FCC To Rule On "Paid Prioritization" Deals By Internet Service Providers

An anonymous reader writes "After a record 3.7 million public comments on net neutrality, the FCC is deciding if the company that supplies your internet access should be allowed to make deals with online services to move their content faster. The FCC's chairman Tom Wheeler says financial arrangements between providers and content sites might be OK if the agreement is "commercially reasonable" and companies say publicly how they prioritize traffic. Many disagree, saying this sets up an internet for the highest bidder. "If Comcast and Time Warner – who already have a virtual monopoly on Internet service – have the ability to manage and manipulate Internet speeds and access to benefit their own bottom line, they will be able to filter content and alter the user experience," said Barbara Ann Luttrell, 26, of Atlanta, in a recent submission to the FCC."

Comments

We are fucked

[Nyder]

My guess is we are fucked.

Re:We are fucked

[maynard]

Remember when Gilmore said, 'the internet routes around damage'?

Remember when it was commonly accepted that censorship on an open network was virtually impossible?

Remember then?

All that idealism crushed with buyouts and consolidation, money thrown at the problem of uppity citizens using disruptive new technology to assert their pesky rights. And it worked. The Internet is nothing like what I remember twenty years ago. A free thought and open platform for exchange of ideas and technology. Now it's a marketing platform at best, global surveillance mechanism at worst.

My parents generation from the 60s had their idealism crushed too. What with the assassination of a president, a civil rights leader, and that president's brother murdered on the campaign trail while running for President. No wonder in the '70s people turned their backs on civics danced away their troubles.

And if you look back to the Wobblie generation - my great grandparents - at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so too did it happen then as well. Utterly crushed under the boot of money and violence. People danced during the roaring twenties too.

At least not too many 'net idealists have been killed this time 'round. Though it doesn't seem like it's time to dance either. The mood has gotten too ugly to party the bad news off.

So.

[Anonymous Coward]

Overwhelming response telling our leaders exactly what we wanted through our only feedback system. And it is blatently IGNORED in favor of paid interests. It's not a surprise, considering that the FCC leader is ex-cable, and they are appointees directly from big business. However it obviously shows just how badly this country is broken. I'm not an alarmist, but it this simply isn't going to change with the current US government system. They have no REASON to change it.

Re:So.

[Luckyo]

They are not "your elected representatives". They are "representatives of the elite pre-selected for you to choose from".

There is a huge difference.

Re:So.

[uncqual]

3.7 million comments, even if all were rabidly in favor of "net neutrality", is a small fraction of registered voters in the US. Therefore, one can't draw the conclusion that the majority of the voters agree, or disagree, with net neutrality.

For example, many people may be fine with allowing Netflix to partner with their ISP to put Netflix servers in their ISP's datacenters to feed content directly onto the ISP's network - esp. if that would save money for everyone and increase service quality at the same time.

We vote for our representatives (including our President who can exert a lot of control over the FCC) and they manage and direct the organizations that make these decisions. That voting process gives everyone an opportunity to make their opinion heard and their vote counted. It also allows only those who have the right to vote to do so. It also prohibits one person from casting multiple votes w/fake addresses etc. None of that can be said of the FCC comment process.

In the next Presidential election, vote for the a candidate who will push for net neutrality if that's important to you.

Re:So.

[king neckbeard]

3.7 million voters is not the majority of the voters, but it is certainly more than enough to be a decent sample. And nobody is objecting to locating servers closer.

Re:So.

[Crazy Taco]

However it obviously shows just how badly this country is broken. I'm not an alarmist, but it this simply isn't going to change with the current US government system. They have no REASON to change it.

The thing that's really broken is that we have government involved in this at all. Why, exactly, should only one cable company have been allowed to run wires to the houses in my area? Why shouldn't two or three of them have been allowed to do it? Why did the government mandate that there will be monopolies in cable, telephone, etc? That's ultimately the real problem: government took away my choice, so I can't vote with my wallet now. Now I have to plead to unelected FCC bureaucrats in DC to force my local monopoly provider not to throttle my service, when I could have simply voted with my wallet like I do with everything else.

It's probably too late to get to get the cable mess fixed now, but hopefully this can at least be a good cautionary tale moving forward: never, EVER let the government mandate monopolies in anything, whether it be public schools, post office letter delivery, utilities, media companies, mass transit bus service, healthcare, etc. It NEVER turns out better for the consumer, and you end up having to grovel to government employees that could not care less about you personally. Every area should be open to any company that wants to participate, and may the best one win.

A recent success story would probably be the opening of space exploration to private companies: what did NASA do in the last 30 years when it had a monopoly? What are private companies already doing in the 5-10 years they've been developing their technology? Look how far SpaceX has come with it's rocket technology. It will shortly have better, safer, more cost effective options than NASA ever did.

Re:So.

[dgatwood]

But 3.7 million is big compared with the entire voting public. On average, only about 100 million U.S. residents actually vote in any given Presidential election, and even fewer in midterm elections.

