
FCC plans to vote to overturn U.S. net neutrality rules in December - mido22
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet/fcc-plans-to-vote-to-overturn-u-s-net-neutrality-rules-in-december-sources-idUSKBN1DG00H
======
gooseus
> On Thursday the FCC will vote on Pai’s proposal to eliminate the 42-year-old
> ban on cross-ownership of a newspaper and TV station in a major market. The
> proposal would make it easier for media companies to buy additional TV
> stations in the same market.

> Pai is also expected to call for an initial vote in December to rescind
> rules that say one company may not own stations serving more than 39 percent
> of U.S. television households, two people briefed on the matter said.

Despair seems like an appropriate response here, but hardly useful. This is
probably as bad for society as any of the changes to the net neutrality laws.

Getting out into the streets, blacking out websites, commenting on the FCC
site... those things are just meaningless it seems and weren't even a response
to these last two pieces.

How in the hell is monopoly ownership of the press still considered a free
press? Shouldn't this constitutionally protected industry have its own set of
anti-trust laws? In the Information Age, how can we be so careless about the
management and structure of our core information distribution systems?

Are there any movements to combat this and prevent more local papers and tv
stations from becoming smaller delivery mechanisms for the same partisan
bullshit?

~~~
sithadmin
>How in the hell is monopoly ownership of the press still considered a free
press?

Because in the US, the 'free press' is an extension of the First Amendment,
which protects individuals from _government_ interference with speech. It has
no bearing on the behaviors of private parties.

FWIW I'm not taking a pro-monopoly stance here. Just think it's important to
educate the public that the First Amendment is a lot more limited than the
average American believes that it is.

~~~
shkkmo
> Because in the US, the 'free press' is an extension of the First Amendment

Not true. While the First Amendment does provide many protections for free
press and there are no national press shield laws, many states in the US
provide additional free press protections:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_laws_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_laws_in_the_United_States#State_laws)

Please stop trying to hijack discussion of free speech and free press (both of
which are human rights / social institutions that extend beyond the scope of
protections provided via the court due to the First Amendment) into being
discussions of the First Amendment in the name of "education".

~~~
sithadmin
It's not unreasonable to reference _federal_ protections for the 'free press'
when the scope of the discussion is focused on the US in general.

>Please stop trying to hijack discussion of free speech and free press (both
of which are human rights / social institutions that extend beyond the scope
of protections provided via the court due to the First Amendment) into being
discussions of the First Amendment in the name of "education".

At the end of the day, whatever you choose to identify as "human rights /
social institutions that extend beyond the scope of protections provided via
the court due to the First Amendment" don't really matter unless they're
institutionalized and codified. Rights that have explicit protections written
into law are the only rights that are backed by the State's right to use of
coercive force.

------
edwhitesell
This is the kind of stuff that really bothers me about government. Governments
should, IMHO, work for the people and their best interests. This seems clearly
about who's lobbying the most.

Contrary to some state-level efforts and laws; companies are not people.

~~~
Dangeranger
It’s clear now that most US representatives have been bought by one special
interest or another. Until the people demand laws outlawing political
contributions from organizations and companies this will only get worse.

~~~
flavor8
I think that outlawing contributions from certain entity classes is tackling
this from the wrong side.

The problem is that political success in the US depends on a successful
marketing & sales campaign, which in turn costs a lot of money. Legislating
campaign events out of existence seems to be a non-starter, but with a
progressive supreme court paid political advertising could be curtailed or
stopped, in return opening up debate and equal-time promo slots on network TV
that uses licensed slices public airwaves. Journalists and opinion-swayers
could still report on candidates as they did before, but the need to have
millions of dollars to run a senate campaign would be dramatically reduced. Of
course there's a big free speech juggling act that would have to be performed,
but it's not an insurmountable problem.

Couple this with some relatively lightweight voting reform (IRV or something
more sophisticated, plus data driven auto-districting or even proportional
representation at a state level to combat gerrymandering) and a good deal of
the problems with the system go away, since politicians would have to spend
much less of their time seeking donations (and politicians who were still
doing a lot of fundraising would stand out more and could be investigated more
thoroughly.)

~~~
shkkmo
I hold the highly unusual view that voting to elect representatives is a
inefficient and ineffective way of accurately determining the will of the
people.

Our current system predominantly favors white, rich, cis-gendered male
christians who are good at manipulating their constituents and getting rich
people and corporations to give them money. This seems like such an awful set
of criteria that it is hard to see how just picking randomly could fail to be
better. (There is evidence that sometimes it is better to choose randomly than
relying on ineffective criteria:
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/10/random-...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/10/random-
decisions-oliver-burkeman-this-column-change-your-life))

Even if you eliminate the problems of campaign finance and winner-takes-all in
elections we are still left with the distorting incentives of re-election
(though enforced single terms could help with that.)

