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FCC To Make Move On Net Neutrality
GrApHiX42 writes "The FCC will announce on Thursday it plans to pursue a 'third way' forward in the fight for tough net neutrality rules, opening a new front in an ongoing legal battle that could come to define the commission under Chairman Julius Genachowski. A senior FCC official said Wednesday that the chairman 'will seek to restore the status quo as it existed' before a federal court ruled it lacked the authority to regulate broadband providers and set rules that mandate open Internet. The goal is to 'fulfill the previously stated agenda of extending broadband to all Americans, protecting consumers, ensuring fair competition, and preserving a free and open Internet,' the FCC official said."
Without net neutrality regulation, I fear that providers will have far too much power to censor content. In my area, there is only one choice for broadband: Comcast. My provider has already demonstrated a willingness to censor based on protocol and re-direct DNS lookup failures to their own search engine. I don't trust them at all to act in the best interest of the consumer when sites like Hulu and iTunes start directly competing against cable TV offerings for content.
I think this is a much more admirable endeavor than being the nipple and potty mouth police. I always considered the FCC toothless moralists. I welcome our new internet overloads.
Like having the government take over the parts of the industry that are inherently monopolistic (ie. wires; the barrier to entry for that essentially amounts to putting your own set of wires around the entire country) and having them rent out those wires to ISPs, who would then become competitive?
It's really the only way to have a free market in internet service at this point.
There's nothing illegal about circumventing the law. That's why it's called "circumventing", and not "breaking". The court is reminding the FCC that there are limits on their power, the FCC is working within those limits. Provided that you agree with the limits that the court gave the FCC, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Why don't they just make ISPs common carriers. A common carrier has to take anyone's traffic without favor or discrimination (as long as the customer can pay). The concept has served us very well for things like telephones and railways. I find it hard to understand why it doesn't automatically apply to ISPs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
Just what we need, a government takeover of another entire industry.
What's up with people saying this? Look around, especially to wall street and the gulf of mexico. I see industry messing up on the exact same scale or bigger than the government messes up.
I'm not saying "Some companies have messed up so lets give it all over to the government," I'm just saying "Government takes over an industry" isn't as scary to me as it once was.
Just what we need, the government to regulate safety standards on off-shore oil rigs. Just what we need, the government to regulate the largest banks. Just what we need, the government to regulate environmental rules and protect wetlands.
You're fucking A-right.
Just what we need, for Comcast to turn the Internet into the Disney/TimeWarner Channel.
When the federal government was building the Internet, were you saying, "Just what we need, a fast open data network that anyone can connect to".
If you had waited for AT&T to build the Internet, you'd still be waiting. And I guarantee, that whatever they had built wouldn't have allowed for political blogs and bittorrent trackers and news aggregators and open source HTML standards. No YouTube. No Slashdot. And no teabaggers (well, I guess there would be some good points).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Um. No, the judges correctly noted that it was the FCC that was saying "fuck the law," by making up their own laws.
Do you really want federal judges who are going to allow federal agencies to do whatever they want, even when the law says they can't? That's scary stuff.
Actually, we don't have to guess at what the broadband carriers would have built had they been entrusted to create the Internet, because they already have done it.
It's called "cable television".
Those of you who are old enough can remember that when the internet was still Darpanet, the big telcos and media companies were telling us how "cable television" was going to revolutionize communications. It was going to be small-d democratic, with tons of opportunities for local programming and public access.
And what did we get? Spike. And fucking infomercials out the ass. And some very expensive programs (with commercials no less) and lots of reruns. For this, they were given the right to public lands and the right to gouge customers. And we got "pay television" where you have to pay to watch the baseball game you used to watch for free. And monopolies. Don't forget monopolies.
The "free market" and "competition" had their shot at the internet, and they gave you cable fucking television.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Through the Communications Act of 1934 as amended over the decades Congress has given the Commission express and expansive authority to regulate common carrier services, including landline telephony; radio transmissions, including broadcast television, radio, and cellular telephony; and “cable services,” including cable television. In this case, the Commission does not claim that Congress has given it express authority to regulate Comcast’s Internet service. Indeed, in its still-binding 2002 Cable Modem Order, the Commission ruled that cable Internet service is neither a “telecommunications service” covered by Title II of the Communications Act nor a “cable service” covered by Title VI. The Commission therefore rests its assertion of authority over Comcast’s network management practices on the broad language of section 4(i) of the Act [which the courts have come to call ancillary jurisdiction] [citations omitted]
Yes, the DC Cir. ruled that the FCC didn't have ancillary jurisdiction. But way up at the top of the opinion is the bit quoted above, where the court recognizes that this issue is raised because the FCC determined, in a still binding order, that internet service was not a telecom service, which it can regulate under title II, common carriage.
