The FCC Net Neutrality Comment Deadline Has Arrived: What Now?

blottsie writes After months of heated debate, viral campaigns, deliberate "slowdowns" and record-breaking public responses, the Federal Communications Commission is finally set to decide how "net neutrality"—the principle that all data must be treated equally by Internet service providers (ISPs)—should look in the U.S., or if it should exist at all. Today, Sept. 15, the FCC officially closes its public comment period on its latest net neutrality proposal. The plan enables ISPs to discriminate against certain types of data, in certain circumstances, by charging extra for broadband “fast lanes” between content providers—like Netflix or YouTube—and users.

Comments

Now they Ignore It

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, they do not care.

Re:Now they Ignore It

[zlives]

no i think they will print them out and then hold giant petition burning gatherings.

Re:Now they Ignore It

[Jason Levine]

From: Tom Wheeler
To: All My Friends At Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc.
Subject: Network Neutrality

Message:

I thought you guys could use a laugh... or a couple hundred thousand laughs. I've attached a file containing all of the pro-Network Neutrality comments the FCC received. The idiots actually thought we'd take their comments into consideration!

Which reminds me, let me know when you finish touching up that FCC Network Neutrality Policy so we can publicly release it.

Your humble servant,

Thomas Wheeler

Re:Now they Ignore It

[fustakrakich]

Why should they? Where's the incentive?

Re:Now they Ignore It

[GNious]

you forgot to include the word "Dingo" in there...

Re:Now they Ignore It

[kilodelta]

I don't so much think they don't care but that corporate interests in Congress have threatened to cut their funding if they move ISP's into common carrier status.

Spoilers

[GameboyRMH]

And now that all our objections have been duly noted, they'll go ahead and end net neutrality anyway.

Re:Spoilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos. It's all of you who voted for Kang that turned the FCC and pretty much every other regulatory agency into corporate lackies.

Re:Spoilers

[diamondmagic]

Net Neutrality is a technically a routing policy that individual nodes in the network can comply with. My home router is most certainly not neutral, for instance, and that's a good thing, I like how I have traffic prioritized on my network.

Of course, that definition doesn't really make sense in this context. Perhaps you refer to enforcing a law that brings legal action against router operators that don't implement the routing policy. But that doesn't really make any sense either; the FCC never had any policy on the books to begin with. You can't end something by continuing to not have a law three decades after the fact.

(Fwiw, I'm totally down for not enacting more laws. The FCC is not your friend, and I doubt they'd be an effective packet police.)

Re:Spoilers

[Cabriel]

I don't see why this is such a huge deal in the US. Why not both allow so-called "Fast Lanes" and also mandate a high minimum for the "Not-so-fast Lanes" which will prevent ISPs from serving subpar rates to customers?

Re:Spoilers

[Smidge204]

This doesn't address what is the true threat: It's not about ISPs choking bandwidth to individual consumers, it's about ISPs choking bandwidth to their competitors.

For example, Comcast offers, internet, streaming video, cable television and telephone services.

If I, as a third party, want to offer telephone services that use broadband internet (VoIP), Comcast will be able to make my access to their consumers so crap that I can't compete with their telephone service. The only way around that would be to pay them for "fast lane" access which will also ruin my ability to compete as it cuts deeply into my budget.

The end user can have all the bandwidth the infrastructure can provide, and it won't mean a damn thing because my traffic, specifically, will be choked by the monopoly ISP guarding the gates.
=Smidge=

Re:Spoilers

[zlives]

i see this as an opportunity to finally talk about the ISP monopolies. let the BW games begin.
I for one welcome my google fiber overlords?

Re:Spoilers

[ganjadude]

no how about we keep all traffic on a level playing field. Or if they want to implement "slow lanes" I the consumer should be paid by the cable companies for putting the traffic I requested in the slow lane

Re:Spoilers

[Jason Levine]

The problem is, right now, we have the choice of letting the ISPs decide their own Network Neutrality policies or letting the FCC decide it.

