FCC Starts Net Neutrality Protections Rollback

[Guest]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to roll back net neutrality protections will move forward.

FCC Starts Net Neutrality Protections Rollback : Read more

 

[dstarr3]

And America inches itself closer still towards losing its first-world nation status.

 

[Spazzy]

What a crock, now ISP's will be more brazen than before Net Neutrality was enacted. Pai just told the ISP's they can do as they wish. If some law is bothering you, let me know, we will get rid of it for you. Somebody should fire that fool, Pai! Net Neutrality is a good thing!

 

[jaber2]

We never have a choice, its either this or that and if this and that are pushing for the same thing then it don't matter which to choose.

 

[10tacle]

We never have a choice, its either this or that and if this and that are pushing for the same thing then it don't matter which to choose.

It depends on where you live. Where I live, I have no less than four ISP/cable provider options. The smaller the town you live in, the smaller your competition choices are. This is nothing new in a free market society. Smaller more rural areas may only have one or two grocery store chains to shop at whereas those in larger cities may have six or more to choose from. Living in a less populated are has its advantages - and disadvantages. Limited competition choices being one of them.

Anyway, if any of you actually believe that NN was concocted with the purpose of preventing monopolization of carriers, offering high speed internet access to rural areas, and prohibiting ISPs from throttling as it was sold to the public, then you are fools. Ask anyone in Orlando area how well it's worked out having dealt with Brighthouse and Time Warner and now are dealing with Spectrum. The FTC did nothing to stop it. NN would not stop it either.

It's nothing more than federal government overreach with more control over what content would be allowed on the internet. We need regulation of ISPs. We do not need another fascist government entity mandating what we can and cannot see on the internet. In the words of Tim Wu, the law professor who coined the term "net neutrality", the internet rules are about "shaping media policy, social policy, oversight of the political process, [and] issues of free speech.”

 

[caustin582]

If any of you actually believe that NN was concocted with the purpose of preventing monopolization of carriers, offering high speed internet access to rural areas, and prohibiting ISPs from throttling as it was sold to the public, then you are fools. Ask anyone in Orlando area how well it's worked out having dealt with Brighthouse and Time Warner and now are dealing with Spectrum. The FTC did nothing to stop it. NN would not stop it either.

It's nothing more than federal government overreach with more control over what content would be allowed on the internet. We need regulation of ISPs. We do not need another fascist government entity mandating what we can and cannot see on the internet. In the words of Tim Wu, the law professor who coined the term "net neutrality", the internet rules are about "shaping media policy, social policy, oversight of the political process, [and] issues of free speech.”

Wow, where to begin?

First of all, I don't think anyone is claiming that net neutrality exists to prevent monopolies or extend access to rural areas. Those are separate issues unaffected by net neutrality. The third thing you listed--throttling of content by ISPs--is exactly what net neutrality is about, and it's a very real concern. Comcast and Verizon have both been caught in the act, and now thanks to Ajit Pai, this is going to be standard business practice.

Net neutrality laws do not enable the government to censor anything. Do you have any example of this actually happening under the justification of NN, or can you point out something in NN policy that would even theoretically justify such censorship? NN simply means that all internet traffic must be treated equally. If the government is controlling what people can and cannot see on the internet, then that by definition is not net neutrality.

I hate to make personal assumptions, but it sounds like your cynicism regarding government or your infatuation with the private sector is short circuiting your ability to properly identify which side is working in the general public's best interests on this issue. Put agenda and politics aside for a moment and the answer should become obvious.

 

[damric]

Ugh...it's going to probably take 20+ years to recover from this new idiocracy if ever, but only if we can ever get someone into office who isn't a billionaire or millionaire and who doesn't take bribes from lobbyists. It's too bad that Independent Senator Bernie Sanders is probably too old to make another run.

 

[alextheblue]

"Today’s move by the FCC and Chairman Ajit Pai to gut net neutrality rules will devastate Black communities. Net neutrality is essential to protecting our free and open Internet, which has been crucial to today’s fights for civil rights and equality. Our ability to have our voices heard in this democracy depends on an open Internet because it allows voices and ideas to spread based on substance, rather than financial backing. Net neutrality helps to ensure that the Internet is a place for innovation and opportunity for all, rather than just the wealthy few. "

LOL... this is the kind of thing the average dope thinks Net Neutrality is about. Gee golly whiz, I don't know how we did anything on the internet before they fixed it for us! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get censored by <insert site here> because it turns out Net Neutrality has jack-all to do with freedom of speech or civil rights.

