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FCC Rescinds Claim That AT&T, Verizon Violated Net Neutrality (arstechnica.com)
jriding writes: The Federal Communications Commission's new Republican leadership has rescinded a determination that ATT and Verizon Wireless violated net neutrality rules with paid data cap exemptions. The FCC also rescinded several other Wheeler-era reports and actions. The FCC released its report on the data cap exemptions (aka "zero-rating") in the final days of Democrat Tom Wheeler's chairmanship. Because new Chairman Ajit Pai opposed the investigation, the FCC has now formally closed the proceeding. The FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau sent letters to ATT, Verizon, and T-Mobile USA notifying the carriers "that the Bureau has closed this inquiry. Any conclusions, preliminary or otherwise, expressed during the course of the inquiry will have no legal or other meaning or effect going forward." The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau also sent a letter to Comcast closing an inquiry into the company's Stream TV cable service, which does not count against data caps. The FCC issued an order that "sets aside and rescinds" the Wheeler-era report on zero-rating. All "guidance, determinations, and conclusions" from that report are rescinded, and it will have no legal bearing on FCC proceedings going forward, the order said. ATT and Verizon allow their own video services (DirecTV and Go90, respectively) to stream on their mobile networks without counting against customers' data caps, while charging other video providers for the same data cap exemptions. The FCC under Wheeler determined that ATT and Verizon unreasonably interfered with online video providers' ability to compete against the carriers' video services.
Well, gentleman, we've been sold out.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
As they defend anything the cheeto insurgent does. Oh, you cry about Democrats, the corruption and how they forget the little guy, and give your vote to the guy that was already price checking stuff like this for his corporate buddies during the campaign. But this is really what you wanted, isn't it? As long as you can fuck over the liberals in your head, as long as you can stomp on people that do nothing to you, you will readily sell down the river all the principles you claimed to stand for here on Slashdot. Net neutrality? Fuck that! Who cares about that nerd shit as long as Trump does the MAGA song and dance?
You certainly don't. And we are paying for your incompetence as voters.
Perhaps the best compromise is to allow differential treatment of TYPES of packets / packet streams, but not allow differential treatment of packets /streams FROM particular source IPs / identities / organizations nor allow differential treatment of packets / streams TO particular IPs / identities / organizations.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In theory, you can have the general concept of network neutrality, and also have QoS.
In practice you can too. Net neutrality is about the source of the data. QoS is about the content. They are very easily distinguished by law.
Let us not forget that his very first executive order jacked up mortgage costs for home buyers. It's hard to find a total price tag reported for that move, but a naive* calculation suggests 750000 loans x $500/year x 30 years = $11 billion on loans taken out in 2017, with more to follow for next year's loans. All of it straight out of the pockets of the little guy.
*I defer to some one who actually understands present value calculations on loans.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)