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NYTimes Editorial Board: The FCC Wants To Let Telecoms Cash In on the Internet (nytimes.com)
The New York Times' Editorial Board writes: The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission wants to let Comcast, Verizon and other broadband companies turn the internet into a latter-day version of cable TV, in which they decide what customers can watch and how much they pay for that content. That's essentially what would happen under the proposal by the chairman, Ajit Pai, to abandon the commission's network neutrality rules, which prevent telecom companies from interfering with how their customers use the internet. Net neutrality prevents those companies from having companies like Amazon pay a fee to get their content delivered more quickly than their rivals', and from having the firms throttle other services and websites, even blocking customer access to, say, Netflix or an online newspaper. Under Mr. Pai's proposal, telecom companies would effectively be allowed to sell you a basic internet plan that might include only limited access to Google and email. For Facebook and Twitter you might need a slightly more expensive deluxe plan. The premium plan might include access to Netflix and Amazon. Oh, and by the way, media businesses eager to gain more users could pay broadband companies to be included in their enhanced basic or deluxe plans. Further reading: Associated Press fact check: Net-neutrality claims leave out key context; The death of the Internet.
they are already doing it but maybe not legally.
So now I know that it's more establishment bullshit that I can safely ignore.
Oh, and what about all of you uber-nerds who have been clamoring for A-La-Carte cable TV for years? Don't you "only want to pay for the things for want to see"?
Me, on the other hand, I prefer an open internet the same way I want all the TV channels available should I have the need to or choose to watch something I normally wouldn't. But seeing all the hand-wringing from Google, Facebook, Twitter, the establishment media, and the rest of the liars over this issue I have a pretty good feeling it's probably a good thing this "decree" (it was never a law or ever even enforced) is going by the wayside.
The government can keep their goddamned hands off of the fucking internet.
This model smacks of 1990's style thinking.
Do they think Amazon and Google won't start building out their own 'internets'? Do they think that this type of fragmentation and duplication of efforts would be anything but harmful for consumers?
This isn't free market capitalism. This is crony capitalism.
Those Indochimps are just as happy as a clam with the caste system. They live by it in their own stink hole country where the roads are literally paved with shit -- human feces.
Mister Ajit Pai can pack up all his dot head sand n***er clan and move back to the motherland. Then he can have the untouchables wipe his butt and throw it into the street. Go fuck up your own Internet, dot head. Oh that's right, Indochimps didn't invent the Internet. They did invent street shitters.
NN regulations were never put into effect. If it's so terrible, why hasn't all those bad things already happened?
If you want a free and open internet, the very, very LAST thing anyone should desire is government regulation. The internet has been as free and open as it's been so far precisely *because* there has been no government regulation.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm shocked. Shocked and chagrined. To think that commercial companies would utilize public weakness, influence the government and engineer a situation in which they can squeeze people for more money? Unthinkable! Only Google, Facebook and Amazon are supposed to be able to cash off of the Internet.
Let's face it, if you let massive telecoms write the bill slashing regulation of themselves, YOU ARE A SELLOUT AND TRAITOR.
We need strong, caring, logical people to join the U.S. government. One way to help that happen is to take the money out of being elected. Could there be free TV channels for those who qualify and are trying to make themselves known before an election?
Another way is to pass a law that says anyone who tries to influence legislation must make all documents public, and must have no personal involvement with lawmakers or their staff.
Glad I got on about '92-'93 while it was still a bit of the old "wild west" and anything went.
I guess you couldn't expect it to last forever...it caught the govt types off guard and it took a long time for them to catch up to it.
I guess they'll be happy letting the corporate world do what they really never seemed to be able to do and kill it for the masses.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Why should Google and Facebook be the only ones able to cash in on the internet?
Because they have a political party in their pocket? One that doesn't believe in free speech?
Personally if I was them, I would not want this. They'll lose their carrier status and will be responsible for the content viewed
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
yeah, why the hell should my insurance cover prenatal care, I'm never going to need that!
