No More Net Neutrality-- But The Impact Won't Be Felt Until AFTER November To Protect Republicans

But will the issue persuade voters to defeat the GOP?

In 2005 the FCC had a Republican chair, Kathleen Abernathy, a Republican, but not a Trumpist crackpot like Ajit Pai, the current chair. Abernathy's FCC adopted the principles of net neutrality "to preserve and promote the vibrant and open character of the Internet as the telecommunications marketplace enters the broadband age." 18 years later and the Trumpist Republican Party is no longer remotely interested in preserving and promoting the vibrant and open character of the Internet. They're interested in seeing what they can squeeze out of the Internet service providers in bribes.

Between 2005 and 2012, five attempts to pass bills in Congress containing net neutrality provisions failed. Proponents claimed that these bills would preserve the open Internet that consumer groups sought, and to prohibit Internet service providers from using various variable pricing models based upon the user's quality of service level, described as tiered service in the industry and as price discrimination arising from abuse of "local monopolies enshrined in law" by some economists. Opponents claimed that these bills would have benefited industry lobbyists instead of consumers due to the potential of regulatory capture with policies that protect incumbent interests and that the bills were a transparent attempt to establish US government control over the Internet.

Pai's anti-net neutrality agenda went into effect yesterday, despite the fact that recent polling shows that 83% of voters support keeping the rules on net neutrality, including 75% of Republican voters, 89% of Democratic voters, and 86% of independent voters.

The last time there was serious consideration in the House in was Ed Markey's 2009 Internet Freedom Preservation Act (H.R. 3458). Boehner had it buried in Fred Upton's Energy and Commerce Committee so that it would never have to be voted on, and so Republican congressmembers would never be forced to vote against something the GOP base overwhelmingly supported, not to mention 86% of independents.

Last month the Senate voted, 52-47, Susan Collins (ME), John Kennedy (LA) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) voting with every Democrat, to overturn the FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which which went into effect yesterday, taking net neutrality rules off the books.

To make it work in the House-- where Paul Ryan opposes net neutrality-- a majority on the House would have to sign a discharge petition. meaning every Democrat (already a stretch in the House) plus 22 Republicans. And then it would have to be signed by Trumpanzee! Mike Doyle (D-PA) is leading the charge. Some of the worst and most corrupt Blue Dogs are dragging their feet, including many of the hardcore members of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party: Henry Cuellar (TX), Filemon Vela (TX), Jim Costa (CA) Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), bribe taking machine Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Tom Halleran (AZ) and Stephanie Murphy (FL). And, of course, no Republican signed on either.

Chuck Schumer, who personally recruited Blue Dog chairman Kyrsten Sinema, who refused to sign the discharge position and votes with the GOP most of the time, is seeking to profit politically from the disaster: "It's now as clear as day to every American that-- with the exception of three Republicans in the Senate-- their Republican representatives in the Congress chose to protect special interests and the biggest corporates over middle-class families, average consumers, entrepreneurs and anyone who relies on the free and open internet. Every Republican who opposed this vote will own any and all of the damaging consequences of the FCC's horribly misguided decision."

Yesterday Levi Tillemann sent this message to residents in suburban Denver where he's sunning for the seat (CO-06) occupied by GOP-tool Mike Coffman. "Today is a sad day for all Americans who care passionately about a free Internet. The Internet was the result of government investments in risky, cutting edge R&D-- investments that the private sector never would have touched. Well, Donald Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai just gave away the internet to special interests by ending 'net neutrality.' Net neutrality protects equal access to the Internet for all Americans-- not just those who can pay extra. When I go to Congress I’ll fight to roll back Ajit Pai’s disastrous policy. Help us fight for the future of the free internet by contributing today. (In case you're interested, here's a speech I gave at a rally for net neutrality from few months back.)"

We asked Mike DeVito, the progressive Democrat running for the Staten Island seat Dan Donovan is currently holding, how this plays out in his district. This is what he told us:

In areas of NY-11 (Staten Island and South Brooklyn), Charter/Spectrum is the only ISP game in town. That's the corporation that is trying to starve 1,800 IBEW Local 3 Union workers to death.  Our brothers and sisters walked out because of unfair labor practices, and have been out on strike for 441 days as of today.  But a huge aspect of the labor practices for which they walked out were about the company's lies to customers about Internet speeds and equipment capacity.

People want what they pay for and what they are promised. Net Neutrality is designed to protect people from deceptive practices like these.

It is no surprise that the sitting GOP Congressman in this district takes money from Charter/Spectrum. But when a Democrat also works against Net Neutrality, it's critical to hold him accountable. The Blue Dog Democrat who is my opponent in this race has an agreement with Joe Crowley and has taken money from the Joe PAC which also includes union busting Charter/Spectrum money.

