U.S. Senate Republican leader calls net neutrality bill 'dead on arrival'

[webfact]

U.S. Senate Republican leader calls net neutrality bill 'dead on arrival'

By David Shepardson

 

FILE PHOTO: Net neutrality advocates rally in front of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ahead of Thursday's expected FCC vote repealing so-called net neutrality rules in Washington, U.S., December 13, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday a Democratic bid to restore the 2015 net neutrality rules is "dead on arrival in the Senate."

 

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday debated a Democratic plan to reinstate the Obama-era rules and overturn a December 2017 decision by the Federal Communications Commission to reverse the rules and hand sweeping authority to internet providers to recast how Americans access information.

 

Late Tuesday, the House opted to delay a vote on the measure and a series of amendments until Wednesday because of an unrelated issue over a separate budget measure.

 

The net neutrality bill mirrors an effort last year to reverse the FCC’s order, approved on a 3-2 vote, that repealed rules barring providers from blocking or slowing internet content or offering paid "fast lanes."

 

The reversal of net neutrality rules was a win for internet providers such as Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, but was opposed by companies like Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc.

 

On Monday, the White House told Congress that if the bill were approved, President Donald Trump's advisers would recommend he veto it. The White House "strongly opposes" the measure that would "return to the heavy-handed regulatory approach of the previous administration," it said in a statement.

 

The bill would repeal the order introduced by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, bar the FCC from reinstating it or a substantially similar order and reinstate the 2015 net neutrality order. The House will also consider a series of amendments.

 

Representative Mike Doyle, a Democrat, said Tuesday the bill "puts a cop on the beat to make sure our internet service providers aren't acting in an unjust, unreasonable or discriminatory way."

 

Republicans called a bid to restore internet protections akin to a "government takeover of the internet" and said it would open the door to the FCC eventually setting internet rates or imposing new taxes on internet service similar to levies on cable or telephone service. Democrats say polls show Americans overwhelmingly back net neutrality and want protections that providers will not interfere with their internet access.

 

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Amanda Becker; Editing by Dan Grebler and Lisa Shumaker)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-04-10

[Tug]

To much money to big of a lobby 

[helpisgood]

3 hours ago, webfact said:

The White House "strongly opposes" the measure that would "return to the heavy-handed regulatory approach of the previous administration," it said in a statement.

Some pols like to stoke the fear of "heavy-handed" govt. regs.  Maybe that's a holdover from the Cold War?  Sure, regs can be less than perfect.

 

However, power is power whether it is from the public or private sectors.  Large private corporations can also be heavy-handed towards smaller businesses and the general public.  Just ask competitors of giants like Amazon or Walmart.   

 

As I recall, the seminal legislation on all of this is the Communications Act of 1934 (an easy read from Wikipedia is linked below).  Congress made the American public the essential owners of the airways, not the networks, large corporations and so on.  Although the radio/TV signals that used to fill the airways are now, due to modern technology, often sent through cables, wires, etc., it is conceptually the same thing.

 

So, whatever happened to antitrust and control of unfair competition?  Capitalism can be a wonderful system.  However, like all forms of competition, there needs to be some sort of officiating for the sake of smaller businesses and, more importantly, the general public.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934

 

[Chomper Higgot]

Exposes who this administration is looking after.

 

Again!

 

[suzannegoh]

2 hours ago, helpisgood said:

Some pols like to stoke the fear of "heavy-handed" govt. regs.  Maybe that's a holdover from the Cold War?  Sure, regs can be less than perfect.

 

However, power is power whether it is from the public or private sectors.  Large private corporations can also be heavy-handed towards smaller businesses and the general public.  Just ask competitors of giants like Amazon or Walmart.   

 

As I recall, the seminal legislation on all of this is the Communications Act of 1934 (an easy read from Wikipedia is linked below).  Congress made the American public the essential owners of the airways, not the networks, large corporations and so on.  Although the radio/TV signals that used to fill the airways are now, due to modern technology, often sent through cables, wires, etc., it is conceptually the same thing.

 

So, whatever happened to antitrust and control of unfair competition?  Capitalism can be a wonderful system.  However, like all forms of competition, there needs to be some sort of officiating for the sake of smaller businesses and, more importantly, the general public.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934

 

Anti-trust law and Net Neutrality are two separate issues.  Net Neutrality regulates the mechanics of the internet (for instance, prioritization of one type of traffic over another) and gave the FCC jurisdiction over that.  Without Net Neutrality, anti-trust laws still apply and the FTC has primary jurisdiction; with Net Neutrality anti-trust laws still apply but there is an additional layer of regulation imposed by the FCC. 

 

Where I disagree with Net Neutrality is not over its stated intent (which is basically to require ISPs to be more fair) but over the practicality & need to regulate a commodity (bandwidth) whose supply has been doubling every 18 months for the past 20 years as if it's a scarce commodity.

