26 ms·

Trump’s F.C.C. Pick Quickly Targets Net Neutrality Rules

• maxxxxx 10y ago
  Like it or not, but Trump may become a transformational president. They are wasting no time. Have other presidents been that aggressive with their agenda when coming in?
  • jackmott 10y ago
    When congress and president are both controlled by the same party, you get lots of action, yes. See the first 2 years of Obama.
    • jjawssd 10y ago
      Is that it?
      • gph 10y ago
        I know it's hard looking back to see the good that was done, it certainly was for me at first glance. But if you remember Obama took over a severely damaged economy, one that many people at the time thought was on the verge of collapsing. There's nothing flashy about stabilizing an economy, there's no single policy or action he took that you could really point and say "that saved the economy". But he took a lot of actions, including controversial ones like bailing out the auto industry, which in hindsight may be part of the reason we didn't fall into another depression. I think when we look back at Obama a lot of people feel like he didn't do much since at the end of his term we'd basically returned to the same status quo (tho it should be noted that the status quo is a lot more beneficial for some than others). The only real lasting difference we can point to is Obamacare, and obviously that doesn't look great. But when you look at what he might have potentially saved us from, you have to give him some credit in those first two years. Certainly the republicans are going to dismantle the Frank-Dodd legislature, but they did that in his first 2 years as a response to the banking crisis in order to stop it from happening again. Just something to think about.
    • emodendroket 10y ago
      Compared to this administration and Congress the first two years of Obama actually look pathetic.
      • anigbrowl 10y ago
        I know, think what he could have achieved by simply ignoring the other party and tweeting about his feels.
        • emodendroket 10y ago
          Do you see Trump watering down his proposals to satisfy the forlorn hope that some Democrats will support them?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • munificent 10y ago
    * 30 January 1933 Hitler sworn in as chancellor. * 27 February 1933 Reichstag fire. * 28 February 1933 Reichstag Fire Decree passed. Suspends habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, and communications privacy, among other things. * 23 March 1933 Enabling Act passed. Allows the Reich to pass laws, even those which deviate from the constitution. With this, the executive branch completely overpowered the legislative branch and established Hitler's dictatorship.
    • conistonwater 10y ago
      Isn't that comparison a bit overdone? Even people who (seriously) know their history know not make facile comparisons, and draw more interesting/plausible parallels: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/normalization-lesson-munich-post/ https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/normalization-lesson-mun...
      • anigbrowl 10y ago
        It's broadly accurate notwithstanding its summary nature. One under-appreciated fact about the rise of Nazism is that it proceeded by technically legal means. Even though Hitler eventually sent the German parliament on an almost-permanent holiday, he never suspended the Weimar constitution and could have made a credible argument for the legality of what he was doing at any given time. Our constitution is subject to similar abuses; ultimately a great deal of governance is based on mutualism in the political class rather than strict rules, and departures from this mutualism often result in crises - such as the slowly-unfolding one over the vacant Supreme Court seat right now, or FDR's threat to pack the court with judges favorable to him in the 1930s if they didn't support his administration - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bil... The constitution is quite vague in many respects. If I were Steve Bannon I'd be mapping out my route for driving a monster truck through it right now.
        • dragonwriter 10y ago
  • anigbrowl 10y ago
    I don't think that following existing rulemaking practices is a waste of time (I know you were just using that phrase loosely). It seems clear that the new administration is indifferent to existing norms and aims to sweep most them aside, but those norms are generally the product of experience and (as we're seeing) disregard for them is generating so much opposition that the strategy may be self-defeating.
    • maxxxxx 10y ago
      Totally agree with you. The funny thing is the "conservatives" in the US are not conservative at all. I would think that conservative means to change things only after careful deliberation but they act in exactly the opposite way.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        > I would think that conservative means to change things only after careful deliberation but they act in exactly the opposite way. That's not what political conservatism has ever meant.
