Imagrunt
Because, historically, when government seizes liberty, it's gone forever.

FCC approves controversial ‘Net Neutrality’ regulations

By Eric W. Dolan
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 -- 2:07 pm

By a 3-2 vote Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed so-called "Net Neutrality" rules aimed at prohibiting internet service providers (ISPs) from discriminating between Internet traffic.

Supporters of "Net Neutrality" have been disappointed by the proposed rules, saying they heavily favor the industry they are supposed to regulate.

Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps both voted with Chairman Julius Genachowski in favor of the new rules, despite saying they believed the Open Internet Order to be too weak.

Republican Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker voted against it.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who has championed "Net Neutrality" in the past, said the FCC's proposed rules would actually "destroy" the principle of "Net Neutrality."

The rules authored by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski would require ISPs to allow their customers to have access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks and prohibit unreasonable network discrimination.

But the plan would also allow for a greater fractioning of the Internet and data rationing on mobile and wired networks, according to analysis of the policies. Major network stakeholders like Verizon and AT&T would be able to sell bandwidth in capped tiers, with overage charges for users who download too much information, and certain types of data traffic like peer-to-peer file transfers could be banned altogether.

The FCC would additionally require broadband providers to disclose their network management practices.

If they pass and telecoms are allowed to move forward with their plans, "the Internet as we know it would cease to exist," Sen. Franken concluded in an editorial published by Huffington Post.

"That's why Tuesday is such an important day," he continued. "The FCC will be meeting to discuss those regulations, and we must make sure that its members understand that allowing corporations to control the Internet is simply unacceptable."

In a recent speech, Genachowski specified that the FCC's rules would permit ISPs to charge heavy bandwidth users even more, creating a tiered pricing structure. ISPs would also be able to charge fees to businesses serving large quantities of data.

The new rules would apply to wireless Internet providers as well as wired Internet providers, but wireless Internet providers are expected to receive greater flexibility in their ability to manage web traffic.

Tiered pricing structures are already in place for many communications providers like AT&T and Cricket, which offer wireless broadband services. Verizon said it would implement similar pricing structures in the coming months.

With a recent report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that a majority of Americans age 25-29 live in households that only have cell phone access, the importance of wireless connections is expected to grow.

"We are deeply disappointed that the chairman chose to ignore the overwhelming public support for real 'Net Neutrality,' instead moving forward with industry-written rules that will for the first time in Internet history allow discrimination online," Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron said in a statement. "This proceeding was a squandered opportunity to enact clear, meaningful rules to safeguard the Internet's level playing field and protect consumers."

Republican Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell warned Tuesday that the new "Net Neutrality" rules would be used by President Barack Obama to takeover the Internet.

"The Obama Administration, which has already nationalized health care, the auto industry, insurance companies, banks and student loans, will move forward with what could be a first step in controlling how Americans use the Internet by establishing federal regulations on its use," he said.

Republican Commissioner McDowell had less alarmist disagreements with the new rules.

"Analysts and broadband companies of all sizes have told the FCC that new rules are likely to have the perverse effect of inhibiting capital investment, deterring innovation, raising operating costs, and ultimately increasing consumer price," he wrote in an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal. "On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation."

BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs...rse-fccs-internet-takeover#ixzz18nMbVe3O

Politics from the Nation's Capital
DeMint vows to reverse FCC's 'Internet takeover'


By: Mark Tapscott 12/21/10 2:33 PM
Editorial Page Editor

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, says Federal Communications Commission should be renamed the "Fabricating a Crisis Commission," following a vote by the panel's three Democrats to approve proposed rules that amount to a hostile takeover of the Internet by a government agency acting illegally.

The proposal - misleadingly described by proponents as an attempt to insure "net neutrality" by guaranteeing equal access to the Internet - was introduced a year ago by Julius Genachowski, President Obama's appointee as FCC chairman.

A federal court has ruled that the commission has no authority to regulate the Internet, and a bipartisan group of senators and representives warned Genechowski not to attempt to impose a regulatory regime on the Internet earlier this year.

The move's legality was even questioned by FCC Commissioner Michael Copp, one of the Democrats who voted today with Genachowski, saying he considered voting against the proposal because it lacks a sufficiently defensible legal basis to survive a court challenge promised by major Internet Service Providers like Verizon, Microsoft, and AT & T.

But legal challenges by industry are likely to be much less of a problem for the Genachowski-led takeover than efforts in Congress to stop the FCC in its tracks.

