House Panel Votes To Repeal New FCC Internet Rules

WASHINGTON — A Republican-controlled Congressional panel has voted to repeal new Federal Communications Commission rules that prohibit phone and cable companies from interfering with Internet traffic on their broadband networks.

The House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology voted 15-to-8 along party lines Wednesday to overturn the FCC's new "network neutrality" regulations. The FCC's three Democrats voted to adopt the regulations in December over the opposition of the agency's two Republicans.

The rules are intended to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over broadband connections to dictate where their subscribers go and what they do online. They prohibit broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services, including online calling services like Skype and Web video services like Netflix that could compete with their core phone and cable operations.

Wednesday's vote marks the second attempt by House Republicans to reverse the FCC's actions. Last month, they attached an amendment to a sweeping spending bill that would prohibit the agency from using government money to implement its new regulations.

Republicans argue that the rules will discourage phone and cable companies from investing in costly network upgrades by barring them from offering premium services over their lines or prioritizing traffic from business partners in order to earn a return on those investments. They also maintain that the FCC overstepped its authority in adopting the rules.

Verizon Communications Inc. and Metro PCS Communications Inc. are also challenging the rules in federal appeals court in the District of Columbia.

Last year, that same court ruled that the FCC had exceeded its legal authority in rebuking cable giant Comcast Corp. for blocking its subscribers from accessing an Internet file-sharing service used to trade online video and other big files. Comcast maintained that traffic from the service was clogging its network.

The agency said Comcast had violated broad net neutrality principles first established by the commission in 2005. Those principles served as a foundation for the formal rules adopted by the FCC late last year.

Comments

[bcarb]

07:18 PM on 03/16/2011

andyg 11:13 PM on 3/12/2011 44 Fans
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The dim's want the goverment to control the internet, so the only news on it is good for them.
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Just a gentle reminder to everyone. These people are paid to blog on this site with the Koch brothers mantra. Everytime you reply to their comments, they get paid. Try responding to them like I have here. Let's starve them.

[bcarb]

06:57 PM on 03/16/2011

Sure they did this with all the world focused on Japan....very snakey GOP.

[Danish5666]

08:30 AM on 03/14/2011

You can always count on the GOP to by on side of cooperation against the people.

[Birdman]

10:35 AM on 03/13/2011

How can any sane person see this as a good thing? Where say Comcast/NBC can limit, slow down, or otherwise manipulate the delivery of any content other than their own? Sheesh, Oh I know some will say move on, use someone else, that is fine if you have an aternative, but in many places you do not.

[twninja]

03:47 PM on 03/12/2011

Leave . . the . . . INTERNET . . ALONE!

[bistromathics42]

02:07 PM on 03/11/2011

Apparently the GOP doesn't want the government to tell service providers what to do with the internet, but it wants service providers to tell consumers what to do with the internet. Real smart, guys...

[andyg]

11:12 PM on 03/12/2011

consumers choose by using their feet, if you don't like the service, find another one.

[Birdman]

10:41 AM on 03/13/2011

What if you have no other altenative? Most communities have no other options Ya know one high speed cable provider. Like in my case I have only one option, my cable company, no DSL or Fios where I live, sure there is dial up but that is a joke in today's internet. There is satellite but that is not all that reliable at least it wasn't several years ago. So I guess what you are saying to 75% of the users then is, if you do not like it do without.

[bistromathics42]

01:12 PM on 03/15/2011

What you're implying there is that there's an equivalent, or better, alternative. If there's no regulation against content discrimination, then why would any service be better than another? For instance, every cable company which also provides internet access has a built-in incentive to block or hinder Netflix streaming over their network. Why? They'd much rather their customers rely on their own native On-Demand video service. When you allow incentives like that to exist without regulation, you open the door for abuse.

In the world of the internet, there are content providers and there are service providers. Some companies blur the line by being both (AOL/Time Warner, for instance), but for the most part, service providers have no business controlling content. None whatsoever.

