Senate Republicans Introduce Anti-Net Neutrality Legislation (thehill.com) 224
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill Monday to nullify the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules. "Few areas of our economy have been as dynamic and innovative as the internet," Lee said in a statement. "But now this engine of growth is threatened by the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internet's infrastructure." Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) co-sponsored Lee's bill. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai introduced his own plan last week to curb significant portions of the 2015 net neutrality rules that Lee's bill aims to abolish. Pai's more specific tack is focused on moving the regulatory jurisdiction of broadband providers back to the Federal Trade Commission, instead of the FCC, which currently regulates them.
Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no idea what party the one belongs to that issued this letter here [senate.gov]. But it was the first time I saw a senator actually write something sensible about "this computer stuff".
Clean up your own act before you try to mess with the rest of the internet, will ya?
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:4, Insightful)
I see a lot of failed red states with Republican governors that receive more money from the federal government than they submit in taxes on that list.
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:5, Insightful)
huh, with the exception of Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), none of these jugheads are from what I would consider in any way a tech state, .
I don't think there is a state in the union where every member is well versed in tech, nor a state where no member is. I don't think you can judge a senator's tech-savviness based on his home state. I'd bet 95% of politicians are not tech-savvy. They tend to be older individuals, and also come from backgrounds not dependent in tech. There are exceptions, but most of them aren't tech savvy.
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:4, Informative)
I'd bet 95% of politicians are not tech-savvy. They tend to be older individuals, and also come from backgrounds not dependent in tech. There are exceptions, but most of them aren't tech savvy.
That doesn't mean it can't be explained to them: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net... [theoatmeal.com]
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I'd bet 95% of politicians are not tech-savvy. They tend to be older individuals, and also come from backgrounds not dependent in tech.
No, please stop saying that.
I actually bet that 95% of politicians know exactly what they are doing. They might not be tech-savvy, but they are smart and someone could easily explain to them what they don't know. Or sometimes the aides or lobbyists writes the laws for them anyway.
They are just not working for us. Please don't explain it away by "they don't know what they are doing".
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I didn't say they didn't know what they were doing, I was saying they probably aren't Tech Savvy.
Net neutrality is a simple enough concept you don't need to be technically gifted to understand. However, as easy as it would be to explain. Have you ever tried explaining anything to an ideologue, and most politicians are ideologues. Capable of understanding something and willing to understand something are two different things.
I make no presumptions though as to whether these senators know what horrific thi
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:5, Insightful)
Net Neutrality is anything but. It is government designed networking. Last thing we need is more government interference.
And end with the solution of.....governments designing networks:
This is easily solved, by allowing municipalities to build out common infrastructure that can be used by anyone to any provider.
It seems to me that the easiest way out is to simply declare that anyone who is running a line to an end user is a common carrier and required to lease that line to anyone the end user wishes to connect to without preference. We call that concept...."net neutrality."
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A wire is Layer 1/2. A network takes 7 layers. Net Neutrality, from a layer perspective is 3,4 and possibly 5, right in the middle of the entire stack. That is where you're trying to regulate.
A wire doesn't make a network, it makes a connection. If I can choose which "network" I am attaching to, then it isn't a "government" anything. Just infrastructure.
Kind of like a road does not make a transportation system. A Road provides a conduit, and I can chose the method of travel, from a Tesla to F250 Super Duty
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:5, Informative)
Net Neutrality is like saying I have to use a Prius to haul 2 tons of bricks, or I have to us USPS instead of Fed/Ex or UPS.
In a world where net neutrality means something completely different, then maybe? In this world, it's complete bullshit. You keep describing your ideal system, and it sounds suspiciously like this:
the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites
Which is the definition of net neutrality. Literally. You know, not favoring the Prius, in your tortured example, or the truck that would make sense, but rather treating bits as bits, regardless of source or destination. Like our transportation system does today.
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So, which party wrote and signed the "Patriot" act, putting us all under police surveillance?
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The patriot act passed 98-1 in the Senate and 367-66 in the House. Both parties get to take responsibility for it.
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You mean "ARPANET" where all our protocols were written?
Hint:Sarcasm flag set.
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You do know that these bills aren't actually written by the Senator, right? They will tell some aides to mark something up, and then they go over it and give the aides changes while they go and sell the idea to other Senators to get their votes, and get it through committee.
