Senate Democrats, 22 States Fight To Restore Net Neutrality

[Guest]

Senate Democrats are on the verge of achieving a majority vote that could eventually restore the consumer protections. At the same time, 22 states are suing to block the FCC’s repeal decision.

Senate Democrats, 22 States Fight To Restore Net Neutrality : Read more

 

[motocros1]

don't people know anything the government gets involved in causes the exact opposite effect to happen then what they wanted to.

 

[dark_lord69]

Stupid net neutrality repeal my porn is already buffering all the time. LOL

 

[teslacoilftw]

"Washington D.C. Attorney General Bob Ferguson to file a petition to appeal the FCC’s decision."
Bob Ferguson is actually Washington States Attorney General.. Not Washington D.C.

 

[moonhutch9]

Has anyone noticed that almost all the states are run by Democrats . All Democrats Senators except one Rhino Republican are against the repeal .This is not bi-partisan ! People need to get there group think out of libtardville and look up the facts about NN ! Do i need to post links on this to wake you up ? For one , the FCC and the Government needs to stay out of our Internet . 2 . I believe that NN gave rise to Google , Facebook & Twitters censorship . There are lawsuits pending and beginning on those matters . Ask yourselves ,do you want them to be regulated as utilities ? DO RESEARCH !!

 

[Gregory_3]

Bah! This a regulatory agency. By what avenue is anyone going to reverse this. The only way a far as I can see to re-establish this foolishness is by a majority act of Congress passed in both houses. The states can shriek all they wish, but they have no ability to change Federal regulation. This is all raw hysteria.

 

[moonhutch9]

Tom's Hardware , since you seam to be on the side of the Democrats on this , i will be unsubscribing and such .

 

[jdog2pt0]

don't people know anything the government gets involved in causes the exact opposite effect to happen then what they wanted to.

Yes because giving the corporations unlimited control has worked so well in the past.

And on a side note, it looks like even Tom's isn't immune to the FCC's paid shills. I remember how excited everyone was to have NN put in place. Personal attack on a previous poster removed Is nobody capable of independent thought anymore? Are you all just dumb slaves to whatever party happens to be your fancy at that particular moment, and therefore unable to form an argument of your own other than "well X supports this, therefore I must not". NN isn't stifling competition, if anything it's doing the exact opposite. It's also been stated many times that having NN in effect does not prevent new ISP's from entering the field. No, what's stopping them is all of your buddies at Comcast, TWC, etc that sue them into inexistence. The same corporations that are desperately pushing to keep NN repealed.

 

[Dantte]

This article is a gross misrepresentation of the facts and truth. Lets start with the very first paragraph...

"NN legislation" first of all, there never was and has never been any "legislation". NN was created by Obama and his chronies with the wave of his magic pen. Its not law and can be undone in the exact same way... and it was! Any lawsuit brought against it will fail. You want NN, it needs to be passed as a law, period!

 

[mihen]

Man all this non-neutral internet has really affected me this past month. My ISP raised my speeds from 300 MB/s to 1 GB/s. They also didn't touch my bill and haven't blocked my access to anything.

Also you can't sue a regulatory agency into adding regulations. Seriously have these guys taken a civics class before? The only avenue of the lawsuit is to repeal the rule which forbids states from enacting net-neutrality rules.

 

[photonboy]

Mihen,
Even if what you say is true, do you really think an ISP is going to give away more bandwidth for the same money to everybody? Makes no sense.

Do you guys even know what's going on in other countries without Net Neutrality?

In some countries you have to pay for STEAM and NETFLIX individually just to have access. So you pay NETFLIX itself like normal, but also pay your ISP a monthly fee to use it... that's what "gated access" is like. Glad everybody thinks that's great.

 

[captaincharisma]

Man all this non-neutral internet has really affected me this past month. My ISP raised my speeds from 300 MB/s to 1 GB/s. They also didn't touch my bill and haven't blocked my access to anything.

Also you can't sue a regulatory agency into adding regulations. Seriously have these guys taken a civics class before? The only avenue of the lawsuit is to repeal the rule which forbids states from enacting net-neutrality rules.

LOL you think everything happens instantly do ya?

 

[shrapnel_indie]

Bah! This a regulatory agency. By what avenue is anyone going to reverse this. The only way a far as I can see to re-establish this foolishness is by a majority act of Congress passed in both houses. The states can shriek all they wish, but they have no ability to change Federal regulation. This is all raw hysteria.

The States did have a say at one time. That was before the Senate was changed from Senators were chosen by their States to represent the States to the same voting process as the House and the Presidency and we the people doing the choosing.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

Mihen,
Even if what you say is true, do you really think an ISP is going to give away more bandwidth for the same money to everybody? Makes no sense.

Do you guys even know what's going on in other countries without Net Neutrality?

