Slashdot Mirror
Net Neutrality Suffers Major Setback
RingDev writes "The US Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Comcast today, stating that the FCC lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks."
Bye-bye internet, was nice knowing ya.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
and yet, they probably shall maintain the authority to 'regulate' 'Foul Language'. :(
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
... would be "The government's policy suffered a setback today". Not everyone agrees on what Net Neutrality even is, whether or not to support it as envisioned.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
https://ecf.cadc.uscourts.gov/cmecf/servlet/TransportRoom?servlet=ShowDoc&dls_id=01206657831&caseId=23733&dktType=dktPublic
geek. lawyer.
Step 1. Send a letter to your ISP asking them to filter your access by a defined criteria.
Step 2. Wait to get content that you requested filtered.
Step 3. ??????
Step 4. Profit.
If they can filter content, based on whatever they want to do, they lose their common carrier status, and are now responsible for all content passed over their networks. If you get a spam message that you did not want, you can sue, at least in a perfect world. I am sure they will get out of it somehow.
all your tubez are belong to comcast...
Isn't this P2P blocking bit, a little like allowing AT&T arbitrarily and capriciously to prevent you from calling anyone in Chicago (not that it would be a bad thing)?
(possible lost profits from complying with net neutrality) > (potential financial benefits as proposed by FCC)? Are there some bargaining chips still on the table? Or is it just about "freedom of doing business how we want to"?
And yeah, I assume the "benefits" implied by the article -- funds for improving internet to rural areas -- are peanuts to comcast...
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
But what should we expect when politicians are bought and sold and when an actual value can be placed on the price of integrity and transparency. I could rant, but what good would it do? Here's a link to the official ruling from wired.com: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/04/comcastdecision.pdf
It's the sound of the FCC never having anything to do with regulating the Internet to begin with. If someone says that the FDA doesn't have the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks, will that also be a major setback for Net Neutrality?
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
It's not "net neutrality", but the people of US of A who will suffer the consequences for this kind of setbacks.
I don't have a sig.
and i don't think Congress can pass a law either. You have ISP's on one side some of whom are also cable companies and in the business of reselling media content via their cable TV business. and on the other side you have companies like Google who think up of new digital products that cause ISP's to spend more money for capital upgrades. if there is a net neutrality law then i can see the ISP's coming out with tiered pricing overnight. it's like electricity, in the last 10 years people's demand for it has grown and they have accepted paying more for it. but with internet access people scream that it's the end of the world
ISP's operate in that magical land of no tariffs. I bet not for long. If the FCC has any backbone (I'm not necessarily convinced they do, but hey, sometimes you can hope) they'll turn this into a regulated service. Just like all of those other wonderful tariffs we've had, for basic POTS lines, T1's, ISDN, etc, etc, look for that to happen with all sorts of Internet connections. So, in return for keeping net neutrality we'll lose ISP's... and the vicious dog eat dog cycle begins.
----- obSig
This is just one Circuit of the US Court of Appeals (although very influential). There is no "The United States Court of Appeals".
but my packets were delayed...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The State government would have the power to regulate any monopolies inside its borders, including electrical providers, natural gas providers, phone companies, and yes Internet providers. - The local government/town that granted the exclusive license to Comcast also has the right to regulate, per the terms of the monopoly.
Both these levels of government could mandate that Comcast provide equal access to ALL websites.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The end result might suck for net neutrality but it's a win for the US Constitution, which has been sorely hurting. If you want net neutrality, don't expect it to come legitimately from the pen of a bureaucrat; demand it from Congress.
Once the internet is completely metered and locked down, with corporate traffic given huge priority over private traffic, I wonder if all the "free market solves everything" libertarian types will still be so anti-regulation....
Slashdot seems to have a fairly large amount of 'free market solves all' people. Maybe strangling the internet is the thing that will make some of them realize that certain things do deserve either heavy regulation or government ownership:)
Since this is the "information super highway", maybe it should get the same level of government control as the Federal Highway System.
Without net-neutrality, Comcast's purchase of NBC (and Hulu) could start raising some major questions about whether it is forming a monopoly, especially when the government is already looking at the broadband situation in the US (and possibly unhappy about it).
Additionally, the FCC has made it pretty clear that they want some authority over the net, so far assuming implicitly that they have such authority. With this ruling, we may yet see them given such authority explicitly.
I almost wonder if this may be a pyrrhic victory for Comcast. Imagine them having the NBC/Hulu sale blocked, and then later the FCC gets it's authority specifically created, enforcing Net Neutrality (perhaps with some fangs), and having a bit of a grudge against Comcast.
"We're so screwed. All politicians are so technologically ignorant they can't tell when a lobbyist is lying to them, and even if they could tell many wouldn't care."
Or perhaps they understand that government shoudn't be micromanaging ISP's.
"I am moving the hell out of this country ASAP. Day after day its just worse news. "
No you're not. Like the people that screamed about how they'd move to Canada or New Zealand in 2004 if Bush won re-election, you're going to stay right where you are and bitch some more on the Internet.
"US is going to have some massive brain drain soon, I predict."
I'll take that bet. Where's all this talent going to go? Bastions of Internet freedom like... China? How about Europe, where governments are increasingly using technology to snoop on every aspect of the lives of their citizens and subjects? But hey, lets leave America because Comcast is throttling bandwidth when we're downloading illegal movie torrents. See ya. The airline ticket counter is that way.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
What is the point of having the FCC if you don't let it do its job? Under what guise could anyone come under the impression that this isn't FCC Jurisdiction?