        • rotten 10y ago
          I would have believed the original meaning of "conservative" was someone who wanted to keep things they way they are. Advocates for the status quo, which is good enough. Usually it means they are relatively risk averse. Changing the system is likely to make things worse, not better. "Progressive", on the other hand, traditionally meant advocating for continuing change to the system with hopes we can get even better. Since those original meanings, the terms have co-opted into meaning something else entirely. Conservative = Capitalist or Royalist. Progressive = Socialist or Populist.
          • dragonwriter 10y ago
            > I would have believed the original meaning of "conservative" was someone who wanted to keep things they way they are. In a sense, this is correct, but it wasn't an orientation toward generic absence of, and failing that slow pace of, change, but instead defense of the hold on political and economic power by traditional elites based in privilege of birth justified appeal to religious tradition that was opposed by classical liberalism , to which political conservatism was defined in response. And conservatism still largely stands for defense of established elites and privilege of birth justified by appeal to tradition, largely religious. > "Progressive", on the other hand, traditionally meant advocating for continuing change to the system with hopes we can get even better. No, it "progressive" as a political label originally meant "populist" (or, at least, a sepcific populist platform of a particular time), it was later, after being mostly unused for several decades, borrowed by American social liberals, mostly within the Democratic party and mostly in response to perceived devaluation of the "liberal" branding, to denote a different specific policy platform.
• coldpie 10y ago
  I hope you like paid priority lanes for big companies, less oversight of telecommunication company fees, data caps on home internet connections, huge telecom mergers, and no regulation of the growing mobile industry, because that's what you're getting with Pai's FCC. You voted for fewer regulations, Americans, so you get fewer regulations. I hope you like the results. We've got another election this coming November. And another one next November. If you want consumer protection and some amount of oversight on big companies, turn out to vote every single year and kick the Republicans out of office.
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    I think you're taking an awfully optimistic view of how much people understand or care about this issue.
    • conistonwater 10y ago
      I don't understand your point. I think it's a general principle that the government is supposed to do a good job regardless of whether the issue at hand is well-understood by the public. It's a valid observation if somebody points out that the public was sold a bill of goods by the government.
      • emodendroket 10y ago
        My point is nobody is going to connect the dots and say "I can only access certain Web sites at certain speeds now... this is because of Trump's FCC guy gutting net neutrality" unless they already are keyed into and concerned with the issue in the first place.
      • ssharp 10y ago
        The point is getting the public to care about this stuff. I don't think the average person spends much time thinking about politics. I think most may see some stuff online or on TV but are largely locked into their beliefs. You probably have +1 std. dev. who "pays attention" to politics as a bit of a hobby and +2 std. dev who make it one of their top priorities. That still leaves a lot of people who care far less than the average person does. If you want to effect change in Washington, you either have to make people care more or find a candidate who people who don't care will still rally behind. I think both Trump and Obama fit that bill well but for much different reasons. edit: I wonder how it would play if during a debate, a candidate really drilled down into how the incumbent's policies negatively affected people in small ways they may not realize. This net neutrality thing may be one of them. "Your cable provider won't let you stream Netflix at full quality? That's Trump's fault".
• shmerl 10y ago
  > The agency has strayed from its core mission,” said Marsha Blackburn, a Republican representative from Tennessee who oversees a telecommunications and tech subcommittee. Yeah, in her view, the mission of the agency is to serve the monopolists, and to strengthen the market stagnation by preventing any trace of competition. Of course in exchange for generous bribes (aka donations) to the likes of her. Why are such people even being voted for?
  • jcater 10y ago
    > Why are such people even being voted for? It doesn't help this is who was running against her the last couple of election cycles: http://www.nashvillescene.com/news/article/13041553/tharon-chandler-wants-you-to-want-him http://www.nashvillescene.com/news/article/13041553/tharon-c... http://www.theleafchronicle.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/07/07/tharon-chandler-district-7-us-house-candidate/86765294/ http://www.theleafchronicle.com/story/news/politics/election...