[ScentOpine]

10:10 AM on 03/11/2011

Fox News says net neutrality is bad, therefore, flaccid Americans fall in line.

AT&T wants to turn the internet into cable TV.

Tea baggers, republicans and centrists have more in common than people realize.

Democrats and republicans are working together with CEOs to bundle internet access into premium packages like cable. For example-

$50 a month gets you basic service with access to Fox, Wall Street Journal, CNN and Microsoft websites. $100 dollars gets you to these additional sites, etc.

Teabaggers don't understand that tiered service plan already exist for the purposes of regulating traffic - most people pay for service based on usage - $X for Y Mbyte/sec and Z number of downloads.

Of course, that's not what is at the heart of this matter. This is about CEO control of information.

What CEOs are doing in Wisconsin is what they are doing to internet. Taking away rights and freedoms.

Tea baggers want to be able to restrict your access to health care, internet, working rights, religion, and whatever is left.

Tea baggers are ultimate control freaks. They won't be happy until the only web site and television available for viewing is Fox News. Just like old Soviet Pravda, tea baggers and CEOs are aligned in their fight against freedom of information.

More and more tea baggers represent something like fascist robots. Democrats and Republicans are building a new age of American ignorance in the image of a bagger.

[andyg]

11:13 PM on 03/12/2011

The dim's want the goverment to control the internet, so the only news on it is good for them.

[ScentOpine]

12:41 AM on 03/13/2011

Baggers put their trust in Fox News and billionaire CEOs. The rest of us want freedom of speech and equal access to information.

Baggers want full control of everything - media, energy policy, education, abortion right, birth certificates, religion, sex, immigration, war, on and on. Baggers are at war with everything.

Baggers want control of what people say and do. Meanwhile, the baggers send all jobs to china and india while thumping their bible here at home.

Nothing bothers a bagger more than freedom and education. Smart people get things done and that presents a threat to baggers. So its only natural baggers what to control what gets reported on the internet.

Baggers are all about torture, censorship, religious tests, cronyism, all tools to make up for poor skills and poor education. They can't compete on intellectual level so they take control by brute force.

[Birdman]

10:48 AM on 03/13/2011

How about freedom for all? Net neutrality guarantees it .. Anything else allows for manipulation by the providers to control what you have access to and at what speed. Then I guess you would be OK with your gas pedal being controlled by Detroit rather than yourself. Maybe I will develop a way to have Detroit do just that. Wirelessly control the how far the gas pedal will go on any given car based on their whims. What a wonderful Idea I will make millions. thanks for the idea. I certainly hope that 18 wheeler behind you has good brakes as you are doing 25 in the slow lane.

[JackStark]

01:32 AM on 03/11/2011

Why do they think all Americans are as stupid as the people who voted for them? The whole argument about return on investment is a sham. AT&T ran telephone lines all over the country and made an insane amount of money by charging people for phone service. If you want internet access today you have to pay a provider for the service. So the companies spend money to expand and improve the internet and then they charge us what they want to have internet access. What is the big mystery here? You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing!

[Birdman]

11:03 AM on 03/13/2011

The issue here is certain companies what to block or slow down certain content but give their own content priority access unless a content provider pays for premium access. So for example if you visit You Tube and want to watch some videos and your provider does not want you to access You Tube because You Tube would not pay your provider money for good access. Your provider then reduces the speed of their connection to you or blocks it outright. In either case waiting for a video to display would frustrate you and you may go to say a site your provider prefers.

Killing net neutrality will create an environment which will force providers of content to pay up to get that preferential treatment or for just plain access to customers on a given network... Essentially without net neutrality they would have full rights to block this site if a provider felt like it. That is why the net neutrality law has to stay in place to stop providers from limiting access to information on the Internet, because that information provider did not pay some bribe money.

