In the world of government regulation, is is absolutely the norm for regulations to be voted on before being made public. But that does not mean the process is not transparent: the Commission has been conducting an open proceeding for months (years, really) where they have explained their proposals to the pubic, and allowed anyone in the country to submit comments. The commissioners and their staff then look over the comments they have received, draft an order that responds to the important points raised in the comments, vote on it, and then make it public as a binding rule. Perhaps this is counterintuitive to some, and maybe it's not the best way to make rules. But there is nothing at all abnormal about it -- this is simply the process that we call "notice-and-comment rulemaking" which Congress enshrined in law almost 100 years ago when it passed the Administrative Procedures Act. Anyone who tells you that this is weird, or that the Commission is trying to pull a fast one by waiting to publish the rules, is either misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead you.
As for the meeting itself: of course it's theater. The real policy work doesn't happen in the meeting, it happens in the formal notice and comment proceeding that has been happening on paper for many many months. The meeting is primarily a political opportunity.
It's mostly irrelevant what the 'norm' is. Either the process is actually transparent or it's not. Dropping xxx pages after passage is not really transparent.
In fact, the 'norm' is usually what we want to be moving away from. The problems that we are trying to solve exist in the 'norm'. It used to be the norm that the Roman Church could come in, try you for heresy on hearsay and then execute you, all with no real evidence and decided by an inquisitor. Just because that was a normal occurence, doesn't make it right or transparent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act
I agree with what you say, though.
From what I know already I'm not in favor. I.e. the trepidation felt vs. those who are pro-titleII.
As we all have seen in the past, the proposals they explain and the final rules that become law are usually different. We should be able to see these proposals.
"Perhaps this is counterintuitive to some"
This just illuminates why this process needs to be changed. "counterintuitive" is a nice way of describing our lack of freedom and the lack of transparency in choices that will directly effect all of our lives.
It's not as though the game is totally over. Parties can (and will) petition for reconsideration, and then there will be challenges in court if people think that the Commission has overlooked important issues. End then there's always Congress...
> This just illuminates why this process needs to be changed. "counterintuitive" is a nice way of describing our lack of freedom and the lack of transparency in choices that will directly effect all of our lives.
Fair enough. But I don't know that this is a valid ground for criticizing the FCC.
Edit: While it's true that the Commission's decisions are often not exactly the same as its proposals, it is prohibited by law from making a rule on a subject not implicated by the issues raised by the Commission's proposals (the technical term is "logical outgrowth"). Why isn't this good enough? What is to be gained by circulating the actual rules before they are enacted that is not already accomplished by 1) extended period for public comment on the issues, with full knowledge of the regulatory options under consideration and 2) the possibility of a petition for reconsideration or court challenge after the rules are issued?
You were told this was wrong yesterday, and I know you saw that because you responded.
Why are you still repeating it?
Once again, we will all have plenty of time to read these regulations before they are enacted.
Here is how this works, and how it has worked for well over 50 years, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act, at most or all agencies, not just the FCC.
1. Someone at the agency decides to propose rules.
2. They circulate those rules within the agency for discussion, and they may modify them based on that discussion.
3. When they feel that the rules are ready for consideration as an official proposal, they bring them to a vote among before the Commissioners. (Well, for the FCC it is the Commissioners. I have not idea what the corresponding group at, say, the FAA, is called. It would be cool if they were the Aviators, but it is probably something lame).
4. If the rules pass this vote, the agency then publishes them in the Federal Register as a "Notice of Proposed Rule Making" (NPRM). A public commentary period, normally 60 days, begins.
5. People then comment on the rules. They comment on other people's comments.
6. If there are a lot of comments, the agency might extend the commentary period.
7. When the commentary period ends, the agency considers the comments, and decides if it is going to go ahead and enact the rules, or start over, or not regulate at all at this time.
We just finished step #3 and #4 is starting. The published proposal has to include the objections raised by the Commissioners who voted against them, with responses to those objections by those who supported the proposal, so there will be a short delay before publication and the start of the comment period.
Am I wrong in my reasoning? Aren't these rules, whatever they are, about to become active?
This makes it sound like the final rule must be the rule that was proposed and commented on, which would mean we've looped back to issuing a new proposal.
[1] http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/rulemaking-process-fcc#q6
The Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the whole notice-and-comment dog and pony show, also makes it pretty easy to overturn regulations if the final regulation isn't adequately foreshadowed by the NPRM. And this will be heavily litigated, so you can bet the FCC is trying to do this by-the-book. One might make the argument that there should be public comment on the final text, but that would be intractable. It's taken 9 months just to do one round of notice and comment.
