“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intends to go ahead with a vote on Dec. 14 to repeal the net neutrality rules despite calls from Democrats and advocacy groups to delay the proceeding,” Ali Breland reports for The Hill. “The FCC said in a statement Monday that ‘the vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14.'”
“In a separate statement provided to Ars Technica, the FCC hit back at those seeking a delay,” Breland reports. “‘This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet regulations are becoming more desperate by the day as their effort to defeat Chairman [Ajit] Pai’s plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled.’ The decision comes after 28 Democratic senators pressed the agency on Monday to postpone the vote, citing fake comments that were filed during the open comment period on the repeal proposal.”
Breland reports, “Under Pai’s repeal proposal, the agency would scrap the Obama-era internet rules and cede authority over broadband providers to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Internet will be just fine, just as it was before the FCC instituted these rules on June 12, 2015.
SEE ALSO:
Dear Aunt Sadie, please step back from the so-called ‘net neutrality’ ledge – November 27, 2017
U.S. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: Killing Obama-era rules for so-called ‘net neutrality’ will set the internet free – November 22, 2017
U.S. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: How the FCC can save the open internet – November 21, 2017
U.S. FCC plans total repeal of Obama-era rules for so-called ‘net neutrality’ – November 21, 2017
U.S. FCC plans December vote to kill so-called ‘net neutrality’ rules – November 16, 2017
Apple’s call for ‘strong’ net neutrality rules is a hint about the future of its business – September 1, 2017
Apple breaks their silence on ‘net neutrality,’ remains open to alternative sources of legal authority – August 31, 2017
Trump administration gives thumbs up to overturning FCC’s rules for so-called ‘net neutrality’ – July 19, 2017
]Apple’s deafening silence on so-called ‘net neutrality’ – July 14, 2017
FCC kicks off effort to roll back so-called ‘net neutrality’ rules – May 18, 2017
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai explains why he wants to scrap so-called ‘net neutrality’ rules – April 28, 2017
FCC Chief Ajit Pai develops plans to roll back so-called ‘net neutrality’ rules – April 7, 2017
U.S. FCC chairman wields weed whacker, takes first steps against so-called ‘net neutrality’ – February 3, 2017
How so-called ‘net neutrality’ will fare under President Trump – January 26, 2017
New FCC chairman Ajit Pai vows to take a ‘weed whacker’ to so-called ‘net neutrality’ – January 24, 2017
President Trump elevates Ajit Pai to FCC Chairman – January 23, 2017
Outgoing FCC chief Tom Wheeler offers final defense of so-called ‘net neutrality’ – January 13, 2017
Under President Trump, Obama ally Google may face policy setbacks, including roll back of so-called ‘net neutrality’ rules – November 18, 2016
Jeb Bush on FCC and so-called ‘net neutrality’ regulation: ‘One of the craziest ideas I’ve ever heard’ – March 8, 2015
Who loves the FCC’s overreach on so-called ‘net neutrality?’ Telecom lawyers – March 5, 2015
Anyone whose upset about the lack of so-called “net neutrality” but who is fine with Facebook, Twitter, and Google—all far leftist corporations—censoring the internet based upon political ideology, are disingenuous hacks.
And anybody like Pai and twimoon1 who can’t tell the difference between (1) a free market where Facebook, Twitter, Google, and hundreds of other companies are free to compete, and (2) the ISP market, which has no meaningful competition in most of the country, isn’t competent to be voting on national telecommunications policy.
“And anybody like Pai and twimoon1 who can’t tell the difference between (1) a free market where Facebook, Twitter, Google…”
There’s really not competition for Facebook and Google, they control nearly the entire internet. Try to build an market a business without dealing with one or both of them. They have far more of a monopoly than ISPs, and arguably more than governments. Without them having to abide by the First Ammendment, we don’t really have free speech over the internet. Since the internet is currently the method by which the vast majority of us communicate in 2017, that means corporations are able to shut down our civil rights.
But thanks your your ignorant patronizing.
Correct.
I thought the FBI would have found all you Russians trying to influence American public opinion by now. First I guess they’ve got to get the head cheese.Funny that head cheese keeps running around the world to get his marching orders from putin. Of course, there’s no record of what they talked about.
Spot on
Comcast is leftist, too. And the ONLY thing keeping them from censoring the entire internet for many is what’s in place now.
If you don’t believe me, just wait until they decide that sites that promote “hate speech” take up too much of their bandwidth, so they’re going to wall those off.
The solution is force all corporations to abide by the First Amendment non-discrimnatorily and allow all individuals to sue them if their civil rights are violated.
Even if I hadn’t spent 40 years practicing law, I would understand that allowing the Government to tell private parties (whether corporations or natural persons) what speech they have to facilitate and what speech they cannot block is pretty much exactly what the First Amendment is intended to prevent.
Read the Constitution, comrade.
I am very familiar with the constitution, there’s nothing preventing congress from passing a law that forces corporations to respect it. I can see you spent 40 years practicing how to take constitutional rights away from citizens based upon your stances on this issue. Pretty sad.