  • Synaesthesia 10y ago
    If you're wondering why people like this are voted for, it's because they don't run on the core issues, they don't discuss policy when campaigning, nothing important, and run on all kinds of fringe issues. That's very important to do, otherwise nobody would ever vote for them. Trump also was very sparse on detail and very big on emotional oversimplifications, and now that he's in he gets to implement his real agenda.
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      No politician runs on core issues. It is always terrorism, jobs, economy. More people die each year in the US by chocking on food than getting killed by terrorist. People seem to think we are under some sort of constant attack. I guess they believe the lack of evidence supports this. Jobs and economy are always good to run on because you can promise the world and people get excited. Nothing changes because once in office, politicians have to answer to the people who really put them there; Big Business with deep pockets.
    • 10y ago
• kilroy123 10y ago
  This is great news! Now YouTube, Apple, Netflix, Google, etc. products will run way faster. No more wasting internet and bandwidth on any small crappy websites or companies products. Honestly, if you're not a billion dollar company, you shouldn't even exist and be on the internet. /s
  • gph 10y ago
    Pull that ladder up behind you, lest anyone should try to climb up there with you.
    • ska 10y ago
      It's the American Way, right? Errr, nevermind.
  • sharemywin 10y ago
    Try YouVerizon, ApplVerizon, VerizonFlix and GooVerizon... New Business plan 1. charge internet service excessive fees 2. use excessive fees to fund crappier version of existings services 3. cut off old versions.
• lettergram 10y ago
  Well, it's kind of funny. I was joking about starting a political party. Now, as a business owner, I feel it's my duty. Seriously, I've decided after reading this. I just want to vote for a party that supports abortion rights, gun rights, a open Internet, and a generally smaller government (focused more on research and education). FYI Ill be moving to Champaign, IL if anyone is interested.
  • gph 10y ago
    >I just want to vote for a party that supports abortion rights, gun rights, a open Internet, and a generally smaller government (focused more on research and education). Request denied. Join a side and conform any of your conflicting ideals with theirs. Too much effort letting people decide each issue for themselves. Edit: /s [sorry I forgot to put that, I know sarcasm can be confusing on the internet]
    • lettergram 10y ago
      I believe this was in jest lol Im just super liberal. I think you should be able to do what ever you want as long as you don't hurt (or overly annoy) others. The thing is, almost everyone I talk to agrees with me. I don't understand the current political system at all...
      • metaphorm 10y ago
        > I don't understand the current political system at all because you're trying to view it through the lens of "rational, beneficial policies that are supported by a democratic majority" whereas our current system is "niche issues of low utility but high tribal divisiveness used to distract the democratic majority while we secretly empower monopolist corporations"
        • InitialLastName 10y ago
          I don't know about you, but I don't see anything "secret" about the current power of monopolist corporations.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• tabeth 10y ago
  Just curious: in an ideal society, where there are no super large corporations that would abuse their advantage here, would this be a big deal? Isn't this similar to the advantage that capitalists have when buying huge swathes of land? I imagine that if this passes companies would then start selling their "high priority" traffic to smaller companies. I'm pretty ignorant to the history of Net Neutrality, but this seemed inevitable to me. Seems to me that every time there's a "constrained" resource (though internet access is arbitrarily constrained) large companies end up dominating it. It sounds to me that the real problem is the existence of large companies that have the resources to exploit advantages to begin with.
  • metaphorm 10y ago
    "ideal society" thought experiments get degenerate and wacky in a hurry. let's talk about reality, if you wouldn't mind. Net Neutrality is specifically the idea that delivery of bytes of data over internet connections amounts to a global public commons that is a shared resource for everyone. Just as we make laws to prevent someone from putting up an enclosure fence around public meadows, we also have the idea of net neutrality so nobody puts up a virtual enclosure ("high priority lanes") around the internet. i.e. everybody pays the same rate for traffic delivery regardless of the origin or content of the traffic. you're right that this was an inevitable power play that would be made by monopolist rent-seeking corporations as soon as they could get away with it. the importance of strong regulations on this issue cannot be emphasized enough.
