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FCC Votes To Consider Next Round of 'Net Neutrality' Rules
As you may have watched live earlier today, the FCC in a protester-heavy hearing has voted to formally consider a net neutrality proposal. The linked L.A. Times story says the 3-2 vote of the commissioners represents a victory for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: 'A Democrat who took over in November, Wheeler triggered outrage among public interest groups, online activists and many liberals with a plan that would for the first time allow the possibility of so-called pay-for-priority deals. Wheeler said his plan has been misconstrued and that it would not allow broadband providers to block any legal content or slow down connections in a way that is commercially unreasonable.' As the Washington Post points out, the phrase "commercially unreasonable" is a loaded one. More good coverage at Ars Technica, too.
Can we safely assume he has been bought and the others have been made promises regarding other issues they care about? The only thing I can hope for at this point is that these older, technology illiterate politicians will die off as younger people come in and change things for the better because they understand what's going on. I seriously doubt this though.
To me, the real question is: why is this self-described (and, to be sure, described by others as) Democrat acting so much like a fascist?
No good without evil, no fast lane without a slow lane.
and be done with it. That's how consumers view ISPs', so that's what we should make them. Stop catering to their silly cries that they want to be something more. They aren't and will never be.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Now the ISP can't throttle content below a speed which is up to what I pay for (since the contracts always specifies this). Thanks a lot FCC zero is in the list of number up to what I pay for.
Imagine, if you will, a crowded freeway with two lanes in each direction.
The people cry out: "Make the road wider, so traffic will flow better!"
The roadbuilder says: "Not unless we can make some lanes into toll lanes!"
The people cry out: "Anything, anything you want, just make it faster!"
The next month there are two toll lanes and a muddy ditch in each direction.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Dear Tom,
Money is in Swiss bank account and your job here is assured. Don't let us down!
Love
Your Comcast Overlord.
Quickly going downhill to the bottom of the list of third-world countries.
It's all Bush's fault!
So, basically, the FCC has rejected the notion of classifying ISPs as common carriers and is instead moving forward to adopt Wheeler's plan which allows ISPs to charge companies for faster service under the guise of "net neutrality"?
I don't need to follow any of the links in that submission to know that "commercially unreasonable" can be construed to be "to maximize profits".
In other words, he's laying the groundwork for them to do as they please, with the standard that seeking to gouge your customers is "commercially reasonable", and asking for extortion fees to make sure what you're already selling works continues to isn't "unreasonable".
Same shit. Different asshole.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Believe it or not, I can get DSL service through the ages old SDF. They support a commercial free internet and that's starting to look mighty fine about now.
I'm guessing writing my local representative and simply saying "I don't like this" isn't very convincing. Is there a petition?
That term means anything goes. There are things which are physically impossible and/or morally reprehensible that are far from commercially unreasonable.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sign and share this petition.
let the White House and politicians of any party know that this is not acceptable. we need ACTUAL Net Neutrality. the ISPs and Cable/Telcos have had their free ride and now they want to take advantage of everyone. this cannot continue!
The real insult to this injury will be when Comcast et al raise their subscriber rates to pay for the new fast lane resources that Amazon and Netflix will already be paying for. Ka-ching!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Tom Wheeler is a cable lobbyist, so I get it. He's doing his (evil, sociopathic) job. He's a bad person,, and is acting in bad faith, and he should be fired. The Republicans are idiots, they think that lack of regulation means a closer approximation of the ideal free market (even though almost every single one of the biggest commercial successes of the Internet era said the opposite, and the ISPs depend on regulation in rights-of-way, easements, and spectrum). They're ignorant true believers, and should be fired.
But Obama, Rosenworcel, and Clyburn have some 'splainin' to do. They claim to understand the issue, they claim to support net neutrality. But you can't vote to kick a puppy and then say you oppose puppy-kicking. We can't keep accepting their bullshit theatrics; "It's not so bad, because we're only kicking the puppy a few times." No more death by a thousand cuts. Stop voting to kick the puppy, or we have to stop believing your lies.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I have watched the whole thing and I anticipated that the proposal would have been passed since commercial interests often outweigh public interest - Money does talk after all, especially in America.
But I thought that the Republicans would voted for killing the Net Neutrality, how wrong I was !
It turns out that all three (3) commissioners who voted for killing Net Neutrality turns out to be DEMOCRATS !!
I owe an apology to all the Republicans and I hereby sincerely apologize for doubting you guys !!
As for the Democrats, FUCK YOU !!
The big vile ISPs are notorious for not listening. Rules will exist meant to ensure that everyone has a fair business model for ISPs and then the big guys will keep looking at the model to squeeze more and more money out of it because fair business isn't enough for those guys... they have to squeeze every last nickel out.
