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."

Comments

Oh goody

[Captain Splendid]

Bye-bye internet, was nice knowing ya.

Re:Oh goody

[Vancorps]

Except for the fact that the big ISPs got that way because of billions of dollars of tax payer funding. That alone I would have thought would have given the FCC authority here. At seems, that presumption would be incorrect though which sucks.

Re:Oh goody

[Lunix Nutcase]

From the FCC's charter:

For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio

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".

Re:Oh goody

[brkello]

Load of crap. You could use the same logic to say we don't want the government putting regulations on our food supply. I am sure someone will provide us an alternate source of water that has much less arsenic than the other company.

You ignore reality. There isn't a lot of choice for most people on what ISP they use. So no, there will not be a better option. As far as techniques, it will be a constant escalation between the two sides which will just take up more bandwidth and cause everyone's connection to be slow.

You folks need to wake up and understand that corporations do not and never will have your best interest in mind. Government regulations may not always be good, but in this case having a regulation that guaranteed net neutrality would benefit everyone. Of course that doesn't resonate well with the tin-foil hat and Fox News watchers out there.

Re:Oh goody

[Captain Splendid]

And can you tell me why you trust corporations to do anything besides slavishly tend to their bottom line?

I've got no problem with a general distrust of government, but when you turn around and bend over for someone who doesn't even bother to pay lip service to your welfare, I gotta question your sanity.

Re:Oh goody

[commodore64_love]

>>>no need for government regulation here - it would only benefit the existing ISPs at the expense of the consumer.

That's equivalent to saying there's no need for the government to regulate the Gas & Electric companies, or the Phone company, because it would only benefit the monopoly. I say "bull" to that. Whenever a monopoly exists, the government should either regulate the monopoly, or regulate it, or break it up and restore competition.

Re:Oh goody

[commodore64_love]

That would be true but the 1996 Bill tied no strings to the dollars. For example Congress typically says, "Raise your drinking age to 21, else your federal highway funds will be reduced by 5%."

Congress could have done something similar, mandating companies have equal access to all websites else get no funds, but they did not. As is typical of Cognress they handed corporations lots of money and no strings attached.

Re:Oh goody

[Lunix Nutcase]

2) ISPs will be formed with the specific selling point of having no traffic shaping/filtering/prioritizing.

This has been claimed for years and yet this hasn't actually happened. You live in a fantasy world if you actually believe such nonsense. The entrenched ISPs would kill off any such company.

Re:Oh goody

[clone53421]

When the government got involved.

Re:Oh goody

[geminidomino]

In a free market, if their product is crap, you don't buy it. You don't have the option with the government.

You also don't have that option with ISPs. There's no free market there.

Re:Oh goody

[spun]

If what you say is true, then Comcast would be fighting FOR net neutrality. If you've noticed, they are fighting against it.

Government regulation occurs locally as a defense against a particular kind of market failure: natural monopoly. The monopoly is going to exist whether the government gets involved or not, so the best course of action is to regulate it. If another start-up came along and ran another set of cables to every house, they would go bankrupt. In this case of natural monopoly, having more than one set of wires running to each home is simply less efficient than having only one. Everyone loses if companies run more than one set of wires, as everything gets more expensive. It's a simple fact: a natural monopoly means that a monopoly is more efficient. So, we can either encourage a fake competition (which means everyone loses) or we regulate a single entity. Or, we wait the decades or more for technology to change the market, but an unregulated natural monopoly is going to do everything in its power to kill any technological change that threatens it. Regulation really is the best option. Only closed minded free market ideologues think the free market is always the best option. Reasonable people know that it fails sometimes, and then government must step in. As with most things in life, the middle ground is often the best.

Re:Oh goody

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is saying that you have to resell (on reasonable terms) the monopoly that you are being given (OK, paying a paltry sum for) to others who will do work and give you a reasonable profit from "micromanaging"? The FCC does not seem to be dictating a lot more than "you have to allow for competition". With all the rhetoric going around about "the free market", this seems to actually be a great example of where a more free market would benefit the public, with the only downsides being to the established (and government sanctioned) monopolies.

This same idea has worked out pretty well for phone service, while still allowing the major monopolies to still be the dominent players.

Re:Oh goody

[TheWizardTim]

Why not micromanage? How is the internet not necessary to function in daily life. The government is moving more and more services to the net. Without high speed access, people will be left out. If we don't make the net a public utility now, we will lose our access to government in the future.

For example, if you live in Mass. you can't have your natural gas cut off, no matter how much you owe in winter. If companies were allowed to do whatever they want, it would cut off gas in winter and let people freeze to death. We have similar rules all over the US for phone, water, power, and others.

Net access needs to be treated the same. It should be a right to have cheep, high speed, unfiltered, unshaped, internet access.

Re:Oh goody

[jaweekes]

When companies became involved and wanted to spoil the golden goose, the government stepped in to save the goose. Now the courts have given the companies the rope to kill the goose.

Re:Oh goody

[KharmaWidow]

While I agree with you, and I appreciate the potential value of a tiered internet, I have no other choice but feel doomed by this decision.

Net-neutrality almost ensures that everyone one has an equal opportunity/experience on the internet (for those who have access). It is the first step to freeing information.

As well as it is evident that Comcast, and other companies like it, want to move to a measured-rate means of charging. Combine that with tiered traffic speeds and the cost of using the internet is going to skyrocket. Online gaming and media streaming will cost a fortune to the user.

And while the FCC is not the appropriate entity to regulate this, they were our only hope in maintaining net-neutrality. Democrats and Republicans, and politicians in general have demonstrated time and time again they are not capable of managing issues like these.

