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Tom Wheeler Defeats the Broadband Industry: Net Neutrality Wins In Court (bloomberg.com)
Andrew M Harris and Todd Shields, reporting for Bloomberg: The Federal Communications Commission won a major appeals court ruling supporting its efforts to prevent broadband Internet service providers from favoring some types of web traffic over others. The Washington-based court Tuesday denied challenges to the federal government's so-called net neutrality regulations, which were backed by President Barack Obama. The ruling hands a victory to those who champion the notion of an open internet where service providers are prevented from offering speedier lanes to content providers willing to pay for them. It's a defeat for challengers including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp., which said the rule would discourage innovation and investment.FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, "Today's ruling is a victory for consumers and innovators who deserve unfettered access to the entire web, and it ensures the Internet remains a platform for unparalleled innovation, free expression and economic growth. After a decade of debate and legal battles, today's ruling affirms the Commission's ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections -- both on fixed and mobile networks -- that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future."
Response translated from AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast: "Waaah, we can't upcharge for any existing or new service that comes along on the internet." Discourage innovation my ass. I'd say it's more likely that people will develop for an open internet than a closed one. After all, the developers would the ones having to pay the ISPs as well as the ISP's customers getting charged more for the service. I don't think that would go well in the long run.
I can not identify an argument for "net neutrality", that would not also not apply to attempts to prioritize â" such as by designating traffic lanes for them â" buses, bicycles, cars with electronic toll-payment transponders, and even for emergency vehicles.
Perhaps this will help:
I can not identify an argument for "apples" that would not also not apply to "oranges."
Hope that helps clarify it a bit.
It's not difficult to work out. If you have a company whose job is road maintenance, say they successfully argue that certain people need to cover the distance quicker. These people would pay extra for the privilege of faster transit, and after all, everyone else still has the original road.
Only in time, the original road is neglected, it becomes full of pot holes. If any expansion is made, it's made to the faster road, since that makes more money. So as the weeks pass, the original road falls into worse condition, unable to cope with the volume of traffic which is always growing. If anyone complains, then they are just told to pay for the faster lane.
Eventually the original road is barely navigable, and anyone wanting to travel is forced to pay the extra for the toll road. Eventually, the original road closes. Before long, an idea is floated for a new super-fast road...
They could appeal to the US Supreme Court, but with the current 4-4 split on the court, the best they could hope for is that the USSC would split and leave the Appeals Court ruling standing as is
Unless you're the Oracle of Delphi it's extremely dangerous to try and predict how SCOTUS Justices will swing on any given issue. They rarely break down along predictable partisan lines, even on the highly divisive political issues of the day (e.g., Roberts on the ACA) never mind something as technical as network neutrality and telecom regulation. People who try to politicize the Court miss the point; I suspect Liberals could find more than a few things to admire about Scalia (Kelo v. New London) if they were honest with themselves, as well as a few things to hate about the Justices on "their" side (Gonzales v. Raich). Conservatives could do the same, again, assuming they were willing to be honest with themselves, rather than blindly rooting for the "home team."
Anyhow, I digress. I would not even venture a guess as to how any of them would vote on NN. If you forced me at gunpoint to make a prediction it would be that they decline to issue any sweeping ruling; they'd kick it back down to the Appeals Court, 8-0, with clarification on one or two items of dispute.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
but it's pretty interesting that the anti-free-internet banner has been picked up so thoroughly by the Republicans.
They don't see it that way; principled Republicans see a slippery slope now that the FCC is regulating the internet, which you may recall got to be what it is today largely because it was unregulated. Are such fears grounded in reality? Hard to say; come back in 20 years and let's see what the internet looks like then.
(Unprincipled Republicans are crony capitalists, more worried about their Big Telecom donors than Big FCC; condemn them if you'd like, but be honest enough to admit there are at least as many Crony Capitalists among the Democrats, including the one that is now their presumptive nominee for POTUS.)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Discourage innovation my ass.
You're confused my friend. They mean it will discourage innovation in their price gouging -- I mean -- strategies and business models.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You're confusing traffic shaping with prioritization.
Doing something like prioritizing VOIP packets over FTP, for instance, is perfectly acceptable, because the reason for doing it is that VOIP traffic is much more affected by latency than FTP. If I'm trying to talk via VOIP at the same time I'm FTPing a large file, and the network hits congestion, I'm generally much better off having the FTP transfer slow down than I am having my VOIP throughput degrade. It's still a neutral network because it doesn't care what VOIP service I use, as long as it's standard VOIP traffic. This is a "Cars with 4 people/buses/etc can use the left lane during rush hour, everyone else has to use the right 3 lanes" situation.
What we're talking about is something like Comcast or AT&T trying to make _their_ Streaming Video/VOIP/FTP service work better than Netflix or whomever, by deliberately making Netflix worse, or forcing Netflix to pay extra to not get degraded. They can do this in a variety of ways, including throttling any Netflix connection, while exempting their own, or putting in Data Caps that apply to Netflix traffic, but not to their own streaming service. This is a "GM owns this toll road, so the charge for GM vehicles is $1.00, but the charge for Ford vehicles is $10.00" situation, and that's what you can't do according to Net Neutrality.
now that the FCC is regulating the internet, which you may recall got to be what it is today largely because it was unregulated.
In the late 80s, the internet was just this weird academic network that could not make money so no corporations paid any attention to it. Businesses were fighting over various online services (were you on Compuserve, or AOL, or The Source?). Then the government funded the NSFnet, and let outside companies join onto the NSFnet. And still nobody cared about the internet.
Then government-funded CERN invented the WWW, and government-funded NCSA invented Mosaic, and people started to care about the internet.
So "unregulated" for a bunch of government-funded projects is a very relative term. Far less regulated than the other online services, I'll grant you, but those were all regulated by their corporate owners, not by the government.
And that's really the lesson here. The internet won because it had far less overall regulation, while the other services were locked down and controlled. Now, the big ISPs want to "regulate" their pipes. The government passed a regulation, net-neutrality, which says "nobody can lock-down and control their pipes in certain uncompetitive ways". So, I think that you are arguing for very high (but corporate) regulation, and the NN folks are arguing for very low (but governmental) regulation.
You want no regulation? As long as it makes money, that cannot happen. But we get to choose between one hands-off sheriff, or a bunch of small despotic warlords. And I'm happy with how the court has chosen.
The broadband companies are going to keep trying until they get the answer they want. Then once they do, there will be no going back.
Personally I feel it's just a matter of time before they monetize everything on the internet.
This isn't a great comparison, but I remember cable TV was promoted as "commercial free TV." ie, You could watch TV without commercials.
Yeah... well... that worked out great.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Suspiciously, the post above me appears completely blank, is anyone else having this issue?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?