The Senate has voted to save net neutrality, but don’t get your hopes up: there’s still a long, likely impossible journey ahead if the policy is to be saved in the immediate future.
In a 52-47 vote today, senators voted to overturn the Federal Communication Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which took net neutrality rules off the books. They were able to do so using the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, which allows Congress to reverse recent decisions by government agencies. Republican control of Congress means that such a measure wouldn’t normally even make it up for a vote; but the CRA allows senators to force a vote by obtaining 30 signatures.
All 49 Democrats voted in favor, as well as Republican Senators Susan Collins, of Maine; John Kennedy, of Louisiana; and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska.
This is a step in the right direction for the US, but corruption runs deep, so this fight is far, far from over. Still, a victory is a victory.
This is going to unpopular.
But I am conflicted. I don’t like Government interference (btw I am a Libertarian from the UK).
However I do think there should be net neutrality.
I think the market should sort it out ideally, but there simply isn’t the infrastructure available in the US. In the UK and they took net neutrality away, it would be an ISP selling point.
coherence,
Almost all of us think the market should sort it out ideally. However the free market becomes an utter failure under monopolies and oligopolies. Decades ago blind faith in the free market might have been forgiven, but these days one industry after another we’ve witnessed the harms of consolidation and the downfall of competition, all under the “free market”. The big fish are not succeeding through better products and services, which was the intention, but rather because they are able to strongarm the rest of the market (and even government itself). This hurts consumers, employees, startups, etc…it helps wallstreet, but unless we are in favor of aristocracy, then we desperately need an economy with more emphasis on merit.
I get why people hate government intervention, but we need to recognize that it’s the corporations that have hijacked the free market to benefit insanely wealthy CEOs at the expense of society. The healthiest thing to do would be to break up all these massive corporations and then let them compete on merit. Alas, I’m under no delusions that this will happen, government is bought by corporate interests, and given current events I’m not optimistic that things are about to get better.
I significantly broadened the scope of discussion, but only because I feel what is happening with carriers is a consequence of much larger economic trends.
“free market,” “laissez faire,” neoliberalism, whatever you call it, it’s just purity – it has to be either all free, or all planned. This black and white false dichotomy is just so childish and tired. I’m so tired of simplistic good and evil thinking applied to economics. People need to grow up already.
I’m not sure where you’re getting this, certainly not from anything Alfman wrote above.
Net neutrality in not “planning”. It is simply trying to ensure a level playing field, for both consumers and providers. Nothing else.
Trump administration had the nerve to call anti net neutrality action “Restoring Internet Freedom Order”? …are they that delusional or simply that manipulative?
Net neutrality is about freedom, for users to access what they want without impediment, and for services to work likewise. ISPs are just necessary evil we all have to deal with to accomplish what the net is about (it’s certainly not about freedom of ISPs to interfere with the above two freedoms)
100% of Democrats voted to restore net neutrality.
6% of Republicans voted to restore it.
It’s pretty obvious on which side the corruption runs deep.
It’s true. Republicans have always been closer to money interests. Corruption is a problem in both of our two parties – but suggesting they are equally corrupt is not backed up by the facts.
…but, when a vote comes up that the donors want, like confirming Gina Haspel, and not enough Republicans are on board, you see Democrats switch to make up the difference.
Both parties are corrupt and the corrupt Democrats are paid to give the illusion of not being as bad.
For example, the Republicans weren’t consistently dominant in U.S. politics between 1981 and 2002, but this study reveals a consistent problem with policy decisions:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/art…
(TL;DR: There was essentially no correlation between the average citizen’s preference and what got passed and a near perfect correlation between what economic elites wanted and what got passed.)
Edited 2018-05-17 20:30 UTC
You’re implying a moral equivalence where there isn’t one. It’s like saying that Bashar al-Assad and Justin Trudeau are both corrupt and, therefore, equivalent to one another.
Name the Democrats and who are “paid … to give the illusion of not being as bad” and who is paying them.
As one example, here is a complete list of the members of the House and Senate who received money from Comcast in 2018 (primarily via their PACs):
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000000461&cycle=2…
Conversely, as another example, here’s a breakdown of Nancy Pelosi’s top donors:
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary/nancy-pelosi…
Those in charge at corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit for their shareholders, which means spending is always a “return on investment” question. If this a case of “charitable giving in exchange for good PR”, it’s a pretty poor one.
Edited 2018-05-17 22:18 UTC
Political donations are not “charitable giving.”
When you donate to a campaign, it’s supposed to be because that candidate shares your views on important issues. Donations are not supposed to be for the corrupt purpose of buying votes from elected representatives.
When it is in USofA it is called “lobbying” Tom, only people from less enlightened countries (everyone else) suffer from corruption.
Get your facts straight pal.
/s
…this is a loss. A giant one.
Anyone that thinks that more government involvement in the Internet is a good idea has lost their ever-loving mind.
I can’t believe in 2018 I still have to point this out.
So-called “net neutrality” is inherently evil. The Democrats tried and failed to take us down this very short road to Hell. Thank God people with sense stopped it.
I mean this in the most respectful way: You’re an idiot if you think that leaving this up to massive, for-profit corporations will benefit the consumer.
Broadband will use their monopolies and oligopolies throughout the country to screw their customers and the competing content competitors.
You want to give Comcast the ability to interfere with the ability of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, CBS All Access, and HBO Now to deliver content. If too many subscribers drop premium channels from their Comcast TV service, then Comcast starts crippling the competition. If Netflix et al. won’t pay for faster speed, the consumers are left with “buffering” messages, pauses, fall-back to lower resolution and/or more compression, and so on.
You want to allow broadband providers to charge twice for the same bandwidth. I pay for given amount of bandwidth, but if I use it to watch Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and so on, you want my ISP to be able to charge the content providing company for the bandwidth I already bought!
“Competing content competitors” should have been “competing content providers.” Caught it after editing time expired. Sorry.
We found the edge lord everybody!