Motley Moose – Archive

From the White House: In the lead-up to the State of the Union next Tuesday, President Obama has been traveling across the country unveiling some of the ideas he’ll be talking about in the address.

On Monday, the president spoke before the Federal Trade Commission and unveiled a series of proposals protecting consumers and families in this digital age:

“Since I’ve only got two years left in the job, I tend to be impatient and I didn’t wait to wait for the State of the Union to start sharing my plans,” the President quipped at the top of his remarks. […]

New actions to protect identities and privacy

The President announced a number of new steps today to safeguard Americans’ identities and privacy:

1. We’re introducing legislation to create a single, national standard protecting Americans from identity theft.

2. More banks, credit card issuers, and lenders are giving customers free access to their credit scores.

3. We’re also introducing a new Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

4. We’re working to protect our children’s personal information and privacy online.

“We pioneered the Internet, but we also pioneered the Bill of Rights, and a sense that each of us as individuals have a sphere of privacy around us that should not be breached, whether by our government, but also by commercial interests,” the President said. “And since we’re pioneers in both these areas, I’m confident that we can be pioneers in crafting the kind of architecture that will allow us to both grow, innovate, and preserve those values that are so precious to us as Americans.”

Fact Sheet: Safeguarding American Consumers & Families

Transcript below the fold.

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