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FCC Plans December Vote to Kill Net Neutrality Rules

posted by janrinok on Thursday November 16 2017, @07:32PM   
from the so-long,-interwebs,-it-was-nice-knowing-you dept.

Fnord666 writes:

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission next month is planning a vote to kill Obama-era rules demanding fair treatment of web traffic and may decide to vacate the regulations altogether, according to people familiar with the plans.

The move would reignite a years-long debate that has seen Republicans and broadband providers seeking to eliminate the rules, while Democrats and technology companies support them. The regulations passed in 2015 bar broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from interfering with web traffic sent by Google, Facebook Inc. and others.

[...] Pai plans to seek a vote in December, said two people who asked not to be identified because the matter hasn't been made public. As the head of a Republican majority, he is likely to win a vote on whatever he proposes.

[...] The agency declined to comment on the timing of a vote. "We don't have anything to report at this point," said Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for the commission.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/killing-net-neutrality-rules-is-said-readied-for-december-vote

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Original Submission

• Re:Again, you're begging the question. Re:Again, you're begging the question. (Score: 1) by mobydisk on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:05PM (2 children)

  by mobydisk (5472) on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:05PM (#597933)

  FYI: There's actually laws preventing someone from doing what you describe in your analogy. The Common Carrier laws forbid, for example, the shipping company from modifying or substituting the product.

  Parent

• Re:Again, you're begging the question. (Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:15PM

  by Thexalon (636) on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:15PM (#597941)

  And part of what this vote is doing, along with some previous regulatory changes, is removing any kind of common carrier obligations from ISPs. They've already been working towards getting rid of those obligations [federalregister.gov].

  --
  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.

  Parent

• Re:Again, you're begging the question. (Score: 2) by tibman on Friday November 17 2017, @01:28AM

  by tibman (134) on Friday November 17 2017, @01:28AM (#598010)

  https://ting.com/blog/getting-straight-about-common-carriers-and-title-ii/ [ting.com]

  In 1996, Congress passed a major Telecommunications Act that, says Cherry, “basically approved the distinctions between transmission and enhanced services that the FCC had had to make up on its own,” although the Act relabeled “enhanced services” as “information services.”

  The FCC maintained these distinctions as the Internet arose. Back when DSL was the best way for customers to connect to the Net–sending signals over the telephone companies’ wires–the FCC counted your DSL connection as a regulated transmission service (Title II), and the applications running over your DSL connection as unregulated enhanced services (Title I). This was perfectly in accord with how it handled the telephone network.
  Then came the change

  In 2002, the agency had to decide how to classify broadband Internet access provided by a new player: Cable TV companies. With Republicans now in the majority, the FCC took the opportunity to undo the very framework it had established. Now the FCC declared that cable broadband access would come under Title I, along with the “information services” provided over the network. Cable companies would not be required to live up to the demands of common carriage even for the transmission service they provided.

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  SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.

  Parent