He's a manager - he needs to understand the 20,000 foot view. Unfortunately, these guys don't seem to even get that. This bill was probably written by lobbyists and given to the Senator with a nice big contribution check to his re-ele
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He's a manager - he needs to understand the 20,000 foot view. Unfortunately, these guys don't seem to even get that. This bill was probably written by lobbyists and given to the Senator with a nice big contribution check to his re-election campaign.
Jeez... Ya think?
Seriously, campers. This is how it works. In the U.S. Senate, campaign contributors are the constituents, not the voters. You can fix this, but you have to start getting involved and supporting candidates who will support a Constitutional amendment that will remove corporate money from U.S. politics. https://movetoamend.org/ [movetoamend.org]
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A couple important links on that page are broken. Not very reassuring.
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Texas has tech pockets.
Utah? Novell...they are less tech than Kansas, Olathe has as much tech as all of Utah.
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Silicon prairie. Silicon gulch. Silicon Slopes. The only thing they all have in common is they are bullshit.
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They want the web to be the new cable tv, with them raking in the profits, plain and simple.
Yep. This is being bought and paid for by large ISPs.
Google will be the first target of anti-neutrality (ie. Youtube, Google search, Gmail), hopefully Google can fight this.
Netflix, Facebook, etc, will all be interested, too. None of them wants ISPs to charge a "premium" rate for access to their services.
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Yep. This is being bought and paid for by large ISPs.
of course it is. Net Neutrality also has backers, mostly liberals who want to control everything via Government decree.
Your assumption is that one is better than the other, where mine is that both are equally valid. One view is no more valid than the other. Government has no right to decree what goes on the wire, because it isn't government's wires.
Re: Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:4, Interesting)
mostly liberals who want to control everything via Government decree
Versus the free market fairies who will always do the right thing and don't have to deal with physical constraints, like a limited footprint in which to connect services. Seriously, we've already established above that your alternative to government control is government control. Are you a "liberal" in disguise?
Internet was a failure until 2015? (Score:3, Interesting)
> Educating one's self is pretty much all that matters, however that occurs (incidentally, due to my experience, I probably have more tech-savvy in my little finger than most millrnnials).
Agreed. I've made my living doing internet technology since 1998. As a member of IETF, I helped develop and draft standards such as HTTP and SMTP (web and email). During those years, I put my degree on hold while I working on developing the technology of the internet. For example, I developed the first live video with
Re:Internet was a failure until 2015? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the difference is that local cable companies began acquiring monopolies across wide areas, and then began trying to leverage those monopolies to extort money from large content providers.
Either the issue of regional consolidation must be addressed, or net neutrality. If I can switch to a different ISP, I'll switch to one that doesn't put a choke on my choice to access Netflix. But, if my only choice is between the latest iteration of Time-Warner or that 28k modem....well, the regional monopoly has me across a barrel, doesn't it?
I do agree, though. If the FTC is keeping the monopolies in check, there is no need for the FCC.
Re:Internet was a failure until 2015? (Score:5, Informative)
There is an additional issue. Not only are cable companies operating as state sponsored monopolies but since the deregulation of the late 90's they also tend to own both the means of production and the means of distribution. This gives them an increasingly powerful incentive to use internet services as a weapon against their competitors. That is what's driving the relatively new need for something like NN. I'm not sure if NN is the answer but I would whole heartedly support another Ma Bell'esq forced breakup of cabled companies from their ISP's and possibly from the media creation portions of the companies. You should be paying to lease a line from your cable company (or phone company, or fiber company, or local service district) and getting ISP service from a separate unaffiliated company of your choice.
Not wrong, but don't forget (Score:3)
> would whole heartedly support another Ma Bell'esq forced breakup
I'm old enough to remember that. The government broke up a national monopoly into a set of regional monopolies. Long-distance calls were $1.25 / minute, under the government-enforced monopoly rate structure. Then the telcos were deregulated and the rate IMMEDIATELY dropped to 15 cents. Then within two years it was 10 cents. Rates dropped over 90% as soon as the FCC got out of the way. Now of course most people don't pay anything for long
Re:Not wrong, but don't forget (Score:4, Insightful)
I was young when the breakup happened but I certainly remember it's fall out. I have no idea why you think the government would need to set rates just because it forced the separation of the various corporate divisions. In most civilized areas that's known as a straw man argument.
