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the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, in a significant move that could reshape the landscape of the internet, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted yesterday to reinstate Obama-era net neutrality rules. The decision marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing debate over internet regulation and consumer rights.
Continue reading FCC Votes to Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules: What You Need to Know
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Washington DC, Since the repeal of “net neutrality” took effect on June 11, the U.S. internet speed has gone from 12th to 6th fastest in the world. Critics claimed repealing net neutrality would cause the apocalypse. When FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced late last year that he would be repealing the Obama-era internet regulations known as “net neutrality.” Following this announcement, the internet went into an absolute frenzy.
January 12.2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, FCC’s chairman, Ajit Pai, became the subject of almost daily persecution by left wing loons and bigots. It seems no figure has been as controversial since Al Gore discovered the Internet in the early 90’s.
It all started with the FCC’s decision to scrap an Obama-era rule implemented in 2015 deemed “net neutrality.” The end of net neutrality will allow internet service providers to, if they choose, privilege the content of providers that they own or support. Pai has been since the target of a campaign of harassment that amounts to a national scandal.
HBO lefty host John Oliver was among the first mainstream cultural figures to organize a net-neutrality campaign, which he dubbed “Go FCC Yourself.” He encouraged followers to bombard the FCC’s website with comments supporting the regulation, and so they did.
According to the NY Post , “Those comments were peppered with claims that Pai was a pedophile, a “dirty, sneaky Indian” who should self-deport and reminders that anonymous online hordes maintain the “power to murder Ajit Pai and his family.” Oliver was eventually compelled to release a video urging his followers to dial back the racism and death threats.”
Matt Rooney of the Save New Jersey blog , ” the Internet survived (and thrived) from the day Al Gore invented it up until 2015 when the Obama Administration imposed so-called ‘net neutrality.’ I suspect it’ll function just fine now that the FCC is rolling back those regs.”
The fact is Net neutrality is misnamed. There’s nothing “neutral” about it. The government controls it. The government regulates it. If you like government regulation, if you like how government regulation retards things, slows things down, gums things up, causes mistakes to be made, then by all means support net neutrality. Net Neutrality was an attempt by the federal government to regulate and control your internet browsing and control your internet feed and curtail the number of independent information outlets like the Ridgewood blog.
“Net Neutrality” was nothing more than using “Big Brother” as a gate keeper for the internet.Protesting for Net neutrality is like protesting for high taxes , for less freedom , perhaps a trip to social paradise Venezuela will warm you heart instead.
“Net Neutrality” may sound innocuous enough, but the problem is that the proliferation of things like streaming video and online gaming are taking up increasingly large amounts of bandwidth and are sensitive to delay. This Internet congestion can lead to the degradation of service for all Internet users.
To impose rules against the market price system allocating bandwidth resources prevents innovations which will solve existing issues.
Adam Summers
Monday, June 02, 2008
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in June of 2008.
Over the past six years or so, network neutrality, or “net neutrality,” has risen from an obscure techie buzz phrase to a bona fide political issue and rallying cry for some strange political bedfellows. The current debate comprises competing views on economics, regulation, free speech, property rights, and even the supposed rights of individuals and businesses to a certain Internet experience. Would a net-neutrality mandate protect the rights of some or merely trample the fundamental rights of others and stifle competition and innovation?
Much of the perplexity surrounding net neutrality stems from ambiguity and confusion over the very definition of the term. The concept concerns how information is transmitted over the Internet. Data are moved in “packets” through networks of computers and routers. Currently, these data are processed with little regard to what kind of information they are—be they important medical data, streaming video, or spam.
Generally speaking, net neutrality is the notion that all content, applications, and services should be treated the same by Internet service providers (ISPs). Net-neutrality proponents fear that network operators might someday discriminate against certain types of information by charging fees to particular content providers in exchange for guarantees of higher-quality service or by blocking some content completely.
Such a proposal may sound innocuous enough, but the problem is that the proliferation of things like streaming video and online gaming are taking up increasingly large amounts of bandwidth and are sensitive to delay. This Internet congestion can lead to the degradation of service for all Internet users. Slight delays may hardly be noticeable in e-mail or web-browser applications, but can be more serious for video-content providers or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which allows people to make phone calls over the Internet.
Then there is the question whether the government has any right to tell ISPs how to manage their own networks and pricing structures, which will be discussed in some detail below.
https://fee.org/articles/net-neutrality-or-government-brutality/
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that an open and free internet is vital for America in the 21st century.
