Free Republic

Today marks two years since the Federal Communication Commission's historic vote to roll back the Obama-era internet regulations misleadingly known as “net neutrality.” As we hit this anniversary, it’s important to remember the apocalyptic predictions Democratic politicians and special interest groups made — and how their warnings never came to fruition. First, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane. In 2010, the Obama-era FCC applied net neutrality to internet service providers across the country. For the 20 years of commercial internet history up until that point, almost every major provider had offered open access to the internet without throttling....

Sprint Corp. has for years failed to accurately measure how many of the low-income Americans it serves through the federal Lifeline program actually use their phones, according to regulatory documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The No. 4 U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers is facing a potential settlement with the Federal Communications Commission after the regulator in September said Sprint improperly collected “tens of millions” of dollars in federal subsidies for 885,000 Lifeline customers who weren’t using the service. The carrier said its error was caused by a 2017 inadvertent coding issue in the system it used to measure...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday delivered a mixed ruling for net neutrality supporters and opponents alike, allowing the Federal Communications Commission's 2017 repeal to stand but striking down a provision blocking states from implementing their own open internet rules. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals also ordered the FCC to revise the repeal order to take into consideration other issues, like the effect that it will have on public safety. The FCC decided to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality rules in 2017 with the Republicans on the commission carrying the 3-2 vote along party lines. The rules classified internet...

Washington (CNN Business)A draft executive order from the White House could put the Federal Communications Commission in charge of shaping how Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR) and other large tech companies curate what appears on their websites, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The draft order, a summary of which was obtained by CNN, calls for the FCC to develop new regulations clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites when they decide to remove or suppress content on their platforms. Although still in its early stages and subject to change, the Trump administration's draft order also calls for the Federal Trade Commission...

The House on Wednesday took a major step toward cracking down on illegal robocalls by passing legislation allowing for tougher penalties against the scammers who generate billions of unwanted calls each year. Lawmakers passed the measure, sponsored by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), in a 429-3 vote. The bill takes aim at illegal spam calls by toughening up the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) ability to take action against illegal robocalling operations and requiring all carriers to implement technology to make sure calls are authentic. "The rising tide of unlawful, unwanted robocalls started as a nuisance but...

Video at link. Here's the text that Mr. Casler provided to describe his video: The FCC has issued a Public Notice called an "FCC Enforcement Advisory," Number DA 18-980, dated 24 Sept 2018. It essentially makes worthless nearly all Chinese-made UHF/VHF ham radio handhelds imported into the country over nearly a decade that can also transmit outside the ham bands (which is nearly all of them). Watch this video for details and an interim update.

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) The folks at Project Veritas have done God’s work one more time. – This time they have gotten the smoking gun on Google’s Orwellian efforts to not only control Americans’ political opinions, but to actually control their entire thought processes to favor the Democrat Party and its candidates. Here is the video in its entirety: The video features two people: The first is Jen Gennai, head of Google’s “Responsible Innovation” team – an Orwellian name in and of itself, given what they actually do – bragging about how her team and indeed,...

A California man was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Friday after pleading guilty for threatening to kill the family of U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai over the regulator’s successful effort to repeal net neutrality rules. The Justice Department said Markara Man, 33, of Norwalk, California, sent the email threats “in hopes it would cause (Pai) to reverse his position on net neutrality.” The FCC did not immediately comment after the sentencing by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. […] In November 2018, Tyler Barriss pleaded guilty for calling in a bomb threat...

As robocall numbers continue to skyrocket, the FCC is fighting back, proposing new ways for phone companies to crack down on unwanted calls. NBC’s Tom Costello takes a look at a new tool that can hopefully keep your phone from ringing. Click here to watch the video report

The top U.S. communications regulator urged the rejection of China Mobile Ltd.’s application to provide telecommunications services in the American market, opening another front in the trade fight between the world’s biggest economies. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said Wednesday he was scheduling a vote May 9 on a measure to deny the application of China Mobile USA, described as a Delaware-registered subsidiary that is indirectly controlled by the Chinese government, on national security grounds. “We comply with all applicable laws in the course of operations and have not engaged in any behavior that causes ‘substantial and serious national...