If internet services and cable access services where separate there's no reason to believe a new monopoly would form. Much like dial up before you would be able to pick any ISP you wanted for your internet needs. Local monopolies for cable providers would likely continue because of the nature of the municipal agreements in place but internet service would have no such restrictions. In fact it would be nearly impossible to impose such a restriction. It would be like your town telling you what VPN provider you must use.
Beyond that not everyone is lucky enough to live somewhere like you. In my area (We would consider 20,000 a largish city) we have exactly one cable company (spectrum formerly TWC) and a phone company that couldn't offer reliable DSL if their lives depended on it. We have no competition, we have no choices. We pay top dollar for bottom of the barrel service. If I cancel my cable service and keep my internet it would actually make my bill higher.
What we do have is a local company trying to roll out fiber to home one town over (An ex dialup turned business provider). Because of the anti competitive nature of the cable industry they are being blocked, bullied, and sued at every turn. How dare they offer people a service they want!
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Not only are cable companies operating as state sponsored monopolies
While they may be operating as a monopoly, they are not STATE SPONSORED monopolies. The federal regulations against exclusive franchises make this very clear.
but since the deregulation of the late 90's
Which included removing the government monopoly status.
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Most of them achieve a monopoly at the city or municipality level of government. They also make use of state and city laws/regulations to squash any potential competition. In a lot of the US it's still a state sponsored monopoly, just enforced at a different level of government.
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Most of them achieve a monopoly at the city or municipality level of government.
The cities cannot grant what the federal government has specifically outlawed.
They also make use of state and city laws/regulations to squash any potential competition.
They make use of the existing franchise regulations, which competitors don't want to follow. Competitors don't want to have to provide all the services the franchise requires, they want to cherry pick the profitable ones and leave the incumbent stuck with a legal requirement to provide the rest. This is where many proposed municipal systems fail, in addition to the direct competition of a non-profit tax-funded corporation with a
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Franchise requirements are part of the price cable companies agreed to in order to access public right of ways. They did so happily at a time when it saved them a great deal of money and allowed them to expand their subscriber base. I'll gladly forgo those franchise requirements and start charging them rent for the pole in my yard.
It's fully past time that they had to face competition. The form of that competition is irrelevant. I happen to live in an area where companies are unwilling to make the inf
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Franchise requirements are part of the price cable companies agreed to in order to access public right of ways.
Yes, they are.
I'll gladly forgo those franchise requirements and start charging them rent for the pole in my yard.
They already pay rent for the pole you don't own in the part of your front yard that is part of the public right-of-way. It's called a "franchise fee".
The remainder of your comments do not support your claim of government-supported monopolies. Notice that I did not say that cable companies are not defacto monopolies, just that your claim that they are government-created ones is wrong.
(though I suspect your just defending your employer)
Now you are just reverting to ad hominem by claiming that I work for a cable company. I don't. I just know th
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We'll have to agree to disagree then. I can't define exclusive franchise agreements as anything other than a government sponsored monopoly that needs to end.
My last comment was perhaps a bit of an ad hominem but I usually only see the semantic argument that exclusivity agreements aren't a government granted monopoly coming from people who have a vested interest in maintaining said monopoly.
Not just wide areas, also local franchise monopoli (Score:2)
> monopolies across wide areas, and then began trying to leverage those monopolies
That's an issue, and has been ever since cities starting granting government-enforced monopolies. Take a look at the New York City cable franchise map. It's ridiculous. Which company is allowd to serve you depends on which side the street you live on.
This isn't new with packet switching either. I'm old enough to remember when long-distance calls were $1.25 / minute, under the government-enforced monopoly rate structure. T
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That's an issue, and has been ever since cities starting granting government-enforced monopolies.
Yes, that was a problem. Which ended a long time ago. Cities grant franchises, but they cannot be exclusive anymore, and haven't been so for a very long time.
Then the telcos were deregulated and the rate IMMEDIATELY dropped to 15 cents.
Not quite. The rates dropped when federal regulations required access to alternative long distance services. It wasn't de-regulation that accomplished this. It took regulation to force this to happen. And then we wound up with a world where you'd select "none of the above" as an LD provider, and sure enough, the company named "None Of The Above" charge
Read the rule. They lied to you. See NYC map (Score:2)
> Cities grant franchises, but they cannot be exclusive anymore, and haven't been so for a very long time.
Every so often somebody on Slashdot says that. But somebody lied. You can read the rule for yourself if you want to know the nitty-gritty details, but essentially the rule change said:
Before granting a new exclusive franchise, the city must hold a meeting.
