Another Fatal Attack on Free Speech, Copenhagen

[Quoner]

Here's the perfect example of how some folks have to learn what they have done to themselves. Sometimes it's the hard way. You can apply the gov overreach of net nuetrality issue to this example as well.

http://twitchy.com/2015/03/03/i-am-going-to-stab-a-bitch-liberal-journalist-discovers-the-joys-of-obamacare/

LOL!

Rick

Have you ever dealt with a cable company?

Even 90 hasn't bothered to jump in on this one and he'd argue passionately for days in a thread about toast to keep himself entertained.

[forevereagle]

.

So it's kind of a... "We have to pass the law to see what's in it",... thing, right?

Rick

Um, no. If you want to know what is in it, go look. Again, do you have actual reason that you are against this, or just that you don't like the president?

[UNT90]

Even 90 hasn't bothered to jump in on this one and he'd argue passionately for days in a thread about toast to keep himself entertained.

You are my soulmate.

In the words of Helen Boucher, the Internet is the devil. It seems like the perfect pairing.

[FirefightnRick]

Have you ever dealt with a cable company?

Even 90 hasn't bothered to jump in on this one and he'd argue passionately for days in a thread about toast to keep himself entertained.

Yes I have. Have you ever dealt with the DMV, the Social Security Administration or a VA hospital?

Rick

[forevereagle]

Yes I have. Have you ever dealt with the DMV, the Social Security Administration or a VA hospital?

Rick

Those are actually government run entities. A closer analog would be dealing with the electric company.

[TIgreen01]

Put me in the IT Pro camp that is concerned about these new changes and what will ultimately come out of them. The outcome that many of you are hoping for (free internet with no paid fast lanes) may not turn out exactly as you hope. The end customer may very well be left in a less desirable position long term once these ISPs adjust to the new rules.

What we really need is a way to spur these ISPs into continually upgrading their networks. I'm not sure that turning these ISPs into common carriers is going to accomplish that goal.

[FirefightnRick]

SUMMARY OF FCC COMMISSIONER AJIT PAIS

ORAL STATEMENT DISSENTING FROM THE FCCS DECISION TO ADOPT PRESIDENT OBAMAS PLAN TO REGULATE THE INTERNET

For twenty years, theres been a bipartisan consensus in favor of a free and open Internetone unfettered by government regulation. So why is the FCC turning its back on Internet freedom? It is flip-flopping for one reason and one reason alone. President Obama told it to do so.

The Commissions decision to adopt President Obamas plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. Its an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world.

One facet of that control is rate regulation. For the first time, the FCC will regulate the rates that Internet service providers may charge and will set a price of zero for certain commercial agreements.

The Commission can also outlaw pro-consumer service plans. If you like your current service plan, you should be able to keep your current service plan. The FCC shouldnt take it away from you.

Consumers should expect their broadband bills to go up. The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband. One estimate puts the total at $11 billion a year.

Consumers broadband speeds will be slower. Compare the broadband market in the U.S. to that in Europe, where broadband is generally regulated as a public utility. Today, 82% of Americans have access to 25 Mbps broadband speeds. Only 54% of Europeans do. Moreover, in the U.S., average mobile speeds are 30% faster than they are in Western Europe.

This plan will reduce competition and drive smaller broadband providers out of business. Thats why the plan is opposed by the countrys smallest private competitors and many municipal broadband providers. Monopoly rules from a monopoly era will move us toward a monopoly.

The Internet is not broken. We do not need President Obamas plan to fix it.

The plan in front of us today was not formulated at the FCC through a transparent notice-and- comment rulemaking process. As The Wall Street Journal reports, it was developed through an unusual, secretive effort inside the White House. Indeed, White House officials, according to the Journal, functioned as a parallel version of the FCC. Their work led to the Presidents announcement in November of his plan for Internet regulation, a plan which blindsided the FCC and swept aside . . . months of work by [Chairman] Wheeler toward a compromise.

The plan has glaring legal flaws that are sure to keep the Commission mired in litigation for a long, long time.

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0226/DOC-332280A1.pdf

Rick

Edited March 4, 2015 by FirefightnRick

[forevereagle]

Put me in the IT Pro camp that is concerned about these new changes and what will ultimately come out of them. The outcome that many of you are hoping for (free internet with no paid fast lanes) may not turn out exactly as you hope. The end customer may very well be left in a less desirable position long term once these ISPs adjust to the new rules.

What we really need is a way to spur these ISPs into continually upgrading their networks. I'm not sure that turning these ISPs into common carriers is going to accomplish that goal.

In what way may consumers be in a less desirable position? ISPs already had begun to show that they would disadvantage businesses during the window between regulations.

They are already slow to upgrade their networks. Bandwidth limitations are their chief argument against the new regulations, so why would they want to increase available bandwidth when it is their cash cow? They already have an environment where competition is limited within their geography, so they feel little inclination to be competitive. Not sure how you encourage them to get faster, but letting them have free reign is not it.

[FirefightnRick]

SUMMARY OF FCC COMMISSIONER AJIT PAIS

ORAL STATEMENT DISSENTING FROM THE FCCS DECISION TO ADOPT PRESIDENT OBAMAS PLAN TO REGULATE THE INTERNET

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0226/DOC-332280A1.pdf

Rick

DISSENTING STATEMENT OFCOMMISSIONER MICHAEL ORIELLYRe: Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet, GN Docket No. 14-28.

Today a majority of the Commission attempts to usurp the authority of Congress by re-writing the Communications Act to suit its own values and political ends. The item claims to forbear from certain monopoly-era Title II regulations while reserving the right to impose them using other provisions or at some point in the future. The Commission abdicates its role as an expert agency by defining and classifying services based on unsupported and unreasonable findings. It fails to account for substantial differences between fixed and mobile technologies. It opens the door to apply these rules to edge providers. It delegates substantial authority to the Bureaus, including how the rules will be interpreted and enforced on a case-by-case basis. And, lest we forget how this proceeding started, it also reinstates net neutrality rules. Indeed, it seems that every bad idea ever floated in the name of net neutrality has come home to roost in this item.1......

http://www.fcc.gov/article/doc-332260a6

Unlike the first one page statement, the above second statment is 9 pages long explaining how this was a bad deal, so I won't quote the entire thing.

Rick

Edited March 4, 2015 by FirefightnRick

[FirefightnRick]

"FCC chief Wheeler better rest up"

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/overnights/235417-overnight-tech-wheeler-better-rest-up

THE LEDE: Tom Wheeler may be riding high now, but he's about to face a whole lot of criticism.

A fourth hearing this month featuring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman was added on Wednesday, when the House Judiciary Committee scheduled a March 25 session. Add that to Re/code's report that the text of new Internet rules are due out on Thursday, and it looks like the wave of criticism is about to crash.

FCC spokespeople couldn't confirm Re/code's report, but advocacy groups and K Street will surely have their eyes peeled for the rules' arrival. Though the commission voted to issue the tough net neutrality rules late last month, the act of incorporating responses to the two dissenting commissioners stretched the release out for a few weeks. A slight delay is normal for the FCC's operations, though the hold-up over the current rules -- surely the highest profile ones the agency has seen in years -- caused a bit of partisan bickering over who, precisely, was responsible for the delay.

The release of the rules will also set the clock ticking until the first lawsuit is filed over the rules. Two big cable groups have dropped hints they're going to go to the courts, but exactly what form the lawsuit takes -- and who joins -- is still up in the air.

Rick