Senate votes against measure to kill Net Neutrality rules

Sweet victory for Internet users! Story

Mm...

Why are republicans doing this? What was their reasoning?

The corps probably want the ISP services to do away with the Pirate Bay and Limewire and such.

Can't win either way, I guess.

That article says the vote passed with just 52 Senators. Since when can anything get passed in the Senate with fewer than 60 votes?

@ breadloaf:

Whoops, dropped a word there.

edited 11th Nov '11 12:44:21 PM by Deboss

also, they seem to feel that any law = regulation. it's protection. same way that declaring Yellowstone a national park isn't "regulation" so much as it is preserving nature as much as possible. The internet needs to be protected or else corporations will rape it, the same way they would clear-cut forests and strip-mine land for every penny if there weren't laws preventing them from doing so.

edited 11th Nov '11 12:47:54 PM by willyolio

@USAF 713

More like they want to be able to charge for premium pipeline services, especially for things like streaming and communications. They'd love to be getting a percentage of stuff like Netflix and Skype.

Pirating isn't anywhere close to the main reason why ISPs want to shut down Net Neutrality.

Wait, were you asking "why did the republicans not vote in lock step" or "why did the republicans suggest this" breadloaf?

Yeah, a good way to look at it is as the Anti-Netflix Bill of 2011

I'm just sort of surprised that it skirted past the filibuster and such...

I thought you could just circumvent tht by switching ISPs.

That assumes there are ISPs that would actually want to play fair.

What about third party ones? This isn't like TV or radio.

The main ISPs own the pipelines, so the third party ISPs are just as beholden to any extra charges, AFAIK.

edited 11th Nov '11 1:44:25 PM by Jeysie

Ahh. That sounds vague, but plausible.

@ Deboss

Well it says it was a Republican-backed measure to kill Net Neutrality, so I was wondering what the reasoning could possibly be here. I mean, the whole point of Net Neutrality was to enforce free market principles on the internet, as well as free speech. So I was wondering if they publicly stated their reasons.

@breadloaf

Same reason the Pubs do anything; because the corporations want it.

Though the excuse is that the Net Neutrality rules are "unnecessary regulations" and that it gives the FCC too much power.

Because don't you know, keeping the free Net market actually free is too much regulations, and having the bureau that's supposed to have supervisory control over US communications actually be able to... you know... have supervisory control over all US communications is apparently a bad thing.

edited 11th Nov '11 3:11:24 PM by Jeysie

So, wait, hold on:

The bill, if ppased would have allowed corporations to selectively control Internet traffic, right?

So, isn't this a good thing?

@Wicked 223

Basically, the Republican majority House tried to pass a bill saying that the ISPs could control traffic, but the Democrat majority Senate just repealed it.

edited 11th Nov '11 3:42:28 PM by Jeysie

Wicked: For one they could control flow to any sight they saw fit. The ISP's would be able to effectively extort the entire American Internet for their profit without regards to fair business practices, freedom of speech or other concerns.

Wicked: So you think it's a good thing that if you want to use the internet to play online games, you have to pay a separate fee on top of using it to browse TV Tropes, and then pay another fee to access Wikipedia, an additional fee to visit a British site vs US websites, a different cost for videos vs images...

of course, none of these fees will go to the video game studio, or wikipedia, or TV Tropes... it's all "additional options" that the ISP will "provide" to you so they can make more money.

edited 11th Nov '11 4:17:20 PM by willyolio

To be more realistic, what would happen is that let's say Comcast would partner with Daily Motion, and give all their traffic priority, and slowing down everything else, including other streaming sites. It actually could get as bad that you could see IS Ps restricting access to competitor's (in other markets) websites.

edited 11th Nov '11 4:20:56 PM by Karmakin

I am so confused

One of the goals of the ISP corporations was to find ways to milk more money out of the internet including deliberately controlling traffic flow to and from sites. Several fo these plans included requiring a fee of some sort to be applied. Other plans worked similar to how you would get cable tv. You would select a package or range of websites you could visit on your plan. Anything else cost extra.

Net Neutrality effectively kills those plans.

Some of the ISP's were being pressured or seriously considering outright killing access to certain websites. The right has been pushing bills like this alot. Including various internet blacklist bills.