Two possible silver linings if it does get removed on the 14th:
1. We were wrong the whole time and reversing net neutrality launches us into a golden age of fast and cheap internet for all. (Very unlikely)
2. We were right, and reversing net neutrality is as bad as we feared. While it will be painful in the short term, hopefully it's bad enough to The Internet/Net Neutrality a relevant election issue for more people.
Either way, the sure silver lining is that by hashing this out now the consequences will be fully felt by the time the next presidential election rolls around.
Can you imagine if they were trying to shove this through in the lead up to the 2020 election when everyone is distracted by all the other issues at stake in the election?
Well, here's my bet on what will happen:
3. There will be no immediate catastrophic consequences. Over time, the Internet will become less amenable to innovation and small players and will just overall be worse than it would otherwise. But there will be no sudden dramatic change that will spur action for people who weren't already concerned.
Among other things this is an issue of competitiveness for the United States.
Eventually some country or federation of countries will recognize the opportunity to grab some of the market once America becomes less startup-friendly. It may even happen in the developing world somewhere, in countries that are being mostly ignored today, taking the rest of the world by surprise.
For example excluding affiliated sites from any caps (let's stream 4k movies from Hulu, RedBox etc even if you have lower bandwidth than necessary, you would be excluded for these services) or have data caps not apply for affiliated sites.
For an extra fee you could also get similar treatment for non-affiliated sites (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video etc).
In the mean time everything else will gradually is getting slower and slower. Tough luck for any new startup trying to enter the market. As it already is difficult right now, it will be nearly impossible after that.
The absolutely bad things (throttling/blocking/modifying content of sites the companies don't agree with) will happen much much later.
Like how cell phones are "free" so it's impossible to buy one without a contract.
https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-kills-two-ye...
For example, will people notice the lack of a really great Netflix competitor that would have gotten off the ground? What about the new best search engine to topple Google Search that died out of the gates?
I disagree. Pai and his GOP sponsors are making enemies of people who buy bandwidth by the terabyte-second. That's much worse than making enemies with people who buy ink by the barrel, as the old saying went.
Any negative consequences to this decision, real or imagined, absolutely will come back to haunt the Republicans.
That's why I don't understand why they're doing this. They are pissing off millions of people who wouldn't otherwise bother to vote against them.
Imagine a world where more people think twice before inserting tracking and adware junk into their websites!
Edit: typo
I'm not versed in the APA at all so I might be remembering the article wrong but it seemed reasonable.
Most relevant section:
>So drastic is the reversal of policy (if, as expected, the commission approves Mr. Pai’s proposal next month), and so weak is the evidence to support the change, that it seems destined to be struck down in court.
> The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason, such as a change in factual circumstances. A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough. As the Supreme Court has said, a federal agency must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” Given that net neutrality rules have been a huge success by most measures, the justification for killing them would have to be very strong.
However, a legal challenge will likely take a while to wend it's way to the Supreme Court.
The issue is for companies that will try to exists after that and would offer better service than Netflix. They won't succeed because: "well, the service might be cheaper and offer more shows, but it is dogshit slow and unusable/goes against my datacap so why should I use it?"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/12/h...
Senate confirmation is a political vote, one of “advice and consent”. There are no rules. Justice Thomas was not held to a “reasoned interpretation of the law” standard. Judge Garland was not rejected on a “reasoned interpretation of the law” standard. If a political hack like Talley can’t muster 51 votes in a Republican Senate, you should wonder about him.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/12/politics/trump-judicial-picks/...
The other nominee, Jeff Mateer, is an obscene choice by either incompetents or malicious people. Mateer has said transgender children are part of "Satan's plan." This psychotic religious nonsense injected into government should not be socially acceptable behavior in a thinking society. Someone should be fired.
But because Trump claims he hires all of the best people, we have to take the selection seriously as intentional. And since the buck stops with the president, you have to accept that he's the one whose incompetent if he isn't neither hiring good people, nor firing them when they fail this spectacularly.
They aren't even trying to make sensible, plausible justifications. For example, see paragraph 252, where they discuss paid prioritization.
They say ISPs need it because ISPs may not be able to figure out how to do usage based billing of their customers, so they need to be able to make sites like Netflix pay instead.
Looks like it. It's pretty surprising how ambivalent the guy is to public pressure.
Also, we really need to look into how government and regulation works in this country. What's the point of having a regulatory system for industries if the officials of companies in these industry lead the governmental/regulatory agencies?
If former goldman sachs officials run financial agencies and if a former verizon official runs the FCC, what's the point of these agencies?
Remember that Wheeler was a former cable industry lobbyist. Unlike Pai, he actually listened to non-industry voices during his proceeding and created rules based on inputs from many different sources. He did not give net neutrality advocates everything we wanted, but he did listen and did create something much better than what the industry has been demanding.
Not necessarily. An obvious conflict of interest would be someone who has a significant financial stake in the industry, or someone who is married to a CEO in that industry, etc.
Also consider this: who is actually qualified to regulate an industry? It is often the case that the only qualified candidates are people who have worked in the industry or who have worked against it (which is just as much of a conflict of interest). Someone who is clueless could be worse: they could be more susceptible to lobbying pressure, since they have no prior knowledge of the issues they are dealing with.
In theory the job of the Senate should be to determine whether or not a candidate will be able to serve the public instead of their former industry bosses. Such people definitely exist -- Tom Wheeler is a prominent example. We also have an impeachment procedure to deal with the possibility of failure i.e. the possibility of the Senate confirming a regulator who fails to serve the public; by now there is ample evidence that confirming Pai was a mistake, but with today's hyper-partisan Congress there is not much hope for impeachment.