[JackStark]

01:24 AM on 03/11/2011

Our grand children will be making flip flops to sell to the Chinese. The American ruling class will be living on private Islands in the Caribbean protected by what is left of the US Navy and with huge Swiss bank accounts.

[nuni]

08:21 AM on 03/11/2011

Precisely! The people who are looting this country need not be the least bit concerned about its long term prosperity. They have a vice grip on the politicians and can make them do anything they want them to. If you step back and look at what they're able to get away with now, it's incredible. The S&L crisis was just over 20 years ago. Then we had more than a thousand crooks prosecuted and hundreds of convictions. Fast forward to 2008 and we have a crisis exponentially larger-- large enough to collapse our banking system. As of March 2011, we have had ZERO prosecutions. There are some who say it's the governments fault for deregulating the industry by smashing Glass-Steagall Act in the late 1990s. But, the S&L crisis was also a direct result of deregulation. What's the difference? Today the head of a firm like Goldman Sachs can call or meet with the POTUS on a regular basis. Why is it that our President, the most important leader in the world, always has time for a man like Lloyd Blankfein? It's because the administration and most of the Congress work for HIM.

But, we still have the numbers. We can end this with the wake up call people are getting right now.

[AlbertT]

07:21 AM on 03/11/2011

It's too late for rabies shots, but at least wipe the foam from your mouth.

[virpilosus]

12:44 AM on 03/11/2011

The Republicans in Congress seem to actually have a co-ordinated plan to attempt teh systematic dismantling of every freedom known to our society...these people are akin to "cylons" of scifi fame...they may look like us, but they are definitely an alien race bent on destorying human beings.

[nuni]

08:23 AM on 03/11/2011

You just need to understand who they work for and then everything they do will make perfect sense.

[andyg]

11:13 PM on 03/12/2011

You mean the freedom to use the Internet without goverment control.

[Birdman]

11:13 AM on 03/13/2011

You think you will have freedom without net neutrality? When you have Internet providers starting to do shakedowns on provides of information to pay them for access to their networks or be locked out? The kind of freedom you are talking about where the only sites you will have access to are the ones your Internet providers wants you to have access too? Doesn't sound very free to me sounds more like a propaganda machines wet dream. Treating all Internet traffic the same sounds pretty reasonable and fair and loaded with freedom. Sometimes however, you have to tell the greed merchants that holding the Internet hostage is not legal. That is what net neutrality does, ensures all Internet traffic is treated equally. After all maybe this site will not be accessible to everyone in the new GOP idea of the Internet without net neutrality, and that would certainly warm the cockles of their hearts knowing that there would be one less site that points out their follies.

[ZeraLee]

04:41 PM on 03/16/2011

You mean the freedom to be abused by racketeering and organized crime? Haven't paid much attention to how business works, have you?

If you like the way the Internet works now, then you are on the wrong side. If you want to see it subverted and crippled, then you are supporting the predators you are looking for.

[yougg]

11:08 PM on 03/10/2011

We have to vote these jerks out of office ASAP.

[Mychal]

10:51 PM on 03/10/2011

I have to say, the Republican's are F*****g Nazi's, plain and simple...

[andyg]

11:14 PM on 03/12/2011

The dim's are hate mongers, own it

[benji85]

09:26 PM on 03/10/2011

"Republicans argue that the rules will discourage phone and cable companies from investing in costly network upgrades."

Yeah Wall Street already does that to companies. Remember Verizon announced they will invest in laying down fiber for their network and Wall Street dinged them because they didn't like the large investment.

[Rhaspun]

08:32 PM on 03/10/2011

This is so typical of Republicans. They do these type of things to favor the business community and most likely personal friends. It's about have a inside track to ensure more profits for many of these companies. If competition is there improvements will be made by companies. Eliminate it and the companies won't spend as much on improvements. If a company can get away with not improving anything because no one else offers the service you know they will do it. Take a look at grocery stores. Lots of them out there. Don't they look nice. Competition makes them them do it.