
Trump FCC Head Cancels Net Neutrality Zero Rating Investigations - apress
http://fortune.com/2017/02/03/trump-fcc-zero-rating-att-verizon/
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BoorishBears
Most laypeople I know have no problem with Zero Rating and were sold on net
neutrality with unreasonable examples like "without net neutrality an ISP can
kill small sites by making them slow unless they pay" (no one tell whoever
started peddling that dystopian extreme how locating a datacenter near an
internet backbone works).

I support net neutrality but I wouldn't surprised if the average American is
fine with zero rating.

~~~
kem
I agree about the zero rating thing being ok to most people, but my guess is
the FCC was trying to walk a line clearly and didn't want to create any grey
areas. Net neutrality means net neutrality means net neutrality and so forth.

The problem is really that once you allow any sort of packet discrimination,
for lack of a better way of putting it, you open up questions about what's
"slow", as it's all relative anyway. Better to just not go there.

I'm a strong supporter of net neutrality, but don't see that as being the only
way. I just am deeply skeptical that the FCC and government would enforce the
sort of antitrust regulation and encouragement of competition that's needed to
achieve the same aims another way. If the FCC and federal legislators were
encouraging antitrust suits, and banning bans on municipal broadband, etc. I
would feel totally differently. But to me it seems like it's obvious they're
there to protect entrenched corporate interests at the expense of small
business and consumers.

I sincerely appreciate Pai's comments about regulation inhibiting expansion of
new ISPs and broadband delivery, but it seems like a con to me without
concrete examples, and without doing other things that are consistent with
that. If he gave a damn about expanding broadband access he would be fighting
tooth and nail to support municipalities that have wanted to do it but haven't
been able to. Maybe he has and I'm not aware of it, but his rhetoric seems
empty and one-sided.

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mikeyouse
The difference in time and effort between creating something and destroying
something is going to be made painfully clear in the next few years.

~~~
ebcode
When I was five years old, I made a little play-dough man by unbending
paperclips, winding them together and wrapping the play-dough around the
wires. I must have spent at least a half-hour on it. I went out onto my street
and showed it to a neighborhood kid, who promptly grabbed it away from me,
crumpled it up, then threw it on the sidewalk and stepped on it. So, yeah.

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skeptical1984
he says they will focus on "expanding broadband deployment" \- i assume that
means like this:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decad...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decades-
failed-promises-verizon-it-promises-fiber-to-get-tax-breaks-then-never-
delivers.shtml)

"encouraging innovative service offerings" sounds to me like they mean -
"encouraging innovative service offerings... but only from the now further
subsidized natural monopolies that we have already decided will win."