Off the top of my head, economists and lawyers?
I don't think you need first-hand experience in an industry to regulate it. We need experts in regulation that can take input from industry and consider the public perspective.
I'm not convinced it's possible to have a career in a field and not have your opinion tainted by that experience. This is why neither industry insiders or opponents should be responsible for regulation.
Sure. In the abstract. But in practicality, it doesn't pass the smell test. Just like if I committed a crime and my mother was judge of the case, there isn't anything specifically wrong with it. But there are potential issues of conflict of interest and she should probably recuse herself from the case.
> in fact, good regulation should include the input of the regulated industries (failure to do so was a causative factor in the bankruptcy of railroads in the 60s and 70s).
Of course regulatory agencies need input from the industry. But there is a difference between providing input and leading the agency. I'm all for input. I'm not too keen on former Directors, CEOs, etc of banks, ISPs, etc leading agencies that regulate those companies. Especially when we have people going back and forth between regulatory agencies and companies.
If you have an ex-Verizon person they shouldn’t have any loyalty to the company. If they do, then there would be a conflict of interest.
Yes, and people should be good at all times and not lie.
For most industries, the only people who are interested enough to become legal/policy nerds are either people who work in the industry in legal/policy executive positions, or a small number of academics who specialize in those industries. The academics are usually a little too theoretical to deal with actually running an agency, and so that pretty much just leaves people from the industry.
It actually could be expected. He is not an elected official, so he can easily do the bidding of corporate masters, instead of serving the public, especially if he feels that legislative power is too dysfunctional to do anything about it. It can happen even with elected officials, even more so with appointed ones.
But Pai has tens of millions of people vehemently opposing him. He is probably recieving jeers and hate mail and rude gestures every time he goes out in public. And people have even started harassing his family - at what point does the money cease to be worth it? Most people would have given up under a hundredth of that backlash.
Pai digs in and fights back against racist death threats? Good for him. Shame on anyone expecting him to back down in the face of that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2QorHUU-Kg
read comments
read most upvoted comments
>You can't say "One thing that should remain Sacred is family, wife, and kids"... when there are families who make a living by working online. If this goes through MILLIONS of people will be fucked... I can assure you .. If this falls through, go into witness protection or some shit because you are gonna get killed. Period. 384 upvotes
>This twatwaffle needs to be burned at the stake. 301 upvotes
These are people promoting Net Neutrality. I don't support that. It is disgusting.
strawman: misrepresenting argument to make it easier to attack
ad hominem: attacking your opponent's character or personal traits instead of engaging with their argument
appeal to emotion: manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid or competing argument
texas sharpshooter: cherry-picking data clusters to suit an argument, or finding a pattern to fit a presumption
But you implied that don't support NN itself, not disgusting comments. So do you support monopolists?
If this guy is going to play dirty then I don't see why others shouldn't fight back.
This was all Ajit's fault, but he's been sacked from public office, rejoice!
Reminds me a story, where there was an official who had an arrangement to receive a payment for every day in prison (if he ever ended up there as a scapegoat for actual criminal overlords, whose crimes he was covering up).
If Verizon is bribing him, they certainly wouldn’t need a former employee to do so. They can just invest in PACs or lobbyists, or even straight up bribe any elected official.
Not necessarily direct employ, but serving their interest. They wouldn't be so stupid as to publicly employ him.
> they certainly wouldn’t need a former employee to do so
It was the path of least resistance for them. He was already in the FCC, and he was always backing the interests of ISP incumbents against the public, if you paid attention.
ethics have gone out the window for this presidency, shouldn't doesn't matter anymore
Here's what I don't understand, maybe someone has some insights.
Demographics is not on the side of the Republicans. It hasn't been for a long time, and the imbalance is getting worse, not only because of immigration but because the Republicans depend on older white voters. That cohort isn't growing at the rate it needs to, if the Republicans are to continue to win elections at either the local or national level. If they aren't careful, many of the gerrymandered districts they've constructed so carefully will turn into electoral deathtraps.
So, given that they must expand their appeal to younger, more diverse voters, why are they choosing this hill to die on? Internet regulation is one of the vanishingly-few issues that actually gets young people involved in the political system. It gets them to sign petitions, call their representatives, and -- who knows? -- maybe even vote.
If and when the ISPs follow through on their newly-granted powers to balkanize and channelize the Web, the outrage will be seismic. Young people and old people alike will remember who made it happen, and will respond accordingly. Every race, every gender, every faith, and almost every individual has a stake in this issue. The rest of the Republican agenda will be imperiled by the resulting groundswell, as people who wouldn't otherwise have bothered to vote do so.
In American politics, you can collude with foreign and domestic enemies to install raving demagogues, you can raise peoples' taxes, you can even start wars, but you do not mess with the Internet. The SOPA/PIPA fiasco should have made that clear enough. What exactly is the GOP expecting to happen here?
They gave up trying to appeal to more diverse voters long ago and are becoming increasingly desperate. So desperate that in the last election they took hacking assistance from a foreign adversary.
> why are they choosing this hill to die on?
They're not. Almost no one outside of our bubble will think about this when they go to vote.
On the other hand, this move may be expected to result in substantial campaign contributions from those who stand to benefit.
The entire comment period was for show. Pai and his republican co-commissioners are going to jam this through regardless of what anyone says or does. He was brazen enough to admit, early on, that he does not care whether or not his plan is unpopular and that what the public thinks makes no difference whatsoever.
The only way to change this is to convince Congress that this is an election issue. Unfortunately there are too many other things happening right now, so net neutrality is being drowned in the noise and will likely continue to be drowned in the noise.