Re:Oh goody

[spazdor]

HINT: "Rights" never require action on the part of someone else.

Oh, good. I'll let all the nation's court justices and bailiffs know that they can retire now and due process will carry on without them.

Re:Oh goody

[Gerzel]

Yeah except there are no nannystaters. Practically, no one believes that the government should just be obeyed and never questioned, at least in the US.

There are people who believe that a robust government can encourage and even enhance the general welfare, rights and pursuit of happiness of its citizens if managed reasonably well.

There are also people who believe that large private entities with drastically reduced legal liabilities should not have the same rights or to the same degree as living citizens.

Re:Oh goody

[TheWizardTim]

The second we take away the roads, power, water, garbage collection, phone, net access, schools, other fundamental services of a first world nation, we become a third world nation. You can say "free market" all you want, but history shows that companies will not deliver these fundamental services if they don't forced to do so. If you lived in small town America, away from high density populations, you did not get power for years after the rest of the country. The same goes for phones.

I want to live in a first world nation, where I have cheep, reliable access to these services.

Re:Oh goody

[thetoadwarrior]

ISPs probably shouldn't have taken tax payer money then if they didn't want the government to have a say in how they run.

Re:Oh goody

[goldmaneye]

The short answer is, it depends on the kind of rights we're talking about.

The long answer is, there are many different kinds of rights. Natural rights are those that are thought to be inherently granted; legal rights are those granted by a body politic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

Positive rights require action. Universal healthcare is a positive right, since it requires someone to provide that healthcare. Negative rights require inaction. Right to life, liberty, and property are negative rights, since they require that someone NOT take those things from you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

There are also the concepts of claim rights (a right which entails some responsibility on the part of the right-holder) and liberty rights (a right which does not).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claim_rights_and_liberty_rights

Healthcare and the Internet could easily become rights if the government decrees that they are rights. With respect to the Internet, this is what the GGGP was arguing should happen.

Re:Oh goody

[TheWizardTim]

Okay, if that is your argument, shut off your power, water, don't drive on the roads, don't send your kids to public school, don't fly, don't go to the hospital, don't use medicine, move to the middle of nowhere and build a house out of mud. All of those things are wants. We don't have the right to any of them.

We the people funded the internet. We the people subsidized the cables in the ground. We the people own the airways. We the people should have access to what we paid for. If companies want to make profit of of the infrastructure, they need to follow the rules we put in place.

Meme

[TheWizardTim]

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.

Re:Meme

[vux984]

If they can filter content, based on whatever they want to do, they lose their common carrier status,

Lose what? They don't have common carrier status. They never were common carriers.

In fact they have lobbied and fought hard to AVOID getting common carrier status. Being a common carrier would expose them to regulatory oversight they DO NOT WANT. And would limit them from doing certain types of Deep packet inspection, traffic shaping, etc, etc, that they DO WANT.

and are now responsible for all content passed over their networks.

Except libel and slander because they are exempted from respoonsibility in the communications decency act. Except Copyright infringement because they are protected provided they follow DMCA takedown requests. And so on.

I am sure they will get out of it somehow.

Of course they will. By and large they already have.

This is terrible news...but here's the doc

[elohel]

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

Re:This is terrible news...but here's the doc

[Reality Master 101]

Sheesh, forget your drama queen pills this morning?

There is nothing terrible about this decision, because this decision has nothing to do with net neutrality. It was a decision about whether a government agency has carte blanche to do whatever the hell it wants without any congressional oversight, much less voter oversight.

Please, get a clue. Anyone with a brain does NOT WANT GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVING UNLIMITED POWER, even if they do things you like. They next decision might be something you don't like, and you won't have any way to stop them.

If you want net neutrality, then fine, get the government to pass a law. That's the way we do things in a representative democracy. We do NOT want government by executive order.

Tariffs are a comin'....

[vinn]

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.

Re:Tariffs are a comin'....

[LordKazan]

>You really think that such improvements would happen in a hyper-regulated marketplace?

As evidence by Europe: yes.

Note: basic consumer protection is not "hyper-regulated", only an ignorant anarchocapitalist thinks that kinda crap - and considering implementing even a few of the anarchocapitalist deregulatory wet dreams led to the current recession: why the @#%$ should we listen to you?

No single US Court of Appeals

[Sentex]

This is just one Circuit of the US Court of Appeals (although very influential). There is no "The United States Court of Appeals".

Don't give up so easily

[commodore64_love]

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.

Seriously?

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

The decision is somewhat moot

[jmichaelg]

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.

telecom

[slashnot007]

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.

Login page, NOT the opinion

[choongiri]

$.08 per page. That's only really worthy of +4 informative if parent also post's his/her PACER login details.

Re:Login page, NOT the opinion

[TubeSteak]

$.08 per page. That's only really worthy of +4 informative if parent also post's his/her PACER login details.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29489974/Full-Text-Comcast-vs-FCC-Federal-Court-Ruling
Found Here by using the googles

Any court decision worth reading will almost always be hosted somewhere else within hours of showing up on PACER.

Re:What now?

[Ltap]

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?

Not an FCC issue

[discojohnson]

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.

Re:That doesn't make them dictators.

[The End Of Days]

Nearly anything is true when you operate on the principles of confirmation bias.

The ruling was correct, now lets change the law

[mykos]

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.

Ahem

[kenp2002]

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.

free market bullshit

[unity100]

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.

Simile, you're on candid camera!

[Tetsujin]

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...

Wrong (I disagree with Wickard, but....)

[einhverfr]

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?

From the FCC's Statement following the ruling

[TechForensics]

"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.