Court Unfriendly To FCC's Internet Slap At Comcast

Several sources are reporting that federal judges have been harsh in their examination of the FCC's action against Comcast in 2008 for the throttling of Internet traffic from high-bandwidth file-sharing services. "'You can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good,' said US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Chief Judge David Sentelle during an oral argument. The three-judge panel grilled FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick on the parts of communications law it could cite to justify the Comcast punishment. The FCC argues that it was enforcing an open Internet policy implicit in the law. Judge A. Raymond Randolph repeatedly said the legal provisions cited by the FCC were mere policy statements that by themselves can't justify the commission's action. 'You have yet to identify a specific statute,' he said. The judges' decision in the case could throw into question the FCC's authority to impose open Internet rules."

Comments

Just Pass a Law

[jimbolauski]

So all that needs to happen is a law must be passed. I can't wait to see how many pages it will take to say NO THROTTLING!

Re:Just Pass a Law

[calmofthestorm]

I could be way off but I believe net neutrality did go through recently. That said, it wasn't in place at the time, and since it isn't legalizing criminal invasions of privacy this means it isn't retroactive.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[FlightTest]

After all the unrelated pork-barrel is added? Thousands of pages, I'm sure.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[DoofusOfDeath]

I can't wait to see how many pages it will take to say NO THROTTLING!

I'm curious too. Let me go ask the lobbyists who draft our legislation.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[maxume]

What if I want to pay for a 'lazy' broadband package, where I agree to be throttled when the network is loaded, in exchange for better throughput when things are less busy?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[TheReverandND]

What Comcast did isn't throttling. They engaged in willful packet tampering, by replacing seed packets with reset packets, and that IS already illegal.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[NickFortune]

What if I want to pay for a 'lazy' broadband package, where I agree to be throttled when the network is loaded, in exchange for better throughput when things are less busy?

Cool. What were you going to do if you wanted a package where your packets don't get throttled by third party providers with whom you have no direct financial agreement relationship?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[maxume]

You mean like when a website limits download speeds for people that choose not to pay them money, like Rapidshare?

I'm in favor of a net neutrality where providers have to offer all comers the same service packages at identical prices, beyond that, I'm not real worried about it. It would be nice if conglomerates were required to separate content and infrastructure operations (to the point that the one actually bills the other), but they'll squabble amongst themselves anyway (as managers try to push costs off on other groups to make themselves look better).

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Shakrai]

What if I want to pay for a 'lazy' broadband package, where I agree to be throttled when the network is loaded, in exchange for better throughput when things are less busy?

If it works the same way as the health care reform legislation then you'll be limited to choosing a list of internet packages that were pre-approved by the FCC or some other Federal bureaucracy. This may or may not include one that meets your needs and provides you with the most value for your hard earned money.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[spun]

If you do agree to be throttled, please take precautions to make sure you don't end up like David Carradine.

Too soon?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[wgaryhas]

More like the following:

You have service through ISP A

Website/peer has service through ISP B

for traffic to go from ISP A to ISP B it has to be routed through ISP C's network.

ISP C decides to throttle your connection.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Shakrai]

But I thought the days of lobbyists drafting legislation behind closed doors ended on 20 January 2009?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[maxume]

Well, as long as they are throttling all their customers (at a particular service tier) in the same manner, I wouldn't be real worried about it.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Imrik]

No, like when someone between Comcast and Rapidshare (or whichever ISP + website pair you choose) decides to throttle your bandwidth.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Nadaka]

You fell for a big one. There is a reason both parties used to have the name Democratic-Republican. Our electoral process ensures a 2 party system, if you can use two different names for the same party, you can reduce it to a one party system.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[MobyDisk]

Well, as long as they are throttling all their customers (at a particular service tier) in the same manner, I wouldn't be real worried about it.

Which certainly would not be the case. And even if it were, it doesn't take into account ISP C.

You paid ISP A to not throttle. The website/peer paid ISP B not to throttle. But ISP C thinks your content violates their rules, so they throttle it. So you both paid to get nothing, and your ISPs can't do anything about it.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[maxume]

Then A and B are incompetent.

And they very much can do something about it, they can route around C.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[fulldecent]

If it works the same way as the health care reform legislation then you'll be limited to choosing a list of internet packages that were pre-approved by the FCC or some other Federal bureaucracy. This may or may not include one that meets your needs and provides you with the most value for your hard earned money.

No. If it works the same way as proposed health care reform legislation, an additional 20% of your packets will be stolen from any transaction you initiate and they will be used to support others' zombie connections that just wont die. All network engineering (choosing which packets live and which ones die) will be handled by the largest operators in the game and highly politicized, mostly by Pelosi. Also, if you opt not to buy service, you will have to pay an extra fee.

And you thought running out of IPv4 addresses was bad...

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem, NO! Speak with your feet. Is a service you're paying for not doing what you want? DON'T PAY FOR IT! Guess what, buddy.. this internet is not a right.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Rapidshare has full rights to determine how much data they send you. They have no contractual obligation, they have not advertised to you any data rate and most of all, their service is free. An ISP has all these against it.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[bmk67]

So all that needs to happen is a law must be passed. I can't wait to see how many pages it will take to say NO THROTTLING!

It's never that simple. The road to hell is paved in good intentions.

Let's say Lobbyist A wants net neutrality, and finds a sympathetic ear or three in congress. Draft legislation is written by legislator C, and Lobby B gets wind of it. Lobby B is opposed to neutrality, and contacts legislator D, who happens to be bought and paid for by Lobby B. Another bill is written, which on it's face looks like net neutrality, but in fact is not.

The first bill gets a few sponsors, who go out and try to get other legislators to line up behind them. In order to garner votes, the sponsors have to make concessions to other legislators, or add pork to benefit another legislator's state/district. Repeat ad nauseum until enough of the 435 representatives / 100 senators have slipped in their pet project or amendment.

Meanwhile, the second bill is going through the same process. There may be several competing bills, in both the House and the Senate. Usually when you actually get a similar bill to pass both the House and the Senate, there are differences to be hammered out.

What you end up with is a monstrosity of a bill that looks like neither original bill, and nobody is really happy with it - except the districts that ended up being the beneficiaries of all the pork that got packed into the bill on both sides of the capitol building.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Jeremy Erwin]

. They have no contractual obligation, they have not advertised to you any data rate and most of all, their service is free.
Not if you pay them 9,90 Euros per month.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Timothy Brownawell]

If it works the same way as the health care reform legislation then you'll be limited to choosing a list of internet packages that were pre-approved by the FCC or some other Federal bureaucracy.

This sounds bogus, do you have a reference for it?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[NickFortune]

And they very much can do something about it, they can route around C.

The point, really, is that you as a customer can't do anything about it. You either accept that ISP C will degrade your traffic, despite having been paid to carry it through existing peering arrangements; or else you go with an ISP that pays a premium to ISP C beyond the peering charge and get shafted.

Or, of course, you move to ISP C and get shafted by ISP A and B's retalliatory surcharges and/or throttling. As a customer, you still end up a loser.

The real problem, of course, is that there are a lot more ISP Cs than there are A and Bs, at least for any given customer. If every owner of every yard of fiber in the Internet decides to add arbitrary surcharges, it could quickly cripple the internet. I can see how that might appeal to the likes of Sony and Michael Lynton, but for most of us, it there really is no positive outcome.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[maxume]

If the internet ends up crippled, people will promptly build a new one, with hookers and blackjack.

My point is that as a customer, I don't ever expect to have to do much about it, except maybe put up with no internet for short periods of time (by which I mean, when I switch to the competent ISP, and the only reason any waiting would be involved is the stupid way that the last mile is regulated in the United States).

Re:Just Pass a Law

[TheDownSyndromeKid]

But it should become one. We should follow Finland's lead on that notion.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[bill_mcgonigle]

But I thought the days of lobbyists drafting legislation behind closed doors ended on 20 January 2009?

Yeah, and the entire healthcare debate and negotiations will be aired on CSPAN... meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[NickFortune]

If the internet ends up crippled, people will promptly build a new one, with hookers and blackjack.

"Promptly" in this context meaning after twenty years of investing in infrastructure that was already largely paid for by government subsidy anyway, I take it.

My point is that as a customer, I don't ever expect to have to do much about it, except maybe put up with no internet for short periods of time (by which I mean, when I switch to the competent ISP, and the only reason any waiting would be involved is the stupid way that the last mile is regulated in the United States).

OK, you have low expectations when it comes to corporate ethics. I can see how that might happen.

Thing is, that still doesn't mean that letting third party ISPs play "Stand And Deliver" with your data is a good thing. And it still doesn't mean we should accept arbitrary surcharges to a service for which we have already paid, from parties with whom we have no direct financial arrangement.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[maxume]

Are those things happening?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[HeckRuler]

Well, you could have a second ISP/account for that. It is a worry that once the preferred packed for ISPs becomes tiered, non-neutral, or otherwise funky that the telcom companies would offer only a minor discount for low quality connections and bend you over and rape you for high-quality connections similar to the "standard" internet service we have now. And if the pricing structure for text messeging is any example, then I wouldn't trust the telcom companies with any power at all. In a perfect world, charging different rates for different quality isn't a bad thing, but the culteral setup of those in power makes this a terrifying prospect.

But ideally, I'd like 3 different accounts:
1. Cheap-ass, slow, flaky, interpretable, but uncapped connection for my casual downloading. Stuff I set up and let run overnight. Pay scales per gig over a set period of time.
2. Quick response, high priority, no dropped packets, with a bandwidth of... whatever I need at the time for gaming and voip. Paid per byte per level of bandwidth. And I limited to X bytes every minute.
3. High bandwidth, intermittent connection for burst communications. ie, web-browsing. I don't want the connection all that often, but when I ask for it I want it all right now.

But as I said, this is an ideal scenario where we accurately pay for what we need. But this model wouldn't encourage telcom companies to lay down more lines. It would encourage them to limit supply so people pay extra.

I would like some sort of quality metrics and contractual agreements instead of the vuage promise to get something between 0Mps and 5Mos I have now.
But I understand your original message that Comcast throttled ALL P2P connections over their lines regardless of who paid for what and so all of this entirely beside the point.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Curunir_wolf]

I could be way off but I believe net neutrality did go through recently. That said, it wasn't in place at the time, and since it isn't legalizing criminal invasions of privacy this means it isn't retroactive.

It wouldn't affect this anyway, because the "net neutrality" you're referring to is not a law (passed by congress) - it is another set of policy rules issued by the FCC. If the judges rule in favor of Comcast in this case, it could serve as precedent to throw out the entire rule. If they can't point to a statute that points to their actions against Comcast, they won't be able to point to a statute giving them the authority to issue those rules, either.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course he does. Both Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly said so, so it must be true!

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Ichijo]

What were you going to do if you wanted a package where your packets don't get throttled by third party providers with whom you have no direct financial agreement relationship?

Switch to an ISP with a different upstream provider. Or subscribe to a VPN tunneling service.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[NickFortune]

Do you think it would be a good thing if they did?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[maxume]

Not particularly, but I'd rather risk it than have some vaguely worded "No throttling" legislation passed.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[NickFortune]

Switch to an ISP with a different upstream provider

Which works as long as we only have one "bad guy" ISP trying to supplement their legitimate peering income with arbitrary surcharges on third party traffic. It doesn't mean that allowing those surcharges is a good idea, but it's a viable strategy as long as only ISP decides to charge for services for which they're already being paid.

The trouble is that once the principle is established that this is acceptable behaviour, every cable owner on the planet will want a piece of the action. When that happens, your internet fees go up. They go up regardless of who you're with, because everyone with whom you don't have a contract is charging your ISP a premium not to simply drop their packets.

Or subscribe to a VPN tunneling service.

And they're not going to shape SSL traffic because ...?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Ichijo]

The trouble is that once the principle is established that this is acceptable behaviour, every cable owner on the planet will want a piece of the action. When that happens, your internet fees go up.