What we need is a global competitor to big ISPs that can deploy anywhere. Google could be that new hope, but so could a DIY off-grid group. Google's baloon experiment could be what we need but it doesn't have to stop there and also it is important to note that Google's closeness to NSA is problematic.
There are other better answers to big ISP. Teleporation could destroy the ISP business model and place the power directly in the hands of each individual. No more government spying. No more ISP bullshit.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
keeps falling further and further behind the rest of the industrialized world.
Pretty soon we'll be behind countries like Latvia and Romania.
Oh wait. . .!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1) no priority tag, data is at priority 0
2) no lower "trunk cost" to preferred customers. trunk costing used only to route traffic to the cheapest/fastest/lease congested route .
3) due to latency and jitter issues, VoIP could be set midrange, at priority 3.
4) one price for all at a specified bandwidth.
that's all the regulation you need, and you need an iron fist to maintain it, considering the number of fat weasels out there.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's clear that the FCC no longer cares about true net neutrality. At this point, the most effective way to send them a message is to throttle their connection to as many sites as possible. Maybe then, they'd actually understand what 'fast lane' means for the rest of us.
Neocities throttles fcc
FCC script
Ok we did this once 12 years ago and got DRM legal requirements non voted on. We can do this again.
For American Slashdotters:
1.) Tell the FCC what you think in polite terms and why it is a bad idea for business, consumers, and innovation?
2) Go to to your house of representatives website and use the zip code finder in the upper right hand corner. If your personal representative has a (R) in his or her name mention how you worry about the government overstepping its boundaries and ruining the largest emerging economic trend in history. Mention this FoxNews article, where Republicans are urging the FCC to bud out. If you work in the IT industry mention how you will be impacted and how unregulated internet led to the greatest economic expansion in history in the late 1990s.
If your representative has a (D) in his or her name, tell them how it will unfairly impact consumers and force unfair monopolies more power and ruin innovations with services like Netflix. Mention economic impacts as well. Use Netflix as an example of something that used to work until a few months ago and cite sources where L3 admitted it was being bottlenecked on purpose.
Also both parites are under the assumption that the internet worked just fine without net neutrality and we still had the largest explosion of GDP growth in history. So why change (Mega Telecom sales pitch). So inform them that they were regulated beforehand and this time it is different.
Remember it is not about adding new rules that were never needed. It is about preventing new rules that are not in your emails regardless of parties to counter the
FUD of the telecom lobbyists
3. Let the Obama know how you feel? Yes, he does read email and hand written letters every night. Perhaps seeing a large push in volume all angry about this may get his attention?
4. Let your senator know? Copy and paste the email you sent your congressman if he or she is of the same party. If not emphasize free market if he or she is a (r) and consumers and monopolies if he or she is a (D).
Be polite and factual as possible. Yes they are corrupt, but many are inept and get all their FUD from lobbyists. Mention we never had anything like this to counter the fud this is socialism to have the same lane and this is a fast enabler not something that slows regular traffice down yada yada. Mention your IT background too to build credibility.
If enough people whine it may delay or cancel the vote.
http://saveie6.com/
Just what the hell is "commercially unreasonable" thought the whole point of a commercial company was to make as much profit as possible.
...and upgrades they are currently planning that would be put on the chopping block with common carrier status. Be specific. Tell us EXACTLY what new innovations and upgrades you will be forced to cancel because of this.
I can only imagine the math is something like:
"We have Z mbits of bandwidth per customer with current infrastructure. We want to use 80% of that for our value-add services like our own streaming and on-demand services. The remaining 20% is for end-user internet access and we've already oversold that by 50%".
I can only imagine the "innovation" and "upgrades" they will lose out on are their own, internal revenue-generating uses designed to supplant third party services like Netflix/Amazon/iTunes.
I don't think for a minute that they are designing and planning any kind of bandwidth/capacity upgrades designed for general-purpose end-user internet access. Any increases in network capacity or bandwidth (if there are any at all) are strictly reserved for in-house high-margin media consumption services they want to sell, cap-free and un-shaped to their subscribers while they cap and shape Netflix et al into a stuttering, low-res wasteland.
No, if you buy a 35 Mbps plan means that under no circumstances will you receive content faster than 35 Mbps. It's the maximum, not the minimum, and who doesn't know this? Boo "Brian Fung", technology writer for The Washington Post.
It's not physically possible to guarantee 35 Mbps transfer rates, since the theoretical maximum speed is always the speed at which the server can send out the data, which could be 35 Mbps or 1 Kbps. 35 Mbps would merely be the last-mile speed, with all kinds of unadvertised potential bottlenecks elsewhere in the network.
