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Several news sites are reporting that Donald Trump is looking to elevate Ajit Pai to head up the FCC:
Ajit Pai, a Republican Federal Communications Commission member and foe of net neutrality regulation, will be named to head the agency, according to a person familiar with the transition.
Pai has often dissented as FCC Democrats voted for tighter regulations, including the 2015 open internet, or net neutrality, decision that forbids internet service providers from unfairly blocking or slowing web traffic. The rule opposed by AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. is among those likely to be reversed by president Donald Trump's FCC, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts.
Additional information at Politico and Reuters.
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Ajit Pai to Become New Head of the FCC
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
QOTD:
The forest may be quiet, but that doesn't mean
the snakes have gone away.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @04:37PM
Many of the things one would expect net neutrality to protect against have come to pass from the US telecoms giants already, and I don't think this is a coincidence. If you read the net neutrality rules they're effectively hamstrung from the inside out. Every single section of the rules add a little disclaimer. 'You may not --some net neutrality clause-- excepting reasonable network management. So what is "reasonable network management?" In the 400+ pages of rules, it's never once defined. And how are disputes managed? One a case by case consultation. This is, in effect, writing cronyism into law. Companies with sufficient connections will be able to get away with whatever they feel like under the guise of "reasonable network management." And even when they fail their connections check, it opens up immense plausible deniability that I'm sure will leave any disputes tied up in the courts for years as they argue over the nuance of undefined terms in the 400 page behemoth.
I think the current implementation of net neutrality is in many ways worse than having no rules at all. It's not stopping the companies from doing anything they would do otherwise but it ensures there will be no major progress on net neutrality so long as these rules exist: "What do you mean you want net neutrality? Don't you know anything? We already have it thanks to Tom Wheeler - such a great guy! Amazing a lifelong telecoms lobbyist would come around like he did. CRAP! My connection just got throttled since I went over my bandwidth limit on this unlimited bandwidth plan. Oh well, at least I get full speed if I stream from my ISP's site..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:10PM
Your criticism is itself as empty as you claim the regulations to be.
What, specifically have the ISPs done by abusing the deliberately undefined "reasonable network management?"
Without any evidence you are saying the FCC needs to define in specific detail every technical decision that a network manager can and can not make.
That's beyond ridiculous, its impossible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:45PM
The law itself lays out what people, in any conceivable situation, are not allowed to do. Laying out what companies in a very specific field are not allowed to do would be trivial by contrast. If the rules were insufficient - that's fine. They, like the law, can be amended, corrected, and even rescinded as necessary. But the problem is there wasn't even an effort to make real rules. The whole thing was a charade written by telecoms lawyers and headed by a telecoms lobbyist who showed just how easy it really is to fool the masses who think they "won" even as the 'quote' I referenced is the state of telecoms in the US today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:51PM
> The law itself lays out what people, in any conceivable situation, are not allowed to do.
What law does that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:38PM
Here is the US code for federal crimes: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18 [cornell.edu]
That would be the appropriate analog as the FCC would create fundamental top level rules which states could expand on or adapt as appropriate and on downward to counties/municipalities/etc. Tellingly enough, I suspect if you printed out the entirety of title 18 it would be shorter than the net neutrality rules. The difference between rules meant for enforcement and rules meant for obfuscation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:25PM
You know why we have judges? To apply human judgment to those laws.
To decide whether they apply and whether the application is reasonable.
So now you want judges to decide what network managers can and can't do?
What you are calling for isn't just unworkable its something nobody with an iota of experience would try to apply to any industry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:21PM
Judges are not involved in interpreting anything in some ridiculously large percent of cases. 99.999% or whatever.
You're being obtuse.