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FCC Declares Intention To Enforce Net Neutrality
Unequivocal writes "The FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, told Congress today that the 'Federal Communications Commission plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads. ...Genachowski... told The Hill that his agency will support "net neutrality" and go after anyone who violates its tenets. "One thing I would say so that there is no confusion out there is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles," Genachowski said when asked what he could do in his position to keep the Internet fair, free and open to all Americans. The statement by Genachowski comes as the commission remains locked in litigation with Comcast. The cable provider is appealing a court decision by challenging the FCC's authority to penalize the company for limiting Web traffic to its consumers.' It looks like the good guys are winning, unless the appeals court rules against the FCC."
I did not see this one coming....
Here I am, here I remain.
Assuming they aren't already. You know Rogers and the other providers are going to be watching very closely how this develops.
cue /. republicans, bitching about how nothing good will come of this, and whenever the government try anything they just fuck it up and or it should just be left to the market!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
If "Net Neutrality"= "treat traffic the same regardless of source and destination", then GOOD.
If "Net Neutrality"= "treat traffic the same regardless of protocol", then BAD.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I'd be happier if they vowed to enforce the principles, rather than their violation.
The FCC are the good guys now?
What you don't realize is that by "neutrality" they mean politically; all Republican websites will be required to forward half the incoming traffic to liberal pages.
They'll swap that when (if) the Republicans come back to power.
>It looks like the good guys are winning
O rly? The same "good guys" that impose and enforce draconian censorship laws on TV stations?
There is no such thing as "good guys" or "bad guys" in government. There are agencies, issues, policies, and interests. A particular agency has a particular policy on a particular issue that appeases (or doesn't appease) a given interest group, and that interest group would then support (or oppose) the agency's policy on that issue. Which does not stop the same interest group from having an opposite support factor for the same agency on another policy or issue.
People can be good or bad, organizations (govenrments, corporations, etc.) cannot. And stopping anthropomorphizing them is the first step towards getting something rational done instead of generating knee-jerk reactions and emotional hype.
The FCC, working for the rights of the consumer and not the rights of the big corporations?
Is it April 1st?
I wonder if they'll go after ESPN/Disney for violating net neutrality with ESPN360, which forces ISPs to pay for their subscribers to be able to view it (article: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/12/1842243/Disney-Strikes-Against-Net-Neutrality).
Every so often, a foundational concept comes along that could affect development for decades or centuries hence. The concept of "network neutrality" is one of these.
Just imagine the future possibilities:
On one hand, you have a future where you can never be sure what's really "out there", where there are huge swaths of information that you simply can't access, not because you or the information owner have any disagreement, but because some third party that you don't even know has determined that you shouldn't or couldn't see it. In this world, many sites are slowed to the point of unusability simply because your carrier doesn't want to have to compete with them when they offer a similar service. Quality suffers due to the lack of open competition.
On the other extreme, we have a future in which the Internet consists of the "world of ends" so charmingly envisioned by Doc Searls and David Weinberger. In this world, every information provider competes on fairly level turf with everybody else. Services that are genuinely better are allowed to win out solely on their merits, and not on their competitive associations. Quality of service continues to progress at a lightning pace, friction for improvements is low, so the best man truly does win.
Some people would say this is esoteric, that it's not about the "real world". But these people miss the fact that in the world of the future, the Internet will be the primary means of communication around the world. Already we see whole industries being consumed and integrated into the Internet. I no longer have cable, no television antenna sits on my roof, since Hulu + Netflix does everything I ever asked of my satellite dish and then some. I no longer have a phone line, since Vonage lets me do what I wish, anywhere I like for less. I basically don't send letters anymore, Email does the job faster, better, and cheaper. It's easier for me to do my banking electronically than it is to drive downtown to the nearest bank branch.
The world of the future is the Internet. And it's up to us, our generation, to see that this gorgeous technology is established with social norms and laws that allow us to use it to its maximum potential. This is our time. SAY YES TO NETWORK NEUTRALITY, AS LOUDLY AND OFTEN AS YOU CAN.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I'd be happier if they vowed to enforce the principles, rather than their violation.
What I'd like to know is on what grounds do they think they can mandate how traffic is managed on ISP networks. There are no net neutrality laws. "Principle" means jack squat legally. I don't think there are even any internal FCC regulations on the books regarding NN, let alone laws passed by Congress. This leaves a huge hole for ISP's to take the FCC to court for what is essentially a privately delivered service.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The FCC's Network Neutrality Principles are:
Neither of the principles you state are, as such, strictly necessary to meet those principles.