    • tabeth 10y ago
      ah, I guess I wasn't clear. the point/opinion I was trying to convey is that without getting rid of large corporations there's no way to avoid these issues. I was just curious why there's so much emphasis on his particular issue, which I believe not to be the real problem. I agree with your claim that we need regulations. I just don't see how they'll last, given corporations' influence on our democracy and government. Isn't this article in particular case and point?
      • metaphorm 10y ago
• jjawssd 10y ago
  As long as the FCC stays on track to do its best to encourage competition in the Internet ecosystem I see no problems with what they are doing. I am too uneducated to understand the real downstream effects of "net neutrality"
  • kennywinker 10y ago
    One of the downstream effects is reduced competition in the internet ecosystem.
  • anigbrowl 10y ago
    If you know you're uneducated on a topic that a lot of people insist is problematic, perhaps you should rectify that before choosing your position.
    • mjmsmith 10y ago
      Or commenting.
      • jjawssd 10y ago
        It's difficult to form a position with so much misinformation around
        • jrcii 10y ago
          It's a very complex topic that requires technical knowledge at the intersection of the law, economics, and computer networks. For that reason you're far from alone, in fact all but one or two members of Congress really understand the issue.
        • anigbrowl 10y ago
          OK, here's a few rules of thumb to get you started. First, be selective about whose information you consume. Nobody is right 100% of the time but you can identify news and information providers who are consistently more reliable than others. The best way to do this is by measuring their predictive power over time. You don't have to do this in a spreadsheet unless you enjoy that sort of thing, but if you notice that a source of information on some topic consistently informs you about issues earlier and more accurately than the general news media, then you should give extra weight to hat source. Second, don't make the mistake of assuming that all claims are true from the claimant's perspective, and that if you just seek to understand all the competing claims you'll be able to synthesize some great overall understanding. There are quite a lot of people who will lie and deceive either to promote their own ideology or for money. Default to assuming good faith, but never exclude the possibility of bad faith, and if you encounter it burn the source down (not literally, but by calling out the deception to raise awareness among others and undermine the deceiver's credibility). Third, never stop maintaining your own intellectual foundations. The study of economics is especially rewarding because economic insights can be applied to any area of life. I don't mean that you should sit around doing basic calculus problems all day - indeed when there are too many numbers flying about you should be cautious, because most economic mistakes derive from choosing incorrect starting assumptions rather than a failure of logic, so I'm a little suspicious of economic claims that look too like a math paper (Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase used to refer contemptuously to 'blackboard economics,' and warned against falling too in love with one's models to the detriment of empirical observation). Rather, treat economics as a set of techniques with which to assess a complex problem. An excellent introduction to the field that has the merit of being intellectually neutral and exploring ideas from both left and right perspectives is Todd Buckholz's New Ideas From Dead Economists. IIRC it has a pretty good bibliography too, if not it'll still give you a decent overview of the field.
• ChicagoDave 10y ago
  They will certainly kill city-run broadband and anything else that the big companies view as encroaching on their monopolies. In 2008 we should have let the banks fail and all the wealth in the world evaporate like it's supposed to in a Capitalistic society. Instead, we basically made the banks bigger and the rich richer and more powerful.
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    Capitalism, as a system, tends toward wealth accumulation, and that wouldn't have been less true if they allowed a bunch of banks to fail.
    • cpursley 10y ago
      I think you're referring to cronyism (aka crony capitalism), which is often conflated with free-market capitalism here on hn.
      • emodendroket 10y ago
        It's a distinction without a difference.
      • ska 10y ago
        Iirc correctly there is theoretical work supporting the former (i.e. capitalism leading to wealth accumulation) but not the stability of that wealth over longer terms. That is, there is inequality in distribution, but also churn. Of course this has the same fundamental issues as all economic modeling when employed in practice.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        "Crony capitalism" is the only kind that has ever existed and the one for which its critics coined the name "capitalism". "Free market capitalism" is a not particularly coherent utopian aspirational vision which defenders of real-world crony capitalism invented as a distraction.