There it is! I found the docket number but didn't know the right website to find the filings. Thanks for the link. 99 pages tho.
Seriously though, I think there was a lot of hype built up around net neutrality(for good reason) and it ended up clouding the discussion.
Quickly it became a dichotomy, you must be either for Title II and whatever the FCC decides that entails, or you must be against any change to the status quo.
Now that we are passed that dichotomy, we are faced with the reality that we have little control over the FCC and how it chooses to enforce regulations. That is understandably making many people nervous.
I look forward to the regulations being published and sincerely hope that it works out as many people hoped it would a few months ago, but someone rather late in the process pointed out to me that the FCC loves to censor things like television, and it wouldn't be insane to think they would consider doing the same with the internet (one only has to look to England to see how real that possibility is)
I don't really know anymore, I'm more unsure about all of this than ever - i really hope nothing nasty surfaces because of this decision, but what can we do at this point but sit and wait and then try to change it all again if we object.
Unfortunately, this is kind of a red herring. There are a few places in the telecommunications act that require the FCC to fine for indecency/obscene material. Cable operators themselves, for example, are not responsible for channels that display obscene material - the original transmitter is. That's under Title VI (cable communications) and Title III (radio and television).
Title II is all about common carrier status. Cable television, broadcast radio, and broadcast television are not common carriers, and Title II does not give the FCC either the requirement or permission to fine or censor obscene content. Neither does it give ISPs the requirement or permission to censor obscene content.
As Title II has been interpreted by courts, you are actually _more_ protected from internet censorship if they are considered Title II common carriers.
They can't terminate based on suspicion of unlawful use; there must be evidence:
* Shillitani v. Valentine, 53 NYS 2d 127 (1945); "a telephone company may not refuse to furnish service and facilities because of a mere suspicion or mere belief that they may be or are being used for an illegitimate end; more is required."
* Nadel v NY Tel., 170 NYS2d 95 (1957); carrier suspected caller of using the telephone for illegal gambling transactions and terminated their service. Court ruled that service should be reinstated: the telephone company "is not at all qualified, in the absence of evidence of illegal use, to withhold from the petitioner, at will an essential and public utility."
They are not authorized to collect said evidence themselves (this could be interpreted to mean that, as a common carrier, ISPs are not allowed to read the contents of the packets that they transmit, only the headers -- like telephone numbers -- as needed to get the packet to its destination):
* People v. Brophy, 49 Cal.App.2d 15, at 33, 120 P2d 946, at 965; "public utilities and common carriers are not the censors of public or private morals, nor are they authorized or required to investigate or regulate the public or private conduct of those who seek service at their hands."
You, as an internet user, are not protected from those actions unless your ISP is classified as a Title II common carrier.
Other than censorship, do you foresee any major gotchas in the upcoming regulations?
And even if they weren't, there is a clear process for companies to petition for forbearance on regulations which they find too burdensome.
That is the true red herring we hear over and over again. Don't worry about censorship, you can still say indecent/obscene things... if you happen to have been awarded the broadcasting license.
Sir, or Ma'am, please understand. The censorship problem we anti-FCC complain about is the problem of not being able to get a license in the first place. You and others like you are always addressing this red herring non-issue of indecency and obscenity. That can only happen if you get a broadcast license. The problem with the FCC is that they are a gatekeeper for getting a broadcast license and it is at that point, when they are deciding whether to give the license that they exert the most dangerous kind of censorship. Not after you have the license.
Sure! You should totally be allowed to throw up a transmitter and blast white noise through fifty percent of the radio frequencies at 50 kilowatts of power! And so what if the car next to you on the highway has a transmitter that interferes with your radio tuned to the classical station by blasting dubstep. FREEDOM
The problem is, that's all covered under Title III. Title III is very specifically about radio broadcasting.
And has nothing. At all. To do. With Title II.
Well, I'm already driving out of the state tomorrow, now I know what I'll be doing with my unlicensed FM transmitter.
Is this to start an ISP? a website? or what?
What warfangle etc don't understand is that was exactly the excuse for the FCC to get into the Radio business. Oh no, it wasn't to require licenses! It was to protect people from warfangle's "chaos" that he paints so vividly but that never happened in actual reality, you know, the one we live in. Maybe it happens inside the theoretical realities that warfangle makes up. Regardless.
So the FCC at first was all like "yeah we need to step in to protect the radio waves from jumbling". Even the president at the time said he saw no problem with just leaving it be. But the FCC got its way. But oh! We forgot. In order to protect the waves from jumbling we'll need to require that people get licenses, but you know, it's just to assign a name to a frequency. That's all! But you need a license.
