FCC looks to scrap net neutrality rules, report says
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is on Tuesday expected to unveil plans to dismantle Obama-era net neutrality protections that prohibit internet service providers from slowing certain websites while allowing paid "fast lanes" for others.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Politico reports Pai will push for a total repeal of core net neutrality regulations, marking a win for telcos like Verizon and Comcast that stand to profit from the change.
News of Pai's supposed plan comes hours after a The Wall Street Journal report suggested Trump's FCC would reveal a final proposal to undo net neutrality protections this week. The commission opened the issue up for public debate less than three months ago, during which time some 22 million comments were lodged.
The proposal to shift the FCC's stance is being backed by Republicans commissioners who view current regulations as invasive to the businesses of internet service providers. Strict rules set up and enforced by the Obama administration stymie investment, which in turn slows the expansion of broadband infrastructure, Republicans argue.
Introduced in 2015 by former FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler, net neutrality regulations classify internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, granting the commission greater oversight over their consumer practices. Pai's proposal is expected to roll back this classification to Title I information services.
Proponents of strong net neutrality rules argue Title II classification allows for an open internet by prohibiting ISPs from engaging in price unsavory practices.
For example, one worry is that providers will charge websites and services a fee for priority speeds, or paid "fast lanes," once neutrality protections are removed. While such measures would be a boon for big firms like video streaming companies, smaller entities looking to establish a foothold would suffer.
Apple weighed in on the subject in August, saying it supports an open internet without artificial barriers. The company urged the FCC to keep net neutrality regulations in place as lifting existing restrictions could allow ISPs to favor one service over another, thus "fundamentally altering the internet as we know it today -- to the detriment of consumers, competition, and innovation."
Along with Apple, other notable tech firms like Amazon, Google, Spotify, Twitter and others threw their weight behind net neutrality in July.
FCC commissioners will vote on the matter in December.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Politico reports Pai will push for a total repeal of core net neutrality regulations, marking a win for telcos like Verizon and Comcast that stand to profit from the change.
News of Pai's supposed plan comes hours after a The Wall Street Journal report suggested Trump's FCC would reveal a final proposal to undo net neutrality protections this week. The commission opened the issue up for public debate less than three months ago, during which time some 22 million comments were lodged.
The proposal to shift the FCC's stance is being backed by Republicans commissioners who view current regulations as invasive to the businesses of internet service providers. Strict rules set up and enforced by the Obama administration stymie investment, which in turn slows the expansion of broadband infrastructure, Republicans argue.
Introduced in 2015 by former FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler, net neutrality regulations classify internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, granting the commission greater oversight over their consumer practices. Pai's proposal is expected to roll back this classification to Title I information services.
Proponents of strong net neutrality rules argue Title II classification allows for an open internet by prohibiting ISPs from engaging in price unsavory practices.
For example, one worry is that providers will charge websites and services a fee for priority speeds, or paid "fast lanes," once neutrality protections are removed. While such measures would be a boon for big firms like video streaming companies, smaller entities looking to establish a foothold would suffer.
Apple weighed in on the subject in August, saying it supports an open internet without artificial barriers. The company urged the FCC to keep net neutrality regulations in place as lifting existing restrictions could allow ISPs to favor one service over another, thus "fundamentally altering the internet as we know it today -- to the detriment of consumers, competition, and innovation."
Along with Apple, other notable tech firms like Amazon, Google, Spotify, Twitter and others threw their weight behind net neutrality in July.
FCC commissioners will vote on the matter in December.
Comments
The costs will without a doubt get passed on to consumers, squeezing those that already don’t have enough. Essentially a toll lane to the internet, and a new kind of paywall.
Thank you Apple for standing up to the companies that our own government will not protect us from.
Time to stand up behind Apple and draw a line in the sand. It’s never been so easy to fight back.
https://www.battleforthenet.com/?utm_source=AN&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BFTNCallTool&utm_content=voteannouncement&ref=fftf_fftfan1120_30&link_id=0&can_id=99938e0e78ecbd59e0a8f02403bc2fb6&email_referrer=email_265023&email_subject=net-neutrality-dies-in-one-month-unless-we-stop-it
You can’t have access to my phone, you can’t break my privacy, and you can’t deny my right to acces the internet.
We the People are more powerful than your lobbyists will ever be!
Whether people are for or against net neutrality as it is now, if removing it will allow ISPs to prioritise traffic we have to insist that something else is put in its place. The internet as we know it will fade away and become like television was 20 years ago—only those with lots of money and influence can get ‘in’ on content creation and distribution. And the variety we see today, for better and worse, will be relatively anemic.
The VPN overhead is better than the alternative...
Soon Apple might just integrate the technology directly into their security chip...
Actually, full speed head FCC. They might force secure tunnels and SSL/TLS everywhere, and everyone would be more secure.