• scarface74 10y ago
  I have different views on prioritization and providers not counting some data as part of your data allotment depending on the circumstance. T-Mobile. If you are a legal video or audio streaming provider and you meet T-mobiles technical requirements, you can get zero rating. Everyone is on a level playing field. Verizon and AT&Ts zero rating of their own services: there are four national carriers and a few regional carriers with their own networks. There is plenty of competition in the wireless space. Cable companies zero rating their own content on their own network: Technically, all internet providers have peering arrangements where if they have more outbound traffic than inbound traffic, they make up the difference with payments. Since it is there own traffic, they don't have to pay another network provider. Of course, realistically, the cable companies are doing it to be anticompetitive. The real answer is make it easier for there to be multiple companies to provide Internet access in a given area. they would start competing on price, speed, data limits, etc. Luckily, I live in area where I can choose between Comcast's crappy service and AT&Ts gigibat internet service - no data caps and a flat $70 a month.
  • ch4s3 10y ago
    > The real answer is make it easier for there to be multiple companies to provide Internet access in a given area. How? This is a serious question. Laying cable/fiber is tremendously expensive and is a natural monopoly. At best competing providers must lease infrastructure. So how does government induce "competition"?
    • scarface74 10y ago
      And somehow in the more affluent parts of the city where I live, Comcast, Google and AT&T are all competing. AT&T and Google are both offering gigabit internet for $70 a month. I moved into a brand new subdivision and I had a choice between AT&T fiber and Comcast. It's also ranked as one of the 25 most affluent counties in the U.S. I'm not bragging, any senior software developer making an average salary in the city could easily afford a house here. On the other hand, in some parts of the state, they use to have a choice between low data cap cable and even lower capped DSL. But AT&T doesn't even offer DSL in some places that they use to. They either pulled out the market or are not accepting new customers. Make it easier to get right of way to lay cable for internet. Also state governments are making it illegal for counties to offer municipal broadband. The government gives incentives for everything else, why not internet service?
• Analemma_ 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be great if, right after net neutrality was scrapped, some ISP came out and said this: "Thanks to the innovation-promoting policies at the new FCC, we're pleased to announce that, starting next month, FoxNews.com, Brietbart, 8chan, the Drudge Report and reason.com, will be deprioritized to 1 Kb/sec unless you purchase our premium plan for only an extra $100/month. God bless America and the free market." What would be even better is if they only did it in markets where there was no competition, and they announced that they would drop the plan as soon as another competitor offered service in the area. Wonder how fast people's ambivalence about net neutrality would shift then. C'mon, doesn't anyone have the balls? Sonic?
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    I think looking to businesses to oppose an FCC that's too business-friendly is probably a dead end.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      Looking to certain classes of businesses to oppose an FCC which supports one narrow set of businesses against the interests of a much larger set of businesses, may, however, be more fruitful. But, certainly, looking to ISPs to oppose giving ISPs more latitude to capture the value of Internet services is a doomed cause.
  • jjawssd 10y ago
    Let it happen, if ISPs are open to true competition. If ISPs are opened up to true competition then a competitor will appear which absolves consumers of the pain points of their current service. The biggest unknown right now is whether there will be more competition in the ISP space. We need this now more than ever.
    • wlll 10y ago
      That's a nice idea in theory, except I predict it won't happen. Unregulated capitalism is meant to mean (or at least people seem to expect) better service, more choice, better value through competition for your business. In reality all I've seen is the opposite. The US has bad and/or expensive healthcare, cell service, Internet, TV service to name a few.
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  On the bright side, these are exactly the conditions that promote the flourishing of new protocols, just as internet culture took off among those who found censorship undesirable in a previous era.