The same will happen online. Not at first, but eventually. And the excuse will be the same. Netflix uses too much bandwidth? Well, they'll need a license. Suddenly all busy websites need a license, but they'll only get it if the FCC approves it. Netflix? Granted. Popcorn Time? Disallowed. Mainstream X? Granted. Controversial Y? Disallowed.
Licenses that could be denied for radio was a policy adopted by Congress in the same law that created the Federal Radio Commission, before the FCC existed. The FCC inherited its radio role from the Federal Radio Commission. Neither the FCC, nor its predecessor, could have lobbied for the power to grant and deny licenses, because they didn't exist when Congress was considering creating that power.
Please step outside your bubble and understand what the FCC does.
And a citation for you, cheers mate: http://www.fcc.gov/maps/fcc-enforcement-actions-against-pira...
If you wish to test them, please setup a pirate radio station and you will be arrested. The sentencing is not pretty, so tread lightly.
Oh yea, be sure to pick up your public web service license so are not causing harmful interference with those that DO.
Radio represents a hard-limited amount of spectrum. There is literally a maximum amount of broadcasts that are possible before you have to start overlapping on the same frequencies. Those pieces of spectrum can be owned or rented just like public address space on the internet.
The internet has no such limit, adding to the internet just makes the internet bigger, it doesn't push someone else off the internet.
The real corollary to pirate radio would be someone hijacking google.coms DNS records to point to their own website instead. And tthat is and should remain illegal.
Like, the biggest problem is that people are unhappy with comcast and there's no alternative. Then they get the bright idea that making entry into the market harder will fix this problem?
If what you say is true then we should be able to buy and sell radio wave frequencies from each other. But radio waves are treated specially by the government because they're a long range means of communication. Same with the internet. That's why the FCC wants in. Not because "it's limited". Land is limited, where is the FCC for land? Gold is limited, yet we can freely buy and sell. Everything is limited but the FCC only has eyes for LONG RANGE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION. Why?
EDIT for temporal:
Please explain this:
"One of our troubles in getting legislation [to nationalize the airwaves] was the very success of the voluntary system we had created. Members of the Congressional committees kept saying, 'it is working well, so why bother?'" -- Herbert C. Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933, at 142 (1952). Cited in Hazlett, 1990.
Well, there's the matter of their statutory brief. There is a reason they are called the Federal Communication Commission, and not the Federal Every Limited Resource Potentially Subject to a Tragedy of the Commons Commission.
Lol, that's the government. You cannot "freely buy and sell" land, you have to follow certain processes to register your dealings and you are responsible for how you use that land (zoning, environmental laws etc). That's basically what the FCC does for airwaves, except they want to make sure you'll be "responsible" before they actually allow you to register your dealings.
We grant land ownership and leases. Why not radio spectrum too? Not all that different really IMO.
If the major problem as you see it is the cost of licensing, then I don't really have a response to that.
I think you mistake "is mandated by Congress" for "loves".
Congress has mandated the censorship of TV and radio broadcasts, it was not purely invented by the FCC - sorry for any miscommunications.
The FCC is un-elected, that's always scary. Not that our elected officials know better. Haha.
I'd certainly be interested in general proposals for improving regulatory transparency, but I don't see what basis there is for painting this particular decision as something special in that regard, and find it interesting that the people prominent in the media that have been concerned about "transparency" in this process (a) are consistently people that were opposed to net neutrality, (b) became concerned with "transparency" only after it was clear that anti-neutrality policy arguments were failing to gain traction, either at the FCC or with the public, and (c) have not generally voiced similar transparency concerns over any of the other processes (e.g., every other regulatory action of the US government) that uses the same basic process, including not publishing intermediate drafts between an NPRM and a final action on the matter covered by the NPRM that incorporates changes based on subsequent analysis and the public comment on the NPRM.
Politicians spend much of their time getting re-elected, and they have to focus a great deal on whatever the electorate's current opinion is. That is excellent for things that should respond relatively quickly, and terrible for things that should move deliberately or be countercyclical.
It would be way more scary to me to have the FCC commissioners out fundraising from industry all the time like our elected officials do. Right now they're appointed on staggered 5-year terms, which is intentionally longer than the election cycle of the President who appoints them. No more than 3 can be members of the same political party, and none can have a financial interest in any regulated business. It's not perfect, but I think it's a great example of how to minimize the ills of direct election while still having it be (indirectly) accountable to the people.
While in theory it seems like a good idea, in practice it's not and all of a sudden you have judge's (or in the case at hand, FCC officials) with "interests" other than the law (communications).
