The House has passed bill Wednesday to restore Obama-era “net neutrality” rules, but the legislation faces slim odds of making it through the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Save the Internet Act passed the Democrat-controlled House 232-190 Wednesday, with only one Republican vote in favor. But top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that net neutrality is “dead on arrival in the Senate.” The Trump administration also opposes the bill . Still, the effort to restore net neutrality could give Democrats political points on consumer protections.
The 2015 net neutrality regulations barred internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T from blocking or slowing online traffic or from charging companies for faster lanes for consumers. They were highly partisan in Washington and came after a decade of telecom-industry resistance.
They were upheld by a federal appeals court, but the Federal Communications Commission scrapped the rules after the Trump administration installed a Republican majority there. That meant there was nothing stopping ISPs from interfering with internet traffic so long as they disclosed it.
The net-neutrality saga continued as tech companies and nearly two dozen U.S. states sued to undo the 2017 repeal and restore the 2015 measure. A decision by a federal appeals court on that is pending. California also has a net-neutrality law which is on hold until the appeals court decision.
In Congress, Republicans have introduced three other bills that net-neutrality advocates say are too weak because they don’t give the FCC the power to go after potential bad behavior by ISPs aside from blocking, throttling and charging internet companies for zippier access to users.
(AP)
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3 Responses
The Democrats primary concern is to protect tech companies (who are major Democratic donors) that use large amounts of internet resources and do NOT want service providers to charge extra based on use (sort of like demanding from restaurants that they serve “all you can eat” at a flat price). The Republicans should counter-offer that: 1) internet service providers have to have one rate table for everyone but that can include higher fees for those wanting better service; 2) internet companies must be politically neutral (as opposed to today, when they tend to be left-wing shills).
The name of the law is misleading and fraudulent. It offers no neutrality only control and restrictions to the providers.
It sounds like a good thing when it actually causes the internet companies to lose money and subsidize some terrorist with one PC and give home the same service as NETFILX.
MOST PEOPLE ARE EASILY FOOLED BY THE NAME.
See Wikipedia description:
Network neutrality, or more simply net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers should treat all Internet communications equally and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication.[4] When net neutrality is required, Internet service providers (ISPs) may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific online content. Without net neutrality regulations, ISPs may prioritize certain types of traffic, meter others, or potentially block traffic from specific services, while charging consumers for various tiers of service.
The fraudulent democrats only support it since it is an easy sell – especially since most people HAVE NO IDEA what it is.
If you have the time to read the Wikipedia article, they list economists, Nobel prize winners, civil rights groups, director of policy of cisco etc
The list is long. Take a look.
It is a stupid and bad law with a sweet sounding name.