FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules For 'Open Internet'. Ended by orange turd and losers.



Washington becomes first state to pass net neutrality protections into law
At the state level, bill essentially reinstates rules the Federal Communications Commission rolled back earlier this year

Three months after state leaders vowed to safeguard net neutrality despite rollbacks by the Federal Communications Commission, Gov. Jay Inslee has signed a bill to protect an open internet in Washington.

With his signature, Washington became the first state in the nation to pass a law to protect net neutrality.

In 2015, the FCC created rules against blocking legal content, throttling traffic and using paid prioritization for some traffic. The FCC reversed these net neutrality rules earlier this year.

Washington’s new law, House Bill 2282, protects those net neutrality rules at the state level, ensuring that internet providers cannot advantageously manipulate internet speeds and access to content.

“Today we make history: Washington will be the first state in the nation to preserve the open internet,” Inslee said during today’s bill signing ceremony. “We’ve seen the power of an open internet. It allows a student in Washington to connect with researchers all around the world — or a small business to compete in the global marketplace. It’s allowed the free flow of information and ideas in one of the greatest demonstrations of free speech in our history.”​
 
I still laugh at the end of this thread's title. If only swearing was allowed and you added As*** Pie to it.
 
They should have joined years ago.

It was always a little puzzling to me that they weren't in on it at the start. I think they finally woke up and are realizing that the idiocy going on is really going to impact them severely.
 
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Not like we need it, but just another example of what happens if you don't have an open internet

 
I remember seeing something about this regarding Twitch.tv as well. Didn't know how deep it went but if it's because of Amazon, then I can imagine a lot of stuff being inaccessible without AWS.
 
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Yeah unfortunately it has to get past the House, then if it makes it that far has to get past Trump.

Best thing you can do? Look at this list, find your representatives in the senate. If they voted to restore net neutrality (for) (the good one), make sure to get out and vote for them this fall. If they voted the other way, go vote for whoever is their opponent.

https://www.cnet.com/news/senate-votes-to-restore-net-neutrality-heres-how-every-senator-voted/

Pass this along to everyone you can find, and get everyone you know out to vote this fall.

To put this in video game terms, you're paying your ISP and either MS or PS for online play. You don't want to have to pay yet again for a fast lane.
 
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No surprise both of the Iowa dips***s voted against. Unfortunately it's not an election year here.
 
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/...-Barcelona-Shortly-After-Cohen-Payment-141844

AT&T Met With Ajit Pai in Barcelona Shortly After Cohen Payment

Last week, AT&T apologized for for its "serious misjudgment" in hiring US President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen to provide “insights” into how the new administration would handle issues like net neutrality and AT&T’s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable. Ultimately, the $600,000 AT&T paid Cohen for said insights became such a scandal, the company was forced to fire its top policy and lobbying man Bob Quinn, despite the fact that such behavior is arguably routine at the Dallas-based telecom giant.

While AT&T would obviously like to move on from the scandal, watchdogs and several lawmakers would like to see the issue explored in more detail.
New scheduling documents obtained through FOIA by corruption watchdog American Oversight show the Chairman met with with top AT&T executives at a private dinner in Barcelona a month after the company began paying Cohen.

One of the AT&T executives at that meeting was top AT&T policy and lobbying exec Bob Quinn, who orchestrated the payments to Cohen and was fired by AT&T for what the company now acknowledges was "a mistake."

“A private dinner between Chairman Pai and an AT&T executive who hired Michael Cohen to influence the president doesn’t reflect well on the impartiality of the FCC," said American Oversight Director Austin Evers in a statement. "Pai should disclose exactly what was discussed at the dinner and who organized the meeting. Did Michael Cohen set up a dinner where AT&T executives tried to sway a member of the president’s administration on policy that affects the company?"

"We can’t know for sure until Pai tells the whole story," the group proclaimed. "The FCC has some serious explaining to do."