In some countries you have to pay for STEAM and NETFLIX individually just to have access. So you pay NETFLIX itself like normal, but also pay your ISP a monthly fee to use it... that's what "gated access" is like. Glad everybody thinks that's great.

Please cite your sources.

 

[Davil]

Mihen,
Even if what you say is true, do you really think an ISP is going to give away more bandwidth for the same money to everybody? Makes no sense.

Do you guys even know what's going on in other countries without Net Neutrality?

In some countries you have to pay for STEAM and NETFLIX individually just to have access. So you pay NETFLIX itself like normal, but also pay your ISP a monthly fee to use it... that's what "gated access" is like. Glad everybody thinks that's great.

There are absolutely no countries that pay more to their ISP's for Steam or Netflix. Taxes on Steam purchased items are higher in like the UK because of a VAT tax which has nothing to do with the ISP. Netflix has wildly different prices depending on the region, purely because they want to seem to find out how much people will actually pay, Argentina for example are being charged about $4.75 whereas people in Denmark are paying $15.11. That's not related to bandwidth it's related to supply and demand, if people didn't pay that much Netflix would lower the price, simple as that. It's how capitalism and free markets work.

Surprisingly, the same will be true of ISP's now, they can have fair prices or people won't buy from them. The plan is actually working great because already there are tons of start up ISPs trying to enter the market which means competition and therefore lower prices and better services. Oh dear god the horror...

As far as paying for more speed goes, I don't know how long you've been an adult and paid for your own internet, but when I first started paying Comcast back in 2005 they had speed tiers. That hasn't changed at all in the past 12 years or so. Funny enough Net Neutrality has only been a thing for 2 years, so clearly it didn't change that. Also companies like AT&T offer perks by giving unlimited access to apps they own, that is basically the argument that you're trying to make but it was still happening under Net Neutrality. So what did Net Neutrality actually do? TLR not a damn thing.

Government does not do better than the private sector and free market ever. The only thing the government can do well is hold a gun to your head and tell you what you have to do because that's what governments are for. Every policy the government makes is backed up by a gun saying this is the law you will follow it. If that how you want to live, please move elsewhere, and when you do so tell me how bad OUR immigration policies are compared to other places.

 

[Wisecracker]

Libertarian Space Program

 

[WyomingKnott]

Ok, my fellow Tom's folks, some ground rules. A clarification of general forum rules as they apply to this topic.
The news here is that a certain group of people are taking certain actions to reverse the FCC decision on Net Neutrality.
Discussion of the goodness / badness / pointlessness of Net Neutrality is on topic.

Stating that all Democrats, all Republicans, all businesses that use the Internet, all people who use the Internet, or any other arbitrary group are idiots, corrupt, evil, or wrong from birth is both off-topic and against forum rules. Please don't keep the moderator team busy removing them.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Government does not do better than the private sector and free market ever. The only thing the government can do well is hold a gun to your head and tell you what you have to do because that's what governments are for. Every policy the government makes is backed up by a gun saying this is the law you will follow it. If that how you want to live, please move elsewhere, and when you do so tell me how bad OUR immigration policies are compared to other places.

Governments do better than the private sector at caring for things that are for the common good (see Tragedy of the Commons). The local police department probably keeps things safer than if everyone had to hire one of twenty independent contractors - although it does allow prejudices to become more easily ingrained than a variety would. I'd rather have the government run national defense - we've got lots of great stuff, no country dares send armed people over to take it away from us, and it ain't because I'm exercising my second amendment rights. The national highway system is better than what we had when the only public roads were private-investment toll roads. Government is better than the free market for eliminating slavery - cheap labor looks awfully good on the free market.

Let's not get inflammatory for the purpose of, well, being inflammatory.

It is a legitimate question whether or not this function of government is a benefit in this particular case, or if net access should be left wide open and unregulated. That question is also on-topic for this thread.

(this post made in my role as a member, not a moderator)

 

[13thmonkey]

Tom's Hardware , since you seam to be on the side of the Democrats on this , i will be unsubscribing and such .

Just so everyone is aware Moonhutch only subscribed yesterday and has posted twice, both here in this thread. This may help you understand bias in him as a source, him throwing toys out the pram and leaving is just acting up for crowd.

 

[Davil]

Governments do better than the private sector at caring for things that are for the common good (see Tragedy of the Commons).

Tragedy of Commons has absolutely nothing to do with this, that's talking about destruction of the environment not running a program. If you are referring to the EPA they are one of the absolute worst government agencies, flying into LA from anywhere outside of it and seeing the giant change in air quality is a good example of how they aren't doing their job, and there are plenty of other places where they continue to be bad at it.

The local police department probably keeps things safer than if everyone had to hire one of twenty independent contractors - although it does allow prejudices to become more easily ingrained than a variety would.