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by suzannegoh

[earlinclaifornia]

6 hours ago, suzannegoh said:

Anti-trust law and Net Neutrality are two separate issues.  Net Neutrality regulates the mechanics of the internet (for instance, prioritization of one type of traffic over another) and gave the FCC jurisdiction over that.  Without Net Neutrality, anti-trust laws still apply and the FTC has primary jurisdiction; with Net Neutrality anti-trust laws still apply but there is an additional layer of regulation imposed by the FCC. 

 

Where I disagree with Net Neutrality is not over its stated intent (which is basically to require ISPs to be more fair) but over the practicality & need to regulate a commodity (bandwidth) whose supply has been doubling every 18 months for the past 20 years as if it's a scarce commodity.

 

I too thought that to be true. Undecided about any other underlining points to deside. 

[bristolboy]

6 hours ago, suzannegoh said:

Anti-trust law and Net Neutrality are two separate issues.  Net Neutrality regulates the mechanics of the internet (for instance, prioritization of one type of traffic over another) and gave the FCC jurisdiction over that.  Without Net Neutrality, anti-trust laws still apply and the FTC has primary jurisdiction; with Net Neutrality anti-trust laws still apply but there is an additional layer of regulation imposed by the FCC. 

 

Where I disagree with Net Neutrality is not over its stated intent (which is basically to require ISPs to be more fair) but over the practicality & need to regulate a commodity (bandwidth) whose supply has been doubling every 18 months for the past 20 years as if it's a scarce commodity.

 

Well it may not be scarce in the matter of supply, but access to it is very limited for most people. Not much competition out there. And the Republican Congress actually outlawed any governments from providing Internet Service.

[suzannegoh]

1 hour ago, bristolboy said:

Well it may not be scarce in the matter of supply, but access to it is very limited for most people. Not much competition out there. And the Republican Congress actually outlawed any governments from providing Internet Service.

If the issue is a lack of competition, the remedy already exists to use anti-trust laws to break up regional monoplies that dominate the market now. Unfortunately the Net Neutrality approach does the opposite in that it legitimizes those monopolies by regulating them in place rather than breaking them up. That's why Comcast was a supporter of Net Neutrality, they knew that if they played ball with the government by going along NN rules that no one would try to break up the company.

Edited April 10, 2019 by suzannegoh

[usviphotography]

11 hours ago, helpisgood said:

 

 

So, whatever happened to antitrust and control of unfair competition?  Capitalism can be a wonderful system.  However, like all forms of competition, there needs to be some sort of officiating for the sake of smaller businesses and, more importantly, the general public.

 

 

That is not what this is though. This is regulation in favor of companies like Google and Amazon at the expense of the ISPs. The real problem Americans are having with this is not some inherent fear of regulation but rather the simple fact that all of the problems in terms of censorship of the internet are coming not from the ISPs but rather companies like Google and Amazon which this bill aims to help. A "Net Neutrality" bill which benefits the internet's biggest censors is a hard sell. 

 

There is probably some "grand compromise" available in which Neutrality is imposed on all the major players, and not just one class (which happens to be the one class engaged in the least amount of censorship out of anybody) but the Dems would never go for that because actually like censorship and a neutral internet is the last thing they want. 

Edited April 10, 2019 by usviphotography

[bristolboy]

33 minutes ago, usviphotography said:

That is not what this is though. This is regulation in favor of companies like Google and Amazon at the expense of the ISPs. The real problem Americans are having with this is not some inherent fear of regulation but rather the simple fact that all of the problems in terms of censorship of the internet are coming not from the ISPs but rather companies like Google and Amazon which this bill aims to help. A "Net Neutrality" bill which benefits the internet's biggest censors is a hard sell. 

 

There is probably some "grand compromise" available in which Neutrality is imposed on all the major players, and not just one class (which happens to be the one class engaged in the least amount of censorship out of anybody) but the Dems would never go for that because actually like censorship and a neutral internet is the last thing they want. 

Net neutrality is not what you think it is. It has nothing at all to do with alleged censorship. Here is a succinct explanation:

Network neutrality, or more simply net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers should treat all Internet communications equally and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

 

[suzannegoh]

9 hours ago, bristolboy said:

Net neutrality is not what you think it is. It has nothing at all to do with alleged censorship. Here is a succinct explanation:

Network neutrality, or more simply net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers should treat all Internet communications equally and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

 

Yes, that's what Net Neutrality was sold to the public as being.  The name "Net Neutrality" implies to most people that it's about "Net Fairness" so all sorts of things get blamed on Net Neutrality (or the lack thereof) that actually have nothing to do with Net Neutrality. 

However that definition is too simplistic to be a cornerstone principle and even the FCC recognized that.  There are lots of legitimate technical reasons to prioritize one type of traffic over another, and because of that the FCC implemented a process to approve exceptions and when NN was in effect they approved almost all requests.  So instead of Net Neutrality being implemented as originally defined, what consumers got was a committee micromanaging ISPs' technical decisions.