On the other hand, this also means they don't need to seek funding for running a campaign which theoretically could insulate them from what we see with our elected officials currently pandering to business interests.
Time will tell with this decision i suppose, whats important from my perspective is that change happens quickly if there are any major objectionable pieces of these new regulations
Check the employment history of FCC folks after their term. It is very much like other staff members in various regulatory bodies in DC, they get high paying jobs in the industry for their work.
The advantage (and again i'm not claiming this to be the reality) would be that that the new FCC employee doesnt need to rely on the corporation to continue working at the FCC, Once they have left the corporation, why would they seek to push pro-corporate regulations?
Of course this is all muddled when you see that these people then go BACK to the corporation after their time in the FCC, which leads to well grounded suspicions.
Its really a complicated mess; I only meant that there is a logical reason why having non-elected persons creating regulations can be advantageous
We elect people to do that. Perhaps if they were forced to do the actual rule making we would not get 1,000 page bills with all of the rule making to be done later[1]. Perhaps they would pass less bills that need regulation if they had to put them in the bill.
The staffers at various agencies are doing their apprenticeship for their big payday when they join lobbying organizations or the companies that they were supposed to be watching. It happens enough that it has been suggested multiple times that employment restrictions (basic conflict of interest) should be put in place. The DoD is famous for a lot of this (check Boeing's hiring).
"I only meant that there is a logical reason why having non-elected persons creating regulations can be advantageous"
Because those folks are their friends and future employers (again).
1) yes, I read the ACA because I needed to know the ruling on a specific situation and it was one of those rule making later. It was very frustrating but not very surprising.
But i disagree that pushing regulation onto elected officials would be better.
My point is that non-elected officials are shielded from many aspects that lead to corruption in elected officials. Namely having to re-up on funding every couple years. Non-elected officials do not have to raise money to keep their position.
Is there still corruption with non elected officials? yes I am not saying otherwise nor am i satisfied with the current state of things. But to say that the solution to that corruption is to place the power into the hands of an already corrupt congress seems backwards to me.
Also, I totally agree with you on the language and length of bills. I would go further to say that the congress people should be the ones AUTHORING the bills, let alone reading them. Nothing smells like corruption more than a corporation drafting a bill to regulate themselves and stamping a congress person's name on it.
My point is that the non-elected officials are not shielded and have a different corruption path going. In a lot of ways, a rich elected official is probably better insulated than a high level bureaucrat.
We elect people to make the laws. Regulations are the laws and they should be the responsibility of the people we elect. I cannot vote out of office a bureaucrat. If you believe your congress person is corrupt then vote them out. This whole rule-making process is a corruption of the system.
Regulatory orders aren't generally published before being approved by the initiating authority (preliminary notices that are subject to revision before being approved are published when those are approved by the authority, as was the case with the NPRM on this issue published last year. The final decision based on the NPRM and public comment received since the NPRM, is what was voted on today, which will then be published.
This is the processed followed by basically every regulatory body for virtually every regulatory action in the US government (sometimes there isn't an advanced notice like the NPRM, however.)
The spin doctors consistently fail to mention your point: the new rules went through the exact same process as all the previous rule-making.
On the other hand, it's my understanding that the FCC will enter a period of public comments after voting on the rules but prior to enacting them. So there's also a chance for further revisions to take place, but I'm not overly optimistic given the 300+ pages of regulations for what should have been a fairly simple issue.
I suspect if the rules are too far-reaching, they'll be mired in litigation for years. Hopefully the regulations will be released to the public so we can start disseminating them today or tomorrow. Although the FCC doesn't commonly release rules it's voting on prior to a vote, I do think this illustrates a dysfunction of government agencies and transparency. Maybe that's something we should change.
It's a good example of why we have representatives representing the people and we don't have a traditional democracy.
Exactly. It's worrisome to me that nearly all political campaigns have been driven by emotional rubbish without any regard for possible repercussions. Yet, you're decried and rebuked for daring to suggest that we probably ought to stop and think very cautiously about what it is we're asking for!
On the other hand, our representatives are paid for by lobbyists and seldom appeal to their constituents even if it's in the latter's best interests.
I can only hope at this point that these regulations are not so overbearing and damaging that it harms innovation. But with 700+ regulations on the books now, I'm feeling somewhat pessimistic. I rather wish the FCC focused exclusively on what it was so-called "net neutrality" was originally intended to do. But now I'm afraid that if their language is too broad, Mark Cuban may be right, and it might affect QoS and related protocols. (I don't think that would happen--and I feel Mr. Cuban may be a touch paranoid--but politicians aren't exactly known for their technological prowess either.)
I'm truly sorry for my pessimism. I just don't have much faith.