During a speech at the Newseum on Wednesday, Pai said he plans to roll back the net-neutrality regulations and to restore the light-touch regulatory system established by President Bill Clinton and Congressional Republicans by the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Net neutrality passed under former Democrat Tom Wheeler’s FCC in 2010. The rule, known as the Open Internet Order, reclassified the internet as a public monopoly. Critics chided the rule, stating that it would diminish the freedom of the internet. Proponents argue that the regulations prevent Internet service providers from discriminating against content providers.
Chairman Pai said during his speech that the internet prospered before net neutrality was enacted. Pai said, “The internet is the greatest free market success in American history.”
Breitbart News asked the FCC chief why he thinks that net neutrality is a problem, and why we must eliminate the rule. He said:
Number one there was no problem to solve, the internet wasn’t broken in 2015. In that situation, it doesn’t seem me that preemptive market-wide regulation is necessary. Number two, even if there was a problem, this wasn’t the right solution to adopt. These Title II regulations were inspired during the Great Depression to regulate Ma Bell which was a telephone monopoly. And the broadband market we have is very different from the telephone market of 1934. So, it seems to me that if you have 4,462 internet service providers and if a few of them are behaving in a way that is anticompetitive or otherwise bad for consumer welfare then you take targeted action to deal with that. You don’t declare the entire market anticompetitive and treat everyone as if they are a monopolist.
Going forward we are going to propose eliminating that Title II classification and figure out the right way forward. The bottom line is, everyone agrees on the principles of a free and open internet what we disagree with is how many regulations are needed to preserve the internet.
By RUDY TAKALA • 8/13/15 3:09 PM
A Washington, D.C., appeals court is set to hear arguments later this year on new net neutrality rules, which critics say could lead to government regulators censoring websites such as the Drudge Report and Fox News.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral arguments against the Federal Communications Commission’s rules on Dec. 4. A panoply of amicus briefs filed with the court last week offer a preview of the arguments.
In its February vote on net neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission stated that broadband providers do not have a right to free speech. “Broadband providers are conduits, not speakers … the rules we adopt today are tailored to the important government interest in maintaining an open Internet as a platform for expression,” the majority held in its 3-2 vote.
The rules, which went into effect in June, require that broadband providers — such as Verizon or Comcast — offer access to all legal online content. It did not place such a requirement on “edge providers,” such as Netflix and Google. The FCC defines edge providers as “any individual or entity that provides any content, application, or service over the Internet, and any individual or entity that provides a device used for accessing any content, application, or service over the Internet.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/drudge-fox-news-could-be-censored-under-new-rules/article/2570147
GUEST POST WRITTEN BYFred Campbell
Mr. Campbell is executive director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology and a former chief of the FCC’s wireless bureau.
Is watching Netflix on the broadband Internet more like (A) watching cable television or (B) talking on the telephone? Common sense suggests the answer is “A,” and the court that overturned the previous open Internet rules chose “A”; the First Amendment demands it. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nevertheless chose “B.”
In the 2015 Open Internet Order, the FCC concluded the Internet is the functional equivalent of the public switched telephone network and is subject to the common carrier regulations in Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. If it had admitted the Internet offers communications capabilities that are functionally equivalent to the printing press, mail carriage, newspaper publishing, over-the-air broadcasting, and cable television combined, it would have been too obvious that its decision to classify broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers is unconstitutional. Like all other means of disseminating mass communications, broadband Internet access is a part of the press that the First Amendment protects from common carriage regulation.
by JOEL GEHRKE May 2, 2015 3:24 PM
Carly Fiorina made the case for her prospective presidential candidacy on Saturday, just days before she’s expected to officially jump into the race, telling a room full of conservative activists and writers that she has the policy background and the political skills to beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. “Hillary Clinton may be a vulnerable candidate, in many ways, but we should not underestimate her,” Fiorina said at the National Review Institute Ideas Summit. “We have to have a nominee who can take punches, but we [also] have to have a nominee who will throw punches.”
Fiorina’s political ambitions have met with derision among political experts, given that the only people to serve as president without holding prior elected office were war heroes. Fiorina argued that her experience rising from the secretarial pool to CEO at Hewlett Packard makes her a true outsider who can direct the general disgust voters feel toward Washington, D.C. — and toward crony capitalism in particular — at Hillary Clinton.
Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/article/417819/railing-against-crony-capitalism-carly-fiorina-makes-her-case-joel-gehrke
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality
BY TOM WHEELER
02.04.15 | 11:00 AM |
After more than a decade of debate and a record-setting proceeding that attracted nearly 4 million public comments, the time to settle the Net Neutrality question has arrived. This week, I will circulate to the members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed new rules to preserve the internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression. This proposal is rooted in long-standing regulatory principles, marketplace experience, and public input received over the last several months.
Broadband network operators have an understandable motivation to manage their network to maximize their business interests. But their actions may not always be optimal for network users. The Congress gave the FCC broad authority to update its rules to reflect changes in technology and marketplace behavior in a way that protects consumers. Over the years, the Commission has used this authority to the public’s great benefit.
The internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance, if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network. The modems that enabled the internet were usable only because the FCC required the network to be open.
https://www.wired.com/2015/02/fcc-chairman-wheeler-net-neutrality/
Internet rules stir passionate debate
The Federal Communications Commission is being bombarded with passionate calls for a wholesale change to the way the Internet is regulated.
While reclassifying Internet providers to treat them like phone companies would be an uphill political battle, companies, lawmakers and members of the public are pressing the agency to do it anyway.
The FCC has received more than 1 million comments about its proposed rewrite of net neutrality rules. Amid profanity-filled diatribes and threats against FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, many of the comments ask the agency to change the way it regulates Internet providers.
Under the agency’s old net neutrality rules, Internet providers were regulated as “Title I” or “information” services.
Phone companies, in contrast, are classified as “Title II” or “telecommunications” services, meaning they are regulated more like utility companies.
While Wheeler initially focused on rewriting the net neutrality rules under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, he began focusing more seriously on reclassification after a backlash from Democrats on the Commission and on Capitol Hill.
The pressure from lawmakers and industry players — including Internet companies such as Netflix and Mozilla — has intensified since May, when the FCC voted to move ahead with Wheeler’s plan to rewrite the net neutrality rules, which
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/212748-fcc-bombarded-with-calls-for-tougher-internet-rules#ixzz385Z4xJEP
Net Neutrality: Don’t Let the FCC Control the Internet!
Nick Gillespie | May 26, 2014
By the time you read this, the Internet—that glorious system of tubes that brings us everything from cat videos to free amateur porn to (trigger warning! NSFW!)free amateur cat porn—might already be dead.
That’s the consensus from proponents of so-called net neutrality, who are alarmed and dismayed by a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal that might eventually allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to charge users different rates to transmit data across their networks.
The result could be that big companies with a lot of cash could use “fast lanes” to deliver content, while smaller, poorer outfits might be stuck in “slow lanes” that would turn off potential users and customers (who wants to wait for a site to load or a video to buffer?). Such “paid prioritization” would, we’re warned, violate cyberspace’s bedrock principle of digital non-discrimination, lead to the “death of the democratic Internet”, and even kill “the dreams of young entrepreneurs.”
Yeah, not so much. Reports of the imminent death of the Internet’s freewheeling ways and utopian possibilities are more wildly exaggerated and full of spam than those emails from Mrs. Mobotu Sese-Seko.
In fact, the real problem isn’t that the FCC hasn’t shown the cyber-cojones to regulate ISPs like an old-school telephone company or “common carrier,” but that it’s trying to increase its regulatory control of the Internet in the first place.
Under the proposal currently in play, the FCC assumes an increased ability to review ISP offerings on a “case-by-case basis” and kill any plan it doesn’t believe is “commercially reasonable.” Goodbye fast-moving innovation and adjustment to changing technology on the part of companies, hello regulatory morass and long, drawn-out bureaucratic hassles.
https://reason.com/archives/2014/05/26/net-neutrality-dont-let-the-fcc-control
F.C.C., in a Shift, Backs Fast Lanes for Web Traffic
By EDWARD WYATTAPRIL 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — The principle that all Internet content should be treated equally as it flows through cables and pipes to consumers looks all but dead.
The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday that it would propose new rules that allow companies like Disney, Google or Netflix to pay Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and other content to their customers.
The proposed changes would affect what is known as net neutrality — the idea that no providers of legal Internet content should face discrimination in providing offerings to consumers, and that users should have equal access to see any legal content they choose.
The proposal comes three months after a federal appeals court struck down, for the second time, agency rules intended to guarantee a free and open Internet.
Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, defended the agency’s plans late Wednesday, saying speculation that the F.C.C. was “gutting the open Internet rule” is “flat out wrong.” Rather, he said, the new rules will provide for net neutrality along the lines of the appeals court’s decision.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0