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Net Neutrality Repeal: A Victory for Freedom Over the Hysteria of an Internet Apocalypse

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog 

This month marks one year since the FCC repealed the controversial Obama era net neutrality rules. According to America’s left it would be killing the internet as we knew it forever , but in this post internet apocalyptic world one report shows that download speeds are actually up 35.8 percent.

Many will remember the hysteria  when Democrats marched onto Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. and demanded that lawmakers stop a vote to repeal Net Neutrality? Liberals argued, and the Federal Communications Commission decision would take the country back to the stone age, well it didn’t, In fact, internet speeds across the board are faster than ever before.

The internet has been a household commodity available for public use since August 6, 1991 and gone fully mainstream since 1994 ,but according to net neutrality’s most fervent supporters, the internet didn’t truly take off until February 2015, when the FCC passed and adopted the new rules.

Net neutrality sought to define the internet as a public utility, putting it in the same category as water, electric, and telephone services. Doing so left it open to regulatory oversight, specifically when it came to connection speeds and the price providers were allowed to charge consumers for its use.

 Cynics saw it as a power grab , to regulate and control the content you see on the internet .

Since the repeal Internet speeds have gone up by nearly 40 percent, per the 2018 Speedtest U.S. Fixed Broadband Performance Report.

“With gigabit expanding across the nation, fixed broadband speeds in the United States are rapidly increasing. Speedtest® data reveals a 35.8% increase in mean download speed during the last year and a 22.0% increase in upload speed,” internet speed-test company Ookla reports. “As a result, the U.S. ranks 7th in the world for download speed, between Hungary and Switzerland. The U.S. ranks 27th for upload, between Bulgaria and Canada, during Q2-Q3 2018.”

The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.

The growth in speed is important as the internet undergirds more of our daily lives and the wider economy. As internet service providers continue building out fiber networks around the country, expect speeds to increase, though speeds vary widely by region depending on infrastructure and whether or not an area has fiber.

As of October, the U.S. ranked seventh in the world in broadband and 43rd in mobile download speeds — a slight increase in rank from last year. Broadband is twice as fast as mobile. Broadband speed growth is also outpacing mobile. The rollout of 5G mobile connections should help.

Once again demonstrating the fact is that less government regulation results in better outcomes for both companies and consumers. So the next time we are told that a lack of regulation is going to be the end of life as we know it, we would do well to remember what really happened when the government finally freed the internet from its grasp.

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The biggest threat to the Net isn’t cable companies. It’s government.

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Geoffrey A. Manne & R. Ben Sperry from the May 2015 issue – view article in the Digital Edition

Net neutrality” sounds like a good idea. It isn’t.

As political slogans go, the phrase net neutrality has been enormously effective, riling up the chattering classes and forcing a sea change in the government’s decades-old hands-off approach to regulating the Internet. But as an organizing principle for the Internet, the concept is dangerously misguided. That is especially true of the particular form of net neutrality regulation proposed in February by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Net neutrality backers traffic in fear. Pushing a suite of suggested interventions, they warn of rapacious cable operators who seek to control online media and other content by “picking winners and losers” on the Internet. They proclaim that regulation is the only way to stave off “fast lanes” that would render your favorite website “invisible” unless it’s one of the corporate-favored. They declare that it will shelter startups, guarantee free expression, and preserve the great, egalitarian “openness” of the Internet.

No decent person, in other words, could be against net neutrality.

https://reason.com/archives/2015/04/09/how-to-break-the-internet

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How Government-Imposed ‘Net Neutrality’ Is Recipe for Crony Capitalism

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How Government-Imposed ‘Net Neutrality’ Is Recipe for Crony Capitalism
Alden Abbott / @AldenAbbott1 / March 30, 2015

The Federal Communications Commission’s Feb. 26 regulation imposing highly restrictive regulations on the Internet (“Open Internet Order”) threatens to undermine the vibrant economic growth and innovative consumer offerings that have characterized the largely unregulated Internet sector.

Unless and until the Open Internet Order is thrown out by the courts or displaced by a new law of Congress, it will place Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and firms with which they interact under a regulatory cloud, with the heavy hand of government a real threat to curb novel business practices that until now have spawned the emergence of countless new beneficial services, such as iTunes and Netflix.

As Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow James Gattuso recently put it:

Devised for the static monopolies, public-utility regulation will be corrosive to today’s dynamic Internet. There’s a reason the phrase “innovative public utility” doesn’t flows easily from the tongue. The hundreds of rules that come with public utility status are geared to keeping monopolies in line, not encouraging new or innovative ways of doing things. (The FCC has indicated it will refrain from enforcing the bulk of these rules, but if you believe that, I have a water-front property in Wyoming to sell you.)

Even worse, by imposing burdens on big and small carriers alike, the new rules may actually stifle chances of increasing competition among broadband providers.

The Open Internet Order is, however, more than just another Obama administration burden (admittedly a huge one) placed on the American private sector and on economic growth.

Like so many other Obama administration programs, it is an invitation to cronyism. As Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint and Heritage Action President Mike Needham have explained, well-connected businesses use lobbying and inside influence to benefit themselves by having government enact special subsidies, bailouts and complex regulations. Those special preferences undermine competition on the merits firms that lack insider status, harming the public.

The Federal Communications Commission has a long record of shielding powerful incumbents from competition.

The Open Internet Order encourages cronyism by establishing an extremely broad “no unreasonable interference or unreasonable disadvantage” standard for Internet conduct, to be applied on a “case-by-case” basis that balances the benefits of innovation against harm to end users and “edge providers” (firms like Google, LinkedIn and Facebook that provide Internet content and related services). The Federal Communications Commission will provide guidance through “enforcement advisories” and “advisory opinions,” and the Commission’s Enforcement Bureau can request written opinions from outside organizations.

Cutting out the Washington speak and bureaucratese, the Federal Communications Commission is saying that the inherently vague and malleable language that determines whether an Internet business practice is given a thumbs up or thumbs down will turn on “opinions” that will require the input of high-priced lawyers and advisers.

Smaller and emerging firms that cannot afford to pay for influence may be out of luck. Moreover, large established companies that are experts at the “Washington game” and engage in administration-approved activities or expenditures (such as politically correct green projects or the right campaign contributions) may be given special consideration when the Federal Communications Commission sages decide whether an Internet business practice is “unreasonable” or not.

This means that firms that are willing to pay more for better Internet access to challenge such powerful firms as Netflix in video services or Google in search activities or Facebook in social networking may be out of luck, if they are less effective at playing the Washington influence game than at competing on the merits. Those who doubt this need to know that the Federal Communications Commission has a long record of shielding powerful incumbents from competition. For decades the Commission maintained AT&T’s telecom monopoly by keeping out of the market new cellular service and telephone equipment providers, and protected dominant broadcasters by preventing cable companies from providing competing video services.

In sum, the benefits to American consumers and the overall American economy generated by a regulation-free Internet—not to mention the ability of entrepreneurs to thrive, free from cronyism—may soon become a thing of the past, unless action is taken by Congress or the courts. American citizens deserve better than that from their government.

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Cable lobby eyes opening to rewrite Web law

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Cable lobby eyes opening to rewrite Web law
By Julian Hattem – 03/21/15 11:42 AM EDT

Cable and telecom industry lobbyists are launching an effort to convince lawmakers to support new legislation that replaces federal Internet regulations.

After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued its new regulations to treat the Web like a public utility, major companies are now sensing an opening to escape what they consider crushing net neutrality regulations.

“The 400-page order really is starting, to us, a process on the hill,” said one telecommunications industry lobbyist who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the plans.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/236483-cable-lobby-eyes-opening-to-rewrite-web-law

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The legal case against Internet rules

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The legal case against Internet rules
By Mario Trujillo – 03/15/15 06:00 AM EDT

Asked what the Internet ‘general conduct rule’ means, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, ‘We don’t really know.’

As legal challenges loom for new net neutrality regulations, GOP members of the Federal Communications Commission are offering some of the first lines of attack.

The dissenting opinions of the two Republicans ran 80 pages, and they telegraph some of the arguments on which critics could rely as they prepare legal filings to scrap the new rules.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has repeatedly said the commission wrote the rules to withstand challenges from the “big dogs.” And while it is still unclear which organization or company will lead the charge, there is little doubt that a legal battle is brewing.

