Politics FCC trying to classify the internet as a utility

They'll take my smut away when they pry my cold dead fingers from around my mouse.

 

What report is that?

 

Thats not your mouse, well, maybe it is...

 

Ajit Pai, one of two Republican Commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), inferred in a tweet that President Barack Obama’s secret, 332-page “Net Neutrality” document is a scheme for federal micro-managing of the Internet to extract billions in new taxes from consumers and again enforce progressives’ idea of honest, equitable, and balanced content fairness.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently acknowledged that the three Democrats on the commission had decided to avoid Congressional input regarding the Internet by adopting President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1934 Communications Act to regulate the Internet with the same federal control as the old AT&T customer monopoly. To make sure that libertarian advocates would remain in the dark, Wheeler “embargoed” release of any of the specifics in the new administrative “policy” that will act as law.

The FCC legislation that was passed eighty-one years ago by the most leftist Congress in American history to ban companies from participating in “unjust or unreasonable discrimination” when providing phone services to customers.

But in 1949, the Democrat-dominated Commission implemented the “Fairness Doctrine” that required holders of media broadcast licenses to present “issues of public importance” in a manner that is “honest, equitable, and balanced” in the “Commission’s view. It would take 39 years before a conservative Congress could overturn a policy that hijacked the mainstream media to kowtow to liberals or face loss of their licenses.

If the Internet economy was a country, it would rank fifth, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and India. Economic activity on the Internet totals $4.2 trillion, and almost half of the earth’s 7 billion people are already connected to the Web.

Ajit Pai’s description of “President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet” sounds Orwellian. He tweeted a picture of himself holding the 332-page plan just below a picture of a smiling Barack Obama with a comment, “I wish the public could see what’s inside.” The implication depicted Obama as George Orwell’s “Big Brother.”

Pai also released a statement: “President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works,” he said. “The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband… These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.”

Pai had previously observed that he was concerned about the plan would hinder broadband investment, slow network speed and expansion, limit outgrowth to rural areas of the country, and reduce Internet service provider (ISP) competition.

“The plan saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market,” Pai said. “As a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices. This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated monopoly is what we’ll get.”

Pai’s confrontational comments came after FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler penned an op-ed in Wired Magazine detailing his spin on the core aspects of the Democrat’s desire to lump ISPs under the amended Title II of the 1996 Telecommunications Act — which was used to break-up the AT&T telephone monopoly into four regional Bell companies at the dawn of the digital age.

“Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” Wheeler wrote on Wednesday. “These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.”

Pai responded that the “Courts have twice thrown out the FCC’s attempts at Internet regulation” during the Obama Administration. On January 14, 2014, the D.C. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals struck down most of the FCC’s November 2011 net neutrality rules. The Appellate Court vacated the FCC’s “anti-discrimination” and “anti-blocking” as essentially discriminatory and blocking in an attempt to again give the FCC political appointees the power to dictate what they believe is honest, equitable, and balanced.

Pai said that after a year of debates responding to the courts twice striking down FCC efforts to regulate the Internet, “There’s no reason to think that the third time will be the charm. Even a cursory look at the plan reveals glaring legal flaws that are sure to mire the agency in the muck of litigation for a long, long time.”

Pai promised he would make further comments as he reviews the plan himself in the next two weeks in the run-up to the FCC’s public vote on February 26. He has blamed the two Democrat Commissioners’ for their dismissal of any negotiations with Congressional Republicans in setting the “basic rules” governing Internet access.

 

I don't get the fact that consumers will have less to choose from. Most cities have few choices anyway. We have 1 where I live.

Also, it's bit the rules that get struck down, it comes down to the right of the FCC to do so. They think that now under title II they have their best shot.

 

I'm not sure what it all entails or whether its good or bad but:

I pay around $100 a month for TV and internet to AT&T, a private company. So that's about $50 a month for internet at a decent rate of speed. Would I like to pay less? OF course. Who wouldn't? But $5o a month for what I get is quite acceptable. What I pay each month for TV and internet is exactly the amount that I have an agreement with the private company to provided me plus a small extra amount for state and local taxes.

I get water into my house from the Baton Rouge Water Company. The Baton Rouge Water Company is a private business. Their only function is to deliver running water. The amount of water I use every month is stated on my bill. The only thing I have agreed with the water company to pay is for the amount of water I get from them each month. BUT! The city of Baton Rouge adds and extra amount each month to pay for the usage of the city maintained sewer system. I have no agreement with the city to provide the sewers. In fact, my house once had a septic tank buried in the back yard and that's where the sewage went. I paid nothing for the sewage to go into the septic tank.

Then, at some point years ago, the city mandated that septic tanks were no longer legal to use and that homeowners had to tie their property into the Baton Rouge sewer system. Each month I am charged an amount for the sewage that they estimate went into their system. Do I get a sewage bill from the city each month? NO! My sewage bill is added onto my water bill! I have never agreed with the water company to pay for anything other than for them to provide me with running water but if I don't pay the sewage portion of the bill The Water Company, a private enterprise, will shut off my water for not paying a fee to a public utility.

So, that leads me to think that if the internet is classified as a public utility then the government at their discretion can add fees for whatever future services they declare that I need and mandate that I pay.

The Internet Ain't Broke! It don't need fixing!

 

Stop flushing your toilet and shit in the yard if you have a problem with sewage. :/

 

I think people are over thinking this.

Te phone lines fall under title II. No one birches about that??

 

I have no problem with sewage. I have a problem that the government can tell a private, for profit business to cut off my service if I don't pay for something that I didn't contract through that private service.

 

Phone lines are becoming a thing of the past. Private companies own, build and maintain cell towers on land that they have either bought or leased.