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Federal Court Kills Net Neutrality, Says FCC Lacks Authority.
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report from Gizmodo, a U.S. Appeals Court has invalidated the FCC's Net Neutrality rules. From the decision: 'Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. Because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order.' Could this be the final nail in the coffin for Net Neutrality? Or will the FCC fight back? This submitter really, really hopes they fight back..."
It's past time to just classify them as common carriers and stop trying to make an end-run around the rules.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
There's a comment in the article stating that the court found the FCC regulations are not needed because consumers have a choice in broadband providers. That argument always make me shake my head. I have one broadband option - Comcast. Verizon FIOS isn't here. I suspect most people are actually in the same boat as me. There really is no viable broadband option to my local cable provider. Who/where are these people that have these so-called choices?
smallwebsite.ext cannot be found. Please verify you have bribed your ISP to allow access, and that you have typed the domain correctly.
If you are still having trouble, try being a larger corporation again later.
The free market, especially in the broadband sector, has shown time and again, across all state lines, through cities, and in local neighborhoods, to be a fair, equal-service provider to all customers.
When I had Cox Cable, and they were the only provider available other than Dial Up, i was treated with respect, my calls were answered promptly, and my network node was NOT overloaded for months.
As soon as Verizon FIOS moved in, however, it was hell. Prices doubled, speeds were cut to 1/5th what they used to be, and service calls took 2 weeks longer to get answers on...
I, for one, wish they'd bring back the monopoly carrier. At least then I was treated fairly. I mean, just look at what Google is doing -- they moved in, and prices went up 3-4x ! and the speeds are 10x slower!
As opposed to when the people on the right are left with their hands in the cookie jar ... Fraud, abuse of power, general asshatedness.
Sorry there, dumbass, but politicians of all stripes are douchebags.
The ones on the right just pander more to large corporations and their drinking buddies, to the detriment of all of us.
The FCC won't fight back, in fact this result was probably the intention along.
Prior to joining the FCC, Chairman Wheeler was Managing Director at Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm investing in early stage Internet Protocol (IP)-based companies. He served as President and CEO of Shiloh Group, LLC, a strategy development and private investment company specializing in telecommunications services and co-founded SmartBrief, the internet’s largest electronic information service for vertical markets. From 1976 to 1984, Chairman Wheeler was associated with the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), where he was President and CEO from 1979 to 1984. Following NCTA, Chairman Wheeler was CEO of several high tech companies, including the first company to offer high speed delivery of data to home computers and the first digital video satellite service. From 1992 to 2004, Chairman Wheeler served as President and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
http://www.fcc.gov/leadership/tom-wheeler
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Generally speaking the idea of anti-Net Neutrality is an anti-business, conservative idea. It "stifles" the "free market" by forcing regulations on businesses. The conservative's "free market" approach would be to let ISPs decide if they want to charge on a per-site basis and let consumers go to other ISPs who will simply do the same thing.
That depends on which Appeals Court it is. There are thirteen of them.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Sigh... if only the 'lefty" judges assigned to this case hadn't AGREED WITH VERIZON...
Seriously, apparently the only dissenting opinion is from the Reagan appointee
Hey! Lefties are just as capable as righties. Sure, we might need special scissors, but, damn it, we're people too!
It sounds like this is a technicality because the FCC's rules are inconsistent with law. They need to fix them.
I am reposting this comment by "CakeStapler" from GizModo because it explains it well:
As we explain in this opinion, the Commission has established that section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 vests it with affirmative authority to enact measures encouraging the deployment of broadband infrastructure. The Commission, we further hold, has reasonably interpreted section 706 to empower it to promulgate rules governing broadband providers’ treatment of Internet traffic, and its justification for the specific rules at issue here—that they will preserve and facilitate the “virtuous circle” of innovation that has driven the explosive growth of the Internet—is reasonable and supported by substantial evidence. That said, even though the Commission has general authority to regulate in this arena, it may not impose requirements that contravene express statutory mandates. Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. Because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order.
(Emphasis mine)
So, the FCC will remove their exemption from treatment as common carriers, reenact the regulations, and there's nothing to see here. 20 minutes ago
Sure, but the conservative's "free market" approach would also leave it up to companies to decide if they want to pollute, allow car dealers to lock out Tesla (because they don't want competition), absolve Monsanto from liability, further deregulate the financial industry to allow Wall Street to rob us like they were doing before the '08 meltdown, and further extending copyright.