 

[ledhead11]

A rule of posting: never post under the influence

Under the influence of freedom. . .Ajit gives it better than I****a.
I'll miss being on Tom's but thanks to people like him its only a matter of time anyway.

 

[Adamw0611]

Ya guys know everything worked fine before the government got involved right? Net neutrality did nothing to help consumers, it was just more wasteful regulations that accomplished nothing.

 

[blitzkrieg316]

Or it's about freedom of speech and a capitalist economy. By forcing companies to comply with net neutrality regulations you are taking away their right to provide content at their own discretion. The markets will dictate what services will be successful and what won't be. Options suck usually, but who are we to say what a private company can or can't do with it's money? Stomping your feet is a terrible way to try and get what you want. If you are protesting for neutrality, you are protesting against free speech and for government intervention which is disturbing.

 

[RichardSlim]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBkMRDbgAY4

 

[dark_lord69]

"It depends on where you live. Where I live, I have no less than four ISP/cable provider options. The smaller the town you live in, the smaller your competition choices are. This is nothing new in a free market society. Smaller more rural areas may only have one or two grocery store chains to shop at whereas those in larger cities may have six or more to choose from. Living in a less populated are has its advantages - and disadvantages. Limited competition choices being one of them."

COMPLETELY WRONG!!!
Move to Minneapolis and see how many options you have available.
One or None, those are your options. And your situation with multiple provider options is actually super rare from my experience.

"with more control over what content would be allowed on the internet."
That's the opposite of what it does.

"We need regulation of ISPs."
What do you think NN was for!?

"We do not need another fascist government entity mandating what we can and cannot see on the internet."
NetNeutrality has nothing to do with regulating what you can and can't see.

Even the article says since it's going to be gone now...
"...a green light for cable and telecom giants to control where we go and what we do on the internet." Which is the exact opposite of what you said.

 

[10tacle]

Ya guys know everything worked fine before the government got involved right? Net neutrality did nothing to help consumers, it was just more wasteful regulations that accomplished nothing.

Exactly. A fool and his freedom are soon parted. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

I blame our public education system indoctrinating young impressionable minds believing that government really has OUR best interest at heart. Of course the reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. Jimmy Carter signed into law the Department Of Education in 1978 federalizing our public school system. It 's been down hill in quality ever since.

It's about control and power. The denial and downvotes I received in my post says it all when there is plenty of evidence showing NN's root goal was internet censorship. They'll just have to learn the hard way.

 

[problematiq]

"took the first step toward restoring Internet freedom and promoting infrastructure investment, innovation, and choice by proposing to end utility-style regulation of broadband Internet access service."

Because before Net neutrality ISP's invested tons into the infrastructure.. ohh wait we had one of the worse net infrastructures out of all the developed countries, and some not so developed.

 

[problematiq]

Or it's about freedom of speech and a capitalist economy. By forcing companies to comply with net neutrality regulations you are taking away their right to provide content at their own discretion. The markets will dictate what services will be successful and what won't be. Options suck usually, but who are we to say what a private company can or can't do with it's money? Stomping your feet is a terrible way to try and get what you want. If you are protesting for neutrality, you are protesting against free speech and for government intervention which is disturbing.

There are some other underlying problems. One is the net is no longer just a luxury, and our economy depends heavily on it. Another is that there are no alternatives, you speak of free market yet the ISP's literally have a "league of ISP's" for the sole purpose of killing off any competition. Free market should also include the removal of commercial lobbying. You want an ISP that won't screw you over? tough luck. due to lobbying and monopolies you cannot create a new ISP, little lone one that allows for equal non-biased content.

 

[ibjeepr]

"would create jobs, (give us more money) encourage companies to improve their networks, (give us more money) and offer better internet access to rural Americans (give us more money)"

Give us more money so we can put popular websites behind second pay wall.
Give us more money or you'll get data throttled.
Give us more money or you'll run out of data.
Give us more money so we can afford to pay off these politicians that allowed this to happen.
Give us more money so can continue to funnel more money to the top of our corporate pyramid.
Give us more money so we don't have to better manage the insane profits we already make.

 

[10tacle]

COMPLETELY WRONG!!! Move to Minneapolis and see how many options you have available. One or None, those are your options. And your situation with multiple provider options is actually super rare from my experience.

I've lived in four major cities since the mid-90s when the internet started getting going (Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, and Washington DC). If you do a quick service support, you'll see they all have multiple cable/ISP options. This is not news. If you only have one choice, then that's a local control issue (apartment, neighborhood infrastructure, etc.). I just looked up your city. Here are the options I found after a three second Google:

https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=isps&find_loc=Minneapolis%2C+MN

"with more control over what content would be allowed on the internet."
That's the opposite of what it does..[snip] What do you think NN was for!?.