In a free market, a seller cannot increase his or her profit margin without attracting other sellers. The profit margin disappears as they compete by lowering their prices or improving their service. Which reminds me of a third option: setup a community broadband cooperative.

And they're not going to shape SSL traffic because ...?

Your ISP can't shape SSL traffic because they can't inspect the contents. They would have no way of knowing which bytes are going to which web site.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Kalriath]

Your ISP can't shape SSL traffic because they can't inspect the contents. They would have no way of knowing which bytes are going to which web site.

So they shape all of it. Problem solved. Generally speaking they could choose to just penalise any sustained encrypted connection, as a standard HTTP over SSL connection will be relatively short lived. And also, that gets those pesky encrypted torrents as well! Win/Win! Well, for them.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[NickFortune]

Your ISP can't shape SSL traffic because they can't inspect the contents

See, this is the point everybody seems to miss. It's not your ISP that causes the problem. And it's not the ISP of the web site at the far end, either. It's all the johnny-in-the-middle provides through whom your packets get routed who decide they want more money, above and beyond the peering arrangements that already compensate them for use of their pipes.

So changing your ISP doesn't help. A community broadband co-op will not help, unless the community in question is Planet Earth.

Market Forces will not ride to the rescue on this one.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[NickFortune]

Not particularly, but I'd rather risk it than have some vaguely worded "No throttling" legislation passed.

That's a poor "risk". The Net Neutrality debate kicked off when AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre announced his intention to do exactly what we're talking about. Since then we have seen several cases of large providers unfairly throttling smaller downstream providers.

This is not an abstract doomsday scenario. It's happening.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we need new laws. New laws every year. More laws! More laws!

Re:Just Pass a Law

[inode_buddha]

In other words, you want a business-class, leased line. So do I. After checking around, my cable provider actually has this, starting at $250 per month over existing copper.

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Lockejaw]

Aye. The judges want specific statute cited?
18 USC 1343

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Warhawke]

Legislation that protects consumers against the profit-interests of large corporations... Why does the word "vaporware" come to mind?

Re:Just Pass a Law

[Thinboy00]

Market Forces will not ride to the rescue on this one.

Duh! The telco market is one of the least competitive markets in the US!

No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Judges have a history of defending big buisness. This comes as no suprise that they would rule in favor of corporate interest.

Re:No Suprise here

[calmofthestorm]

Well, depends on the corporate. Media companies love neutrality because then they don't have to pay ISPs to get full speed. ISPs hate it becuase they don't want to be dumb content providers, and want more money.

Consumer interest is pretty obviously on the neutrality side*, but there are corporate interests on both sides. Think Google.

* The real solution is actual competition on the part of ISPs but that'll be a cold day in Hell before it happens in the US.

Re:No Suprise here

[dkleinsc]

Actually, the real real solution is probably a publicly owned utility handling telecom and ISP, because publicly owned utilities have a history of giving better prices and service than their private counterparts for doing similar jobs.

Yes, there are corporate interests on the side of Net Neutrality, but they probably aren't media companies, for a couple of key reasons:
1. A lot of media companies have business ties to ISPs. Time Warner in particular is guilty of this.
2. If they pay the extra to ISPs, they gain an advantage over any upstart competitors. It produces a significant barrier to entry for, say, a successful blogger or independent news site.

Re:No Suprise here

[jgtg32a]

Do you have any citations on Publicly Owned is better?
 
Because IPL does a damn good job at keeping the lights on.

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Both Judges have a history of defending big buisness. This comes as no suprise that they would rule in favor of corporate interest.

Actually, they are ruling in the favor of law. Just because you happen to agree with the FCC doesn't make what they did right.

Imagine the FCC thought throttling was fine, and created policies that punished content providers who didn't properly mark their high-bandwidth traffic. You'd be begging the court for relief for this exact same decision instead of calling them corporate shills.

Even though throttling is bad, the FCC making up their own rules as they go along is worse.

Re:No Suprise here

[jimbolauski]

Actually, the real real solution is probably a publicly owned utility handling telecom and ISP, because publicly owned utilities have a history of giving better prices and service than their private counterparts for doing similar jobs.

Just ask any Russian about the public hot water, they shut off hot water in the summer for matience.

Re:No Suprise here

[CannonballHead]

because publicly owned utilities have a history of giving better prices and service than their private counterparts for doing similar jobs.

Aren't "publically owned utilities" basically financed with tax dollars? No wonder they can give "better prices and service." They get my money somehow else.

Not saying it's not an option... just saying that the price you pay for a public utility isn't just the price on the sticker. Or ad. Or whatever.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

Nice anecdote. Perhaps it's even true. But the vast majority of publicly owned utilities do in fact provide better service at lower rates. Look at the TVA. Look at what happened in South America when water was privatized.

In general, privatization only works when there is a robust and competitive market. In the case of public utilities, they are a natural monopoly, and therefore, a competitive market is impossible. Cooperatives and other forms of public ownership are the most efficient way to run any form of natural monopoly.

Re:No Suprise here

[Excelcior]

Someone please mod the parent up, this is so important to say. If the law isn't there, we need to make a new law, not try to force everyone into whatever we want. If freedom is to exist, everyone needs to be subject to the laws; even the government.

Re:No Suprise here

[Shakrai]

because publicly owned utilities have a history of giving better prices and service than their private counterparts for doing similar jobs.

They also have a history of paying excessively above market wages/benefits to their employees. Their unions have a history of corrupting the political process to benefit their few members at the expense of everyone else. Just look at the states that are deepest in the red right now (New York and California come to mind) and compare the compensation packages of the public and private sectors in those states. Then look at how any politician brave enough to stand up to these special interests is immediately vilified.

1. A lot of media companies have business ties to ISPs. Time Warner in particular is guilty of this.

No it's not. Time Warner Cable was spun off from Time Warner some time ago. TWC is a bad example anyway -- they've never blocked any service (other than netbios and smtp, which is SOP these days for security reasons) or interfered with any protocol. As ISPs go, Roadrunner is a pretty good one, IMHO anyway.

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

Not always. There are plenty of public companies that charge just enough to break even. Internet would cost about $2/month if it was a public utility. Maybe they could get by with charging a one time $500/per house to have a fiber optic line hook up.

Seems better than the current system with everyone paying $40+/month and having all these wifi routers that can't be used by neighbors or travelers.

Re:No Suprise here

[Ironsides]

Also, look at Venezuela.

Oh, and the TVA?

One such considered above criticism, sacred as motherhood, is TVA. This program started as a flood control project; the Tennessee Valley was periodically ravaged by destructive floods. The Army Engineers set out to solve this problem. They said that it was possible that once in 500 years there could be a total capacity flood that would inundate some 600,000 acres (2,400 km2). Well, the engineers fixed that. They made a permanent lake which inundated a million acres (4,000 km). This solved the problem of floods, but the annual interest on the TVA debt is five times as great as the annual flood damage they sought to correct. Of course, you will point out that TVA gets electric power from the impounded waters, and this is true, but today 85 percent of TVA's electricity is generated in coal burning steam plants. Now perhaps you'll charge that I'm overlooking the navigable waterway that was created, providing cheap barge traffic, but the bulk of the freight barged on that waterway is coal being shipped to the TVA steam plants, and the cost of maintaining that channel each year would pay for shipping all of the coal by rail, and there would be money left over.

from the wiki article.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

Ooh, an early Reagan quote. Sounds more like a criticism of the Army Corps of Engineers, though, doesn't it? And the criticism could be leveled against any hydro-electric program. As for the debt, it was payed off years ago, (the quyote was from 1966) yet the project continues to protect against floods.

As for the articles on Venezuela, yes, I agree that climate change has caused some terrible tragedies already, tragedies that affect public and private concerns alike, but how does that relate to my point?

Re:No Suprise here

[CannonballHead]

$2/month subscription. How much in taxes, though?

Sorta like how we pay for city water, but we also pay (in taxes) for the water district stuff, too. Not necessarily bad, but it's sort of a "hidden" fee.

Not saying that doesn't necessarily happen with a company like Comcast, since the American government seems to like giving my money to companies, banks, and politicians (everyone but me).

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

AH oh, here we go again.

You're right, big government is the solution. Government in control is what we need. This is perfect. Instead of letting competition decide who wins, we let government hurrah!!!!

Do people not understand how capitalism works? And no, we don't have a capitalistic system in the US, we have big corporations and unions who get legislature passed, that is the exact opposite of capitalism. But the solution isn't to just go hogwild with stupid regulations that hinder improvement and innovation and meanwhile don't even achieve the results they desire?

and moreover, what are we btihcing about? throttling? geez. you know what? i had comcast, i started to hate them, they are incompetent(beyond throttling), so you know what i did? I did my business elsewhere. And don't tell me there aren't other options, because there are in almost all cases, other options.

The solution is rather simple, get rid of almost all regulations on business. Let individuals decide what their choices are and where to go. Let people vote in the best way, with our dollars, on what services are good, and what are bad. But nope, won't be done, all those regulations are supposed to help right? hahahahaha. they rarely help, and even when they do it's a short term, and in the long term are much worse for the consumer. The worst thing to do is judge legislation by it's intentions rather than it's results. Which is what we always do. At some point we'll learn freedom of choice, really does work. Well, we'll learn it again, we used to know it back in the 1700's and 1800's and even into the early 1900's. Which were our most productive times, but ah well. Hell, as recently as the 50's we had decent medical care, and shockingly, there was little regulation and government involvement.

Socialism does not work. Even in cases like this, where you want it to. The only exceptions, are literally where there are no other alternatives, but those cases are few and far between. And i'll put my mod prediction in the last part so no one will read it, either this post gets ignored or modded down, never know tho, occasionally some 'kook' libertarian posts do get modded up.

Re:No Suprise here

[jedidiah]

> AH oh, here we go again.
>
> You're right, big government is the solution. Government in control is what we need. This is perfect. Instead of letting competition decide who wins, we let government hurrah!!!!

+...and who EXACTLY is "competing" for YOUR broadband business.

In my case it is two natural monopolies.

Great "market forces" at work there...

Re:No Suprise here

[brkello]

You do realize that the whole infrastructure of the Internet was already paid for through tax dollars, right? When there is a lack of competition (like in this market) yes, publicly owned utilities are a lot better (as in cheaper for you and run more efficiently).

Re:No Suprise here

[apez1267]

what , so i can sell my kids to walmart , or would you perfer to legalize kidnaping , if there are no laws on busnesses then i can kidnap someone and when the police can come but all i will have to say is , its a busness so leve me alone. ps , i live in maryland and i literaly have 2 choices dile up , and comcast and my work requires me to have a high speed concetion to my work so i dont have a choice at all

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

there's a few companies with DSL, there's satalite, there's dialup and there's the option of not having internet. quite a few options for me.

Of course, i live in a suburb of seattle, not everyone has as mayn options. But they still have choices. And if people like me make the right choices, they'll soon have better choices to make anyways, as I'll reward the companies doing the right thing.

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

Hey, since you bring up kids, protection of children is a place where i think the local governments do have a role to play. But you can't own people in a free society. They are responsible for themselves, and certainly no decent goverment would allow kids to be traded, even if you are responsible for them. But let's not compare kids to the free market, because it's a different beast. THe free market functions on people making their own choices, and living with the consequences of their own choices. You are in charge of yourself.

And your situation, you want the government to do what? regulation comcast because you put yourself into a situation, that relies on comcast? You still have options, you can move, you can get another job or whatever. sorry the situation isn't what you want.

But let's go further, let's say you get regulations passed. Then what happens? well your prices will go up(maybe not by much), and in the future the market's will be limited by these regulations. SO you MIGHT benefit int he short run. that is the best case scenario. In the long run you are hurting competition and you are basically increasing the likeliness an incompetent company (comcast) will remain in existence.

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't "publically owned utilities" basically financed with tax dollars? No wonder they can give "better prices and service." They get my money somehow else.

I don't think that is very accurate. The post office, which is a publicly offered service, operates on a budget that comes from stamps and other shipping fees. Public roads are funded through gasoline taxes that are only passed on to the people who drive. If our payroll taxes paid for these services then there would be no need to pay for postage or high prices at the pump. This would be an unfair burden to those who don't use mail or don't drive.

