Net Neutrality Prevails In Historic FCC Vote

[Taem]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26...61702.html

The FCC intends to use this new authority to ban "paid prioritization," a practice whereby Internet service providers can charge content producers a premium for giving users more reliable access to that content. The FCC also intends to ban blocking and throttling of lawful content and services. These regulations also apply to mobile access. More details about the plan are expected after vote.

"The Internet is simply too important to allow broadband providers to be the ones making the rules," Wheeler said prior to the vote.

I had actually anticipated the opposite happening with big lobbying pushing towards a regulated internet. I'm pleasantly surprised on this ruling!

[Bolty]

What I will continuously find the most interesting thing about this decision is that it is absolutely historic. It radically alters the future of our country and benefits US citizens in ways we probably can't even fully predict right now without a time machine. And yet, your average citizen hasn't the slightest idea what this means or why it is a good thing for all of humanity. I can just see my wife's eyes glazing over as I try to explain why this is such an incredibly big deal.

I practically jumped up and cheered when I heard of the ruling. The most shocking thing was Tom Wheeler's statement, who famously is considered a corporate shill having come from the cable industry to his FCC appointment:

The Internet is the most powerful and pervasive platform on the planet. It's simply too important to be left without rules and without a referee on the field. Think about it. The Internet has replaced the functions of the telephone and the post office. The Internet has redefined commerce, and as the outpouring from four million Americans has demonstrated, the Internet is the ultimate vehicle for free expression. The Internet is simply too important to allow broadband providers to be the ones making the rules.

So let's address an important issue head-on. This proposal has been described by one opponent as, quote, "a secret plan to regulate the Internet." Nonsense! This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech.

They both stand for the same concept: openness, expression, and an absence of gatekeepers telling people what they can do, where they can go, and what they can think. The action that we take today is about the protection of Internet openness.

I get goosebumps reading the bolded part.

Expect the major ISPs to engage in a bloody legal war to try to pull out of this, a situation that they themselves created through their insane greed. They've now been reclassified because they couldn't accept just having a taxpayer-subsidized monopoly on Internet service provision. They couldn't stop themselves from also trying to also stomp on everything they could in the name of even more money. They lost huge today as a result. The gravy train is effectively over.

[LochnarITB]

It may seem silly, but this actually starts to bring tears to my eyes. Tears not only for understanding of the power of this ruling, especially for someone like myself that essentially lives on the internet, but for the passion apparent in Bolty's post that I also feel for equating a free internet with free speech. Both are vital to the free flow of ideas and the bettering of our lives.

[Belix]

This just happened. On my birthday. Awesome. I've never been much of one for celebrations, but this is one of the best reasons I've ever had yet! Thanks for making a post about this. I don't keep up with the news much lately. I could of missed it for days.

I used to be greatly disturbed at the thought of how much damage could be done to the future of our race in terms of technological and social progress by the cash-obsessed lunatics that run these companies.

I feel greatly relieved now knowing it is far less likely that I will ever live in a future where the internet is full of toll booths and getting a new ISP means selecting which "website package" you want access to. Because that's exactly the kind of stuff I think these people would do to us given the chance, and they wouldn't feel one shred of guilt.

If I may equate the telecom industry is to the Butcher, then The spirits of the dead are now avenged!

[DeeBye]

Meanwhile on Fox News:



edit: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/...-meddling/

"The Obama Administration needs to get beyond its 1930s rotary-telephone mindset and embrace the future," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.

[Belix]

From the article DeeBye linked:

The order explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes.
Read my lips: More new taxes are coming. It's just a matter of when.

Heh! That sounds exactly like something someone with close ties to the telecom industry would say. And, sure enough, I just looked him up:

Pai previously worked as a lawyer for Verizon Communications.

I thought I had seen his name somewhere else recently. Yep!

Techdirt: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai Is Leading An Incoherent, Facts-Optional Last Minute War On Net Neutrality

In short, you've got a former Verizon regulatory lawyer claiming to represent the interests of everybody except the companies he's actually busy looking out for. Layered on to that is a media that pretends it's not just a little bit absurd that a living, breathing example of revolving door regulation is claiming to be a champion of the American public. Pai knows the rules will be approved on Thursday; he's just hoping his theatrical performance wins him a chance to lead the FCC (and the likely destruction of these very same rules) should we see a 2016 party shift.

So, Mr. Pai warns us that the government will abuse its "control of the internet" to grab billions of dollars. This is delightfully colorful coming from someone who worked as a lawyer for a company that did exactly that:

Techdirt: Decades Of Failed Promises From Verizon: It Promises Fiber To Get Tax Breaks... Then Never Delivers

Verizon promised that all homes and businesses would have access to 45Mbps symmetrical fiber by 2015. By 2004, the deal was that 50% of all homes were supposed to have that. In reality, 0% did, and some people started asking for their money back. That never happened, and it appeared that Verizon learned a valuable lesson: it can flat out lie to governments, promise 100% fiber coverage in exchange for subsidies, then not deliver, and no one will do a damn thing about it.

And Verizon, of course, isn't the only one with their hands in that cookie jar:

Techdirt: You've Already Paid $2,000 For A Fiber Connection You'll Never Get

For the last decade, those same telcos have made promise after promise to local governments concerning the delivery of truly open fiber optic connections to the home. In exchange, they've been granted all sorts of privileges and rate increases by the government, costing all of us money. And where did the money go? Not towards what was promised.

====================

He warned of a litany of negative consequences, intended or not, from the net neutrality plan. He said it allows rate regulation -- and, ultimately, rates will go up and broadband service will slow.

Telecom companies have already been artificially raising rates and slowing services for a long time. It's standard practice.

PBS: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen

Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it.
...
The cost of providing digital services is always going DOWN, not up, so the telcos that might have been forced to cut rates instead offered to freeze them, locking in an effective multiyear rate increase.
...
The RBOCs cut heads, cut spending, cut construction, increased depreciation rates, failed to deliver promised services, increased telephone bills, and had booming profits as a result.
...
I could move to Japan and pay $14 per month for 100-megabit-per-second Internet service but I can't do that here and will probably never be able to.

The telecom industry has had decades to earn the trust of customers, and has spent the entire time doing the exact opposite. I don't feel the least bit sorry for them. Quite frankly, I think Mr. Pai should be given the opportunity to find other employment opportunities. You know, by being forcefully ejected from his current job.

[kandrathe]

So, for the non-technical people in my life, I equate the internet to our interstate freeway system, built during and after WWII under the auspices of improving national security**. Some places do have local public or private toll roads, which benefit only those who can afford to use them. Treating the internet as a common carrier means that it will be treated more as our *free* interstate freeway. Just as a trucking company in California doesn't need to worry about negotiating the route of its produce heading to NYC, a free internet means producers of internet services do not need to deal with various tolls in getting their products to us, their market. This again does not preclude some large producer from using a "private high speed line" negotiated with a carrier to transmit some information at high speeds to a wealthy consumer, but it does ensure that the general public will have access to the common road at the same rate and price as everyone else. That private "road" just would not be on the internet.

** formerly known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.

“Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south.” -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 22 Feb 1955