The Blue Dog PAC which gives money to the establishment Democrat in this race is also funded by the NCTA-- the Internet and Television Association, which is a trade group for telecom companies that promote anti-regulation, oppose net neutrality and used an Alec-written bill to lobby against municipal broadband.

As a progressive, I believe we need to move swiftly to municipal broadband. We live in an age where it is impossible to participate in society without regular, reliable access to the internet. Having to pay for access to vital information directly affects the economic stability and mobility of everyone who cannot afford it, perpetuating cycles of struggle and poverty.

Of course these huge conglomerates are not going to simply relinquish control, and there is only one way to take them out. That's to vote them out. Vote out anyone who can be confirmed to have taken a dime from a corporation, and put a stop to the election of any candidate who does likewise before they rise to make consequential decisions for the rest of us.

It is time to stop the hypocrisy and obstruction of progress. It's time to be better, and demand better.

Ajit Pi Alone Can't Kill Net Neutrality-- It Takes A Village... A Corrupt Conservative Village

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Wu wu wu
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Jolting Joe has left and gone away
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Actually it's Lyin' Ryan who's gone away... or, at least, going away. And he's leaving behind the mess over net neutrality. "Oh, but it isn't Ryan's mess," you claim. It;'s just that horrid, slimeball lobbyist Ajit Pai. Pai, a former" Verizon lobbyist, was just doing his job, clearly for his "former" employer. It's Ryan who isn't doing his job, if you consider the people in southeast Wisconsin his employer. We'll get to that in a second. First a little update from Tom McKay at Gizmodo.

On Thursday, the Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission and its chairman, Verizon BFF Ajit Pai, will hold a vote on whether to repeal Barack Obama-era net neutrality rules. If passed, the FCC would allow ISPs to begin setting up a tiered internet designed to suck as much money from customers’ pockets as possible while screwing with their ability to access competitors’ content, or really anything that might suck up amounts of bandwidth inconvenient for their profit margins.

The plan is immensely unpopular, even with Republicans. This type of situation would typically call for a charm offensive, though Pai has apparently decided to resort to his time-honored tactic of being incredibly condescending instead. In a video with the conservative site Daily Caller’s Benny Johnson [above]-- the dude who got fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarizing Yahoo Answers-- Pai urged the country to understand that even if he succeeds in his plan to let ISPs strangle the rest of the internet to death, they’ll let us continue to take selfies and other stupid bullshit.

...All of these claims on what users “will still be able to do” are actually questionable, seeing as under Pai’s plan, ISPs could easily hit up their customers with crushing fees to let them access any of these services at reasonable speeds-- particularly those binge-watching streaming services he claims to love so much. Strangely, Pai didn’t mention torrenting, one of the applications of the internet he believes ISPs should be able to turn off entirely to save on bandwidth.

The debate over net neutrality isn’t whether people are literally going to be unable to upload photos of cute puppies to the internet, but whether they’re going to be able to do so on fair terms or arcane, extortionate ones dictated entirely by a handful of ultra-wealthy service providers. But that’s beside the point; just like with a previous video mocking Twitter critics he filmed with the right-wing site Independent Journal Review, the intent seems to be finding friendly last-minute venues for Pai to publicly laugh off the intense criticism being directed at his plan.

He’s trying to buy precious cover by painting everyone who disagrees with him as a simple-minded idiot.

Beto O'Rourke, an ardent defender of net neutrality, is running for the Texas Senate seat held by the odious Ted Cruz, a fanatic anti-neutrality backer. He's been working on a bill and so has Sean Patrick Maloney. But no one is deluded into thinking Ryan-- who has taken oodles of cash from the telecomms; this cycle $59,195, more than anyone else in Congress other than Greg Walden (R-OR), chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology ($105,100).



Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), everyone's favorite congresswoman, also emphasized that "this fight is not over with today’s vote. In Congress, I am an original co-sponsor, with Rep. Mike Doyle, of the Congressional Review Act that will reverse the FCC’s terrible vote. It is a top priority for me to do everything I can, working with people across the country, to protect net neutrality and preserve an open internet for all."

Another member of Congress told me he called for a constitutional amendment on net neutrality 7 years ago! He said the "most likely reason why nothing has passed is that the phone companies and cable companies would try to jam up any effort like that, and the internet companies aren’t strong enough on K Street to neutralize their effort.  AT&T, for instance, has the single largest federal PAC in DC, if I recall correctly. So the New Dems stop it in the House, and the Schumer Dems in the Senate." Hawaii's progressive champion, Kaniela Ing came up with a very interesting solution he tweeted last night. What do you think of this?

