More Net Neutrality Sadz From Drudge

At this writing the Drudge Report is completely blank.

Obama Thanks Reddit On Net Neutrality

A longer message was sent to the Reddit blog: "Earlier today, the FCC voted to protect a free and open internet — the kind of internet that allows entrepreneurs to thrive and debates over duck-sized horses and horse-sized ducks to persist. This would not have happened without the activism and engagement of millions of Americans like you. And that was a direct result of communities like reddit. So to all the redditors who participated in this movement, I have a simple message: Thank you.  —President Barack Obama"

This has made the Tea People furious, of course.

Matt Drudge Has The Net Neutrality Sadz

UPDATE: All the homocons have the sadz.

FCC Approves Net Neutrality

Via TechCrunch:

As expected, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed new net neutrality regulations today on a vote of 3-2, with the Commission’s two Democratic appointees joining Chairman Tom Wheeler in voting yes. The Commission’s two Republican-appointed members both voted no.

Notably, the FCC’s plan is now known to have undergone a last-minute revision to remove a potential weakness in its formation, pointed out by Google, that might have allowed for some paid prioritization. If you were curious about Google’s take on net neutrality, that fact should settle the question. The CEO of Etsy, an online marketplace, spoke before the commission voted to “applaud” the FCC for putting into place “bright line” rules, and “voting to protect the Internet.”

Up first from the commission, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in her remarks that the “framers” of America “would be pleased” with the FCC’s plan. The commissioner went on to call today’s vote the FCC’s “third bite at the apple.” Clyburn also disclosed, as was previously reported, that she had helped shape part of the order, and also listed a number of changes she would have preferred to see in the order itself. The commissioner wrapped by arguing that individuals who are worried about rate regulation are worrying unnecessarily.

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel argued that the United States’ “Internet economy is the envy of the world. We invented it. The app economy began right here on our shores.” She went on to call the Internet “our printing press” and “our town square.” Rosenworcel also called attention to the massive outpouring of public response to net neutrality: “Four million Americans wrote to this agency…Whatever our disagreements are on net neutrality, I hope we agree that this is democracy in action and something we can all support.”

More from Wired:

With the vote, the FCC is changing the way it views both wireless and fixed-line broadband service providers, reclassifying them as “Title II” common carriers under the nation’s telecommunications laws. The Title II designation, which already covers voice services, gives the FCC the ability to set rates, open up access to competitors, and generally more closely regulate the broadband industry. It’s a reversal of course for the FCC, which until now did not even enforce net neutrality rules on wireless broadband services, and very lightly regulated fixed providers. But it’s also a return to the regulatory regime that governed consumer internet services 20 years ago, when hundreds of dial-up internet service providers competed on Title II-regulated phone networks.

Internet service providers and Republican commissioners on the FCC see the new rules as unnecessary and dangerous government interference. “The internet is not broken,” said FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. “There is no problem for the government to solve.” Ironically, today’s vote was first set in motion by a series of lawsuits dating back several years, which challenged the FCC’s ability to enforce it’s own net neutrality regulations. Last year the latest legal challenge ended when a D.C. court ruled in Verizon’s favor, saying that the way that the FCC had classified internet services didn’t give it the right to enforce net neutrality.

Conservative groups and the American Family Foundation have vigorously opposed net neutrality. Because Obama.

Whatever Obama Wants, Ted's Agin' It

President Obama On Net Neutrality: FCC Should Reclassify Internet As Public Utility

Via Reuters:

Barack Obama took a strong stance on Monday on new 'net neutrality' regulations being drafted by the Federal Communications Commission, saying the agency should reclassify broadband to regulate it more like a public utility. The FCC has received nearly 4 million comments after Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that prohibited Internet service providers from blocking any content, but allowed deals where content providers would pay ISPs to ensure smooth delivery of traffic. Obama, who campaigned on the issue of net neutrality, said the FCC's new rules should explicitly ban such paid prioritization deals and sided with consumer advocates who have pushed for the FCC to reclassify ISPs so that they can be regulated more like a public utility.

Read the White House statement.

Today Is Internet Slowdown Day

Via USA Today:

Several tech companies including Netflix and Digg are participating in a digital protest supporting net neutrality. The protest is part of Internet Slowdown Day, targeting cable companies that supporters of the movement say want to slow down the Web. Now, this won't mean sites will intentionally slow their services to make this point. Instead, visitors to sites like Netflix, Digg, Reddit, Mozilla, Etsy and Foursquare will display messaging with the iconic, spinning "loading" symbol. They will also urge users to share their complaints with the Federal Communications Commission and Congress. Several apps may also display prompts to stop cable companies' "slowlane."

