I'm one of the people who has had part of their identity used to submit false comments. Found out when a journalist emailed me asking me to do a survey and some additional comments months ago. I proceeded to sign up for an API key[1] to confirm what was being claimed and turns out, it was true. The API is a bit limited, but I was also able to do searches using the falsely submitted comment to find others like it as well as what looked like a lot of fake submissions.
I already contacted all of my representatives to investigate this, but with the approaching FCC vote and now this AG Open Letter, I fear that nothing will happen until it's too late. What is a citizen to do when they try to do everything in their power and play by the rules - vote, submit comments, call representatives, contact press for help, and repeat - results in nothing?
The FCC has effectively ignored the rules and stalled their way to victory. I'm not even sure how to describe our government anymore...
I believe that there are a lot of fake comments(possibly threads) appearing on Hacker News. I'm sure on Reddit and everywhere on the Internet that influences peoples' oomph to stand up for something like Net Neutrality.
I mean why in the world in 2017 are we so apathetic about something so important? We were up in arms about in 2013 and stopped SOPA then!!!
While there's a good amount of outrage in some online niches, I don't think Net Neutrality has been on the radar of the general public. A lot of friends and family I've spoken to over the past few weeks don't understand the power that repealing net neutrality will give to ISPs.
Also, I think people are so emotionally worn out by the mass distraction machine that is the Trump presidency, the over-saturation of outrage in the media, and the fact that so many democratic and political institutions are under attack that people either can't keep track of each one, feel hopeless, or have just tuned it all out for their own sanity.
Apathetic? Have you seen Reddit today or yesterday? The top post in 90% of subreddits are pro-net-neutrality posts, even where it makes no sense. I can't think of a time when that much of a stink was made, including SOPA.
The reason it's not working this time around is because you have an FCC chair whose not really interested in what the public thinks - you're not his constituents, and you're not the constituents of the people who put him in power.
Note that the constituents of Republicans are honestly mostly wealthy donors by this point - I doubt they care too much what their voters think beyond ensuring that they don't screw them over directly (e.g. via increased taxes or decreased entitlements)
I’ve seen reddit, but ultimately that means nothing. Posting a comment on a forum (even reddit or hn) is in itself meaningless. It’s oretty much the definitio or apathetic.
How so when there’s a hired army of people or bots to create fake comments that are pro Net Neutrality. There’s so many such comments.. threads even that all real members of a community see the flood of pro Neutrality comments and become apathetic. They think the flood of comments are what the majority of members feel leaving them to think a) It must not be that bad & then b) do not speak up against a majority.
This effectively drowns out the opposition. Proponents of Net Neutrality already flooded the FCC with fake comments as the guy above noted they stole his identity. What makes you think they don’t have an army of an army fake social media commenters to shape the conversation in their favor? Especially on influential tech sites like this!
I'm not sure if you're claiming that my comment is fake, but I can assure you it's not. I'm also not apathetic as I've done everything possible including reminding everyone I know (yet again) to follow my steps in trying to stop this. If I do come off as apathetic, it's probably because I'm just worn down mentally and emotionally from the days/weeks I've spent investigating my situation only for it to lead to this.
You say we should be up in arms, but realistically, what can we do? I'm pretty sure I've literally done everything I can do given my personal and financial situation. I've read through all the comments and while potentially helpful for my situation, none actually address what can be done for Net Neutrality. So I'm just going to repeat, what can I/we even do anymore?
We need some type of identifying online tool like that blockchain ID tool to proliferate.
It would ensure who you say you are on the Internet. YOu could still comment anonymously, but what you say anonymously wouldn't hold as much weight vs. when you use your real verified identity!
>why in the world in 2017 are we so apathetic about something so important?
it is not that people do not care; it is that they do not understand how to use force to achieve their goals. they do not understand how to contest the government's exclusive claim to rights like management of the internet, etc.
or they must show up for work and don't have the time to make physical appearances in places that create inconvenience-- fundamentally refusing to accept that their duty as citizens to contest government overreach is more important than their own personal life running smoothly.
May be a long shot but the more people know about what's actually happening then the more pressure they can put on their congress critter to do something.
If you have the time and money for something unlikely to get results for you specifically you could always try suing the person or persons impersonating you in filling documents with the federal government, then subpoena the only known party (FCC) to have information capable of helping to identify that party.
The FCC has effectively ignored the rules and stalled their way to victory.
Nawh, they are following the power delegation given to them by congress. They dont have to do fuck all for public comments, other then recieve them, document them, and say "we got feedback but fuck yall we going forward"
> They dont have to do fuck all for public comments
That's not true. As a nonpartisan federal agency, the must show how they accounted for public comment and why the choice they made is either in line with the public comments or why it is justified to not be in line.
They have to do more than just accept the comments.
But by allowing all the fake comments, they were able to say "see everyone wants this, what we are doing is in line with the public comments".
Actually, it appears that many of the fake comments are in favor of net neutrality. Or at least the comments originating from overseas. (Russian domains are top of the list.)
The corruption of the judicial branch is more obvious to its victims than it is to the average citizen, but it does quite a bit more direct harm than Congress does. For example, the courts that fund their municipalities on the backs of the poor, all the shady arrangements with the incarceration industry, the seemingly deliberate destruction of families and children perpetrated by the divorce courts, the horrific excess of the Drug War, etc.