That being said, discrimination by source or destination could in some cases violated the principles (e.g., if an ISP that is also a content provider outright blocks access to traffic trying to reach competing content providers over its network, or blocks all port 80 requests, or all requessts that appear to use the HTTP protocol, going to their non-business subscribers IPs.) Likewise, discrimination by protocol might in some cases violate the protocol (indeed, the last example of discrimination by source or destination is also a discrimination by protocol.) Whether deprioritizing rather than outright blocking traffic using certain ports or protocols would violate the principles depends on the circumstances; presumably, deprioritization that made it impractical to use the protocol for its principal purpose would be problematic.
Most of the types who have traffic shaping explained to them - which is what usually happens when politicians are the ones pushing the cause - still don't understand the concept of port blocking.
When I pay for "Internet Access" I don't expect my service provider to be able to dictate what I can and can't do with my internet connection. This includes hosting my own mail, FTP, and HTTP servers! What business of it is theirs if I post an image on Fark and host it myself?
As long as you're not spamming and/or doing illegal things they need to back the hell off.
As far as I'm concerned, if I'm having select ports blocked I am NOT getting "Internet Access".
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Given the very few choices available for last mile and the high cost of wireless alternatives, couldn't this become a giant demotivator that causes the likes of cable and telephone companies to radically slow their investment in capacity and QoS improvements?
I love the concept of net neutrality but I don't know that the impact of this style of enforcement will result in service levels any of us will have been wishing for.
Won't be standing OF AMERICA) is the than tFhis BSD box,
However, I hate pay by the byte at rates that are way out of porportion to the actual cost of delivery, which includes the actual proportionate share of maintaining the infrastructure.
In other words, if Grandma and Grandson both subscribe to the same nominal maximum speed, but Grandma downloads 1 movie a month then burns it to a DVD, and grandson downloads 500, Grandma's Internet bill should be significantly lower than her grandson's.
However, Grandson should get the speed for the rate he's paying for.
A charge that would make sense is:
Base customer charge.
Charge per TB at a given speed.
In practice, most companies would add a few units to the base customer charge and call that their "non-heavy user" plan.
For example, rather than
5 North Eblonian Currency Units as a base customer charge
1 NECU for each TB at 1 Mbit/sec (slow speed/lifeline service)
2 NECUs for each TB 10 Mbit/sec (normal speed)
3 NECUs for each TB at 50 Mbit/sec (high speed)
They might have:
6 NECUs + 1 NECU for each TB over the first TB for lifeline service
10 NECUs + 2 NECUs for each TB over the first 5 TB for their standard plan
35 NECUs + 3 NECUs for each TB over the first 10 TB for their elite plan
Of course, there will be discounts for those who bundle their cable TV, wireless, telephone, and mud-supply-needs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...but aren't we talking about private property owned by private private companies?
I don't want my traffic shaped one way or another, BUT allowing the government this kind of power is a dangerous road. If the government wanted the internet to be free of these kind of controls, doesn't it make sense for them to OWN the infrastructure so they can make the rules? As apposed to forcing the rules down the throat of a company?
I value lower government interference over funky tubes any day.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
What is meant by "network neutrality" is network bias. The proposed mandate is a pricing scheme biased in favor of those who consume more. If everyone is required to pay the same price regardless of usage, then those who consume little bandwitdth pay a relatively high rate (in dollars/bit) while those who consume much bandwidth pay a relatively low rate. This is a discriminatory pricing policy biased against small-time users. The grandma sending a weekly email to her grandkids is paying a much higher rate than the BitTorrent junkie sharing films. If you benefit from that mandate then go ahead and selfishly advocate for government to enforce a discriminatory pricing policy which benefits you, but at least have the honesty not call it "neutral".
How about "fuel neutrality," SUV owners pay the same price to fill up the tank on their Lincoln Navigators and Hummers as Toyota Prius users pay to fill up their tanks. Or "land neutrality", the buyer of a 100 acre estate pays the same price as the buyer of the shack on the wrong side of the tracks. Ok, you say, it would be absurd for the government to mandate that pricing and ludicrous to call that "neutral." Well, then you see my point.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
The stimulus bill that was passed requires any firm getting stimulus money for infrastructure upgrades, to follow the FCC's net neutrality tenets.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I just can't understand how ISPs make this a difficult problem. Obviously there are some users that use a lot of bandwidth, there are others that don't. They have tried to discriminate based on "type" of traffic for a while, but why not just on the users total traffic for the month? It is super simple, keep track of the volume of data for all customers. From this data generate a QoS ordering for every customer (quantized based on QoS technical limits) daily or every so often. Now people that don't use bandwidth get served first and others get their packets dropped when bandwidth is at capacity(which I imagine isn't 100% of the time). Essentially high bandwidth users get all the extra bandwidth left over after the low bandwidth people get as much as they want. Then there is none of this packet filters, port blocking, man in the middle TCP reset junk that they are doing now. If you really want you can guarantee a minimum bandwidth for each customer and make reservations for that in the system.
