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from the people-paying-pipers-pick-preferred-program dept.
The 28 House members who lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to drop net neutrality this week have received more than twice the amount in campaign contributions from the broadband sector than the average for all House members. According to research provided Friday by Maplight, the 28 House members received, on average, $26,832 from the "cable & satellite TV production & distribution" sector over a two-year period ending in December. According to the data, that's 2.3 times more than the House average of $11,651.
The US has long applied common carrier status to the telephone network, providing justification for universal service obligations that guarantee affordable phone service to all Americans and other rules that promote competition and consumer choice.
Some consumer advocates say that common carrier status is needed for the FCC to impose strong network neutrality rules that would force ISPs to treat all traffic equally, not degrading competing services or speeding up Web services in exchange for payment. ISPs have argued that common carrier rules would saddle them with too much regulation and would force them to spend less on network upgrades and be less innovative.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Lagg on Sunday May 18 2014, @12:00AM
I've wondered for some time why people have so much trust in this. Even if one ignores the problem of using bribery to fight bribery, I've literally scoured that entire site looking for what kind of campaigns they're going to run and it's just as much vague political bullshit as all the rest of them use. No matter where I've looked, including here [mayone.us], here [mayone.us] and here [mayone.us] it's just "We'll use this money to run campaigns for key reform in key areas as long as you give us the key. We swear! This will end super pacs!". Regardless though isn't this off-topic in the first place? You got me excited thinking that some of this money would go to campaigns to force common carrier status on ISPs which then lead me to my futile search to get a straight answer out of these fucks.
Even more funny is that they acknowledge that it's a dumb and vague sounding idea. And say "Yeah, that's a feature!". If I'm wrong and am just being a big dumbass and missing some crucial information then by all means point me to it because I do want to buy into something like this. I really do. But given history and the high risk of "accounting errors" in such things I have no choice but to be suspicious.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