Net neutrality isn't about guaranteeing a minumum speed, it's about having ISPs do their job--providing approximately the service advertised by building enough capacity at both sides of their network, both at the homes and at the connections to other ISPs, backbones, and popular data sources. Without net neutrality, ISPs in a monopoly or duopoly situation have an incentive to neglect that other side of the network, to NOT build more capacity but just give existing capacity to those that pay.
At this point I think we need to just go ahead and eliminate the FCC and Congress needs to legislate these regulations directly. We are beyond the point of just needing to play some BS game of musical chairmen to appoint another industry lobbyist to regulate their own industry. From no longer licensing new radio stations to this idiotic spin the wheels and do whatever you want as long as you hire the right lawyers as lobbyists kind of bullshit regulation the FCC is a farce
Your ISP sells you a product which they know is oversold in capacity. Instead of fixing their capacity problem they now try to get you a their consumer to not use their product (the cap limit).
The concept of TOECDN solves the distribution of static content on the Internet. NetFlix, Youtube, Steam and whatever you are using to go over your cap can and should be fixed by TOECDN.
TOECDN place the cache server as close as possible to you as a consumer - even with the possibility to have your own cache server at home!
If you place cache-servers within the ISP networks, they, as a benefit, don't have to upgrade their networks connection to be able to push out more data to their consumers.
Before anyone reply and say: it won't work, it will never work, I will make sure its not going to work, I have invested heavenly in CDN companies stocks so your solution can not see the light, etc...
I would like to ask you: How does _your_ solution looks like to be able to let anyone on the Internet to cache their content on cache-servers within a ISP?
http://www.toecdn.org/
Finding God in a Dog
Lets regulate netflix instead.
99% of slashdot doesn't even want to admit there's a problem.
Netlfix (and yes, this is entirely about netflix and almost no-one else) has no finacial reason to be responsible with how they transmit data. Every ISP out there hates them. Not because they compete. Netflix is one of the few reasons people haven't gone entirely to their cellphones for the internet. What they hate is that Netflix is completely irresponsible when it comes to how they handle transmitting their data. No Cache. No real peering. They switch networks seemingly at random with no notification. All at tremendous detriment to the ISPs network.
The ISPs don't want to end net neutrality. Quite the opposite. Traffic shaping and bandwidth caps are expensive. You need equipment and people to deal with that. But they have to make Netflix poor network decisions hurt netflix. It's the only way they can see to reign them in. The FCC's answer is what you see here. I think it's a terrible idea.
What I'd suggest is something a bit more reasonable. Why is it that Netflix is unregulated? They're basically a broadcaster right? Why not get the ISPs together with Netflix and come up with some industry standards? If you're going to supply 34% of the content during peak usage, why shouldn't you be under some obligation to do it in a way that wasn't going to harm the network? Wouldn't that be more reasonable than the insanity they're suggesting now?
Or are we going to continue to pretend there's this vast ISP conspiracy to stop you from using the internet because losing customers is somehow possible?
No thanks. I'd rather have the Internet work instead.
And it's not just bandwidth that's the issue. If Comcast's X1 platform is an example of the "innovation" they're talking about we are in big trouble. It's the most poorly designed and implemented piece of technology I've ever used. Buggy, fewer features, less user friendly, and more expensive. Under X1, you only get one DVR per household. So if you want a DVR in your bedroom or you need to pause live TV while making dinner? Too bad because with X1 you now can only have "satellite boxes" in those other rooms. They have the same functionality as your cable box circa 2002. Do you like rebooting your DVR on a daily or hourly basis? I hope so because with X1 that's probably gonna happen. Everything about the interface is designed to sell Comcast content so no Netflix. Super slow and horribly designed menus too. Comcast "innovation", yikes!
I hope your bosses give you a really big cookie for debasing yourself so readily.
How's that free market working out for you?
(written from a "socialist" European nation, where data caps on mobile data, let alone broadband with associated restrictions, would be totally unheard of)
You have big players on either side of this, but the big communication companies have probably donated much more to politicians. AT&T is the 4th largest donor to federal politicians over the period 1989-2012, for example. Also, the big communications companies got their man on the inside as the head of the FCC. These rules could go through, and it'll start driving prices up, but by then, the voting public won't make the connection between any politician and rising prices or worse service. Most people don't understand what net neutrality is.
Net result: Keeps the big donors happy, very little or no voting consequence, especially with responsibility plausibly divided between both parties.
Whatever your take on this situation, please for fuck's sake, send your comments to the FCC. Seriously, people, /. is nice and all, but griping here does fuck-all for getting better internet. Griping to the FCC on FCC's website like they asked the public to do, on the other hand, would at least mean there's an official record of what the people actually want.