Also the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of protecting freedom of speech and assembly in a number of landmark cases, there’s no reason the court can’t rule this along the lines I described. Having a monopoly (and Google + Facebook inarguably have a monopoly) loses your right to act the same as if you do not have a monopoly.
That you think ISPs have more of a monopoly than Facebook and Google simply means you do not understand the nature of the internet very well at all.
If you are familiar with the Constitution, how can you possibly think that Congress has the power to force anybody to help spread ideas with which they disagree? That is exactly what the Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Petition, and Free Exercise and Establishment of Religion clauses were intended to forever and totally prohibit.
There is absolutely nothing in the First Amendment that even vaguely suggests that non-governmental actors have a duty to facilitate their fellow citizens in spreading ideas that they find odious. Obviously, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of free speech, but they have never ruled that the right to free speech includes the right to force somebody else to publish your message. The right of freedom of assembly does not include the right to force a Democrat to rent his private meeting room for a Republican political rally.
There is, of course, an exception for utilities and common carriers that essentially trade the benefits of a monopoly for the duty to carry every message that comes along. However, Chairman Pai and the current FCC majority have quite expressly rejected the notion that anybody connected with the Internet is either a utility or a common carrier.
Paranoid much?! Everyone is “leftist” and against you? The media…ISPs…etc. You folks have a massive persecution complex.
There is undoubtedly an element of partisanship in this highly divided partisan and extremist political situation in the U.S. But it also possible (and likely) that many people disagree with your statements and your political agenda simply on lack of merit, not because they have a label attached to them.
The partisan among you have never believed me, but I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Like George Washington, I believe that political parties are highly undesirable. Furthermore, neither party comes close to fully representing my complex set of beliefs and viewpoints.
The fact that I currently find more flaws on the Republican side than on the Democrat side is simply a reflection of the massive shift in Republican politics over the past 25 years, starting with Newt Gingrich. I cannot abide the attacks on legitimate science, for instance. But I have always been very fiscally conservative — I just wish the Republican Party were as fiscally conservative in terms of actual legislation and spending, not just in lip service.
You extremists are in the process of tearing this country apart, and I am ashamed of everyone whose votes have led to the ongoing disaster of American politics.
Facebook was heavy infiltrated by Russian spies promoting stories about Hillary that swayed many voters not to vote or vote for someone else.
Also no one forces you to go on Facebook or other such media. They are nothing but Russian propaganda.
”Leftist organisations”!!! Wow, what suits you? Fascists?
there’s a new sheriff in town, pardner.
Excuse me while I whip this out … 🤠🌭
They will be airing TV Commercials before The Vote: “This vote sponsored by Comcast”
Can someone in this forum give me an example where a major ISP actually censored content? The net neutrality crowd throw that straw man out all the time.
They haven’t done it because it has been against the FCC policy that is about to be repealed. The day the vote was announced, Comcast removed the No Paid Prioritization pledge from its website. That suggests that the “new sheriff in town” is going to deliver on his promise to let Robber Barons be Robber Barons.
Paid prioritization is NOT the same as censorship. Please try again. I would like to read about real censorship from a major ISP. As it is now the real censorship is from major social networks.
You won’t read about it until AFTER the 14th. The current rules prevent them FROM censoring. They will, though. If the pipes are as clogged as they say they are, I’m sure walling off unpopular websites like 4chan and torrent sites would save them a TON of bandwidth.
Most of us aren’t that worried about political censorship. What we are worried about is “prioritization” that allows ISPs that are also content vendors to prioritize their own stuff while deprioritizing content from other vendors.
Comcast might not block Fox News because of its political content, but because it competes with the three news networks that Comcast owns. If the NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC sites all load enormously faster than Fox or CNN, readers will migrate there. The could also happen if Time Warner/Spectrum decided to prioritize CNN over other news outlets.
The same applies to non-news internet traffic. NBCUniversal and Turner Broadcasting have a lot of entertainment content for sale. If they can slow down packets from their competitors so that they become unwatchable via streaming due to constant buffering, they don’t have to compete with better content or lower pricing.
I don’t worry about Google biasing its search results as much as I worry about Google Fiber choking alternative search engines to force its subscribers to use Google Search (and view Google advertising).
If web sites have to pay extra to obtain enough priority to be accessible in practice, it won’t matter that they aren’t censored in theory. Rich corporations like Facebook, Netflix, and Google can afford to pay for prioritization; startups almost certainly cannot, so innovation will come to a screeching halt. The rich will get richer, while others cannot afford to break into their ranks.
Under the current rules, ISPs can already block or throttle users that consume too much bandwidth. Without those rules, they can do the same to providers that generate lots of traffic but are unwilling or unable to pay for prioritization. For-profit websites can set up paywalls to generate the money to pay the ISPs, but what about the “free” sites that used to be the essence of the Internet? Bye-bye.
