Republicans to cede on Net Neutrality

[© tweed]

The responses to the FCC were over 99% in favor of net neutrality, so I imagine even among non-politician Republicans, it had to be completely overwhelming support.

Yeah, this is a pretty undeniable example of 'opposing it just because Obama's for it' from the Republican political classes.

some sectors of capital no doubt 'oppose net neutrality'.  the major telecom companies would love to be able to charge for the right to have your website accessed at x speed.  

once TW and Comcast merge, it'll be easy.  any non-corporate site will be throttled to a few kbs/second, rendering them effectively inaccessible.  you'll have fewer websites to access than cable channels on the TV.

[© tweed]

the "left group" is Electronic Frontier Organization, an open internet advocacy nonprofit.  their concern is that the clause that allows the FCC to act against "non-neutral" practices that "harm consumers", and that the statute doesn't place enough limits on this authority.

of course:  we worry that this rule will be extremely expensive in practice, because anyone wanting to bring a complaint will be hard-pressed to predict whether they will succeed... As a practical matter, it is likely that only companies that can afford years of litigation to answer these questions will be able to rely on the rule at all.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/dear-fcc-rethink-those-vague-general-conduct-rules