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U.S. FCC chairman plans fast-track repeal of net neutrality: sources
- doctorshady 10y agoIs there anything that can be done here? Pai and his little buddy O'Rielly have an easy majority on the FCC here, and I doubt they'll listen to any comments. Short of like, the Trump government being dismantled before then, how do you get rid of such a transparently corrupt head of a federal agency?
- wavefunction 10y agoYou vote in a new President.
- kablaa 10y agoVoting in the midterms is equally as important! If we can regain some balance in either the house or the senate we can block, or at least slow these terrible bills down
- doctorshady 10y agoHe's proposing to do it as a ruling within the FCC; not within congress. EDIT: Worth mentioning Pai was directly as chairman by Trump.
- aanm1988 10y agoThat was tried. Plurality voted for Clinton.
- LoonyBalloony 10y agoElectoral reform. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3GFG0sXIig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3GFG0sXIig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erph1L_XwVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erph1L_XwVQ
- pubby 10y agoNone of those ideas solve the problem of campaign financing being legalized bribery, the problem of politicians lying and flip-flopping to gain votes, or the problem of wealth, power, and the establishment deciding who can't win by manipulating the press. The only system I know of that avoids these problems is to hold randomized lotteries for government positions and skip the election process entirely.
- karmelapple 10y agoIt does not directly address those, but it does allow people to vote for a candidate that they may think has little chance. Their vote is not "wasted" when it falls back to the next-best candidate, and gives a third party more potential to be taken seriously. The changes are not mutually exclusive, either. Let's reform voting and reduce influence by money in elections.
- intended 10y agoYou want to solve your country's problems ? Simples steps, clearly communicable steps, and one step at a time. Start by Reducing the impact of money on elections. Politicians themselves will thank you. The ability to flog oneself on the airwaves, to call and reach out to people and keep targeting newer and newer potential voters. These abilities force politicians into a monetary arms race. The easiest thing here is funding, and curtailing it. The issues are creative ways to get on the air without resorting to using money. But one step at a time.
- seanp2k2 10y agoLet them do their thing until people are so mad that they go after them. At the end of the day, if politicians aren't scared of armed mobs, we don't have real democracy anymore. Because a real militia capable of overthrowing DC in 2017 is laughable, I'm not sure how we keep the power of politicians in check anymore. They do whatever they want, and the people have little recourse. Call and complain all you want, they'll still do whatever they want for the next three and a half years. Start a riot and you'll get zip-tied up into jail, blasted with a water cannon, get on watchlists and have trouble flying + re-entering the country, and they'll still do whatever they want.
- nebabyte 10y ago> if politicians aren't scared of armed mobs, we don't have real democracy anymore I've never accepted that idiotic premise. If your ultimate trump card is armed mobs ousting a 'regime' if it occurs, you're just inviting your ruling class to start acquiescing to draconian measures in the name of 'national security' for their own safety. You already see this with "freedom spaces" or whatever the hell you americans call them. If the 'right to petition' is a basic right, you'll just start seeing courts "define" and restrict when and how you can petition in the name of public safety - because when is a court ever going to rule that a potentially violent mob is the correct solution to a problem? "Real democracy" is a laughable term to use while you're shrugging your shoulders and looking around to see who has the biggest rocks. If 'might makes right' is your only remaining fallback, you might need to stop lying to yourself about your 'democracy' first.
- coldpie 10y ago> Call and complain all you want, they'll still do whatever they want for the next three and a half years. One and a half years. There are congressional elections every other year. There are local elections every single year. Don't forget this! Vote every year!
- ersii 10y ago> How do you get rid of such a transparently corrupt head of a federal agency? In principle, you can not corrupt something that doesn't exist. If the FCC would get dismantled, it wouldn't be possible to corrupt it anymore.
