Free Republic

A Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission wants to see changes that could narrow the scope of new net neutrality rules set for a vote on Thursday. Mignon Clyburn, one of three Democrats on the FCC, has asked Chairman Tom Wheeler to roll back some of his provisions before the full commission votes on them, FCC officials said. The request — which Wheeler has yet to respond to — puts the chairman in the awkward position of having to either roll back his proposals, or defend the tough rules and convince Clyburn to back down. It’s an ironic spot for...

As the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission toy with regulating aspects of the Internet, critics on those agencies are warning that speed and freedom of speech are in jeopardy. In a joint column, Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai and Federal Election Commission member Lee Goodman, leveled the boom on the Obama-favored regulations, essentially charging that it will muck up the freedom the nation has come to expect from the Internet. In one key passage of the column published in Politico, the duo wrote Monday that heavy-handed FCC regulations like those imposed in Europe will significantly slow down

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is out with a new message to fight net neutrality: “If you like your wireless plan, you should be able to keep it.” Borrowing the phrase from President Obama, the Republican commissioner penned an op-ed with Federal Trade Commissioner (FTC) Joshua Wright, raising concerns with Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet. While the president insists his plan is for a “free and open Internet,” Pai and Wright said net neutrality is anything but. “If you like your wireless plan, you should be able to keep it. But new federal regulations may take away your freedom...

In the months and years since the recession began in December 2007, foreign-born workers have experienced a net increase in employment, while native-born Americans have experienced a net loss. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released updated employment data Friday. The new BLS figures reveal that since the start of the recession in 2007 — which is said to have ended in June 2009 — the number of foreign workers employed in the United States rose by 1.7 million. In December 2007 the number of foreign-born workers was 22,810,000 by January 2009 the number has increased to 24,553,000. Meanwhile the number...

Republicans in Congress are doing a 180 on net neutrality as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to issue new rules within weeks. For years, GOP lawmakers have adamantly opposed any rules requiring Internet service providers to treat all Web traffic equally, calling them unnecessary and an example of Washington overreach. But now that the FCC is moving toward issuing a tough net neutrality order that would subject broadband to utility-style regulation — an approach endorsed by President Barack Obama — top Republicans in both chambers are making plans to legislate their own rules to ensure the agency doesn’t go too...

Microsoft is planning to open source the full server-side .NET core stack and to take that open-sourced .NET core to Linux and Mac OS X, alongside Windows.Microsoft officials announced the company's latest .NET programming-model plans on the opening day of the Connect(); developer-focused event on November 12.In April 2014, Microsoft announced plans to open source a number of its developer technologies, including ASP.NET, the Roslyn .NET compiler platform, the .NET Micro Framework, .NET Rx and the VB and C# programming languages. Microsoft officials said they planned to make these technologies available via a newly created .Net Foundation.Today, the company is adding...

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, As spring unfolds here in the Northern Hemisphere, the future of the free and open Internet hangs in the balance. As such, I strongly believe everyone should have at least some understanding of what is at stake. When most people hear or read the words “net neutrality” their eyes glaze over with a feeling of confusion and despair: “I can’t remember, am I supposed to be for or against this?” This is exactly how the lawyers and lobbyists in D.C. want it, but unless the citizenry is informed we could lose the...

Net very slow here. Is it local or regional or national?

This one will probably come as a surprise to many of you. Despite the best (read: worst) efforts of the Obama administration and the counter-intuitive nature of what you’re paying for gas and heating bills this winter, the United States is on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time in more than half a century. The U.S. exported more oil-based fuels than it imported in the first nine months of this year, making it likely that 2011 will be the first time since 1949 that the nation is a net exporter of such goods,...

Late last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took what is being called "the final step" towards implementing their illegal Net Neutrality regulations. You may recall, that back on December 21, the FCC bypassed government regulations and seized control of the Internet -- delivering what many believe is a knockout blow to one of the last, great free-market frontiers our nation and the world has ever seen. According to the organization Less Government, regardless of a multiple lawsuits, a move by the House of Representatives and a D.C. Circuit Court unanimously ruling that the FCC had no authority to take...

