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What you need to know about the FCC's new net neutrality proposal

Dusting off old regulations won't protect free, open Internet

The Internet is and will continue to be an indispensable part of the lives of Floridians and all Americans. As we grow more dependent on it for everyday tasks, ensuring fair and open Internet access will continue to be a priority.

In the early days of the Internet, Congress and regulators intentionally left the Internet free from burdensome regulation. This bipartisan decision to keep government’s hands off the Internet has been responsible for leaps in innovation and investment – making America a global leader in broadband development. Revolutionary ways to connect with other people around the world online; billion dollar smart phone applications; near-instantaneous Internet speeds; the list of truly life-altering innovations goes on and on.

No one disagrees that the Internet should be free and open. The president’s plan just does not accomplish that goal.

We have all benefitted from a system that incentivizes broadband providers to be the fastest and most reliable consumer access to the Internet.

Over the last six years, however, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has tried to assert more control over this valuable American resource. The courts have already overturned two sets of FCC rules, but this so-called “independent agency” is poised to vote this week on its most aggressive rules yet.

At the urging of President Obama, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler submitted a proposal that included more drastic changes and regulations than ever before. This government takeover of the Internet follows the President’s position that reclassification of broadband services to Title II common carrier status – which were originally designed and implemented to protect against 1930s monopolies– is the only option.

Dusting off regulations from the Roosevelt-era will not protect a free and open Internet. They will not benefit consumers. They will not spur innovation. They will not encourage a young entrepreneur to develop a new innovative app, or a company to develop new “smart” appliances.

Consumers – yes, you, reader – will be most hurt by this proposal. A whole host of new regulations and years of uncertainty will come. Even worse, this plan opens the door to billions of dollars in new fees on your Internet service, while putting nearly $45 Billion of new investments at risk over the next five years.

Do you like streaming live sports or network TV on your computer or mobile device? The agreements that allow you to do that quickly and reliably will now be subject to new, untested regulations. This unknown regulatory landscape is likely to reduce future investments in services that many consumers rely upon.

Small businesses across the country are also put in jeopardy from these rules. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/02/26/net-neutrality-debate-dusting-off-old-regulations-wont-protect-free-open/

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"LEAKED! Here's The White House's Draft Cybersecurity Executive Order"

Earlier this week, we wrote about how the White House was working on an executive order to act as a "stand in" for cybersecurity legislation that has so far failed to pass Congress (CISPA passed in the House, but a different effort, the Cybersecurity Act, failed in the Senate, and it would have been difficult to get the two houses aligned anyway). Last weekend Jason Miller from Federal News Radio wrote about a draft he saw... but failed to share the actual draft. We got our hands on a draft (and confirmed what it was with multiple sources) and wanted to share it, as these kinds of things deserve public scrutiny and discussion. It's embedded below. As expected, it does have elements of the Lieberman/Collins bill (to the extent that the White House actually can do things without legislation). It's also incredibly vague. The specific requirements for government agencies are left wide open to interpretation. For example, the State Dept. should engage other governments about protecting infrastructure. Well, duh. As expected, most stuff focuses on Homeland Security and its responsibilities to investigate a variety of different cybersecurity issues -- but, again, it's left pretty vague.

There is, as expected, plans concerning information sharing -- but again, they're left pretty empty on specifics. It talks about an "information exchange framework." Unfortunately, it does not appear to highlight privacy or civil liberties concerns in discussing the information sharing stuff. That seems like a pretty big problem. Homeland Security is tasked with coming up with a way to share information, pulling on some existing efforts, but nowhere do they call out how to make sure these information exchange programs don't lead to massive privacy violations, despite the President's earlier promises that any cybersecurity efforts would take into account privacy and civil liberties.

Mike Masnick

techdirt.com

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Comment by Central Scrutinizer on March 27, 2018 at 6:30pm: MICROSOFT TO BAN ‘OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE’ & MONITOR YOUR PRIVATE AC...

Comment by Central Scrutinizer on May 10, 2017 at 1:15pm: New browser out, designed right this time (personal opinion) called

Lunascape6, luvvin the hell out of this one ;)

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/5925-lunascape.html

Comment by Tara on February 26, 2015 at 10:45am: Watch Net Neutrality Voting live

http://www.c-span.org/video/?324473-1/fcc-meeting-net-neutrality

Live Now

Comment by guest_blog on October 21, 2013 at 4:48pm: Level 3 Outage Disrupts East Coast Internet Traffic 19 Oct 2013 Internet users from Brooklyn to Philadelphia suffered slow to nonexistent service Saturday after equipment at a New York-area network hub broke down, disrupting service for several hours. A spokesman for the Internet service provider Level 3 Communications Inc. said technicians were working quickly to fix the outage, which cascaded down to customers using Cablevision Systems Corp.'s Optimum service and Time Warner Cable Inc., among others. It wasn't immediately clear Saturday why traffic from cable subscribers in New York and New Jersey wasn't rerouted around Level 3.

Comment by Central Scrutinizer on March 24, 2013 at 1:43pm: Wireless Mesh Networks – The Internet Censorship Solution

Fabulous must see video! James Corbett again brilliantly nails the ongoing internet "war of attrition" by our would-be controllers. More than that, he introduces our ultimate solution to their clampdown - a decentralized pirate internet via "mesh networks"!

Get ready, folks, it's about to come to that, same story as in all fascist clampdowns. They can't stamp us out as hard as these bastards try. Listen and learn and start getting hooked up. Keep on!

Comment by Central Scrutinizer on February 2, 2013 at 6:06pm: TWITTER: 250k accounts hacked

Comment by Friday Woodlans-Sprite on January 3, 2013 at 6:49pm: anyone who invokes god needs to learn.

Comment by truth on December 6, 2012 at 11:46am: U.N. Report Reveals International Protocol for Tracking People Online

The document outlines the stages law enforcement agencies should go through when conducting electronic surveillance of suspects: first, by obtaining data and “cookies” stored by websites like Facebook, Google, eBay and Paypal; second, by obtaining location data from servers used by VoIP Internet phone services (like Skype); then, by conducting a “smart analysis” of these data before moving on to the most serious and controversial step: intercepting communications, exploiting security vulnerabilities in communications technologies for “intelligence-gathering purposes,” and even infecting a target computer with Trojan-horse spyware to mine data.

Comment by Tula on December 1, 2012 at 11:47am: Alex Jones Connected To Stratfor/Israel CIA Front

Comment by guest_blog on December 1, 2012 at 11:40am: CIA-Sponsored Trolls Monitor Internet & Interact With Users to Discredit Factual Information http://occupycorporatism.com/cia-sponsored-trolls-monitor-internet-...