There is no reason to believe that you would be charged twice for internet access as a "publicly owned utility." The budget to operate a utility of this sort would most likely come directly from those who were accessing the service. The reason that prices are often better with "publicly owned utilities", is that there is not an eternal drive for ever-increasing quarterly profits.

Re:No Suprise here

[apez1267]

i want a gov's option , that way i can say it sucks but right now the only thing i can say is that the PRIVATE option does suck , hay , all i want is more options , dont u?

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

As ISPs go, Roadrunner is a pretty good one, IMHO anyway.

I used to think Roadrunner was pretty good. Until they decided to claim the title of the First ISP in the USA to actually implement usage caps and overage fees on their broadband internet service -- ridiculous ones, at that. 5GB per month for something like $30 _UP TO_ 40GB per month for $60, and with $1/GB overage fee. Nothing higher than that was ever offered. I could almost live with comcast's 250GB cap compared to this. Roadrunner must have been out of their frigging minds. The troglodytes that inhabit this area known as Beaumont, TX did not protest, even though RR is the ONLY fucking ISP here that is worth a damn. (ATT DSL service coverage is extremely limited here and is run by incompetent morons and satellite is, well, satellite..) Luckily when Time Warner decided to expand their greedy, idiotic pricing structure to other, more enlightened cities, the residents there created enough of an uproar to put a stop to this nonsense. They backtracked and removed the caps in Beaumont and everywhere else, but now everybody knows (or should know) how much Time Warner sucks. Seriously, fuck these guys.

When I complained to Time Warner about the caps were going to be implemented, they made it quite clear their intentions (but later lied about it to the public). Remember how they said they weren't making enough money to sustain themselves, needed to charge more or they would go out of business, blah blah blah? And how it was later proven to be a bunch of lies? With that in mind, read this response from a Time Warner rep:

Thank you for contacting Road Runner technical e-mail support.

As per your e-mail, I understand that you have some issue with Tiered bandwidth caps.

I would like to try to restore your faith in Time Warner Cable. We value each and every customer, and I apologize for the problems you?ve experienced. Let me assure you that I?ll do everything I can to take care of this for you.

Let me tell you that Road Runner has introduced such plan with regards to illegal downloads. However, I?ll forward this email to our development team so that they can look forward to your concern. You will receive the notification from our development team very soon.

That's right, these fuckers were trying to police the interwebs. They were trying to protect their content from the evils of "illegal downloads" if there is such a thing, by putting severe limits on ALL of their customers' internet access. And of course it had the side benefit of crippling any internet-based competition to their cable and on-demand services. Oh and the "development team" never fucking emailed me back, either.

Hope that clears up any misconceptions that Roadrunner may be "good" in any way

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

and if you get a government option you will eliminate competition and thus eliminate any chance for options for you.

Re:No Suprise here

[HeckRuler]

Here I thought the media giants hated that ISPs were just dump pipes and wanted control over what tier of internet service was provided.

Basic: Google (plus the top 10 results!), wikipedia's main page, and now including our business partner and friend(ESPN!)
Silver: amazon, craigslist, Wikipedia, facebook, Disney, and other out-of-network sites.
Gold: Unlimited* connections to anywhere in the world*
Ultraviolet, pay-out-yer-ass: Slashdot and other such subversive sites

Or in short: They want to break network neutrality to turn the internet in cable television networks.

Re:No Suprise here

[apez1267]

but i dont have any right now so whats the problem , i gave them plenty of time , now its the non profits tern

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

So you want government provided internet? What does government provide, that it does well? I mean, the best cases, are where government subsizes things, and those are even more expensive. You really won't get a better option from government, for much of any length of time.

Re:No Suprise here

[gsarnold]

You know what's missing? The mom and pop broadband market like we had with dialup in the 90's. We should do communications like we do roads.

We won't ever have actual competition in any of the broadband or communications markets because pulling physical cables is expensive and difficult. (Wireless *might* be an exception if it pans out...) There are permits, zoning rules, capacity/buildout planning and all kinds of "who really wants five cables from five different providers running into their house?!" issues that give communication markets exceptionally high natural barriers to entry. The problem is that all these services share a common cable that should be centralized.

If local government were to seize ownership and operation of the physical network layer -- the cabling and routing -- from the phone and cable companies under eminent domain, then any company that wanted to sell ISP, VOIP or TVIP service could do so by paying the city a simple access fee to use the public network infrastructure. We could stop wasting money running redundant cables to everyone's house, we could stop letting service providers leverage their networks to strongarm customers with unfair policies, and we could stop letting them use their existing regional monopolies to lock out competition and cherry pick their customers.

BONUS: Since the service providers would be freed of the burden of being a 'dumb wire' (I'm looking at you, TWC!), they could instead focus on providing stellar competitive services.

For those of you concerned about "government efficiency", consider that your city government could contract out the network management and maintenance if they didn't want to do it themselves; we just wouldn't let them sell ownership. Besides, this is exactly how we handle most of the other infrastructure we depend on anyway. Are roads that everyone uses really that big a problem? If we did roads the way we do data, you'd need to sign a five year contract and agree to have the roads around your house torn up and rebuilt to shop at Target instead of Walmart.

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

That would seems very inefficient to have someone else heat my water for me. Why don't Russians just buy hot water heaters like Americans do?

Re:No Suprise here

[apez1267]

as i said , i want to hate it but i have been yet to get the chance, yes there are bad things but the police have always come when i call and the fire department does to and my park is clean and safe jusst to name a fiew things (its a public park)

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

police and fire are legitimate jobs the government should be doing. owning parks.. a lot of parks are unclean and even dangerous. And the parks aren't (usually) open after night, so you can't even use them when you want. But owning a park isn't even hard.

Re:No Suprise here

[dkleinsc]

Well, here's a pretty good example from near where I currently live: Cleveland Public Power (publicly owned, as the name suggests) versus FirstEnergy of Ohio (a private utility). These two companies serve a very similar customer base in roughly the same region, practically overlapping in places.

During the 2003 Northeast blackout (caused by FirstEnergy), CPP had its customers' power on about a full day ahead of FirstEnergy. The municipal power company in a different town where I was living at the time had my power back within approximately 1 hour of the start of the blackout.

Oh, and the rates were and are somewhat cheaper, without any taxpayer subsidy.

Re:No Suprise here

[Kalriath]

Cooperatives and other forms of public ownership are the most efficient way to run any form of natural monopoly.

Don't make me laugh. Here in New Zealand, the government owns the largest two electricity generators, and the national power grid. A trust owned by the residents of our largest city owns the municipal power grid within that city.

Generated prices are increased for no reason once every 3 months or so, with an increase in transmission costs added on by the grid operator, plus an additional increase by the municipal grid (sure, they issue dividend cheques to half the region they charge once every year, but wouldn't it benefit those residents more if they - oh, I don't know - charged less to start with?)

Every bloody 3 months.

Yes, because publicly owned is so much better.

Re:No Suprise here

[Kalriath]

If local government were to seize ownership and operation of the physical network layer -- the cabling and routing -- from the phone and cable companies under eminent domain, then any company that wanted to sell ISP, VOIP or TVIP service could do so by paying the city a simple access fee to use the public network infrastructure. We could stop wasting money running redundant cables to everyone's house, we could stop letting service providers leverage their networks to strongarm customers with unfair policies, and we could stop letting them use their existing regional monopolies to lock out competition and cherry pick their customers.

You do realise that a government ever actually invoking that right (and I can guarantee that they have laws stating specific circumstances under which it can be used) would cause a drastic loss of confidence in ability to do business in such an area and undoubtedly result in economic disaster right? No government in it's right might would ever seize the core assets of a business in such a fashion. Keep dreaming.

Re:No Suprise here

[coolgeek]

Seems to me these judges just clotheslined the FCC. This ruling can now be used to challenge any enforcement action by the FCC.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

If it's publicly owned, it's publicly controlled. Who, then, do you blame for your problems?

Re:No Suprise here

[Ironsides]

So it protects against floods by permanently flooding a larger area?

El-nino is Climate Change now? Really? And the utilities lack of preparation has nothing to do at all with a socialist government nationalizing everything under the sun and causing shortages?

Re:No Suprise here

[sonicmerlin]

You are such an ignorant twit I don`t even know where to begin. You want to get rid of all regulations? Ok then, no more FDA to protect you from poisoned foods. No more American Medical Association to make sure you don`t get fooled into buying a quack doctor`s services. No more zoning laws, minimal building construction standards, water quality requirements, phone line uptime requirements, electricity production standards, etc. etc. In the 50s and 60s our capital gains taxes were much, much higher than they are now. Your comment about `socialism` is so stupid it just boggles the mind. There is no black and white you juvenile-minded fool. EVERYTHING is at least partly socialized. I can`t stress this enough. There is no business, no industry in the world that isn`t at least partly regulated and thus socialized for the benefit of society. The fact that you don`t understand this just demonstrates how much a brainwashed retard you are. Just please, jump off a cliff and relieve this world of your oppressive idiocy.

Re:No Suprise here

[sonicmerlin]

You`re a friggin` blithering idiot aren`t you? The vast majority of people don`t have more than 1 or 2 options. Satellite and dialup are not `competitors`. They don`t provide anywhere near the same quality of service as cable or DSL. You obviously haven`t even bothered taking an economics 101 class to understand what free market `competition` actually refers to. Your mindless drivel is sickening to read. I once again recommend you find a bridge to jump off of.

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

You are such an ignorant twit I don`t even know where to begin. You want to get rid of all regulations? Ok then, no more FDA to protect you from poisoned foods. No more American Medical Association to make sure you don`t get fooled into buying a quack doctor`s services. No more zoning laws, minimal building construction standards, water quality requirements, phone line uptime requirements, electricity production standards, etc. etc.

I love it, begin with an insult.

by all means, get rid of the FDA which causes far more problems than it prevents. 15 years to get a drug out that saves thousands a lives/ that means for the past 15 years it has cost 15 * thousands of lives, thanks to the FDA. AMA is a private organization, which is fine. zoning laws are local and i'm not really talking about them. Who would drink water if it was bad, same with everything else you listed. You think that we don't have problems with these things because of regulations? Hahaha and you call me juvenile? I've explained my thoughts on everything, and you keep insulting me. No, it's not black and white, and the free market isn't perfect. But it is far superior.

hahahha I love it, you tell me to jump off a cliff because i express a view point contrary to your own and think i'm oppressive??? Our most productive times were when we had these 'ignorant' ideas as you describe.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

Are you daft? There's a difference between flooding a mountain canyon and flooding towns, cities, and farmlands. How do you think hydroelectric projects work?

Yes, El Nino is worse because of climate change. And the supposed 'lack of preparation' is due to sabotage.

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

because publicly owned utilities have a history of giving better prices and service than their private counterparts for doing similar jobs.

They also have a history of paying excessively above market wages/benefits to their employees.

Better prices _and_ they pay their employees more? Sounds like a win to me.

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

If the law isn't there, we need to make a new law
The law already is there. What Comcast did was forge reset packets to look like they were sent by a torrent user. Wire fraud is already illegal.

Re:No Suprise here

[Kalriath]

The board, and the government that persists in demanding multi-million dollar dividends from the board.

Re:No Suprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another Americunt big-business apologist. Here's a hint: you already paid for the public utility with a ludicrous subsidy and they have fucking screwed you--big time--and yet you continue to defend them and shout "socialism" as if you knew what the word meant.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

Shouldn't you blame whoever elects the board?

Re:No Suprise here

[Kalriath]

Elects? Noone elects them.

Besides, they still have to turn a massive profit so they can return multi-million dollar dividends.

Re:No Suprise here

[Ironsides]

So, flooding a larger area makes sense than letting the smaller floods occur once every 500 years? How does that make sense? And it wasn't a mountain canyon, it was 4,000 square kilometers. That's larger than most cities.