Police are funded and operated primarily by the local government not by the federal government, which I agree that things should be run at a state level not by broad sweeping policy that is decided well outside the scope of where it applies. Implying that police are also largely prejudiced and racist does not gel with the facts either. Statistically minorities are under policed and are prosecuted less for the same crimes.

I'd rather have the government run national defense - we've got lots of great stuff, no country dares send armed people over to take it away from us, and it ain't because I'm exercising my second amendment rights.

Obviously the government should run the military, it is one of the few duties that they have which is protect it's citizens and we need soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines for that. Being a member of the armed services on active duty for 12 years I can tell you, the government is the absolute worst at policy, budgets, and operating.

The national highway system is better than what we had when the only public roads were private-investment toll roads.

Federal government does not fund roads, it does deliver some funding to states and local governments however. If you took away that funding and the states stopped paying for roads, I can assure you that roads would continue to be paid for. Either through toll roads or communal interests such as HOAs. My HOA for example is extremely good at maintenance of our local roads and we do it cheaper than government because we can hire whoever we want and not be restricted to a bad contract.

Government is better than the free market for eliminating slavery - cheap labor looks awfully good on the free market.

This is purely ridiculous statement and patently wrong. The government did not end slavery, evil laws such as Jim Crow stayed on the books despite the vast majority of people not wanting them to exist. The people who stood up for social reform and equality are what ended those laws, not the government deciding it on it's own.

Let's not get inflammatory for the purpose of, well, being inflammatory.

It is a legitimate question whether or not this function of government is a benefit in this particular case, or if net access should be left wide open and unregulated. That question is also on-topic for this thread.

Nothing I said that was inflammatory or off topic unless you disagree with my political ideal that the government should not interfere with business which is in fact the root the discussion. What is inflammatory is insisting that this has anything to do with race.

 

[WyomingKnott]

My comment on police was a pro-active protection from those who might write that police protection isn't very good for some people, nothing else.

Don't argue local government vs. Federal; your original statement said "Government," not "Federal government." IMHO, the same arguments apply at different scales of government.

The Tragedy of the Commons can apply to any common resource, not just environment or a grassy field. Think watersheds and who gets to use how much of the water. Think all of the available bandwidth and how it gets allocated, billed, filtered, and blocked. I consider the Internet to be a shared resource, conceptually.

The interstate highway system was conceived and built by the federal government. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System.

"The people who stood up for social reform and equality are what ended those laws, not the government deciding it on it's own." Very few slaveowners divested because their neighbors picketed them. They divested because their state or local governments outlawed slavery, or because the North defeated the South and, whether or not slavery was the point of the Civil War, the Federal government chose to make it illegal nation-wide and to actually enforce that law. The people who stood up for abolition motivated more people and formed an important movement, and rescued large numbers of individual slaves, but ultimately effected large-scale change by influencing government activity. Point in fact - human trafficking is still much in the news. We look to both governments and NGO's to suppress it, not the best nature of the individual people.

"The only thing the government can do well is hold a gun to your head..." sounded pretty inflammatory to me; I was referring to the phrasing, not the idea that business should be free of government interference.

-----------------------------------------

Details aside, the point is that I strongly disagree with the idea that "the government should not interfere with business," and I was providing what seem to me to be examples of things that go better when a government is involved.

Although any particular instance of a government may be coercive and act in some ways contrary to some of the interests of some or all of the citizens, it seems to me that a government is the only way for a populace larger than a family to regulate the interaction of its citizens. And preferable to a combination of anarchy and having the strong bop the weak over the heads and take everything.

And that, both from you and from me, is getting back on point. Should a government have say over the Internet, or only the companies that paid for and run the infrastructure? Many of us find the latter idea anti-competitive, and think that the government has a duty to encourage open competition, such as when monopolies were broken up.

 

[Davil]

And that, both from you and from me, is getting back on point. Should a government have say over the Internet, or only the companies that paid for and run the infrastructure? Many of us find the latter idea anti-competitive, and think that the government has a duty to encourage open competition, such as when monopolies were broken up.

I'm not going to respond to all of that again but no the government should not, they didn't in the 20+ years prior to net neutrality and things were just fine. The internet also isn't a finite resource by any means, bandwidth doesn't work like that. The theoretical bandwidth of fiber optic is in the neighborhood of 1 petabit per second which is insane and would require a lot of really expensive equipment. The rate at which technology advances sees us making faster equipment year after year and for cheaper prices and as it turns out, the government is not inventing it or funding it. The free market and capitalism are what drive these innovations.

People are worried that they are going to suddenly get a rate hike, and all the big companies are going to band together to screw us. Well as it turns out in my area, which is a fairly small town, there are less than 14% with only 1 option of wired carrier and they still have 3 options for wireless carriers. I myself have 3 wired options, and 3 wireless, so if the company I have doesn't work well then I switch. I used to have Comcast, but AT&T came along with faster speeds and better prices so obviously I switched. Much in the same way if I start not being able to get to a site I want or get charged some crazy price I will switch to a different company who will give me better terms. That's the free market, and to think that there is a monopoly is pretty short sighted because realistically satellite is always an option.