State representatives that want to be successfully re-elected, need to bring
home the pork and this incentives wasteful government spending. They also need
to avoid taking political stances that might cost them the election, even when
it has popular support and would be beneficial to our society (e.g. gun laws,
criminal reform and the legalization of marijuana).

Removing perverse incentives of re-election and moving to random selection for
one of our chambers of representatives would mean less pointless pork barrel
spending, reduce the incentives for corruption, and lead to a more
representative demographic sampling with a better personal understanding of
the economic and social challenges we face as a society.

~~~
flavor8
Interesting. I'm not sure that random selection would be effective though -
just look at the jury system, where the opinion of the relatively domain-
uninformed body is manipulated by domain experts to attempt to reach the
outcome that they desire. The same sort of thing would happen (IMO) in a
political body -- the "shadow" government (i.e. the career government workers)
would end up manipulating members of the body to a greater or lesser extent.

~~~
shkkmo
> the "shadow" government (i.e. the career government workers) would end up
> manipulating members of the body to a greater or lesser extent.

Certainly a risk, but we have already have a similar shadow government of
congressional aids and special interest lobbyists today. I think this can be
mitigated to some degree by providing funding and resources for self
education, but this is something that would need to be taken under
consideration as the system was designed and measured as the system was
implemented.

------
blitmap
I wonder if there would be any issue with creating a service for identifying
Congress members (by IP or browser identity or something) to perpetually block
them from accessing sites we would consider to be important. There's a danger
in having news media block our representatives, but I wonder if being cut off
from everything but Fox News would ultimately wake them up.

We don't have to include them if they want to let Comcast and others restrict
the web. Black out Wikipedia, Reddit, Facebook, Netflix.. Do not serve them -
because they are not serving us.

If they learn to get around this - well then they'll be more informed anyway.
It would be more hilarious to see Comcast come out with its own VPN service to
help them get back "online".

~~~
w0rd-driven
I feel like the last ditch effort is to go a step further. This may not be
actually possible but if we could identify the leaders of the companies and
people in the government that are for a restricted internet, blacking out
their access as a form of ransom may be the only thing that works. We're to
the point of dealing with seemingly hostile entities and the passive, yet
legal approaches are clearly not working at all. We're dealing with people
that are either too ignorant or too complacent to see what a colossal fuck up
this is and it's possible even spelling out the entirety of the impending
disaster isn't enough to get them to do the right thing.

------
spodek
What happens to a person that he or she will hurt a nation of people, against
his or her job description, for what? ... a few dollars?

I think my empathy skills are good, but I struggle to understand Ajit Pai.
What is redeeming to this course beyond some dollars to a negligible number of
people compared to the number of voters supposedly represented?

~~~
indubitable
In general, I think if it's the case that you can't reasonably defend a view
you don't agree with then there's a very good chance you don't understand it.
I was in the same boat as you until I started looking at Pai's comments
[1][2][3]. Notably those are all transcripts. What he actually says, and the
implications of the headlines and comments snipped by third party
organizations tend to be quite different indeed!

While certainly missing plenty of nuance, his view is that rules should be
written as necessary instead of creating an enormous rule book based entirely
on today's tech. And to some degree, I think this has a lot of merit. Take for
instance SpaceX and Google's variations of widespread air-based internet. If
the throughput for these systems starts to become an issue would it be so
unreasonable for them to throttle or block sites consuming disproportionate
resources? And yes, this could absolutely be used in an anti-competitive
fashion. What Pai is saying is deal with specific bad behaviors as they arise
instead of building an encyclopedia of rapidly dated laws against many actions
- which in some cases could be completely justifiable and beneficial.

Maybe the most basic argument is that it should be clear that net neutrality
has not really achieved anything. Many people seem to think we always had net
neutrality and stripping it away is some radical shift. In reality the
government had no formal regulatory role on the internet until 2015. What was
the state of the internet beforehand? Has it worsened or improved since then?

[1] - [https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-chair-dishes-on-plan-to-
rewrit...](https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-chair-dishes-on-plan-to-rewrite-net-
neutrality-rules/)

[2] - [https://www.recode.net/2017/5/5/15560150/transcript-fcc-
chai...](https://www.recode.net/2017/5/5/15560150/transcript-fcc-chairman-
ajit-pai-net-neutrality-merger-recode-decode)