 

Edited April 11, 2019 by suzannegoh

[bristolboy]

42 minutes ago, suzannegoh said:

Yes, that's what Net Neutrality was sold to the public as being.  The name "Net Neutrality" implies to most people that it's about "Net Fairness" so all sorts of things get blamed on Net Neutrality (or the lack thereof) that actually have nothing to do with Net Neutrality. 

However that definition is too simplistic to be a cornerstone principle and even the FCC recognized that.  There are lots of legitimate technical reasons to prioritize one type of traffic over another, and because of that the FCC implemented a process to approve exceptions and when NN was in effect they approved almost all requests.  So instead of Net Neutrality being implemented as originally defined, what consumers got was a committee micromanaging ISPs' technical decisions.

 

Really? Got some evidence to support that? By your own contention, the Internet has grown massively in capacity. No, the FCC wasnt using a heavy hand to regulate technical issues on the Internet. In fact that authority was delegated long ago to ICANN and the FCC's decision has done absolutely nothing to change that.

 

"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN/ˈaɪkæn/ EYE-kan) is a nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet, ensuring the network's stable and secure operation.^[1] ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zoneregistries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community.^[2][3][4][5]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN

 

 

[usviphotography]

12 hours ago, bristolboy said:

Net neutrality is not what you think it is. It has nothing at all to do with alleged censorship. Here is a succinct explanation:

Network neutrality, or more simply net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers should treat all Internet communications equally and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

 

In other words, this bill seeks to impose on providers, who have never really discriminated much at all based on user, content, website, or platform a financial burden to the benefit of companies that have in recent years become the primary source of such discrimination and censorship on the web. Don't try to tell me I don't know what I am talking about. Now maybe a decade ago when this idea first came out and companies like Google and Amazon were still in "Don't Be Evil" mode this might have made sense in theory. But now that Google, Amazon, et al actually are the threat that people back then worried ISPs might some day become the entire concept is ludicrous. 

[bristolboy]

1 hour ago, usviphotography said:

In other words, this bill seeks to impose on providers, who have never really discriminated much at all based on user, content, website, or platform a financial burden to the benefit of companies that have in recent years become the primary source of such discrimination and censorship on the web. Don't try to tell me I don't know what I am talking about. Now maybe a decade ago when this idea first came out and companies like Google and Amazon were still in "Don't Be Evil" mode this might have made sense in theory. But now that Google, Amazon, et al actually are the threat that people back then worried ISPs might some day become the entire concept is ludicrous. 

Still obsessed are you? This allows the internet providers, such as ATT  or Comcast which have their own content, to discriminate against say Netflix. This has nothing to do with them being crusaders against evil lying organization like Fox News. Fox deserves a chance to peddle its propaganda without being discriminated against by ATT on behalf of CNN which it now owns. By what bizarre route of mentation did you come to the conclusion that it will be only content providers and search engines you dislike that will be discriminated against by ISPs? You think that ISPs are crusaders on behalf of the Truth? Their incentive will be to discriminate against competitors. So they can make more money. Do you not understand that increased  profits might just possibly be their incentive? 

[usviphotography]

7 hours ago, bristolboy said:

 Their incentive will be to discriminate against competitors. So they can make more money. Do you not understand that increased  profits might just possibly be their incentive? 

ISPs have never done the awful things that people are worried they might do. Google, Facebook, Amazon, are doing all those awful things right now. That is why the bill is going nowhere. It is fighting the last war (that never even actually happened) while ignoring the current crisis. ISPs have been the absolute best actors in the entire ecosystem of the web. Do you not understand how ridiculous it is to single out the one group that has actually done the right thing over the years while ignoring the companies that are trying to turn the internet in the West in to their own heavily censored and discriminatory gardens? And to attempt do it under the banner of "Net Neutrality" no less?

[bristolboy]

58 minutes ago, usviphotography said:

ISPs have never done the awful things that people are worried they might do. Google, Facebook, Amazon, are doing all those awful things right now. That is why the bill is going nowhere. It is fighting the last war (that never even actually happened) while ignoring the current crisis. ISPs have been the absolute best actors in the entire ecosystem of the web. Do you not understand how ridiculous it is to single out the one group that has actually done the right thing over the years while ignoring the companies that are trying to turn the internet in the West in to their own heavily censored and discriminatory gardens? And to attempt do it under the banner of "Net Neutrality" no less?

What are you talking about? What have ISPs done that is so worthy of praise? And what do you mean by "awful things"?  Why should they get to discriminate in favor of their streaming media over their other providers of streaming media? Their function as ISPs has no inherent connection with the streaming services they provide. And because they are often a monopoly , there is no one to compete with them. 

More than 100 Million Americans Can Only Get Internet Service from Companies That Have Violated Net Neutrality

https://www.wired.com/story/the-fcc-says-net-neutrality-cripples-investment-thats-not-true/

 

You are obsessed with an issue that has nothing to do with net neutrality. Nothing, nada, zip.  Interesting to see though, that you approve of the AT&T-Time Warner ISP who are also the, the owners of CNN.