Didn't affect the existing franchises at all, and nothing prohibits city and state politicians from granting new monopolies to their donors; the
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Every so often somebody on Slashdot says that. But somebody lied. You can read the rule for yourself if you want to know the nitty-gritty details,
Yes, you can. Here [cornell.edu] it is. Very first paragraph:
Nice post (Score:2)
Wow - nice post. Thank you for that.
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Ted Cruz is from Texas, and Austin (its capitol city) is most definitely a tech hub. That said, I would not trust a single thing that comes out of Cruz's mouth. With the exception of religious comments, I don't think Cruz listens to anyone in Texas.
I wasn't attacking Ted Cruz in particular.
That cartoon is a couple of years old, maybe you can imagine it has different names on it, mmmmmkay?
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Really though, net neutrality (and the entire ISP market issue, of which NN problems are a subset) isn't something that only a techie from someplace like Austin should care about - it affects rural areas as much, if not more. Austin has multiple high quality ISPs, incl
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That is until Netflix doesn't pay the extortion that the ISP they're with requires, and suddenly they find themselves having to do a whole lot of waiting while video loads.
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Netflix has already claimed that being asked to pay for a spot in the ISPs rack is extortion. Bullshit. They aren't special, they can pay for their rackspace same as everyone.
There are no 'good guys', just corporations trying to shift costs and maximize revenue.
Having the federal government decide just what is and isn't QoS _isn't_ a good outcome. The markets need more competition, not thick volumes of rules that favor incumbents. See also: regulatory capture.
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Government set rules doesn't mean a level playing field either. It just makes the game into lobbying. In the long term, in the American political system, it _guarantees_ regulatory capture.
I don't see monopolies in most markets. Oligopolies are bad, but they don't do what you describe, in fact oligopolies pretty much guarantee that any ISP that tried would be punished on the market.
If what you believed was true, Coke and Pepsi would have long since raised their prices to monopoly levels. (Think of the
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Pick any other oligopoly then you halfwit. They behave the same.
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I don't even think Cruz is legitimately religious. He knows what buttons to push to get his voters riled up and to the polls. Most of these kinds of politicians don't have a genuine bone in their bodies. For them, religion is always the big show. They're the ones at the front of the church singing the loudest, proclaiming their faith in God the loudest, and believing it all the least. He's a con man.
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I don't even think Cruz is legitimately religious. He knows what buttons to push to get his voters riled up and to the polls. Most of these kinds of politicians don't have a genuine bone in their bodies. For them, religion is always the big show. They're the ones at the front of the church singing the loudest, proclaiming their faith in God the loudest, and believing it all the least. He's a con man.
This has been the key page in the GOP's playbook for decades. Abortion and gay rights are a guaranteed dog whistle to the typical, so-called conservative voter. Now that the gay rights thing is all but settled (and to my LGBT friends, yes. I know that there are still many who think it's not and who bear watching), the new threat invented by the Right is the MtF transgendered using the women's restroom. That one will keep getting them elected for another ten years or so. Meanwhile, the interests of those fea
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In my IT roles I found a strong correlation with how often and at what volume somebody proclaims their religiousness and the volume/depravity of porn found on their computers.
Not how religious they were, how loudly and often the refereed to it.
I'm including liberal SJWs in this group as they are essentially religious (thoughts supplied by leaders, world view is never examined, parrots). If they were in your face, they had depraved tentacle rape porn on their computers too.
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:5, Insightful)
"this engine of growth is threatened by the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internet's infrastructure."
What a load of doublespeak bollocks.
Either the person who wrote that is lying or they have no idea what the Internet is.
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net... [theoatmeal.com]
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None of them seem to understand what it is they're talking about very well, and what they do probably understand they're paid to lie about.
Looking at campaign contributions for those on the list, it's not really hard to figure out why. The link you provided is a perfect place to start, and none of the others on the sponsorship list are any better than Cruz.
Re:Senator? Clean up your own shit first! (Score:4, Insightful)
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"this engine of growth is threatened by the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internet's infrastructure."
What a load of doublespeak bollocks.
Either the person who wrote that is lying or they have no idea what the Internet is.
The "engine of growth" he's talking about is the growth of his personal bank account.
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What makes you think it has to be "either - or"?
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The FCC has received plenty of complaints about Net Neutrality violations, were any valid?
