcast is a company afraid they won't get their way. And typically contributions fluctuate between whichever party is in power. Only the ignorant masses, who also feel betrayed when an athlete leaves their favorite team, remain fiercely and irrationally loyal. It's fascinating how effective propaganda in America actually is.
Read the bill (Score:3)
All it does is restore the rules the court struck down until such time as the current appeals process completes...
In other words, the things the district court struck down will be re-instated until the Supreme Court determines the the district court was right, and the 'net neutrality' laws will be struck down again.
This bill is just an example of stupid politicians pandering to the electorate - relief from the court's decision is easy, and it was even described in the district court's decision (which everyone, on both sides of the case expected)... The FCC simply needs to decide that broadband carriers are 'common carriers' not 'information services' and then their attempts to force net neutrality will become legal/enforceable. The court said that since the FCC ruled that broadband carriers were not common carriers, they could not be regulated like common carriers.
The Democrats simply want to legislate that the FCC ignore the District Court's decision until such time as the Supreme Court rules on this case's ultimate appeal.
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All you're doing is stating that you hold positions that are firmly contrary to the Republican platform, and emoting at how amazed you are at the chasm.
That's nothing remotely like an argument for how you're right and they're wrong.
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anti-women, anti-gay, anti-choice: those are absolutes. or, do you think that certain people deserve more rights than others?
should blacks have to use a 'colored only' water fountain??
its just like this. this is not 'relativism', its pretty absolute and everyone deserves equal rights in a so-called free country.
when I read forums that have a lot of young people, I can see they are all for equal rights and they are not following the republican agenda, not one bit. only the older 'white men' seem to believ
Re:ah, yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand your frustration, but both parties seem pretty bad in their own ways. I suspect most Republicans are actually just anti-Democrats, and vice versa.
Re:ah, yes (Score:5, Funny)
I suspect most Republicans are actually just anti-Democrats, and vice versa.
Now if only the laws of physics would apply here . . . then these particles would mutually annihilate each other when they meet in Congress, and we would all be much better off without the lot of them.
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The GOP was instrumental in killing SOPA. So... there's that.
Perhaps, but with apologies to Yakov, "In Soviet America, the other party is always wrong, even when they're right."
About the Republicans . . . (Score:3)
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republicans. is there anything you DON'T fuck up?
Speaking of fucking.. There is far too much sodomy of the taxpayer going on to actually use the term "republican" or "democrat". That would imply there was actually some sort of representation present for their constituent base.
We need a better name for what we have but "Right/Left Leaning Corporate Bill Smuggling Mercenary" is a bit of a mouthful.
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Draw the analogy to trying to stop child pornographers by censoring the internet. Opposition claims (and is right) that that power would be overextended and abused and damage many legitimate uses of the internet. Then the supporting side can say, how could you, with a clear conscience, be against stopping child pornog
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seriously. how could you, with a clear conscience, be against fairness in network access?
Your flamebait doesn't deserve much of a response, other than to point out that 194 pages of FCC regulation doesn't necessarily either 1) provide fairness in network access or 2) do it the right way.
For example, you probably didn't know that on page 2 of FCC 10-201 [google.com] the following appears:
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Yeah, they fuck up by not doing that. I feel no personal moral compunction against killing any creature incapable of self-awareness. When such prohibitions actively harm those that do meet that criteria, I begin to see injustice.
Re:US Democrats? (Score:4, Informative)
Only about 100 countries have a party by that name. [wikipedia.org] It's completely obvious which one is meant in context, but come on, be less ignorant.
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Then how do you explain the constant lies to pander to religious lunatics and polluters? Republicans treat their voters like they have the minds of children, and after the mass-exodus of smart people from the Republican party in the past 20 years, I fear their belief was self-fulfilling.