Sabotage? That's your claim? Where's your source? And shouldn't a utility take steps to ensure that it can provide services regardless of what should happen? I notice Brazil hasn't had any news reports of water shortages lately.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

Um, if no one elects them, it isn't publicly owned.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

You don't remember the big hack into the system, a little prior to the accident? Okay, maybe it wasn't sabotage, and if it was, no one on either side would say. It's just that the timing was very coincidental.

As for the TVA project, flood control isn't about acreage protected versus acreage flooded. It is about the economic value of each, and the value of the electricity produced. And saying the project only provided 15% of the electricity generated back then is just silly, without a dollar value. It was such typical Reagan mumbo-jumbo it made me laugh.

Re:No Suprise here

[gangien]

hahaha yeah. I've looked up the word a few times, and i think i get what it means. But i'm for treating big and small businesses the same. so i'm hardly playing favorites. and subsidies are bad, but that doesn't mean we need to make it worse (even though i'm not sure of any subsidies cell phone companies get, i'm sure there are some).

But you go ahead and continue to be against capitalism, and tell me how well that works out. Here's a hint, it doesn't.

Re:No Suprise here

[Kalriath]

Yeah it is. The parent company is (wait for it) the Government. That's publicly owned.

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

So who gets the profits? The people, or investors? And if the government owns it, then can't you petition the government for change? Who do you petition for change at a corporate utility? N one, and you can't even choose another company, because utilities are natural monopolies.

Re:No Suprise here

[Kalriath]

Who gets the profits? The government. And since the moronic country elected a right wing corporatist party... well, you get the idea.

And petitioning the government is pointless. They held a referendum (total cost to taxpayer: $2.5 million) on whether to reinstate the reasonable force for corrective purposes (i.e. smacking your own kids) provision of the crimes act, and ignored the 80% in favour of it. They also ignored a petition for GST to be removed from staple goods (bread/milk) with tens of thousands of signatures (country population only 4 million).

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

Well, we have our own problems with recalcitrant and ineffective goverment over here in the USA, so I do understand. But in the final analysis, I can only blame ourselves for our problems. It isn't really the government's fault. We could probably fix them if we could just agree on how.

Re:No Suprise here

[Kalriath]

It's hard enough to get 3 people to agree on something, let alone an entire country. Unfortunately.

Is it just me, or is Democracy (or Republicanism, whatever you want to call it) one of the least effective governing theories?

Re:No Suprise here

[spun]

I think it was Winston Churchill who said, 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.'

People see politics as a dominance game. The monkeys that win the game get to shit on the monkeys who lost. So people don't compromise, they treat politics like hooligans treat a soccer match.

There's a lesson here

[JoshuaZ]

Just because something is good policy doesn't mean a given implementation of it is legal. This is the reverse of the common rule that stupid laws aren't necessarily unconstitutional. The solution here is to get Congress to pass explicit net neutrality legislation. Unfortunately, the last such attempt died a gooey death.

Re:There's a lesson here

[unity100]

if there is no precedent regarding a policy, it is not only legal tradition but global practice to rule in favor of public interest.

this is what precisely those fscking judges should have done. they have not. their approach little different than parroting corporate interests' statements.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Attila Dimedici]

if there is no precedent regarding a policy, it is not only legal tradition but global practice to rule in favor of public interest.

this is what precisely those fscking judges should have done. they have not. their approach little different than parroting corporate interests' statements.

In the U.S., if there is no law authorizing the Administration (the FCC is part of the Administration) to take an action, it is illegal for the Administration to take said action.

Re:There's a lesson here

[kevinNCSU]

I think most people in the US would prefer that government NOT be given the power to interfere in how any business runs its affairs in the name of 'public interest' just because there isn't a law either giving them said power or expressly revoking it. The 'policy' is fine, the FCC can make all the policy it wants. But it needs to have a law voted on by our elected representatives to give them the power to enforce it before it can go around punishing and fining companies.

Re:There's a lesson here

[bondiblueos9]

I didn't realize judges knew how to check file systems.

Re:There's a lesson here

[je ne sais quoi]

There is a huge body of law in the U.S. that protects the consumer from unfair or deceptive trade practices. How is what comcast doing a fair trade practice? You most often see this with credit cards and banks. IANAL, but I imagine there is something similar for ANY regulated corporation.

Re:There's a lesson here

[natehoy]

Unfortunately, the last such attempt died a gooey death.

That's one of the best and most concise descriptions of the lawmaking process I've seen to date. Well done.

"Laws are like sausages. You might like 'em, you might dislike 'em, but you do not want to know what went in to making 'em."

Re:There's a lesson here

[sgtrock]

Right. And if the FCC had simply cited that law, then the judges hearing the case in question would at least have to make a determination as to whether it applied or not. The complaint from the judge was that they failed to do so. If true, then the counsel for the FCC didn't do his job.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Attila Dimedici]

As another poster mentions, the FCC failed to cite such a law. Now there are two possibilities. One, there is no law that the FCC believes applies to this case. Or, two, the FCC is not empowered to enforce any laws that Comcast was violating and knows it.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true, but the unfair trade practices empower the FTC, not the FCC. It's gotta be the right authority exercised by the right agency.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Anonymous Coward]

And we all know how well the US government was (and is) able to protect the public from unfair and deceptive practices when it comes to credit cards and banks...

Re:There's a lesson here

[VGPowerlord]

That's true, but the unfair trade practices empower the FTC, not the FCC. It's gotta be the right authority exercised by the right agency.

The FCC is the regulatory agency for all wire and radio transmitting companies in the US. So, one could argue that they have the power, pursuant to USC 47.

Re:There's a lesson here

[pfleming]

The FCC regulates communication. The ISP is deemed to be providing communication services. The FCC, as my brother would say, regulated their ass. Not everything has to be explicitly written in law.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Attila Dimedici]

TNot everything has to be explicitly written in law.

There are two points I want to make. First if not everything has to be explicitly written in law, then how does a business know if what it is doing is legal? Corollary, who gets to decide what is illegal? What if they are your political enemy?
Second, just because a company is an ISP doesn't mean that the FCC is responsible to enforce the relevant laws.

Re:There's a lesson here

[unity100]

There are two points I want to make. First if not everything has to be explicitly written in law, then how does a business know if what it is doing is legal? Corollary, who gets to decide what is illegal?

as i said in the grand graaand parent, they have to act in favor of public interest. thats the case in legalese around the world. they can look at examples set before them and act accordingly. if no example is set, they can act for public interest.

Re:There's a lesson here

[unity100]

the exact reason the u.s. consumers are in such a mess is that you people do not give your government enough power to regulate businesses. and businesses just pull any kind of shit behind the pretenses of 'free market' and 'trade secret'.

in turkey there are many regulatory powers at the hands of government. and it used them to crack down on deceptive and abusive credit practices, credit card abuses by banks, abuses of consumers by gsm operators (it was HUGE abuse), and many other small things.

in the end it worked for the public interest well. now we really have choice, and noone can suck our blood by putting a few hidden statements in a contract.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Attila Dimedici]

As I said in response to that, in the U.S. if there isn't a law authorizing them to take an action, it is illegal for them to take that action. If there is no law authorizing the FCC to act on a particular matter of public interest, it has no authority to so act.
I am not sure where you get the idea that the government "has to act in favor of public interest", even when there is no law on a particular issue. Once again I ask, who decides what is "in favor of public interest"? What happens when those people are in the pockets of a particular industry?

Re:There's a lesson here

[pfleming]

If they want to have the immunity and benefits of "common carrier" then yes, the FCC does explicitly have the authority.

Re:There's a lesson here

[kevinNCSU]

Good, I'm glad your happy in Turkey. That's the beauty of democratically elected nations, we can each have our country run as we like it. As an American, because of our history and heritage I like many of my country men have an innate fear of giving government too much power, and I expect a high level of individual responsibility out of my fellow countrymen. I see things differently then you, but I'm not going to shove my American ways down your throat or insult your country's economic abilities because you have a different viewpoint so I'll ignore your vague attacks on our deceptive abusive bullshit blood sucking American ways and cut back to the chase: .......

Oh wait, there's absolutely nothing in your post having anything to do with the issue at hand which is the FCC punishing Comcast for throttling without having any law on the books to do so. It's all just bunch of hand waving about the recession in an attempt to magically justify giving an agency that regulates communication unbridled power to act however they see fit. And this would have prevented the recession your saying? Giving the FCC absolute power? But as long as their acting for good? If they do something bad we have some sort of absolute power take away clause? What exactly is your point in relating the FCC punishing Comcast without written law allowing them to do so with the recession. Are you claiming because a government agency acted in a "good" illegal manner that we should therefore trust the rest of the government to regularly do the same?

Re:There's a lesson here

[unity100]

government does. its sole purpose in being invented was to act for the public's interests. public being, everyone in a nation or administration zone.

this very definition is the thing that resides as the framework under courts of justice, law, police, even military.

it HAS to act in public interest. otherwise, as in united states as of now, any private interest could abuse others in society and go unpunished, further encouraging similar behavior.

Re:There's a lesson here

[unity100]

Good, I'm glad your happy in Turkey. That's the beauty of democratically elected nations, we can each have our country run as we like it. As an American, because of our history and heritage I like many of my country men have an innate fear of giving government too much power, and I expect a high level of individual responsibility out of my fellow countrymen. I see things differently then you, but I'm not going to shove my American ways down your throat or insult your country's economic abilities because you have a different viewpoint so I'll ignore your vague attacks on our deceptive abusive bullshit blood sucking American ways and cut back to the chase: .......

yea. you dont give government too much power. in its place, private interests acquire that power themselves, and you have no right and no say in how they abuse their power.

just one thing aside. because you let the private interests get their way that much, and they aggregate that much power, they are not staying within your borders, but spreading their filth elsewhere. ie. they are interfering in the democratic process and even legislation in MY country. just like in the recent case of legislation about the genetically modified foods, in which a particular GMF company has gone to big lengths to influence legislation at the expense of turkish public.

not to mention acta, something like from middle ages, being pushed into numerous countries and european union.

excuse me, but we, as the rest of the world, cant allow that shit to continue in your country. your country has been the equivalent of the radical islamist countries at the other end of spectrum. you are breeding equally dangerous shit, but just on the other side of the spectrum. it doesnt matter anything. they clog democracy everywhere in the world. i wont even go into details about iraq.

leaving you be there is just like leaving the french aristocrats be where there they fled after french revolution to germany, austria. they ARE plotting the downfall of democratic, pluralist (aka modern) society from where they are.

Oh wait, there's absolutely nothing in your post having anything to do with the issue at hand which is the FCC punishing Comcast for throttling without having any law on the books to do so. It's all just bunch of hand waving about the recession in an attempt to magically justify giving an agency that regulates communication unbridled power to act however they see fit. And this would have prevented the recession your saying? Giving the FCC absolute power? But as long as their acting for good? If they do something bad we have some sort of absolute power take away clause? What exactly is your point in relating the FCC punishing Comcast without written law allowing them to do so with the recession. Are you claiming because a government agency acted in a "good" illegal manner that we should therefore trust the rest of the government to regularly do the same?

1 -there wasnt anything about any recession in my post.

2 - in your country, and especially in your country, you are better of giving absolute power to government agencies nomatter what, because in this situation the tip of the balance is EXTREMELY skewed to the other scale.

at least, you have a right in your government, and you have a right to object to them and even change things based on that right.

whereas you dont have zit against private parties. anything they have is their private property, and any info they have is their private trade secrets. and their power is 'justfully' acquired market monopoly, which you cant do anything solid against it either. they just continue their monopoly as 'triopolies' or 'quadropolies' or unsigned agreements of cartel behavior (like in the LCD monitor case) and you people cant do zit with your 'consumer decision power'. because that power does not exist.

after some point, when the government sufficiently cracked down on your private interests for the good or for worse, you can start balancing the tip again. because, by that point it will be much closer to the balance than it is now.

Re:There's a lesson here

[kevinNCSU]

you let the private interests get their way that much, and they aggregate that much power, they are not staying within your borders, but spreading their filth elsewhere.