Carol Shea-Porter, the progressive congresswoman from New Hampshire, told her constituents that the fight isn't over as far as she's concerned. "I strongly oppose the result of today’s shameful FCC vote, and I will work to restore the net neutrality protections American consumers expect and deserve. Net neutrality is the simple principle that lawful content on the Internet should be equally accessible to everyone, and that Internet service providers should not be allowed to discriminate against some content providers. Without the guarantee of net neutrality, the Internet superhighway’s rules of the road will favor big businesses over newer startups. The Internet has allowed the proud tradition of American ingenuity and entrepreneurship to reach every corner of the globe. Its openness has enabled a new generation of New Hampshire innovators to turn a bright idea and a laptop into a business. We can’t stand by as the FCC and big corporations steal our right to equal access."

Almost all the Blue America-endorsed candidates sent out e-mails today campaigning on net neutrality. Wise. Sam Jammal (CA-39): "Ajit Pai and the FCC just voted to ignore the overwhelming majority of Americans who begged to save net neutrality. Too much of our economy is reliant on a free and open internet for us to stand back and do nothing... It's time to elect a Congressman who refuses to sell out his community." Derrick Crowe is our candidate in the Austin-San Antonio corridor (TX21): "The internet is ours-- the people's. But, the FCC sided with corporate America and voted to kill the open Internet. Send me to Congress and I will fight to pass strong legislation that will undo this terrible decision. This is what Donald Trump's appointees are here to do: sell us out to corporate America. The best way to fight back now is to take back Congress, and to put representatives in place who will force an open Internet policy on the FCC. I am refusing corporate-PAC money because you need to know whose side I am on." Katie Hill, up in the Santa Clarita Valley, got it perfectly: "Today, the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality, ignoring the millions of us who stood up in support of it. They allowed a handful of billionaires and corporations to control our access to information. Now, the best way for us to stand up and fight back is right here in the 25th district. Steve Knight has taken $60,000 from telecom companies, and has stayed completely silent on net neutrality. These telecom companies are emboldened by politicians like Knight, and they won't be stopped until there are leaders in place who can't be bought by special interests."

Verizon and the Death of the Internet

In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the Internet into "packages" — so much for email service, so much for social media, and so on. You don't buy the service, you don't get access (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

There are two stories here, one about net neutrality — which Trump's FCC is about to terminate — and one about a corruption of the process by which the FCC arrives that decision.

About net neutrality itself, consider an analogy. Should companies that control the telephone wires control (a) who gets to use them, and (b) what is allowed to be talked about? In the U.S. a long time ago, the answer was no. Telephone wires were declared "common carriers" in the same way that roads are common carriers — a resource that should be open and available to all.

The same with the transmission lines and pathways that carry the Internet, or so the thinking goes. For most of its life, the Internet was treated like a utility, and Internet "wiring" was treated like a common carrier. That made sense and happened almost automatically, since early Internet traffic was carried by phone wires (via modems and DSL), to which established common carrier rules already applied.

In short, in the early days, the Internet was treated the same way the phone system was treated — like a public utility whose transmission lines were mandated to remain open to anyone who wants to use them.

The Internet, Big Money and Political Speech

Then three things happened. First, "ecommerce" grew, becoming a sizeable percentage of both Internet traffic and company profit. The Internet wasn't just about communication, it was about Money, not just for large existing companies. Dedicated ecommerce giants were created — Amazon, for example, and Netflix. The people who love money more than anything now had a stake in how the Internet was treated under the law. Meaning, they had a stake in making sure their Internet traffic was special, privileged.

Second, Internet traffic spread from phone lines to wired coax and fiber optic cable networks (Comcast, Time Warner) and wireless channels like satellite transmission (DirecTV). Were cable and satellite systems considered "common carriers" under the law? No, and it made no original sense to consider them so, since traffic on those channels was typically one-way, from the company to the customer, and never in the other direction. Internet traffic, of course, changed all that, turning cable lines and satellite transmissions into virtual common carriers, even though they weren't considered as such under FCC regulations.

Finally, the Internet became an organizing tool for opponents, not just of Big Money, but of what I would broadly call "rule by the rich" — which includes, among other things, the establishments of both political parties. It's the Internet that allows dissidents all around the world to organize resistance to powerful elites, from Cairo to Beijing to Washington D.C. The world of power hates the Internet, and works in every way it can to subvert it.

All three of these changes made the Internet vulnerable to perversion no matter which party was in power, and open Internet, or net neutrality, advocates have been fighting ever since to keep the Internet as we now understand it open and free, which was always its developers' original intention.

The FCC and the Open Internet

President Obama's FCC looked for a while like it would write rules that benefited the wealthy, since his choice for FCC chair, Tom Wheeler, had ties strong to the industry. Surprisingly, though, the Wheeler-led FCC preserved net neutrality — the open Internet as we know it today.

Trump's FCC chair is also an industry insider, Ajit Pai, and this time the threat to net neutrality is almost certain to be realized.

The Federal Communications Commission took aim at a signature Obama-era regulation Tuesday, unveiling a plan that would give Internet providers broad powers to determine what websites and online services their customers see and use.

