Posted on 06/09/2006 5:26:45 AM PDT by mathprof
The U.S. House of Representatives definitively rejected the concept of Net neutrality on Thursday, dealing a bitter blow to Internet companies like Amazon.com, eBay and Google that had engaged in a last-minute lobbying campaign to support it.
By a 269-152 vote that fell largely along party lines, the House Republican leadership mustered enough votes to reject a Democrat-backed amendment that would have enshrined stiff Net neutrality regulations into federal law and prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from others.
Of the 421 House members who participated in the vote that took place around 6:30 p.m. PT, the vast majority of Net neutrality supporters were Democrats. Republicans represented most of the opposition.
The vote on the amendment came after nearly a full day of debate on the topic, which prominent Democrats predicted would come to represent a turning point in the history of the Internet. [snip]
At issue is a lengthy measure called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act, which a House committee approved in April. Its Republican backers, along with broadband providers such as Verizon and AT&T, say it has sufficient Net neutrality protections for consumers, and more extensive rules would discourage investment in wiring American homes with higher-speed connections.[snip]
Defenders of the COPE Act, largely Republicans, dismissed worries about Net neutrality as fear mongering.
"I want a vibrant Internet just like they do," said Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican. "Our disagreement is about how to achieve that. They say let the government dictate it...I urge my colleagues to reject government regulation of the Internet."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.zdnet.com ...
"How? They invested that money based on the profits they make under the current neutral model."
Because they envision increasing profits through business models that "Net Neutrality" would make illegal. They also envision expansions in bandwidth and access that will cost money. Under your preferred business model, those increased costs would be passed on to end users like the poor student that some Net Neutrality proponents mistakenly claim to be protecting. What cable companies have actually been proposing is passing those costs on to high bandwidth consumers like Google, who profit heavily from those upgrades.
However, it is not guaranteed.
The telcos won't lose customers per se. Just those who want reliable liberal internet. Basically, not guaranteeing Net Neutrality enables the telco to say, "If you don't want restrictions as to what you can access, you need to pay us $XX per month. And then raise the cost enough to ensure a fat profit margin.
All considering that the Internet was a government invention to begin with, and remains regulated primarily at the behest of the United States.
I don't have a problem with companies making a buck. I do have a problem however with them using underhanded and shady tactics to achieve a profit margin. Guaranteeing Net Neutrality with the force of law erases this option, and those who do violate it to face fines.
Those profits came by charging people to access the Internet reliably and then ensuring service. The companies are allowed to adjust their access rates by themselves to a point.
But to charge people and webmasters to access more sites--and then tying service quality with it is simply wrong. Pure and simple. But if Net Neutrality isn't guaranteed by law, any greedy and unscrupulous Joe TelcoExec can hike rates or cut your service.
Doing this results in the modern equivalent of the "robber barons" that polluted the American economy from the Civil War to the Great Depression. Their business practices were a big part of the market hype in the Roaring Twenties--which in turn ultimately led to the Crash of 1929.
The biggest point with Net Neutrality is that your ISP/telco isn't supposed to care what you do on the Internet--just as long as you're using the service legally (paying for it and abiding by the terms of service and applicable federal, state, and local laws).
Just the sheer fact that Telcos are pushing for the green light to control and/or railroad you, their customer, in their own e-fiefdom should make just about any conservative boil over...
How much of this is gray? Seems to me there is an awful lot of internet connectivity NOT in the hands of the 'few major backbone providers,' and I don't know that 'everybody's traffic' goes through them at all. The internet was built to avoid traffic jams at tollbooths, and what will happen is that providers who want to charge sites for speedy upload will suddenly become less likely to provide service to those sites by users, so these providers will also be less attractive to users.
It's worse than that. Without net neutrality, an ISP can simply drop FR packets even if JimRob offers to pay for premium service if the ISP's boss likes his lunch dates with George Soros more than he likes JimRob's money.
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