  • nosuchthing 10y ago
    Not a new protocol, a new infrastructure. With no net neutrality, ISP DPI will drop your protocol or service not on the approved whitelist.
    • cmdrfred 10y ago
      ​Obfsproxy can get around the great firewall of China's DPI. I assume it would work for this use case. I imagine this would work in the same manner as long distance cards back in the day. The VPN provider would buy "fast lane" access and sell connections to it's users. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/obfsproxy-next-step-censorship-arms-race https://blog.torproject.org/blog/obfsproxy-next-step-censors...
• exabrial 10y ago
  Can we stop making this into a partisan issue please? The Democrats are not scot-free in this matter.
  • epistasis 10y ago
    How about we demand accountability? That is more important than protecting a political party from criticism. We also need to stop thinking down logical chains of "well if I accept criticism of this decision, than that means criticizing my side, which weakens that side, so maybe I shouldn't try to hold my party accountable." That's an excessively partisan way to deal with these things. We can't not criticize the party in power that's doing things just because the other party might have done some things too at some point. Also, love to see what Democrats have done on this so I can complain to my Democratic congresspeople. Please share!
    • exabrial 10y ago
      Refusing to collaborate with the Republicans: http://www.thewrap.com/democrats-and-republicans-battle-over-competing-net-neutrality-plans http://www.thewrap.com/democrats-and-republicans-battle-over... The "my way or the highway" attitude is something that both parties suffer from. Whoever wins changes every 4 years. Whoever loses stays the same: The people
      • epistasis 10y ago
        Your link does not support your contention that they're refusing to collaborate with Republicans. In fact, your link describes them talking about the loopholes in the proposed legislation. This would seem to actually be cooperation in improving the legislation. >Congressional Democrats and Republicans offered widespread agreement Wednesday that the time has finally come for the government to step in and take action to preserve net neutrality. Then again, they disagreed strongly on the shape that protection should take. I have yet to see party-based Republican support for solid net-neutrality proposals. I have seen some proposals using the name "net neutrality" that in fact undermined it deeply. If you give me some examples of this "my way or the highway" that's something I can push back on my congress people with. It matters who we vote for, "the people" don't lose equally no matter who is in office. This "all politicians are bad" thing comes up frequently when criticizing them, but it's simply not true that all politicians are equal, and it's not an excuse fro their bad behavior. The difference between the Pai and Wheeler are clear and stark. And that's not to say that Pai is innately evil, he still could do some good for the internet, and some of the things he says I agree with. Wheeler was intensely criticized as a shill for cable companies when he entered, however he turned out not to be one in the least. Was it our criticism that had an effect? Who knows, but by calling him out as a former lobbyist, people were at least aware of what was going on. Perhaps if we publicly shame Pai for his bad behavior we'll see the same thing. Let's forget whether we are a D or an R, lets focus on the policies. That's what non-partisanship is.
• bluetwo 10y ago
  We screwed up by not making this a campaign issue. Now we are going to pay the price. This is a freaking disaster. When I was at the Women's March talking with friends, I said the smart thing to do was not react to every issue, but to pick one and focus. This is the issue I care the most about. I feel like we are way behind on fighting this. Million Techie March? If only. Going to have to figure out what the right actions are regarding this issue.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • astrodust 10y ago
    A) Emails. B) Emails. C) Emails. D) Emails. E) Benghazi. Also emails. This campaign was a train-wreck of bullshit. There was no time to talk about actual issues.
    • sverige 10y ago
      The people who voted for Trump don't really give a shit about the FCC or net neutrality. Sure, everyone knows that the big media companies and ISPs are horrible, but on the list of horrible things that need to be changed, it falls down the list pretty fast.
