Waxman Net Neutrality Plan: Internet Regulation Lite, Anybody?

Just days before Congress recesses for the upcoming elections, House Commerce Committee chair Henry Waxman stepped into the debate over Internet regulation yesterday, releasing draft legislation to impose certain "neutrality" rules to providers of broadband Internet service. Hammered out in negotiations over the past few weeks with the active participation of Google, Verizon, and other competing broadband industry players, the final product-not surprisingly-looks a lot like the Google-Verizon consensus plan announced last month.

Specifically, the Waxman proposal would ban Internet access providers such as Verizon from blocking content outright but would otherwise allow them to manage the traffic on their networks-and even offer "priority service" for a fee-as long as they do not "unjustly or unreasonably discriminate." This anti-discrimination requirement would not apply to wireless Internet access, which would be kept mostly free of regulation.

In general, the new rules would be enforced on a case-by-case basis by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which would be banned from writing its own rules on the subject. The FCC would also be barred from pursuing its plans to classify broadband Internet service as a type of telecommunications service, which would have permanently subjected it to heavy, telephone - style rules.

Waxman’s plan left many pro-regulation advocates, who wanted a virtual ban on any sort of active traffic management, sputtering. And it could represent a death blow to their efforts: If Waxman - who has rarely met a regulation he didn’t like - doesn't support them, who will?

(Bottom line) Lite or not, policymakers should reject this proposed new regulation.

I’ll never understand why we turn something into conservative or liberal when it has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology or politics. I call them the master manipulators (astro turfers) who know that by claiming the liberals are “for” something is enough to make the conservatives “against” it, or vice versa. They can take any issue that they need public opinion on (even if its against the interests of the public) and turn it political and gain support.

In this case they pulled out “if its government regulation it must be bad card” and here we are discussing net-neutrality. Some might claim that the Bill of Rights are bad because it is effectively a government regulation too. BTW the SPLC absurdly claims those who quote the BoR are potential terrorists, but that’s a different story.

But back to the issue….. Because I strongly believe in liberty for all versus the alternative, I support basic government regulation that says to the ISPs that all traffic on the net will be treated equally (as in neutrality).

The crux of this is that big mainstream media (that once controlled everything we read or viewed) wish to stratify and control the internet for their benefit and our loss. They want tier 1 access, while average bloggers and lower level video servers are relegated to something lesser. They want the equivalent “network TV broadcasting” while everyone else gets the AM radio channel with 500 watt transmitter or a 3 watt CB depending on how much money you have. The other aspect of this is that the ISPs want profits by tiering of services. It comes down to big money and influence versus equal access.

This isn’t conservative versus liberal, it is liberty for all versus corporate dominance for a few. I prefer liberty versus being constrained and I can’t imagine anyone (liberal or conservative) who would want it any other way. If I was a media giant I’d prefer the power and profits and a public constrained to my internet profit center versus having infinite access to others.

BTW you can kiss goodbye to the free aspect (aside from ISP access) for 99% of the internet if the big media gets their wish on this, and it sounds like both Ds and Rs are in the bag.

Pardon the rambling my friend.

“The idea of some 1’s and 0’s being more important than others doesn’t make too much sense to me.”

It’s not “more important” per se. It’s “different priorities”. There are lots of types of service (TOS), some requiring high throughput, some don’t care about mbps but need a fast response time.

The bundles of bits come marked with a TOS, that way the network knows if a bundle wants to go first or if it wants to carry a lot of info even if it’s slighly delayed. And, when the network is saturated, knowing the TOS is useful to planify the best way to keep as many connections as possible running.

In short, knowing which packages should go first is a standard practice to operate a network. Yes, it could be used for evil; like for example giving 95% of the bandwidth to a single user...

“And if I’ve paid for 15Mbps unlimited service...” but then you better check if that’s really what you paid for, and if it was, then your ISP is defrauding you, and you already have a case with no extra legislation needing to be signed.

——————On the other hand, the leftist dreamers who wanted to forbid even necessary traffic management, which would have been a huge burden for the telcos, have lost.——————

Based on some of the things that Sunstein has said, I don’t see the merit here.

And with Kagan on the bench, she’ll rule in favor no matter how many people get silenced.

-—————With a few notable exceptions, net neutrality still exists.————

With all the marxists out there clamouring for this both in and outside of the administration, that’s unlikely.

Their total focus is on the word “neutrality”.

-————These are the guts.——————

Then there’s something missing, perhaps left out on purpose.

Marxists simply do not support true efforts to enshrine free speech. There is simply too much history to say otherwise.

-————Do you honestly see anything about fairness doctrine in there?—————

Based on what you quoted, no. But there’s a reason why the author of the report on “the structural imbalance of talk radio” was A) installed at the FCC and B) supports net neutrality. It wasn’t to protect any free speech.

—————Do you see anything at all regarding content producers, the ones who would be the target of a fairness doctrine?-—————

The way it’s structured, no. But we aren’t dealing with standard democrats and republicans here. These are hardcore revolutionaries. Take note of the last part of the third section:

===========In promulgating rules implementing this subparagraph, the Commission shall at minimum require providers to display or provide links to the required information on an Internet website and to update such information in a timely fashion to reflect material changes in the information subject to this paragraph============

That is *EXACTLY* what Cass talked about, was requiring websites to post information. Now the bill itself states that it’s only for usage of the bill, but as I just said, these are revolutionaries. Ignore the whole of the bill and just focus in on this requirement.

That’s exactly what progressives have done with most other laws, and even the constitution itself. They have been doing it for nearly a century. To think that “well, ok, this time they’ll not omit things because of x y or z reason” is both ludicrous and outlandish.

History did not start today.

It’s all in the precedent. First, they force xyz group to display information strict to data usage. Then they can move the ball down the field a few more lines. Even the fairness doctrine had negative effects on both TV as well as FM and it was only targetted toward AM.

There’s too much progressive and marxist history on all of this; it’s all well established.

And this isn’t a finalized bill. They have been passing incomplete bills and then adding to them after the fact. Have you missed just the last two years of progressive history? That in/of itself should be enough to be convincing.

————————I’ll never understand why we turn something into conservative or liberal when it has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology or politics.———————

In this instance, it’s totally about ideology and the progressives are making that as clear as crystal. When these people say something, I take it seriously.

Here, post a reply to this thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2516189/posts

“Do you take them seriously” is ultimately the question. If you take them seriously, then you’ll see net neutrality for what it really is. If you don’t, then we’ll have to all band together to get our freedom back post-passage as we did with the fairness doctrine.

They are making it clear that they want to silence us. All you have to do is listen.

-———And that has absolutely NOTHING to do with net neutrality, even as proposed in this bill.-—————

It has everything to do with net neutrality.

Sunstein can’t just go silencing people. He needs a vehicle to get it done.

The vehicle to silence talk radio was the fairness doctrine.

Those talk radio guys just aren’t very fair!

And the vehicle to silence people online is net neutrality. Because far too many people are saying unneutral things.

—————The net neutrality issue brings up more strawman arguments from the opposition than I’ve seen for any other issue.——————

I’ve linked to his words in two different posts, one right after another. He fully intends to force websites to have to post “both sides” of an issue.

————I attribute it to the disinformation campaign by the telcos.——————

There’s no need to reference any telcos. I got it right from the horse’s mouth. A horse named Sunstein.

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