If the ISPs decide it, you can be sure that they would enact Fast Lanes and Slow Lanes. Any content that competes with them (e.g. Internet Video Services) would get tossed into the slow lane and would be unusable unless the service paid the ISPs big money for fast lane access. As the ISPs are monopolies/duopolies, customers couldn't switch to another ISP. Requiring people to move to a different part of the country for Internet access isn't reasonable. Especially since there would be no guarantee that the ISP whose area they moved into wouldn't either get bought out or wouldn't go fast lane themselves. Letting the ISPs decide is effectively kissing Network Neutrality goodbye.

If the government decides, there's the chance of corruption (ISPs "lobby" Wheeler to make the "right" decision), but at least the government is somewhat answerable to the people. If a million people wrote to Comcast telling them not to do X and Comcast did X anyway, there would be no consequences. If a million people told the government not to do X and they did it anyway, there's a chance of consequences.

I'll agree that, ideally, it would be best if the government didn't have to get involved. Unfortunately, I don't see any scenario in which "non involvement" doesn't immediately result in Network Neutrality being killed off.

Re:Spoilers

[Jason Levine]

Because ISPs would immediately accept these limitations and then work behind the scenes to allow relaxing of the rules - or would flaunt them openly and get mere slaps on the wrist. Look at what happened when Verizon was under contract (having received taxpayer money) to wire an entire state with high speed access. They didn't do it and, when brought to task, argued that their wireless network counted as "wiring the state." The state government bought it and declared that Verizon lived up to their end of the contract.

The same is true for merger conditions on Comcast-Time Warner. Comcast will agree to the conditions and then will start working behind the scenes to ensure that they don't actually have to follow them.

Re:Spoilers

[diamondmagic]

I doubt Net Neutrality is about "fast lanes". Isn't that called... you know, bandwidth? When I pay my Internet carrier per Mbps for a dedicated pipe, how is that not paying for a "fast(er) lane"?

Re:Spoilers

[Charliemopps]

I don't see why this is such a huge deal in the US. Why not both allow so-called "Fast Lanes" and also mandate a high minimum for the "Not-so-fast Lanes" which will prevent ISPs from serving subpar rates to customers?

Because our country was founded to escape the fascist oppression of and English king that used arbitrary rules/laws/policies to oppress us. People at the time were extremely upset that these laws were getting passed and we had no say in what laws were passed. We were taxed, sent to jail, required to serve in the military, yet had no say in English parliament. Thats where the American saying "No taxation without representation" comes from.

Similarly, laws recently in the US, including Net Neutrality, seems to be getting enacted by comity despite vast and overwhelming opposition by the public. Given the way our laws work here... the government does not get into the nitty gritty of how a thing works usually. So, more likely than not, this ruling will be as simple as net neutrality is Ok or its not ok. Much like Gun control... guns are legal here with few limitations. Freedom of speach in this country is so extreme here is shocking to most of the rest of the world. For good or for ill that's how it turns out.

So the problem is, if the feds give them an inch, the ISPs will take a hell of a lot more than a mile. The FCC will find it impossible to enforce any particular form of net neutrality given their current power. They can either green light it as a whole and hope the ISPs play nice (yea right) or just say "NO!" and be done with it once and for all.

Re:Spoilers

[Delwin]

The problem isn't fast vs. slow - it's content creators vs. bandwidth providors... and the vertical monopolies that arise when they merge.

Re:Spoilers

[diamondmagic]

That makes even less sense... How's that a problem unique to Internet providers, never mind routing rules on routers?

Re:Spoilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that has nothing to do with the discussion. Maybe you don't understand what's going on because you haven't looked into it. No-one is saying that different speed connections can't be sold. That's not controversial in the least. The issue is ISPs throttling based upon provider source. If you pay for a 100Mbps connection I imagine you expect it should be pretty close to 100Mbps to any endpoint on the internet barring their end having a slower connection, not you can only get 2.5Mbps to Netflix because ISP don't like them but you can have your full 100Mbps to app store owned by ISP.

Re:Spoilers

[diamondmagic]

The issue is ISPs throttling based upon provider source.

Now there's an actual Net Neutrality violation. But...