If the FCC determines that internet access is a telecom service - which they have the authority to do - then it can enforce net neutrality using its normal common carriage authority. No new laws from Congress required.
> Just a quick question: Who paid for/subsidized those wires?
You are getting close to the truth of the matter. Yes the telcos paid to put in the wires but it was subsidized in a way. It was part of a deal where AT&T would run wires to MOST[1] of the country in exchange for a monopoly.
So every time this topic comes up I remind people of the only long term solution that would actually work and get ignored. Break up the phone companies one more time, this time along the correct lines. Company A gets the monopoly, the local loops and the COs and sells access at rates set by the government. Company B puts dialtone, IP or video on the wire along with as many other companies who want to compete. And do it for the cable companies as well, they have had enough time extracting monopoly rents they can be split along the same lines of the natural monopoly vs the value added services.
But of course what we get is the government will essentially nationalize the Internet. Service will go to hell if you can even get past the political cleansing. And with Big Media having achieved regulatory capture decades ago the p2p scene will be toast.
[1] Even then they carved out a lot of really rural areas that they wouldn't serve, which is why there are small local phone companies that have been around for a really long time. But all are way out in flyover country where 'real' people never go and thus are ignored.
Democrat delenda est
Just make ISPs common carriers like the phone companies. Then the FCC can enforce the rules it wants.
Not "common carriers" but rather just "telecommunications services" rather than "information services."
Ironically, it was the FCC itself that recategorized ISPs as "information services" and thus opened the door for all of this bullshit in the first place. You would think that since the trouble started with the FCC, they could just change their minds and put things back the way they were so that IP was treated the same as Voice and all the neutrality rules would then apply again.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I agree with the basic principle, but you're overlooking the fact that the telecom industry is NOT a free market and hasn't been for over 100 years. They have been granted monopoly status by government action. That's exactly the opposite of a free market. Cable TV has never been a free market. There is no competition that is legally allowed to come in and fight back. The only hope of any competition is wireless, but they can't compete with the raw speed a wired line can. And the entrenched monopolies can just lower prices and push speeds up to force new competition out of business. With protected monopoly profits no less.
In this industry, there is no freedom, no free market. Even removing the laws preventing competition isn't enough in this case. The existing companies also got huge subsidies and tax breaks to pay for the networks. Can you think of a business plan that can compete with that?
I don't think you're looking at this the right way. It's not viewed as the government censoring Comcast or ANYONE for that matter. There is no removing the freedom of speech by the FCC anywhere in this. The only perpetrators of that in this particular instance is the content provider.
It's funny how these days people view it as "I gotta be in the corporations camp" or "I gotta support the government" when there's a hidden option: "I support my own views." Google tries to kick China in the balls for freedom of speech? Great! Uncle Sam trying to give the ISPs a slap for being mean to their customers? Great! Now, the converse is not supporting things you don't like. Don't jump on a bandwagon here, unless it's going in the direction that's best for all.
Sig not found.
> AT&T put in all the miles of fiber we now have back in the 40's?
Ok, you asked for it. So sit right down and lemme tell ya a tale.
Back in the 90's there were first stirrings of the sort of reform I am talking about. They didn't split em but they did force the telcos to allow competition of a sort. Remember the CLECs? There was a lot wrong in how that scheme was setup, with the incumbent carrier retaining an unhealthy advantage but it was a start and it scared the piss out of the telcos. So they got their pet congressman (Rep Billy Tauzin R-LA in fact but R-BellSouth in reality) to knife the CLECs. This set off a chain reaction that led killed off the CLECs, and most small ISPs because they had become CLECs to get access to low enough rates to stay in the game; that in turn killed the equipment makers that depended on them, i.e. Lucent, Nortel, et al. The contagion spread until it became known as the .bomb.
Perhaps you read about that back in 2000 if you were the sort to read business pages. The rest of the country found out in 2001 after the Presidential race was over with, a major market meltdown didn't fit the media's narrative of that race you see; the story of the Clinton economic miracle that we could keep going if we elected Algore.
While the threat was solved for now, the telcos were determined a shift in their political fortunes wouldn't see a rebirth of competition. So while they had the power they used it. They bought themselves a law that would exempt any new fiber investment from being subject to being opened to competition. They told us that without that promise we would all be stuck on dialup and become uncompetitive in the world economy. And so Congress gave them what they wanted and then some, heck they even threw direct cash at em! And they are slowly rolling out fiber.... and rolling up the copper as they go. So they just refreshed the monopoly. Who cares what it cost, that gets passed to the end customer anyway.
Note that the government is just as liable for the Kaboom! as the telcos. So giving any of them more power is a bad idea.
Democrat delenda est