Pretty sure the most of what you're talking about is the executive branch. They're in charge of enforcing the rules - e.g. deciding who to prosecute for drug crimes and which prisons to put them in to serve their term.
Likewise, the executive branch is the one that decides to go after offenders based on profitability over public good (although you could also lay that on the legislative branch for allowing the executive to fund itself using fines in the first place).
Nothing I mentioned happens without the eager cooperation of judges and other officers of the court. The ongoing disaster of the divorce or "family" courts has nothing at all to do with the executive. Anyway we weren't comparing the judicial with the executive but rather with the legislative.
It's been really interesting to see the interplay between State Attorneys General and the federal executive branch over the past decade. I don't know enough legal history to know if this contention is new or has always happened. But the contrast between what happened with regulation of carbon and coal is fairly striking. The federal judicial brach said that it had to be regulated in order to meet the laws that the legislative branch had passed, executive branch followed through with regulations based on science and input from stakes holders. We ended up with regulations on coal plants that are weaker than Chinese restrictions on their own plants. State AGs revolted, to little effect.
In the last year, regulatory decisions at the FCC, EPA, and DOE are being made by fiat, without any of the typical study and justification that typically goes into them. In particular, DOE suggestions to FERC have been denounced by nearly everybody in the energy industry, by nearly every interested outsider, and in a bipartisan fashion from lots of prior FERC commissioners. The general whims of a single person are taking precedence over having market principles, or really any other principle at all. The only parties in favor of the regulations at all are those who directly benefit by guaranteed payments, and they only justify their favor of the regulations through a massive and legally questionable expansion of regulatory power of the regulatory agency, something that these particular partisans are usually against.
With the FCC, we see something similar, an impulse to make regulations without much reasoning behind those regulations except that they favor a small group.
This type of regulation, where particular parties are favored, rather than particular principles, is madness.
> This type of regulation, where particular parties are favored, rather than particular principles, is madness.
It's plutocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy), plain and simple. Some have been pointing out things like this and calling it plutocracy for a long time, but until now it wasn't so blatantly obvious.
Can states regulate ISP activity within their states? Could the New York state legislature pass a law stating that ISPs who offer services in New York must provide net-neutral services?
The FCC can add what is called a "preemption clause" that effectively overrules states. The same sort of thing is used to prevent every city you drive though for having different insurance requirements for example.
Maybe, and the states have a leg to stand on. Along with net neutrality, the FCC voted to overturn laws that limit municipal broadband. The states challenged the FCC, and the states won.
They could try but the FCC would almost certainly contest that the states do not have the right to pass such laws. Additionally there is nothing stopping the FCC from passing rules forbidding states from regulating net neutrality.
States could make life really hard for the companies. Impose taxes on those that are not neutral, make permitting difficult and even start up state run internet.
That's the idea. Get the Federal government out of the business of regulating the internet & open it up to competition.
The cartel practices of the ISP oligopoly is a separate issue. They bought the state legislatures. The people of each state that is under the influence of the ISP cartels should demand an open internet for their state.
Could you explain how the FCC has superiority here? Doesn’t the constitution allow states to set local laws for things that aren’t expressly dictated in the constitution? Please forgive my limited legal knowledge.
The FCC is superior because it involves interstate commerce. Whether a local law can survive alongside a federal law depends on whether there's undue conflict, and conflict is determined by whether the local law intolerably intrudes on the federal law's scheme. Intolerable intrusion isn't the actual term of art but it may not matter because fed/state conflict doctrine is a big bowl of mush.
The Constitution gives the federal government the ability to regulate interstate commerce, which, effectively, means almost everything.
Taxing the hell out of non neutral ISPs at the state level may be viable, though? IANAL... It may be a case where a successful state level action in (say) New York and California covers enough people that national ISPs won't want to build a whole second system for all the other states; this is how many California environmental protection laws become de facto national.
The stuff with FERC & DOE is a little more complex. Nobody likes coal, and the north American electricity market mechanisms have had prices for years that are too low for coal to turn a profit. Great, the market has spoken you say? The only problem is it presents a major issue for national security if all you have is natural gas and some renewable. What happens if the pipelines freeze? Grid resiliency means having a diverse enough fuel mix to still be ok if we have certain disasters. One day we'll hopefully have very large and affordable batteries and a lot more renewables, but despite huge growth in this sector, most demand is still sourced from unclean fossil fuels today. Nobody (except Perry) is really expecting or wanting coal to make a comeback. They're just trying to provide a market mechanism to compensate power companies to keep just enough coal online so we can better hedge against blackouts.
The revocation of the Net Neutrality rules became a foregone conclusion once Donald Trump was elected. The sad reality is there's not much we, Eric Schneidermann or anyone else can do about it.
There are 5 FCC commissioners but only 3 may be of the same party. Ajit Pai, Brendan Carr and Michael O'Rielly are locks to vote in favor, so it will pass, 3-2.
At this point the best thing people can do is prepare to vote in 2018 and 2020, whether that's registering voters or forming groups to get lazy liberals or independents to vote to send better people to Washington.
