ISPs Worry About FCC's 'Future Conduct' Policing

jfruh (300774) writes "In the wake of the FCC passing net neutrality rules, the federal agency now has the authority to keep an eye on ISPs 'future conduct,' to prevent them from even starting to implement traffic-shaping plans that would violate net neutrality. Naturally, this has a lot of ISPs feeling nervous." From the article: The net neutrality rules, beginning on page 106, outline a process for staff to give advisory opinions to broadband providers who want to run a proposed business model past the agency before rolling it out. But those advisory opinions won’t have the weight of an official commission decision. The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau will be able to reconsider, rescind or revoke those advisory opinions, and the commission itself will be able to overrule them, according to the order. “It’s unclear what you’re supposed to do when you have a new innovation or a new service,” the telecom lobbyist said. “There’s just a lot of ambiguity.” Even the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the most vocal proponents of strong net neutrality rules, urged the commission to jettison its future conduct standard.

Comments

If they aren't doing anything wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

If they aren't doing anything wrong, then they have nothing to worry about.

Only ISPs with something to hide should be worried.

Re:If they aren't doing anything wrong

[Sarten-X]

Well, yes...

The problem is that we don't know what the problems will be. Today, Network neutrality is the hot-button issue the FCC is finally forced to deal with, but tomorrow, who knows? Maybe we'll have to have regulations on compliance (or not) with encryption-busting wiretaps, DNS hijacking, advertisement injection, or something completely different.It's taken long enough for the FCC to move on this that we've already had a few cases of effective extortion by an ISP, and maybe those issues will be even more problematic.

The solution, then, is to bring the FCC in as an advocate for the American citizen, since that's pretty much the government's primary job. This establishes a process where the FCC can say "You're not breaking rules now, but you're getting really close" and give the ISPs a chance to avoid sinking investment capital into systems that will be outlawed as soon as people notice. Cooperating with regulators, especially by asking permission rather than forgiveness, is also a great way to reduce future penalties if the FCC's policies do turn against them.

If the ISPs' new business models don't piss off the FCC, then they don't have to worry about new regulation in the short term. Only ISPs with predatory business models to hide should be worried.

Not quite the same ring to it...

Underlying problem

[JBMcB]

And here is the underlying problem with a good chunk of FCC regulation.

Basically, you can do anything you want until they decide it is against an arbitrary regulation. Then they can not only stop you from doing it, but fine you for having done it.

Think of the "decency" statues for broadcast TV. Sometimes you can swear (playing Saving Private Ryan) sometimes you can't (some random award show) Sometimes you can show nudity (NYPD Blue) sometimes you can't (Superbowl?) The FCC will let you know you violated the unspecified rules via a fine
well after the fact.

This is the regulatory regime being imposed on the business practices of ISPs.

I don't like the big ISPs screwing around with the internet just as most anyone else, but this type of regulation is bonkers.

Re:Underlying problem

[Jane Q. Public]

This is the regulatory regime being imposed on the business practices of ISPs.

It is pretty much the SAME "regulatory regime" that was imposed on landline telephones before the cell phone revolution was granted exceptions. Did you have a big problem with landline telephone regulation, too? Your communications were carried reliably, not interfered with in any way, and you had privacy.

The intent of the regulation is clearly stated: to ensure (a) neutrality of communications media and (b) privacy.

Clearly the FCC could enforce the rules arbitrarily. But it always could. So what? None of this is new.

Re:Underlying problem

[Dutch Gun]

Enforcing FCC regulations is not quite as arbitrary as you make it sound. My understanding is that the FCC has clearly stated in writing exactly how they intend to apply the Title II rules to ISPs. In order to change their enforcement, a vote is required by the FCC commissioners on new policies. I don't believe they can just change their enforcement policies on a whim.

To be honest, I wasn't entirely happy with the internet becoming government regulated either, but let's face it: the ISPs had free reign for quite some time, and they eventually couldn't seem to help themselves in pooping all over their customers, because (surprise) we have no real competition in the industry. I would have been much happier if we enacted legislation to ensure proper competition, but for whatever reason, that seemed like a dead end.