If you pay for a 100Mbps connection I imagine you expect it should be pretty close to 100Mbps to any endpoint on the internet barring their end having a slower connection, not you can only get 2.5Mbps to Netflix because ISP don't like them but you can have your full 100Mbps to app store owned by ISP.

You don't need legislation for that, isn't that called fraud?

Re:Spoilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, right minded consumers call that fraud, but ISPs are trying really hard to call it "fast lanes" and "slow lanes". That's exactly what everyone is upset about. I think you should take another close look at what's on the table over at the FCC.

Re:Spoilers

[SumDog]

No. That's totally different. Network Neutrality means that when you pay for a given quality of service, you get that same quality of service to any destination on the Internet.

When you pay for 30Mbps, you expect that maximum of that to any Internet destination (of course within reason of normal traffic congestion and delays on that path). But what if an ISP says, "Well for YouTube, Google is forking over $1m for this dedicated fiber lane to their data centre." So now they charge you a little extra, maybe $5 a month, for faster YouToob. Now you have two Internets.

Re:Spoilers

[BringsApples]

but at least the government is somewhat answerable to the people.

Citation please.

Re:Spoilers

[Forgefather]

The point of net nuetrality isn't about what speeds are sent to your home it's about the relative speeds of the web content that you browse. You pay for 100Mbps and yes that connection is capped at that speed, but without net nuetrality the individual sites that you visit could be throttled to well below the speed that you ALREADY PAID FOR. That is the key. You have paid to access all sites at a certain speed as determined by your plan, but the ISPs have decided that in order for you to recieve the speed that you paid for those websites must also pay.

Re:Spoilers

[dissy]

I don't see why this is such a huge deal in the US. Why not both allow so-called "Fast Lanes" and also mandate a high minimum for the "Not-so-fast Lanes" which will prevent ISPs from serving subpar rates to customers?

Sounds great in theory, but in the US the term "broadband" is defined such that the minimum requirement is 128kbps (the speed of a fully utilized BRI line - the original high speed connection)

Since I don't see them successfully raising that first the past hundred or so attempts, the fact they are moving forward on any neutrality issues is pretty much a certainty your plan will never happen here.

In fact given the lack of evidence in either direction, I would naturally assume they will end up changing that min limit to 64k if anything... we suck just that bad :/

Re:Spoilers

[DMUTPeregrine]

They don't even have to restrict bandwidth. They can also just store packets from non-preferred providers in a long queue, thereby vastly increasing latency. VoIP is especially sensitive to this.

Re:Spoilers

[diamondmagic]

That sounds like "throttling" and in the particular way they're doing it, "fraud." I still fail to see how Net Neutrality comes in here.

Re:Spoilers

[HiThere]

I call it fraud, but the contract says "up to" some speed or other, so technically they're only breaking the contract if they provide you faster service than you paid for.

I still call it fraud. And a contract of adhesion.

Re:Spoilers

[Jason Levine]

You can call it fraud and I'd agree with you. The problem is that most of the ISPs are monopolies or, at best, duopolies. If you want to a wired broadband connection to the Internet, you NEED to go through them. They are also big, powerful companies with plenty of lawyers to tie up fraud cases in court and lots of lobbyists to make sure the rules are written to favor themselves.

The end game of all of this isn't so much to cripple the Internet as it is to profit off of it. They see companies making a lot of money off "the Internet" and they feel that they are owed some of that money because those companies are making money off of their (the ISPs') customers. Of course, a pizza place doesn't owe money to Verizon because some of Verizon's customers use their Verizon phones to call the pizza place and order a pie. Still, the big ISPs see others making this money and want a chunk,

Moreover, they feel threatened. Internet video isn't killing off the ISPs' own video offerings, but the potential is there. They aren't stupid and so want to kill off Internet video before it becomes a threat.

When you combine a series of giant organizations with greed and seeing their existing profit centers threatened, you get a dangerous (for consumers) combination.