One side aspect that I think hasn't been covered: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is a former Verizon lawyer and probably plans to parley his government experience into a lucrative gig at one of the big telcos once the Republicans are inevitably thrown out of office, so he stands to personally profit from this decision.
> FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is a former Verizon lawyer
He worked in their legal department for 2-3 years 15 years ago. All of his other time has been spent has a public servant. People need to stop bringing this up, because it only muddies the actual policy debate.
Let's wait and see where he ends up. If he doesn't immediately go back to telecom after his appointment is over, then I'll agree bringing up his history wasn't warranted.
I'm curious, where would you expect someone with years of experience in a specific industry to go after public office? Besides public office, of course.
If I started selling a product that may have benefited a future employer, should I not work for that employer in the future? Not saying these are at all equivalent situations given the amount of power Pai but curious all the same.
As far as things you can do, I'd add doing whatever you can to push local broadband, if it is feasible wherever you are. If your local government is trying, push for it! If you have state laws that forbid local governments from serving their constituents, push to repeal those.
The telecoms have many sophisticated strategies they pursue; one is alternating between "states rights" and FCC-friendly arguments to create a ratchet locking out competitors. If you break one side of the ratchet, at least some folks can have first-world bandwidth.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is a former Verizon lawyer and probably plans to parley his government experience into a lucrative gig at one of the big telcos
I don’t care if he was a professional kitten killer, it has little relevance to actions currently being taken. I say this for two reasons: Pai has spent more time in public service than he did at Verizon, by multiples. And second, who cares what his motivation is? Does that amplify or mitigate the circumstances in some way? No? Then it’s just a distraction from the issue at hand, which is bad enough that we best not derail the conversation worrying about where someone worked twenty years ago.
Knowing his motivations (is he simply misinformed? is he corrupt? does he believe in strict libertarianism?) has a big impact in shaping a winning strategy to oppose him.
Eh, I’m having a hard time mentally walking through how this would work. Because it would seem to me that his mind is going to be made up at this point, and we need to persuade those that think he’s right (and maybe “he’s a shill” can do that, dunno).
But that doesn’t mean I can’t upvote a reasonable POV with which I just happen to disagree.
Per Trump exec order, he can't lobby for at least 2 years and most likely 5 depending on his tenure. So it's not a profitable move for him, taking this position.
If I were a betting man, I would absolutely bet that he works in the telecom industry after his stint at the FCC. He might not work as a lobbyist, but there are a lot more jobs than that open for a person with his knowledge and contacts.
Because accepting a job at a firm immediately after shifting government rules in its favour is corruption. Its absurd to claim that the government work was impartial when so many regulators end up taking advantage of the revolving door between government and industry.
Of course there would be a public outcry if during his government appointment he worked to weaken or dismiss regulation that impacts Google directly. It’s the textbook definition of conflict of interest.
There's nothing inherently wrong with working at a telco after his tenure. What's wrong is he is making decisions at the expense of the American people to secure that position.
> The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) is reportedly set to release copies of roughly two dozen ethics waivers for federal officials next week, showing which officials are focusing on issues that they worked on in their private sector jobs.
> The waivers are in addition to the ones the Trump administration released this week, The Wall Street Journal reports. The White House released those ethics pledge waivers Wednesday, exempting at least a dozen White House officials.
Depends how cynical you are. He could technically lobby 'other parts' of the government according to this article but it does not specify, only reiterates you can't lobby your former agency for 5 years.
Serving 5 years in a government position when you could be an exec at a Telecom company is a gigantic opportunity cost so the point here is that he's not getting paid off, unless fraudulently, which can't be completely ruled out.
Would the FTC count as "other parts of the government"?
I seem to recall one of the arguments of Pai is that the FCC shouldn't be responsible for regulation of the internet, it should fall under the FTC.
So as head of the FCC he can effectively strip it of all power, the governance shifting to the FTC. Once his commission is up he takes a job at Verizon/At&T/etc, lobbying the FTC.
Or, as burkaman noted, they will just issue a waiver.
And how many waivers were given out for that? I'm sorry, but nothing in this administration has given me any reason to believe this will actually be followed up on.
Not to defend trump but it's congress that is corrupt to the core. The cable companies have been trying this many times before and congress is on their side. At this point it's just a matter of time.
More like we need to limit the influence that money and lobbyists can have on elected officials. Changing seats in Congress will just put new people in place who will more than likely do the same thing.
> At this point the best thing people can do is prepare to vote in 2018 and 2020, whether that's registering voters or forming groups to get lazy liberals or independents to vote to send better people to Washington.
My biggest fear in our current situation is the threat of voter suppression and election fraud. Any suggestions on shining a light on these issues, and combating them?
> The sad reality is there's not much we, Eric Schneidermann or anyone else can do about it.
If Ajit Pai continues to obstruct investigations, I would consider it obstruction of justice. That's something that an Attorney General should seriously consider in the current light.
It's not obstruction because of federal supremacy; given the normal level of voluntary cooperation, it's bizarre that there is no cooperation, and suggests that the fraud is not just an outside fraud on the FCC but a fraud by the FCC (whether originally or merely one convenient to and retrospectively ratified by the agency.) But there is little a state AG can do in that case except publicize the issue.