[3] -
[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/05/52...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/05/526916610/fcc-
chief-net-neutrality-rules-treating-internet-as-utility-stifle-growth)

~~~
SCHiM
>> Take for instance SpaceX and Google's variations of widespread air-based
internet. If the throughput for these systems starts to become an issue would
it be so unreasonable for them to throttle or block sites consuming
disproportionate resources?

No this is not appropriate. Sites do not 'consume' resources, users do. Let
the market do it's normal job of supply and demand. If millions of users want
to match netflix at the same time and the network cannot supply that, then
raise the prize and invest in more infrastructure as any company with a demand
surplus would. Markets _work_ in such situations, there's room for
competitors, investments, increased profit margins and all those other good
things. There is little information asymmetry: either netflix works when you
want to chill or it doesn't. People _will_ vote with their money. Protecting a
company from a demand surplus?? MADNESS!

Instead of nitpicking further on this flawed example instead turn your
argument against itself. Why create rules of which you _know_ (as you yourself
mention) that they are going to be abused, only to later 'deal' (take more
'campaign' money) with them. There is a very clear conflict of interest
between ISPs that are also content creators and their content creating
competitors.

I too ascribe to the notion that, whatever the legal code might say, companies
are not people. They should not be able to abuse the rights that people have
to achieve their business agenda. Their customers' bytes on their switches are
not 'speech'. They should be dumb pipes, selling access to their dumb pipes
and compete with other designers or dumb pipe networks, and that should be it.

~~~
kodablah
> Let the market do it's normal job of supply and demand.

I agree with your point in general, but careful with this argument as it can
favor those wanting to remove rules instead of add them. When it's phrased as
"what if there is market demand for a cheaper internet package for lower-byte-
producing sites or specialized-cheaper sites only?" You might say "Whoa, wait,
I didn't mean let the market do its normal job of supply and demand, I meant
require X regardless of demand."

Of course we can all agree that the market can't do its job anyways if a new
ISP can't be easily built to satisfy consumer demand requirements.

~~~
bo1024
It's a very important argument for NN though. One of the biggest problems with
removing NN is that it will stifle competition by allowing pipes to interfere
with normal market forces of supply/demand for the flow.

I admit that it requires actually thinking for a moment to see how regulation
in this case can actually promote competition, and you'll have trouble getting
many politicians to admit that or even understand it (when, as someone or
other said, their paychecks depend on not understanding it).

------
karl11
You can either allow monopolies and regulate for net neutrality or bust up
monopolies and let competition regulate. This guy is a stooge - no net
neutrality regulation AND allow monopolies to control internet access.

------
pimmen
Please, tell me one thing this administration has done that has empowered the
majority of Americans.

So it's up to the EU now to lead the way, and then we went ahead and started
the process of making it legal for national governments to block IP-addresses.
Which great power is left to fight for net neutrality? China? Russia?

~~~
lightbyte
>Please, tell me one thing this administration has done that has empowered the
majority of Americans.

It seems to have empowered Americans who were previously apathetic about the
political process to get involved!

------
TYPE_FASTER
I really missed the good ol' days where, if you had the right feature phone,
you could pay VZN $3-4 dollars to put a song on it. /s

~~~
kfriede
Are you suggesting that Verizon should have given you that feature for "free"?
In that case, they would have either passed that cost on to _every_ customer,
or not had that feature at all, taking it away from those who were willing to
pay for it.

~~~
ben1040
Is $3-4 is a fair price for access to a song, at a time when Apple was selling
it for a dollar?

You couldn't connect a phone to Verizon's network unless Verizon sold it to
you.

The phones they sold had the firmware configured to prohibit adding content
from any source other than their store, which sold it at an extremely high
cost.

~~~
kfriede
Ah, I thought they were referring to buying a song-ringtone. Still, it's not
the government's business to be telling Verizon they must sell for $1 or allow
competition into their ecosystem.

~~~
s73ver_
I believe it is their business to act on price gouging, which that most
definitely was.

------
coldcode
I wonder if Hacker News will be available in the new internet channels.

~~~
wmeredith
It will depend on your service level.

------
shmerl
There should be a way to depose this corrupted shill.

------
Balgair
CALL your Reps here, there is still time:
[https://callyourrep.co/](https://callyourrep.co/)

~~~
s73ver_
Remember, calling Members of Congress is what killed the healthcare bills this
past summer. It absolutely can and does work.

------
aliljet
Where is the latest response to this being coordinated?

~~~
pas
The latest response was in last November, people failed to coordinate. The
next is going to be next year November. November 6, Tuesday to be exact.

All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 33 of the 100
seats in the United States Senate will be contested. 39 state and territorial
governorships and numerous other state and local elections will also be
contested.

Yes, showing that this [FCC fuckery] is bad is important, but it is possible
because there is no legislation, no statute regulating this.

------
burntrelish1273
If the status quo continues, the billionaires will continue advancing their
dreams of greater extraction, while many people lose jobs and industries, live
in homeless camps on the side of the road, decline in standards to turn
formerly first-world countries into third-world poor ones and a few of the
white-collar, hangers-on prosper willfully oblivious. At some point, the
people will reach a sudden and "unexpected" breaking point to rebalance
austere extremism. This is why Roosevelt offered a slice of bread instead of
crumbs while the rich got to keep the bakery.

------
yuhong
Of course, it is likely that a shutdown will also happen too.

------
Dangeranger
It’s clear now that most US representatives have been bought by one special
interest or another. Until the people demand laws outlawing political
contributions from organizations and companies this will only get worse.

------
hguhghuff
Governments don't govern for the people.

------
porfirium
I would like to see a _fair_ referendum about net neutrality. And by fair I
mean to also see the good parts of not having net neutrality, like zero
rating.

Tell people they can get zero rating on their favourite services, and the
result of such a referendum will be uncomfortable for many.

I'm really tired of seeing people everywhere thinking net neutrality is
"unquestionable", "universally good" and "the will of the people". Ever
bothered to ask anyone outside the tech circles? Or you simply think you know
what's best for everybody?