One positive about this is that it will give the FCC some oversight over the pricing of interconnect deals. But interconnect deals will still happen, and they won't be free - these rule changes effectively codified them into law. So Netflix will still have to pay Comcast/Verizon to send lots of traffic to their users, only the FCC now has the ability to regulate the pricing terms of such deals.
Yeah, but Comcast took that FCC order -- made without any advance regulation -- to the courts, which struck it down on the basis that the FCC could not issue such an order under its ancillary authority. Comcast v. FCC, 600 F. 3d 642, D.C. Cir. (2010).
As this specific order to Comcast being struck down was one the things motivating the FCC's initial Open Internet Report and Order which applied nonblocking of lawful applications as a generally-applicable regulation (and which itself was later struck down as being a common carrier regulation which could not be applied without Title II reclassification), its pretty odd to use the existence of the Comcast Order as a way to dismiss the need for generally applicable regulation to prevent blocking (or even, given the history of the subsequent order, to dismiss the need for specifically Title II regulation to prevent blocking.)
No, the usual process is NPRM, comment period, Final Rule. The NPRM was last spring, the comment period took up much of last year, and the Final Rule is now.
> I suspect if the rules are too far-reaching, they'll be mired in litigation for years.
There'll be litigation for years in any case (whether the rules will be blocked while it proceeds is less certain.)
> Hopefully the regulations will be released to the public so we can start disseminating them today or tomorrow.
They won't be published until all the commissioners have finished their commentary (particularly, the opposing commissioners). That will almost certainly take more than a day or two.
It's long passed time that I can add edits to my original comments (so obviously, there's no point), but I've included what I've found, and why I was incorrect here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9116126
So it looks like the timeframe we're expecting is 30+ days or so to allow for a) the commentary you mentioned and b) the reconsideration period to come to an end for parties wishing to file petitions against the rules.
Thanks!
That was all done last year. Now the rules are out.
The problem is that I had been "corrected" (incorrectly) in a discussion elsewhere when I mentioned there was only the one comment period by someone who stated that there would, in fact be a period after the rules were voted on where there would be a second period to accept comments from the public. I should have looked it up myself, rather than taking the correction at face value.
In fairness to the individual who attempted to correct me, I think he/she was confusing the reconsideration period with a second round of comments. It's a fair and reasonable mistake to make, so with that in mind, I suppose you could correct my initial post to make mention of the reconsideration period in lieu of what I wrote.
One of the issues I take with some of the pro-net neutrality crowd is that they're willing to vehemently hyper-correct everything, including statements that were not wrong, and due to the insistence of some of the comments I read, I made the mistake of presuming my initial understanding was wrong.
Go figure. It's too late for me to correct my original post, but feel free to use this as an addendum to it. :)
http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/rulemaking-process-fcc
As dragonwriter wrote in reply to me--and as you can read above--there's at least 30 days after the rule vote before they become available to allow for analysis and for dissenting petitions to be filed during the reconsideration period.
It should be interesting to see what happens at this point.
Isn't that just politics in general?
It's like everything else in the last 20+ years. Someone drafts a bill that sounds like a good idea, then before you know it, it balloons to thousands of pages of rhetoric drafted by every lobbyist in Washington.
I don't know what the answer is. I can think of a few solutions, but they're impractical and would never happen.
Republicans: Want the government out of it. Democrats: Only care about it to the extent that it's a nexus of class/race warfare.
Only when it benefits big business. Republicans are more than happy to stick the government into your religion, your health decisions, your recreational drug use, etc.
I suppose they could try to defund the FCC, but I guarantee that would never happen.
However, I can say with a straight face that I know plenty of people who might make that sort of suggestion...
This is what is happening. The government is now regulating the Internet. Where is the emotion?
"then blamed Obama"
He played a clip in which Obama talked about what he wanted. The FCC complied and now we have Internet regulation (exactly what Obama wanted). Again, these are facts, not emotion.
I also think it's funny that you mention one line of potential emotion when the pro-regulation speeches were almost all emotion.
No, the government is regulating carriers.
When talking about "the Internet", people usually mean both actual wires (carrier infrastructure) and websites (content). If anything, with Title II the FCC is actually forcing companies to keep content less regulated, preventing commercially-motivated censorship.
> He played a clip in which Obama talked about what he wanted. The FCC complied
Obama tried long and hard to stay out of this mess, but Verizon's and Comcast's actions have been more and more outrageous every year.
I have a lot of complaints about the Obama administration, but everyone knows this is just the result of some carriers' continuous brinkmanship.