Well, relating to the identity misappropriation itself. Should there be litigation over the final regulation (as is near certain) and should the content of public comment and the FCC’s handling of it be an issue (as is also near certain), then things become a lot more interesting.
> If Ajit Pai continues to obstruct investigations, I would consider it obstruction of justice. That's something that an Attorney General should seriously consider in the current light.
My recurring thought as I read the fine article: "you're an attorney general, a lawyer who has asked politely, multiple times and been ignored; why TF haven't you filed for a subpoena yet?"
A state AG has no authority to investigate a federal official for his official actions. The federal government is the superior sovereign and has the sole power to police itself. This is nothing but political grandstanding by Schneidermann.
Regulations are not the answer, for the very reason that they will flip-flop with political appointees, and it amounts to people begging for what they rightly should demand.
You realize that all utility networks are regulated and have been since the advent of electrification and telegraphs? There's no neutral here, it's a fundamentally regulated industry. Exactly what solution would you offer that isn't in the form of regulation?
The inconsistency in this position is prioritizing killing off net neutrality regulations while the thicket of regulations which cement the ISP oligopoly remain in place to be dispensed with probably never.
Spectrum is the result of a merger that subsumed TWC, for what it's worth. Your HOA just needs to update its paperwork. I'm sure a judge would see things your way if someone actually pursued you for failing to use a company that doesn't exist anymore.
> At this point the best thing people can do is prepare to vote in 2018 and 2020, whether that's registering voters or forming groups to get lazy liberals or independents to vote to send better people to Washington.
There should be some effort to get more moderate Republicans involved. There are plenty of Republicans who support net neutrality, but do not consider that as important an issue as other issues on which Republicans and Democrats differ, such as immigration, taxes, gun rights, abortion, and many others.
I think that most of the less moderate Republican voters who oppose net neutrality mostly do so because their representatives and party officials tell them to. It's not like, say, their opposition to abortion which they came to on their own and then used that to help choose their party.
If that is true, it should be possible to move the GOP to a place where net neutrality is something that a Republican candidate can either support or oppose and still have a chance of winning a GOP primary or caucus.
Congress could still take action to keep this from happening. It's a long shot, but the folks in Congress still don't really want to be tossed out next time they're up. They're hoping people will not notice this is happening or will not realize its effect until much later, and on not being blamed for it by the folks that do notice and care. We should all be making it clear that not only do we know and care about this, we also don't buy that Congress is powerless.
You know, if this was true, half of congress wouldn't be there. You forget about gerrymandering and establishment party politics keeping people who are amiable to telecoms in power.
How is refusing to participate in an identity theft investigation not obstruction of justice?
Surely Ajit & co travel to NY from time to time... why isn’t there an arrest warrant? Why are the states being so toothless in responding to rampant criminal behavior?
I’d like to see how I would fare if I participated in mass scale identity theft and refused to participate in the subsequent investigation.
The federal government is the superior sovereign and does not have any obligation to answer to a state investigation.
Further, withholding cooperation from an investigation is not obstruction of justice, it is your God-given right as an American. You generally only have the obligation to cooperate when you are presented with a court order. And even then, you have the right to challenge the validity of that court order.
Refusing to participate isn't obstruction. It's not obstruction of justice if you refused a cop who came to your office and asked for business records. That's what happened here.
Schneiderman is doing far more for net neutrality with his Spectrum lawsuit than the FCC has done (even pre-Pai, the FCC did nothing about peering extortion for example). But this stuff about fake comments seems to be nothing more than procedural bikeshedding since the FCC ignored all the comments anyway.
Normally I'd agree, under the premise that the party who manufactured the comments had the competence to hide/obfuscate their trail enough to make it not worth following. However, the FCC's position is striking: they're not even maintaining the pretense of caring. This suggests sloppy execution and makes me revisit my priors regarding assumed competence. I think Schneidermann is right to spend resources on this angle, even if the chances of success are far below 100%.
More and more we see state agencies standing up to regime change in Washington (ex: CA and environmental regulations). Regardless of your personal politics, I wonder how this dynamic will affect democracy in the US.
Well up until election 2016, Democrats were vehemently opposed to states authority, and concentrated far more power in Washington during the Obama administration.
> Democrats were vehemently opposed to states authority
No, they weren't. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, on the whole, have a strong general position one way or the other on the balance of federal vs. state power. Republicans like to invoke the phrase “states rights” around issues where they disagree with the current federal policy and project a strong centralizing position onto Democrats on those issues, but both tend to act more on issues that state/federal preference, acting at whatever level they have the present influence to act, and Democrats aren't even particularly prone to pretending a strong preference either way. (They'll often cite a practical need to act at one level because of a failure at the other level, but that's different than even a for-show ideological preference.)
>Democrats were vehemently opposed to states authority
No they weren't. This is a total lie. I'd call it a mis-characterization but it's been beaten down so much that you have to be purposefully lying at this point to keep repeating it.
Gun laws, abortion, the trans bathroom thing in NC...all recent issues that the GOP sided on states rights vs. federal regs
On healthcare policy in particular the state specific policies continue to be enforced by the GOP. These aren’t positions I agree with btw I’m just pointing out recent examples.