Re:Spoilers

[rtb61]

We can also let 99.9999% of businesses decide it. That is the reality by far and away the majority of businesses will benefit by net neutrality, from cheaper data transmission, to protected from interception traffic and competitor driven censorship. All tech staff need to get out and produce an advisory to management about the extremely damaging impact to business digital communications with the loss of net neutrality and the requirement for management to instruct lobbyists to ensure an absolute tiny minority of companies in the order of 0.0001% of companies can control, limit, censor and intercept business communications. A loss of net neutrality is a real threat to the future of by far the majority of businesses.

Re:Spoilers

[fustakrakich]

If a million people told the government not to do X and they did it anyway, there's a chance of consequences.

Only at election time, but those chances of anything changing are extremely small.

At the present time Comcast tells the government not to do X, and in such a case, if the government does not comply, you will see new people on the ballot. The company is buying a service, and they expect a return on that investment. 95% of the politicians will be reelected, and between elections, the public will cry about how much they hate their corrupt politicians, and then vote for them again. It's like a domestic dispute in the trailer park. After the cops leave, the couple are fucking like rabbits.

Re:Spoilers

[Pi1grim]

Because Net Neutrality is exactly this: not discriminating traffic based on its origin or type. Providing internet as a pipe, not a toll-road. But ISPs want to have control over what is being sent over that pipe and extort money from services not to throttle them. This "fast lane" is not a dedicated line provided straight to your home to show you youtube, nope, it's a reserved bandwidth (from the bandwidth you paid for) that will be used to deliver you content from services that agreed to pay the ISP for not throttling them.

Re:Spoilers

[Pi1grim]

Supermarkets have a much lower entry barrier, small need for infrastructure and are forced to adapt to buyers' habits, not vice versa. ISPs on the other hand, hold a monopoly in most places while providing critical infrastructure. Your comparison is totally invalid.

Re:Spoilers

[ganjadude]

You can prioritize traffic without making it a multitiered net. What a level playing fielf means is that if I roll out a voip solution, comcast cant throttle mine over their own or others

Re:Spoilers

[Jason Levine]

Except that 99.9999% of businesses can't make a decision. They can say they support Network Neutrality, but they aren't in a position to do anything other than make statements (and, perhaps, talk to politicians about it). ISPs are in a position to either preserve Network Neutrality or trash it in favor of "pay us or your traffic slows down." Government can mandate that this kind of situation isn't acceptable. Therefore, the only acceptable options for consumers (and 99.9999% of businesses) are for ISPs to preserve Network Neutrality on their own or have the government preserve it for them. I'd prefer option #1, but given how the ISPs are drooling over money they'd make using "fast lanes", I fear option #2 will be needed.

Re:Spoilers

[Jason Levine]

True, the public's sway over politicians isn't as strong as it should be, but at least it's there to some degree.

The same can't be said over the public's ability to dictate what Comcast does.

Re:Spoilers

[fustakrakich]

That's just it. The public's sway is 100% effective, but they approve of the situation, or they would be voting for other people, and that would be the end of the story.

Re:Spoilers

[neminem]

If your supermarket doesn't carry the kind of mustard you like, you can find another supermarket. If none of them around you carry the kind of mustard you like, you might pay more in shipping, but you can probably still get it shipped from somewhere else where that mustard is more popular.

If your ISP blows, you can... move to a different city. Maybe. If they aren't the only ISP there, too.

Re:Spoilers

[DMUTPeregrine]

No. Net neutrality allows ISPs to follow the DS field, just not to set it on traffic they didn't create.

Of course, there's always the possibility of a legislature screwing it up and outlawing QoS, but redefinition of ISPs under FCC Title 2 wouldn't have that problem.

Re:Spoilers

[JoelKatz]

That's what VPNs are for. If there's a consumer demand, someone will find a way to supply it. Sure, if you don't believe that, you can justify all kinds of government intervention. Make no mistake, that's what net neutrality is -- it's a demand on behalf of those who seek low cost access to an expensive market to get the government to force others to pay their costs of reaching their market.

Re:Spoilers

[JoelKatz]

It must be nice to see the world in such black and white terms. Every business is forced to adapt to its customer's demands.