I guess at this point we have no choice but to wait and see how it plays out.

Re:Underlying problem

[phantomfive]

That's kind of ignorant. From 1870 to 1995 we went to cross-continental phone calls to phone calls over microwave to phone calls through satellites. Along the way, they invented transistors, information theory, improved materials science, and many other things. Of all the things you could complain about the phone company, and there were many, lack of technical progress is not one of them. Probably the worst thing to happen as a result of the Ma Bell breakup was the death of Bell Labs.

Re:Underlying problem

[sjames]

Not really, no. Your memory is oddly (I might say pointedly) selective.

You know we had internet before 1995, right? That many of the advances happened after a regulatory nuclear option was deployed to shake things up, right?You know, the one that the anti-regulatory people decried as interference.

That we went from a human being physically connecting pairs of wires together to place a call to automated routing of digital packets through virtual circuits.

Perhaps you missed that touch tone came out during that 'stagnant' period.

When the regulations were relaxed, we saw our internet connectivity options shrink and ossify. We went from dozens of choices in a given area to 1 or 2.

Cellular service started well before the regulatory change. The big driver to the vast improvements there was a matter of signal processing and denser and more powerful ICs. Had we had better regulation like in Europe, all of our phones would freely port from one network to the other just by switching sim cards. There would be no issue of phones being SIM locked or technologically stuck with one provider. We wouldn't have all the random over-billing and over-priced service we have now.

Fuck ISPs

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISPs brought this on themselves by fucking with traffic, they deserve no sympathy and they should be thankful the government doesn't break them, nationalize them or shut them down entirely.

Re:Fuck ISPs

[adolf]

It was the torrent protocol who fucked with the ISPs before the ISPs started fucking with the traffic and long ago before anyone started fucking anyone the quarterly financial report fucked with everyone.

It's not my fault that they killed Usenet.

Re:Fuck ISPs

[adolf]

"We"? I guess.

The speed of my own VDSL connection was deemed inadequately-quick to spool Usenet traffic well over a decade ago. And the last time I commissioned an NNTP server, it didn't even come close to burdening a T1 (close to 20 years ago).

But, I know! We can distribute the load. Use fifty-thousand volunteer servers, all with different parts and PAR files to keep up the slack, scattered everywhere in the world. ...just like BitTorrent, but worse.

The beauty of Usenet was its simple one-to-many approach on a local level. The long-distance pipes had a predictable burden and the last-mile burden was limited to the end-user requests (with proper application of nntpcache, geographically-diverse NNTP servers, et cetera), where bandwidth is cheap.

It was a system that was designed to be very efficient, and it was very efficient. But in order to re-create it efficiently takes support from TWC, ATT, COX, etc., but they've already killed it and it is dead.

(Oh, sure: Today I can buy NNTP access from any number of centralized providers with months- or years-long retention. But that's not the way that Usenet was intended to work and doing so isn't nice to the network at all.)

What we need is proper multicast IP, which IPV6 seems be implicit about: Want a 4GB $file? Sign up to the multicast feed, wait for 4GB of file to stream your way, and done.

One-to-many. It's been built into the Internet since well before I was involved with it and yet nobody seems to understand it anymore. (It used to sadden me, and then I realized that I was sad for reasons that nobody else wanted to care about, so now I just don't care about network efficiency at all. The Me! Me! Me! mentality that I've adopted instead, just like everyone else, is much more gratifying, and actually works....as opposed to Usenet or Multicast-IP today.)

Re:Doesn't matter

[MaWeiTao]

I didn't realize Obama was a Republican. You do know that he attended private raisers held by Comcast executives, don't you? He's golfed with the CEO of Comcast. Oh yeah, and the current FCC chairman, nominated by Obama, has close ties to the telecom industry and has long been a lobbyist for companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. In 2012 Comcast employes donated roughly 4x more to Democrats than Republicans.

But sure, keep believing all the bullshit you're fed; it will just make it that much easier for Democrats, and Republicans along with them, to screw you over.