We will never convince emotive people to think, because they are so overwhelmed by fear. To think for oneself means to shed cultural ties and to stop identifying oneself with a group. We are all individuals and that's the only identity we all share in the world. The minority that realizes this will forever be prisoner to the irrational mob majority that act like tribesmen and incessantly demand group privileges.
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015...
Order forbears 27 provisions of title II and over 700 associated regulations. Will not impose rate regulation, tariffs, burdensome administrative filing requirement or network sharing requirements. The proposed Order would apply fewer sections of Title II than have applied to mobile voice networks for over twenty years.
This is a huge problem. It is literally impossible for lawmakers and regulators to read everything they put into law, as many bills are hundreds of pages long.
Does anyone have any viable solutions to this problem? The only attempt to solve this problem that I know of was in early 18th Century England, when they set a limit on the word count of laws. But this was widely criticized (including being lampooned in Gulliver's Travels) and didn't last long. It seems like this is a pretty intractible problem.
Lawmakers could either abstain or vote No until they've read and understood the legislation. The problem is that votes aren't generally cast on understanding, or even how the law will affect the welfare of the populace, but on party lines, with not enough exceptions.
On the cure for that, I am equally clueless.
If the past experience on similar FCC actions (including, e.g., the last Open Internet Report and Order) is a good guide, they'll be published in the next several days, and the biggest delay in getting them published will be the opposing commissioners getting finished writing up their dissenting views, which will be published alongside what is adopted.
http://reason.com/archives/2015/02/25/fccs-ajit-pai-on-net-n...
Regulating the internet like a utility is quite possibly the worst thing you can imagine, and now its come to reality.
There is no bill. And, under the normal regulatory process, there is nothing to be published until the authority responsible for regulation approves something -- its true that the FCC could have delayed action and issued another NPRM. But regulations are published fairly quickly once adopted by the issuing authority, not generally effective immediately, and subject to revision by the issuing authority or overriding by Congress once they are published, so the idea that this will go into effect without people knowing what is in it is incorrect, as is the idea that there is anything unusual about the process here.
Having failed to drum up opposition to the general idea of regulation, opponents have attempted to paint the process as unusual and nefarious, but that just isn't an argument that has a grounding in reality.
> Regulating the internet like a utility is quite possibly the worst thing you can imagine
Even the worst possible regulation of the internet isn't even in the top 50% of the worst things I can imagine.
Why? My electricity and water work a hell of a lot better than my cable internet.
[0] http://energy.gov/oe/services/technology-development/smart-g...
And you're absolutely right - we have zero need for alternative energy sources (although on that, it's kinda true - I've no particular issue with nuclear fission per se, though we need to figure out something better in regards to storage, and nuclear fusion is something that merits a huge deal of research into commercial viability).
This thread is just full of HN's intellectually-challenged users waving their hands and saying "ooooOOOOoooo GOVERNMENT! SCARY GOVERNMENT! BE AFRAID OF SCARY GOVERNMENT! ooooOOOOoooo!"
The plan gives a Washington bureaucracy a blank check to decide how Internet service providers deploy and manage their networks, from the last mile all the way through the Internet backbone. Take interconnection as just one example. The plan states that the FCC can determine when a broadband provider must establish physical interconnection points, where they must locate those points, how much they can charge for the provision of that infrastructure, and how they will route traffic over those connections. That is anything but light touch regulation. And the plan extends the FCC’s interventionist gaze well beyond this part of the network. Small wonder that some pro-regulation activists are already deeming the FCC the “Department of the Internet.
http://www.fcc.gov/document/comm-pai-press-stmt-president-ob...
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/fe...
Question is who wrote this stuff: telecoms, Google, the NSA, ???
I'm willing to bet there are provisions in there for further NSA-related cruft. I'm also suspicious that this will set the stage for increasing the tax burden on consumers, but that remains to be seen.
I was thinking last night about how I haven't heard much from these two organizations over the whole net neutrality debate. But then I started wondering why the FCC commissioners kept using the phrase "legal content" in the context of these regulations. Maybe I'm a touch paranoid, but it almost sounds too coincidental.
Gosh, I hope it's not true, but now that you mention it, they probably handed more than an olive branch to these two clowns.
Sadly, yes. I recently purchased a home and was shocked at the logical inconsistency in the contract and the inability of ANYONE at the mortgage company to explain some of the clauses. And I often broken links in terms of service that sites make you accept. It's quite sad. What's the point of any of it?
With all of the Snowden leaks, why aren't we demanding transparency? Do we really just want to give our rights away like this?
Not to mention it's not just the GOP that's full of old people that have zero technology grasp.
