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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."
This is just one Circuit of the US Court of Appeals (although very influential). There is no "The United States Court of Appeals".
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".
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.
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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.
>>>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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
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.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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? ]=-