Slashdot Mirror
FCC Posts Its 400-Page Net Neutrality Order
jriding sends word that the FCC has released new rules outlining its recently officialized role as internet regulator. Simply titled "Open Internet FCC-15-24A1," the order runs 400 pages. The actual text of the new rules is only 305 words long. [FCC head Tom] Wheeler said reclassifying broadband as an utility gives the FCC its best shot at withstanding legal challenges. The courts have twice tossed out earlier rules aimed at protecting Internet openness. The FCC chairman has said repeatedly the agency does not intend to set rates or add new taxes to broadband bills. More than 100 pages of the 400-page document released Thursday explain that forbearance. AT&T had hinted it would file a lawsuit once the new rules become public. The company's chief lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, didn't indicate Thursday when or even if AT&T would sue — only that the battle is far from over. "Unfortunately, the order released today begins a period of uncertainty that will damage broadband investment in the United States," Cicconi said. "Ultimately, though, we are confident the issue will be resolved by bipartisan action by Congress or a future FCC, or by the courts."
....by whether or not AT&T sues.
"Ultimately, though, we are confident the issue will be resolved by bipartisan action by Congress or a future FCC, or by the courts."
AKA, We will get our way once we buy off enough people.
Not for Google. I guess AT&T needs a new CEO who's not afraid to run a business.
"Ultimately, though, we are confident the issue will be resolved by bipartisan action by Congress or a future FCC, or by the courts."
What is he smoking and where can I get some?
ATT hasn't invested in decades and does as little as it can get away with to maintain its existing infrastructure.
As it stands they don't even replace failing equipment, just shift it around so the problems hit different customers.
So much for the ZOMG 300-ODD PAGES fucktards. Bet they don't come back and admit they were wrong either.
In case the 500 pages scare off anyone, he's the TDLR version:
1) No Blocking - An ISP can't block legal content for any reason. So Comcast can't decide that you can't get to Disney's website anymore because they are having a cable TV dispute with Disney over ESPN.
2) No Throttling - An ISP can't say "you have broadband Internet" and then tell you "you've used too much so now you're stuck at dial-up speeds." If they want to have caps - e.g. only 500GB of data per month - they need to clearly specify this limitation. ("the Order builds on the strong foundation established in 2010 and enhances the transparency rule for both end users and edge providers, including by adopting a requirement that broadband providers always must disclose
promotional rates, all fees and/or surcharges, and all data caps or data allowances")
3) No Paid Prioritization - An ISP can't tell a website that the website will be slowed down unless they pay for "fast lane access." (Note: This doesn't mean the ISP can't sell users faster speeds for more money. Just that ISPs can't try to double-dip by charging web content providers to allow/speed up their traffic through the ISP's network as well as charging users for the Internet access to get the web content.)
All in all, pretty common sense stuff. It's a shame that it had to come down to a government agency saying this, but the ISPs only have themselves (and their greed) to blame.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Standard FCC rules. They're not allowed to publish new rules while they're still in the making stage.
Whether or not that's a good idea is up for debate, but this is far from the only FCC reg this applies to.
As posted by the Washington Post to Scribd. Since my submission was rejected.
The rules start on page 283.
If it's not stated, it certainly doesn't sound required. If I tell you, "you must not murder any children", does that mean you're required to murder all (or indeed, any) adults? No, it just means don't murder any children. Telling them they're required to not block any legal content, doesn't mean they're required to block content if it isn't "legal", it just means they're allowed if they decide they would like to.
You mean how dirty phone calls are illegal? Or porn on cable TV? Or fearmongering on the Internet?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Actually, not quite. Most areas at best have 2 options for high speed internet. Usually, both are bad. Its almost impossible for other companies to enter the market to provide a real competitive atmosphere by doing it better than the existing providers. So you have no real competition. This is mainly why broadband services are a natural multiopoly, the huge capital investments needed pretty much lock it up for 1 to 2 companies, any more than that and it becomes unprofitable due to the huge cost of running lines. This means that the market basically does not function effectively in this market and regulation is well justified to provide protection for the consumer. Its very similar to your water service, it wouldnt be feasible or practical for 20 different water companies to run their own pipes up and down their streets.