Lacks the Authority? It should be the Authority. The courts should only be called in when the FCC is doing something that is questionable. Instead, they have prevented the FCC from stopping all of the questionable behavior that is undoubtedly going to be spawned by this.
With Wikileaks the other day, and now this, news is giving me a serious headache this week.
Apparently, from this article, Comcast madea successful argument based on the fact that the FCC fought to keep broadband deregulated in 2005 in the Supreme Court. While spitting on net neutrality basically spits in the face of the intent of that battle, I think the FCC could successfully file this particular incident under, "Lessons on Things Coming Back to Bite You in the Ass."
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
If congress doesn't weigh in on this soon they're going to pass the point where massive head breaking won't be necessary (not that Comcast doesn't have a big head in need of some slapping). And when it comes to head breaking, I'd rater see a TR progressively taking on Standard Oil than FDR reactive style acts against those who tanked the economy. (There's more corollaries here to the current US banking system than are immediately obvious). Information and transit of information are the commodities of the day.
for i am going to post in this discussion and cant use mod points.
Read radical news here
Net Neutrality didn't just suffer a "major setback." It's effectively dead.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Excluding data carriers from common carrier requirements was one of the dumbest things we have ever done.
Simple principle: If you want to make decisions about which traffic to carry at what speed, you are legally liable for all traffic you carry. If you want safe harbor from liability, you cannot decide which packets get special treatment.
Throttling is fine if it is unbiased. Picking winners and losers is not the ISP's prerogative.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The FCC knew Comcast was going to win quite a while back. Comcast's basic argument rests on the fact that the FCC didn't follow it's own rules in how it created the net neutrality rule. Since the rules weren't followed for creating a new rule, Comcast argued the net neutrality rule was unenforceable.
The FCC recognized Comcast had a point and restarted the rule making process to enable them to legally enforce net neutrality.
Personally, I'd like to see the FCC say that if you own a cable or phone company, you can't provide internet service. We've just been through the consequences of companies that were too big to fail failing and are quite a bit poorer because of it. Letting monopolies form is just taking us down that path again.
Both At&t and the cables are scared shitless that the Internet will make their business models obsolete. Of course, they're right.
Did the FCC at least force ISP to give the users the exact throttling rules like Canada CRTC ruled last autumn?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/21/2223229/
I would have loved to see slashdotters' reaction to the CRTC announcement after this news came it, would have put things in perspective. It's good to be pro-net-neutrality (CRTC also is pro-net-neutrality), but even with limited power it tried and succeeded to at least get some basic ruling done so we are not (the users) completely screwed.
In the end though, I guess both organizations will reach the same kind of decision (Canadian politicians being what they are) and Big Industry will flourish.
Remember the FCC is the Federal Communications Commission. Notice the word Communications. So it seems like they might have some authority here.
One place we know they do have authority is telephony. And the largest immediate threats posed by the decision I think are to 1) VOIP and 2) Netflix. For brevity, I'm going to ignore bittorrent because at present while a big bandwidth hog, it's not a commercialized bandwidth hog like the other two.
it will be easy for comcast to squeeze out all VOIP and streaming video providers with simple QOS tweaks. Already Netflix is barely tolerable and it would not take much for me to give it up. Likewise Comcast is now in the VOIP market so why not prefer their own packets over others?
You can't even call it Anti-trust since they are not leveraging one market to enter another. Indeed Comcast has been in the movie providing market longer than netflix. You might make the anti-trust argument for voip however.
Which brings me back to the FCC. the FCC might not have the authority to regulate all of the internet but surely they can regulate VOIP since that is telephony.
I sure hope they do, because once all the VOIP and netflix competition is squeezed out to either comcast itself or to people that partner with comcast it's going to be hard to decentralize it again.
I'll make one other prediction. the fate of bit torrent. right now bit torrent is nothing but cost to COmcast. if it went away people would not stop paying for their internet connection so there's no downside to squeezing it out. I suspect the future of Bittorrent is how it becomes monetized. If comcast could profit from bit torrent then they will be happy for it because, when done correctly, bit torrent more efficiently broadcasts across the edges of the network rather than the backbone. I suspect the way it will be monetized is that someone will start selling movies using some set top internet box (roku, apple-tv, etc...) that uses bit torrent rather than limewire to deliver the content. you park the top 200 movies in slices out on people's set top boxes-- these are not movies they ordered, you are just parking them there for delivery. then you distribute this from these boxes. You could even compensate the box owners for using some of their bandwidth. THe key is you do this in a locked down DRM way where one company is selling the service. now it makes money and costs less infrastructure wise than direct streaming. Comcast will get a cut.
I suspect that's the future of peer to peer.
$.08 per page. That's only really worthy of +4 informative if parent also post's his/her PACER login details.
Comcast Cable pays networks for the privilege of carrying their content. If I were Google, and Comcast came knocking, I'd say, "YOU pay ME $1/subscriber, or I will filter your users from my site."
>>>I am moving the hell out of this country ASAP. Day after day its just worse news.
If you were thinking about moving to Europe, you might want to think again because I've been following EU politics and their leaders seem to be making a lot of dumbass, US-style decisions too.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The cable companies are using eminent domain to run their wires through the right-of-way in my yard (buried, on the pole ... doesn't matter.) That little tidbit should force the neutrality issue upon them. Don't like it? Fine, contract with each and every individual for compensation for running the cables through private properties. If the FCC doesn't have jurisdiction on this, the states certainly should.
Ah, really? What alternative definitions, besides the common one, have you heard? It's really pretty simple and it boils down to this: you treat everyone's traffic on your network the same, whether any of the endpoints are in your network or not. You want to perform traffic shaping? Fine, you shape traffic the same for your customers as you do for your peers. What you can't do is say, "well, Google isn't paying me for hosting, so I'm going to slow down everyone's access to Google until Google pays me." See? Simple.
