In a vote Thursday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission “scrapped so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content,” Cecilia Kang reports for The New York Times. “The federal government will also no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as if it were a utility, like phone services.”
“Ajit Pai, the chairman of the commission, said the rollback of the rules would eventually help consumers because broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast could offer people a wider variety of service options. Mr. Pai was joined in the 3-to-2 vote by his two fellow Republican commissioners,” Kang reports. “‘We are helping consumers and promoting competition,’ Mr. Pai said in a speech before the vote. ‘Broadband providers will have more incentive to build networks, especially to underserved areas.'”
“Critics of the changes say consumers may have more difficulty finding content online and that start-ups will have to pay to reach consumers,” Kang reports. “Mignon Clyburn, one of the Democratic commissioners who voted against the action, presented two accordion folders full of letters in protest to the changes… Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner, said it was a ‘great day’ and dismissed ‘apocalyptic’ warnings. ‘I’m proud to end this two-year experiment with heavy-handed regulation,’ Mr. Carr said.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Federal regulators voted on Thursday to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules for internet traffic — a major victory for telecommunications companies and another milestone for the Republican deregulation push under President Trump,” Jim Puzzanghera reports for The Los Angeles Times. “The 3-2 party-line vote by the Federal Communications Commission tears down the controversial utility-like oversight of internet service providers that was put in place by Democrats in 2015 to try to ensure the uninhibited flow of data online.”
“That strict regulatory structure will largely give way to market forces. Internet service providers now will be required only to disclose their online practices, with the Federal Trade Commission policing them for anti-competitive practices,” Puzzanghera reports. “Republicans said they are simply restoring government oversight of the internet to where it was before 2015, reestablishing the light-touch regulatory approach that allowed the online ecosystem to flourish and develop into an economic force.”
“‘The internet is the greatest free-market innovation in history,’ Ajit Pai, the Republican who took over as FCC chairman in January and pushed the repeal, said before the vote. ‘Entrepreneurs and innovators guided the internet far better than the heavy hand of government ever could have,’ Pai said,” Puzzanghera reports. “[ISPs] have hedged on whether they would start charging additional fees to transport video streams or other content at a higher speed through their network in a practice known as paid prioritization. Pai has said paid prioritization could accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles and home health monitoring, which would need reliably fast service.”
Read more in the full article here.
“The meeting was evacuated before the vote for about 10 minutes on the basis of what Commission Chairman Ajit Pai called ‘advice from security,’ and resumed after sniffer dogs checked the building,” The Daily Mail reports. “An FCC official told DailyMail.com that police had concerns after a bomb threat was phoned in.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote on Tuesday regarding the call by U.S. Senator John Thune (R-SD) for Congress to pass ‘net neutrality’ legislation:
There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. The former is harder, but lasting; the latter is quicker, but ephemeral.
Real net neutrality legislation is the solution to the FCC/FTC regulatory seesaw.
SEE ALSO:
Republican senator calls on U.S. Congress to pass ‘net neutrality’ legislation – December 12, 2017
Millions of people post ‘net neutrality’ comments on FCC docket; many are fake – December 12, 2017
U.S. FCC rejects calls to delay vote to repeal so-called ‘net neutrality’ rules – December 5, 2017
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
omg. the Internet just crashed.
To read this comment, please insert CC information to open the tube!
“Real net neutrality legislation”
Legislation, you know, that thing the Republicans we voted into office has shown SO MUCH ability to do this year. We should have had repatriation a LONG time ago.
Never forget that when Democrats lose, they riot, burn cars, destroy property, shoot congressmen, and call in bomb threats like the good little terrorists they are.
GOP political commercials will remind the voters of this each election time, since the biased, leftist mainstream media is broken and cannot/will not do its job.
First 2014, Then 2016 you need to get a life!
what are you 9
Pecans, cashews & filberts must be treated equally. #nutneutrality
I guess it was funnier when Pat Sajak tweeted it.
tough crowd.
What in the blue fuck is that idiotic comment even supposed to mean, dumbass?
Well I’ll call it. You lie.
From Sept. 12, 2001, to Dec. 31, 2016 — there have been 85 attacks in the country by violent extremists resulting in 225 deaths. From the U.S. Extremist Crime Database.
Of those 225 deaths:
• 106 individuals were killed by far-right violent extremists in 62 separate incidents;
• 119 individuals were killed by radical Islamist violent extremists in 23 separate incidents;
Why you choose to blatantly and mindlessly ascribe right wing supremacist terrorism to the innocent, is beyond common decency. It’s the behaviour of scum, it’s gutter mentality loser deflection. Deplorable. Mindless. Callous disregard for the truth.