In other words, more crony-capitalism where the rich are free to make backroom deals which benefit them, and which harm the rest of us, and the 'freedom' of the market mostly restricted to big players who paid off the politicians.
No, this requires government interference with the free market (legislation against Tesla's business model). In a free market, Tesla could... *cough* MAR-KET freely to whomever.
sig: sauer
uh isp's were already throttling competing video services while not counting their own service against the throttle allowances.
that is quite simply the whole reason for the whole debate.
imagine if google as an isp would throttle netflix unusable and just allowing google video - or throttling bing search unusable. that's the scenario.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It was ALWAYS a tool to impose government control over the internet.
Yeah, it's not like the government had control over the Internet before. Except for:
- when it was run by the Department of Defense for the early part of its existence
- when it was opened up to the public by then-Senator Al Gore and placed under the jurisdiction of the FCC
- when they paid AT&T to build and improve the network
- when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton tried to stop all Internet pornography
- when the FBI created Echelon under the Clinton administration
- when Admiral Poindexter started the Total Information Awareness project in 2001
- when the NSA cooperated with Google and AT&T and Verizon and a bunch of other major corporations to spy on everybody..
So clearly Net Neutrality was the thin wedge that was going to give government control of the Internet, right?
I am officially gone from
The future: broadband packages sold like cable packages.
Basic: $59.99/mo gets you the top 100 websites like whatismyip.com (with commercials inserted before your IP is finally revealed), comcast.com, nbc.com, and 80 other websites you've never heard of nor would ever visit. All with added commercial interstitials.
Friends and Family: $89.99 gets you the basic package plus access to twitter, myspace and livejournal so you can share your experiences on The Comasticnet with all of your friends. Every third post is replaced with an ad, and every morning you automatically tweet how Comcastic your day is.
Movie Watcher: $129.99 gets you the basic package plus access to nbc.com streaming*. You can buy the netflix channel for an additional $10/mo and youtube SD for $5/mo or HD (720p videos only) for $10/mo. As a special deal you can sign up for Movie Watcher and Friends and Family for a low introductory price of $150/mo (*: standard rates only allow 24 hours of video streaming per month. Additional programming charged at pay per view rates of $5/MB)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
That's not true (nor is the AC response to your post). My initial knee jerk reaction was certainly that it's anti-business and over regulation (read that again - over regulation is a problem; regulation might be needed, but over-regulation is bad). But after giving it some thought, I am completely on board with the idea of net neutrality. I am my ISP's customer, not the content provider. If Netflix is using my ISP's bandwidth, it's because I, as the customer, requested it - and I'm paying for it. If my ISP doesn't like how I'm using the service that I am paying for, their beef is with me.
The obvious reason they want to go after the content provider is because then their internal competitor to the service (in this case, video streaming) gets an unfair advantage... even if they're "paying," it's only "funny money" if they are owned by the same parent company. If, however, they went after me, then both services are equally penalized. That's a second strike in favor of net neutrality.... what the ISPs want is obviously anti-competitive... that is NOT something a free market person supports. I MIGHT support "anti" net neutrality if the ISP was barred from competing against services that they would otherwise be charging access fees for... but even then my former complaint is still valid.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
No, they'll just gouge Netflix for a lot of money that could have been spent on content for us subscribers. The result is that the content cuts we've already started to see at Netflix will likely continue and get even worse.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The technology isn't the problem. It's immature, but the fundamentals are there and improvement is incremental from here on. The problem is node density. Go see if you can find three other people living within wireless range of your home who share your interest. It's statistically unlikely.
You trolling me? Net Neutrality was preventative to say that it never stopped anything is like saying that stoplight never stopped anyone from T-boning someone. It didn't happen because the FCC didn't allow it to. I believe most if not all the major ISP's were hoping to have a tiered system and have been saying so for years. It's well documented their lobbying on the matter.
As for the Snowden bullshit do you think for a second that just by not having net neutrality corporations are not going to hand over information to the NSA? Government is going to be involved in data traffic regardless of who is the carrier and how they handle it. They could care less in that regard. That will change nothing with privacy at all. So why allow companies to fuck everyone over with their large oligopoly.
Yes, by conservative lawmakers who claim to be proponents of a "free" market, when in fact they're in proponents of crony-capitalism.
In other words, the conservatives braying about a free market (which is a myth) are full of shit (which isn't a myth).
I would rather be able to choose my ISP from a rich selection of carriers and not have other ISPs (or my own) interfere with my communicating with businesses.