But if you care about ISP's being a monopoly, you should strongly oppose net neutrality. It makes ISPs less profitable, discouraging competition. It makes ISPs unable to distinguish themselves by requiring them to provide a uniform service, also discouraging competition.

Here's what'll happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, they'll go golfing. Then, they'll go out to have fancy dinners. Finally, they'll go back to work and ask their underlings why they haven't finished deleting all those complaints and tell the media that they worked very hard to reach the conclusion that the average person just isn't lining their pockets as much as these cable corporations, so net neutrality is officially dead.

Re:Here's what'll happen.

[Narcocide]

You forgot the part where they'll also come up with a lame, poorly-concocted excuse to bill the customer extra for it anyway, and get away with it.

Now nothing

[jbohumil]

Easy. Now that they've given us a chance to "participate" by commenting, that bothersome necessity is taken care of, and the FCC will now ignore the comments and proceed to do whatever they are told to do by their rich friends.

Re:Now nothing

[Krishnoid]

As featured in this video about Apple's new product. The appropriate quote is at 2:50, but the whole thing is pretty funny.

Next Year

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be a 18000 page report with 567 recommendations, none of which will be implemented over the next 2 decades.

A million for...

[JWW]

Now they notice that its a million comments for Net Neutrality and a few hundred for and then screw us over by:

Giving us a watered down version of Net Neutrality "regulations" that the ISPs and Carriers can drive huge trucks through

or

They just let the mask slip and enable the fast and slow lanes exactly like the ISPs and Carriers want.

This truly will make me sick. I have no hope that the Internet will be regulated as common carrier like it should be. No hope at all.

Re:A million for...

[thegameiam]

regulated as common carrier

Be careful what you wish for.

Re:A million for...

[BringsApples]

Yup. Now "websites" will be more like "channels", just like the old days on the old TV. Basically, we're all waiting for YouTube.com to be paywalled.

this is where we find out

[Rinikusu]

(store-comments comment /dev/null)

Money

[schneidafunk]

There are large corporations such as google & netflix that spent money lobbying as well. Does anyone know the amount of lobbying money spent for both sides of the argument?

What now?

[gstoddart]

My guess, the FCC chair will do whatever his former employers tell him to do so that he can guarantee when he's done pretending to be the regulator he can go back to his cushy lobbying job.

Does anybody really believe they're going to do anything not endorsed by the cable, wireless and content cartels?

Having that guy in there is pretty much the definition of regulatory capture.

Re:What now?

[bigpat]

I think it is fair to say that the FCC is one of the most corrupt institutions in the US government.

Re:What now?

[i.r.id10t]

Out of curiosity, what is the least corrupt part?

Re:What now?

[John_Sauter]

Out of curiosity, what is the least corrupt part?

The section of the Secret Service that protects the President.

Re:What now?

[ganjadude]

the janitor of the capitol building

Re:What now?

[bigpat]

When I say "corrupt" when referring to a body of government I usually mean systemically corrupt and not just the paper bag full of money under the table kind of corruption or the laundered campaign contributions or jobs for friends and family kind of corruption which corrupts individuals.

In the systemically corrupt sense the FCC itself is a corruption of a representative form of government in that it is a complete abdication of lawmaking authority by Congress and the President to a commission made up of people who have made big money in the industry they supposedly regulate and to which they undoubtedly expect to return to make big money especially when they are rewarded by the industry for the regulations they craft. So it is both systemically corrupt in that it is a corruption of lawmaking authority which should be held by Congress and the president and not delegated to an unelected commission, but it is also clearly individually corrupt with most of the commissioners deep in the pocket and beholden to the industry they regulate.

Re:What now?

[Krishnoid]

Get Steve Ballmer hired to the FCC?

Re:What now?

[Andy_R]

You could always try the RICO Act.

Net neutrality is what ought to prevent racketeering in the digital age. In the old days the Mafia turned up on your doorstep and said "nice warehouse you have here, it would be a shame if it 'burned down', give us some money and we can make sure that doesn't happen." Without net neutrality, Comcast can turn up on your doorstep and say "Nice website you've got here, it would be a shame if it 'slowed down', give us some money and we can make sure that doesn't happen."