So prove to me that your comment isn't FUD and tell me what other definitions you've heard.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That's a ridiculous generalization. You speak of Europe like it's a homogenous entity. In reality, only a handful of countries are even thinking about what you're suggesting, and most of those are just simple corruption and greed (see: Italy) rather than anything major. Scandinavian countries are still largely separate from the stuff that's been going on in the west.
Also, eastern europe is pretty much a dark spot - does anyone know if there is filtering or throttling there, and, if so, how much?
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
Mod parent up. Where are you going to go? Any technologically advanced country is just as bad as here vis-a-vis government intrusion. There's no place left to go. Perhaps you could move to a failed state like Mexico or Somalia where they have pretend governments, but then your net access isn't so reliable--and neither is your personal safety.
Of course, there's always Wyoming.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Like it or not, what "net neutrality" is going to bring is a clear separation between content and communications. About the only thing that Verizon and Comcast are going to be able to do is really split off the ISP part of the business into a standalone unit. Why would they do this? Because it gives them a tremendous amount of immunity from people attacking them for not being "neutral".
It also means that the subsidy of Internet providing ends. Instead of Comcast being able to write off a lot of the cost of being an ISP because it improves the cable TV business, the new ISP unit will have to stand on its own. That is going to mean some very large rate increases. Same thing on the DSL side, with the $15 DSL plans going the way of $0.39 a gallon gas.
I would expect cell phone service to be split the same way. Sure, there is no reason not to use Skype on your cell phone with an unlimited data plan and never, ever touch the "phone" side of the service. Of course, you will be paying $100 a month for the data plan from a different business unit. The advantage for the cell carrier will be two business units, two annual reports and two profit centers. You wouldn't really expect that the cell phone side would be able to continue supporting the data plan side when they are competing against each other, would you? It would be like Burger King subsidising McDonalds.
The result of all of this is that costs will be far more transparent. Because there are more profit centers and business units the costs will overall be higher, but you will know that you are paying $35 a month for cable TV and $65 a month for Internet service instead of $90 together.
I don't see any new costs because of network neutrality, other than the plan of instead of soaking their customers forcing content providers to cough up the dough. It might seem nicer to have a low ISP bill, but the whole idea of "network neutrality" is to push the cost back on the ISP customer where some believe it belongs.
The end result is pretty much the same, though because if Google was paying they would make the advertisers pay, who in turn would make the customers pay. End result is the same - the customers pay. Imagine that.
This is an FTC issue. If you want the FCC to keep their hands off of the broadcast flag or a three-strikes program, then they need to not be in net neutrality business either.
A win for freedom - even if you support Net Neutrality.
I do support Net Neutrality. I think the very companies that it would apply to are government-sanctioned monopolies or duopolies, giving few a choice if they implement anti-neutral policies.
HOWEVER... Let's let our elected lawmakers decide the issue. This is the problem with America today, the UNELECTED 4th branch of government: the bureaucracy. Policies that get set in stone with nary a vote on the issue, let alone on the official that enacted it!
If you agreed with Net Neutrality, get it passed as a law. Today, the FCC (or EPA or any other bureaucrat) can be issuing a policy you agree with, and in later administrations, the opposite - but regardless, you have no say.
Scandinavia. I'd recommend modding parent down, but I'm just some reactionary, apparently.
OK, I know most of you actually haven't RTFA this being /. and all, but if you do you will see that Comcast is right. The FCC dulled its own teeth in 2005 when they deregulated broadband. Was that stupid then, ofcourse it was. But until the US government adopts rules to allow more competition, ie making the infrastructure an open network, Comcast and other large ISP won't let anyone else be an ISP on their infrastrucutre with out paying a huge amount of money to "lease" it. I think there was a good article in Newsweek about why the US's broadband access was the 12th slowest and most exspensive to use and it gave examples of what other country's, namely South Korea, had done to bring cost down for the consumer.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
Funny, TechDirt explains why this is good.
Shh.
If the ISP is filtering traffic, doesn't that blow their "common carrier" claims out of the water? In other words, if you censor the content, don't you automatically become responsible for the content?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'm not entirely opposed to this. I'd love an ISP that would let me pay an extra $1 or 2 a month and give priority to my VoIP traffic. I'd happily pay for it to go faster than my or my neighbor's p2p download.
The trouble is the lack of last mile competition in the United States. Where you have only one or two carriers to choose from, you can't simply go elsewhere if they implement what could be a sensible measure in a way you don't like.
Still, I'm not sure we should be prohibiting something that could benefit users simply because it could be used in a way that doesn't.
Pirate party has seats in Parliament in both EU and Sweeden. I already have job offers in Sweeden. I think I'm going to do a lot better there than here.
The preample of the constitution begins:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That doesn't give the government the power to do whatever it wants just because it thinks that it insures domestic tranquility. It is just a non-binding purpose of statement, and the specific grants of power follow. The same is true of the section you quoted from the FCC charter.
The FCC are not the communication dictators of the US. They don't get to do whatever they want just because they think it is good idea. They have been granted specific powers to regulate specific aspects related to communication, and that is it.
In this case they had sanctioned Comcast for violating the FCC's Internet Policy Statement. The statement itself states that it is not legally binding, just a set of guidelines. In court, the FCC could not point to a single statute that gave them the power to regulate the internet in this manner. They were blatantly operating out of their granted powers and the judge ruled accordingly.
This is not a setback for net-neutrality, because net-neutrality doesn't exist yet. This ruling does nothing to prevent us from creating net-neutrality laws, nor is there any reason that it will sway popular opinion against them.
