“A US Senate committee on Wednesday, with a tie vote, rejected a proposal that would have required broadband providers to give their competitors the same speeds and quality of service as they give to themselves or their partners,” Grant Gross reports for Macworld UK.
“The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee’s 11-11 vote means the net neutrality amendment will not be added to a wide-ranging broadband bill as it goes to the Senate floor. The amendment would have prevented broadband providers such as AT&T and Comcast from charging extra based on the type of content transmitted by internet-based companies,” Gross reports. “The amendment would bring new regulation to the internet, committee Republicans argued.”
Gross reports, “The committee’s rejection of the proposal means the fight for net neutrality rules could be stalled for the year. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives approved its own version of a broadband bill, but voted 269-152 to reject a net neutrality amendment.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nothing new to add on this, so here’s a replay: We don’t presume to know the best way to get there, but we support the concept of “Net Neutrality” especially as it pertains to preventing the idea of ISP’s blocking or otherwise impeding sites that don’t pay the ISP to ensure equal access. That said, we usually prefer the government to be hands-off wherever possible, Laissez-faire, except in cases where the free market obviously cannot adequately self-regulate (antitrust, for just one example). Regulations are static and the marketplace is fluid, so extensive regulations can have unintended, unforeseen results down the road. We sincerely hope that there are enough forces in place and/or that the balances adjust in such a manner as to keep the ‘Net neutral. What do you think?
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Related article:
House rejects H.R. 5252 Net neutrality amendment – June 09, 2006
Your tax dollars at work. The US government invested billions of dollars on the internet infrastructure before the big ISPs even heard of it. Now that they are in and invested, they act as though they own the place. Tsk tsk.
I can’t believe there is no mdm comment here….i’m at a loss for words….
Make sure you complain about this to your paid off government representative so they can totally ignore you while eating cherries from a stripper on a borrowed At&t jet.
Not sure which side of the fence I’m on but “new regulation to the internet” just sounds so……wrong.
Big business rules the U.S. government – sad but true. Bleak times are ahead for the internets (hey, maybe George Bush can get us another one if the current internet goes to tiered service)
Great.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”mad” style=”border:0;” /> There are more and more toll roads that we have to deal with. Now we’ll start to see toll internet.
Stinking Republicans!
…infrastructure providers should *not* be content providers — inherent conflict of interest over the question of who gets what types of access – blows up any notion of a level competive playing field in the vertical internet markets
Great, I even emailed my DEMOCRATIC Senator, who voted for this. Politicians suck.
Red Dwarf, Cubert, Abe: Right on! Our government is owned lock, stock, and barrel by corporate and moneyed interests and nothing that works to the advantage of consumers and ordinary citizens is going to get through the Congress. Is revolution the only answer? Thomas Jefferson seemed to think so.
Ok, I am a bit confused here, so please someone help me out on this.
We live in a free market society and hate it when the Government (or sometimes referred to Big Brother) attempts to step in to “control” things. Our mantra during these times are “Let the market work itself out – competition is good!”
But then we quickly turn around when the market forces are working and want the Government to step in like we live in a Socialist society to “to protect us from those greddy corporate b@st@rds!”
The last time I looked, we live in a democracy where the voters control the government (regardless what the latest conspiracy theorists scream about – on both sides of the political spectrum) and the consumer controls the market forces. It’s our vote and our dollars.
Am I wrong here? IMHO, we could be living in the Middle East where the quality of life is soooo much better than here. Or even Africa, I here things are great there as well. Oh shoot, I forgot about France where we don’t even have to work because of all the labor strikes. Oops, there’s England too, where we could live under a monarchy again!
Just a thought
So, let me get this straight: Republicans want less government regulation. Except when they don’t.
Considering they pilloried Al Gore for having claimed to “invent” the Internet (he didn’t), I think they may go down as the group of asshats who “killed” the Internet.
I’m just gonna open my wallet and bend over….. cause now things are going to get ugly.
can you see this day?