On Thursday, the public got its first look at the actual text of the net neutrality order, two weeks after it was approved. The rules would reclassify broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communication Act. The new designation will give the commission increased authority to enforce rules barring Internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from prioritizing any piece of Internet traffic above another.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/235672-the-legal-case-against-net-neutrality

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Congressman Leonard Lance (NJ-07) Calls FCC Release of Depression-Era Net Neutrality Regulations regulatory overreach and job-killing

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Congressman Leonard Lance (NJ-07) Calls FCC Release of Depression-Era Net Neutrality Regulations regulatory overreach and job-killing
Mar 12, 2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

WESTFIELD, N.J. — Congressman Leonard Lance (NJ-07), New Jersey’s only Republican member of the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee, commented on the Federal Communications Commission’s release of its Depression-era rules to regulate the Internet.

In January  Lance  stated ,the obvious to everyone except the Obama administration, “The Internet is a medium that continues to experience tremendous technological growth and today’s action by the D.C. Circuit Court striking down the FCC’s efforts to regulate the Internet protects consumers, increases competition and encourages new investment and innovation in broadband.  As a member of the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure that the FCC does not overstep its authority on the issue of network neutrality.”

Lance continued his attack on Net Neutrality in February , “The Federal Communications Commission has voted in favor of a net neutrality plan that is the most dramatic government intervention in the Internet in two decades.  The FCC’s proposal to regulate the Internet will hurt consumers and discourage new investment and innovation in broadband.  It is Congress, not an unelected federal commission, that is tasked with modernizing our Nation’s telecommunications laws and today’s action is a blatant overstep of authority that threatens to stifle one of the Nation’s most important economic engines.”

The FCC’s Release of the Net Neutrality regs on Thursday, Rep. Leonard Lance (NJ-07), seized on the opportunity to condemn what he views as “Depression-era” rules.“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has finally released its sweeping proposal following weeks of secrecy and stonewalling.  The American People now have an opportunity to read the FCC’s 300-plus page plan to regulate the Internet as a utility — a plan I believe will hurt consumers, discourage new investment and innovation in broadband, and lead to billions of dollars in new fees and taxes.  That’s why I have joined many of my colleagues on the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee and introduced H.R. 1212, the Internet Freedom Act, that will put the brakes on this FCC overreach and protect our innovators from these job-killing regulations.”

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Opinion: The FCC’s Net Neutrality Victory Is Anything But

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Opinion: The FCC’s Net Neutrality Victory Is Anything But

The day after the FCC’s net neutrality vote, Washington was downright frigid. I’d spoken at three events about the ruling, mentioning at each that the order could be overturned in court. I was tired and ready to go home.

I could see my Uber at the corner when I felt a hand on my arm. The woman’s face was anxious. “I heard your talk,” she said.“If net neutrality is overturned, will I still be able to Skype with my son in Turkey?”

The question reveals the problem with the supposed four million comments submitted in support of net neutrality. Almost no one really gets it. Fewer still understand Title II, the regulatory tool the FCC just invoked to impose its conception of net neutrality on the Internet.

Some internet engineers and innovators do get it. Mark Cuban rightly calls the uncertainty created by Title II a “Whac-a-Mole environment,” driven by political whims. And telecom lawyers? They love it: whatever happens, the inevitable litigation will mean a decade’s worth of job security.

https://www.wired.com/2015/03/fcc-better-call-saul/

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Netflix May Already Regret Its Support for the FCC’s New Net Neutrality Rules

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Netflix May Already Regret Its Support for the FCC’s New Net Neutrality Rules

The agency’s new Internet rules will only make the web worse.

Over at Wired, Geoffrey Manne, the Executive Director of the International Center for Law and Economics, has one of the very best critical takes on the Federal Communications Commission’s decision last week to overhaul the way broadband Internet is regulated in order to enforce net neutrality rules. Manne makes a couple points that are worth repeating.