This is a win for the rule-of-law and should be applauded.
The main alternate definition that I've heard is essentially that Carriers/ISPs are not allowed to do anything but limit the bandwidth. No shaping, no filtering, no prioritizing by type--just bandwidth limiting based on subscriber's allocation.
The rationale behind this is that if I pay for a certain amount of bandwidth, my ISP shouldn't care what sort of packets I choose to send over it.
I know, Government's right place is helping ISPs destroy the internet and screw the citizens of this nation. Right.
Until your NNTP traffic gets limited to one bit per second ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Here is the case law that lets the FCC regulate this
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Here is an article written by a friend on it.
net neutrality
it doesn't actually seem like a net neutrality issue to me.
It seems like corporate sponsored censorship.
I am confused
I probably need coffee
"That's a ridiculous generalization. You speak of Europe like it's a homogenous entity."
With the creation of the European Union, and creeping loss of sovereignty of the member nations, you don't think Western Europe is becoming more homoginzed?
"In reality, only a handful of countries are even thinking about what you're suggesting, and most of those are just simple corruption and greed "
Of course it's corruption and greed, but not for money... corruption of power, and the greed for more of it. Because that's what large government entities lust after; ever more amounts of power.
You're right in that there's definitely a difference in attitudes between East and West Europe. In the East, memories are still fresh of the Soviet boot. But in the West, the trend is clear; ever more nannying by their governments for "the public good", through technological and other means. Surveillance cameras in British trashcans, anyone?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Learning how to spell Sweden properly would be a good start to the immigration process.
it's another thing to propose a workable alternative
so, for example: yes, universal healthcare makes complete sense
of course universal healthcare has downsides. but if you wish to complain about those downsides, enunciate a lucid alternative. however, every alternative, including the nonsense system we had before the recent healthcare overhaul, had far worse downsides
so if you can't enunciate a working alternative to something like universal healthcare, accept it and embrace it. otherwise, what is the point of your complaints? accept that some things are best run by the government, even with all of the negatives that implies (simply because your alternatives have far worse negatives), and therefore live in reality
what i want to know is why do we have people running around with rabid fundamentalist opposition to the idea of big government, rather than lucid, intelligent opposition to the idea of big government? until i see someone against the idea of big government enunciate a coherent logical argument, rather than all i see: a religious act of faith that "big government=bad", then i am completely unswayed, unimpressed, and totally turned off by the anti-government crowd as a bunch of ignorants and hypocrites
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's not really a setback considering the legal framework for it doesn't exist. Looks like the net neutrality movement now has a Square One to begin from. I'm on the fence when it comes to net neutrality as I believe it's a corporations right to charge how they see fit and if customers don't like it they can go elsewhere. On the other hand, many of the ISP's are government sanctioned monopolies which I don't agree with at all.
Comodoe64_love, you are wrong. see this post and the one below it to learn about constitutional and federal law
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
No, it would be more like allowing AT&T to prevent you from using fax machines over their network.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The Pirate Party does NOT (yet, elections this fall) have any seat in parliament (riksdagen) in Sweden. They did get seat(s) in the EU in the swedish election to the EU parliament but that is not the same election as for national parliament.
“This crisis is not a result of a weak Congressional law, but a direct consequence of the previous two Commission’s misguided and overzealous attempts to completely deregulate America’s communications networks. Past FCC actions created a huge loophole in the law that leaves the agency unable to protect consumer privacy or promote universal broadband access,” said S. Derek Turner, Free Press’ research director. Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/net-neutrality-throttle/#ixzz0kLU62cLV
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
My personal opinion is that ISPs are ridiculous with the crap they pull. AT&T has blocked my DSL in the past for using too much bandwidth. Umm... If I payed for 3 Mb/s (of which I only actually get about 2.4 Mb/s) then I should get 3 Mb/s for the entire duration of my contract. There was no term in the contract that gave any limit besides 3 Mb/s. This is stealing just as much as (if not more than) than downloading illegal torrents is. If this keeps up, then why not block phone calls of people who use too much phone bandwidth? Cut TV service of people who watch TV too much (or make over-watched channels broadcast at lower quality, to follow the traffic-shaping scheme). Ridiculous, right? Same exact scenario in a different setting. ISPs need to get their act together.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
where governments are increasingly using technology to snoop on every aspect of the lives of their citizens and subjects
Fuck me. Is the PATRIOT ACT just a figment of my imagination? The difference is that America denies it is doing any packet inspection, while in other countries they admit to it. Which one do you think is more dangerous?
No you're not. Like the people that screamed about how they'd move to Canada or New Zealand in 2004 if Bush won re-election, you're going to stay right where you are and bitch some more on the Internet.
My flight out is this month. Not everyone was kidding.
Yeah, sorry I double tapped the 'e'. I have a sensitive keyboard. I'll go back to feeling inferior to you now, if that is acceptable.
It's not as if handing over the reigns to corporate interests ruined radio - so why would it ruin the Internet?
Currently listening to: Ke$ha - Tik Tok
or else!
Time for people to start demanding municipal broadband from their communities. Local government is going to be less self-interested in limiting packet speed than monolithic Comcast and AT&T.
If the FCC doesn't have the authority to enforce equal access in ISPs, then they also don't have the authority to mandate free rights-of-way for ISPs.
Comcast can now negotiate with every property owner over/through whose properties their Internet links pass. No more free ride, and major costs.
Live by the sword, die by it.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Oh yeah? Well, MY nigger is Charlton Heston, you insensitive clod!