Given that Pai is arguably ultra-cozy with the industry he's supposed to be holding accountable, it's entirely possible that meeting would have happened anyway. But the group still believes that the company and Ajit Pai should be more transparent about the meeting, especially given the laundry list of favors (from gutting net neutrality to killing consumer privacy protections) that have rained down upon AT&T since Trump picked Pai to head the agency.

Meanwhile, the scuttlebutt I'm hearing in telecom circles is that AT&T's donations came as AT&T was trying to secure the nomination of Pai's fellow FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, given the telco was eager to ensure the appointment of a Commissioner that would consistently vote in line with Pai's agenda. That agenda not only has included the assault on net neutrality, but protection of AT&T's business data services monopoly and the elimination of smaller competitors.​
 
https://gizmodo.com/a-democrat-funded-by-at-t-could-sabotage-californias-ne-1826964363

Efforts in California to pass a comprehensive net neutrality law hit a snag on Tuesday after a key committee, which is chaired by a Democrat whose coffers are flush with telecom industry cash, suddenly threw a wrench in the works.​
Two California state lawmakers struck a deal on Monday to combine two net neutrality bills introduced separately this year—SB 822 and SB 460—both of which have cleared the state’s Senate. Working in tandem, the bills would ensure that Californians have the same level of protection against net neutrality violators as granted under the 2015 Open Internet Order, which established the federal net neutrality rules officially repeal by the Trump administration one week ago.​
Instead of accepting amendments to combine SB 822 and SB 460, however, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, chair of the Communications and Conveyance Committee, is likely to propose his own, according to a source with direct knowledge of the negotiation. Santiago, the source said, intends to substantially diminish the end legislation’s effectiveness, leaving enormous loopholes for internet service providers (ISPs) such as AT&T and Comcast to exploit.​
The plan to unify the two bills was announced Monday by State Senators Scott Wiener and Kevin de León, the authors of SB 822 and SB 460, respectively. The decision was widely praised by, among others, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and Initialized Capital. Federal lawmakers, too, have weighed in on the legislation, believing that the California bill will set the bar for any other state-level net neutrality laws to come, as well as boost efforts to reject the new Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) rules in the House of Representatives.​
The passage of a toothless net neutrality bill in the liberal haven that is California’s legislature would serve as a humiliating moment for the Democratic Party.​
“We will not settle for the weak bills pushed by Republicans that eliminate crucial consumer protections and are net neutrality in name only,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote Monday in a letter to Santiago. Senator Edward Markey, a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, tweeted Tuesday that major internet providers were working hard to weaken any future California law, adding: “everyone is watching.”​
The telecom industry is, in fact, working hard to disrupt the passage of California’s net neutrality legislation—in particular, SB 822, a bill which mirrors not only the handful of pages that make up the underlying rules of the 2015 Open Internet Order, but the 300-pages worth of explanations contained in the order itself.​
While the rules alone prohibit ISPs from blocking or throttling internet traffic, or creating so-called “fast” and “slow lanes,” the full order explains at length the reasons the rules exist and how they should be applied, codifying a number of protections that aren’t explicitly laid out in the rules’ simple text.​
The rules do not, for example, address the unreasonable fees ISPs may impose on application and content providers in order to reach end users—i.e., access fees—which the rules also define as a form of blocking. Nor do they address ISPs congesting interconnection points to force payments from providers managing traffic along the internet’s “backbone.” Nor do the rules address “zero rating,” a practice whereby ISPs get to pick and choose which websites and services consumers can use without impacting their data limits.​
The bill authored by de León, SB 460, did not include these additional protections; however, it would if it is successfully combined with SB 822. Instead, if amended to be conjoined with SB 822, SB 460 would focus on ensuring that net neutrality violators are prohibited from entering into public contracts, a practice which is being adopted via executive power in handful of other states, including New York.​
Senate lawmakers had expected Santiago’s committee to release a report Tuesday morning endorsing the amendments to combine the two bills. But that didn’t happen. Now the authors are convinced that Santiago is likely to propose amendments of his own which neglect the 2015 order’s broader explanations—leaving ISPs loopholes through which they can charge businesses and content providers exorbitant fees.​
The telecom industry, and AT&T in particular, have been applying enormous pressure to California lawmakers in an effort to defeat SB 822. One of the industry’s prime targets remains Santiago, to whom major ISPs have contributed more than $29,000 this election cycle, according to campaign finance records, including $7,800 from AT&T and its affiliates.​
 