Re:What now?

[Zxern]

Damn that's not a good sign then.

Re:What now?

[John_Sauter]

Damn that's not a good sign then.

Our puritanical culture condems sexual entertainment. I don't agree: I think hiring a prostitute is much more fun than watching a violent movie or attending a loud concert. However, to each his own.

Re:and of course, the home server operators get nu

[GameboyRMH]

Well look at it this way, with net neutrality your upstream home connection may be slow but the traffic would be as "important" as anything else - with a tiered Internet, upstream home traffic would be put in the Internet infrastructure's leper colony. Unless it's streaming video over Skype or something "important" (run by people who make deals with ISPs).

Bad way to conduct policy

[magarity]

Whether you like or dislike net neutrality, you should NOT like government regulatory agencies setting public policy unilaterally without legislators involved. Name one person at the FCC you can vote out of office at the next election based on your feelings over how they rule on this issue.

Re:Bad way to conduct policy

[gurps_npc]

In general, making positions 'electable' makes things WORSE. Because most people don't care about anything short of President. So they vote the party, not the person, IF they bother to vote at all.

Judges for example. When judges are appointed they tend to have high qualifications - experience in the law, an actual law degree, etc. When you vote for them, you get whatever joe shmoe has put in the most time at the political party doing paperwork.

Voting is great for high end positions, but people just don't get excited about anything less than Supreme Court Judge.

Having the FCC get voted on would make things much much worse, not better.

Re:Bad way to conduct policy

[suutar]

The legislators are very much involved. If the FCC makes a decision that the corporations don't like, their pet legislators will reverse it.

Re:Bad way to conduct policy

[Areyoukiddingme]

Whether you like or dislike net neutrality, you should NOT like government regulatory agencies setting public policy unilaterally without legislators involved.

The legislators were involved. This whole situation was supposed to be a good thing.

The theory was the government could be more responsive and more able to keep up with changing times than the legislature could be, so the law was written to broadly authorize the Executive branch to come up with the details on its own, rather than having every tiny little thing argued over by Congress itself. All the various federal commissions and most of the administrations were set up under that theory. Congress broadly sets policy and writes up the authorizations and the Executive branch takes care of the details. In an attempt to preserve a little democracy, Congress did mandate this public comment thing. At least the part where comments have to be solicited. Of course, odds are good that nothing says those comments have to be in any way heeded.

If regulatory capture wasn't a thing, it wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, the phrase "for the public good" has fallen out of favor. The Almighty Dollar speaks, and the government falls all over itself to listen. As if somehow all things business does are guaranteed to be good for the general public. Apparently all of history happened in vain. People never learn.

Re:Bad way to conduct policy

[StatureOfLiberty]

That certainly sounds good. But, the reality is that many times the elected officials' and their appointees' involvement is the problem. And most of the time the public doesn't know and doesn't care. When the 'broadband over power lines' debacle was going on during the FCC Powell years, a friend of mine privy to some of the discussions said that when FCC engineers were talking to industry engineers things progressed in a reasonable way. As soon as the political appointees showed up, things went stupid. The engineers could no speak frankly and just work through the issues. And in the end the FCC literally created regulation based on incorrect physics. Fortunately, BPL pretty much died on its own. So, we dodged one there.

Re:Bad way to conduct policy

[ghjm]

At least they went through a rulemaking process. Some agencies (recently FAA, FDA) figure if the issue only affects a narrow interest group (pilots, drug makers) that they don't actually have to bother with public comments or even actually writing the rule down before starting to enforce it.

What now?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, let's say this passes...What do we do then? How can I continue to fight this?
How can I start a campaign to eject Tom Wheeler from his chair if he doesn't listen to the overwhelming response from the public?
`A concerned internet user.

Strange

[Anon-Admin]

It does not seem that hard to me, apply the common carrier requirements to ISP's and be done with it.

No lengthy committee meetings, findings, reports, etc.