I recently saw a comparison chart of various ISPs; for the benefit of consumers who consider this a selling point, the chart showed which ISPs were and were not filtering BitTorrent traffic. (Sorry I am unable to find that chart again right now, wish I could.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Under current law, the FCC had no authority to do what they did. The idea was right, the execution was wrong. We need to have clear laws about net neutrality so that the government DOES have the authority to tell ISPs when they are hurting consumers.
When you give the government more control, they have more power to abuse the people. The idea of net neutrality is nice but at what price? The free market should be able to workout the issues if the internet becomes less free and neutral. I suggest we keep the government out of this one.
I tried to watch this trial online, but my ISP said I had to pay extra to be able to watch it.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
you want internet to become a cable tv clone ? thats what they are intending to do. they cover 25% of america each. if they are given the right to decide who sees what in their network, entire swaths of america will be denied content they dont want them to see. its TOTAL isp fascism.
wake up. there is NO tool but government to use against corporate fascism.
Read radical news here
The constitution gives congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. However, congress had passed no law prohibiting what Comcast had done, nor had they delegated power to the FCC to regulate the internet in the manner that they did. Government officials can't make up their own laws, nor can they punish people for breaking nonexistent laws.
I agree that net neutrality regulation, if created, would absolutely fall within both the letter and spirit of the interstate commerce clause (unlike many other laws that are justified by it).
internet is. once you hand over control of the radio, you already give out its control to them, and this is what private corporations has become used to. they want to have same kind of control, the one way street, in the case of internet too.
i also want to add that you are way, way, too naive. you shouldnt be doing any business deals, running any business, or getting into any contracts with anyone until you are older and wiser than you are now.
Read radical news here
This isn't about keeping government out of industry's way, this is about freedom of internet use, which companies should not be allowed to control, and neither should the government. I think we need a constitutional amendment personally. Internet usage should be treated as a utility, not entertainment, and usage should not and cannot be controlled by telecom/cable/satellite companies anymore.
How is this a set back? That statement assumes they aren't already throttling the piss out of traffic.
I can download at 258kbps from Microsoft no problem.
I can got to Hulu and clear 259kbps.
I try and update World of Warcraft (which uses p2p) and I suddenly get 49kbps.
I download Ubuntu Linux at 49kbps.
In fact ANY torrent is exactly capped at 49kbps.(unless I turn on Protocol Encryption Only then magically that 49kbps cap vanishes...)
I can download from any non-major website and get 128kbps... capped. (Simtropolis for example, sourceforge, etc.)
A SET BACK implies they are not throttling already.
And the kicker... If I start a torrent my bandwidth appears to be capped at 49kbps for about 3 hours afterwards.
a.k.a
Boot Computer
Download by Excel files from work at about 109kbps.
Start a torrent and let it run for about 30 minutes while I take a shower. Torrent appears capped at 49kbps.
Stop the torrent and close Utorrent.
Download the same excel files from work... at 49kbps....
Wait 1 hour... try again... 49kbps
Wait 1 hour... try again... 49kbps
Wait 1 hour... suddenly back to about 109kbps...
Next Day:
Boot computer
Download excel files from work 109kbps.
Open Forced Protocol Encryption torrent
256-290kbps for torrent.
Close torrent.
Download excel files from work 109kbps.
Open WoW to update and suddenly total bandwidth drops to 49kbps....
Sorry it isn't a set back, it's "Court Affirms Right for ISPs to CONTINUE to throttle traffic."
As long as this stands non-megacorporations don't stand a chance when say Facebook will be allowed to buy a high service level then a competitor. There is nothing preventing Comcast in offering 21 Tier 1 SLA blocks
200 Tier 2 SLA blocks
1000 Tier 3 SLA Blocks
and bucketing all non-sla buyers in a T4 bucket. Then they can auction the top 21 blocks and charge substantial fees for the 2 and 3 blocks.
The capitalization of preferred service levels isn't new and the anti-competitive abuse that comes with it will be par for the course.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
did free market work out the issues in wall street ?
stop believing that 'free market' religion. it NEVER existed at any point in human history, just like real communism. BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO IDEALISTIC AND CANT EXIST.
once a company acquires monopoly, it doesnt matter shit whether it acquired it through legitimate means, or underhand means. a monopoly is a monopoly.
its even stupider to expect the monopoly or near monopoly companies and groups not to ab use their power for their own profit, at the expense of the people or the free market. "oh, im near monopoly, i can lock out everyone and force my will upon everyone, but, well, i shouldnt do this, because it is unethical" => can you expect this from any executive officer of any company ?
"people will make choices, and all will be good" BUT WHO GETS STRONGEST FIRST DENIES THE PEOPLE THE RIGHT TO MAKE CHOICES. they lock them down into their stuff only. just like how 30% of america is locked down to one single ISP, just like how despite seemingly having an innumerable array of cleaning liquids/products in your local wal mart, more than half of them are produced by a single company, procter&gamble. choice is in the labeling only. source is the same.
below is an excerpt from another well made post by another user in /. in another thread :
"Free market capitalism has never been tried"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market [wikipedia.org]
"Free market economics is closely associated with laissez-faire economic philosophy, which advocates approximating this condition in the real world by mostly confining government intervention in economic matters to regulating against force and fraud among market participants."
The USA tried something close to a laissez faire marketplace and it failed miserably.
Starting in 1898, there was an explosion of regulation and the breaking up of monopolies.
Free markets did not self-regulate. They polluted, colluded, abused the workforce,
sold unhealthy foods, caused stock/bank crashes and a 101 other things.
The EPA, SEC, FTC, FDA, OSHA, etc are all the direct result of that failed philosophy.
