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FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

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Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#251
post #229
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see it all soon (as in the next couple weeks) and if there's something awful in there we can start calling for revision.

Nothing is going to happen in the next couple of weeks. There are going to be lawsuits galore that will hold up any significant changes to internet services for years.

What? The regulations will certainly be released in the next couple weeks. Yes, that's also when the lawsuits will start. But I was talking about the regulations being released (since that's what the comment I was replying to was talking about.)

Feel free to take your terrible attitude elsewhere.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel, Cisco, and IBM all sell deep packet inspection products. They have a material interest in not seeing NN go through.

The FCC"s plan isn't NN. It's a gigantic steaming pile of regulations that's ostensibly designed to implement NN. So far, any attempts at public debate gets reduced to emotional screeches and partisanship without any real meat to anything. We're doomed. Maybe not today, tomorrow or next year, but censorship as you fear it is coming and you have yourselves to blame.

I just don't get this. The telecoms already started the censorship process when they decided to prioritize some types of traffic over others. The free market failed free speech the moment that happened, so yes, we the people decided to phone our government and tell them we don't want a bunch of $limeball$ deciding who gets to see what.

We've exchanged impending corporate censorship for possible, maybe, conjectured future government censorship.

I know which one I favor.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#253

Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US. Reading commen…

If you'll notice, the lines of attack closely mirror the anti-Obamacare lines. "700 regulations and no one has even read it!" is very close to the "No one — not one single member of Congress — has read the bill" Michael Steel was using in 2009.

> "700 regulations and no one has even read it!"

Note the commenter said no one had "seen it". That's a meaningful difference worth accurately re-quoting.

Also, is it "700" or "70" or "70+" or what? [citation required]

> "No one — not one single member of Congress — has read the bill" Michael Steel was using in 2009

The concept of passing laws that few have read or understood is the very definition of "disconcerting".

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#254
post #181

Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US. Reading commen…

This is America, where infrastructure is communism. I mean if we provide good infrastructure, pretty soon we'll be sending people to gulags or something like they do in Europe and Canada.

I'm an European and it's the first time I hear about us being sent to gulags for making infrastructure that actually works.

BTW. In Poland, infrastructure was all fine until they started to privatize it. Now our trains barely work, and public transport companies like to compete with each other by showing which one sucks at doing their job more...

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conservatives don't like it because it allows the FCC to do things like rate-setting, even if this administration chooses not to use that power. Liberals don't like the specter of FCC regulation of content. This is a funny line of reasoning on the part of Conservatives. Reclassification under Title II is supposedly bad because it allows future Commissions to impose rate-setting requirements. But, in the absence of…

Could someone explain for the ignorant what "rate setting" means in this context? Does it refer to download/upload rates, or does it refer to $$ rates (between whom)?

It refers to setting the rate for monthly service. Title II was written to regulate phone companies, where for many years AT&T had a government-granted monopoly on phone service. In return for that monopoly, the government got the right to regulate phone rates.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#256

Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US. Reading commen…

If you'll notice, the lines of attack closely mirror the anti-Obamacare lines. "700 regulations and no one has even read it!" is very close to the "No one — not one single member of Congress — has read the bill" Michael Steel was using in 2009.

The fact that the Obamacare bill probably contains an error that might shut down subsidies for federal exchanges sorta backs up Steel's criticism.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is revisionist history. Up until very recently, everyone considered Title II the "nuclear option." That is revisionist history. From the outset of the NN debate, a large subset of the pro-NN crowd has pushed for Title II, and this increased after the court made clear that the critical elements of net neutrality could not be enforced by regulation, without substantial gaps, except under Title II. It is simply n…

Fair enough, see edit.

> Fair enough, see edit.

When you edit a comment, it would help others if you could explicitly mark what you changed with the annotation "Edit:".

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "we haven't even seen the rules yet" line is really just a meaningless talking point promoted by NN opponents. In the world of government regulation, is is absolutely the norm for regulations to be voted on before being made public. But that does not mean the process is not transparent: the Commission has been conducting an open proceeding for months (years, really) where they have explained their proposals to t…

"the Commission has been conducting an open proceeding for months (years, really) where they have explained their proposals to the pubic, and allowed anyone in the country to submit comments" As we all have seen in the past, the proposals they explain and the final rules that become law are usually different. We should be able to see these proposals. "Perhaps this is counterintuitive to some" This just illuminates wh…

> As we all have seen in the past, the proposals they explain and the final rules that become law are usually different. We should be able to see these proposals.

It's not as though the game is totally over. Parties can (and will) petition for reconsideration, and then there will be challenges in court if people think that the Commission has overlooked important issues. End then there's always Congress...

> This just illuminates why this process needs to be changed. "counterintuitive" is a nice way of describing our lack of freedom and the lack of transparency in choices that will directly effect all of our lives.

Fair enough. But I don't know that this is a valid ground for criticizing the FCC.

Edit: While it's true that the Commission's decisions are often not exactly the same as its proposals, it is prohibited by law from making a rule on a subject not implicated by the issues raised by the Commission's proposals (the technical term is "logical outgrowth"). Why isn't this good enough? What is to be gained by circulating the actual rules before they are enacted that is not already accomplished by 1) extended period for public comment on the issues, with full knowledge of the regulatory options under consideration and 2) the possibility of a petition for reconsideration or court challenge after the rules are issued?

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't worried about the main gist. People are scared of the fine details that they categorically refused to release before voting.

> People aren't worried about the main gist. People are scared of the fine details that they categorically refused to release before voting. Strangely, the people that have suddenly expressed concerned about the second thing in the major media as the vote approached are the same people that were expressing opposition on the first ground until very recently (and, many of them continued to do both.) So, I don't think t…

What's wrong with that? I consider myself one of those people.

Broadband companies have a government sponsored monopoly. There are good, fair reasons for that. One of the rules with being gifted a government sponsored monopoly should be that you aren't allowed to abuse that monopoly power. Very reasonable. People agree in principle.

Now we're adding some rules to prevent that abuse. However we don't know what they are! Just as the pendulum was much too far on one side it could easily swing much too far to the other. A great way to evaluate if it's swinging too far is by reading the rules. Which people asked to do. And they categorically refused! The only reason this vote came up is because of passionate public opinion. But now they won't let the public know what is actually being voted on? That's fucked up.

I would personally like to see telecommunication companies spend 1 trillion dollars in infrastructure over the next 20 years. I want wireless gigabit internet. I'd like 10 gigabit wired connections. Maybe more. Will these rules make that harder to do? Will that be more likely or less likely than before? NOBODY IN THE PUBLIC KNOWS. To celebrate the passing of laws when you don't actually know what was passed is insane.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing. This is revisionist history. Up until very recently, Title II was the "nuclear option."[1] There's plenty of people who are pro-net neutrality who were skeptical of Title II. That's why they originally threw their support behind the FCC's last attempt at net neutrality, which tried to impose neutrality without reclassification. The EFF o…

> ("Mark Cuban faults ‘Silicon Valley groupthink,’ says FCC broadband rule a mistake") Ha, cable network owner Mark Cuban is totally unbiased, of course.

He also owns a large position in Netflix (at least 50k shares, but "a lot more" = ~$170m+???).

Don't know what AXS TV is worth

Src: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102097968

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