....excuse me, but we, as the rest of the world, cant allow that shit to continue in your country. your country has been the equivalent of the radical islamist countries at the other end of spectrum. you are breeding equally dangerous shit, but just on the other side of the spectrum....

after some point, when the government sufficiently cracked down on your private interests for the good or for worse, you can start...

So you believe that rather than organizing your country to police corporate interests as you see fit within your own borders the better solution is to force your views upon our country through...what, war? I mean, any actions you took to start a war in the first place would seem to pretty much require the ability to completely take over or shut off any American Corporate interests in your country anyways, so why don't you spare the bloodshed and just do that if you really believe what your saying?

Or are you just looking for someone to blame and lash out at in order to avoid dealing with the actual problems you have, and America seems like a convenient target? I mean, how in the hell did you get from the legality of the FCC's actions over p2p throttling to Turkey forming an alliance to declare war on America anyways? Does Comcast even have any foreign holdings or offer foreign services? Last I knew they only served like 40 or so states in the US.

Re:There's a lesson here

[unity100]

So you believe that rather than organizing your country to police corporate interests as you see fit within your own borders the better solution is to force your views upon our country through...what, war? I mean, any actions you took to start a war in the first place would seem to pretty much require the ability to completely take over or shut off any American Corporate interests in your country anyways, so why don't you spare the bloodshed and just do that if you really believe what your saying?

you see, this is a dilemma like radical islam vs the west. the west wants to leave radical islam in place, and not to be bothered by it. but, radical islam (actually islam) doesnt want to be contained in the bottle. instead, they infest the west through various means.

all the while the life under radical islam in middle east gets even worse, DESPITE the residents of those places want and even appreciate it.

the situation with your corporations is the same. a 40 to 50 % of you have been brainwashed with the idea that 'letting private interest do whatever they want' = democracy, and just giving them their way. in the end they make shit out of your ordinary daily lives. and just like radical islam, they dont stay in the bottle - they go infest other countries, and curb their democracies.

i dont need to do anything to cut out american private interests actually, or start a war to do it. american corporations, with their filth, are doing that. they have supported islamist parties to be able to make them do what they want, ie an unregulated environment in which they could easily play horse, and they got it. (most of that was done with your taxpayer money through bush & co admn. i might add). however, a natural result of this has been the advent and ascent of the islamic capital in turkey. the islam rooted private interest has grown to extreme power here. and they are increasingly radicalizing the country. despite the government seems pro western in the outside, it is underhandedly supporting anti west, especially anti american propaganda through innumerable means, leave aside almost entirety of the press.

given enough time at this rate, (at most maybe 10 years), turkey will have radicalized greatly and american corporate interests will be shut out forever by the islamist interests rooted in middle east.

you will be enjoying an islamist country which is muuuuch more dangerous than iran by then. enjoy your security threats.

Or are you just looking for someone to blame and lash out at in order to avoid dealing with the actual problems you have, and America seems like a convenient target? I mean, how in the hell did you get from the legality of the FCC's actions over p2p throttling to Turkey forming an alliance to declare war on America anyways? Does Comcast even have any foreign holdings or offer foreign services? Last I knew they only served like 40 or so states in the US.

no. because i know exactly how it happened :

in 1998, the Rand corporation (cia's unofficial pr arm) has published a report. the report said explicitly 'in order to further america's interests better, recep tayyip erdogan (current islamist prime minister) needs to be made the prime minister, and abdullah gul (current islamist president) needs to be made secretary of state.

in 2001-2002, these duo and their affiliates made numerous trips to washington, meeting with bush & co affiliates.

in 2002, these two founded a party. and just out of nowhere, without any history, this party suddenly was able to field unbelievable amount of funds in the elections campaign. they spent so much that their spending not only surpassed summation of ALL spendings in any political elections in turkey up to date, but could be compared to the national budget. they spent so much that it could be deemed unnecessarily lavish. turkey doesnt have that kind of money. notice, im not saying noone in turkey, im saying turkey doesnt have that kind of money.

natural

Re:There's a lesson here

[JoshuaZ]

Not how it works. If there's something that's happening not in the public interest and a given agency doesn't have authority to deal with it they can't do anything until congress passes legislation. The solution to private interests engaging in abuse is to create legislation to then prevent those abuses.

Re:There's a lesson here

[unity100]

well,

its your job to make it work as it should like a citizen. when your car breaks down, do you just give up using cars because they may break down, or do you fix it and make it work. leaving the government out is just like letting go of cars when they break. you lose a very important and irreplacable tool.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Attila Dimedici]

If they want to have the immunity and benefits of "common carrier" then yes, the FCC does explicitly have the authority.

Well, guess what, a judge just ruled that the FCC failed to offer any legal basis for its fine of Comcast, so apparently your conclusion is wrong. The FCC does not explicitly have the authority.

Re:There's a lesson here

[Attila Dimedici]

And this court ruling is saying that if the public thinks Comcast was in the wrong (which I do), they need to get the legislature to pass a law. The FCC is not allowed to decide that something should be illegal and start handing out punishment for doing it. It is the job of Congress to decide what should be illegal.

Sounds more like a firing squad than a "slap"

[Anonymous Coward]

From the 2.5 paragraphs I could read without subscribing.

8==C=O=M=C=A=S=T=I=C==D

[Anonymous Coward]

On day Comcast cock-slapped me by throttling my bit torrent downloads to zero.

For some reason they didn't throttle my bill to reflect the diminished service.

Since Comcast had a monopoly on my apartmets, I had no choice but to bend over and accept the throttling.

8==C=O=M=C=A=S=T=I=C==D

Re:8==C=O=M=C=A=S=T=I=C==D

[Dan Ost]

What did they say when you called them on it?

Re:8==C=O=M=C=A=S=T=I=C==D

[jackspenn]

Funny, I just read a post from the fellas on your network segment, who wanted Comcast to refund their money on days when Comcast failed to throttle your connection and as it was impacted their connection speeds.

Isn't it interesting when people think they are getting screwed by big business, when it is really them screwing each other from a far?

If Comcast is really honestly raping you, then change to something else. If there is nothing better than Comcast, which is why have been willing to spread your legs and through some cash at them, I have to wonder ... What is it that makes you feel you are the one being taken advantage of?

Re:8==C=O=M=C=A=S=T=I=C==D

[lastchance_000]

"Who are you? How did you get in my house?"

Apologies to XKCD

Re:8==C=O=M=C=A=S=T=I=C==D

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny - the people on his network segment should actually have been pissed that they were promised "unlimited" service and oversold by Comcast. Wow, looks like big business wins again!

Excuse me, do you need a fscking law for this ?

[unity100]

arent there already customer satisfaction laws in place ? guarantees for the product/service sold ?

wont wrongfully advertising X bandwidth/month and then curbing the user's usage despite charging full charge, a violation of these laws ?

or, arent falsified advertising, and hiding critical information in footnotes and smallprints illegal ? well it is such in turkey. if you want to sell something you have to make any kind of footnotes and small print big enough, and in bold text. especially in credit card contract statements.

Re:Excuse me, do you need a fscking law for this ?

[jimbolauski]

But the FCC does not have the power to enforce any consumer protection laws.

Re:Excuse me, do you need a fscking law for this ?

[Dynedain]

False advertising regulatory powers belong to the FTC, not the FCC. Different agency.

Re:Excuse me, do you need a fscking law for this ?

[Fallen Kell]

Which is why if you listen to the advertisements, it is always "up to" X speed, never stating a minimum, just a maximum, or if they show a number on the screen, there will always be some real tiny print at the bottom which basically says the likes of "advertised speeds are not indicative of actual speeds in your area, just a potential theoretical speed that can be reached in ideal circumstances".

It's time for a proper neutrality law

[Adrian Lopez]

A proper net neutrality law is long overdue. I don't want ISPs to ever be allowed to block any content, cripple any protocols, or artificially slow down any kind of traffic beyond whatever is necessary to ensure reliable service for all customers alike. A ruling against the FCC on its own ruling against Comcast would cause significant injury to US broadband users, and that's why we need some kind of legislation outside of FCC rules that will ensure ISPs such as Comcast can't cripple customers' connections. Pro-corporate judges then won't have a leg to stand on.

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[jimbolauski]

As much as I'm for net neutrality, I have to side with the Judges on this one. All the Judge is saying is the FCC can not create and enforce laws that seems pretty reasonable to me.

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[undecim]

Any net neutrality law that could make it through congress would be worthless.

Comcast justifies throttling bittorrent traffic by saying that bittorrent traffic slows down other users' connections making their service unreliable, and the politicians don't know any better.

Unless it's either written or enforced by completely unbiased technicians (with the assistance of a few legislators), a net neutrality law would only give companies like Comcast a new place to dig up loopholes and lies.

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[MindlessAutomata]

I don't want ISPs to ever be allowed to block any content, cripple any protocols, or artificially slow down any kind of traffic beyond whatever is necessary to ensure reliable service for all customers alike

Yeah, that's the job for the government. As long as the censorship or restrictions has the label "democratic" attached to it, it's usually acceptable, right?

On that token, net neutrality would forbid speeding up or giving priority to certain packets, as well--and "beyond whatever is necessary" is convenient wording on your part because it is vague and completely sidesteps over the entire issue of what "whatever is necessary" even is, let alone how one begins defining that.

One of the worst things in this era is the belief that corporations are worse than governments. They're not exactly great, but Comcast can only cripple customers' connections if customers remain ignorant about the products or services they are purchasing. Government is among the few institutions in the world that can be relied upon to hold you hostage, perhaps for ransom, is you go out of your way to avoid doing business with them. You're gonna pay for whatever the government gives you, your own beliefs be damned--whether it's social security, healthcare, or international warfare shenanigans. Isn't a loss of autonomy beautiful?

If you don't want a business to offer a certain kind of service a certain way, perhaps you should just not purchase the product instead of demanding through threats that someone provide for you on your terms. I really have trouble seeing who is more selfish--the large corporations, or the customers that demand laws passed so they can take more from them. Of course, the corporations do the same thing, too, but legislation is effects everyone and usually lasts forever.

And before someone states that the ISPs are monopolies, you're right. They're monopolies either because consumers (who apparently are too stupid to make good purchasing decisions but smart enough to be able help make life-changing political decisions) let them become monopolies or because of sweetheart deals with the government (again, ultimately the fault of the voters anyway).

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been screwed over by companies more times than the government. It doesn't help when the people voted in view companies as perfect things that can do no wrong.

There is no competition in the ISP market in many areas, there is no choice, or the choice is between bad and worse.

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[Adrian Lopez]

Yeah, that's the job for the government. As long as the censorship or restrictions has the label "democratic" attached to it, it's usually acceptable, right?

Net neutrality is the opposite of censorship as it bars ISPs from blocking or crippling those network connections the customer chooses to open.

... net neutrality would forbid speeding up or giving priority to certain packets ...

Nonsense. It depends on how the law is written. If speeding up certain kinds of packets can help guarantee reliable service without rendering other services unreliable, a properly written law would still allow that.

"beyond whatever is necessary" is convenient wording on your part because it is vague and completely sidesteps over the entire issue of what "whatever is necessary" even is, let alone how one begins defining that

I'm not writing any laws. Legislators would, of course, explicitly define any and all such terms.

One of the worst things in this era is the belief that corporations are worse than governments. They're not exactly great, but Comcast can only cripple customers' connections if customers remain ignorant about the products or services they are purchasing.

Comcast can cripple customers' connections as long as it's legal for them to do so. Some customers might be able to switch ISPs, but when Comcast is the only ISP available or when all available ISPs are crippling users' connections, an unregulated market becomes a real liability for consumers.

They're monopolies either because consumers (who apparently are too stupid to make good purchasing decisions but smart enough to be able help make life-changing political decisions) let them become monopolies or because of sweetheart deals with the government (again, ultimately the fault of the voters anyway)

Whatever the reason they have become monopolies, once they have a monopoly I see nothing wrong with regulations that prevent them from taking advantage of their monopoly position in order to treat customers less than fairly.