A new "net neutrality" plan released by the White House on Monday morning includes an endorsement of an old idea that some activists have been pushing for years: the treatment of the Internet as a public utility.

To listen to some, the internet is well on its way to becoming a tiered fiefdom for the sole benefit of the rich and powerful. To these Chicken Littles, the Save the Internet Act of 2019 (H.R. 1644) offers the best chance at having a free and open internet for all. The legislation would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reinstate “Title II” rules forcing internet providers to treat all data (everything from cat videos to medical applications) the same. There’s only one problem: the internet doesn’t need any saving. In fact, download speeds have never been faster and the...

A Senate panel on Wednesday advanced legislation that would levy a hefty fine on illegal robocalls, the latest congressional effort to crack down on the billions of unwanted calls that irritate U.S. consumers every year. Lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee approved the bill in 26-0 vote. The measure's co-sponsors include Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is running for president, and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate Commerce consumer protection subcommittee. The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act, introduced by Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), would give the federal government the authority...

Following a new FCC ruling, the California Public Utilities Commission has ditched its planned 2019 vote on taxing text messaging. The CPUC revealed on Twitter Friday that it has decided not to go forward with a scheduled January 2019 vote to levy a 'text tax' following the FCC's ruling that text messages were an 'information service' — as opposed to a telecommunications service — meaning that texts aren't eligible for taxation under California state law. The commission's controversial 'text tax' plans involved a per-text surcharge which would help fund programs that provide cell phone services for low-income and disabled people,...

The legal fight over a 2016 lower court ruling upholding Obama-era net neutrality regulations aimed at ensuring a free and open internet - rules that have since been repealed by President Donald Trump’s administration - came to a formal end on Monday, with the U.S. Supreme Court declining to take up the matter. The Trump administration and internet service providers had asked to justices to wipe away the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that had temporarily preserved the net neutrality regulations championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama. But the justices refused...

Americans For Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) filed a formal FEC complaint Friday against Google, Facebook and Twitter for violation of election law stemming from the tech giants’ widespread censorship and bias against conservative patriotic Americans online. ALIPAC’s statement reads in part: “ALIPAC’s new complaint and request for investigations to the FEC sent to Washington, DC via FedEx today can be viewed here– ALIPAC Complaint to FEC Regarding Silicon Valley Elections Influence

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $37.5 million fine against a Tucson company for allegedly placing more than 2.3 million “maliciously-spoofed” telemarketing calls to sell home-remodeling services during a 14-month span starting in 2016. FCC officials said Affordable Enterprises of Arizona made the telemarketing calls that apparently manipulated the caller-ID information so that many of the calls appeared to come from consumers not connected to the operation.

IPAWS National Test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) The national WEA test has been postponed to the backup date of October 3, 2018 at 2:18 p.m. EDT.

Transcript: Net Neutrality means that the government will--one day--control the internet. "Wait a second!" I can you hear you saying. "That sounds bad." But almost everyone you know says that Net Neutrality is good. Doesn't "neutral" mean that no one is picking winners and losers, that everyone is equal? Maybe according to the dictionary, but not according to the people behind the Net Neutrality movement. For them, "neutral" means the government regulates the internet like a public utility--and that means bureaucrats making key decisions about how the internet is run. And that's exactly what happened in 2015. The Federal Communications...

Investor’s Business Daily charged in an editorial on Thursday that net neutrality advocates unintentionally “made the case” for regulating Google and Facebook. This week a coalition of large tech giants, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, urged a U.S. appeals court to challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) repeal of the agency’s 2015 net neutrality rule. The editorial board found regarding the agency’s Obama-era net neutrality, “Those 2015 rules were supposed to protect the ‘free and open’ internet by forbidding ISPs from, as the filing puts it, ‘engaging in discriminatory practices that limit consumer choice, competition, and innovation online.'” The business...