Motley Moose – Archive

From the White House:

President Obama is asking the FCC to keep the Internet open and free. Help spread the word – share his plan with your friends.

President Obama:

An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life.  By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.

“Net neutrality” has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation – but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted.  We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.  That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to answer the call of almost 4 million public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality.

For almost a century, our law has recognized that companies who connect you to the world have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access in and out of your home or business.  That is why a phone call from a customer of one phone company can reliably reach a customer of a different one, and why you will not be penalized solely for calling someone who is using another provider.  It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service that is based on the transmission of information – whether a phone call, or a packet of data. […]

So the time has come for the FCC to recognize that broadband service is of the same importance and must carry the same obligations as so many of the other vital services do.  To do that, I believe the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act …

The FCC voted on its net neutrality proposal today, and we’ve all come out the losers.

I will admit to having been distracted of late. Between Christmas, work, the excitement over the repeal of DADT, the new tax deal, and my personal life, I pretty much forgot that this was coming up. And frankly, it depresses me, so I won’t be offering much commentary.

From Raw Story,

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who has championed “Net Neutrality” in the past, said the FCC’s proposed rules would actually “destroy” the principle of “Net Neutrality.”

[. . .]

But the plan would also allow for a greater fractioning of the Internet and data rationing on mobile and wired networks, according to analysis of the policies. Major network stakeholders like Verizon and AT&T would be able to sell bandwidth in capped tiers, with overage charges for users who download too much information, and certain types of data traffic like peer-to-peer file transfers could be banned altogether.

Raw Story