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-age-literature/#many
There's also the term "digital native": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native
There's always a difference between the technologies you grew up around and the ones that have emerged after you became an adult. For me it feels similar to my native language and the ones I've picked up later.
As a pretty-young curmudgeon, I will say that young people often throw out "he's old and doesn't understand the internet" when they really mean "he's old and doesn't share our values re: the internet." "Neutrality" is a value you subscribe to, not a technology to be understood.
My issue is that many young people think that new things are completely different..when in reality, it's just better/different packaging and marketing on an old idea.
It's probably a fair assessment to say that most people of that age are going to be on the back side of the bell curve in understanding issues of technology, and it's fairly verifiable through their words and actions that the Republicans in Congress are the most vehemently anti-science, perhaps in our history.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/obamas-bad-pick-a...
And then there's this. I'm not sure what it's meant to mean.
Although, I have seen the cost of some Cisco networking devices. I know exactly what they stand to gain from a tiered Internet (Hint: Billions in sales to telcos looking to shape their traffic based on contracts).
A comment that plainly stated a fact in a noninflammatory way?
Or proposed a course of action that was not designed to be punitive to some group, or alternately, designed to disproportionately benefit the powerful?
Republicans inhabit a carefully-crafted parallel reality that is at the breaking point of divergence from American and global first-world society.
Personally, I'll take them seriously when they change their methods and rhetoric, which is probably never.
Their current attitude and language indicates they are not interested in either my vote, or my problems.
Do you seriously believe that it's only Republicans that pander to their base?
What would you expect a politician to do—raise an issue his supporters don't care about? That doesn't even begin to make sense.
All of your points apply to every politician, and to every talking head.
That's my rule of thumb for knowing which side is right. There's always one side that makes emotional arguments, and another side that makes factual arguments. This simple heuristics is inaccessible to over half the population, who are collectivists.
Also notice, most of those collectivists do not believe they should oversee their representatives (corollary from the fact that they don't). They believe politicians are a "set and forget" thing that you input tax-money/votes and without oversight, out comes exactly what was asked for.
There's only one solution that I can see. People who want to be led and believe in godonearth, I mean, government, should be allowed to live their communist fantasy; but they should not be allowed to demand that others do so too - this much is fascism. As soon as that schism is feasible, you will see the progressive dwindling of brainless taxpayers and the fattening of the free side; but as long as everyone is forced to participate in this immorality, no change will come.
Unfortunately, this simple heuristics is out of reach for most people.
First, let us establish that because we have a democratic government, this must mean more than half the population wants it to be like this (otherwise this is not a democracy). Therefore more than half the population is composed of people who are collectivists. Collectivists believe that by utilizing a middleman to share costs amongst everyone, they can make the cost of goods and services cheaper. The word "collectivist" is used disdainfully by those who reject the idea that adding a middleman central planner to decide how resources will be allocated in an economy will make goods and services cheaper.
Now we can argue that collectivists cannot grasp the heuristics suggested herein, because they fall time and again to government propaganda, and it can be demonstrated by public polling that most people accept unquestioningly any narrative that the government puts forward about important political and economic events. That is why news anchors are fatherly figures that seek to gain their viewers trust, so that they won't think they need to research by themselves what they are fed by the media, since the tone and emotion set by the anchor give the information an aura of authority.
Because collectivists are so prone to being lied to and manipulated by hyperpathetic rhetoric, I can only see one solution for the individualist: coarsely put, they should all move to a place and establish an individualist colony, and peremptorily reject the influence of collectivists by accusing them of fascism, which is a suitable moniker for a group of people that believe in the authority of a central planner over a region; much like the kings and the pharaos of yore, the collectivists still believe there is a numinous person that is pure and incorruptible that must pull the excalibur of power and peacefully rule over and for us all. This much has never been seen matter-of-factly in objective reality.
I believe if this secession were to happen and enough individualists moved to a separate place and claimed it their own and carried on with their lives for generations, that eventually the average collectivist would realize that prosperity and wealth blossom in a free society at a much more efficient and rapid pace than in the collectivist side.
djur: Is this non-offensive enough for you? It's the same points I made above when I used those words you don't like. I hope from this you will learn that as a critical thinker, you are supposed to see past the shape (the rhetoric, the pathos, the choice of words) of the discourse and examine the arguments being put forward for their validity (not harmony, not beauty, not political correctness). If you can't see the arguments amidst the "bad words", keep trying. You will get it eventually.
Also consider that if you downvote those that use bad words, you probably upvote those that use good words. The media targets people like you that react positively to good words and badly to bad words. They rely on that reaction mechanism to shape your opinion. By reacting emotionally you are publicly proving that you are easily swayed by pathetic rhetoric.