“Most of us aren’t that worried about political censorship…”
By “most of us” you mean you and all your far leftist pals, plenty of non-leftists are very worried about this. You simply don’t expose yourself to information outside of your narrow buble.
Perhaps “aren’t that worried” was a poor choice of words by TxUser. But I agree that the initial and most likely focus of ISPs unencumbered by net neutrality rules will be to monetize their power over internet traffic. It is also possible that censorship (from many perspectives, not just “leftist”) will begin to creep in, as well. In fact, I don’t doubt that there are already some elements of that present on the internet backbone. But, at this point, the greater risk appears to be the disinformation sources on the internet. The trick, of course, is separating the “disinformation” from the legitimate information or opinions. Everyone is being manipulated far more than they would care to admit.
As citizens of a democracy, it is incumbent upon us to protect and defend our Constitution and rights. Those rights were hard won, but easily lost as you can observe in Turkey and other situations around the world. So we must remain vigilant. But political censorship is not currently one of my chief concerns because there is such a large volume of political speech on so many different media platforms that I do not view political censorship as a serious near-term threat.
You are welcome to your “label and disparage” tactics. But those of us who are independent thinkers will never succumb to that weak-minded approach. We independently observe, research, and formulate our own opinions using a variety of sources from across the political spectrum. The flaw of many extremists is that they only listen to the sources that reinforce their belief systems, automatically filtering and disregarding any content that is in opposition. That is a mistake. It makes you a tool.
Very well stated, TxUser!
“They haven’t done it because it has been against the FCC policy that is about to be repealed.”
Nope, and the FCC rules did not exist before Obama and the internet did, and such discrimination did not occur. There’s a free market for ISPs unlike Facebook and Google, which combined are a huge monopoly of web traffic and discovery.
Most people in the USA do not have a choice of ISPs. You get what is available like your water company or electric company.
If you think there is a free market for ISPs, I’d like to have some of what you’re smoking.
Austin is the heart of one of the largest concentrations of high-tech industries and workers in the country, yet there are tens of thousands of people living within its city limits, and hundreds of thousands within the metropolitan area, that have no more than one choice for high-speed internet (and that one both rather slow and very overpriced).
In many portions of the country where Donald Trump got a majority of the vote, there isn’t even one provider with decent affordable access to the Internet. Giving the incumbent ISPs a license to print money by charging both the content providers and content consumers extra fees for reliable service will make it that much more difficult for anybody else to break into those markets.
Even given the situation you’ve described, Google and Facebook have overwhelmingly more of a monopoly on the internet.
I don’t smoke but you are simply just wrong arguing that there’s a free market where Google and Facebook operate. There’s a thing called monopolies, but almost the same is when a couple of companies together form something similar, and especially if they all share the same ideology and motivations.
Imagine if the only book publishers were far right wing Christian companies, they wouldn’t publish any science books or textbooks that did not get approved, forget textbooks that teach evolution or the Big Bang, etc. Censorship of ideas is far more of a serious threat than censorship of high bandwidth traffic.
MDN, if net neutrality is bad, why does the Electronic Frontier Foundation support it?
No clue, but I have not heard them complain about the censorship by Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, etc. Have they?
Nor have they complained about the censorship by Breitbart, InfoWars, or the Daily Stormer. I haven’t seen much liberal (or even mainstream conservative) content on any of those. If they are less popular on the free market than sites you regard as left wing, that is a function of which sites have more satisfied customers.
The First Amendment protects free expression generally, including the right of private publishers to edit the material they publish as they see fit. If you don’t like that, you are free to advocate the repeal of the Bill of Rights. Then America can be more like Russia or China, where the government controls both the traditional media and the Internet.
The bill of rights does not need to be repealed, it simply needs to apply to corporations that run search engines and social media, or any other similar internet platforms.
The First Amendment does apply to such corporations. They have the constitutional right of free expression. The Constitution says in so many words that the right of free speech (etc.) cannot be abridged by Congress. Corporations therefore have no constitutional duty to promote the speech of others. If Congress wants to impose such a duty, it will have to amend the Constitution first.
“restore Internet freedom”
Such bullshit double-speak.
Is that similar to the “freedom” of “competing” gas companies?
What’s Santy gonna bring you this year, Cocoa Boy?
Typical. Why don’t you comment on the topic instead of attacking someone personally?
There is less fun in that. Retired persons need a little fun in life.
So retired fun = invective-laden, hate filled, xenophobic, homophobic and misogynist low IQ insults posted to an irrelevant corner of the internet?
That’s not retirement…it’s the culmination of a woeful lifelong failure to be a responsible world citizen. In other words… a nobody.
Comcast used to have a page up saying they would not interfere with content for profit or limit customer’s web browsing- a net neutrality pledge.
The day Ajit Pai announced his intentions, they took it down.
Welcome to the cableization of the internet.
You free market fuckstains are full of shit if you think that Pai and his cronies care about anything but making the corporate overlords rich while you take it in the assw from has beensw like Trump.
fuck you all.