It's the opposite land gang! (Score:5, Insightful)
Up is down! Left is Right! Freedom is servitude!
Again, this is another case where these people are being paid to misunderstand the situation because it profits someone else much more if they do. The sad part is that they've been put in a position of power. Hopefully this bill never makes it out of committee, let alone gets scheduled for a vote.
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We're now living in Trump-land, don't make any bets on what ought to happen.
Isn't Ajit evil enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like Ajit wasn't invited to the latest meeting at Mt. Doom.
Witness the DoubleSpeak (Score:5, Insightful)
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) [says] "...now this engine of growth is threatened by the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internet's infrastructure."
What a heaping pile of horseshit, afloat in a vat of raw sewage. Did the good senator's staff come up with this on their own... or did they perform a ritual sacrifice to enlist assistance from the Demon? Show me their hands... this statement was written in blood and one of Lee's staffers is missing a finger.
Let's try and fix this, shall we? Now this engine of growth is threatened by would-be monopolists and their crony politicians who would put marketers and profiteers in charge of monetizing the Internet's infrastructure to squeeze the highest prices from users of the Internet in return least possible investment .
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MAGA (Score:4, Funny)
Because the US already leads the world in broadband, right? Have to make it better!
Tee hee.
Regulate ISP's not Regulate the Internet (Score:3, Informative)
The ISPs are messing with the Internet. Net neutrality is about regulating the ISPs and Carriers to not "shape" traffic. There is no regulations on the Internet, until they enter this legislation.
Tell everyone, keep congress out of the internet.
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An us versus them mentality. (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill is unlikely to receive support from Democrats in the Senate.
[...]
A full repeal of the rules would be a worst case scenario for Democrats.
The whole point is that a full repeal would be the worst case scenario for everyone except extortionist ISPs.
I find it disappointing that the actually matter at hand isn't being addressed in anything but vague quotes.
What does "conservative" mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
For centuries the intellectual basis for conservatism has been set, not by Jesus, or Adam Smith, but by Edmund Burke, whose philosophy could be summed up this way: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Burke was the kind of man who could defend the monarchy while despising monarchists: he thought the notion that monarchy was an ideal form of government was fatuous twaddle. But he thought all grand, all-encompassing theories were foolish, so he wasn't any more enthusiastic about pure democracy. Burke preferred a monarchy restrained by a democratically elected parliament not because it was the best system, but because it worked, experience showed that men could be tolerably free and prosperous under such a system.
So the notion that we need to "fix" an innovative segment of the economy to be more like what our theory of what an innovative industry should look like is about as un-conservative as you can get. It is, in fact, radicalism of the sort Burke detested.
The worst part: This would be hard to repeal later (Score:2)
The trouble with something like this is that once ISP's start collecting income this way, building entire business models on charging web sites to send data over their networks - it'll be hard for future (saner) governments to reverse. Passing laws that cause businesses to fail is a tough call.
But this is a truly crazy, irresponsible piece of legislation.
The idea that allowing this makes the Internet more free shows a TOTAL lack of understanding as to what makes it tick.
Ask yourself: How will WIkipedia p
What makes fast lanes attractive? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing that will make people pay for fast lanes is a painfully slow lane. So how does a lack of net neutrality incentivize broadband investments?
It's like getting rid of traffic jams by selling left lane access separately.
The internet wasn't broken (Score:2)
Look, the internet had functioned quite well for 30 years. The U.S. economy as we know it and for that matter, that of much of the developed, world exists because of it. Ergo, it wasn't broken. Government, on the other hand, has been broken (and broke) for a lot longer than that. What better way to "engineer" a bailout of government than to suck wealth out of the most prosperous segment of the economy. You wouldn't realize that you've been screwed until long after that "engineering" has been entrenched
Nostalgia (Score:2)
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It's only if you distribute the kernel that you need to publish changes to it in source. As you're not about to distribute, nobody ever needs to get to see the kernel mods you made.
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Agreed, flat out troll.
GPLd tools do not cause the use of those tools to require your code to be GPL.
If you modify GPLd code, then you need to GPL your modifications and distribute them if you distribute to customers is probably the shortest summary. The conditions if you want to modify and distribute bits of windows are somewhat harsher!
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There is a very easy solution to your problem: Fire your lawyer. He doesn't know jack shit about the GPL, or probably software licensing in general.