The first is that the new regulations give the agency license to go far beyond what supporters of the Title II/net neutrality regime have said is necessary—and, in doing so, may actually inhibit more valuable and effective consumer protection regulations from the Federal Trade Commission:

You were sold a bill of goods when activists told you net neutrality was all about protecting “the next Facebook” from evil ISPs. Think about it: If you’re “the next Facebook,” who do you think is more worried about you? Your ISP, or Facebook itself? If the problem is between Facebook and its potential challengers, hamstringing ISPs is an awfully roundabout way of dealing with it. Especially because we already have a regulatory apparatus to deal with issues related to competition: antitrust laws.

But consider this irony: Now that ISPs are regulated under Title II as common carriers, the Federal Trade Commission can’t enforce its consumer protection laws against them anymore.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be antitrust enforcement, but we did just hobble our most significant and experienced consumer protection authority. That seems like a mistake if we’re enacting rules that purport to protect consumers.

This may not be exactly how it all plays out, but it’s not a bad bet. We don’t know for sure, of course, in part because we haven’t even seen the full FCC order yet; indeed, according to an agency statement earlier this week, it hasn’t even been finalized yet.

https://reason.com/blog/2015/03/05/netflix-may-already-regret-its-support-f

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Internet at a Crossroads

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Internet at a Crossroads

How Government Surveillance Threatens How We Communicate

by Cynthia M. Wong (@cynthiamw), Senior Researcher, Internet and Human Rights

We have reached an inflection point for the future of the Internet. To preserve the Internet as an open, global platform for rights, development, and commerce, we need principled rules to govern digital surveillance and protect privacy that apply to every government.

Until the summer of 2013, the global movement for Internet freedom had been gaining momentum. A diverse range of governments had formed the Freedom Online Coalition and publicly committed to promoting a free, open, and global Internet through coordinated diplomatic efforts, led by the United States, United Kingdom, and their allies. There was broad recognition at the United Nations Human Rights Council that the same rights we enjoy offline must also apply online.

However, global trust in US and UK leadership on Internet freedom has evaporated ever since former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden began releasing evidence of mass surveillance by the NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). In a blistering critique at the UN in September 2013, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff condemned these practices: “In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy,” Rouseff declared. “The right to safety of citizens of one country can never be guaranteed by violating the rights of citizens of another country.”

Snowden’s revelations laid bare the rift between the stated values of the US and UK and their behavior. Even while championing an open and free Internet, these governments were collecting data on hundreds of million people worldwide every day, including, in the case of the US, Dilma Rousseff herself. To make it easier to spy on people online and identify security threats, they have also surreptitiously weakened Internet security, paradoxically making all Internet users less safe and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/essays/internet-crossroads

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FCC chief scheduled for marathon week of testimony on Internet rules

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FCC chief scheduled for marathon week of testimony on Internet rules

By Mario Trujillo – 02/27/15 03:53 PM EST

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s March schedule is filling up fast.

Wheeler has agreed to cap off a marathon week of hearings next month with testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications and Technology on March 19.

The hearing, announced by panel Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), will be his third of the week. He will also testify at the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Oversight Committee.

There is still another request for testimony outstanding from the House Judiciary Committee.

Congressional Republicans have pounced on Wheeler after the FCC recently approved regulations that would reclassify broadband Internet under regulations governing traditional telephones, in order to enforce strong net neutrality rules.

The increased authority, approved by a 3-2 vote on Thursday, is meant to enforce rules to ensure Internet Service Providers do not prioritize any packet of Internet traffic above another.

Committees in the House and Senate have launched investigations probing whether the White House had an undue influence on the rule-making. Republicans have accused Wheeler of bending to White House pressure, because the regulations track closely with recommendations President Obama made to the commission in November.

Republicans are also considering a series of congressional actions to undo the regulations.

Leaders on the House and Senate Commerce committees are pushing a bill to enact many of the net neutrality principles advocates have supported, while also restricting some FCC authority. Another group of Republicans are advocating a more partisan effort to block the regulations through a “fast track” process under the Congressional Review Act.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/234168-wheeler-scheduled-for-marathon-week-of-testimony-on-internet-rules

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Republicans strike back: FCC member invokes Star Wars in net neutrality fight

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Republicans strike back: FCC member invokes Star Wars in net neutrality fight
Dominic Rushe in Washington

Republican Ajit Pai quotes Emperor Palpatine, of Star Wars’s evil galactic empire, in attack on new broadband rules regulating the internet

Republicans invoked Star Wars’s evil galactic emperor in their attacks on new broadband regulations on Friday, warning that the public and Silicon Valley were in for an unpleasant surprise.

