The sad thing is this: unlike the wired world, there is limited wireless specturm and what is available is leased by the government. So there is even greater justification for true net neutrality in the wireless world than the wired world.
Still, we live in an effective plutocracy and Washingon is a playground for lobbyists and prostitutes who write legislation on the side.
The big news in technology politics yesterday was the Senate’s attempt to undo the so-called net neutrality rules that were approved by the FCC last December.
See also: Net neutrality? More like neutered neutrality.
As it turns out, even though the House approved overturning the toothless net neutrality rules, the Senate — not completely controlled by the Republicans — was unable to come up with a majority.
This, sadly, is so not newsworthy.
First, as has been the case for the last twenty years or so, the party in power (to some degree that’s the GOP now) always tries to undo the stuff that the party out of power did, back when it was in power — regardless of whether the stuff done was good, bad, or in the case of our current net neutrality regulations, completely and totally meh.
As I wrote last year, the FCC passed a set of net neutrality rules governing wired communication — right at a time when everything is going wireless. The FCC carefully managed to avoid doing anything to protect our citizens from predatory actions by the wireless carriers because, among other things, the wireless carriers have one heck of a lobby in D.C.
No matter. Because they were put in place by a Democratically appointed FCC chairman, the GOP considered the regulations bad, and wanted to overturn them. Now, please note that this doesn’t mean the GOP was going to step up to the plate to pass good or effective net neutrality regulations.
Nope, it just meant they were just being pissy and combative, because that’s pretty much all that our politicians are good at doing these days.
And, they failed.
So, pretty much same ol’ same ol’.
Like I said, there’s no news here. Nothing to see. Move along.
The Senate failed to get anything done. Again. This time, they failed to undo toothless net neutrality news. Are you proud of your politicians yet? Yeah, neither are we.