Here's a great explanation of the issue.

GOP Fails To Block Net Neutrality

A last-ditch GOP attempt to block the FCC's coming rules on net neutrality has failed in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats narrowly defeated the measure by a vote of 52-46. Politico notes that the president had promised to veto the bill.

It is unclear whether Senate Republicans intend to attempt a related resolution in the future. A similar measure by House Republicans sailed to victory in April. The Senate outcome Thursday is largely symbolic: Even Republicans had recognized the White House would likely veto any effort to roll back the FCC’s work on net neutrality, a threat the administration made formal this week. But Republicans in the upper chamber, led by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), never backed down in their war. With more than 40 original co-sponsors, the GOP held on to the resolution for months, waiting for the FCC to publish its rules through official channels, so that GOP lawmakers could fast track their measure to the floor while avoiding a filibuster.

As more internet providers are gobbled up by major content providers such as television networks, many fear that web speeds will be throttled when customers attempt to access content owned by the competitors of their ISP. The FCC rules outlaw such actions. And as usual, the GOP sided with corporations over consumers.

Dominionist Nutjob David Barton: The Bible Is Totally Against Net Neutrality

David Barton, the Seven Mountains whackjob who believes that America should be a Christianist theocracy, says that the Bible outlaws net neutrality. In fact, fairness isn't a concept that Christians should embrace at all.

This is the Fairness Doctrine applied to the Internet, and I’ll go back to what I believed for a long time is: fair is a word no Christian should ever use in their vocabulary. Fair has nothing to do with anything. What you want is justice, you don’t want fairness. Fairness is subjective, what I think is fair, what you think, what happened to Jesus wasn’t fair. That’s right, but we needed justice so God did that for us. This is really, I’m going to use the word wicked stuff, and I don’t use that word very often, but this is wicked stuff.

RELATED: Alarmed by Barton's meteoric popularity among the Tea Party and religious right, Right Wing Watch today issued an exhaustive expose on the man Newt Gingrich Mike Huckabee says Americans should be "forced to listen to at gunpoint." An excerpt:

Barton has been profitably peddling a distorted “Christian nation” version of American history to conservative religious audiences for the past two decades. His books and videos denouncing church-state separation have been repeatedly debunked by respected historians, but that hasn’t kept Barton from becoming a folk hero for many in the Religious Right. His eagerness to help elect Republicans has won him gratitude and support from national as well as state and local GOP leaders. Former senator Sam Brownback, now the governor of Kansas, has said that Barton’s research “provides the philosophical underpinning for a lot of the Republican effort in the country today – bringing God back into the public square.” Indeed, Time Magazine named him one of the nation’s 25 most influential evangelical Christians in 2005.

Comcast Clamps Down On Netflix

Comcast has just about closed on its deal to acquire NBC-Universal, meaning that they'll soon have a much greater stake in directing their customers to their own streaming entertainment properties. So it's not too surprising that they are already charging the competition more to deliver Netflix movies to Comcast customers.

Level 3 Communications Inc., an Internet backbone company that supports Netflix Inc.'s increasingly popular movie streaming service, complained Monday that cable giant Comcast Corp. is charging it an unfair fee for the right to send data to its subscribers. Comcast replied it is being swamped by a flood of data and needs to be paid. Level 3 said it agreed to pay under protest, but that the fee violates the principles of an "open Internet." It also goes against the Federal Communications Commission's proposed rules preventing broadband Internet providers from favoring certain types of traffic, it said. "Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network, enabling it to unilaterally decide how much to charge for content," said Level 3's chief legal officer, Thomas Stortz, in a statement.

Comcast has a history of "throttling" (slowing down) the signals of heavy download customers such as those accessing BitTorrent or Netflix. The FCC continues to back the Net Neutrality bill which would prevent internet providers from charging more for signals from their competitors. Netflix now accounts for about 20% of all internet downstreaming in North America.

INTERNET DEATH WATCH: 100% Of Net Neutrality Supporters Their Elections

You can kiss your unlimited, uncensored, unthrottled and open internet service goodbye. All 95 candidates that supported the FCC's Net Neutrality bill were defeated on Tuesday.

Before Tuesday's midterm elections, there were 95 House and Senate candidates who pledged support for Net neutrality, a bill that would force Internet providers to not charge users more for certain kinds of Web content. All of them lost -- and that could mean the contentious proposal may now be all but dead. The Federal Communications Commission tried to implement Net neutrality rules but got smacked down in April by a court ruling saying it did not have the authority to do so. As a result, it is preparing a proposal asking Congress to give it new authority to regulate broadband Internet service. If passed, the Net neutrality law would require Internet providers like phone and cable companies to treat all Web content equally. They would prevent providers from restricting access to certain sites or applications, or collecting fees to deliver some sites faster than others.