I think it’s fair to say Democrats would rather have centralized healthcare, gun laws, lgbt policies, and abortion access, rather than leaving it to the states to decide.
> Gun laws, abortion, the trans bathroom thing in NC...all recent issues that the GOP sided on states rights vs. federal regs
Nope, they aren't. They are all areas where the GOP has pushed at both the federal and state level in the same direction, caring about policy (excluding transgendered persons from general society, blocking abortion, and protecting individual firearms rights) not the relative balance of state/federal power.
* Republicans vigorously oppose gun control and the state level, even suing state governments in federal court to overturn regulations.
* Republicans fight for LGBT discrimination in law and regulation at all levels, not for freedom of states to set inclusive or exclusive policies.
Obviously both parties are going to fight at all levels but in recent history GOP controls far more of state governments than Democrats so they strategically favor states rights. My original point is still that they haven't shifted away from that strategic view of states rights since the election because they still hold those advantages.
When Democrats dominate at state level I'd expect the poles to shift but that has not happened yet.
> Obviously both parties are going to fight at all levels but in recent history GOP controls far more of state governments than Democrats so they strategically favor states rights.
No, they tactically see success on certain issues operating at the state level; they don't, strategically or otherwise support states rights (that is, any consistent protected domains where states are free to act as they will without federal interference.)
They do like, since the adoption of the Southern Strategy, to use the phrase “States Rights”, but that's a 150+-year-old American political code for “we support and demand systematic oppression of blacks”, not a position on the relative distribution of power between the federal and state government.
Whenever I see one of these “parties purport to disagree on this issue, but neither is actually for it” I wonder if it would be a good keystone for a new moderate party, built on consensus.
The idea being, taking a principled stance on the aspects of those issues on which there is consensus, while not taking a stance on the part which does not have agreement, would expose the other parties as frauds and give you a rhetorical advantage over them.
> Whenever I see one of these “parties purport to disagree on this issue, but neither is actually for it”
The parties don't purport to disagree on the issue; one party paints it as a point of disagreement, but even that is just using the term as a coded reference to a real disagreement on race policy, not a reference to a disagreement on the policy suggested by what the words otherwise seem to mean.
> I wonder if states rights is one of those issues.
“States rights” isn't, because it's not an actual issue, it's a slogan for an issue people don't like to directly describe.
Now, you could come up with a model of a coherent set of protected zones of state authority and try to organize a movement around them, but that's not an existing ideology that is getting lip service but no actual support, it would be a whole new issue.
Yes, agreed on all points. I'm just saying that "whole new issue" would take the wind out of the fake talking points version of the "states rights" debate, and draw some of those voters.
I don't think those are good examples of states' rights legislation. Just because some NC Republican state Senators enacted a bathroom bill doesn't necessarily mean those Senators think the issue should be left to the states to decide, they could well prefer that their bathroom bill be made federal policy. Pushing legislation at the state or local level instead of federal can simply be a strategic decision rather than an ideological one.
If US Senators pass bill that explicitly delegates something to the states to decide, that's an example of states rights. If US Senators back a bill that explicitly overrides state laws, that's an example of federal regulation.
(It's actually interesting that you bring up the bathroom bill, because it actually is an example of centralizing power. The bill explicitly prevented local and city governments from adopting a different policy. Just an interesting aside.)
> I think it’s fair to say Democrats would rather have centralized healthcare
Obamacare specifically allows individual states to choose whether or not to participate in Medicaid expansion, and gives the money for Medicaid directly to the states to use as they see fit. That's a pretty clear example of states rights in action.
> Obamacare specifically allows individual states to choose whether or not to participate in Medicaid expansion
Well, no. Pre-existing law allows states to choose whether or not to participate in Medicaid. The ACA made the expansion a core and integral part of Medicaid; the ability to stay in Medicaid but opt out of the expansion was a (rather bizarre) result of a lawsuit by States against the expansion.
> and gives the money for Medicaid directly to the states to use as they see fit.
No, the expansion isn't a block grant, it's an expansion to include a new population with a set federal-share reimbursement rate attached to that population.
"Gun laws, abortion, the trans bathroom thing in NC...all recent issues that the GOP sided on states rights vs. federal regs"
All things they brought up before the current administration took office. All things that they've decided now to defer to the Federal government to, now.
"I think it’s fair to say Democrats would rather have centralized healthcare, gun laws, lgbt policies, and abortion access, rather than leaving it to the states to decide."
To be perfectly honest, it makes absolutely zero sense for some of those, abortion and LGBT policies in particular, to change your basic human rights just because you moved 5 miles.
centrifugal forces affect countries by tearing them into pieces; the number of pieces depends on how long you run the centrifuge and at what speed.
the US has long been subject to many centrifugal forces, one of which was the tension between state and federal bodies of government. trump has accelerated the centrifuge's rate of rotation past safely sustainable speeds.
What I’m most worried - as an EU citizen - is that shit happening on the western shore of the Atlantic eventually blows over this side.
Thankfully TTIP was thrown under the bus - for now, tomorrow who can tell? - so it won’t be easy but I’m not feeling that safe. The same greedy multinational corporations sponsoring this public spoliation in the USA are massively present in EU and I don’t think Chinese Walls are a meaningful property of their structures...
