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So, Where Are YOU on Net Neutrality?
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Think time to stop making new laws, follow laws already on books, and get rid of the laws that allow Politicians to pocket millions. I remember about 15, 20 years ago there was a big push to get rid of Lobbyists in DC, after election never heard about it again. That's politics!
― George Carlin
Talonsin said: Basically their favored "political team" says the magic keywords like "jobs" and "but obama" and its swallowed whole by those who follow. I get that politics is full of half truths and rhetorical bull from both ends of the spectrum, but now and then the obvious is just obvious.
Apparently the difference between actual government content control and and ensuring a free and fair market is beyond the scope of comprehension for some. The same type of person who lets government officials convince them that the government is out to get them but the corporate elite are a fair and virtuous lot who always have the peoples interests in mind.
This article lays out the differences and why the current version of it is nothing more than a power grab. (trigger warning, it's a conservative website)
https://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2017/11/27/net-neutrality-big-power-grab-lie-left-media-telling/
the author throws some undeserved praise at the orange degenerate's administration but it is a really good article.
Bet, you think VA is doing a LOT of good for our Veterans?
More Government isn't the answer and never will be. But keep spreading the liberal talking points, luckily majority isn't listening.
― George Carlin
What is happening is enshrining something that had basically been a core tenant of the internet since it became a consumer product of any sorts. There are laws on top of the regulations, but the laws often are not handling certain things well compared to a regulatory branch. While one could argue antitrust/anti-monopoly laws are on the books one also has to consider the overall reach of what antitrust can do in the light of certain things that can become natural monopolies on their own.
Under a proper system most internet service providers would be up to their eyeballs in antitrust lawsuits inside the US, but it becomes rather costly for the government to constantly have to take singular companies into court hence regulations are put on certain industries when they practice what could be be considered antitrust. You have the companies follow the regulations you feel keep the public trust and then sue if they step out of bounds of those regulations. It keeps the government from overspending more and constantly being in court.
Antitrust lawsuits also tend to have regulations applied to them toward the specific company. Based on how things work if antitrust laws were used the companies would still have regulations applied to them individually after each suit to "fix" what they are violating in the suit to begin with. All you are advocating for realistically when you state things like "use the current laws on the books" is basically less effective government and a government that will be tied up in lawsuits until the cows come home. If you give corporations an inch they will take a mile and they often violate the public trust as is even with the laws on the books + regulations.
Not to mention that the internet in its infancy was handled under title II in the first place. Title I came about as the means to regulate them under as they were also providing TV service and they basically skirted by heavier regulation because of delivery medium even though as it was they should of continued to be regulated under Title II. It was the Bush (2001+) era FCC that chose to change them over to Title I.
Net neutrality up until it was broken by certain ISPs was never a question of being right or wrong. It sort of just was because anything else would "break" how the internet works. This was well understood and then the isps decided to get greedier when they saw people actually using the services they have been selling them as being good for internet video, gaming, and all this other shit for years. Their greed led them to attempt to throttle peer to peer traffic (there is legit reasons for peer to peer transfers such as certain game downloaders using it to speed up their downloads to save money), throttling netflix (whom may I remind you was requested by the ISPs customers on a plan the customers are already paying for and for which both sides already are basically paying for delivery) in an attempt to get netflix to do a direct peering deal so that they basically paid to have their data treated normally, blocking VOIP stuff or even skype because their company offers VOIP/skype like services etc.
The regulations are not ignoring current law and the regulations are there to help current law not be broken so readily that the Federal Government would basically be suing companies over and over every time they do something. ISPs regularly break antitrust laws on the books and there is no way in hell that the GOP is ever going to sue big business. While financial conservative behavior is good to an extent we far from have it. We have post regan era conservatives that don't seem to grasp that you can't be a financial conservative while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations as you need to pick up that slack from elsewhere and going after people that are largely lower income than the mid 90's for tax money realistically isn't going to help matters. Ultimately everyone should get a little bit of a tax increase and we should close tax loopholes.
Again though regulations are there primarily so antitrust lawsuits aren't basically taking up the courts time constantly. They are there to enhance the existing law into a more efficient enforcement methodology.
The Xanadu of free internet he mentions is also the reason Russian trolls successfully influenced the last Presidential election.
The track record of large ISPs showed they have no interest in self-regulation. The article conveniently leaves out any of the past indiscretions of these ISPs.