In August a coalition of GOP and Tea Party candidates formed to oppose Net Neutrality, arguing that it was good for business to allow internet providers to charge customers more to access the sites of their competitors. And if you're unwilling to pay a surcharge to access, for example, Hulu from a Comcast connection, rather than NBC, which they own, then Comcast is perfectly entitled to throttle the speed of Hulu's signal. Time-Warner Cable, likewise, could charge you more to read online magazines that aren't in their 150-title portfolio.

Sam Seder On Net Neutrality

What do we have to fear from Google and Verizon?

NET NEUTRALITY: Sen. Al Franken Warns That Corporations Will Run The Internet

Calling it the First Amendment issue of our time, during his closing keynote at Netroots Nation, Sen. Al Franken warned that unless net neutrality is preserved, media corporations that are also internet providers will soon throttle the speeds of their competitors, an issue we've long been discussing here on JMG.

(Via - Towleroad)

Appeals Court Overturns Net Neutrality

In a decision that may have far-reaching impact on how you view streaming internet video, today a U.S. Appeals Court overturned the FCC's ruling that internet providers must provide equal access to all information on their networks.

The court's ruling also could pose legal problems for the FCC as it seeks to enact the expansive National Broadband Policy it unveiled last month. A spokesman for Genachowski would not say what the next steps would be for the FCC as advisors reviewed the court's 36-page decision. Among the options would be to appeal the ruling, seek direct authority from Congress to regulate broadband or have the commission attempt to classify high-speed Internet service under existing law so it would be subject to the same type of regulation as telephone service. "The FCC is firmly committed to promoting an open Internet and to policies that will bring the enormous benefits of broadband to all Americans," said FCC spokeswoman Jen Howard. "It will rest these policies -- all of which will be designed to foster innovation and investment while protecting and empowering consumers -- on a solid legal foundation."

The huge winner in the case is Comcast, which has been accused of throttling (slowing down) the internet speeds of heavy-use customers and of planning to cripple the viewing quality of streaming video sites that compete with their own. Comcast contends that the FCC has no right to tell them how to handle traffic on their own system.

GOP Fights Net Neutrality

GOP senators are lining up to oppose net neutrality, legislation from the FCC that would prevent internet service providers from favoring their own web applications over those of their competitors, including wireless providers. In other words, all customers should be able to access all available content at the same speed. Major telecom companies, who often operate both broadband and wireless networks, oppose the legislation, preferring a tiered pricing system which many believe would stifle competition and innovation. Because naturally, telecoms would give pricing, speed, and access preferences to companies they own.

Six Republican senators have introduced an amendment that would block the Federal Communications Commission from implementing its recently announced Net neutrality policy. Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison introduced the amendment to an appropriations bill. It would prevent the FCC from getting funding for any initiative to uphold Net neutrality. According to The Hill, the co-sponsors are Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). The move appears to be an attempt to pre-empt the FCC's expected new policy to ensure that Internet service providers don't discriminate between different types of information on their networks.

On Monday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gave a speech in which he outlined the FCC's plan to enforce Net neutrality, a position President Barack Obama held during his campaign for president. In recent years, concern has grown that some Internet service providers are slowing down "access to high speed Internet for things like Internet-based voice calls, video streaming, and legal file sharing (that carriers might wish to block or at least charge extra for)," writes Ian Paul at PCWorld magazine. While Net neutrality is supported by Internet-reliant companies such as Google and Microsoft, it is opposed by major Internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. Those three have come out against Genachowski's plan, ChannelWeb reports.

I can understand the desire to throttle individuals eating up extraordinary amounts of bandwidth, (particularly BitTorrent users), which is already done in many countries. Last year Comcast imposed a 250GB monthly usage cap for its residential customers. Exceed that limit twice in six months and you irrevocably lose your internet access for one year. Bandwidth isn't free. And much like heavier cars are more expensive to register because they literally use up more of the road, it does make some sense to charge heavy web users more than others.

But it's obvious that the real intent of the GOP and their amendment is to further line the pockets of their big-ticket telecom donors. That will happen at the expense of game changers like eBay's Skype, Google's YouTube, or anybody else with high-bandwidth applications that telecoms don't own.

This fight's been going on a long time and here's a classic from 2006, featuring all your favorite early stars of the web. This song still kills me.