What part of full spectrum corporate domination don't you get? It's oligarchies all the way!
In this case, Obama's FCC is fighting against Verizon and other telecom companies and defending net neutrality. But don't let basic facts right in front of your face influence your pre-prepared bullshit.
If Obama is a lefty, all of Europe is dark red with rampant communists.
Seems accurate and agrees with what's going on there.
Netflix should very loudly sue all of the major ISPs in the states, asking the court to affirm its right to reach its users at the same rate content-partners (or other business units) of the ISP pay.
They should make all sorts of noise about anti-competitive practices, damage to the Internet, corruption and bribery, lack of last-mile competition, lack of common-carrier status, etc.
They wouldn't win any judgments, but at least they could provide exposure and coverage in mainstream media so more of the population would grasp what's at stake here.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
They consider Verizon Wireless a competitor. Which is bullshit because Comcast and Verizon Wireless advertise each others' services. Competitors rarely do this. This is of course aside from the obvious reason that it is physically impossible for wireless broadband to come anywhere close to the quality of landline cable or fiber.
But you probably know by now that they don't actually believe their own arguments. Debating their validity with them is a waste of energy because this is not a symptom of their poor judgement but rather of corruption--we live in a plutocracy. It's only going to get worse, and Americans are so misinformed that there's a chance they won't ever realize how bad they've got it.
If you want real competition any time soon, the only choice you have is to move somewhere else--for instance, Europe. You'll probably be happier there anyway.
Netflix, in its old life as a small Blockbuster-fighting DVD-maiing rebel is already dead, after a bout of insanity in apparent pursuit of dark knowledge and money. Its current form, ostensibly an independent being but truly a zombie* raised by the vile magicks of Big Media, aims for exclusive deals with cable providers (who just happen to be ISPs) and to make its own content** as an excuse to lobby for tougher copyright. I would avoid touching the shambling corpse, lest you come down with something and be damned to eternal unrest, availability excuses that involve repeated chants of "distributors", "market segmentation", and "contracts", and high fees.
*It didn't quite manage lichform, but almost certainly tried.
**Which would lead to the whole "doing DRM'd streaming video by breaking HTML5 with DRM-friendly extensions" thing, if HTML5 was a stable or good standard in any sense but name.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Yes, you have a point. When I used to be a bit less mature, I would have swallowed it uncritically.
But now I am more persuaded by the counterpart. There are thousands of corporations, and not a single one of them is accountable to the public. It is REALLY too bad when all of them suck. Hopefully, the government you have IS accountable to the public. But if it is not, then how it mishandles the internet is far down the list of reasons it needs to be changed. And there is a chance it WILL be changed, too, because it is one target. You sure as hell will never change the behavior of those thousands of corporations, except by changing government policy.
Republican here Ralph Wiggam is righ- umm.. Correct. :)
One thing Obama's administration has gotten right is an FCC that is at least TRYING for net neutrality. I own stock in AT&T and think what they are Verizon are doing is a bunch of crap.
I had a sucky sig.
until we start interconnecting bbs at the local level again. I don't know about the rest of Slashdot, but I alone have the know-how, the equipment, the balls of brass, and the resources to interconnect everyone on my street. There are many others like me in my town. If we have to, we can pool our resources and build a local information community in a matter of weeks. There's also another factor that would make this all the more easy. The cable companies have given us a bus network. All we have to do is put modems of our own control on the same lines that the cable companies are using to push their systems and BOOM! there's a mini-net on their infrastructure that they wouldn't necessarily be able to understand, since the community router system would be capable of piping everything encrypted. It would be a trivial matter to set this up among those who are so technically inclined.
Many of those items on the list are indeed bad, so why are you pushing for yet ANOTHER example of the government trying to screw with our internet to add to the list?
You're misunderstanding the argument. Your reasoning appears to be:
1. If Net Neutrality is implemented, the government can control the Internet.
2. If the government can control the Internet, it can (unnamed sinister action).
My argument is this:
1. The government can control the Internet without Net Neutrality.
2. If the government can control the Internet, it can (unnamed sinister action).
3. Therefor, whether or not Net Neutrality is implemented has no bearing on whether the government can (unnamed sinister action).
My guess, based on the rest of your post, is that you are a libertarian, and thus you oppose any rule the government makes on the theory that any rule the government makes benefits the government rather than accomplishing its stated purpose. My view is that sometimes government action serves the government, sometimes it actually accomplishes its stated purpose, and it's worth figuring out the difference because often that stated purpose is worth doing.
