Oregon has become the second state to enact legislation promoting net neutrality. On Tuesday, Governor Kate Brown signed a law that, starting January 2019, will deny state contracts to Internet providers who don’t respect net neutrality:
Oregon’s law is limited in scope in an effort to avoid lawsuits from the FCC, which says that its decisions preempt local governments from creating their own regulations. Rather than banning internet providers that don’t respect net neutrality outright, Oregon is instead flexing its customer muscle, mandating state agencies contract with broadband companies that treat all traffic the same. The law does make some exceptions, including situations where internet access is necessary for public safety and law enforcement [Monica Nickelsburg, “Oregon Enacts Net Neutrality Law as Pacific Northwest Trump Resistance Grows,” Geek Wire, 2018.04.10].
Oregon joins neighbor Washington, which went further last month in fighting for the net neutrality that the Trump FCC wants to trash:
Washington is not as conservative in its approach. Its first-of-its-kind law requires all internet providers operating in the state to uphold net neutrality standards. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bill into law in March [Nickelsburg, 2018.04.10].
Four state governors have signed executive orders setting similar net-neutrality standards for Internet providers seeking state contracts. 23 states are suing the Trump FCC to protect net neutrality.
South Dakota Democrats proposed a net neutrality bill this winter. Senate Bill 195, prime-sponsored by Senator Reynold Nesiba (D-15/Sioux Falls), would have worked like Oregon’s new law, denying contracts for telecommunications services to providers who do any of the following:
- lock lawful content, applications, services, or nonharmful devices, subject to reasonable network management that is disclosed to the consumer;
- Throttle, impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of internet content, application, or service, or use of a nonharmful device, subject to reasonable network management that is disclosed to the consumer;
- Engage in paid prioritization;
- Unreasonably interfere with or unreasonably disadvantage end users’ ability to select, access, and use broadband internet access service or the lawful internet content, applications, services, or devices of their choice; or
- Unreasonably interfere with or unreasonably disadvantage edge providers’ ability to make lawful content, applications, services, or devices available to end users [2018 Senate Bill 195, Section 3, posted 2018.02.01].
Governor Daugaard sent the Bureau of Information and Telecommunications to join Midco, AT&T, Verizon, and the South Dakota Telecommunications Association to testify against SB 195. The Republicans on Senate Commerce and Energy—Jensen, Kolbeck, Nelson, Netherton, Novstrup, and Tapio—all did what the Governor and the corporations told them to do and voted against net neutrality. The only committee aye came from Democratic Senator Craig Kennedy (D-18/Yankton).
Nesiba is the only incumbent Senator facing no challenge for his seat. Let’s encourage Nesiba will bring this bill again in the 2019 Session, and let’s send him some Democratic backup to pass this bill to Governor Sutton’s desk.
As much as I enjoy cat videos, I don’t think they should be given a level playing field with flight status tracking . Not sure about internet porn and online banking services though.
Boy Anne Beal, with thinking like that, it is clear that you really yearn for the Radio Shack days of the 186 floppy disks. Here ya go, step on back to the year 1984, a year in which it would seem, you stopped growing intellectually.
Jerry’s link to Info World Dec. 12, 1983
Reagan was president then so you could have that movie star cowboy craze thingy that made you all warm and comfy. Go ahead and do the dial up thingy with AOL and let the rest of us deal with an honest and fair priced PUC utility just like electricity is regulated.
Anne gets us to the main question: who should decide which content, if any deserves special priority on the Internet? Why should one citizen’s desire to track flights take priority over another citizen’s desire to relax and laugh at online cat content? Is that any different from requiring coal-rollers and hot-rodders out joyriding pull over and yield to any commuter driving to work or any vehicle displaying commercial plates? Or for a tighter analogy, should we limit vacation travelers to the right lane only on I-90 and lower their speed limit to 65, while we allow truckers and other business travelers to travel in any lane at any speed?
And between Anne and Cory it brings to light the great folly of Net Neutrality. Much like health care, tax collection, phone service, garbage collection and now “Net Neutrality” bringing the government into the equation in an attempt to make things “fair” it only results in added expense, poor service, a program that becomes antiquated overnight and will forever refuse to change.
This is also the story of the cell phone that should have been commercially available in the 70’s but the government had a policy that is could not bring itself to change and for the next 30 years radio common carriers were limited to only two carriers in each market for a total of just around 62,000 for the whole nation. What that meant for cell phones was; each cell phone counts as a carrier. (Oh, by the way, AT&T controlled half of those carriers and made a boat load of money renting a phone to your mom every month.) My point: Net Neutrality is the invitation to bureaucracy and dullards that will fill their ranks only to bring each American more frustration.