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[bill_mcgonigle]

I don't want ISPs to ever be allowed to block any content, cripple any protocols, or artificially slow down any kind of traffic beyond whatever is necessary to ensure reliable service for all customers alike.

Neither does nearly anybody else. In a real market, the likes of Comcast's blocking would be quickly eliminated by competition. The problem is the governments grant monopolies, forcing certain corporations upon pockets of citizenry.

So, we need to stop patching bad law with more bad law and start fixing root-cause problems.

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sure, just show the evil ISP by forgoing Internet, right? Because the local government has seen fit to grant a monopoly to a certain corporation and will back up threats against would-be competitors with force.

It's the interplay between corporations and government that is the real danger. Corporations are creations of government, so you get positive feedback loops, legislation that strongly favors incumbents of new market entrants, regulatory capture, etc.

There's a good reason that the US did without corporations for close to a hundred years (except for short charters for public good) - they had proven dangerous to liberty under the European empires. Rockefeller/Standard Oil got that changed, and then not too long after in Santa Clara they got granted human rights, and such became immortal superbeings in the view of government.

They can have some positive benefits, but are they really worth it, on balance?

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[MindlessAutomata]

Because the local government has seen fit to grant a monopoly to a certain corporation and will back up threats against would-be competitors with force.

Yes, you are very correct, and this is where the problem lies.

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law

[dangitman]

In a real market, the likes of Comcast's blocking would be quickly eliminated by competition.

Got any evidence for that at all?

Better Article Link

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't want to disable noscript, there's a better version of the article at http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201001081217dowjonesdjonline000464&title=update-court-unfriendly-to-fccs-internet-slap-at-comcast

The FCC should ask the EPA how they do it

[Coolhand2120]

So the FCC can't rule by fiat? They should ask the EPA how they get to rule by fiat! Only seems fair.

roving commissions of do-gooders

[je ne sais quoi]

You can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good

Yes, god forbid someone in the government actually try and help people. We must put a stop to this at once! The U.S. government should only work to protect the corporate profit, as it has been for the last thirty years.

I mean really, why don't these judges just go out and admit they're on comcast's payroll already? Somebody should tar and feather those judges. Gah, I'm so sick and tired of regulatory capture. When will it all end? S

Here is a non-pay link with the same info.

Re:roving commissions of do-gooders

[kevinNCSU]

Because who defines 'good'? Giving a branch of government unbridled power to do 'good' one day gives them that same unbridled power to do something you vehemently oppose the next, and now they would have the legal precedent to do so.

You can't have a short term view of the law as a judge, and while it might not make them popular in the short run I'd rather our freedom be protected by forcing us to have our elected representatives pass a law for something we want (their entire job), rather then give a branch of our government unbridled power because they happen to be acting in our favor today.

Think about this, the FCC decided on their policy with little to no input from the citizens, and little to no recourse from the citizens. You can't vote FCC workers out of office. What would your view of the legality of what they just did be if they had come down on the completely other side of the issue and were punishing companies that didn't throttle p2p networks in the name of stopping piracy for 'public interest' but had no written law mandated or approved by our representatives to tell them or give them the power to do so?

You can't judge legality of a government organization's actions based on whether you think what they are doing is good, you judge legality based on whether they have the legal right to acting in the way they are according to the constitutions and laws set forth by congress.

Re:roving commissions of do-gooders

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the only real way to stop (or diminish) regulatory capture is even more simple, yet more important than "don't throttle bandwidth", it should be easily resolved with retraining lobbyists to work as prison guards, and then making the practice illegal.

Somehow allowing people and corporations to vote with dollars seems to be very anti-democratic.

Re:roving commissions of do-gooders

[sonicmerlin]

The FCC commissioners are chosen by the President and approved by Congress. The FCC receives daily input from tons and tons of groups. Consumer interest groups, astroturfing corporate-funded groups, various small and large ISPs, etc. etc. There is a long and arduous process to making these rules, and you have no idea what you`re talking about.

Re:roving commissions of do-gooders

[kevinNCSU]

There is not a 'long and arduous process' for making rules and laws that don't exist. That's the entire problem in this case. They were asked to cite the law that gave them the ability to do what they did and they failed to do so.

I didn't say there was no checks and balances, I said there was little recourse directly from citizens. That is specifically why such organizations don't have a blank check to go around doing whatever they decide is for the 'public good' without laws and regulations on the books written or approved by our directly elected officials giving them the power to do so. And if they cannot point out the law that gave them the power and the reason to do what they did then clearly they were in the wrong.

Re:roving commissions of do-gooders

[sonicmerlin]

Have you even read their mission statement? Why do you think Congress created the FCC? It`s to regulate the freaking telecommunications industry. That`s why they set policies that companies have to follow. They have been empowered by Congress to set these policies. You`re right that there is no recourse from citizens... until a new President is elected. Tnsane amount of hands-off deregulation by the FCC under the Bush Administration hurt US broadband and gutted the 1996 Telecom Act so severely, and yet no one could do a darn thing to stop them...until a new President was elected. What a shocking turn of events, don`t you think?

Re:roving commissions of do-gooders

[kevinNCSU]

What does the change of Presidents have to do with the FCC taking action outside the bounds of written law? Yea, their mandate is to regulate telecommunications, that's kind of implied in their name, thanks. But the problem here is that regulating implies the actual presence of regulations or laws. Again, they were asked to cite said regulations or laws under which they were punishing Comcast and could not do so. They do not have the power to go around punishing companies for things they haven't regulated, because no one can know the rules, or approve them, if they don't exist!

That would be giving them unbridled/unchecked power, the existence of which our entire system of government has been created from the ground up to attempt to prevent, whether the wielder of such power thinks they are acting for 'good' or not.

Thank that Judge...

[cborg]

for calling the FCC's efforts 'a roving commission... about doing good'. Talk about a back-handed compliment...

Re:Thank that Judge...

[pfleming]

Apparently a roving commission doing "bad" is OK.

Consumer Interest

[psbrogna]

I'd be happy enough if the ISPs were held accountable for delivering advertised bandwidth when they're not throttling. Does ANYBODY get advertised performance from ANY ISP? Most of 'em tell you up front they won't guarantee bandwidth. To provide some context, my whining comes to you today from the middle of Rural America- an area seriously neglected by the broadband industry.

Re:Consumer Interest

[fyngyrz]

You realize, don't you, that bandwidth is a locally limited resource Y, and that if they guarantee you X, they have Y-X remaining for everyone else? And further, if they guaranteed, say, 1 mb/sec to a thousand customers, they'd have to have a 1,000,000 mb/sec pipe to support it? And THEN, once this goes out on any portion of the network they don't control (by which, I mean almost all of it), of course you know said bandwidth can be choked off by any other company for any particular reason, rendering your "guarantee" absolutely useless?

Your pipe from point A to point B can only be as fast as the slowest segment. It makes guarantees a bit problematic.

There are times when some users make huge demands -- movies, database transfers, streaming this or that. But when they're not doing that, there's more pipe for everyone. This could allow high bandwidth moments (locally) but not a guarantee. That's the reality of what any ISP faces today.

If you *really* wanted a guaranteed minimum network transfer speed, I bet [laughing, hand-waving] the guarantee would have to be about the speed of a 1200 baud modem.

We just need more pipe. Easy to say, expensive to do.

Re:Consumer Interest

[psbrogna]

I realize that's what they're selling but it doesn't have to be like that. They chose to use a shared leg vice switched leg model when they rolled out their infrastructure.

Regardless of the technical details, the only broadband ISP in my region isn't capable of delivering even 50% of their advertised bandwidth and there's absolutely no difference in performance between their tiered level of services despite charing a premium for the higher bandwidths. I tracked their default tier & highest level over the course of 1 year and so no difference in the average bandwidth. I would like to see some sort of regulation come to bear on this matter because consumers in rural areas are getting hosed.

So NOW we have the rule of law

[Anonymous Coward]

If the health care bill has taught you nothing else ...
Lobbyist's will strip anything detrimental, to the corporations that back them, out of any new law that's proposed.

"Protect the children", "protect the artists", will drown out the humble voice of reason.

The Internet is ONLY a tool for making profit; the whole freedom thing is just a zany side-effect that will be remedied in future versions.

Hmm. I pay forr INTERNET ACCESS

[Rene S. Hollan]

I would think to a "reasonable person", who knows what the internet is (an internetwork of networks carrying internet protocol and internet control protocol traffic), that would mean I get to send and receive such packets to the ability of the provider to carry them, without discrimination, to the limit of the bandwidth I pay for.

IOW, if the traffic demand is D and the capacity is C, C D, the actual bandwidth available to someone desiring d is c=d*C/D.

When the law or contract is silent on a matter, the courts will generally apply a "reasonable person" interpretation on what the contracted agreement is.

Now, the FCC might have been out of place to punish Comcast, but that does not mean that subscribers would not be in a position to launch a breach of contract suit.

Comcast's tough if they oversold bandwidth to the point where they have to discriminate between their users so as to try to minimize the fraction that they piss off (which is really what they are doing -- punishing those that expect what they are paying for).

Disclaimer: I have Comcast business internet service with a static IPv4 address, and I had their residential service as well. I found significant variance in bandwidth available on their residential service, but not their business service. I expect it is not as oversold. I no longer subscribe to their residential service. I actually considered load-balancing outbound TCP sessions across both links at one point, but, given the variance, found it would have been more cost-effective to subscribe to greater bandwidth on their business line. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it, or necessary, and dropped the residential service, keeping the business service.

Re:Hmm. I pay forr INTERNET ACCESS

[natehoy]

Are there monthly caps on Comcast's business service?

Right now, I'm paying $45 a month (plus I'm required to have $15 a month Cable TV) for their 3mb down / 256kb up plan. They have a $60 6mb down / 1mb up plan, which would actually work out to the same money, but if they have the same cap and throttling, forget it.

I can't find a terms of service for their business accounts.

Re:Hmm. I pay forr INTERNET ACCESS

[Rene S. Hollan]

I have the 6x1 plan, and AFAIK, there are no monthly caps on their business service.

But, if my calculations are correct, saturating the download at 6 Mb/s 12% of the time would be required to hit a monthly 250GB download cap.

That's A LOT, and would generally warrant them suggesting you trade up to a higher data rate plan.

In practice I regularly see download speeds of 15 to 20 Mb/s, which are nice when downloading a Linux distro ISO. I'm sure that gives them plenty of room to throttle me to the agreed-upon rate of 6 Mb/s if necessary.

I suspect that Comcast simply really oversells residential service, and business service less so.

Now, there generally is a two or three year contract commitment for their business service.

I got it simply because I wanted reliable connectivity, a static IP, and the freedom to run whatever services I want. (Yes, port 25 is open. No, I don't have an open relay.)

Yeah!

[Moridin42]

You can't have government employees doing good!

Translation:
This gives everybody the wrong fucking idea. Like we work for the good of the people or something. Makes the rest of us look bad!

Forgery perhaps

[ArhcAngel]

If I understand this correctly what the judge is asking is what law did Comcast break in their actions. If I understand what Comcast was eventually charged with by the FCC wouldn't forgery or impersonating an officer or hijacking all be possible crimes committed? Comcast basically took a packet coming from a sender and hijacked it, injected it with the reset command (forgery), and sent the packet on it's way to the recipient (impersonating a packet from sender which could be looked at like a mail carrier or "officer" of the post office).

Re:Forgery perhaps

[Attila Dimedici]

Those are all good points. I am not sure that the laws you mentioned are written in such a way as to be applied to the Comcast case. The FCC apparently didn't think so because they did not appeal to those laws. Of course, that could possibly be because the FCC is not authorized to enforce the laws against the crimes that you listed.

Re:Forgery perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd think that comcast committed a felony! Why, because US mail is protected. No one can tamper
with mail that is being sent from me to someone or vice versa regardless of what the contents
of the mail says. Thus, in this modern day world, electronic email is the equivalent of the
old mail system. When I send mail from one point to another, the deliverer or Comcast
ISP can't tamper with the content since that would be a felony! So regardless if the mail
is a letter, picture, music CD, movie DVD or software from MSoft or anyone else, the US mail
must deliver it untouched. As for the internet, the electronic equivalent is email, gifs,
audio mp3 or iso, mpeg or iso, and binaries or iso's, comcast isn't allowed to touch it since
that would be interfering with the delivery of US mail from one person to another.