The existence of a democratic government does not begin to mean that "more than half the population wants it to be like this", whatever "this" is. The failings of formal democracy in representing the desires and interests of the population are well-known, and most democratic systems are openly designed to prevent a bare majority from getting everything they want (including ours -- see the Federalist Papers).
Your definition of "fascist" would apply to any sufficiently powerful central government, from Hammurabi to the tsars to the UK parliament. There are numerous working definitions of fascism but all of them recognize that fascism is a reaction to liberal democracy and thus inherently modern. There is also no fascism without militancy, or without nationalism. You also don't seem to see the contradiction to your "heuristic... to pick the one that is more grounded on logic" inherent in your proposed strategy of "accusing ['collectivists'] of fascism".
And your flight of fancy about a "numinous person... pure and incorruptible" wielding "the exalibur of power" (which looks a lot like an argument from pathos to me) has nothing to do with any standard definition of "collectivist". Nor does it have anything to do with "making goods and services cheaper". You yourself admit it's just a slur ("used disdainfully by those that reject the idea"). Mises, Hayek, Marx, none of them used the term this way. Collectivism is a sociological concept, not a political position.
A rationalist should start with observations of reality and proceed from there, not from the axioms which one presumes to be self-evident.
Do you disagree that most of those people want a government because they want government to intervene on social and economic issues?
Do you disagree that most of those people want a government because "otherwise we'd have to make every decision" and they like to delegate some decisions to representatives so that they don't have to bother to check for themselves if their water is clean, so that they don't have to bother having to contract with a garbage collection company, so that they don't have to bother to check if restaurants aren't poisoning their customers, and so on? In other words, so that they can trust things will be taken care of and don't have to manage every aspect of their lives?
Do you disagree that because most of those people seem to want to abstract away certain aspects of their lives, namely those they want government to take charge of, that they also won't be as willing to discuss those issues, seeing that the reason they delegate those things to government is because they don't want to think about it, let alone argue about it?
Do you then disagree that maybe, because of this unwillingness to engage in these discussions, that if a group of people, namely individualists, that believe governments cause more harm than good, would like to see things changed towards freer markets, that it might be fruitless to think the way to achieve those changes is to engage in discussions with those people who are unwilling to engage in discussions because they are in favor of not thinking about those issues and instead abstracting them away onto government?
That's all I'm arguing. Coarsely put, one side wants to debate. The other doesn't. The side that wants to debate usually uses logic because that's the fundamental tool of debating. The side that doesn't want to debate uses emotion because that's the fundamental tool of avoidance.
Disagreed on the third. The purpose of government is not to delegate decision-making to others, but to join together the power of individuals to accomplish goals that they could not together, and to protect the weak many from the strong few.
I agree that people frequently ignore issues that they perceive as too big or out of their control. Sometimes this is a rational assessment of the situation. Sometimes it's an abdication of personal responsibility.
I disagree that the position you identify as 'individualist' is associated with a willingness to debate, or to use rational arguments. Some of the most rational thinkers I've ever read were communists, and some of the lowest emotional sloganeering I've read was from self-proclaimed libertarians. Emotional and rational arguments are used by every political faction, and the use of emotional arguments is not a sign of weakness. Humans are emotional creatures and they are rational creatures, and there is nothing wrong with engaging with people on an emotional level.
I appreciate this response, even though I disagree with it. Thank you.
I liked this stat from Wheeler's bio:
"Wheeler was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2003, and in 2009, as a result of his work in promoting the growth and prosperity of the cable television industry and its stakeholders, was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of Fame.
He is the only member of both halls of fame."
I haven't read up on his time at the CTIA, but that was 1992 to 2004. Again during a time of a lot of smaller companies in the cellular industry. Remember when roaming was down right expensive or didn't even work? I think that was changed while he was part of CTIA. The wireless industry grew dramatically in that time.
What is the bad thing about him being a lobbyist for these groups? He's someone that has been part of the communication infrastructure at the political end since 1976. This means he probably has a very good idea of how his actions will impact companies. This seems like it may be a good thing?
So while you are right, you are muddying who you consider to be "everyone".
I wouldn't sign a contract without reading it (and having the person on the other side telling me all of the reasons why I should), and neither should you. But apparently, the general population (and many here) will.
I watched the entire live broadcast and the pros played only on emotion (safety, helping out the disadvantaged,etc) and did not really mention any of the regulations. Facts and rationality was only brought up by the opposition.
*edited: I see the down votes. The pro-NN astro-turfing is high here. This is just my opinion. If there is nothing to fear, you shouldn't be trying to silence it.