I am officially gone from
There are no 'leftists' in US politics. You only have extreme right and moderate right, and there are very few of the latter.
There are no 'leftists' in US politics. You only have extreme right and moderate right, and there are very few of the latter.
True. What passes for left here is regarded as right of center in most countries.
What passes for far left is what most countries call "moderate".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Only if you have absolutely no clue about what is left and what is right.
Because there are alternatives for shopping. I have exactly 1 choice for high-speed Internet, Time Warner Cable. When they roll out their tiered Internet and I don't like it, what do you propose I do?
And if they were the only grocery store, you'd just cheerfully starve, right?
And when you grow up, you'll realize that this little theory only works if the customers have alternatives.
If you'd like an example: text messaging: It uses some empty space during the messages that a GSM phone has to send to the tower anyway. It costs the phone company virtually nothing (just the routing servers, which aren't pricey). Yet there are zero cell providers in the US that offer really "free" text messaging. All of them require paying more than "voice only" plans.
How about baggage fees on airlines? With every airline other than Southwest charging them, customers actually don't have alternatives.
And that doesn't even get into the situations where nominal competitors directly collude to screw over customers.
There were also no problems while the FCC introduced the rule. So what is your point?
Do you know what the ISP's want to do? They want to make teirs for services like cable and have you pay extra for say streaming netflix services. They could block access to youtube unless you pay the bill.
So? That's how markets work you pay tolls to go places and you pay for goods and services.
What this ends up doing is hurting the openess of the internet. You are so worried about having gov. influence in your service that you didn't even consider corp. influence? Your ISP has a streaming service that they want you to buy into. It's not as good as netflix or amazon prime so they can't compete. So instead they mark up the price of being able to connect to those services instead of subsidizing their own. It closes pathways on the internet and even if you do work around it can cause lag time.
It's not to say that it would happen but it has been suggested by the gentlemen at AT&T and Time Warner.
Now having the net neutrality laws in place what did that do? Maybe it jacked up the price that some ISP's offer their services at, though I highly doubt that. But what it did was keep all of those channels open and not filter things out. They couldn't prevent access to competing systems for a toll.
The reason there wasn't a problem before is because they were doing something crazy, like future proofing the internet from ISPs trying to muck up the openess of the internet. Streaming, gaming, facebook and so much more is now a part of our lives that an open internet for all is very important. It would be like having the great wall of china but instead it's instituted by the Corp. and they block or limit content they don't want you to have.
So I might not be Einstein but the implications of removing net neutrality could be very consequential to everyone.
Bullshit
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
there is no left in US
See? I *can* say "there is no left in US". And believe it or not, it's actually true. there is no left in US...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
From official statement from House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) this ruling is a "victory for jobs and innovation." See http://energycommerce.house.gov/press-release/upton-walden-applaud-court-decision-favor-internet-free-government-control.
We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share ... sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that’s crazy. Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver, or less?
-- Ronald Reagan, 1985
These days a remark like that would get him labelled a "Leftist", if not worse.
Or probably closer to the truth, you think that you are a moderate but are really a leftist. That would make anyone to the right look extreme to you. Most people, including myself, see themselves as center moderates regardless of what they actually are.
According to the Wikipedia article you linked to, no country has a firm meaning of what right or left is: "The terms left-wing and right-wing are widely used in the United States but, as on the global level, there is no firm consensus about their meaning. "
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
That's how it was in the US back in the late 90's and early '00s. I remember seeing billboards everywhere when I was traveling, such as: DSL 6/1 for $9/mo, or 10/512 Cable for $19.95/mo from *dozens* of companies. What happened? Well those companies went tits up because back in '05ish the government scrapped regulation on selling the last mile. Similar to what we didn't have in Canada for a long time. You could only get broadband through the major players--or through local telcos who invested heavily in broadband like North Norwich Telecom(NNT)-now called execulink after NNT bought them out, Now that we have this up in Canada, with more or less open last mile. we see dozens of new companies selling broadband on the last mile from DSL to Cable, making money and selling it for less than the incumbents.
And down in the US at my place in Florida, I'm paying $69/mo for 10/1 service and in Canada I'm paying $45/mo for 25/1(I could get 25/10 for $3 more, but I haven't switched off my locked grandfathered plan) from one of those companies that buy last mile access.
Om, nomnomnom...