I'm sure it's not in your opinion, but you're sadly oversimplifying or ignoring every use case and ignoring the drivers behind QoS in general. If you want something simplistic and turnkey, there's certainly products out there. Netequalizer springs to mind.
But hey, let's throw in a few simple examples:
HTTP downloads vs. Flash video streamed over HTTP. One is decidedly interactive (even if buffering certainly helps), the other one is decidedly non-interactive (even if faster = neater, naturally).
SIP telephony vs. SIP videoconferencing. Agnosticism per your definition would make the algorithm punish the SIP videocon.
Or, let's take an even simpler example: P2P. Rather than a few very hungry connections, you get a large number of connections pushing less data per connection.
One can always argue that service providers should provide enougb bandwidth so that they won't even have to prioritize data the first place. Nice in theory, hard (or simply uneconomic) in practice. Take a cable provider - with a limited upstream bandwidth per channel, you need some sort of fairness. Simple per-plug fairness works to some extent, but you don't really want to punish the puny amount of upstream data your average HTTP request would generate just because the same user is P2P'ing like there's no tomorrow. Makes for a bad user experience.
When we get to wireless, it gets even messier with the limited and shared upstream and downstream.
I could go on for a whie, but I believe the point has been made. It's not a case of "You simply XYZ" at all.
I'm not sure that the FCC is really the "good guys" here. They're doing the right thing, so it may be a triumph of "good over evil" (hyperbole a bit, but whatever), but I'm not sure I would say the good guys are winning. The FCC should NOT have authority over broadband companies, because their purpose is to control the airwaves. Every step they take into other domains is a step in the wrong direction. If anything, taking care of net neutrality should be something the SEC has domain over, because right now it's more of an antitrust problem than anything else. As long as it's a 2- or 3-party game, Comcast can get away with things like overcharging and dropping packets. Don't get me wrong; I'm definitely glad to see the FCC step up and be ready to put the smackdown on violators of net neutrality. I hope Comcast loses their case, because it's a good precedent to set for net neutrality. However, we should be wary of setting a precedent where the FCC gets more power over the Internet and how people do and don't use it in the United States. It seems good now, but if we decide they have the power to make decisions, what happens when they decide "maybe a little LESS neutrality would be better"? I really think this is an area where the government should be focusing on helping competition enter the market, rather than just smacking the hands of the few companies that hold a near-monopoly on broadband right now.
The ISPs won't reduce the rate for granny, they'll just increase the rate for Wayne.
As a libertarian I must say, No good will come of this, and whenever the government tries anything they just fuck it up and it should just be left to the free market!
this includes net neutrality, health care, environmental regulation, gun ownership/licensing, gas tax, income tax, all taxes, public education, community monopolies on utilities(phone/cabletv/water/electricity), social security, police offers using force against private citizens, national armies, spending money on illegal wars (civil war against your own government is okay though) and whatever else libertarians hate (hard to keep track of it all). Mostly I just hate the DMV and IRS, and I guess the FCC because it's the cool thing to do.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The FCC, making a decision on its own and without direction from Congress, going after companies based on its own whims, basically completely ignoring the rule of law, is a "good guy", now?
If your cause is being approved-of by no one in government other than "that one guy who has a machine-gun and diplomatic immunity", you aren't winning.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
At some point, don't the ISPs risk their common carrier status? They like the protection of saying they don't know what the traffic is that is flowing around their network, then they try to work with the media companies to block downloads of copyrighted material. If they know it is copyrighted material from an unauthorized source, then they no longer can claim to not know what the traffic is.
Either you give me access to the internet to pass whatever I want and are not liable for what I pass, or you get to filter it and become liable when illegal content gets through.
The FCC stated that they will go after violations.
This is not the same as them actually doing it!
Let's first wait and see how this agency, that is stuffed with people from companies that are net-neutrality opponents, actually will perform.