The problem with advocating a "free" market is that it is simply bad public policy to let
a corporation kill 100 people and then settle the matter afterwards through the court.
Ideology rarely succeeds in the real world.
Read radical news here
More like the companies had their golden goose and wanted to sell the eggs to people who could afford them, but the government stepped in to kill the goose and distribute the gold more fairly.
No, I think it's more like the golden goose laid a platinum egg, and nobody could figure out how the golden goose's body was able to fabricate platinum from a diet of grass and insects - and then people started wondering how it could fabricate gold, for that matter, but meanwhile the goose was walking across the road, and stopping traffic, because nobody wanted to run it over, but they didn't exactly want to sit there all day, either, so they beeped at it but it mostly ignored them and just hissed at them a little...
Bow-ties are cool.
MSNBC wrote, The FCC needs clear authority to regulate broadband in order to push ahead with some its key recommendations, including a proposal to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural communities.
This simply isn't true. The FCC could, say, contract with Windstream Communications to upgrade its network such that DSL is available to all households in its service area. After negotiations result in a price both parties agree to, Windstream does the work. No additional regulatory authority needed.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
We dropped everything Comcast related except internet a year ago and have been happily using Netflix, Hulu, and Vonage ever since. If we can no longer stream or use VoIP (or the costs to do so become prohibitive) I'll just disable streaming on my Netflix account, up my DVD count to do everything via mail, and drop the land-line (just use cells). I will NEVER go back to Comcast for TV/Movies.
If it means I end up watching less TV then is that really a bad thing? I'll just spend my time on things more worthwhile.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Unless you can explain how the Internet isn't "communication by wire or radio".
"Series of tubes"
It's not as if handing over the reins to corporate interests ruined radio - so why would it ruin the Internet?
Currently listening to: Ke$ha - Tik Tok
Man, I am so sick of people dragging out that tired, old junk. I mean, so you don't like Kesha, fine. But putting a dollar sign in her name to make your point is just annoying and childish. "Oh, yeah, Ke$ha's just in it for the money dollar signs dollar signs"... Blah, whatever... I thought it had become clear around here, years ago, that sort of thing was just considered passe...
Bow-ties are cool.
I hate to call you out on this, but ... had the 'e' on your keyboard really been sensitive, surely your post would have read ...
"Piratee party has seeats in Parliament in both EU and Sweeden. I alreeady havee job offeers in Sweeden. I think I'm going to do a lot beetter there than heeree."
As it was, you only managed to double tap the 'e' on the word Sweeden ... TWICE !!!
You spell words as they sound, so yes, you probably are inferior to me, and you can go back to feeling that way at your leeisure.
Man, I am so sick of people talking out of their arse. That's how she stylizes her name.
I hope you're being sarcastic; that's how she spells her name
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36193558/ns/technology_and_science-security/
--------------------
The FCC now defines broadband as a lightly regulated information service. That means it is not subject to the obligations traditional telecommunications services have to share their networks with competitors and treat all traffic equally. But the agency argues that existing law gives it authority to set rules for information services, including Net neutrality rules.
Tuesday's court decision rejected that reasoning, concluding that Congress has not given the FCC "untrammeled freedom to regulate activities over which the statute fails to confer ... commission authority."
With so much at stake, the FCC now has several options. It could ask Congress to give it explicit authority to regulate broadband. Or it could appeal Tuesday's decision to the Supreme Court.
But both of those steps could take too long because the agency "has too many important things they have to do right away," said Ben Scott, policy director for the public interest group Free Press. Free Press was among the groups that alerted the FCC to Comcast's behavior after The Associated Press ran tests and reported that the cable company was interfering with attempts by some subscribers to share files online.
The more likely scenario, Scott believes, is that the agency will simply reclassify broadband as a more heavily regulated telecommuniciations service. And that, ironically, could be the worst-case outcome from the perspective of the phone and cable companies, he noted.
"Comcast swung an ax at the FCC to protest the BitTorrent order," Scott said. "And they sliced right through the FCC's arm and plunged the ax into their own back."
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Take an area of Comcast's network. Let's say this particular area has a lot of heavy peer to peer users. This Comcast area has limited transit links so the peer to peer users are starting to saturate the transit routers and the result is increased latency. Comcast provides an alternate route for their VoIP services that does not use their transit routers. At any given routing point the VoIP subnet is directly peered so as to keep latency low. There is NO QoS -- just peering with a network for their VoIP services. Are they violating net neutrality? Personally, I *wish* they'd use QoS in this situation so that video and VoIP traffic can get through all the peer to peer noise. Bittorrent does use ToS bits to give hints to the routers that this is bulk traffic, but when peer to peer programs open up so very many connections to remote systems, the router has to handle all of them somehow and this still creates latency. How about Google or Yahoo that has lots and lots of peering with ISP's so their traffic doesn't get caught up with all the other traffic at the ISP's main transit links. Is Google or Yahoo violating net neutrality? My point is that an ISP doesn't need to create limiting rules to favor some traffic over others. They can use an inherit feature of IP routing that is absolutely important to the heath of the Internet.
Hi, I'm $BIGGOV!
You are required by law to be fucked up the ass, or we'll throw you in jail. $BIGCORP has lobbied us to limit your torrent traffic, and $CORRUPTPOLITICIAN wants us to "regulate" your visits to undesirable, unfair websites. Unlike $BIGCORP, you can't replace us, but somehow, we're better to have than $BIGCORP.
Since you've signaled that you don't believe a company is allowed to have control over its own product services for some reason, we've gone ahead and instituted control of all other areas of life. No need to reply, and no choices to be made--we've already signed the legislation.
Don't worry. We won't monitor your internet traffic for nefarious reasons. Heh.