It also seems content to act as if the entire reason the internet was a big deal was specifically because government wasn't involved in regulating the way ISPs delivered content. That's ignoring the merits of the internet in an attempt to imply blame on the government in general for everything that's bad in our lives. Things the government doesn't get involved in = good, things the government does get involved in (ensuring your have fair access to the electricity needed to read this response on your PC or smartphone, for instance) = bad.
You also need to understand the differing principals between a law and a regulation. Regulations are to make people adhere to laws already on the books in an efficient more cost effective manner. Unless you want the government spending billions just on lawsuits and then on the actual regulation they will need to toss in after antitrust suites happen. Antitrust isn't just a lawsuit to get a fine. They often come with regulatory oversight to make sure that the companies adhere to not breaking the people's trust in the same manner again. So effectively again what you are saying is to make the existing laws more ineffective because "reasons" that you can't really back up other than "big government bad" which in some cases it is and in other cases it is not.
Regulatory bodies exist so that you don't need to consistently tackle a company for violating this that or the next thing. They are not making new laws, but rather regulatory guidelines that a company is to follow or be fined because it quite literally breaks the people's trust. It is an extension of antitrust laws in many situations basically enforcing the enshrined reasons for antitrust suites even existing in the first place. Some companies are out of the purview of regulation set down already so they end up with antitrust suites applied to them (such as microsoft etc).
Just because a law exists that can handle the same process in a much more costly, time consuming, and convoluted way doesn't mean you abolish the regulation with the same goal.
The ISPs attempted a power grab to try and make more money and the Obama era FCC said "No you can't do that" The original tenants of Net Neutrality (a light touch approach) were first tried by Tom Wheeler without any other regulation changes. Verizon sued them for it because it wasn't "allowed" under their current regulation more or less. A judge agreed to that end and told the FCC that in order to enforce Net Neutrality that the ISPs had to be labeled as Title II, a title which the isps/telecoms had prior to the Bush era FCC that changed around their regulation from title II to title I. You may want to actually look at talking points from other sources other than conservative media such as those from the tech industry or those actually you know educated on the matter in a non brainwashed by their party fashion.
What the 2015 net neutrality rules did was give the FCC a lot of power to regulate and censor the internet that it didn't have before with vague guidelines on enforcement. A recipe that could quite effectively be abused by corporations in order to give themselves a competitive advantage as they have in other industries. In general the government names things in order to pass them even if they would have the opposite affect.
The government needs to be investigating the VA more regularly and punishing those cooking the books among other things. I have seen horrors in private care facilities simply because the staff is apathetic and couldn't care less than they do. My mother was in a private care facility after she had surgery on her leg and knee and she needed to be there for physical therapy etc. They left her on a bed pan long enough that her ass cheek literally pulled part way off her body and they had to bond it back onto her.
Also this isn't "more government" this is simply going back to what they used to be under and basically enshrining a basic tenant of the internet to begin with. They would still be regulated under Title I regardless of rolling back Title II, though title I was never meant to really handle telecoms in the way that title II was/is. Your ilk always want to trot out that this is more government without realizing that you are simply and quite blatantly talking out of your ass. This is not more government at all. It is a change in what Title regulation they fall under and the like and basically making them adhere to the basic principals that the internet had up until the ISPs decided they didn't like people actually using the service they've been selling people for ages and wanted to make a further profit off the people providing services on the internet in an unfair and unjust manner.
One other small point, what they will end up doing is start acting like Facebook, Twitter, Forums, they will only allow what they think is allowed not freedom of speech. I can see it now, liberals going well you broke the rules by posting what Info wars said about Obama....or Hillary......elections will be interesting, only hear what Government wants us to hear. I believe China already does this.
― George Carlin
I would encourage you to review the actions taken or attempted by the large corporations such as Verizon. There have already been numerous attempts by those giants at leveraging their weight to ensure their preferred services and products aren't optional in any real sense. For the government to effectively prevent that, oversight is needed, and this will undoubtedly cost money. That's why governments assess taxes or fees on such products. Allowing corporations to gouge us serves us no better than allowing politicians to sneakily pocket bukus of cash off of regulation law. Both situations need to be avoided.
But neither does regulation automatically mean some politician is pocketing a fortune. That's not a given. Based on the past behavior of the ISP giants, taking advantage of us if they aren't restrained by law seems to be.
EDIT- oh geez the typos!
The FCC was budget neutral. It was funded through licensing RF spectrum. They don't really levy a tax, but operate more like a business. The subsidies they provide are gained through fees and licenses they charge to ISPs.