In case your point was missed by some of the people in this audience:
ZERO from left wing American terrorist incidents
Lefties enable Muslim extremists to enter our country so lefties get credit for the Muslim murders.
God help the Internet with the likes of AT&T Verizon Comcast, etc. thank God I despise social media of any kind. I just won’t pay for the foolishness that these companies will start charging. Crooked corporate America alive and well
Memory is so short these days. The net neutrality rules were not just put in place for the fun of it, they were put in place in response to the ISPs screwing with the speed of rivals. so there will be a 4-6 week cooling off period before Netflix and others will be getting letters telling them how much they must pay in order for their service to reach users.
Regarding MDN’s take…
A Net Neutrality law would need to be passed by a Republican controlled House and Senate (who confirmed Ajit Verizon Pai) and then signed into law by Trump who appointed Ajit Verizon Pai.
While I agree a law would be better, there was nothing preventing the GOP in Congress and Trump from passing a Net Neutrality law prior to any action by the FCC.
Instead they put AJit Verizon Pai in a position where his top priority has been killing Net Neutrality.
Sh.t!
Let the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the “winners” have the best internet speed, and the unfortunate dram of a better web.
That’s the vision of the actual politics!
Bloody hell!
Well, you can forget any semblance of privacy after this. It is not going to be just about the money. AT&T and Verizon have dabbled in deep packet, and other forms of persistent cookies that cannot be defeated. Now they will have free reign to offer all sorts of “deals” with the premise that you need to opt in for their “deal”. Once you do this, you can count on everything you do being tracked more carefully than any NSA system, or foreign government sponsored hack. We might as well get used to more pop-up advertising, as well as targeted advertising that will be next to impossible to block. I wonder how much Trump is getting paid to set this up with the new FCC chairman? Does anybody think this was done for anybody else’s benefit? Of course we will likely see increased prices by Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes. They will claim it is due to the increased costs of access, however, we will not be able to verify that information. In the end, the public takes the hosing no matter what.
So let’s say I am an ISP and I want to sell more expensive entertainment bundles.
Now I can throttle Apple TV so people prefer my service.
Pro Apple sites like MDN can say whatever they want, I will just throttle them too.
Why not? ISPs don’t need no stinking regulations according to you.
Are you able to read and comprehend English?
MDN is calling for, and I quote: “Real net neutrality legislation” from the U.S. Congress.
Which (FactChecker) is exactly what the legislation called for, leave it alone and don’t mess with it. You and the same old other douches don’t seem to accept that because if the “Muslim” presnent enacted it, well damnit it’s evil. Why don’t you and the other 33% crawl back under the rock where you belong. No one has yet to come up with a convincing argument for this legislation other than to echo the Pai-holes remarks, so much for fact checking.
Elections have consequences. This how the GOP spell Freedom* Enjoy. Next up, massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy as 2017 enjoys being the year of record store closing approaching 7,000
“MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote on Tuesday regarding the call by U.S. Senator John Thune (R-SD) for Congress to pass ‘net neutrality’ legislation:
There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. The former is harder, but lasting; the latter is quicker, but ephemeral.”
That’s because the GOP controlled congress under Obama would rather destroy the country rather than help the country and have Obama have the rightful claim.
I’m in Canada (net neutral since 1993) but this still pisses me off. I guess I feel for our friends in the south.
Ajit Pai is smoking crack. What an imbecile of a puppet to suggest this is good for consumers.
This affect you (and the rest of the world) as well. Think of every site or service you’ve used on the Internet that originated in the US.
I have a small online media company in the US. That you have net neutrality in Canada doesn’t entirely solve issue, because I’m likely going to need to pay more on my end or possibly face restrictions from my ISP.
Without Net Neutrality we’d all be using AOL to try to find the phone number for Blockbuster to double-check their hours so we could go get a movie for the weekend before they close.
”That the broadband providers so long have fighted for” because they’re so idealistic, philantropic, servers of common interest. Oh No it’s not about the money because that’s what the libertarian mouthpiece ”First 2014, then 2016” believes.
this “so-called” Mac news site is a right-wing joke
Are you able to read and comprehend English?
MDN is calling for, and I quote: “Real net neutrality legislation” from the U.S. Congress.
I guess I’m one of the few dissenters but I actually took time to read stuff by people who are in the industry and not just articles from news outlets.