So yes, Comcast did break the law and commit a felony. Not only within the state boundaries, but
also interstate and international. I'd even goes as far as to say they commited wire fraud by
delivering a tampered product to me without telling me.

An old time equivalent to this is the telegram which was sent electronically. This is also considered
US mail and must be delivered and not tampered with. It's just that the internet is another
form of the dots-n-dashes that are now ones-n-zeroes!

Re:Forgery perhaps

[rel4x]

The United States Postal Service is a government agency. That's why punishments for interfering with mail are so harsh. The letters/mailboxes and whatnot are their property until you take possession of it. (Yes, the post office owns EVERY mailbox) Your ISP/file/website/torrent has nothing to do with the government. Big difference.

Government isn't allowed to do good. Nice to know

[dissy]

You can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good,' said U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Chief Judge David Sentelle during an oral argument.

But one CAN get unbridled roving commission to go about doing evil! Judges allow that all the time.

Except for the takings clause of the Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

Whinge all you want about "subsidized telcos", but the fact is it's the telcos that got billions of dollars in loans to build out their networks, and it's a FACT that the telcos own those networks.

The government coming in and saying they can't charge others to send traffic across their property almost certainly violates the takings clause of the Constitution.

Deal with it.

Comcast must have made good arguments...

[Arancaytar]

Or a few thousand of them.

Re:Government cannot do good, by definition.

[Anonymous Coward]

So much so that you will ignore reality after reading it.

Re:Government cannot do good, by definition.

[AshtangiMan]

It was an ok book, very idealistic. But the problem with it is that Ayn Rand can say in 50 pages what could easily be said in 1 paragraph. The John Gault soliloquy sucked the life out of me. So yeah, that was kind of life changing.

Wow...

[rickb928]

"'You can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good"

This adequately describes more than one Appeals Court. Talk about calling out the kettle!

Breathtaking. Just stupendously breathtaking! He couldn't possibly have said that out loud with desperately wishing he had just shut up...

Terrible internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

My internet service of late has been awful. It's not Comcast; some little small local ISP. I called them today and the response I got was that they had oversold bandwidth and they would have my awful 500 ping, sub 1 mb connection, etc fixed "within a week."

Wasn't the FCC originally going after Comcast for overselling bandwidth in much the same way? How fitting I would read about this today.

told you so

[Jodka]

In my insightful comment last week I alluded to something exactly like this happening.

This week, advocates for "net neutrality" still have a lot of excuse making to do for injustices of the patent and copyright system, rights violations in the war on terrorism, and the train wreck which is Obamacare before they get to advocating for an expansion of government into internet regulation.

Why is "But won't you think of the children?" a joke but "But won't you think of net neutrality" regarded equally?

It depends on the amount of local control

[copponex]

The reason corporations are a terrible idea for basic services is because of two issues: incentive and accountability.

When a corporation owns a basic service, the question is, "How much is the customer willing to pay?" The question when run by a local (meaning, city or county) government is, "How much does it cost to provide?" The incentive for a corporation is always to make the most amount of money possible. If there were no regulation or public utilities, America would look like South America, where a company can make a good profit providing services to the rich, and ignore everyone else. This leads to widespread poverty and income inequality, since you can't do any self-investment when most of your day is spent lugging water or kerosene or wood around for cooking, cleaning, etc.

The second question is of accountability. Corporations simply don't have to have any accountability towards individual customers. Sure, you can sue a company - if you happen to also employ dozens of lawyers and have a few million stashed away, you may have a fighting chance. When a very local entity is running the show, chances are you know the person in charge. They aren't hundreds or thousands of miles away in the top floor of some high security skyscraper - they're downtown, and you know some of the people who know them.

This method breaks down in large metropolitan areas if they aren't further divided into neighborhood councils. They work best when the board members running the utility can be voted out directly by the local populace.

The decision on what is and what is not a utility is an important one. Competition gives us good results in luxuries and commodities, since there are so many customers, and getting screwed on a dozen eggs or a TV isn't the end of the world. However, when the customers have no other options, and it's too expensive to duplicate services, locally controlled organizations are a great option. Better to make the internet a utility with 100% saturation - just like roads and electricity - and allow competitors to provide services over that platform.

PS All your privacy concerns are moot when the NSA is building NOCs inside of corporate datacenters already.

Re:It depends on the amount of local control

[eggnoglatte]

The GP was asking for citations, not opinions.

As much as I disagree with the "government is bad at everything" crowd, it doesn't really help to counter that sentiment with "business is bad at everything, too".

Re:It depends on the amount of local control

[copponex]

I can cite dozens of studies for either side, but most are older and not publicly available - just summarized in reports. Or you could order copies of the Journal of Regulatory Economics if you're really into it, and read such fascinating works as "24/7 Hourly Response to Electricity Real-Time Pricing with up to Eight Summers of Experience," which is actually not bad, and shows how realtime pricing information affects electricity usage in a positive way for conservation and usage. Then the author is labeled a socialist or a nazi, organizational bias is claimed, and everyone slings mud until no one can see.

The larger point to get across is that you need to start from scratch when considering the philosophical implications of something as major as the next communication platform, and also be mindful of real world examples.

Business isn't bad at everything. It's just poorly suited to provide necessary services. This is why democratic governance exists - it' supposed to be an entity based on the will of the populace based on the merit and moral nature of their arguments, not on the size of their wallets. It's why the legal system isn't (well, supposed to be) based on class or birth. It fails to be perfect, but you'll notice that the closer a government is to these ideals, the better the society is in general. Once you get close to the line of basing access to basic needs on dollars alone, you are stating that a human's only value is monetary.

Re:It depends on the amount of local control

[Solandri]

When a corporation owns a basic service, the question is, "How much is the customer willing to pay?" The question when run by a local (meaning, city or county) government is, "How much does it cost to provide?" The incentive for a corporation is always to make the most amount of money possible.

You either have a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, or you're blatantly pretending a corporation doesn't ask itself how much it costs to provide a service. All corporate entities ask themselves both questions: "How much can we get people to pay for this?" and "How much does it cost us to offer this for sale?" The spread between the two per unit is the profit margin. The profit margin times the number of units sold is the profit.

Corporations can increase the money they make by charging customers more as you state, or by decreasing their cost of what it is they are selling. From fundamental economics, simply ratcheting up the price (as you propose corporations do) usually results in sales volume decreasing so that the company actually makes less money, not more. The real money to be made is in lowering the price, not increasing it. Unless you're near market saturation, the increase in sales volume will swamp out the effects of the reduction in profit margin.

Where it starts breaking down is in monopoly, or near-monopoly situations creating an inelastic demand curve. That's where a corporation has so much control of the market that even if they ratchet up the price, the number of units they sell does not go down appreciably. Last-mile utility carriers are a good example. Whether I get my phone/internet service from Verizon, SBC, Speakeasy, whatever, Verizon owns the copper to my business so that company has to contract with Verizon to lease the copper. That gives Verizon total control over the floor price of my phone/internet service. If they decided to ratchet it up, I would have no choice but to pay it since there is no competition where I live.

That's what causes the price disparity and abuses you point out. Not the mere existence of a corporation. Things like basic services and utilities fall into the category of natural monopolies because it makes no economic sense to have more than one set of last-mile copper going into my business. That's when the government has to step in. In most situations, competition between companies creates a better outcome than government intervention. But in certain situations, government intervention yields a better outcome. This is one of those cases where the government approach is better.

Re:It depends on the amount of local control

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of the private business, their operating cost does not set prices -- it is entirely about what they can get people to pay. If what they can get people to pay is less than what it costs them, they simply close down.

Re:It depends on the amount of local control

[copponex]

Sorry I missed this, but what exactly are you saying that differs from what I said? Namely, that if a corporation has control over something you need, they will charge whatever you are willing to pay for it.

This is particular to corporations, since the decision making process is never on an individual moral level, but a collective desire for money by persons who are not affected by the actions they perform through the corporation.

Re:It depends on the amount of local control

[Thinboy00]

I think the difference is that you didn't use any of the fancy-but-correct terms he used.

Re:Except for the takings clause of the Constituti

[apez1267]

FREEDOM OF SPEECH they are encroaching on it by controlling my speed deliberately , THAT is UN-constitutional

Re:YES! Let the free market decide!

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be in college because any adult has already figured out that that Ayn Rand shit is a bunch of crap for teenagers who think the world is black and white.

Amanda Seyfried/Julianne Moore love scene? Check!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> udge A. Raymond Randolph repeatedly said the legal provisions cited by the FCC were
> mere policy statements that by themselves can't justify the commission's
> action. 'You have yet to identify a specific statute,' he said.

Wait, I feel about this...uhh.

I have to first figure out whether I'm for this issue or not before I can decide whether I like the idea of a roving band of officials whose word is the power of law, rather than an actual law.

Political philosophy follows the ideas you want to impose on others, and not from first principles.

Re:Except for the takings clause of the Constituti

[bmk67]

Downloading torrents (or anything else for that matter) is not speech. I would also suggest that you actually read the 1st Amendment, particular the part that starts "Congress shall pass no law...". It's not applicable to private parties, only Congress.

fleeting expletives

[Anonymous Coward]

'You have yet to identify a specific statute,'

An FCC rule is OK for huge fines for fleeting expletives, but for this there needs to be a specific statute? What's the difference?

What the summary title should be

[paragon1]

"Crooked Judge Bribed By Comcast"

Re:What the summary title should be

[Zordak]

[citation needed].

I think it's funny that everyone on Slashdot is all libertarian about wanting to limit executive power and preserve freedom and check government run amok. But as soon as a federal agency run amok does something that they just coincidentally agree with, all the sudden the judges are bribed because they choose to uphold the rule of law.

In other words, I think it would be wonderful if the FTC sent me a $1 million prize for my outstanding contributions to interstate commerce, but that wouldn't mean it was a good thing for them to do or that they had any authority to do it.

Re:Except for the takings clause of the Constituti

[apez1267]

yes , but thats so congress prevents freedom of s peach , i want them TO give me freedom of speech , and no i do not use torrents for anything except sharing pictures with my family

Re:It's time for a proper neutrality law (NOT)

[randy of the redwood]

I am against a net neutrality law. I'd rather have the option to choose a different provider who doesn't throttle my bandwidth.

That's what free markets are all about.

Re:Except for the takings clause of the Constituti

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...dude? I hate to break the news to you, but We, The People actually paid for those networks to the tune of 200 Billion (with a B) + in tax breaks and other incentives, and all we got in return was a fart in our general direction. Look up the telecommunications act of 1996 if you want to read the whole bill, but we gave over 200 billion in breaks and payouts for 45Mb nationwide broadband. What we got was the finger.

Re:Except for the takings clause of the Constituti

[Kalriath]

The Freedom of Speech clause applies only to Congress. A private company may choose to impair or prevent your freedom of speech on their own domain legally and in complete compliance with the constitution. Unless of course Comcast is now a branch of Congress? No?

(You can feel free to make the expected joke about Congress being a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast if you like).

Re:Government cannot do good, by definition.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something a friend sent me....

ATLAS SHRUGGED: THE ABRIDGED VERSION (with spoilers)

AYN RAND
Hello, I'm Ayn Rand. I wrote a novel based on my Objectivist philosophy called The Fountainhead, but I don't think 700 pages was quite enough to get my point across, so I will write the exact same novel, only it will take 1100 pages this time.

READERS
Hey, great.

HEROINE
I'm Dagny Taggart. I am a railroad tycoon, woman-in-a-man' s-world, stunningly beautiful heroine. I am the only person capable of running this railroad. I am the only woman in the universe worth a damn. I am also the only woman in the universe with a real job. I am basically the only woman in this novel.