Seems like america is going to loose its freedom until next president
ALREADY LOST - to pick a internet plan of their choice which is affordable and reliable to them.
ALREADY LOST - to have privacy.
LOOSING - what people will watch in their internet, so basically you will be target fed specific info and some info you will never come across leading to people will be kept in dark like the sugar news forever.
if we were celebrating July 4th for the freedom over internet then we can stop celebrating it from 2018 but luckily its not that. May be american citizens will stop being submissive and not take whatever is thrown at them and start to make their power and presence felt and be an example to other country citizens.
I don't think it matters much who occupies the oval office. I fear the U.S. is in a systematic regression due to deeper economic issues that so far are being totally unaddressed and unidentified in public.
I hope other nations can begin exerting pressure on this country so that we are forced to begin considering substantial reforms (apparently a long-lived fiscal crisis isn't enough); otherwise these issues may worsen and spread elsewhere as they have already begun doing.
(Divest away from U.S. securities, for example. Challenge the status of U.S. dollar.)
The New York AG just needs to have a judge issue bench warrants for the head of the FCC and its general counsel. That is normally what happens when you refuse to provide evidence for a criminal case.
I hope he does. It seems really shady. Impersonating citizens is probably a criminal offense, and the agency/person responsible for doing so could be charged with that crime.
Now, if it was foreign actors though, I don't think much can be done. Maybe Congress could enact more sanctions. But if it was a domestic operation, carried out by one of the big telecos... wow this will be huge.
Can Congress pass legislation to make net-neutrality something that the FCC cannot touch? If that's the case, it might be possible to pass such a law when(if) dems take over the House/Senate next year right?
> Can Congress pass legislation to make net-neutrality something that the FCC cannot touch?
Yes, if they have support of the President or a veto-proof supermajority in both houses.
> If that's the case, it might be possible to pass such a law when(if) dems take over the House/Senate next year right?
Unlikely, for the reasons stated above, though tying it to something the President isn't willing to veto might work. Or, I guess, if after taking both houses of Congress (and, critically, electing a new Speaker) they also impeach, convict, and remove the Vice President and President, and the Democratic Speaker succeeds to the Presidency, then it would be doable.
Dammit, I had no idea Congress needs 2/3 majority in both houses to override a veto. That seems to make it impossible, even if the Democrats do take control of both Houses.
Or, also within the realm of possibility, Trump flip flops on his positions to side with the Dems, just because he doesn't want to be seen as being out of power.
To play devil’s advocate, are we really ready for Internet to be regulated like a public utility? Like water, we will need to pay more the more we consume. You and I can pay but what about poor people? Will this discourage Internet usage?
> To play devil’s advocate, are we really ready for Internet to be regulated like a public utility?
Yes.
> Like water, we will need to pay more the more we consume.
We already do, though it's more noticeable for mobile broadband. Also, not all public utilities are metered—I’ve lived in places with unmetered public water, for instance, so the connection you draw between metering and public utilities is false.
> You and I can pay but what about poor people?
Public utilities are often subsidized for the poor (that's actually one way that broadband is already treated like a public utility).
The marginal cost for additional bits through an existing hookup is tiny - likely not worth charging for. We'd likely pay based off the bandwidth available to us - and we pretty much already do that today, there's higher-bandwidth tiers available.
Net neutrality isn't about paying more for consuming more. It is like needing to upgrade your water plan to make coffee as opposed to tea; unless you brew with starbucks or something.
I think this the fundamental problem: so few people have any idea how the internet works. Sending packets is nothing like consuming water. The marginal cost of internet use is 0. But, because all you can get across to people is "series of tubes" the ISPs make out like criminals charging for for bits.
With any luck the next generation will look at bandwidth caps the same way young people today are shocked anyone was so stupid as to allow companies to charge per SMS message.
The marginal cost is zero until you hit capacity, and then the marginal cost of the next bit is millions or billions of dollars. Then it goes back to zero until you hit the upgraded capacity, rinse and repeat.
This is a pretty common situation in many areas. The marginal cost of putting a package on a truck is nearly zero (there's a very, very small amount of extra fuel burned) until the truck is full, then the marginal cost of the next package is the cost of sending another truck. The marginal cost of putting another passenger on an airliner is nearly zero (again, there's a small amount of added fuel consumption) until you hit capacity, then it's suddenly huge.
In these other areas, we generally look at the cost as being the marginal cost of the whole truck or plane divided by the number of things it carries, rather than assigning the entire cost to the one thing that requires a new truck or plane. I don't see why internet access shouldn't be like this too.
Data costs should be pretty low, and should be much cheaper at off-peak hours, but I don't see why they should be zero.
Why shouldn't we pay more when we use more? I know that "unlimited" plans have great popularity in the tech community, but is that based on any principle, or is it based on the fact that people in the tech community tend to use the internet a lot more and thereby benefit from "unlimited" plans by effectively freeloading off their less technically literate neighbors?
Remember though, multiple regulations make pay-for-use work. For instance, due to rules on product package labels, you can figure out the power consumption of one product and compare that to other products (should be easier to do and more important to consumers but I digress).
I would love to reach the point where I can take these bloated, horrible web sites and make them have to publicly embarrass themselves by publishing their relative Internet consumption.