Under the agency’s proposal, providers of high-speed Internet services, such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, would be able to block websites they do not like and charge Web companies for speedier delivery of their content.

The FCC’s effort would roll back its net neutrality regulation which was passed by the agency’s Democrats in 2015 and attempted to make sure all Web content, whether from big or small companies, would be treated equally by Internet providers.

According to Free Press, the new FCC order would:

• End Title II protections and erase the three Net Neutrality rules passed at the FCC in 2015 and upheld in court last year.
• Legalize internet blocking and discrimination by Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, no questions asked.
• Permit throttling back the speeds of different kinds of websites and apps.
• Encourage paid prioritization — sticking most sites and apps in the slow lane and reserving the fast lane for the few wealthy companies that can afford special treatment.

Ajit Pai is a former general council at Verizon, and most recently a partner in a lobbying firm specializing in "communications practice." He also has strong anti-government views. If you consider him an industry advocate (or shill), you wouldn't be wrong.

From a Trump administration perspective, Ajit Pai is to the FCC what Scott Pruitt is to the EPA — a destroyer. His "new rules" are set to be decided in December.

Ajit Pai's FCC Is Stone-Walling NY AG Schneiderman

The second story here involves the corruption of the process by which the FCC will make its decision — in particular, the "public comment" process.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, in an open letter to Pai posted at Medium, writes (my emphasis):

In April 2017, the FCC announced that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning repeal of its existing net neutrality rules. Federal law requires the FCC and all federal agencies to take public comments on proposed rules into account — so it is important that the public comment process actually enable the voices of the millions of individuals and businesses who will be affected to be heard. That’s important no matter one’s position on net neutrality, environmental rules, and so many other areas in which federal agencies regulate.

In May 2017, researchers and reporters discovered that the FCC’s public comment process was being corrupted by the submission of enormous numbers of fake comments concerning the possible repeal of net neutrality rules. In doing so, the perpetrator or perpetrators attacked what is supposed to be an open public process by attempting to drown out and negate the views of the real people, businesses, and others who honestly commented on this important issue. Worse, while some of these fake comments used made up names and addresses, many misused the real names and addresses of actual people as part of the effort to undermine the integrity of the comment process. That’s akin to identity theft, and it happened on a massive scale.

My office analyzed the fake comments and found that tens of thousands of New Yorkers may have had their identities misused in this way. (Indeed, analysis showed that, in all, hundreds of thousands of Americans likely were victimized in the same way, including tens of thousands per state in California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and possibly others.) Impersonation and other misuse of a person’s identity violates New York law, so my office launched an investigation.

Successfully investigating this sort of illegal conduct requires the participation of the agency whose system was attacked. So in June 2017, we contacted the FCC to request certain records related to its public comment system that were necessary to investigate which bad actor or actors were behind the misconduct. We made our request for logs and other records at least 9 times over 5 months: in June, July, August, September, October (three times), and November.

We reached out for assistance to multiple top FCC officials, including you, three successive acting FCC General Counsels, and the FCC’s Inspector General. We offered to keep the requested records confidential, as we had done when my office and the FCC shared information and documents as part of past investigative work.

Yet we have received no substantive response to our investigative requests. None.

Ajit Pai and Trump's FCC are stone-walling the New York Attorney General, who is investigating an apparent scheme to grossly pervert the FCC public comment process so that it produces a result Agit Pai strongly favors. Whoever is behind the scheme, Ajit Pai is protecting them.

Are big-money "friends of Ajit Pai," or big-money "friends of Verizon," engaged in such a scheme? Agit Pai is acting like they are.

For all we know, he or a subordinate could be behind the scheme, or the author of it. 

The Death of the Internet — Mourned or Avenged?

I'll make one tenuous prediction. If Pai and Verizon's plan goes through, it's possible the tired and harried masses will accommodate themselves to it. After all, betting on the willingness of most Americans to surrender their liberties was an easy call, ever since 9/11 "changed everything."

But look at the graphic at the top. Note that social media content is blocked in Portugal unless you pay extra. Same with video, music, messaging and email. Will people really stand for that?

In addition, without net neutrality, some content — for example, political discussion groups and websites — may never be accessible, no matter what you may want to pay, turning the U.S. into China in that regard. Will people really stand for that?

So this prediction: I could be wrong, but it may just be that this shocks Americans so much that they won't stand for it. And in this case, "won't stand for it" happens to have a convenient and effective target for expression — and punishment.

Verizon.

Ajit Pai's former employer, and one of the key companies pushing for this change.

Are you a Verizon customer? A paying customer? Time to change that perhaps.

Is there a Verizon office near you? Care to make a little visit? I hear they welcome the public with open arms.

Maybe you could bring your friends, or organize a group excursion via social media ... while you still can.

GP