Again, at face value as it was billed. But anyone with a lick of common sense knows that its ulterior motive was about internet censorship and control of media content. The FTC and our US Congress representatives are there for a reason to control anti-trust and monopolies. Speaking of which, what legislation has your Senator Al Franken and US House Rep introduced to increase ISP and cable access to the MSP area? Aren't they elected to office to serve our best interests? [cricket chirps]

Even the article says since it's going to be gone now..."...a green light for cable and telecom giants to control where we go and what we do on the internet." Which is the exact opposite of what you said.

Here's a hot news flash for you: it's already being controlled and censored by Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And I would challenge ANY ISP to "control" what websites we go to, what news we read, etc. like the aforementioned do. Said ISP would lose customers faster than creamed corn through a goose. You don't mess with people's liberty. The people will vote with their wallets. It's not a new concept by the way.

 

[ibjeepr]

Or it's about freedom of speech and a capitalist economy. By forcing companies to comply with net neutrality regulations you are taking away their right to provide content at their own discretion.

That's called censorship, not freedom of speech. Under your logic China has enacted great freedom of speech rules.
By forcing companies to comply with NN regs the government prevented isp's from censoring the internet (mostly) like China does. In this case however where as China simply denies access, isp's will simply create a secondary pay wall for access to sites that don't pay the isp directly to allow that isp's customer access to it's site. Which, by the way, will hinder the capitalist economy by preventing new or small sites from getting hits. So now isp's will get paid by costumers to surf the web and by content providers to even be accessible to the consumers. Possibly, isp's could even charge the consumer extra to access certain websites, thus triple dipping for providing a gateway to the internet.

As a quick side note, this is exactly what cable tv providers already do. ISP's just want to copy that business model.

 

[problematiq]

COMPLETELY WRONG!!! Move to Minneapolis and see how many options you have available. One or None, those are your options. And your situation with multiple provider options is actually super rare from my experience.

I've lived in four major cities since the mid-90s when the internet started getting going (Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, and Washington DC). If you do a quick service support, you'll see they all have multiple cable/ISP options. This is not news. If you only have one choice, then that's a local control issue (apartment, neighborhood infrastructure, etc.). I just looked up your city. Here are the options I found after a three second Google:

https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=isps&find_loc=Minneapolis%2C+MN

"with more control over what content would be allowed on the internet."
That's the opposite of what it does..[snip] What do you think NN was for!?.

Again, at face value as it was billed. But anyone with a lick of common sense knows that its ulterior motive was about internet censorship and control of media content. The FTC and our US Congress representatives are there for a reason to control anti-trust and monopolies. Speaking of which, what legislation has your Senator Al Franken and US House Rep introduced to increase ISP and cable access to the MSP area? Aren't they elected to office to serve our best interests? [cricket chirps]

Even the article says since it's going to be gone now..."...a green light for cable and telecom giants to control where we go and what we do on the internet." Which is the exact opposite of what you said.

Here's a hot news flash for you: it's already being controlled and censored by Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And I would challenge ANY ISP to "control" what websites we go to, what news we read, etc. like the aforementioned do. Said ISP would lose customers faster than creamed corn through a goose. You don't mess with people's liberty. The people will vote with their wallets. It's not a new concept by the way.

The major flaw in your line of thinking is assuming all the ISP's have their own infrastructure. You may have 5 ISP's in your area (I bet 2 are satellite and 1 wireless) but they all run off of ATT or Verizon's backbone. your L2 ISP's have no control over what the L3's throttle or do.

 

[problematiq]

Or it's about freedom of speech and a capitalist economy. By forcing companies to comply with net neutrality regulations you are taking away their right to provide content at their own discretion.

That's called censorship, not freedom of speech. Under your logic China has enacted great freedom of speech rules.
By forcing companies to comply with NN regs the government prevented isp's from censoring the internet (mostly) like China does. In this case however where as China simply denies access, isp's will simply create a secondary pay wall for access to sites that don't pay the isp directly to allow that isp's customer access to it's site. Which, by the way, will hinder the capitalist economy by preventing new or small sites from getting hits. So now isp's will get paid by costumers to surf the web and by content providers to even be accessible to the consumers. Possibly, isp's could even charge the consumer extra to access certain websites, thus triple dipping for providing a gateway to the internet.