I wonder what it would take to really create ISP competition in the US?
I thought I remembered seeing somewhere that the big ISP's use the legal system to essentially drive up entrance costs for smaller players. Would the EFF be able to help with something like that?
The only real long term solution to stuff like this is more competition, because without it you never have the option to "vote with your wallet."
We've had it before, and the way forward is very simple: Internet Service resale at cost.
The major internet providers would be forced to resell to other internet providers access at the costs to the company, including labor, maintenance, etc. Resellers then compete with the company to produce the lowest overhead.
That would get you very cheap ISP with terrible speeds and a lot of downtime.
There is no incentive for investment if they have to resell at (or near) cost.
And we've seen this in action. DSL service was covered by Title II originally, which meant it had to be unbundled and resold. But cable internet had no requirement. Investment flooded to cable rather than telecom. Why would Verizon invest billions in a network that benefits third parties? Well they didn't.
It was only after Title II repeal that Verizon went forward with Fios. Because it didn't have to resell.
It's possible to do this sort of thing, but you have to build in a fat profit margin. But even then, the companies wouldn't have any incentive to provide good service.
And that situation would push us towards internet as public utility, or at least internet infrastructure as public utility. Also, investment into additional infrastructure could be baked into the resale cost. In my opinion, internet as public utility is not a bad thing, although I'm sure there will be many detractors to the idea.
He claims that 80% of smaller ISPs have said that they delayed investment in infrastructure due to the costs associated with the net neutrality regs, and also that there was a reduction in overall broadband investment in the last two years and that has never happened before, outside of a recession. He thinks that this has hurt efforts to bring connectivity to rural and underserved areas.
Personally, I think the argument for net neutrality is strong in the present situation where we have less competition, but he believes that the FTC governance previous to title 2 puting ISPs under the purview of th FCC was already protecting consumers adequately. The new proposal also enforces a transparency requirement on any traffic shaping, or filtering.
I don't really understand how net neutrality can hurt smaller ISPs. Net neutrality just prevents ISPs from using certain monetization schemes. It's not like you have to buy special equipment for net neutrality reasons, or maintain records to prove you're compliant, right?
I think a portion of their argument is that it allows smaller ISPs to gain footholds in niche markets. By allowing them to prioritize and shape traffic, they can gain advantages and offer services that the larger telcos won't.
I imagine an ISP that focuses on serving low-latency gaming traffic at the expense of other application's bandwidth. Or perhaps an ISP that rents bandwidth from a larger one and provides its customers with better bandwidth guarantees on weekends and nights (or balanced out with better business-day bandwidth for commercial customers). And in some ways it makes sense from a market perspective (that's generally how smaller companies can innovate and create advantages).
What all that ignores is the immense locality of ISPs in general. Unless things fundamentally change in regards to how the internet is delivered in the US, most people are never going to have meaningful consumer choice in the one place they live. Giving ISPs more control over bandwidth just gives them more control over consumers.
It's like gerrymandering. The most negative consequences aren't that it gives partisan advantage, it's that it gives representatives the power to choose their constituents.
It's not the net neutrality rules that cause the expense, it's the Title II requirements. The FCC had to use Title II to get the net neutrality rule in place.
Title II is a pretty harsh regulatory environment. The FCC had to suspend most of the rules for the ISPs. Otherwise, the FCC would have to set price control rules, etc.
The only one I've seen that really works at all in my mind is a kind of "it's got to get worse before it gets better" argument. Basically the idea is that if we let ISPs do what they want they will pave their own road to ruin and open the door to more competition from things like planned LEO satellite Internet, mesh networks, etc.
I'm not sure I buy that as I think it under-estimates the barrier to entry.
Listen to the latest "Fifth Column" podcast where they interview this "evil" Ajit Pai guy. I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role of the FTC or state's attorney generals and not the FCC and there is no real market failure here.
> I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role of the FTC
He's echoing the industry on this, the industry that has (succesfully, so far, though the full 9th Circuit will be rehearing the issue) also argued that the FTC is barred by law from regulating them.
Here's the position.
To the FCC: “You shouldn't regulate anti-competitive behavior in our industry, even as a means to serve the clear and precise purposes the FCC is given in statute, because competition in general is the FTC’s job.”
To the FTC: “You can't regulate anti-competitive behavior in our industry, because most major participants are common carriers whether or not broadband is a Title II service, and you are prohibited from regulating common carriers even in their non-common-carrier activities, and any regulation you adopted that only applied to non-common-carrier participants would just concentrate more power in the common carriers.”
That's a completely different topic altogether, though. Even if there were 100 ISPs, Net Neutrality would still be an issue. When there was plenty of competition among long distance phone carriers (back when people needed to worry about that kind of thing), there still was "phone neutrality", meaning that no phone operator could slow down or otherwise interfere with your call based on who you were calling, what provider they had, or anything like that. Net Neutrality is the exact same thing.
It's not the exact same thing. Phone calls are predominantly direct, 1:1 exchanges (in some cases you may have a conference call with a few other parties on the line). No single party could be responsible for a huge majority of the load on a phone network without seeing proportional billing; that is, if you wanted to have 300 simultaneous calls from your office, you had to pay for 300 open phone lines.
