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Alert

FCC approves net neutrality

Feb 26, 2015 2:23AM PST

Discussion is locked

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good
Feb 26, 2015 2:41AM PST

I couldn't see them doing differently though.

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I'm confused about this
Feb 26, 2015 2:45AM PST

They say they intend to keep the 'net free and open, so why the need for this new regulation? What changes? Pardon my skepticism, but I have to agree with the FCC commissioner Ajit (whatever his last name is) that this is a foot in the door to future regulations. Remember all the lies we heard about Obamacare? I'm sorry, but this sure sounds like the same kind of thing to me. I'd love to be wrong, but I've seen and heard too many things like this from bureaucrats and politicians over my many years.

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Me too
Feb 26, 2015 2:48AM PST

I can see another utility tax getting tacked on too
Digger

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Both you and digger
Feb 26, 2015 2:55AM PST

make some worrisome points. However the only way to be sure services like netflix and other streaming services aren't throttled by Verizon, Comcast, et al, is to have some sort of oversight to insure fairness. Yes?

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Does it keep
Feb 26, 2015 3:03AM PST

Verizon or Comcast from throttling My speed if I use Netflix or Amazon Prime ?
Digger

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have to wait and see?
Feb 26, 2015 3:09AM PST

It's supposed to, that's the concept behind "net neutrality", no discrimination in service.

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We used to have something called free enterprise
Feb 26, 2015 3:09AM PST

My ISP, Comcast, already limits the amount of bandwidth all its customers can use without extra charge, so why shouldn't they be able to do it with the likes of Netflix? If data streaming companies are monopolizing the bandwidth and causing the ISPs to spend millions on upgrades, why shouldn't they be allowed to charge for that? That would seem what's FAIR to me. ISPs don't have a monopoly like utilities do, so why treat them so?

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I got this from Mozilla today
Feb 26, 2015 6:27AM PST

So, I guess it's a win?

James,
Thank You for helping protect our public resource

Today will go down in history as the day we won real protections for net neutrality.

After a long campaign, this morning the FCC voted for what we demanded, and what a few big cable companies did not want: strong, enforceable net neutrality rules based on classifying broadband as a Title II communications service. Huge sums were spent lobbying Congress to try to limit what we can create and build and do online.

We accomplished what seemed impossible: we stood together, took on the goliaths, and won.

This was no small feat. It was the biggest show of public engagement the FCC had ever seen -- a mass movement of historic proportions. Millions of public comments flooded Washington on this issue. By banding together, we've helped to keep the Web open and accessible for everyone, equally.

What's next? We've known all along that cable companies would turn to the courts if they lost with the FCC, and that's exactly what they're preparing to do, but they likely have a very difficult road ahead. The President himself spoke in favor of strong rules to protect net neutrality. The FCC chairman, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist, led the FCC to a vote on the rules we asked for. And anti-net neutrality bills in Congress have fizzled.

We have built a powerful and unified grassroots movement, and we aren't going anywhere.

We all know this won't be the last time we will need to join together to protect the Web from those that want to control it. With the net neutrality fight underway in the European Union, this victory in the U.S. will hopefully boost efforts there. Mozilla's policy experts are also keeping an eye on legislation about surveillance, privacy, and online safety and security just on the horizon.

A handful of growing empires will no doubt try again to take more control of what is possible and what is imaginable on the Web. I hope we can call on you to stand with us when the time comes. Strength in numbers -- that's how we win.

Today we celebrate -- click here to get a special photo to use for your Facebook profile to help commemorate this awesome victory.

Thanks again for your work to make today's outcome possible and for all that you do to protect the open Web.

Mark

Mark Surman
Executive Director

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(NT) If you like regulations & taxes, you'll love it.
Feb 26, 2015 6:35AM PST
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will costs go up???
Feb 26, 2015 6:16AM PST

now we will get to see how much costs will go up. since it will be classified as an utility, I wonder if the service providers will be forced to provide service to rural areas. If so, that means costs for everyone will be going up.

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I would think this belongs in a different forum
Feb 26, 2015 11:10PM PST

but I can't point to which. It's certainly not about spyware. Of course our government is likely the greatest perpetrator of it but that's a different topic. I really can't pick which forum would be best because the two general chit-chat ones here have their own personalities.

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Which is why
Feb 27, 2015 12:35AM PST

I put it here.
A Mod can move it wherever he/she thinks is best.
Digger

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So far only 2 folk I know can move this.
Feb 27, 2015 12:45AM PST

Just a FYI here.

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ATT & Verizon are livid over this
Feb 27, 2015 4:36AM PST

The only thing that bothers me about this is govt oversight of almost anything is usually either the kiss of death or the end of technological improvement, and secondly another excuse to add yet another tax, concerns already expressed by wpgwpg above. The economic problem is how to avoid non-beneficial monopolies (some I believe ARE beneficial), but without creating cut-throat competition that can be even more detrimental to decent products and services at affordable prices? Consider the automobile before Ford's factory production of such; the cost was so high that only the rich could afford them, but Ford created almost a monopoly on automobiles and then lower economic classes were also able to afford them, and the added speed of deliveries of goods, the greater distances traveled in a day, all these contributed to a boom in economy, till FDR took a recession and turned it into a Great Depression, which then took us into war in a final bid to recover economically from Socialist policies of the New Deal.


http://www.zdnet.com/article/at-t-verizon-lash-out-at-fcc-after-net-neutrality-ruling/?tag=nl.e540&s_cid=e540&ttag=e540&ftag=TRE5369823

Jim Cicconi, senior vice president of external and legislative affairs who responsible for AT&T's global public policy organization and the AT&T Foundation, took things to a personal level in the first line of his response:

Perhaps I'm betraying my years, but in Washington policy circles there has always been tension between those interested in solving problems and those who see policy disputes as a test of ideology. I'd readily admit falling into the former camp, and have the policy scars to prove it.

Obviously they're on the same page when it comes to decrying net neutrality as outdated and even archaic.

Cicconi questioned, "What doesn't make sense, and has never made sense, is to take a regulatory framework developed for Ma Bell in the 1930s and make her great grandchildren, with technologies and options undreamed of eighty years ago, live under it."

Verizon went back in time even further, lamenting "the Federal Communications Commission approved an order urged by President Obama that imposes rules on broadband Internet services that were written in the era of the steam locomotive and the telegraph."

Both parties promised to keep fighting the decision.
(more in article)

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Thought I brought up the taxes
Feb 27, 2015 10:16AM PST

as in...

Me too

by itsdigger - 2/26/15 10:48 AM

In Reply to: I'm confused about this by wpgwpg

I can see another utility tax getting tacked on too
Digger

Have it your way James
Digger

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I don't think the government regulates anything for free
Feb 27, 2015 5:45PM PST

Adding another layer or product to the already bloated regulatory industry will mean more government related job creation. How many?...who knows. It will also take time for the new division to get put into place and begin writing the rules. From there, the new regulatory group will need to sustain its relevance. That means it will need to write new rules on a regular basis whether they are needed or not. Isn't that the way government works?...never resolve anything completely. Your job depends on it. Happy

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we are always in the middle
Mar 6, 2015 11:52PM PST

between monopolistic practices on one side and over regulation by govt on the other, and the only real winners are both of them.