      • astrodust 10y ago
        That's the thing. So long as they can get their cable packages at a reasonably stupid price they're willing to go along with it. I'm not sure if there's a lot of correlating data but the Trump core supporter group does seem to be older (50+) and not always the first to adopt any new technology. They read newspapers, they watch TV news, they use Facebook, they have wired home phones, basically things that the FCC won't really alter. What removing Network Neutrality does is destroy the next generation of services, something that they have no vested interest in. It's almost as if they'd gladly pay $50/mo. in cable/telephone fees if their taxes went down by $200/mo. The thing is, that $50/mo. increase really squeezes out those in the lower income brackets or those on fixed incomes. They don't pay a lot of tax to see any offsets. But fuck them, right?
• LeoPanthera 10y ago
  I've been thinking about this for a while but I might have to actually do it now. Start a business, and get a server hosted in colo under the business name. Then get a permanent openvpn connection between your home router and the colo'd server. Now your "ISP" is the colo provider, not your home ISP, who only gets to see an encrypted pipe, and everything you do is under a business name. Seems like the best way forward to me.
  • linkregister 10y ago
    So... $50 per month cost on top of my current home internet connection?
    • thekonqueror 10y ago
      Privatetunnel [1] provides unlimited bandwidth for $29 per year. [1] https://www.privatetunnel.com/home/pricing/ https://www.privatetunnel.com/home/pricing/
      • LeoPanthera 10y ago
        There are better choices, privacy-wise. https://thatoneprivacysite.net https://thatoneprivacysite.net
  • binarymax 10y ago
    Sounds like an awfully expensive solution. If you're going to spend that much why not just pay extra for a business level service while "Doing Business As" yourself? That way you don't need to worry about some server in a colo and filing paperwork for a business.
  • thescriptkiddie 10y ago
    I've been thinking about the same thing. There are actually a lot of benefits to routing all of your traffic through a VPN to a gateway you control. You can work around your last-mile ISP snooping, censoring, or manipulating your traffic. You can obfuscate your meatspace location. You can get as many static or dynamic IPv4 and IPv6 addresses as you want. You can transition between landline and cellular connections without changing IP address(es) or breaking your open connections. You can bond together multiple connections. The only problem is actually getting IP addresses that haven't already been blacklisted by half of the internet for spam/fraud. I think the killer app would be to combine this with a mesh networking protocol like CJDNS and some kind of cryptocurrency based micropayments for bandwidth. We could build the data equivalent of a microgrid, a p2p internet operating in parallel with but connected to the hierarchical one.
• plandis 10y ago
  What power do I, as a citizen have to affect change in the FCC? Short of violence is there anything to do other than wait four years and elect a president who will put someone not so blatantly against consumers?
  • rhino369 10y ago
    You can elect congressmen in 2018 that could codify Net Neutrality as law instead of a regulation. Trump would probably veto, but with a sufficient margin you could override it. Administrative regulations aren't really democratic. Easy come, easy go.
    • germinalphrase 10y ago
      Further, there is redistricting in 2020 so the 2018 elections will be particularly important.
  • kd5bjo 10y ago
    Domestic policy is really Congress's responsibility, but they've granted a lot of regulatory authority to the executive in the past few decades. You can lobby them to take back some of that authority and do something sensible with it.
  • jdc 10y ago
    You can fund lawyers and lobbyists like the ACLU does.
    • r00fus 10y ago
      So voting with my wallet? That's great, but that sounds like a losing battle compared to the funds that Comcast/Verizon/AT&T can muster to dismantle regulation and increase profits...
  • jwcooper 10y ago
    In addition to the other suggestions, you could become a recurring donor to the EFF. https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button
• ScottBurson 10y ago
  A contrary view: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#302a479f4c7f http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-th... I'm not really sure what to think about a lot of this. What I do believe is: () We need meaningful competition for broadband. (I live in Silicon Valley and all I can get is Comcast!) () A given company should not be able to be in both the content and connectivity businesses. If classifying broadband as a utility is the right way to accomplish this, let's keep it; otherwise, let's find a different way. I'm open to argument about the means, but not so much about the goal. () Laws proscribing localities from setting up their own broadband utilities are unconscionable and need to be gotten rid of. I don't know if the FCC or even Congress can do this -- these are mostly state laws. I don't know if Ajit Pai is going to bring us any closer to this world or not.