LOVE INTEREST #1
I have worshiped you, the only woman in the universe worth a damn, from afar for my whole life.

HEROINE
That's nice.

LOVE INTEREST #2
I have worshiped you, the only woman in the universe worth a damn, naked on the forest floor. Yet I will nobly step aside in the name of noble idealism, despite the fact that I love you and want you, the only woman in the universe worth a damn, desperately.

HEROINE
Okay.

LOVE INTEREST #3
I worship you, the only woman in the universe worth a damn. Let us have creepy rape fantasy sex now. I will not ask permission to do all these kinky things to you, but luckily you want to be forced into all the kinky things, you dirty biatch.

HEROINE
This is clearly true love! Stick it in me.

ALL
Who is John Galt?

AYN RAND
I am not telling. Instead, please listen to someone pontificate about my Objectivist philosophy for a while.

SOMEONE
[Pontificates]

VILLAINS
There are many of us, but we are all exactly the same. We are caricatures of evil socialists and embodiments of pure evil. Let us create a perfect socialist world order ruled by the inept! We all suck! Socialism sucks! Ha ha!

HEROES
We are all exactly the same. We are noble and perfect and have very angular and insolent faces. We can read each other's minds and the minds of everyone else in this novel, leaving less room for misunderstanding and more room for pontificating. And we are all in love with Dagny Taggart, the only woman in the universe worth a damn.

ALL
Who is John Galt?

VILLAIN
[Threatens hero.]

HERO
[Flips coin]
If it's heads, I will gaze apathetically. If it's tails, I will laugh heartily.

VILLAIN
Although these are the only two things any of you heroes have done for the past 800 pages, I am shocked at this response! How could you! How dare you!?!

HERO
I will now pontificate about Ayn Rand's philosophy. It has been at least 50 pages since you've heard it.

AYN RAND
It is so convenient that all of my heroes are in perfect agreement about my philosophy so that their pontificating is so interchangeable.

ALL
Who is John Galt?

JOHN GALT
Hello. In this, the culmination of all the pontificating, I will explain Ayn Rand's philosophy for a full 57 pages. No, I am not kidding. This one monologue will last for 57 pages. Oh and also, I love Dagny.

DAGNY
I love you too. Man, this is really going to suck for Love Interest #3.

LOVE INTEREST #3
Despite my passionate love for you and enjoyment of our rape sex, and the fact that there is no other woman on earth worth a damn, and the fact that I sacrificed my life's passion on your behalf, and t hat I spent my entire fortune to get a divorce to be with you, I will now nobly step aside in the name of noble idealism.

DAGNY
Great! I will miss our creepy rape sex. Farewell.

LOVE INTEREST #3
Bye.

READER
Wait, what?

ATLAS
[Shrugs]
THE END

NOT THROTTLING

[Anonymous Coward]

Have people forgotten already? Comcast was not fined and chastised for throttling, they were inserting false reset packets, forcing people's data connections to close. Then lying about it and either telling customers they weren't doing anything, or lying and telling them they were only throttling when in fact they were inserting false packets onto the line.

WHY IS FCC ON NETWORKS!?

[myspace-cn]

They are fucking supposed to be dealing with power and frequency! THEY HAVE NO FUCKING BUSINESS FUCKING WITH THE WEB!

then again

[unity100]

this is also deceptive advertising ?

ie, they are selling me a car, that may, or may not run well at speeds 50 mph and over. they also say that the car may or may not see 50 mph on average a month too. they also say that there can be more than one, undefined number of days that i may not be able to use my car.

what kind of product/service sale is that. they cant even define what they are selling and determine an acceptable quality.

Re:Government cannot do good, by definition.

[sonicmerlin]

This is so friggin` awesome and hilarious. Someone with mod points needs to mod this up.

Re:Except for the takings clause of the Constituti

[Thinboy00]

(You can feel free to make the expected joke about Congress being a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast if you like).

I'd go for the other way around given the amount of money Congress gave to the various telcos previously...

lets see

[unity100]

if a company starts branding their employees with rfid chips for the sake of 'security', and there is no law out about it, do we allow them to continue, because, there is no law about it, and say, the congress is not going to convene for another 2 months ? do we prevent a government agency from coming in and stopping the process, because, well, there is not a law for it ?

Re:lets see

[Attila Dimedici]

if a company starts branding their employees with rfid chips for the sake of 'security', and there is no law out about it, do we allow them to continue, because, there is no law about it, and say, the congress is not going to convene for another 2 months ? do we prevent a government agency from coming in and stopping the process, because, well, there is not a law for it ?

If no existing law applies, the answer is "Hell, Yes". The President has the authority to call an emergency session of Congress if some situation like that existed. (Personally, I suspect that there are existing laws that would apply in that situation.)
The alternative is a country where you don't know what is legal from one day to the next. Sorry, you are not going to convince me that it is a good idea to give some unaccountable bureaucrat (or group of bureaucrats) the authority to decide on his(their) own what should be illegal.

Re:lets see

[unity100]

well, what happens when the legislative body lacks the understanding and resolve of the matter like in your example ? like, in the comcast case ? the issue is technological and complex, and its implications arent readily graspable by legislators. but, its implications are serious. what happens then ?

unaccountable bureaucrat ? excuse me, but bureaucrats are accountable, whereas private entities are not. you can prosecute a bureaucrat for anything that is done, but you cant do it for private entities. the whole reason for the companies existing as private entities separate from their owners and their staff is precisely for that reason. a bureaucrat's fate hangs in balance in the hand of the administration, which may decide to replace him/her due to a popular backlash, but a corporation ceo's fate doesnt hang on anything, because regardless of what he does, as long as the move profited the big shareholders, he will still find lucrative jobs. he wont even probably be fired. just like in the wall street case. therefore your distrust is misplaced.

Re:lets see

[Attila Dimedici]

well, what happens when the legislative body lacks the understanding and resolve of the matter like in your example ? like, in the comcast case ? the issue is technological and complex, and its implications arent readily graspable by legislators. but, its implications are serious. what happens then ?

Then you need to vote for people who do understand the matter. If there aren't any running, run yourself.

unaccountable bureaucrat ? excuse me, but bureaucrats are accountable, whereas private entities are not. .

You are obviously unfamiliar with the Civil Service Act. And by the way, I was not arguing that there shouldn't be a law against what Comcast did. I was arguing that bureaucrats should not be allowed to make "law". You are arguing bureaucrat vs private entities. I am arguing administrative vs legislative. There is a reason that the Constitution separates the legislative and administrative functions of the government. It was a good idea then and it is a good idea now.

Re:lets see

[unity100]

hen you need to vote for people who do understand the matter. If there aren't any running, run yourself.

and pray tell me how good does this work in practice.

for centuries, bureaucrats have been the pillar of any government as opposed to elected officials. for around 3 centuries bureaucrats ensured that britain had a state tradition based on liberal principles, and have offset the excesses of elected officials.

no different in usa, the bureaucrat strata of your country has been 'the' government since its founding, and not as vaguely as british either. almost all of your founding fathers and all bureaucrats who serviced immediately after, and numerous bureaucrats in the following centuries were members of Society of Cincinnati http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Cincinnati

this is the way the developed nations kept their ideals for over centuries. else, one populist or dictator like caesar gets elected by mishap, and upturns everything.

You are obviously unfamiliar with the Civil Service Act. And by the way, I was not arguing that there shouldn't be a law against what Comcast did. I was arguing that bureaucrats should not be allowed to make "law". You are arguing bureaucrat vs private entities. I am arguing administrative vs legislative. There is a reason that the Constitution separates the legislative and administrative functions of the government. It was a good idea then and it is a good idea now.

in events that would turn permanently bad for people and modern ideals, there may not be time to wait for legislations. observe network neutrality. lets say comcast did it, at&t did it, others did it. because govt. didnt intervene because there wasnt a law against it. by the time legislature convenes to take the issue, this would already have become a de facto reality of internet, and anti freedom practices would be easily presented and passed as valid by the private interest parties, well doh, because everyone is doing it and there are no observed negative repercussions yet.

see. you cant wait for some stuff.

please do extensive reading on society of cincinnati

Re:lets see

[Attila Dimedici]

You are partially right, bureaucrats have been the pillar of government for centuries, almost always to the detriment of freedom. There is at least one country in the world run the way you would like things: China. If that is the sort of government you want, fine. I don't.
BTW, my understanding of human nature leads me to believe that if what you are proposing was implemented, China is the best you could hope for.
Please do some extensive reading of history. The Society of Cincinatti was an attempt to create a fuedal ruling class in the U.S.: membership is by inheritance or because of noteworthy accomplishment (like the noble classes of the Middle Ages). The Society of Cincinatti has done many good things in the history of the U.S., however, if it had any real power, it would have become evil.
One other thing, you keep making comments about not being able to wait "until the legislature convenes" to take action. Are you trying to tell me that there is anything that can't wait a month (the longest recess the U.S. Congress takes is from early August to early September-usually a couple days more than a month)? My experience is that any "law" put into place in less than 6 months is a bad law.

Re:lets see

[unity100]

You are partially right, bureaucrats have been the pillar of government for centuries, almost always to the detriment of freedom. There is at least one country in the world run the way you would like things: China. If that is the sort of government you want, fine. I don't.

oh is it. the whole history of u.s.a belies your comment. it is one of the two countries with bureaucratic tradition, and up till last decade it was the most free place on earth.

china is not bureaucratic. it doesnt have bureaucratic tradition. a bureaucrat cant resist any unreasonable order from the elected officials there. china is a totalitarian dictatorship. dont mix these two concepts together.

BTW, my understanding of human nature leads me to believe that if what you are proposing was implemented, China is the best you could hope for.

your understanding is wrong. for, it has been to the opposite.

european union is the current climax of humanist progress mankind was ever able to make. leave aside that, it is also the social evolution pinnacle in all other respects of human social understanding too. you should do some research on how life in european union is, how free are the people there, and how the bureaucracy there works.

Please do some extensive reading of history. The Society of Cincinatti was an attempt to create a fuedal ruling class in the U.S.: membership is by inheritance or because of noteworthy accomplishment (like the noble classes of the Middle Ages). The Society of Cincinatti has done many good things in the history of the U.S., however, if it had any real power, it would have become evil.

something being inherited doesnt directly make it feudal. for feudal, noble system to be realized, power needs to be inherited. not a membership in a society.

and anything can be abused. society of cincinnati wasnt exempt from human corruption.

yet as you have noticed, it did a lot of good things in the history of u.s., and it also had a lot of power too, through its members who eventually took up government positions. yet, it didnt turn evil, and usa didnt turn to a kingdom.

One other thing, you keep making comments about not being able to wait "until the legislature convenes" to take action. Are you trying to tell me that there is anything that can't wait a month (the longest recess the U.S. Congress takes is from early August to early September-usually a couple days more than a month)? My experience is that any "law" put into place in less than 6 months is a bad law.

yea, there are stuff that cant wait a month. when you have an organize private interest acting in unison, a month is a huge period.

you apparently forgot how did they suddenly come up out of nowhere with 100 million advertising budget, and god knows how many million spent in lobbying and tried to kill network neutrality a few years ago. not only that they also had 'grassroots' sites suddenly popping with tens of thousands of members and thousands of comments present too. it didnt take a month for them to fire all these at internet, including ted stevens. it was a close call. we were probably saved only because the backlash was strong enough, and congress changed hands right around that time.

no. there are some stuff for which a month is WAY too long.

Re:lets see

[Attila Dimedici]

oh is it. the whole history of u.s.a belies your comment. it is one of the two countries with bureaucratic tradition, and up till last decade it was the most free place on earth.

china is not bureaucratic. it doesnt have bureaucratic tradition. a bureaucrat cant resist any unreasonable order from the elected officials there

The U.S. does not have a bureaucratic tradition. China has a 2,000 plus year tradition of bureaucracy. You have a terrible understanding of history. There is no point in further discussion.
I will repeat one final point. In my life time, no law that has been passed by Congress in less than 6 months has been a bad law that has had consequences that horrified those who supported the law.