While this idea about Internet fast lanes was on the burner, it did not go away with Net Neutrality rules. It only shifted the power to third party content providers that were not covered under Net Neutrality. It’s a much more complex than simple arguments.
Net Neutrality would not last long anyways because in our increasingly Internet dependent world, information prioritization has to be triaged or you end up with bad distortions in the market.
For instance, when you go to the emergency room, do you want the guy with a stubbed toe to get treatment ahead of you if you had appendicitis? Obviously not.
The same thing if you were driving, you want your phone data that is providing you with navigation not to be buffering while the kids in the car next to you are downloading cat videos in HD.
Net Neutrality is like communism – treating everyone the same which leads to a system of poverty. Not all data has the same value to society. And there is nothing inherently wrong with paying more for the things that we value more.
As for this idea that much of the country only has one provider – that is only true in terms of square miles. But if you measure it by population, most people have two or more broadband providers with more threatening to come in.
If anything has proven to be true, it has been content providers like Twitter, Google, and Facebook that have been controlling the content we see.
Virtually everyone in the industry who isn’t an ISP is absolutely in agreement that we need Net Neutrality. The news articles aren’t just writing themselves. They’re written by people who know the industry and are interviewing people on both sides.
I’m in the industry, so if you want, take a listen…
“It only shifted the power to third party content providers that were not covered under Net Neutrality”
No, it removes regulatory power from the government and allows ISPs to provide different “lanes”. Content providers have no power.
“…triage…”
There are several flaws in your logic. First is the idea that HD cat videos are going to stream fine, but navigation data will buffer is false. If all data is treated the same, and there is network congestion, the person trying to stream the HD cat video will experience latency with blocks of data large enough to cause buffering. If severe enough, they’ll stop, while meanwhile tiny bits of data wouldn’t experience the same impact of the latency since what they’re doing only relies on tiny bits of data.
You’re making the assumption that all HD video is of cats or similar importance. It’s quite possible that the video is needed for an emergency, while the tiny bits are ascii cat art.
Even if triage was the answer, the way to deal with this currently exists with Net Neutrality, and that is there’s nothing to stop (and many do) ISPs from charging different rates for different speeds. Further, if that was not enough, the FCC could’ve regulated prioritization on types of internet traffic.
Instead, they’re allowing ISPs to throttle traffic, or block it altogether from companies that are either competitive or don’t pay off the ISPs.
So imagine Comcast who is a content provider and ISP deciding it will simply block all access to Apple movies/TV, and allowing Netflix, but only if they get 30% of all the subscription revenue.
“Net Neutrality is like communism – treating everyone the same”
No it’s not. It would be that way if everyone paid the same price for Internet service regardless of how much they used and if there was only one level of service. What Net Neutrality does is prevent companies from blocking competition and double dipping on fees from both the consumer and the content provider.
“As for this idea that much of the country only has one provider – that is only true in terms of square miles. But if you measure it by population, most people have two or more broadband providers with more threatening to come in.”
That’s not true at all. From the FCC’s Internet Access Services Report for broadband (defined as at least 25mbps down and 3mbps up), 30% have access to no provider, 48% have access to 1 provider, 19% to 2 providers, and only 3% to 3+ providers.
Those numbers would get even worse if broadband were defined as a faster speed. Also, “access to” is misleading since there are people like me where I technically have access to more than 1 ISP, but realistically, the options aren’t practical for anyone but Comcast (it would cost tens of thousands of dollars for cabling for another provider who “has access” where I live.
“If anything has proven to be true, it has been content providers like Twitter, Google, and Facebook that have been controlling the content we see.”
While it’s true that they influence what a lot of people see, that’s by choice. You don’t have to access any of those three. Now imagine that the content you do want to see is simply blocked by your ISP because it’s competitive, or restricted unless you pay extra for it.
The likelihood of the current Congress passing meaningful/consumer friendly net neutrality legislation is somewhere around zero chance. Further, Congress has a penchant for loading up legislation with gifts/enticements for the very lobbyist and their sponsors who write the legislation in the first place. Combine the 2 realities and you have net neutrality legislation that would be anti-consumer and very much along the lines of the FCC’s new regulations.
MDN is not only right, he understands the Republic. If Congress wants something legislated, then they should do it. They are held accountable every 2 years.
The hypocrisy is from the Leftists, who did not mind Socialist Hussein from using the executive to create laws.
People that are against killing the so-called “net neutrality” simply does not understand the subject matter. They read headlines only.