  • ComradeTaco 10y ago
    I disagree fundamentally with Ajit Pai's reasoning that minimal regulation will lead to innovation and lower consumer price. There are some industries that are natural monopolies, like water and electricity, because it's incredibly expensive to build both last mile connections and core infrastructure. They're also natural monopolies because you don't really have great, cost competitive alternatives to water and electricity provided on a large scale. When you consider hard wired internet, it bares of a lot of similarity to utilities, in the cost and difficulty of accumulating infrastructure and in the absence of effective alternatives. For that very reason, internet should be classified, like other natural monopolies, as a utility. Moreover, last mile lines should be rentable or available through competitive bidding. There's actually enough dark cable to make some regional ISPs viable if they could actually get access to consumer level last mile lines. But Comcast won't get off them unless they're kicked off them. And if you try to build lines then Comcast will half their rates in the areas that you offer service in! Of course, Ajit Pai will have a lobbying job earning well north of 400K the moment the Trump administration runs out the door so it's really not his concern.
    • ScottBurson 10y ago
      Yes, I have been inclined toward this view as well. But I would be interested to hear counterarguments.
• Shooogur 10y ago
  This is extremely interesting. Wonder what the POTUS has planned...
• beedogs 10y ago
  Impeachment sure would be nice.
• bogomipz 10y ago
  I keep coming back to this Ajit Pai quote form December: "During the Trump Administration, we will shift from playing defense at the FCC to going on offense," he said last month. "We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation." This seems like a pretty incongruous statement from someone heading a regulatory agency whose mission is to: "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Weed whackers and offense? That sounds like like an (ex)Verizon lawyer and not someone who is now supposed to be looking out for citizens of the United States. Sources: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2016/db1207/DOC-342497A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2016... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commiss...
• caseysoftware 10y ago
  Trump promoted him to head the FCC but he's served on the Commission itself for almost five years: > He was initially nominated for a Republican Party position on the commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012,[1] and was sworn in on May 14, 2012, for a term that concludes on June 30, 2016 (though he may stay on until 2017 even if not reconfirmed). Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Varadaraj_Pai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Varadaraj_Pai
• ordbajsare 10y ago
  Good! Net Neutrality is an government takeover of the internet.
• amelius 10y ago
  I think net neutrality should extend to other means of content delivery. For example, native apps are very similar to web pages in many respects, but app-stores still have control over them more than my ISP has control over the web pages I'm viewing.
• throw2016 10y ago
  One way this could get solved is by a tech breakthough that dramatically reduces costs. Or accept the market doesn't always work efficiently and do something about it in the now. The current way is to 'trust the market' and pray that eventually it will all work out is. Eventually we will all be dead. In the real world there is regulatory capture, lobbying, collusion and agressive misinformation campaigns by orwellian named 'public interest groups'. The plain fact is in certain markets heavy capital and regulatory costs make it nearly impossible for new entrants. And even a few brave new entrants who are heavily capitalized face eventual co-option into collusion with the status quo if successful. None of this is in the market or public interest. This is not free markets but corporatocracy masquerading as free markets. The problem of monopolies, collusion and regulatory capture are conveniently ignored or hand waved away by economists when its the 'natural end state' for capital intensive industries and cannot simply be wished away or ignored. Concentration of economic power can not only undermine markets but create entrenched political and economic power structures. We have to acknowledge a lot of 'economists' are often paid lobbyists to promote a particular 'view'. Municipal wifi and public interest inititiaves are the only solution for the now until proper measures can be found to manage these kind of markets.
• beepboopbeep 10y ago
  For anyone that followed along with the actual meetings, this man was a pissant all through out the proceedings. Not just against the rulings, but visibly perturbed and aggravated by the outcomes. Thus it was no surprise to see him picked to head the FCC. His revenge if forthcoming.