If the ISP wishes to be a contract carrier and not a common carrier then so be it, but by turning it down they are legally responsible for all the content including the child porn, the pirated software, etc. Accept common carrier and you can not choose but you get legal protection.
 

Re:Strange

[qeveren]

No, see... they get all the protections of common carrier status, but none of the responsibilities. Because reasons. Many billions of reasons.

Man with the Pen and Phone - Tsarkon Reports

[slashdice]

Well, he shoved the pen up his asshole. And his phone is a blackberry.

Anti neutral

[fulldecent]

It is good to see this topical announcement from Google today in which they are directly supporting application-specific unmetered internet:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com...

"In an effort to reduce data costs, if you have an Airtel SIM card, you’ll get these software updates for free for the first six months. As part of this same Airtel offer, you’ll also be able to download up to 200MB per month worth of your favorite apps (that’s about 50 apps overall) from Google Play—all without counting toward your mobile data usage."

This is directly against the principles of network neutrality.

The outcome is guaranteed

[irrational_design]

We the Corporations have replaced We the People.

Russian spammers == FDNY searchand rescue?

[raymorris]

Also, if Washington mandates a policy, there is a good chance they'll do something stupid like say "all bits must be treated equally". All bits are not in fact equal. The right thing to do is to block connections from that Nigerian prince with a billion dollars to give away, and prioritize the communications of the search and rescue team.

I'm in favor of network neutrality as a concept. I don't trust Washington to get it right.
Further, even if Washington gets it right, there is little chance that the common understanding of the regulations will be correct or even reasonable. As an example, HIPPA says that hospitals may not sell patient data to marketers. Health care professionals MAY discuss patient care with family members and anyone else that they think the patient would approve of. However, two staff members at the local hospital refuse to discuss with me the billing for my newborn daughter's care, because they think HIPPA prevents them from discussing anything until the patient signs their form. My daughter won't be able to sign her name for another few years, so I guess the hospital won't be getting paid for a few years.

What are the odds that Washington is going to come up wuth regulations that are both reasonable (you can block attackers and spammers) AND simple enough that the high school kid working the support line understands the regulations as they affect hos job.

The slippery bandwidth slope

[Cantankerous Cur]

John Oliver made a really good point about Netflix (especially if you look at that nice bandwidth chart with Comcast before and after the deal -- http://knowmore.washingtonpost...). Ending net neutrality will give internet providers the freedom to extort anyone and everyone who needs significant bandwidth. And there's absolutely nothing to stop them.

Re:The slippery bandwidth slope

[stealth_finger]

Of course, this graph does not in any way correlate to Comcast invensting in infrustructure to more reliably and quickly deliver Netflix traffic. Nope. Not at all.

While your tone is sarcastic you are accurate.

How does Net Neutrality as proposed solve that?

[SuperKendall]

If I, as a third party, want to offer telephone services that use broadband internet (VoIP), Comcast will be able to make my access to their consumers so crap

Well it's a shame then the FCC rules under discussion would have nothing whatsoever to do with that,.

Gosh, I wonder what you are getting if it's not at all what you thought. I wonder what you are getting from an agency intertwined with the cable companies, when you ask them to provide regulation from same companies... Perhaps utterly the opposite of what you wanted?

Re:How does Net Neutrality as proposed solve that?

[Smidge204]

Well it's a shame then the FCC rules under discussion would have nothing whatsoever to do with that,.

Except this is exactly what it's about, and it's something that Comcast has already been caught doing. Allowing "fast lanes" would just be a way for them to legitimize the practice of stymieing competing services and/or extorting money from content providers.
=Smidge=

Now the Monied Powers That Be Decide

[WillAffleckUW]

Now that everyone has commented, the monied Powers That Be will weight it accordingly, and rule in favor of the Biggest Lobbyist donations to the corrupt Congress.

What? You thought you weren't actually Serfs?

Yeah, sure.

Re:What's next?

[WillAffleckUW]

Pitchforks. And torches.

Don't forget the guillotines.

Well duh...

[mcubed]

Now the Koch Brothers get what they want. What were you expecting?