- falcolas 10y ago> If the FCC would get dismantled If the FCC were dismantled, the knock on effects would be worse than the disease. No radio frequency regulation (bye bye wifi and cell phones, let alone amateur radio). No enforcement of TV content. Prepare for all the "fucks" and breasts your prime time show can fit in. Say good bye mandatory landline coverage (and the emergency capabilities thereof) for rural America (about 98% of the country, land wise). This is, for better or worse, a very minor aspect of what the FCC provides.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Is there anything that can be done here? You can work to promote the issue and elect people supportive of it in the next Congressional and Presidential elections in 2018 and 2020. With enough promotion of the issue, you might get Congress to do something now in principle, but that seems unlikely; this isn't a matter of a corrupt individual at the FCC, it's the clear and long-standing policy of the party that now has a majority in Congress and control of the Presidency, and also, largely a consequence of holding the Presidency, a majority on the FCC.
- shmerl 10y agoVoluntarily and monopolists don't combine. This whole corrupted "lawmaking" process is disgusting.
- saboot 10y agoCouldn't the companies simply reorg to effectively become a different business and not re sign up on the voluntary agreement?
- saboot 10y agoKind of depressing how easily all that past effort and public campaigning gets brushed aside for Telecom concerns
- kablaa 10y agoFor every bill we manage to push back, they just make another one with a slightly different name. They are taking advantage of the fact that people can only get up in arms so many times.
- chillwaves 10y agoThey are paid to fight, our side is just volunteers. Who have to work being productive to make a living.
- meddlepal 10y agoThis is the futility of modern activism. The political process is so completely broken now that it's not worth spending time to fix anything.
- liquidise 10y agoA part of me wonders if net neutrality ending would be unintuitively beneficial. Right now we are depending on policy decisions to protect the internet's privacy and neutrality. This has been a flawed approach for over a decade. At some point we need to solve this with technology in a similar way that E2E encryption is a step toward solving chat privacy. Maybe the selling of browser histories and then end of net neutrality will be the kick that finally gets us moving.
- ajross 10y agoHow does encryption solve the problem of Verizon squeezing Netflix to degrade its service in favor of its own offerings? Net neutrality isn't about consumer surveillance (which is a problem too, just a different one). It's about access to markets and the ability to choose the services you use on the internet.
- liquidise 10y agoI'm not saying encryption is the solution. The solution to internet neutrality and user privacy may be something entirely different. Maybe it is mesh networks of an open source wifi solution. I'm not an expert in networking, but it doesn't take much to understand the policy-first approach is fundamentally flawed.
- AnthonyMouse 10y agoThe alternative to network neutrality is a highly competitive ISP market, i.e. municipal fiber leased wholesale to dozens of competing retail ISPs. The problem is the incumbent ISPs lobby against that too.
- ac29 10y ago>I'm not an expert in networking, but it doesn't take much to understand the policy-first approach is fundamentally flawed. Why is policy first flawed? An analogy: Imagine if your county sold the rights to build and maintain (or not maintain) all the roads, highways, and public transportation in your county to Car Company X. Vehicles from competitors Y and Z were then forced to pay tolls. If government policy isn't the solution this, what is? "The free market" is not the answer. Bad car analogies aside, "lets just build our own internet, with WiFi meshes and encryption or something" isn't the answer to internet service either.
- EGreg 10y agoAnd once again, this is why representative democracy is worse than this: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212
- kablaa 10y agoIt's amazing how much money influences these politicians. I would be amazed if any of the people who voted for this bill even fully understand what it is.
- saboot 10y agoIn Tennessee Comcast emailed our state house asking if they want free TV political advertising, this was the day after blocking the expansion of municipal owned broadband. They know what they are doing.
- seanp2k2 10y agoIt's also amazing how little it costs to buy them. It's on the order of a hundred thousand dollars. Check out campaign contributions and you'll see. It needs to be at least 10-100x more expensive to really make a difference. It'd be hilarious / depressing is politicians started colluding to squeeze companies for orders of magnitude more in bribes (sorry, "campaign contributions").
- kablaa 10y agoI wonder if it would be possible to make some kind of "internet superpack". Like a collection of registered voters who would crowdfund more money than they are getting.
- bluejekyll 10y agoIsn't that effectively what the EFF is?
- aanm1988 10y agoWasn't tehre an article recently about how SV (and coastal companies in general) have pretty much screwed themselves when it comes to this stuff?
- lostlogin 10y agoAs a total outsider - it's amazing that a place as huge as the US has a two-party system. splitting everything into one camp or the other makes for groupings that don't always work.