That's clearly what DeMint has in mind, as he said in his statement released today following the FCC action:

“The Obama Administration has ignored evidence that this federal takeover will hang a millstone of regulatory and legal uncertainty around the neck of a vibrant sector of our economy.

"Proceeding on its own liberal whims rather than facts, this FCC has chosen to grant itself broad authority to limit how businesses can bring the internet to consumers in faster and more innovative ways.

“Americans loudly demanded a more limited federal government this November, but the Obama Administration has dedicated itself to expanding centralized government planning. Today, unelected bureaucrats rammed through an internet takeover, even after Congress and courts warned them not to.

“To keep the internet economy thriving, this decision must be reversed. Regulatory reform will be a top priority for Republicans in the next Congress, and I intend to prevent the FCC or any government agency from unilaterally burdening our recovering economy with baseless regulation.

"In order to provide the stability businesses need to grow, I will work with my fellow senators to see passage of my FCC Act, which would ensure that the FCC can only use its rulemaking powers where there is clear evidence of a harmful market failure, as well as the REINS Act, which would add the accountability of a Congressional vote before any government agency’s proposed major regulations may be finalized.”

If the FCC plan somehow manages to survive, it will almost certainly do for First Amendment liberties and the Internet what it did for them in regulating broadcast television and radio. Former CBS News president Fred Friendly's landmark book, "The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment," describes in great detail how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations used the FCC to silence conservative critics.

attempt to insure "net neutrality" by guaranteeing equal access to the Internet

Because there exists no area of human activity that couldn't benefit from more paternalistic attention . . . Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Federal Communications Commission to your Web browser.

Congressional Democrats could not find the votes to pass "net neutrality." No problem. Three un-elected officials will impose rules on hundreds of millions of satisfied online consumers. A federal appeals court stops the FCC from employing authority over the Internet. Again, not a problem. Three out of five FCC commissioners can carve out some temporary wiggle room, because as any crusading technocrat knows, the most important thing is getting in the door.

It's not that we don't need the FCC's meddling, it's that we don't need the FCC at all. Rather than expanding the powers — which always seem to grow — of this outdated bureaucracy, Congress should be finding ways to eliminate it.

Why would we want a prehistoric bureaucracy overseeing one of the century's great innovations? As a bottom-up, unregulated and under- taxed market in which technological innovation, free speech and competition thrive — at affordable prices, no less — the Internet poses a crisis of ideology, not commerce, for the FCC. It's about control and relevance. What else can explain the proactive rescue of the Web from capitalistic abuses that reside exclusively in the imagination of a handful of progressive ideologues?

What is the FCC doing? It's complicated and in some ways irrelevant. It claims that regulatory power will ensure that consumers enjoy an "open Internet" (with more broadband providers than ever, is there anything more open than the Internet?). But the FCC can also censor speech. And once the FCC can regulate Internet service providers, those providers will be more compliant and more interested in making censors happy.

The FCC also can hand out favors and hurt competition. And as Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote in 2008, "Economic growth requires innovation. Trouble is, Washington is practically designed to resist it. Built into the DNA of the most important agencies created to protect innovation is an almost irresistible urge to protect the powerful instead."

Even as Chairman Julius Genachowski claims that he will employ a "light touch," the FCC leaves open the possibility that it will use the Title II docket to classify broadband as a public utility — and, as you know, nothing says progress and modernization like "utility."

The same organization that forced all consumers to buy Ma Bell-made telephones for decades, the same FCC that enforced speech codes via radio "fairness doctrines," the same FCC which took two decades after its invention to OK cellular technology for the marketplace and acted similarly sluggish with cable and satellite innovation has no business online.

[b]It is likely that a new Congress — or perhaps the courts — will undo this regulatory power play. And though "net neutrality" or "open Internet" (no one need to worry, Doublespeak is flourishing) may not survive, it reminds us that the FCC's institutional positions conflict with the vibrancy and freedom of the Internet. Positions that are as archaic as they are detrimental.

Originally posted by ParaSkS:
Currently December 22nd, one day after internet regulations slated to start...relatively how many sites have been affected?

* the right to be let alone -- so that we may be free of government intrusion in our lives, liberty, and property (3rd Amendment);

corporation are fictions that create nothing that they do not first take from the individual living soul

Originally posted by safetalker:
STRATIOTES

What you say is basically true
I am over 64 years of age. If I had this information when I was 20 to 30 I would have been very poor and free. When really is [b] TOO late. [/b]

...when it comes to current events of what goes on today, it is purely who has the force to do what is necessary.