There's a rule in politics that for every one person who complains about something, ten people dislike it, but didn't complain. So if 3.7 million people cared enough to complain about the lack of net neutrality, over 40 million people know enough to be strongly in favor of net neutrality. And most of those folks are likely to vote in the next election.

To put that into context, it is quite possible that net neutrality matters to 2.5 times as many likely voters as abortion.

They already have paid prioritization

[stox]

to the Chairman's desk. Your opinions have been routed to /dev/null.

Re:They already have paid prioritization

[Jason Levine]

Exactly this. They donated to campaigns and now the current FCC Chairman is the guy who used to run the head of the cable lobbying group, I'm not expecting a complete ignoring of our complaints - that might stir up too much of a backlash. Instead, they'll put a "fair process" in place to allow for this. The "fair process" will be designed to shut up Network Neutrality proponents while still letting the ISPs do whatever they want (so long as they hide it behind the smoke and mirrors for a bit).

"You don't like our Internet . . . ?"

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Normally, when non-US folks whine, moan, bitch and complain about the US role in managing the Internet, the US folks answer: "You don't like our Internet? Build your own then!"

Well, I guess this retort applies to the US folks now. If you don't like your FCC Comcast Time Warner Paid Prioritization Internet . . . "Build your own then!"

I would suggest we start small, with a store and forward network, named after someone's dog.

My dog is named "Fido".

Re: "You don't like our Internet . . . ?"

[nine-times]

We did build our own-- or at least, we did pay these companies hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to build it for us. I suppose we could build another one, and if we did, there's no reason to think that corrupt government officials won't just take it from us and hand it over to rich people.

I don't think we need to build our own internet. I think we need to build our own government, and outlaw bribery. Our current one has been taken from us, and has no interest in serving the common good.

Re:Devil's advocate here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally I'd take this stance. However, these companies received billions in state subsidies paid for by US citizens to build their infrastructure. The people own it. If the government wants to alter the agreement we should dismantle and jail the government leaders as traitors.

Pay to slow competitors

[EmperorOfCanada]

Also if these paid agreements are so "reasonable" why not buy exclusivity? That is that when these companies negotiate their fast lane contracts to make it exclusive fast lane access; that is to basically pay to block the competitors out. So Hulu could buy the all the fast lane access for video subscription streaming locking out Netflix. Or google could buy up all search engine access.

Plus this would then give comcast incentive to make an ever greater divide between the two speeds and keep slowing down the slow lane. I suspect that the ever shrinking legroom in economy is increasing first/business class ticket sales.

Basically allowing any form of non-network neutrality will only make a few scumbags richer and the rest of us greatly poorer in both money and quality of services.

Re:Devil's advocate here...

[sumdumass]

Its a little more complicated than that. First, these monopolies are piggybacking on infrastructure and right of ways granted by laws in most cases that were intended to remedy a public need as defined by the government. They recieved tax benifits, exclusivity, and the benifit of time before there ever was an ability to deliver internet on that infrastructure. Why it was ever considered separate is a question that muddles the mix.

  Next comes the question of consumer protections. If you purchase service with speeds up to 10 meg, no matter how it is spun, you simply are not getting that if they slow your access down in order to make these fast lanes. Along these same lines, there are still benifits in yhe form of tax breaks and grants to expand infrastructure for delivering broadband to underserved areas. Now does the broadband definition still apply if the connection to your work or school VPN is slower because netflix paid for fast access and your neighbor is binging on movies the first four months of his unemployment?

Now do not get me wrong. If they can create a fast lane without slowing any other customer down below the speeds they purchased and it is optional, i do not have a problem with it. It likely will not be that way though.

"commercially reasonable"

[PopeRatzo]

Really, this notion of "commercially reasonable" scares me the most. I'm guessing you could cover a lot of very very bad behavior by companies if the regulatory standard is "commercially reasonable".

Remember, this is the FCC head and former cable executive who was appointed by someone who people on the Right call a "Marxist". Tom Wheeler should be shown the door immediately. In fact, he never should have been allowed anywhere near a regulatory agency. Whenever tells me they want people in government who have real-world business experience, I think how that's the last thing we want. Government and regulatory agencies should under no circumstances be run like a business world and experience as a business executive is the last thing we should look for in political leaders. It's like hiring a bank teller based on his experience as a former embezzler. Which reminds me, this is every bit as big a scandal as the recent story of the banking regulators who had the cozy relationship with Goldman Sachs.

If you don't know about the recent Goldman Sachs story, you really ought to take a look:

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/26/6...

Meet Carmen Segarra, whose 46 hours of damning audio tape make her sort of the Edward Snowden of the financial world. And she's every bit as heroic as Snowden. I'm sure the lawbreaking at Goldman could be said to have been "commercially reasonable" too.

Living in an oligarchy sucks balls. Godspeed to any future whistleblowers who decide to make the personal sacrifice to give us these glimpses into the lives of our not-so-benevolent overlords.