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Net Neutrality Goes Down in Flames as FCC Votes To Kill Title II Rules (arstechnica.com)
As we feared yesterday, the rollback of net neutrality rules officially began today. The FCC voted along party lines today to formally consider Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to scrap the legal foundation for the rules and to ask the public for comments on the future of prohibitions on blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. ArsTechnica adds: The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to start the process of eliminating net neutrality rules and the classification of home and mobile Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposes eliminating the Title II classification and seeks comment on what, if anything, should replace the current net neutrality rules. But Chairman Ajit Pai is making no promises about reinstating the two-year-old net neutrality rules that forbid ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful Internet content, or prioritizing content in exchange for payment. Pai's proposal argues that throttling websites and applications might somehow help Internet users.
This is what we get America. Voting largely along party lines or for religious reasons! You thought Trump wait till you see what Betsy Devos, Jeff Sessions, Scot Pruitt are going to do. I am hoping here the states will do the right thing and add some laws against this but I am not sure how much authority they will have. Also, state legislators are probably cheaper to buy anyway!
You know, it's funny. 10 years ago I would be right there with you folks, panicking and hyperventilating ( well, drinking a beer and grousing anyway. We all cope in our ways, don't judge )..but if the years have taught me anything, it's to appreciate opportunity when it comes along.
Had I my own way, my and other's lives would be infinitely better with virtually no downside. However, the world doesn't work like that ( shocking, I know ). Once I stopped fighting it, I realized that despite it's broken nature, the world still manages to push forward to society's benefit ( though most refuse to acknowledge that ). Set backs are sometimes needed to make leaps forward, and sometimes "set backs" are only considered such because individuals lack the vision to find the opportunity.
So relax; breath. Trust in yourself and find the opportunities presented. You, and society, will be fine, I promise.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I'm a conservative, and even I believe that as things stand right now, this has the potential to be a huge mistake. However, if Pai wants to turn this into an actual good thing for consumers, he's going to need to go full-Monty on his proposals. To wit: don't just remove the restrictions, but also the protections which apply to telcos under Title II. Strip away the privileges held by telcos and cable companies alike, in the form of their protected monopolies. Maybe we could even reinstate a truly free market, by the elimination of all FCC policies, period. And then petition Congress to actually give the FCC the power to fully overrule any state or local restrictions, so that they can't blockade the free market, either.
After all, that's pretty much the party-line mantra, at this point, isn't it? Liberals legislate everything to the point where it hurts, and conservatives eliminate legislation to the point where it hurts. So then, do it, Pai. Eat your own dog food.
Of course, maybe Pai's argument would be that if he actually went too far down that path, than the telcos and cable companies would sue... but the thing is, at this point they're always suing over anything that is even remotely pro-consumer. If they're not suing the FCC after the dust clears, then clearly there's something wrong. So why the hell not?
Come on, Pai. Let's do this thing!
There is one simple message coming out of this, putting republicans into office benefits NOBODY bur the gop power-mongers
Neither of those articles really refuted what I said.
Yep, all those companies were risking their settlement free agreements with Cogent and/or violating paid peering agreements with Cogent by deliberately throttling connections. In reality Cogent was irresponsibly allowing settlement peer links to go heavily unbalanced to the point that the other side was throttling the whole thing to maintain the ratios or simply shutting down links.
Things like this are interesting:
"In the past, if two networks transferred so much data between themselves that they were about to exceed the capacity of their connection, they would have gotten in touch to solve the problem. As M-Lab notes in its report, “[T]he traffic that flows through these interconnections is the lifeblood of the Internet—nearly all of the value of the Internet comes from the exchange of traffic, even when the ISPs involved are fierce competitors.” The engineers would have worked out a solution to open the access network’s door to the outside world more broadly. And they would split the minor costs of doing this upgrade—a $300 piece of fiber, a $10,000 souped-up router. A January 2013 OECD report found that 99.5% of Internet interconnection agreements at Internet Exchange Points happen without any formal contracts; engineers easily make deals to share the very low cost of trading traffic between networks in the same building."
The key here is that the ISPs transfer data between themselves, not one ISP transferring fifty times as much data towards an ISP than it receives.
"In the past, requests for upgrades were routinely granted. Now, suddenly, upgrades are impossible without painful negotiations over fees that have no perceptible relationship to the cost of making the upgrade—and Comcast and the other eyeball networks are making no promises about restraining themselves in the future."
The upgrades were for easy and routinely granted when the equally exchanged traffic hit certain thresholds. When one side is the cause of the imbalance, they are the ones that need to pay for it. The alternative is forcing all customers of an ISP to pay for the demands of some while also effectively subsidizing the business model of Netflix.
Netflix had a reason for choosing Cogent and it had nothing to do with ensuring the best experience for their customers.
I'll point out again here that this didn't happen to Hulu, Youtube, Amazon, etc.
As for that second article, ISPs are not obligated to give free datacenter space or network access to anyone, especially not a previously abusive user. Did Netflix offer to pay for the rack space and transit they wanted, or were they expecting another free ride?