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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."
This effectively means it's settled. Comcast et al could still request an en banc hearing from the full Court of Appeals, but that's unlikely to succeed. 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, at the same time they'd risk a 5-3 decision affirming net neutrality depending on how Kennedy swings.
Of course, this could still be overturned if Trump wins and gets to override the pick for the next Justice, nevermind that a GOP congress plus Trump would be free to pass whatever anti-net neutrality legislation they want, or to replace the pro-neutrality majority of the FCC commissioners with a Republican one.
I'm happier to see that this fellow has more integrity than most thought he'd have, with him being a former lobbyist for these cable companies.
I'm trying hard to think no of anything even marginally resembling an innovation which has come from Comcast - but I'm drawing a blank. So I can't see that having it their own way up until now has resulted in what they claim will be stifled by these rules.
On a side note: Tom Wheeler, I think many of us were wrong about you. Thank you!
#DeleteChrome
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...
"Only vehicles built by Ford can drive in this neighborhood."
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I can not identify an argument for "net neutrality", that would not also not apply to attempts to prioritize — such as by designating traffic lanes for them — buses, bicycles, cars with electronic toll-payment transponders, and even for emergency vehicles.
In fact, I suspect strongly, that, had the Internet-service provision been in government's hands already, the same people arguing for "net neutrality" today, would've been arguing for "sensible measures" to prioritize "special" traffic.
And vice versa — had private corporations been in charge of streets and highways, their attempts at prioritization would've attracted the same criticism currently hitting the ISPs.
Some neutralities are more neutral than others...
I've always viewed the entire net neutrality debate as a (hopefully) temporary sideshow while/until we fix the larger problem of lack of competition. The only reason (e.g.) Comcast is able to pull the shenanigans that they are is because we can't go anywhere else. Otherwise, if an ISP decided to slow down Netflix and try to extort money from them, their customers would just leave.
The Internet is a grand bazaar, forum, and meeting place, and what is needed on the parts of the absolutely necessary firms that transport our communications traffic to/from the Internet is for them to most emphatically not muck with it, whether that mucking comes in the form of "super-cookies" (injections of information into what should be inviolate virtual connections), invading people's privacy by tracking what they are doing, or trying to enhance their profits by trying to charge both ends for the same traffic.
There IS honor in providing an ordinary, plebeian transport service, albeit that honor may come with lower profit margins. Over the road truckers don't sort through our packages in order to build dossiers about what we buy, nor do they insert GPS trackers into packages in order to see where they are going. We wouldn't stand for them trying to monetize the delivery service they are already being paid to provide. We should expect no less from Internet Service Providers.
In this case, the head of the FCC was a member of a cable company lobbying group and was widely expected to be yet another pro-cable company shill. Except, Tom Wheeler apparently missed the memo and was mistakenly handed one that said "protect the consumers" instead. His run as head of the FCC has been surprisingly fantastic and I hope he continues on to give the cable companies headaches for years to come.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
The only way I can think of addressing the problem of a lack of competition in the last mile of communications services is for local governments to provide the communications service as a basic utility, the same as water, sewer, trash pickup. Or maybe its provided by a utility provider like electricity or gas. Then companies like Comcast don't need to be a "monopoly" cable provider for a town or county; other companies like Verizon don't need to be a "monopoly" telephony provider either - anyone who wants to provide services (any data service, including telephony data and what we now thing of as cable television service data) can, with the services riding over the utility communications network. Perhaps that is what we are backing into, with ISPs being declared to be the utilities that they so obviously seem to be. Couple that with VoIP telephone services being broken free from cable companies and RBOCs, and the move to "cut the cord" with A/V entertainment services, and pretty soon there aren't any government-protected monopolies for phone and cable... just a basic communications utility provide by or on behalf of the local government, and a multitude of service providers, all competing openly with one another.
How does the decision affect zero rating and stuff like tmobile's binge on? Although I'm completely in support of net neutrality and all companies should be treated the same, I do support the idea of having different types of traffic. For instance making bittorent traffic lower priority than realtime streaming. This should preferably be controlled by the consumer though where they get some benefit for sending less traffic over the fast lane.
I know it's popular because the internets want to be free, but I'd ask everyone to actually read the "net neutrality" regulations yourself. It's not about net neutrality per se, it's about something completely different.
For example, all the peering agreements suddenly come under FCC jurisdiction. Do asymmetric traffic charges count as "favoritism?" Do you even have any understanding of what that means?
The FCC rule means that everything internet-related comes under their jurisdiction.
What this means, in short, is your rates will go up...forever.
John Oliver did a show last year where he mentioned that Tom Wheeler, head of the FCC, was a former telecom lobbyist. He then said that it was like hiring a dingo to watch over your baby.
Tom Wheeler responded by saying he was not a dingo.
I guess he was speaking metaphorically and literally when he said that.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
I remember that one. Given Wheeler's background and the history of FCC chiefs in general, it wasn't unrealistic to assume that he would be a horrible FCC chief who would only think of what the industry wanted. A lot of people are very happy that he's not a dingo. (Well, except for the cable companies but I don't care about them!)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.