Quoting Emperor Palpatine, Republican Ajit Pai, a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said: “Young fool … Only now, at the end, do you understand.”

Meme wars between the two sides of the debate continued through the day, as internet advocates Fight for the Future, Demand Progress and Free Press flew an airplane towing a 2,000 square foot banner over the towering corporate headquarters of the cable giant Comcast, in Philadelphia.

The victory banner depicted the feline internet star Grumpy Cat and the legend: “Comcast: Don’t Mess With the Internet. #SorryNotSorry.”

Referring to Pai’s comments Evan Greer, campaigns director at Fight for the Future, said: “What they didn’t know is that when they struck down the last rules we would come back more powerful than they could possibly imagine.”

Pai and fellow Republican FCC commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who have been consistent critics of the FCC’s new rules, said once they are published people will realise that they will stifle innovation and lead to taxes and increased rates for the public.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/27/republicans-strike-back-fcc-member-star-wars-net-neutrality

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Net Neutrality: Triumph of the Ruling Class

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Net Neutrality: Triumph of the Ruling Class

By Jeffrey Tucker from Beautiful Anarchy link Feb 26, 2015

A triumph of “free expression and democratic principles”? How stupid do they think we are?

It’s been painful to watch the gradual tightening of government control in the name of net neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to rewrite the rules and declare the Internet as a public utility seals the deal. It cartelizes the industry and turns a “Wild West” into a planned system of public management — or at least intends to.

All the rest is a veneer to cover what is actually a power grab.

This whole plot has had all the usual elements. It has a good name and its supporters say it is about stopping private and public control. It’s had the backing of all the top names in content delivery, from Yahoo to Netflix to Amazon. It’s had the quiet support of the leading Internet service providers. The decision to impose the rule has been declared by a tiny group of unaccountable bureaucrats operating with the support of the executive lame duck.

The opposition, in contrast, has been represented by small players in the industry, hardware providers like Cisco, free-market think tanks and disinterested professors, and a small group of writers and pundits who know something about freedom and free-market economics. The public at large should have been rising up in opposition but people are largely ignorant of what’s going on.

https://tucker.liberty.me/2015/02/26/net-neutrality-triumph-of-the-ruling-class/

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Verizon said in a statement , originally released in Morse code the FCC’s move imposes 1930s rules on the Internet.

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Verizon said in a statement , originally released in Morse code  the FCC’s move imposes 1930s rules on the Internet.

FCC Votes In Favor Of Rules Aimed At Enforcing ‘Net Neutrality’

February 26, 2015 2:30 PM

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — Internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile now must act in the “public interest” when providing a mobile connection to your home or phone, under rules approved Thursday by a divided Federal Communications Commission.

The plan, which puts the Internet in the same regulatory camp as the telephone and bans business practices that are “unjust or unreasonable,” represents the biggest regulatory shakeup to the industry in almost two decades. The goal is to prevent providers from slowing or blocking web traffic, or creating paid fast lanes on the Internet, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

The 3-2 vote was expected to trigger industry lawsuits that could take several years to resolve. Still, consumer advocates cheered the regulations as a victory for smaller Internet-based companies which feared they would have to pay “tolls” to move their content.

Verizon said in a statement — which was originally released in Morse code — that the FCC’s move imposes 1930s rules on the Internet.

“The FCC’s move is especially regrettable because it is wholly unnecessary. The FCC had targeted tools available to preserve an open Internet, but instead chose to use this order as an excuse to adopt 300-plus pages of broad and open-ended regulatory arcana that will have unintended negative consequences for consumers and various parts of the Internet ecosystem for years to come,” Verizon said.

https://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/02/26/fcc-votes-in-favor-of-rules-aimed-at-enforcing-net-neutrality/

Net neutrality is the idea that websites or videos load at about the same speed. That means you won’t be more inclined to watch a particular show on Amazon Prime instead of on Netflix because Amazon has struck a deal with your service provider to load its data faster.

