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FCC Chair: It's Ok For ISPs To Discriminate Traffic
sl4shd0rk writes "Remember when the ex-cable lobbyist Tom Wheeler was appointed to the FCC chair back in May of 2013? Turns out he's currently gunning for Internet Service Providers to be able to 'favor some traffic over other traffic.' It would set a dangerous precedent, considering the Open Internet Order in 2010 forbade such action if it fell under unreasonable discrimination. The bendy interpretation of the 2010 order is apparently aimed somewhat at Netflix, as Wheeler stated: 'Netflix might say, "I'll pay in order to make sure that my subscriber might receive the best possible transmission of this movie."'"
If I am Netflix, Google/YouTube, Amazon, etc. and an ISP comes to me asking for money for preferential treatment, I would just say: "Pay me $1/subscriber, or I will block your users from my site--you know, just like how you pay ESPN for their content..." I find it hard to believe these sites need ISPs more than ISPs need these sites.
Cable companies are goverment enforced monopolies in most of the country....
In my community the local government is trying to get Verizon FIOS to lay cable and provide service to challenge Charter, but Verizon is not interested.
Cable companies like to claim their monopolies are "enforced" by government, but really cable companies are perfectly happy with having the map carved up into highly profitable monopoly fiefdoms.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Your local government has picked Charter to be the local monopolist. The solution isn't to get Verizon to lay lines, it's to allow alternative cable providers to operate. If it comes down to it, require Charter to sell access to their lines. If Charter throws a fit, see how they like running cable without government granted right-of-ways.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
You know what, sure, let's let ISPs discriminate traffic. Let's let them outright block any site that doesn't pay them enough. But in exchange, they lose their safe harbor protection.
So anyone who launches a DoS or other "attack" over that ISP? They're partially liable. After all, they could have slowed or stopped that attack.
Anyone pirates anything? Liable. If they're blocking sites for their own purpose, they can obviously block illegal downloads as well, right?
Somebody posts a threat on Facebook? Cyber-bullying? LIABLE. Fraud? LIABLE.
Basically, if it's illegal and done through an Internet connection provided by that ISP, that ISP is a co-defendant in any civil or criminal suit.
Of course, the only way for an ISP to operate in such a legal environment would be to block everything by default, and only whitelist acceptable sites. Which of course cannot include anything with user-generated content - no Facebook, no Wikipedia, no Ebay. Of the 23 sites in my bookmarks bar, the only one that probably wouldn't get blocked is Wolfram Alpha.
So sure! Let ISPs start filtering traffic - as long as they take responsibility for anything that they allow through.