~~~
volak
I work for a growing medium sized ISP - and I'm against net neutrality. I
could write an entire essay about the unintended consequences, hypocrisy,
ridiculous internet memes, and monopolies but I'll only leave one point that
hopefully strikes a chord in those who only see one side.

As a smaller ISP we are constantly asked for cheaper plans for - typically -
older people who "just want to check their email." Thanks to net neutrality we
cannot offer these people anything.

We are forced to compete DIRECTLY against the comcast's and AT&T's in our
region. A competition where our only weapon is cost. And if we lower our costs
we only get a bunch of power users who consume 10x more bandwidth than typical
users - the big business marketing departments eat our budgets for breakfast.

Without net neutrality the first thing we'd do is setup a "email only" plan -
charge $5 a month and literally knock on doors in retirement homes and sign up
swaths of people. We could probably oversell the single line by an order of
magnitude more than usual.

Net neutrality directly prevents any sort of choice for the consumer as to
what level of internet access they want or need. And yes that might sound
scary - but the VAST majority of people in certain age groups just simply dont
WANT to pay $80 a month to check their email.

~~~
joubert
Assuming there are a sufficient cohort of those potential customers to make it
worthwhile going after them in the first place:

Under current net neutrality rules, is it possible to sell a data capped plan
(but content agnostic), with overages, where the data capped portion is below
rival “uncapped” plans?

That way it seems like one could attract that demographic without the downside
you highlighted.

~~~
volak
There is an entire undeserved niche from the dialup crowd who are extremely
unhappy paying more than $10 a month - so yes it could be well worth the
investment.

As for caps - which do you think would sell people better: "You have full
access to anything on your email" vs "You can download 500 mb of data a month"

And what will happen to their service when the grand kids come over and want
to watch netflix?

~~~
thinkpad20
> There is an entire undeserved niche from the dialup crowd who are extremely
> unhappy paying more than $10 a month

A low-speed broadband plan (or even dialup) would serve those customers fine,
no?

> As for caps - which do you think would sell people better: "You have full
> access to anything on your email" vs "You can download 500 mb of data a
> month"

What if those emails link to some other site on the internet? Or contain photo
or video links? Does it still count as “full access” if things slow to a crawl
in those cases? With email being so small anyway, how does that differ in
practice from just a low speed plan? It could still be marketed as “access to
everything in your email.”

> And what will happen to their service when the grand kids come over and want
> to watch netflix?

This question itself seems to undermine your point. What would happen in that
situation, on a plan like the one you’d like to sell?

------
chriscappuccio
Net neutrality, the answer you didn't want to the question nobody asked

~~~
joeblow9999
Exactly.

First, net neutrality rules have NEVER been in force. The internet you use
today operates WITHOUT any government net neutrality regulations.

Not everyone is in favor of net neutrality. An excellent article about very
valid reasons to oppose it: [https://medium.com/@RiaanDeBeer/net-neutrality-
isnt-what-you...](https://medium.com/@RiaanDeBeer/net-neutrality-isnt-what-
you-think-it-is-9005c593f530)

You can agree or disagree but the point is that not everyone thinks it's a
good idea and not all of those people are corrupt politicians.

I've never seen such one-sided irrational discourse over a question of govt
regulation before.

~~~
rndmind
Perhaps you should read more about what it means to classify ISP
telecommunication providers as title two common carriers
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier)
this is not about the government trying to regulate an industry, it's more
about the monopolies within the industry trying to gain control over the
content. The implications of allowing ISP's to control what data is sent over
your internet connection is like a phone company telling you what you're
allowed to speak about on your phone line.

------
rothbardrand
Remember “net neutrality” is 800 pages of regulations, most of which enable
spying and internet censorship... but was sold as “net neutrality” to quell
protest.

Regulations are always sold as protecting consumers but rarely work out that
way- the telco and cable monopolies we have now are the product of regulation.

In other words this is regulation that promises to fix the “unintended”
consequences of earlier regulation.

But those consequences were intended by the companies that benefit from
regulation.