Here is what a public owned and operated system can bring you. We call them jobs. Ann and Daugaard call them myth’s. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chattanooga-internet/index.html
Chattanooga, Tennessee showed America what government can do. Argue that success Ann and you too Old Sarge. Facts are facts. One could argue that there really is not a need for public works regarding the elimination of sewage and why you should make it faster for the rich and slower or non existent to the poor. If you do not make it work well and equal for everyone, then you have problems.
What bunk, OS. You come in again with your generic anti-government platitudes without looking at the actual situation at hand. Net Neutrality is the regime we’ve operated under for the first 25 years of the Internet era, and under that regime, the Internet has flourished. Allowing corporations to co-opt this spectacular global network and shut out the content that can’t pay top dollar will only make it worse. This is a situation where capitalism produces worse results than we’ve enjoyed under the fair, regulated status quo.
Cory, I am not anti-government. It is that adding a level of administration to any endeavor does not improve the endeavor. As far as “capitalism” goes it has given Americans the highest standard of living, greatest wealth and most independence in the history of the world.
No, you have not been under “Net Neutrality” for the last 25 years. The term “Net Neutrality” didn’t exist until the 2000s, but once again, it was in reference to the telephone monopoly I spoke of above. And why on earth would you want the government regulating how long you can look at Facebook, blog or review menus? The only good thing the government has done for any of us is to protect our Nation and collect taxes to pay for the protection. Other than that they don’t really need to be in existence. Some government is behind the fall of every civilization in history. That is why they must be very limited in scope.
Now you’re just playing word games, OS, and trying to hide your ignorance in your preferred platitudes about limited government and capitalism. Try talking about the actual issue.
Regardless of when the term gained currency, the Internet has run under net neutrality from the beginning, with no content enjoying privileged speeds. Net neutrality has nothing to do with the government saying how long I can look at any given website. Net neutrality means that everybody’s content—mine, yours, Netflix’s, Facebook’s—gets equal access to the network. Whether anyone looks at it or not is up to the viewers, but if folks do choose to look, they’ll be able to access our content as quickly as our servers can dish it up, without some middleman making that content wait while they transmit data from bigger, richer customers or perhaps embargoing our content completely during prime time.
Cory asks, “Who should decide which content, if any deserves special priority on the Internet?” This question is the meat of the argument. Under net neutrality when you GOOGLE “pizza near me” the options appear in the order of popularity. With what the internet providers want the options would appear by who pays the most to be first in line.
I prefer choosing by what other searchers have shown to be the most popular choice.
PS … If you prefer that your advertising options are listed by how much money the merchant pays to the ad company with no government regulation, you too have an option. Use The Yellow Pages. Ads there are positioned by how much merchants pay.
The Yellow Pages used to be one of the biggest expenses for my businesses. It was literally legalized stealing of my profits. Businesses competed with each other by how much they paid to the phone book, whose rates were arbitrarily set by how much could be gouged from merchants before an owner finally refused to be blackmailed.
With the popularity of the internet the Yellow Pages have become nearly extinct, showing what the public really wants. The public wants net neutrality not paid positioning of ads.
Excellent Yellow Pages example, Porter. Without net or neutrality, your profits and lots of other businesses’ profits were lower. The Internet operating from the start as a neutral platform helped your business save money and connect with new customers. It sounds to me, if I may amend my capitalism critique above, as if net neutrality is actually better for free and open capitalism, while the Trump FCC wants to facilitate crony capitalism, or maybe oligopoly, where richer players can buy up bandwidth and raise more barriers to the entry of competitors into the marketplace.
But such specific examples are too complicated for OS to analyze. He’ll be back in a few minutes to shout, “Capitalism good, government bad!” and avoid how this policy actually plays out.
Net neutrality is criticized as an affront to capitalism. That’s an invalid argument as net neutrality is only an option in ad placement and not the rule. A business is free to advertise on Facebook or Twitter where an ad’s views and an ad’s size can be adjusted by the merchants choice of how much to spend on advertising. Merchants also get the benefit of social media’s targeting feature, so the money you spend goes towards ads that target people who want your product.
I personally have no problem with Facebook gleaning information on me. I don’t need to see ads for tires, when I don’t have a car. I do however have a enormous problem with a company agreeing to use gleaned information for research purposes and then formulating OCEAN profiles to target voters with untruthful Facebook posts, mailers and robocalls ala Cambridge Analytica. “Lock Em Up”
Net neutrality is no more an affront to capitalism than public highways, open to all vehicles, large and small.