I personally don't believe a word of what a government agency says. Because I learned a bit about rhetorics. And one thing is clear: The reason they are saying it, is never ever to inform anyone about their intentions, but always about reaching a specific effect in the target group.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I expect that my old 56k connection will look pretty good in a little while.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Dont ever forget the FCC is part of the federal government, and can not be trusted to do what is in best interest of the people. If they do this, there is an angle we arent seeing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Bring back fairness in advertising and unlimited use :)
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Verizon may be in violation of the first principle of net neutrality by blocking access to controversial websites and justifying such blocks by falsely alleging that such websites are illegal. In 2006, Slashdot discussed how Verizon terminated its service to Epifora (a host for legal pro-paedophile websites, to whom Verizon provided a backbone). According to a friend who uses Verizon as his home ISP, the company is now blocking access to websites formerly hosted by Epifora (albeit intermittently), sometimes by falsely alleging illegal activites and sometimes through a covert redirect.
One particular website (NSFW but nonetheless legal) which is sometimes inaccessible for Verizon users is LifeLine, which provides support for people who are contemplating suicide or other irrational actions as a result of their attraction to children.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
When the Republicans came in, I hated their standards on the web. But then, they weren't conservative, either.
Democratic folks seem to have us in mind, understand the need, but as has just been seen played out, they'd really love to cage us all.
Having them 'step in' for this much is a very dangerous thing. Ever hear of the Interstate Commerce Commission? It started as a lawsuit over about FOUR TRUCKS and to whom they would pay tax. A few decades later and now it's about weighing each and every truck, stopping them on the road all across the USA, a whole new level of taxing, and pork for political friends all over.
It won't end here. Obama or whoever, once the Fed gets it, it's time to get crazy because "I don't pay attention to politics; I'm a moderate". (Attack of the lazy voter!)
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
This is a pretty good sign that the FCC expects to loose it's court case. It's a common tactic up here in Cananada, say you plan on doing one thing, and then wait for the courts to tie your hands to stop you. (That way you win all the support, and it's not your fault when you don't have to do it)
It gives me the choice to choice a competitor without having my connection artificially slowed down. If I as a ComCast customer can choice to use a video download service other than ComCast's own service, then I have more freedom. If instead of using ComCast's phone service I choice another, I have more freedom. Or if instead of viewing ComCast's preferred political messages I can view others I have more freedom.
You haven't gained any freedom, what's happened is a private corporation has lost freedom to more government regulation, and I don't see how anyone could think that this is a surprising thing.
BS!!! I have gained more choices than either putting up with ComCast or going without. If you want to live in a world where one entity controls what you can see then Cuba's 90 miles from Florida.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Reducing us to "consumers" who "access content" (as opposed to co-equal users of a packet network, who consume or serve as we wish, within the constraints of the bandwidth we've paid for) is part of the problem.
If we don't want ISPs to turn the Internet into mere television, something needs to be done about no-server policies and gratuitous use of dynamic IPs. (In the case of always-on connections, the practice of charging extra for a static IP has almost nothing to do with address shortages and everything to do with market segmentation.)
the far left and far right are correct when they blame big govt
So they need to blame themselves and each other. Both the left and right, far and near, want big government. The only difference is what part of government they want big.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A few Democratic senators may have been bought by the health care industry and are holding things up, but you also have Republican ex-governors and senators making shit up about death panels.
Meanwhile Democrats are making shit up about free markets.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So why is the FCC standing up for the common surfer? Sounds fishy to me and there must be a catch. The government must want something from Net Neutrality, and what it wants can't be good for us. What would they lose without NN? The ability to monitor everything perhaps? The loss of honeypots? Hmmm...
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
My ISP, a national provider, provides me with a static IP address.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's rare and awesome thing thing when that happens.
My ISP did the same though there wasn't a tyme length in the contract. Not only did my ISP cut my bill they also increased my max speed.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Because customers expect broadband internet at dial-up price, and the pipes simply cost more than the average end user realizes.
BS! When I upgraded from dial-up to cable my normal costs went up 2.5X, ie from $20 to $50 a month . Of course the ISP had a special, $30 a month for 6 months, still that was a 50% increase in price.
Flat rate pricing is broken,
Agreed. But when you sell unlimited service, which is what I was sold, don't complain when people take you up on it.
