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Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica reports that the House Energy And Commerce committee approved the Save The Internet Act, which rolls back the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC)* 2017 repeal of its 2015 order on network neutrality[PDF].
The Ars Technica article states:
Democrats in the US House of Representatives yesterday rejected Republican attempts to weaken a bill that would restore net neutrality rules.
[...]
Commerce Committee Republicans repeatedly introduced amendments that would weaken the bill but were consistently rebuffed by the committee's Democratic majority. "The Democrats beat back more than a dozen attempts from Republicans to gut the bill with amendments throughout the bill's markup that lasted 9.5 hours," The Hill reported yesterday.Republican amendments would have weakened the bill by doing the following:
- Exempt all 5G wireless services from net neutrality rules.
- Exempt all multi-gigabit broadband services from net neutrality rules.
- Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that builds broadband service in any part of the US that doesn't yet have download speeds of at least 25Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3Mbps.
- Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that gets universal service funding from the FCC's Rural Health Care Program.
- Exempt ISPs that serve 250,000 or fewer subscribers from certain transparency rules that require public disclosure of network management practices.
- Prevent the FCC from limiting the types of zero-rating (i.e., data cap exemptions) that ISPs can deploy.
[amendment links above are all PDF]
Another Republican amendment [PDF] would have imposed net neutrality rules but declared that broadband is an information service. This would have prevented the FCC from imposing any other type of common-carrier regulations on ISPs.
The committee did approve a Democratic amendment [PDF] to exempt ISPs with 100,000 or fewer subscribers from the transparency rules, but only for one year.
[...]
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) claimed that the Democrats' bill "is not the net neutrality that people want" and is "actually more government socialism," according to The Hill.But the primary opponents of the FCC's net neutrality rules were broadband providers and Republicans in Congress, not the people at large. Polls showed that the FCC's repeal was opposed by most Americans: "Eighty-six percent oppose the repeal of net neutrality, including 82 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats," the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland reported last year after surveying nearly 1,000 registered voters.
"It's embarrassing watching telecom shills in these committee votes attempt to turn this into a partisan issue when it's actually quite simple: no one wants their cable company to control what they can see and do on the Internet, or manipulate where they get their news, how they listen to music, or what apps they can use," Deputy Director Evan Greer of advocacy group Fight for the Future said.
The now-repealed net neutrality rules prohibited ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful content and from charging online services for prioritization. The Democrats' bill would reinstate those rules and other consumer protections that used to be enforced by the FCC. For example, Pai's repeal vote also wiped out a requirement that ISPs be more transparent with customers about hidden fees and the consequences of exceeding data caps.
*The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. The FCC serves the public in the areas of broadband access, fair competition, radio frequency use, media responsibility, public safety, and homeland security.
(Score: 2, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 08 2019, @04:57PM (3 children)
VETO!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Monday April 08 2019, @09:48PM (2 children)
Yes, we know — the asshole you're trying to channel, pretty much all of his minions, and Republican politicians in general are utter scumbags. But hey, thanks for reminding us. I'm sure we're in serious danger of forgetting... somewhere around the year 3,000 CE or so, anyway.
--
If people make you sick... perhaps you should cook them longer
--Hannibal Lecter, probably
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 08 2019, @11:45PM
I think you forgot about President & Senate. Or, you want to forget. And live in the Liberal Media Bubble. Because, your an Editor. And you can tweet in secret, where only the other Editors can read. About every story. But this VERY DUMB story went up. About, House of Representatives passed something. But -- do you know this -- House of Representatives doesn't make laws all by it'self. Must have a Vote in Senate, get majority in Senate AND beautiful signature of President Donald J. Trump. Or, 2/3 of House & 2/3 of Senate when President won't sign. I'm telling you, President won't sign. Except to VETO. And maybe you think you have the 2/3. I don't think so. I don't think so. Very easy for you to do the secret tweet of "oh guys, this isn't a real law." And I think the other Editors would read it, would have read it. And not put up this very dumb story about Dem grandstanding. If Dems really wanted Net Neutrality, they could have made it a law, very easily. When they had a Dem President. Dem House. And Dem Senate. But, they didn't do it. They lost very badly in 2016. Again in 2018. And now they're all, "oh, let's have Net Neutrality." When they know it won't happen. BECAUSE they know it won't happen. Meanwhile we did a magnificent BIPARTISAN law in December. Known as First Step Act. And celebrated its tremendous success on April the 1st. -- in terrific style. I'm getting so much praise about that one. Where are the stories? Not on Soylent News Main, or Front "page." Very biased!!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday April 09 2019, @05:22PM
Keep on burying your heads in sand. Keep on telling me to shut up. Keep pretending as hard as you can. And possibly your Fantasy World will come true. The Net Neutrality, the Green New Deal and the everything else. It's the sand that does it!!!!