Since the internet is instead a broadcast medium, it is much easier for big players to saturate the lines. ISPs naturally believe that _someone_ should be paying for what they interpret as the "extra load" from these big players, and that's not entirely unreasonable when you consider that some households will use 30Mbit/s streaming content to 4 devices for 10 hours per day, and the next household, which pays the same monthly internet bill, uses 5Mbit/s or less to read predominantly-text based sites for 2 hours per day.
Net neutrality is fundamentally large internet companies looking to keep their costs down by using government force to prevent ISPs from charging them usage-based "carriage fees" or similar.
Ultimately I don't know if that's good or bad, but I think it's important we recognize the fight over net neutrality for what it is: an arm wrestling match between industrial juggernauts to decide who is going to pick up the tab for the infrastructure that makes the net tick. The consumer is virtually a non-entity and just watching from the bleachers.
>Phone calls are predominantly direct, 1:1 exchanges
>Since the internet is instead a broadcast medium, it is much easier for big players to saturate the lines
The Internet is _not_ a broadcast medium. Data transfer over the Internet is by nature peer-to-peer.
>ISPs naturally believe that _someone_ should be paying for what they interpret as the "extra load" from these big players
Someone _is_ paying for the load for big players: the consumers who are accessing their sites.
>some households will use 30Mbit/s streaming content to 4 devices for 10 hours per day, and the next household, which pays the same monthly internet bill, uses 5Mbit/s or less to read predominantly-text based sites for 2 hours per day
30 Mb/s residential service already costs more than 5 Mb/s residential service.
>Net neutrality is fundamentally large internet companies looking to keep their costs down by using government force to prevent ISPs from charging them usage-based "carriage fees" or similar.
Net neutrality is fundamentally a consumer protection preventing ISPs from leveraging their natural monopolies on last-mile service to enact rent-seeking policies. Whether ISPs charge consumers directly for access to, say, competing content providers ("Watch Turner Classic Movies for free with Spectrum Basic 10 Mb/s, or upgrade to Spectrum Premium 10 Mb/s for only $19.99 per month to access Netflix, Hulu, and HBO!"), or they charge those content providers extra to peer their traffic and those content providers fold that into subscription fees, we're the ones getting bent over the barrel.
Only in the indirect sense that all expenses ultimately filter down to the customer/buyer. The common trope that businesses never take a loss and always find some creative way to pass each expense onto the consumer is total nonsense, except insofar as it's just a simple tautology that states the obvious fact that a business's revenue must cover its own expenses.
Usage-based billing, per second or per month, does not break net-neutrality.
And as sjolsen pointed out, the consumer is the one who will end up paying the tab, either to the ISP directly, or indirectly via an increase in streaming subscription costs.
If you are ready to steal identities at large scale, don't you think you are capable of faking logs, bribing judges and do whatever you want as well?
It's funny to see how trustful we are in America that the rules will save us all from people not playing by the same rules. Changing the referee is the real solution right? Impeachment should be the focus.
I never heard of slippery slope fallacy before, but I read the wikipedia page about it. Thanks for the info! But I miss where it applies to the reasoning I shared. Maybe you can help me.
Do we really believe key people at FCC are persuaded to support the people with this decision? That is just a matter of showing the truth about those comments? I think it is just a farce and we are wasting our time and energy opposing the FCC. The bigger problem is the constant attack against our democratic process.
So, if I as a private individual ignore and refuse to provide information to an active investigation by a State Attorney General, I am liable to be charged with something (obstruction of justice perhaps)?
Are there no additional avenues to escalate to compel compliance from FCC, other than writing this type of public letter?
Focus your energy on getting your town on municipal fiber. Muni fiber means anyone in your town can start an ISP, which means you'll have 20+ companies competing locally, which means Net Neutrality doesn't need to be regulated at all because there is actual market competition.
They were allegedly against Net Neutrality according to the journalist investigation done [1].
Also, an analysis done by the Knight Foundation for the 2014 proceeding showed that the highest number of unique comment where pro Net Neutrality while the only comments against NN where from templated answers [2]
This letter has nothing to do with the substance of the regulations. It amounts to finger pointing about "illegal conduct". Probably the next thing, we will hear the Russians are behind all of this...
Why can't the FTC regulate or prosecute monoplies, which is its job, instead a bunch arbitrary rules by the FCC?
>Why can't the FTC regulate or prosecute monoplies, which is its job, instead a bunch arbitrary rules by the FCC?
Basically the FTC doesn't have regulation authority over telcos because they are common carriers and thus statutorily exempted from regulation by the FTC.
2020 should be the most awesome year of humanity ever.
And he was piling up many good things for 2020.
But then he felt like there can be more good things for 2020.
So some angel suggested he will create some bad thing in few years before it and then solve those bad things in 2020 that way the awesomeness of 2020 will increase.
I already contacted all of my representatives to investigate this, but with the approaching FCC vote and now this AG Open Letter, I fear that nothing will happen until it's too late. What is a citizen to do when they try to do everything in their power and play by the rules - vote, submit comments, call representatives, contact press for help, and repeat - results in nothing?
The FCC has effectively ignored the rules and stalled their way to victory. I'm not even sure how to describe our government anymore...
[1] https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/public-api-docs.html