Having the government enforce neutrality is actually a very good thing. You read slashdot, so you must be at least a little bit technically inclined, so let me explain what prompted this. Net neutrality has been the default state of the internet since its beginning. How it works :
- Someone runs a service on a computer and needs it accessible to the internet. This range from big (search engine, email) to tiny and personal (minecraft server, voice chat like teamspeak). They pay an ISP to connect their servers to the internet.
- End users want access to the internet. They pay an ISP to connect their home to the internet.
ISPs would charge each according to their needs (link speed, usage, etc) Obviously, there's more than one ISP, so they connect to each others through high-capacity links. This is called peering.
At first, anybody could be an ISP because it used a phone line. You'd dial a number, connect to your ISP and then gain access to the internet. Competition during those days was fierce and customers were fought over. Then, higher speed were needed. Sending data through an encoded voice channel was not sufficient anymore, so cable and telephone companies started using the copper lines directly. This practically killed competition because, unlike with phone lines, ISPs didn't have to give access to their infrastructure to competitors. Obviously, you can't allow 30 different companies to dig under the streets and wire different cables to every house, so what you do is you allow only one or two, but you regulate it. This is called a natural monopoly.
Now, these companies are huge and they essentially have a captive customer base. Some customers may have a choice between two providers (mostly phone or cable), but that means that two companies will control any local market. What this means is that they can both raise prices, and as long as they charge mostly equivalent prices, they make much more profit than if they competed to bring price down. This is called an oligarchy.
These companies finally realized that they had even more power than they first thought. They said "Hey, we've got 30% of the whole country as customers on our own network, why not exploit this as a money source by cutting off access to them unless we get paid?". So now, service companies like Google, in addition to paying for their own internet access, have to pay the individual ISPs for access to their customers. These customers don't have any choice in the matter, because of our natural monopoly. Genius! That's what Comcast and Verizon tried to do companies like Netflix and Google (youtube).
This isn't how the internet is supposed to work and it's obvious that the telcos aren't adding any value by doing this. They are only abusing their monopolies as middle-men to extort money for services already paid for. This what what prompted this whole legislation.
It baffles me how little people seem to be aware of the issue. Every single person who knows how the internet works thinks this law was needed and the only dissenting views are simply preying on ignorance.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Because it's a good way to make political hay out of peoples' ignorance. See also Fox Agitprop.
This is spot on. In my area, there's really only Verizon or Comcast (and I can't even get FIOS here with Verizon). Both of them gouge the consumer, they're just two different heads of the same coin. I'm not a fan of big government, but some degree of regulation is a must in a capitalist system, and if anyone needs a taste of regulation, it'd be these two.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
They freeze the affected industry in a sclerotic fashion, based on the facts on the ground the day the regulation was promulgated. After that, they can never be removed - they might get amended a bit here and there, but what bureaucracy ever let one iota of its power go? That's right, none of them.
This form of regulation is why we have the crappy broadband that we do, ultimately. The regulation you speak of resulted in 50 years of monopoly AT&T sitting on its ass and making sure that everyone had an individual copper loop, when people in Europe already had ISDN readily available. Then years afterward of divestiture, mergers, annoying LATA boundaries and virtually no investment in new hardware.
But yeah, regulation is great.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The actual issue is that Verizon was peering with the Neflix ISP (Cogent) with a 2Gbps link for ALL of their customers. The NOC where that link was located had plenty of capacity on the cogent side, but Verizon was refusing to upgrade it. Netflix even offered to buy them the router (we're talking only like $25K here) so that they could upgrade to a 10Gbps link, but Verizon flatly refused unless they were paid money. There was no internal congestion at all on Verizon's network that justified this. I'd say the issue was pretty clearly on Verizon's side there.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
I'm going to reply to my own comment for the sake of not being disingenuous by omission.