...In fact, Section 706 calls for the expansion of broadband via deregulation, not further regulations. The Court of Appeals for D.C. even ruled that Net Neutrality cannot be justified under this particular section of the Telecommunications Act. As has been seen in The Netherlands, Net Neutrality is extremely detrimental to the telecommunications industry. The largest Dutch wireless company, KPN, has been forced to increase their prices by a significant percentage in order to recoup their financial losses as a result of the new, onerous regulations. In the current economic status, furthering the financial and regulatory burden on companies, and, consequently,...

It's nice to know someone is prospering during the 'Obama years'. The rest of us are watching our home values and retirement investments plummet. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reported a minimum net worth for 2010 that was more than 50 percent higher than the prior year, according to personal financial disclosure forms made public by the Clerk of the House on Wednesday. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) also saw a healthy growth in his minimum net worth, but the total change in his case is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, while Pelosi’s is in the millions. Pelosi, who...

We have discussed quite a bit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 21 unauthorized, unilateral Internet power grab – instigated and rammed through by its Chairman Julius Genachowski so as to impose the ridiculous notion that is Network Neutrality. We have time and again demonstrated how untethered to Reality the attempted imposition of Net Neutrality on the working Web actually is. Meanwhile, the Media Marxists have incessantly scolded us – for in fact more than six years now – that the end of the Internet as we know it was nigh unless we immediately imposed Net Neutrality. During which time...

As a result, the Castro regime has intensified its crackdown on dissident groups in an attempt to ensure that what is happening in Cairo will not happen in Havana, according to some observers. "We do see instances of repression starting since the Egyptian upheaval. There have been brutal beatings on dissidents," said Susel Perez, of the Cuba Transition Project, at the University of Miami. " It is a direct sign from the Cuban government that this is something that will not be tolerated on the island." In a 53-minute video leaked last week, a Cuban counter-intelligence staffer warned an audience...

Search neutrality, the belief that search results ought to be impartial, is quickly becoming a hot-button issue in Washington. Critics have accused Internet giants Bing and Google of producing self-serving results, implying that, say, the latter engine's algorithm has been tweaked to push links to Google Maps or YouTube, rather than a competitor's site. Though Google has denied any such action, the question now is: Should federal authorities be tasked with regulating search results on Google and Bing, or might that amount to a "government takeover" of the Internet? According to a new report by Rasmussen, the vast majority of...

Rep. Marsha Blackburn introduced legislation Wednesday to deny the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulatory oversight over the Internet, which the Tennessee Republican insisted was the “sole prerogative of Congress” to administer. “I agree that the Internet faces a number of challenge, ” Blackburn said in a release. “Only Congress can address those challenges without compounding them. Until we do, the FCC and other federal bureaucracies should keep their hands off the ‘net.”

Milton Friedman had it right. Business is no friend of free markets. The Federal Communication Commission’s “net neutrality” ruling is more evidence of this. What the FCC should have done is called it a year, went on holiday and left the Internet alone. Instead, it found a solution in search of a problem. And that solution was more or less supplied by Verizon and Google last August. To a great extent, the new rules codify that blueprint, which — at least as those companies see things — acknowledged both the inevitability of some government rule-making and the need to better...

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), ranking member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee filed an amendment to an appropriations bill aimed at preventing the Federal Communications Commission from adopting net neutrality regulation. Hutchison's amendment, co-signed by John Ensign (R-Nev.) and six other Republican lawmakers, would "prohibit the FCC from using any appropriated funds to adopt, implement or otherwise litigate any network neutrality based rules, protocols or standards." An FCC spokeswoman declined comment on the amendment.

According to a story on PJM by Charlie Martin, in 2004 Comcast and some of the other big providers started looking at what data was being sent, and decided to start throttling down how much data of certain types — most notably streaming audio and video — people could receive. This tended to irritate people who watch their favorite shows on Hulu or movies on Netflix (I happen to be one of the people who prefers his shows this way). Thus, the push for net neutrality began. On its face, the idea of net neutrality seems like a good one:...

On December 1, FCC Commission Chair Julius Genachowski made a speech announcing proposed rules through which the FCC proposed to establish “net neutrality.” There is much controversy about the rules and about “net neutrality” in general. The frustrating part: when you examine the arguments closely, it’s clear that no two commentators appear to be talking about the same thing. So what does “net neutrality” mean? To answer that question, first of all we need to understand a little bit about the Internet and how it works. (More technical readers can skip this section, or just amuse yourselves observing the simplifications...