Here is the link to the FCC to file your comment. http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comme...
love the taste, hate the texture
The FCC is now going to tell every big internet company how to invent things. Makes me feel so much better knowing that a bunch of bureaucrats are in control. Here's to an internet that runs like the big three networks and ma bell!
Remember back when Obama promised us to keep lobbyists out of his administration? Those were the days...
What can we learn from Boston's venerable Jamaicaway, a three lane road with two in each direction?
The FCC's concern has been directed by the moneyed interests of big media (e.g. Netflix, Google) and big networking (the ISPs and also Google). Both sides have legitimate business concerns, so this is understandable and not intrinsically evil. It is certainly true that connections with the media companies are responsible for the large share of internet bandwidth. But this completely ignores the rest of internet traffic, about which the FCC and Congress and certainly the News Media are nearly unaware. (Because that isn't where the money is.)
The original capability of the Internet was to provide (reliable?) connections between arbitrary machines. The original concerns with decentralization and automatic self-reconfiguration (nuclear war) are perhaps not so much the concern any more, but it is still the case that the Internet must support arbitrary connections between arbitrary devices. I use various SSL/VPN/RDP to work from my laptop at home to development machines at my employer's office. The bandwidth isn't trivial, but small compared to receiving video or even mp3. Netflix and Google and the FCC and Congress and the Media aren't much concerned about that service, but I sure am as should be anyone concerned about the health of the economy. And we are moving into the so-called Internet of Things, so Google's subsidiaries can monitor the setting of my thermostat and the contents of my refrigerator for me. Where does this traffic fit into Net Gnutrality? Who advocates for it? Next year might be too late.
Of course, managing any limited resource requires policies, and usually some kind of cost pricing. (I'm ignoring here the technically-attractive argument that net bandwidth should be implementationally cheap enough as to not need measurement. The problem with unmeasured resouces is that applications soon find ways to overuse those resources.) Assigning the "costs" of network traffic are more complex than is obvious. My connection to my office (15 hops, 5 miles as a carrier pigeon would navigate it, but about 60 miles as the backbone sites route it) first traverses my local ISP (the company that bought the name of the company that in my childhood was the de facto national phone system), then traverses a couple hops through another backbone provider, then a couple more hops through the backbone/local provider my employer uses. Most of the time reliability and latency are admirable -- Emacs works just like a local program. But every tens of minutes latency suddenly becomes about 1.5 seconds, I believe at one of the interfaces between these big three providers.
All three of these big network providers bear some cost from my traffic. (My emacs load is small compared to Netflix, but the issues of throughput and latency are similar.) The providers at each end have some direct cost-recovery mechanism (monthly fees) but the one in the middle does not. There are complex contractual reimbursement protocols between backbone providers. They all deserve to be compensated for the costs. I'd like to understand these contracts better (except I have other things to do with my life) but I'd insist the FCC _show_ that they understand them.
BTW, the nature of some of these compensation mechanisms is that they are (and should be trans-national), not directly subject to Congressional or Administrative (FCC) regulation.
My conclusion would be that the forces on connectivity providers are similar to the cost structure of other public utilities, the same as the nice people who provide you electricity, water, sewerage, and (in the past) telephone connection, and that there should be a wall between these utilities and content providers. That would be the sane solution from the public policy perspective. Whoops, I used the concepts "sane" and "public policy" in the same sentence. Don't expect it to work out that way, as money and Congress are involved.
Anything else is false advertising, contractual interference, and/or a Sherman Act violation.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
It's a shame that this has to be explained here, but the Internet is not public property nor is it an unclaimed natural resource. Simply put, the Internet is a number of computers wired together for communication. These computers and cabling are privately owned. In a country where the property rights of individuals (including individuals organized as corporations) are supposed to be protected by the Constitution, no one, not even the government, should be allowed to provide a benefit to some at the expense of others. If communication companies want to charge extra for enhanced service, it is within their rights to do so without interference from bureaucratic regulation or the outright elimination of their rights by legislation. Net Neutrality is really a "legal" way for some people to obtain a benefit, they otherwise would not be allowed, but by the force of government. All government power is the power of physical compulsion, which means Net Neutrality is aiming a gun at private individuals in order to compel them to forgo their own judgement regarding their private property to serve the ends of others, who have no rights to the property, If your life, including your property, are the means to other people's ends you are a slave. As in Orwell's "1984" where "war is peace, peace is war", Net Neutrality's claim to freedom is an equally mind-bending paradox--freedom is slavery, slavery is freedom.
that he's an empty suit full of hot air. that's probably why only cowards are willing to defend him.
Look at his Ãoehollow eyesÃ, Tom Wheeler is a psychopath, a separate subspecies, a nonhuman human
Did anyone who commented actually read the rule? It was about 118 pages long and had 100 instances of them asking for comments.