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Efforts in California to pass a comprehensive net neutrality law hit a snag on Tuesday after a key committee, which is chaired by a Democrat whose coffers are flush with telecom industry cash, suddenly threw a wrench in the works.​

Where's the poop reaction, optionally and ideally with orange tint and blonde toupée?
 
Wouldn't there be a chance for a provider to advertise as Net Neutral or something? Or does a provider own the lines to the homes/regions and you're stuck with that ISP?

Bring on 6G wifi.
 
Wouldn't there be a chance for a provider to advertise as Net Neutral or something? Or does a provider own the lines to the homes/regions and you're stuck with that ISP?

Bring on 6G wifi.

Pretty much the latter. At least here in the US, many of us have one and only one choice for high speed internet. I can either pay Spectrum, or tether from my phone. That's it. If Spectrum raises my bill $10 tomorrow, what can I do?

Other people here at least have two choices (Verizon runs fiber to some areas but not all), but that's still two huge companies who still have massive market power.

What's worse is that many of these ISPs are also television providers, and they are seeing that market shrink with everyone cutting the cord on their TVs. So, now they are really looking for new streams of revenue since they can't just charge everyone hundreds of dollars a month for terrible cable TV.
 
Pretty much the latter. At least here in the US, many of us have one and only one choice for high speed internet. I can either pay Spectrum, or tether from my phone. That's it. If Spectrum raises my bill $10 tomorrow, what can I do?

Other people here at least have two choices (Verizon runs fiber to some areas but not all), but that's still two huge companies who still have massive market power.

What's worse is that many of these ISPs are also television providers, and they are seeing that market shrink with everyone cutting the cord on their TVs. So, now they are really looking for new streams of revenue since they can't just charge everyone hundreds of dollars a month for terrible cable TV.
Ooooh, ok. I was wondering why you wouldn't just change provider.
The government owns the cables here in Australia, and then the ISP's lease the nodes. They then try to out-do each other with bonus thrown in stuff you don't really need. So even at my mother's rural farm house, she has the choice of about 20 ISP's.

Before that, when ADSL was the best option, a company started rolling out fibre, and they still own those cables, but most councils in the city are forcing them to remove them since they're so ugly.

Now we have NBN fibre rollout on a national scale, and it's a slow mess... But at least you can choose which slow mess you're associated with. :p
 
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Ooooh, ok. I was wondering why you wouldn't just change provider.
The government owns the cables here in Australia, and then the ISP's lease the nodes. They then try to out-do each other with bonus thrown in stuff you don't really need. So even at my mother's rural farm house, she has the choice of about 20 ISP's.

Before that, when ADSL was the best option, a company started rolling out fibre, and they still own those cables, but most councils in the city are forcing them to remove them since they're so ugly.

Now we have NBN fibre rollout on a national scale, and it's a slow mess... But at least you can choose which slow mess you're associated with. :p
We, the taxpayers, paid for these company's infrastructures. They were allowed to build these wide spanning networks due to government subsidies. This is why all ISPs should be classified as common carriers.
 
We, the taxpayers, paid for these company's infrastructures. They were allowed to build these wide spanning networks due to government subsidies. This is why all ISPs should be classified as common carriers.
Why didn't the government just create its own infrastructure if they were paying for it to begin with? Obviously it would have been profitable, even just to sell it on wholesale...

It just seems silly. Like selling roads to private companies, and then closing down other exits.