Posted by JM Ashby
Late last night, House Republicans voted to reverse the net neutrality rules passed by the previous House which never became solid law because of the ineffectual nature of the Senate. The measure to reverse the new rules was included in the Republican's draconian assault on the poor which they are referring to as a "budget." The reversal will open the door to Telecomms. throttling even land-line connections and grant them the power to charge for bandwidth priority.
Clearly the inability to charge people more money for lower quality service was an affront to the rights of freedom-fries-loving real 'merikans
Last night, the U.S. House voted to reverse the compromise Net Neutrality rules passed by the FCC in December. Today, the same politicians plan to vote to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the institution that distributes federal funds to some 1,300 local public broadcasting stations and other noncommercial media. The cuts were made as part of a larger budget bill that proposes to slash $100 billion in federal funding to numerous valuable public programs.
Even for this Congress, today's vote is a low water mark. The Net Neutrality rules are already a watered down half-measure that don't come close to preventing the largest phone and cable companies from censoring or blocking what you see and do online. Last night, phone company lobbyists got congress to vote down what was already a shell of what President Obama promised when he said he would "take a backseat to no one" on Net Neutrality.
John McCain (R-Old) suggested that the new rules simply inhibited free-market forces. Funny, because the country would be a much different place if the free-market actually existed. That's another topic though...