- oculusthrift 10y agothanks jill stein voters. :) tell me again how both parties are the same
- LoonyBalloony 10y agoDidn't vote for Jill but the drug war comes to mind. Also money influencing our representatives.
- oculusthrift 10y agopoint is they are clearly different on this issue. so it has real consequences.
- chillwaves 10y agoIt's amazing to me that you blame people for choosing differently (and not for the current admin). Who you would rather than a) the people who actually supported the current admin and b) the people too apathetic to bother. That's really how you want to make your mark? Going after people for disagreeing with you in a non violent, democratically sanctioned way?
- noobiemcfoob 10y agoGet off your high horse. Obama spied on you first, or is Snowden just a Russian Shillspy!?
- wfo 10y agoSpecifically, all non-Clinton voters and non-voters in a tiny number of relevant states. For everyone else, their votes never counted. To blame it on Stein specifically is of course insane and purposely incendiary without any other purpose really; the number of non-voters who just let it happen or "are not into politics" is orders of magnitude more significant and they are much more responsible. Stein voters at least voted against Trump, they just chose not to vote strategically so that their votes were expressive of their preferences but ineffective. Non-voters couldn't even be bothered to express their preference. Geeks love to avoid politics and pretend they are above it, or they aren't interested in it because it involves people not technical facts and this is what happens when we do.
- Paul-ish 10y agoIsn't this what happens when you do everything through the executive, rather than legislative, branch? If net neutrality were required by law, the FCC chairman would to some degree be compelled to enforce it.
- caseysoftware 10y agoThis is an important and fundamental point. When things are just rules or policies, they can be enacted and removed with a stroke of a pen or by a handful of people voting. When it's the law, they at least have some external pressure to enforce it.. .. sometimes.
- wfo 10y agoWeird, I seem to remember the legislative branch repealing some regulations that nearly all Americans support exactly on party lines in order to make the Internet worse recently... It doesn't matter at all in this particular instance because the people who want to remove NN own both branches and can do it just as easily no matter where the rules come from. The only things that can persist in the face of a 1 party lockstep government like this is a constitutional amendment, or something that is so widely popular and easily understandable that repealing it is political suicide, like health care.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Paul-ish 10y agoThere is a good chance you are right. With that said, privacy isn't important to Google and Facebook, but net neutrality is important to their business. I think if net neutrality repeal were in a congressional bill, a lot of big companies would come out to lobby against the repeal. That has a chance of making a difference, whereas in this case everything is up to Ajit Pai. Also, if it didn't make a difference if you used a bill or not, why wouldn't the conservative FCC commissioners just strike down the privacy rules at the FCC and be done with it? My guess is because they want to make it harder to bring privacy rules back if a democrat president were elected.
- wyager 10y agoThis is a somewhat unpopular opinion on HN, but I think net neutrality is only a mediocre local optimum. We can do much better without it. Look at Denmark; they top the global ITU ITC ranking for internet service, and how do they do it? By totally deregulating ISPs while setting government policy to allow for competition (instead of trying to force ISPs to follow some arbitrary notion of good behavior in the abject lack of competition). They removed many ISP regulations (nominally antitrust regs) back in 2006 and it worked so well that they completely dissolved their rough FCC equivalent (NITA) in 2011. We don't need the FCC ham-fist to improve or preserve the quality of our internet services. All we need is to set local and regional line lease policy to encourage actual ISP competition. Every X years, have an open auction to sell shared cable leases to Y different ISPs or something. Now instead of having to force net neutrality, some of the Z different ISPs that now service your house will use privacy guarantees as a cheap competitive advantage.
- cdmckay 10y agoExcept that most people don't have ISP choice: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-broadband-still-no-isp-choice-for-many-especially-at-higher-speeds/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br...
- kablaa 10y ago>encourage actual ISP competition I don't know about you but in my town ISP competition is practically nonexistent. Usually it's a choice between Comcast and maybe one other local ISP. It's practically a monopoly right now, which is why treating internet as a utility and treating huge ISPs like Comcast as a "government regulated monopoly" makes sense. This would be just like what we already have with our local power companies. It's technically a monopoly, but it's heavily regulated so that they can't raise prices on your electricity for no reason. It's also very easy to argue that internet is every bit as much of a necessity as power or water is these days.
