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posted by n1 on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the are-you-getting-what-you-voted-for-yet? dept.

The Inquirer reports

Donald Trump has signed the bill that will allow ISPs to share or sell customers' browsing history for advertising purposes.

Last week, the Republican House of Representatives passed a resolution which overturns a rule laid down by the FCC during the Obama administration that meant that users had to give their permission before such data was used by third-parties and any breach would be reported as a hack.

President Trump signed the bill on Monday [April 4], which means while many ISPs say they will not sell respect[sic] customers privacy and won't flag their browsing history and other personal data, they can now do so under the new rules. Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast will no longer be obligated to obtain consent before selling and sharing data, and they don't have to notify customers about what kind of data they collect.

[...] There's one winner of this privacy-destroying bill, though, and that's VPN providers.

NordVPN said it has already seen an 86 per cent spike in [inquiries].

Common Cause published, via Common Dreams, a comment from Statement of Michael Copps​, former FCC Commissioner & Common Cause Special Adviser:

Despite a campaign filled with rhetoric about the plight of forgotten Americans, Trump has once again come down on the side of corporate profiteering at the expense of Americans who don't sit on corporate boards and can't afford a $200,000 membership at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach. Trump has flip-flipped on his own campaign promises and handed over Americans' right to privacy to those with the deepest pockets.

Previous: Senate Votes Against FCC Internet Privacy Rules


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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:47PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:47PM (#489943)

    take your business elsewhere, exactly as the free market demands!

    Bwahhaahaa...Do you actually LIVE in the US? ISPs have monopolies here and the Free Market™ is a con job of the first degree.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:59PM (5 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:59PM (#489954)

    Yup. We should be uniting in an effort to fix that actual problem. Pretty much every single time you encounter a monopoly you can find the dead hand of government somewhere in the background. The last mile is a 'natural monopoly' and we probably have to accept that. But there ARE market based solutions. Break up the telcos and cable companies one final time. One half would be a government regulated utility, i.e. a monopoly, and would own the last mile and most of the physical plant that lights it up but would be forbidden from putting actual service on the wires. These would trade publicly as boring dividend paying utility stocks. The other half of the existing carriers plus as many new entrants as the market could support would pay regulated rates to gain access to those wires and sell whatever services they could make a profit on. Dial tone, video, data, etc. under whatever rates, bandwidth caps, privacy promises, etc. the market could support since it would be all but unregulated.

    We could live in that world, or stay in the one where we keep bitching about the monopolies like Comcast, Verizon, ATT,, etc screwing everybody and nothing happens because of regulatory capture.

    • (Score: 2) by FunkyLich on Friday April 07 2017, @12:33AM

      by FunkyLich (4689) on Friday April 07 2017, @12:33AM (#489966)

      For those who are able to do it, it will become more and more attractive the use of self built vpn-s. Getting a VPS like the ones offered here, https://www.time4vps.eu/pricing/ [time4vps.eu] and then setting up openvpn in it is not really very complicated and they are hosted outside of US territory, in Lithuania in this case. One can share the monthly cost of it with family members or friends or whomever they like who cares enough for issues like this, a cost which after all is comparable to a couple of extra drinks every month.
      I am not affiliated at all with the company shown above, but I used them a few years ago for simple personal use. It only as an example that I brought it here and I am sure one can find similar offerings elsewhere and everywhere. I believe that money shout go to who really deserves and for matters like this I think modest companies like that deserve it more than amazon, google or microsoft and their swollen shiny clouds.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @02:43AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @02:43AM (#490006)

      Pretty much every single time you encounter a monopoly you can find the dead hand of government somewhere in the background.
      ...
      Break up the telcos and cable companies one final time.

      And how, exactly, would we go about breaking up these private companies?
      It wouldn't happen to require a certain dead hand, would it?

      • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday April 07 2017, @03:38AM (2 children)

        by jmorris (4844) on Friday April 07 2017, @03:38AM (#490037)

        They aren't entirely "private companies" if they are government granted monopolies, right? How else do we justify the extensive regulation and oversight we put them under? What I propose is to reduce the government monopoly grant to the absolute smallest entity in control of only the section of the network where a natural monopoly is unavoidable. The rest of the telcos, once broken up, would then be free of pretty much all regulation outside of normal corporate regulation (reporting, insider trading, privacy laws that apply to any corporation with customer data, etc) and free to compete, merge, etc. as they please.

        If it makes you happy it wouldn't even be required to force the breakup. Just announce that owners of wires are now utilities with horribly strict regulation and then add the regs to mandate sale of access on non-discriminatory conditions with those horribly strict regulators setting the conditions. They would get the idea to divest the wires from the service on their own almost instantly as a move to 'increase shareholder value.' Who can complain? That is the game with government granted monopolies, the government calls the tune and you dance to it, unless you can achieve regulatory capture of course, which is why Congress would have to force the rule change; they currently control most State utility boards / commissions and have outsize influence with the FCC.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @03:50AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @03:50AM (#490051)

          > They aren't entirely "private companies" if they are government granted monopolies, right

          They are not government granted monopolies.
          The 1992 Cable Act [niu.edu]made it illegal for municipalities to grant exclusive franchises or even to enable de-facto exclusive franchises by unreasonably with-holding franchise agreements from any company that meets the established requirements.

          The reason they are heavily regulated is because they are natural monopolies and since most people don't have their heads buried in the sand they are able to recognize that even natural monopolies are a danger.

          > Just announce that owners of wires are now utilities with horribly strict regulation

          And would that announcement be typed by a dead hand?

        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 07 2017, @09:19AM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Friday April 07 2017, @09:19AM (#490146) Journal

          We even have a legal reason for implementing your plan as the major telecos under Slick Willie took 200 billion from the American People for a national network upgrade [wordpress.com] and promptly stuck it in their pockets, giving us nothing for all that money but a low res Goatse.

          So you plan could be implemented tomorrow, simply declare the telecos that took the money without fulfilling the contract in default and if they do not pay back every cent with 5% interest from the time they cashed the check? We confiscate the last mile to pay back their debt. We can even tell them that if they want a monopoly? For every home that is not currently being served by at least 100mbps down they run FTTH to they will get a 10 year monopoly on that address. this way they can have a monopoly, all they have to do is actually upgrade the infrastructure as they were paid to do in 1996.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.