You also seem to ignore that it was literally a point of squabbling since the 1990's and it wasn't until the mid 2000's that they really started lobbying hard and trying to attempt to do things against the tenants. Also Telecommunications were always supposed to be common carrier status. How you are actually supposed to impose regulation would end up with the isps having to adhere to different regulations depending which of their services you are actually using. For instance their websites and services they might have like television are information services and should be under Title I however the medium used to actually deliver those (ie the internet) is a telecommunications service and should be under title II regulations (btw title I - VII are all part of the same act that allowed bell to become a monopoly which has since had changes applied to it so that it doesn't happen again. Not to mention a later bill in the mid 90's that specifically targeted internet service providers)
ISPs want to be regulated as information services even though they are basically both an information service and a telecommunications network and both types of regulation should be applied to them with the one being title I and the other title II. It seems like you just want to ignore history completely. We don't live in lala land where this shit didn't happen.
If we made public servants take lie detector tests, and got rid of corrupt politicians, maybe then I would have more faith in this change. 80%+ of congress are millionaires, corporations are people, and people can buy influence almost unchecked. Money corrupts, we need it out of the system, no matter what your political affiliation is imo (I am a registered republican, but I am a little all over the place on certain issues).
The fact of the matter though is an ISP is both, but the bill that is actually applied for title I or title II actually implicitly states that a telecommunications company will be treated as a common carrier and with Title II regulations in so far as the services they offer that actually fall under telecommunication services. Hence the internet itself ie the delivery mechanism is supposed to be under title II and their information services that exist on that service are supposed to be under title I. The entire thing isn't supposed to be under title I or title II.
Quite frankly if they keep parading that they want to be treated only under Title I I think the government should actually force them to give up their telecommunication lines and have them act purely as information services which would mean their television services and website are about all they can actually operate as very little of what ISPs actually do with delivery falls under the definition of "information services" they are delivering the information services of others through telecommunications.
Also enough with the right talking point of fear mongering that the SJW's/liberals are going to censor the internet. It isn't going to happen as there is 0 mandate in any of the Title I - VII that have any regulation on what content is actually delivered to people. They'd need to enact a whole different regulation for that to happen and it just shows how uneducated you and your ilk actually are about the subject at hand. It is quite clear you have never read the Communications Act of 1934 as it stands currently nor the Telecommunications Act of 1996 or even have a base understanding of what they say outside of your parties talking points.
And no title Ii wouldn't handle ISPs worse at all as it is what telecommunications is designed to fall under. And ISP is not an information service beyond the extent of services that they offer outside of the internet. You also can't argue that Title I was designed for modern infrastructure either as nothing in that act directly has to do with modern infrastructure. By your logic we should just scrap the entire thing for modern infrastructure and make an entirely new set of regulations that actually would adhere to modern infrastructure properly. The only real reason Title II doesn't work if you apply it without a split in regulation for their information services is because they also offer information services that should be under a different set of regulations (title I) in this case.
But I have to ask... At what point did I mention anything about socialism or anything related to it? Market regulation is just as much part of capitalism. Do you like reimbursement and pain and suffering for when you get ripped off? That's a regulation. Do you like protection of assets? That's a regulation. And also written in the constitution.
You are bad at this.
The free market, without any regulations, would be an unmitigated disaster.
To answer your question however about subsidies given to NFL teams I - personally - think the argument about "government" subsidies being given to companies has merit. It just encourages them to relocate. (Why the EU adopted its "level playing field" approach between member states decades ago.)
It is a tough policy to adopt though.
1) What would be good policy?
2) What should the FCC do now?
The first is fundamentally a disagreement between whether to it is more important to encourage companies to build out their networks so that there can be more bandwidth available, or to decide that we have enough bandwidth and that it's more important to ensure that it is apportioned fairly. If you believe that the former is more important, then you're against the net neutrality regulations that the FCC imposed in 2015. If the latter, then you're in favor of either those regulations or else something else a lot like them, perhaps with a more solid legal basis.
The second question is far more straightforward. The FCC should follow the law. Congress has not authorized net neutrality regulations, so the FCC has no authority to impose them on its own. If congress were to authorize the FCC to impose net neutrality regulations, then the FCC would be obligated to do so. Even if you favor the net neutrality regulations that the FCC imposed in 2015, then you really ought to strongly favor having a law duly passed by congress and signed by the president to provide a solid legal basis for them.
Historically, a little over 20 years ago, with the Internet still in its infancy, President Clinton and a Republican congress reached a bipartisan deal that there would be light regulation of the Internet. They didn't want to strangle it before it could get started. It worked spectacularly well, and it's not a fluke that all of the Internet giants that people are scared of (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) are American companies.