The whole Verizon / Cogent peering issue was a little more complicated that. Initially, peering agreements were made between ISPs and they were fairly simple to manage. If one side was generating an unbalanced amount of traffic, they had to pay the other side.
The problem is that only worked when ISPs had the same profile : some servers, some end-users. Cogent doesn't provide service to end users, only to big businesses. As a consequence, almost all of their traffic is push, with very little flowing the other way. ISPs like Verizon took that as an excuse to claim that the peering was unbalanced, even if all the requests for that bandwidth was coming from their own users. The truth is that Verizon is already charging their users for that bandwidth, so requiring the other side to pay for access to their network is basically extortion.
The only reason they were able to do that at all is because of the natural monopoly that they have regarding the "last mile" cabling into people's home. Regulation is the only way to keep competition healthy when you have these natural monopolies in place. Verizon wanted to have their cake and eat it too. This is why this law was badly needed.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
You're wrong. Have you read the document? It boils down to only 3 things, which are exactly about net neutrality :
- No throttling of lawful data, no matter the source or destination.
- No blocking lawful data, no matter the source or destination.
- No paid prioritization, no matter the source or destination.
That's all there's in this law. Nothing else. How exactly is this a bad law?
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
"Pending Radio Legislation"
from the magazine Radio Age, July 1924
CONGRESS has adjourned without acting either way on pending radio legislation, according to the news dispatches from Washington.
Unless a special session is called, which does not seem likely at this time, radio will be untouched by legal attachments until next year, at least.
The two most important measures which were shelved by the adjournment of the well-meaning but unusually deliberative governmental bodies are the White Bill and the Dill Bill. The first proposes to establish governmental control over radio broadcasting, reception and perhaps the industry eventually. This bill, while not viciously attacked, did not go through because some representatives of the people wanted to know just why such a young and untried industry as radio should suffer the bonds of law so soon. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the White Bill will ever become a law -- so the fans may rest assured they will not be hindered for some time to come in that respect.
The Dill Bill is more far reaching in its scope. It is liberal and fair-minded. It asks that the copyright laws be amended so that copyrighted music can be broadcast without the payment of levies to the music publishers. Although this bill has been opposed at every step by huge organizations and moneyed interests, as well as several prominent music publishers, it was about to be passed with a fair majority when Congress adjourned.
There is still hope for the Dill Bill, then, and we hope that when it finally reaches the President's desk it will represent the result of a fair compromise between the broadcasters and the music publishers, in the interests of the fan who listens to broadcast music and helps the sale of the published article by buying the pieces he likes best.
Government legislation, we believe, appears to be the only means yet suggested which offers any kind of a solution to the bitter enmity between the broadcasters and the so-called music "trust."
Radio's recent jump to prominence in official circles such as Congress is only one indication of its growing importance. Big capital interests, legislators and public spirited citizens are realizing more and more that radio will some day control the destinies of our nation; and accordingly they are setting out to prevent its too sudden growth to an unwieldy influence. Quick government control, the legislators aver, will prevent radio from becoming a menace instead of the help and pleasure it should be.
In a measure these radio-legislators are right. Something must be done to prevent the air from becoming a bedlam of tangled wave lengths. Something must be done to prevent the ether from being clogged with propaganda and useless stuff that will discourage interest in the world's latest miracle.
If legislation works along those lines, it will be beneficial. But if it takes a political trend, this country will see a united uprising of righteously aroused fans -- lovers and promoters of the good in radio.
mfwright@batnet.com
The Wikipedia article calls it "internet transit" and distinguishes it from "peering" as follows: "Transit is distinct from peering, in which only traffic between the two ISPs and their downstream customers is exchanged and neither ISP can see upstream routes over the peering connection." That more or less matches my original understanding. Mind you, there are no citations.
The rule disallowing paid prioritization is very broad, and does *not* have an exception for normal network management. (They actually call out explicitly that this rule does not have that exception, unlike the first two.)
However, clause 30 appears to restrict the scope of the rule to explicitly exclude peering. So that's OK after all.