They also get paid for selling your data and serving you ad's.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

If any of you actually believe that NN was concocted with the purpose of preventing monopolization of carriers, offering high speed internet access to rural areas, and prohibiting ISPs from throttling as it was sold to the public, then you are fools. Ask anyone in Orlando area how well it's worked out having dealt with Brighthouse and Time Warner and now are dealing with Spectrum. The FTC did nothing to stop it. NN would not stop it either.

It's nothing more than federal government overreach with more control over what content would be allowed on the internet. We need regulation of ISPs. We do not need another fascist government entity mandating what we can and cannot see on the internet. In the words of Tim Wu, the law professor who coined the term "net neutrality", the internet rules are about "shaping media policy, social policy, oversight of the political process, [and] issues of free speech.”

Wow, where to begin?

First of all, I don't think anyone is claiming that net neutrality exists to prevent monopolies or extend access to rural areas. Those are separate issues unaffected by net neutrality. The third thing you listed--throttling of content by ISPs--is exactly what net neutrality is about, and it's a very real concern. Comcast and Verizon have both been caught in the act, and now thanks to Ajit Pai, this is going to be standard business practice.

Net neutrality laws do not enable the government to censor anything. Do you have any example of this actually happening under the justification of NN, or can you point out something in NN policy that would even theoretically justify such censorship? NN simply means that all internet traffic must be treated equally. If the government is controlling what people can and cannot see on the internet, then that by definition is not net neutrality.

I hate to make personal assumptions, but it sounds like your cynicism regarding government or your infatuation with the private sector is short circuiting your ability to properly identify which side is working in the general public's best interests on this issue. Put agenda and politics aside for a moment and the answer should become obvious.

This exactly. 90% of people I see talking about net neutrality don't understand what it is, which is exactly what you said: all traffic treated equally, no throttling traffic from certain companies or site or prioritizing other companies that pay off the ISPs.

 

[coolitic]

Wtf, why is Toms posting a quote from Color of Change? Get that PC, professional victim garbage out of here. Toms said they wouldn't be adding GRAPES garbage to their articles. The quote was completely unnecessary.

 

[fruitn]

Freedom in a capitalistic non-regulated society means that the few people with money can do what they want, the rest should fall in line behind and pay up.
For all the glory they promise have never become reality, for any of the proposals I can remember.
"Promoting infrastructure investments"? Not for rural areas, no money to earn out there as they already pay good money for lackluster lines. The only reason to invest in infrastructure is to boast better signal/speed and uptime compared to the competition in the area.
A proper deregulation would be about getting new players on the market that can grow without being hammered by lawyers with mindless and abusive excuses for why a competitor should not be allowed on the market.

 

[Giroro]

Within 5 years, the internet as we know it today will be utterly unrecognizable. It will be a series of of walled gardens consisting mainly of large defense and enterprise services. It will be totally unaffordable to general consumers - it will no longer be viable to telecommute into work (unless you work for your local cable company). Video streaming will be strictly limited to content produced by the telecom companies and will only be accessible with a TV subscription. Chatrooms and messaging services will be banned from your phone so the telecom companies can start charging for SMS messages again. Android and iOS will be phased out for heavily-locked-down OSes built by the telecom companies from the ground up to steal user data without your knowledge or consent. Traffic from VPNs and Tor (maybe even https) will be blocked. Adblocking services will be eliminated.

When the cable companies say they want to "improve" infrastructure, putting in the equipment to easily shape traffic in this way is what they are talking about. This technology wasn't ready when the FCC started attempting to put these rules into place a few years ago, but at this point a motivated company could get it into place very quickly. However it is expensive. They didn't want to do it until they were entirely sure they could get away with it. All this is the "better" business model that Verizon is complaining they can't implement until the risk of regulation is eliminated.

You should immediately sell your stock in web focused companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Hulu, PayPal, etc. - even financial services that depend on the internet like visa, master card, or brokerage houses are at severe risk. These companies won't just be "in a slow lane", anything that even remotely competes with a service provided by a telecom or cable company -including traffic from other ISPs- can (and will) be outright banned and delisted.

The internet is going to die more quickly than you probably think is possible. The monster Ajit Pai killed it. The ripples from the rule changes are going to do TRILLIONS of dollars worth of economic damage to the US. The effects will be felt worldwide.

There is far more at stake here than most people seem to understand. We DESPERATELY need an act of Congress to permanently preserve this critically vital national and world resource. Ajit is a shill put into place for this singular purpose, he will never change his mind because he is the distilled essence of pure evil and greed. Forget the FCC. Call your congressman, call your governor to try and protect it on a state level. Call anybody and everybody who actually has the slightest amount of power to do something about this before it's too late.