Your ever-watchful Big Brother,
$BIGGOV
There's no "major setback" here, because we never had network neutrality in the first place. It's been a mirage: people calling a pile of dog poo a "rose" and admiring the cut of the Emperor's new nonexistent clothes.
WHO STILL OWNS THE WIRES?
As long as the physical medium remains in private ownership, we will never have network neutrality, regardless how many laws Congress might pass and rules the FCC might make.
Just imagine the spew from the Republicans over a goverment run internet utiilty proposal:
1. "It's a government takover of the internets!"
2. "The government is already building secret internment camps for packets with 'bad' CRCs!"
3. "They're gonna pull the plug on IPv4!"
Oh, I don't know if your sig is humorous or uninformed.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements
1-2GB for Win 7.
What "free market" would that be? The one that magically creates more height on telephone and power poles for stringing cables in dense housing areas? Or the one that forces a regime change at Comcast by magically convincing 80% of its customers to cancel service out of respect for the 5% whose activities are curtailed/restrained by non-neutral policies? It's gotta be strong magic, since it will also need to prevent new/replacement operators to not pull the same shit as their predecessors....
Well, have at it and good luck. At the same time, would you please also wave the wand to de-regulate terrestrial radio waves? I really miss the days when a religious nut or quack doctor could fire up their incredibly dirty 500,000 watt AM signal and drown out every other voice for hundreds of miles. Get rid of the Bureau of Mines, too -- heck, anyone rich enough to dig a really big hole must know what they're doing, right? And don't get me started on the financial regulators...enforceable accounting standards just stifle innovation!
education is no substitute for intelligence
Everyone hates on Verizon but dude Verizon does not care what you do with your bandwidth. I run torrents all day everyday and completely torture my fiber connection, they do not care what I do. Comcast on the other hand wants to single handedly overthrow net neutrality and ruin the internet for EVERYONE! This is BULLSHIT!
Yeah, I have heard of Ke$ha. It was a joke. People always complaining about M$ and so on. If you didn't find it funny, then it's fair to say it wasn't a very good joke.
Bow-ties are cool.
gj on your thorough analysis. Very productive. I'm proud to be in your presence.
Seems pretty clear that this falls squarely within it's right to regulate. Unless you can explain how the Internet isn't "communication by wire or radio".
The legal reasoning is solid on this one. The court told the FCC it can't regulate broadband on the basis of broad principles. It has to regulate on the basis of laws it has been mandated to implement.
BigGov haters, this is not a repudiation of the FCC's authority. It just means the FCC can't go off on its own and make major policy changes on the basis of broad principles created by itself, rather than by laws created by elected Congresscritters.
BigCorp haters, this does not mean the telcos can suddenly do whatever they like. This ruling may actually strengthen the case in Congress for a serious revisiting of the regulatory structure around broadband. Comcast has definitely won this battle, but they may still lose the war.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The FCC has never had any authority to regulate internet service providers, no matter how much you think it ought to. Seriously, point me to anywhere in the Comunications act of 1934 or 1996, or any other law that gives them this authority. The FCC couldn't do so when asked by the Judge, and I doubt you can either.
The FCC barely touches broadband. For example, rudimentary research into broadband competition in the late 1990s will show you that the FCC sat by while the Baby Bells colluded to squash upstart competitors. As for regulation in the broader sense, the FCC has failed to keep up with technology on many counts. However, without the FCC, terrestrial radio and over the air TV would be a complete goat rodeo.
The FCC needs a complete overhaul. Their relationship with the public is terrible; they make it incredibly difficult to find even the most basic information on their site, and they are notorious for being incredibly bureaucratic. But I'm not sanguine at the thought of telcos being given free rein, given the amount of tax money they've gobbled up over the years with empty promises, and the anticompetitive behavior they've engaged in time and time again.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Thank you, oh valiant anonymous coward, for so succinctly summing up the spirit of what I was saying where the interpretive powers of others have fallen flat.
The FCC does have a great deal of authority when it comes to the telecommunication industry, and it used this power to force line sharing of DSL service. However, this never extended to cable-modem, because the FCC did not have that authority. In fact, the unfairness of having one set of rules for DSL and another for cable modem was one of the justifications for ending line sharing.
For the record, I do think that we need some network neutrality laws that cover all ISPs regardless of technology, but the FCC does not currently have the power to regulate in that area, nor should they have broad powers to make up any law they wish.
Nobody here disputes that Congress could pass laws to give the FCC such power. At most that's where Wickard would come in but I don't think you'd have to rely on Wickard (which involved interstate commerce powers and growing a portion of one's wheat crop for personal use-- while I think Wickard was wrongly decided, it isn't really relevant here). However here you have money clearly changing hands for a service, which involves interstate communication. That's pretty uncontroversially inside the power to regulate interstate commerce.
Wickard was at its basis a question of the scope of powers that Congress had under the "necessary and proper" clause as it relates to interstate commerce. It was a Constitutional question.
However the FCC can only act on powers specifically delegated to them by Congress. Unless Congress acts, the FCC cannot. That would pose other problems including separation of powers issues.
This decision here involving Comcast was a good one. It ensures that elected lawmakers make the laws, rather than unelected beaurocrats. Whether or not you like the immediate outcome, it seems like supporting the idea that Congress makes the laws and the FCC only acts pursuant to them is a good thing. Anyone really disagree with that?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Once again, this farce is playing itself out and hardly anyone seems to have learned from history. Once the government is granted the authority to regulate the internet ISPs at the traffic level, it's all over.