Opponents, including many congressional Republicans, said the FCC plan constitutes dangerous government overreach that would eventually drive up consumer costs and discourage industry investment.

House Speaker John Boehner denounced the vote in a statement.

“Overzealous government bureaucrats should keep their hands off the Internet. Today, three appointed by President Obama approved a secret plan to put the federal government in control of the Internet,” Boehner said in a statement. “The text of the proposal is being kept hidden from the American people and their elected representatives in Congress, and the FCC’s chairman has so far refused to testify about it. This total lack of transparency and accountability does not bode well for the future of a free and open Internet, not to mention the millions of Americans who use it every day.”

Republican FCC Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai, who voted against the plan, alleged that President Barack Obama unfairly used his influence to push through the regulations, calling the plan a “half-baked, illogical, internally inconsistent and indefensible document.”

Michael Powell, a former Republican FCC chairman who now runs the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, warned that consumers would almost immediately “bear the burden of new taxes and increased costs, and they will likely wait longer for faster and more innovative networks since investment will slow in the face of bureaucratic oversight.”

https://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/02/26/fcc-votes-in-favor-of-rules-aimed-at-enforcing-net-neutrality/

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3 Charts That Show The FCC is Full of Malarkey on Net Neutrality and Title II

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3 Charts That Show The FCC is Full of Malarkey on Net Neutrality and Title II

Nick Gillespie|Feb. 26, 2015 3:51 pm

As Peter Suderman has noted, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted in favor of reclassifying the Internet from an “information service” to being a “telecommunication service” and thus subject to same sort of Title II regulations that have governed voice telephony for decades.

There will now be a long process of what exactly any of this means, followed by inevitable court battles (the FCC is 0 for 2 in recent attempts to expand its authority over the Internet and is hoping this third time will be the charm) and, eventually, possibly some actual implementation of what FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler insists will be “light touch” regulation. Even though Title II rules give the FCC massive power to involve itself in every aspect of how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) go about their business, Wheeler has promised that the agency will in fact hardly use any of the powers granted to the FCC.

https://reason.com/blog/2015/02/26/3-charts-that-show-the-fcc-is-full-of-ma

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Cuban: FCC Net Regs Will Spill Over, ‘TV As You Know It Is Over’

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Cuban: FCC Net Regs Will Spill Over, ‘TV As You Know It Is Over’

Dallas Mavericks owner and investor Mark Cuban predicted that proposed FCC Internet regulations will end up impacting TV and “your TV as you know it is over” on Thursday’s “Squawk Alley” on CNBC.

Cuban began by predicting “the courts will rule the Internet for the next however many years.” He then explained, “let’s just take it all the way through its logical conclusion. All bits are bits, all bits are equal. If all bits are equal, then let’s look at what a stream bit is an example. So when Henry and I do an interview, and it’s streamed lived on the Internet, there’s a camera, it goes through an encoder, it sends it out via server or some manner to the Internet, you click on Business Insider and you watch the stream, right? Now, let’s look at CNBC on Comcast. There’s cameras right in front of you, they go through a switcher, they go through an encoder, it’s put through a server, it goes to Comcast, and it’s streamed in a managed service environment to television. It’s the exact same thing. And if it’s the exact same thing technologically and all bits are equal, then why shouldn’t CNBC and all TV networks that are delivered on cable, and Telco, and fiber like Verizon, why shouldn’t they be part of the open Internet as well? And if they are and all bits are equal, now, let’s take it one step further. It’s the purview of the FCC now. The FCC, right? So, the FCC now has to apply their same standards to content, don’t they, that they do to television content because that’s where it is and there’s going to be certain citizens who think ‘well now, since all content is delivered over the Internet because all bits are bits, and it’s a fair, and open, and equal Internet — decency standards.’ And remember the FCC is the same agency that fought Nipplegate for eight years over a wardrobe malfunction.”

https://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/02/26/cuban-fcc-net-regs-will-spill-over-tv-as-you-know-it-is-over/