- narrowrail 10y agoIn Texas, one can choose their electrical utility, but the transmission line are obviously the same for all of them. Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) work differently in different states. BTW, reading some other comments of yours on this submission indicates you believe this action has something to do with a law and/or legislators; it does not.
- facetube 10y agoYou were warned. You repeatedly claimed this wasn't the place for politics, that the reaction to Trump's Russia-assisted election was an overreaction. Here it is: it's on your shore, and it will rapidly intrude on your career and livelihood. I hope you're happy.
- zavi 10y agoMe?
- xenadu02 10y agoYes, you. If you think Verizon, ATT, and Comcast don't look at all the money sloshing around the SV/SF tech scene with envious eyes then you're a fool. They started with Netflix. They will proceed to squeeze the big players like Google. Soon the average startup will be forced to pay a per-ISP toll to reach that ISP's customers.
- dang 10y agoPlease don't post inflamed political rants here. If you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully. Otherwise please don't comment here.
- supremesaboteur 10y agoIt is saddening to see the HN moderator being downvoted for requesting substantitive discussion. Why not just rename this site 'Left-wing Propoganda Hacker News' and get it over with ?
- SamLevin88 10y agoHow is that not relevant, though? Are you the comment police or something?
- dang 10y agoI am, unfortunately. Relevance isn't the only concern. When you send a message you probably don't want a response, however relevant, blasted through your window by bazooka.
- hitthefan 10y agoaaaaand keep the episodes of Black Mirror rollin'
- graycat 10y agoIIRC a well thought out idea has long been to have privacy, in various forms, handled by the FTC. Then the recent change for the FCC was to go ahead and get the FCC out of privacy and move, hand over, transfer what the FCC was doing on privacy to the FTC. I have read nothing and have no idea what the consequences will be for privacy. E.g., maybe the FTC will, net, give us better regulation of privacy or maybe worse.
- narrowrail 10y agoMy understanding is that once these companies were deemed common carriers, the FTC was prevented from regulating them at all. State attorneys general will still be able to prosecute civil cases where harm can be shown, however.
- graycat 10y agoInteresting. What I read didn't mention the common carrier issue and consequences. Gee, again we could use better written news.
- dzdt 10y agoCable television periodically has "channel blackouts" where the cable operator feuds over price with the content provider. I guess we can expect to see this now for internet. Imagine going to Netflix to find an error 5xx instead: unavailable until they agree on payments to the cable company.
- akinalci 10y agoPart of me wants to make a really nice website to shine a spotlight on these corporate shills and track their offenses. Obviously, we can legitimately argue about the merits of some laws and regulations, but others are obvious corporate power grabs that objectively leave us worse off. And to officials who sell us out but are sure to be re-elected, like Marsha Blackburn, she needs to know that there are people who recognize her as a traitor to the interests of the American people.
- aoeu345 10y agoIf something like this existed, with the source code on Github with a detailed contributing.md document, I would spend time on it. We have great tools available to do this and it is a worthy cause.
- akinalci 10y agoBest case scenario, it gains attention. Worst case scenario, it gains attention and I drive my car into a tree one night or spontaneously OD.
- intended 10y agoWorst case scenario, like every tool made to deal with humans on the internet - you live long enough to see it turn against you. Make no tool you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- icantdrive55 10y agoWill someone explain why certain companies stock, like Google, and Netflix, don't seem concerned about this "fast track repeal of net neutrality" news today? I just check both stocks, and they really didn't move much. It's big news for them--right? (I honestly don't know all the ramifications. Do they figure they are so big, and so popular, they don't need to worry? We will always be around one way or another?)
- aanm1988 10y agoCan we have another day without most common internet sites? No facebook/google/netflix/amazon/youtube. 2 days if necessary. Show a video explaining what net neutrality is and why many of the arguments it are so dumb.
- natoliniak 10y agothese are the incumbents and even though these companies would not have been build without net neutrality, they can afford loosing net neutrality and paradoxically it might be in their interest. Loosing net neutrality will hurt startups and small sites who won't be able to afford payments to ISP's "fast lanes."
- dawnerd 10y agoBingo. It'll only be a minor cost to the large companies that'll end up writing it off anyways. And they'll probably end up signing more peering deals to make their content even faster.