Of course, at first it will be regulation to ensure a fair playing field. But now they have the authority. Next, it will be regulations to ensure a playing field the government wants. And in the end, the big corporations will influence the regulation by lobbying and hob-knobbing with the government to use the FCC to force smaller, innovative competitors out of business and cement their monopoly rule. They've already been doing this for years, on average, with telecoms and everything else. Oil, healthcare, you name it.
It's so sad that all of these super intelligent people on Slashdot are arguing for the FCC to be granted these powers, or for Congress to grant them this power when doing so will, according to history, bring about the exact situation everyone here seeks to avoid.
The ONLY solution to maximize internet freedom is no regulation at all.
Speaking from north/east europe, ex-ussr here (baltic states).
We don't have much (visible) filtering here, although every now and then some local equivalent to riaa jumps out of a box and tries to get youtube blocked (seriously).
Throttling - that's harder to measure. My friends, who live in more urban areas, claim movie downloads in 15 minutes, so i suppose our isps are mostly usable :)
On the other hand, I always have to smile when seeing the word "tethering". It doesn't make any sense and sounds more like "feathering". Basically, we use our devices in any way we like (or more like it, any way the stupid firmware allows to).
Summary - while east/northern corner of Europe might be even in a better situation than USA regarding internet access, there are greedy bastards working to get us down to your level, and maybe even below.
Let them know what you think on this issue. If they know there is some interest or even a large body of interested parties that have an real informed opinion on the matter, maybe there will be legislation to treat the information highway as a public resource like the rest of our highways, a public resource not a private corporate money pit.
We do something similar with the air we breath.
Remember control of information is a first step to control of the people.
too bad i wasted all my mod points yesterday
+5 nicely done
if we didn't live in a society where the average Joe plays by one set of rules, and the "elite"(they're actually fascist morons) play in lawlessness. The FCC will find a way around this because the internet is a threat to our totalitarian government. Net Neutrality claims to help the consumer, but like all legislation coming out of Washington there is a lot of non-sense attached that will ultimately screw the consumer.
If we lived by the constitution, the FCC wouldn't even exist.
"Today's court decision invalidated the prior commission's approach to preserving an open Internet," the agency's statement said. "But the court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end."
Seems like the Court said you can't do it this way but you can try others. That doesn't sound so grim as originally sounded.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Huh?
There's a right to have a local post office? That's a power right there in Article 1.....
There's a right to regulation of interstate commerce?
Have you even read the Constitution?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
... lies with every state, city, town, or wide spot in the road from whom Comcast (and others) must obtain a franchise for the use of their rights of way. Lets go back to that system, with each little jurisdiction imposing its own rules. Then watch the ISPs come back, begging to have the FCC take over regulations.
Have gnu, will travel.
The internet is *the* killer app. People buy computers for the sole reason of accessing resources on the net. The amount of commerce facilitated worldwide is staggering. And these jokers are telling us they can't make a successful business model out of it.
The ideal system relies on multiple tiers of providers, each one leasing bandwidth from their parent and redistributing it to their clients. This happens down to the end user, who should be expected to pay for all the bandwidth that they use. Simple. As the end user, they pay only for the bandwidth of received data, not for the total distance the data was required to travel.
This allows a level playing field for new media enterprises, personal publishing, and an ever evolving means of communication. It has revolutionized the world in a very short time, vaulting third-world nations into emerging powerhouses, and connecting people in ways that previous generations could not have imagined.
So, to put this in jeopardy for the reasons given is patently criminal.
The only reason that ISPs have run into problems is that they've criminally oversold their bandwidth. They truly have been selling something they don't already own. If you purchase a contract for a 50Mb connection, they should expect that connection to be saturated 100% of the time. If it's unlimited, they should bill according to their costs. If that doesn't make sense to the consumer, sell bandwidth by the MB. Instead, they've built a business model on the presumption that end users would only utilize a fraction of what what sold.
In reality, this is greed on several levels, since it not only reveals unfair trade practices (they're selling something they don't have), but they're also trying to kill competition when verticals are in question. They were more than happy to jump on the bandwagon when they were in high growth mode, but now the fight has taken to the trenches some have decided to get ugly.
This is bigger than any one company or one country. Long term, few issues will have an impact quite as powerful as net neutrality on how our civilization evolves.
Here are a few very good papers that address all angles of the issue.
Heads up:
Consumer Welfare
Net Neutrality
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
I'd hesitate to include Britain with continental Europe. The two are very different places.
Also, besides France and Italy (and Germany's censorship which will probably manifest itself in a filter soon), who else has filters? It's not the entirety of Western Europe - not Ireland, not Spain, not Belgium, not Switzerland, not Holland...
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
A simple solution would provide the FCC with ammo necessary to get around this court decision. Redefine "Internet" access, as non-discriminatory access to any Domain name, IP address, and/or port number.
Likewise update the federal law preempting the levy of state sales and communication taxes so that it does NOT include "Discriminatory Internet" access. And the Feds can tie the billions in stimulus cash to those ISP's providing only real non-discriminatory "Internet" access. Let ISP's suffer the consequences (much higher costs) for their arrogance.
Let the power of tax code and stimulus cash speak for itself and I bet ISP's will change their tune in a heart beat.
Seriously? Endless budget deficits, ineffectual programs, various wars for dubious reasons, pork spending in every law, closed room negotiations when they promised transparency, monetary payoffs to get votes to pass, the Patriot Act, the FCC, the FDA, concerns for re-election over servering the people, etc etc etc
I was being sarcastic. By "getting paid to do", I mean getting paid by corporate interests, not by you and me. I don't think net neutrality stands a snowball's chance in hell because the big money doesn't want it. We don't live in a functioning democracy anymore.