“I’m sorry, the page you are trying to load (http://www.apple.com) requires a long distance internet connection. Please call your ISP and pay them 50% of your yearly wages to access this site.”
What is the reason that they are doing this?
*shudders at the thought of a mega ISP like Bell Phone back in the day…*
The vote was strictly down party lines. Guess which side voted for what.
This is the phone companies trying to derail VOIP (like Skype). They (ATT and others) will be slowing down the packets so that the latency in a conversation will make Skype-like VOIP totally suck for phone conversations. This will protect their landline business just a little longer until they can figure out how to gouge us more for quality isp service.
SBC (now ATT) are some of the biggest crooks and jerks on the planet. Of course they did not want Net Neutrality. They want to use and manipulate the hardware they’ve invested in to make outrageous profits.
Telco based ISPs will also be slowing down the packet delivery of movie downloads from companies like Apple so that when they debut their own movie services with higher speed download availability they can claim “faster delivery” as a feature.
The defeat of this Bill will actually benefit Google who has been investing millions in their own fiber optic network to assure swift packet delivery. The bad news for me is that my DSL comes from ATT (formerly SBC) so the jerks will still have their hand on the throttle of my download speed until an alternate high-speed connection becomes available to my residence (other than Charter Cable which ended up being the worst high-speed connection I’ve ever seen anywhere).
Elections are coming. Write your legislators, let them know you’re displeased with their performance, send it via snail mail with a delivery confirmation so they know we know they received it. Vote out all the jerks who’ve sold out to business lobby groups.
Heidi, you’re close. VOTE OUT EVERYONE!
It will take a while for the lobbyists to get in bed with a whole new batch of government administrators, and then we can vote them all out too.
Democrat or Republican, it does not matter. Vote them all out!
It never ceases to amaze me, the number of emotional, yet factually erroneous responses that get posted.
It never ceases to amaze me that Republicans are blamed for everything perceived to be bad by those posters.
Life is not free, somewhere, by someone, money was provided to make it possible. Those that pay make the rules. Period. Don’t like the rules, then pay more than the next guy and you can changed them.
Net neutrality is just bad news, those of you that think this is a good idea, don’t understand what it really does, ignorance is bliss I guess, but having regulations that create another govt bureacracy that determines who gets what bandwidth is just BAD BAD BAD…. There isn’t even a problem to solve, just whiners that think they would have more control, (they wouldn’t) if this so called neutrality existed…
Didn’t I see somewhere that Congress is considering legislation that would tax (also read as regulate) VOIP? They see all that phone service, which they can currently tax through the phone companies disappearing. The phone companies aren’t the only ones that lose income due to VOIP; the federal government loses also. It is apparent that they are closing ranks against the free use of the internet to protect their cash streams.
Anyone who thinks that England is still a Monarchy is just proving how much they live in a bubble.
Get your Vaseline out and bend over. This is gonna hurt.
They don’t call it Big Business for nothing.
===============
Republicans only want Less Government Involvement in Business.
They want More Government Involvement in your Bedroom.
So don’t believe it when they say they want “smaller” government – it isn’t true.
Actually the landlines that the telcos are trying to protect with this law are not their investment. Those landlines were paid for by generations of home phone users.
The old pre-internet companies are trying to protect their cash flow that is based on antequated processes.
Politics and business the old fashioned way. I thought it was against the law for American companies to give bribes for favorable business conditions.
Campaign donations are bribes.
No, its God who demands greater intervention in the bedroom to prevent such heathenish activities.
The Republicans are merely following sanctified morals.
Don’t you want your soul to go to heaven?
Damn Communists.
Um, England is still a monarchy, a parliamentary endorsed monarcy, but a monarchy nonetheless. The Queen of England is the acting Head of State. Look it up.
Anyone who does not know their political history lives in a bubble.
webbyswim wrote:
“The last time I looked, we live in a democracy where the voters control the government…”
Only if the last time you looked was during the FDR Administration.
now back to sleeeeeeep!