"enforcing net neutrality" is not going to do anything to fix it. Bandwidth is like any other finite resource - it needs to be charged by consumption
There is a big difference between that, charging more for more bandwidth used, and slowing down a service a competitor provides when your own service is not slowed down. It is wrong when ComCast throttles VoIP services that compeats with it's own VoIP service but does not throttle it's service.
There's also a big difference between spending your own money to build-out infrastructure and being given $200 billion of taxpayer money to build out but not doing it. Either build-out broadband or get out of the way of those who would.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Normally i'm against regulation and would say "let the market decide" but there are some areas that only have one provider with no competition.
It was government that created the conditions where there was no competition, governments did that by giving businesses exclusive rights to use easements with no open access requirements.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
They're prudes, but they're about as pro-consumer/anti-business as an agency can get.
This certainly doesn't describe the FCC, ask anybody who setup a pirate radio station in an under served area in the US. It doesn't matter if your station only covers a few blocks, if Clear Channel learns of your station you'll have the FCC send the goon squad knock down your door.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Next step, publish online material in campaign donor-independent media formats.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Hmmm.
Take a look at the US, 90 miles from Cuba.
"Free Speech Zones".
Extraordinary Rendition.
Non-Combatant Military Forces.
Search And Seizure at airports because it's in the US but no Constitution because it's international not US ...
I would suggest that barring any US court proofs to the contrary, that those 20% of the users congesting your link are doing so 3% of the time too.
The principles don't "reduce us" in the way that you claim. While they do refer to "consumers", they use that in the sense of the relationship to ISPs, not to content -- the role of the "consumer" is not merely to "access content". Note that while the entitlement to access content is in the first principle, the second principle entitles consumers to "run applications...of their choice", and does not exclude server applications from its scope.
i connect to the internet using a verizon wireless modem thingy and they have a 5GB/month limit which if you go over, the penalties are har$h
at the same time that this 5GB limit is in place, their Terms of Service disallows using many services such as video streaming, being a server, etc.
it seems to me that one should be allowed to do whatever one wants with their internet connection up to that 5GB limit..
Because I am a Comcast subscriber that came on through a buyout.
In my case indirectly I became a ComCast broadband customer through an exchange. When I signed up Time Warner owned the cable system but then they exchanged some locations they owned for some locations ComCast owned.
If I had another choice I would drop them like a bad habit.
Luckily I do have a choice, I can also get DSL where I live. I didn't know before, I don't have landline phone service and my ISP wanted it to look up whether DSL was available, however I learned someone in another apartment in the building got DSL a few months ago. Now my question would be if I had to have landline phone service to get DSL, all I have is a cellphone and service for it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
there's already borderline porngraphy on basic cable,
Where? I don't see any. I see a lot of violence though.
I dont see censorship as really being an issue, what is it that you'd like to see/hear more of on TV that you don't already?
Almost all I watch on TV is CNN and the movies I bought and own on tape or DVDs. I watch the History channel some but not more than say 1/2 hour here and there.
When was the last time you said "Man, that episode of Everybody loves Raymond would have been so much better if there was some nice big tits in it... and people saying fuck a lot... yeah.. that'd be cool"
I've never said it, I never watched that show. The last series I watched on TV were "Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman" and "Touched by an Angel", that was about 10 years ago. Right now as I'm typing this I have "Mr. Majestyk" playing on DVD. It's almost over, then I might put "Casablanca" in the player. Or another of the hundreds of movies on media I own.
Should there be a Law?
The real issue, IMO, is when they cap 'unlimited' connections, which is false advertising.
That's one issue. Another was that broadband providers were given billions of taxpayer money to build out but didn't. A third issue is that they also have duopolies if not monopolies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The constitution was written in the 18th century, of course internet is not specifically mentioned, this is ridiculous literalism.
The US Constitution is a concrete document, even if you and others want to make it say what it does not say. And it does provide a method by which it make be changed, by amendments. And unlike constitutions others have written, I'm looking at the 1000 plus page EU constitution, the US Constitution including the amendments can fit on only a few pages and is a limit on what the federal government can do not what it must do.
local news are published locally
Except there is little local news now. A lot of the print news comes from services like the Associated Press. For radio large businesses such as Clear Channel tape shows which they then distribute to the various stations they own. Take for example the stations in a North Dakota town. Clear Channel owned all 6 non-religious commercial radio stations, all of which were on autopilot. When a train derailed leaking toxic chemicals there was nobody at the stations to broadcast a warning. In other disasters such as when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans it was hams, shortwave radio broadcasters, who helped not Clear Channel or other commercial broadcasters.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
See subject.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?