- tchock23 10y agoPart of the problem 'net neutrality' faces is its name. The average US citizen has no idea what 'net neutrality' means when they hear it, and can't be bothered to learn about it. If it had been branded 'internet freedom' then we wouldn't even be having this discussion because it would be toxic for politicians to mess with something called 'internet freedom.' Source: Sat through way too many focus groups testing communications concepts in my life...
- oxide 10y agoCalling this concept anything but "internet freedom" once it crossed from "concept" to "mainstream political debate" is a little bit like shooting your horse in the hoof before it leaves the gate. Sticking to "net neutrality" seemingly resulted in ISP's treating the phrase like courts treat jury nullification and the FCC making this an across-the-isle issue about corporate investment and infrastructure costs rather than regional monopolies, tiered access, slow lanes, etc. I'm not naive enough to blame this on the name alone, but I'm also curious to see how net neutrality might fair when pushed onto ISP's and mobile carriers alike as "internet freedom."
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Part of the problem 'net neutrality' faces is its name. "Net Neutrality" isn't even the name the name the pro-neutrality group at the FCC used: that was Open Internet. Which, honestly, would be a better name for advocates to use, as well, though "net neutrality" is perhaps more precise. It would get a lot more attention with headlines of "FCC chairman plans fast track repeal of Open Internet."
- coldcode 10y agoSomeday we will look back fondly on the days when we could read Hacker News without buying the Hacker Channel Group.
- intended 10y agoNo, no you won't. Hacker channels will be free. Most of the people who would be upset by this will be mollified, or sidelined.
- nashashmi 10y agoWhen it comes to net neutrality, all I can think of is what Jimmy Wales once said about the lesson he learned from Neupedia: "Don't make rules people are not breaking." No one has really broken net neutrality principles yet. But there are ideas out there and innovation out there, where this net neutrality is turning out to be a hindrance to it all. Why cannot cable company provide cable TV over cable Internet? Because of net neutrality! Why cannot T-mobile provide TV experience on its network for everyone without breaking its network? Because of net neutrality. Why cannot Verizon offer free stuff for its customers over its network? Because of net neutrality. Net neutrality was not supposed to prevent ISPs from doing great stuff. It was supposed to prevent ISPs from making alliances with certain companies and enemies with other companies. It was supposed to prevent ISPs from harming innovation. It was supposed to prevent ISPs from hurting content providers and content types. Yet, now it is preventing ISPs from offering better services.
- falcolas 10y ago> No one has really broken net neutrality principles yet. Whew. It's good to know that mobile carriers aren't charging more for access to video providers than their own offerings. I knew that was all heresay. Or limiting Netflix bandwidth (while promoting their own pay-2-view channels) while blaming it on Level3. It's great to know such rules are not necessary.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> When it comes to net neutrality, all I can think of is what Jimmy Wales once said about the lesson he learned from Neupedia: "Don't make rules people are not breaking." The first Open Internet (the then-majority at FCC's term for net neutrality) Report and Order was drafted and issued after the FCC's use of "ancillary authority" action against Comcast for blocking use of peer-to-peer file sharing software was struck down in FCC v. Comcast [0]. People were breaking the rules that became the FCCs Open Internet rules before they were adopted, so the "Don't make rules people aren't breaking" line, however valid it might be as a general principle [1], is inapplicable. > But there are ideas out there and innovation out there, where this net neutrality is turning out to be a hindrance to it all. No, it's not. > Why cannot cable company provide cable TV over cable Internet? Because of net neutrality! False. Open Internet rules don't prevent this. They so prevent the cable company from blocking access to third-party video services also provided over the internet, though. > Why cannot T-mobile provide TV experience on its network for everyone without breaking its network? Because of net neutrality. Again false, of something is really necessary to prevent breaking the network, it falls under the ambit of the reasonable network management exception in the Open Internet Order. > Why cannot Verizon offer free stuff for its customers over its network? Because of net neutrality. The Open Internet Order does not prevent ISPs, mobile or fixed, from providing free stuff to subscribers. So, again, this is false. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Corp._v._FCC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Corp._v._FCC [1] Itself a debatable point when there are foreseeable and preventable problems.