Re:Something else that's anti-progress (Score:4, Insightful)
It's gotta be a troll. Not even the most clueless lawyer would write "GPL = Gnu Protective License".
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There's nothing anyone can do to help you, but if you were to be strangled with your own entrails, you'd make the world better for everyone else.
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One party has all three legs of the stool and the end result is a stool of an entirely different sort.
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Yes, it's high time the FCC restored my right to have my local monopoly ISP block whatever traffic it wants, because nothing says freedom like not being able to access the content I want to access.
Your guys in congress don't give two shits about a free market. They care about their corporate lobbyists.
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If you're an advocate for this, why not advocate for competing telcos to block each others' calls? If common carrier status is wrong, it's all wrong, and the free market should reign, right?
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Except net neutrality is best done by the group that can actually punish the isps. If att said you could only talk to people on att phones is that an FTC or FCC issue? It is FCC. That is the crust of net neutrality. Isp want to limit communications from sources they don't get paid twice for.
Re:Which they should. The FTC has a good track rec (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so fast. AFAIK, jurisdiction over the Internet has been removed from the FTC, and it would take an act of Congress [arstechnica.com] to put it back... and that sure as shit don't look likely. Any talk of the FTC, for now, is a head-fake excuse for gutting the FCC and letting Comcast and its ilk get drunk and party at your expense.
Face it, ladies. The Internet is the new telephone system - the FCC should regulate it as a common-carrier. Period. That makes it boring to the carriers, gutting a lot of "opportunities" to squeeze extra money out (like selling your browsing histories), but too fucking bad. The Internet ain't no luxury anymore - shit, your grandma needs it just to get her goddamn meds.
Besides, the FTC is not invulnerable to politics. Maybe they don't have a politically ambitious loud-mouth tool [wikimedia.org] as Chairman who wants nothing more than to see himself on TV [politico.com], but a GOP-controlled everything can muzzle the FTC, and they will, if the price is right [on-camera-audiences.com].
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The FTC has done very well going after crooks and people scamming the end users
But Trump has made it obvious that he 100% favors business profits over those end users. If he keeps on his current trajectory we can expect inflation to be through the roof a few years from now.
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The FTC has no rule making authority, that falls on the FCC (as long as Title II remains). The FTC would not be able to enforce rules that don't exist, and without the FCC to craft rules, the FTC's hands are tied. This is why the ISPs want it so badly.
This is the biggest lie the ISPs and their paid mouth pieces have been pushing. If there were competent politicians who could craft a decent set of rules or laws that were not written by the ISPs with monstrous loopholes, then the FTC would have teeth and b
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Sorry.. You are correct... January 2009....
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To quote a phrase, "I won".
Who said that?
Me, in a first to orgasm race against your mom.
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If you don't like your service/provider, change it. End of discussion!
Up until last year, I had exactly 1 provider that offered speeds faster than dialup. And this in a a major metropolitan area (albeit right on the fringe of one) in a town where even the townhomes are going for over 300k. In most places in the US there is no real competition for internet service. When the only option to a monopoly is a government service you are screwed, since the Republicans have trained their base to think that anything done by the goverment (except of course killing people, arresting b
It is a highway, not a product (Score:2)
Private companies took the risk to build up the web, internet lines etc.
Government has no business telling them how to run it.
If you don't like your service/provider, change it.
End of discussion!
Another view is that the Internet is like the highway system. The government (as the people's representative) created it via and owns most of the land the network flows though.
Its great that businesses create all these wonderful places to go, and you can do what you want when I get there, but don't tell me you are throttling the exit to Target because Walmart built the driveway from my house to the road.
(I was going to use an analogy of letting big trucks drive faster than personal cars but the image of th
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But the Obama Administration DID create the apparatus for net neutrality, so clearly they're not identical on this matter. Not that Obama didn't do a dozen unfriendly tech things, but on this particular file, he did the right thing, and the Republicans are going to unravel it. The only explanation being the incumbent cable companies and telcos can afford a lot more hookers and blow.
Thank Al Gore for that. (Score:2)
It does not seem that long ago when commercial use, fund raising, and advertising were prohibited uses of the internet. When the net was opened up to commercial activity, is when everything started to go downhill rapidly. Then politicians figured out it was a tool for social control, surveillance, and censorship.
Thank Al Gore for that.
His contribution to the Internet was legislation to open it to commercial activity. This was enabling for giving access to the general population for all sorts of uses, rathe