The ISPs can still go F themselves. Let’s see them “optimize” the traffic when they have no idea what the traffic is...
Placing the link and providing leadership is all that’s left to me.
Better than your pessimistic approach, must have missed your elegant strategy.
Is there a way to help people see, or is this the classical, lead a horse to water saying...?
The thing that is weird and scary about Internet providers is that at least some of them have a monopoly within our communities. In my community there is ATT from the telephone side of things and Spectrum (Time Warner/Road Runner) as the CATV provider. Once upon a time there was only the telephone company and power company. CATV was added much later. CATV was given a monopoly in order to convince the company to build out the city. They were given license to charge residents for CATV in exchange for the company having to make it available to everybody in the community. At no time did the community say that the rules would not be changing in the future. Every year, I think, the community has the option to change the rules or even toss out the current CATV provider in favor of another. The tossed-out provider doesn't even get to keep the equipment they put in.
So.. much much later the Federal government decides that only they have the sensitivity and intelligence to have ultimate control over how every CATV provider, and any other Internet provider, does business. Still later the new Federal government decides that control over the companies be turned back over to States, Locals, and the companies themselves, back the way it was. Why does this mean the end of all things?
It seems to me that the local government, and the county and state can all intercede if something big and bad happens. In some municipalities, mine included, there are multiple Internet providers and we get to choose. At this time Spectrum is getting really bad press from the local geeks, but I don't know if the non-geeks really care.
Right here, right now, I can get Internet from Verizon, ATT, and Spectrum. Maybe Singular Wireless as well? Dunno. I suspect that Dish Network can do 2-way satellite. They used to have that as an offering.
Where is the evidence of danger from having the Fed back off from this?
What am I missing?
Most people on the Internet probably only come in contact with less than a dozen sites. Google, with its Gmail and YouTube, Facebook, perhaps a random community like Tumblr, a couple of image boards, the occasional visit to Amazon, maybe some news websites, and that’s about it. For the vast majority of the population, the Internet is a prepackaged, socially engineered spy grid. It fuels itself on your input and weaponizes the information against you and everyone else. Already the social engineers are dividing us entirely, confusing the tongue, and making it difficult to communicate effectively. On Google and YouTube, comments and videos are filtered such that you only come in contact with certain predetermined material derived by social algorithms. They make it nearly impossible to discover new random channels and points of view. When you click on a video and scroll down, you’re presented with preselected comments that jive with the opinions you tend to agree with and made to jump through hoops of inconvenience to look at all the other discussions taking place.
Since Google is so influential, this sort of strategy is largely finding its way into every facet of the corporate-controlled Internet. This means that when I click on a video, I will see comments mocking the counterfeit media. Yet when a liberal clicks on the same video, she’ll be presented with comments that agree with her gun-grabbing ideology. In effect, we’re being self-imprisoned on these tiny Internet islands where we can’t reach out to one another. Google can control who and what we interact with and see, and so divide and conquer the mind of the population. It’s a good strategy to quell dissent; when I click on a controversial news video or article, I unwillingly come in contact with opinions that tend to support my own, and so I leave with the sense that there is a consensus on a particular world event. This engineering of a false consensus has the effect of pacifying the people, making them content in their beliefs. In being content, they became lazy and stop questioning the world and discussing reality with those around them.
By forcing the ignorant to be separate from the wise, from the stupid, from the trolls, even, this system of division is impeding the social development of humanity at large. The typical person on the Internet is confined within their own little bubble of information–a literal reservation matrix. The vast majority of modern people only interact with the world around them through the lens of the Internet. Everything they know–and much of where their worldview comes from–is directly influenced through what they experience online. By allowing a cabal of government/corporate entities with advanced technologies in their disposal to regulate what an individual interacts with online, they can shape and guide the development of one’s mind.
We are, quite literally, being domesticated through sophisticated weaponized psychology.
Most of human history and its accumulated knowledge is already immersed on the Internet; within our lifetimes all of it will be in the cloud, soon enough the entire population will be hardwired into the Internet, in one way or another. It’s conceivable that our entire species’ recorded collective experience–all of our history and knowledge–can be manipulated and censored by predatory algorithms that can gradually and insidiously edit the data to keep the truths from us. The beast supercomputers can sift through the entire Internet and gradually edit out certain sensitive or undesirable information–even change audio files and manipulate videos. In recent years, everyone’s identity is being lassoed to the Internet, such that there is no longer anonymity and free exchange. Certain people can be effectively silenced. The Internet with which I come into contact might be an entirely different Internet than the one others see. By socially engineering groups and confining certain people within these restricted informational reservations, reality and social/cultural trends can be manufactured. It’s such a passive and insidious strategy. Just as a virus entering a cell coats itself with the host’s own membrane, masquerading as self to elude detection, this beast computer consciousness uses our own information and our own architecture to elude our defenses and gain entrance into our collective mind.