But if all the big companies are in fact the evil overlords that can't be trusted as some people believe, well mom and pop ISP's do in fact exist, and a lot of them do offer fiber at 1 gb/s for like $100 a month even in very rural places like Kansas as it turns out. More of these types of companies will start up and take business away from those big bad corporations and then they'll either have to change their policies or lose money it's that simple. If your primary argument is that the ISPs will act like several separate monopolies well, net neutrality didn't prevent them from doing that before and that's not even a monopoly in the first place.

What it really does is just put them under title 2 of the 1934 telecommunications act which is a really odd thing to do and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you actually read it you're going to be like "Why is this even a thing?" If you look at section 706 of the telecommunications act of 1996 which is also what applied, it says that essentially companies will do their best to provide better access to schools and the public interest, but it doesn't say how and that doesn't effect normal customers at all. Why that is so important to people, I have no idea.

 

[roblov1]

There was no legislation. That implies an act of Congress. There was a rule by an unaccountable board that was removed by the same board.

Guess what. Nothing has come to pass as you claimed. Net Neutrality was a lie to allow more government control of the net.

 

[mihen]

I think it is quite debatable what is the best course of action in dealing with the Tragedy of the Commons. The 2 main schools of thought on how to deal with it are privatization and regulation. Then there is a middle ground where regulation covers the effects outside the property. The theory with privatization is that the owner of the property would have the most vested interest in preserving that property. This can be seen quite clearly in socialist countries where farmers do not own their farms and it is regulated by a central government. Crops are poorly planned, land is poorly cultured, and the worker is not invested in the crop yield. As a result there are rampant food shortages in Countries like Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and North Korea.
However, there is a flaw with this logic. There is nothing stopping a company from dumping 20 tons of battery on their property then selling it off as a loss.

I don't really see how the tragedy of the commons affects internet service. There isn't a finite good to be mined unless you consider what the ISPs own (bandwidth and access) is the good.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

My comment on police was a pro-active protection from those who might write that police protection isn't very good for some people, nothing else.

Don't argue local government vs. Federal; your original statement said "Government," not "Federal government." IMHO, the same arguments apply at different scales of government.

The Tragedy of the Commons can apply to any common resource, not just environment or a grassy field. Think watersheds and who gets to use how much of the water. Think all of the available bandwidth and how it gets allocated, billed, filtered, and blocked. I consider the Internet to be a shared resource, conceptually.

The interstate highway system was conceived and built by the federal government. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System.

"The people who stood up for social reform and equality are what ended those laws, not the government deciding it on it's own." Very few slave owners divested because their neighbors picketed them. They divested because their state or local governments outlawed slavery, or because the North defeated the South and, whether or not slavery was the point of the Civil War, the Federal government chose to make it illegal nation-wide and to actually enforce that law. The people who stood up for abolition motivated more people and formed an important movement, and rescued large numbers of individual slaves, but ultimately effected large-scale change by influencing government activity. Point in fact - human trafficking is still much in the news. We look to both governments and NGO's to suppress it, not the best nature of the individual people.

"The only thing the government can do well is hold a gun to your head..." sounded pretty inflammatory to me; I was referring to the phrasing, not the idea that business should be free of government interference.

-----------------------------------------

Details aside, the point is that I strongly disagree with the idea that "the government should not interfere with business," and I was providing what seem to me to be examples of things that go better when a government is involved.

Although any particular instance of a government may be coercive and act in some ways contrary to some of the interests of some or all of the citizens, it seems to me that a government is the only way for a populace larger than a family to regulate the interaction of its citizens. And preferable to a combination of anarchy and having the strong bop the weak over the heads and take everything.

And that, both from you and from me, is getting back on point. Should a government have say over the Internet, or only the companies that paid for and run the infrastructure? Many of us find the latter idea anti-competitive, and think that the government has a duty to encourage open competition, such as when monopolies were broken up.

Reality is police are not under any obligation to protect the individual unless some contract has been formed to do so. They don't have to protect the average joe on the street.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

I agree with pretty much everything else that I don't address here as disagreeing with though.

Although the activists didn't directly cancel and nullify racist second-class citizen laws and treatment. They did influence the changes, definitely, but they had not direct power to make the change. it was government that actually made the changes.

Now I do partially agree with government should not interfere with business. I also feel business should play fair, which is where the government should have some say. (Not regulate small business out of existence or unfairly regulate to the point where no business can get off the ground unless they got really deep pockets.)

The internet should be open and free ( and neutral)...however it shouldn't have the illusion of being neutral while not being so or having a hidden mechanism that can rip it away. (just like freedom and security.)