I've said it before, and will continue to say it.
If the Internet goes "walled garden" i.e. AOL style unless you pony up more money, I will just go without.
Give me a dumb pipe where I can do what I please, thank you very much.
I still maintain the lawsuits will fly if this gets repealed, tying it up in court for years (and hopefully long enough where there will be a different administration in the WH)
It would help if Silicon Valley had some influence with Republicans. The telecoms do. But all the (R)s ever get from Google, Facebook and the rest is opposition funding and virtue signalling. It doesn't surprise me that nothing these people have to say is being heard.
And fuck NYT and their editorial epiphanies. There isn't one new thought being expressed here that hasn't been beat to death years ago. I neither need nor want the validation of the establishment's celebrity editors.
Wait until you see the $50 "international sites" add-on. No longer will the US government have to deal with the masses having access to unbiased outside information. They get to have their own Korean-style walled-garden internet!
So, what will ISP's do with VPN users? I pay $5/mo for mine, and connect through another country. I am effectively able to bypass all of this nickle-and-dime filtering about to happen.
ISP's will therefore need to charge a HUGE premium on VPN users.
This is truly the death of the free internet.
It seems to me that the last-mile providers are trying to charge three time for their service:
First, when you buy internet access you're paying for access at 50/mbps (or whatever speed I want). It seems like this should give you access to the pipe at that speed.
Second, the content providers are paying thousands (millions?) of dollars for their "upload" access. They are contracting with Level 3, or buying their own fiber to provide their content.
And now thirdly, the ISPs want to charge the content providers additional fees to deliver their content (initially, it will be fees for "faster", next it will be fees for "not slowing it down" and finally, the fee will be for "delivery").
The water utility analogy (sorry, no cars), is that if you first bought water from a water supplier (not your local utility), then the local water company charged you for a pipe that could deliver 100 gallons per hour, then the utility charged you for delivering the water that you've bought from the supplier, and finally, the local utility charged the company that supplied the water a fee for delivering it.
If I had mod points today you'd have them. The way you ensure a free and open internet is NOT to regulate it, it's to let companies do what they want, and then let people decide what they want to buy.
What people want to buy is not what the NYT is describing, therefore I am sure it's not something we are going to see more than a blip of, if that.
Internet Access: 40.00/Mo @ 500Gb
Modem Rental: $10.00/Mo - Mandatory Use of Modem
Modem Insurance Fee: $1.00/Mo
Extra Computer Fee: $10.00/Mo/PC -Must use our router
NetFlix Fee: $10.00/Mo/client
Social Network Package Fee: $4.00/Mo
Email Fee: $2.00/Mo
VPN Fee:$50.00/Mo
VoIP Fee: $50.00/Mo
Skype Fee: $5.00/Mo
Non-Approved Browser Fee: $5.00/Mo
Non-Approved Application Fee: $4.00/Mo/application
Non-Approved OS Fee: $10.00/Mo
Mandatory AntiVirus Fee: $4.00/Mo
Blocked: Bittorrent, SSH, Non-Approved VPN, Non-Approved OS, Non-Approved Routers, Non-Approved Sites
Early Payment Fee: $1.00
Late Payment Fee: $10.00
Early Termination Fee: $100
Fee Payment Fee: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Surcharge: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Surcharge Levy: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Surcharge Levy Premium: $1.00
Excess Data Fee: $20.00/Gb
Unused Data Fee: $0.10/Gb
Paper Bill Fee: $1.00/pg
You fascist internet regulators keep bringing up that AT&T thing because it's all you have. But what you are missing is how much is speaks against your cause to clamp down on the internet until it chokes.
If lack of NN is such a problem, how come AT&T did not continue blocking FaceTime? Because the truth is the internet does not need regulation for protection, customers simply don't buy services from idiots that block things like AT&T did.
When Obama decreed Net Neutrality he of course fucked it up. Instead of getting new laws passed, he simply had the FCC implement rules treating them like Common Carriers.
The problem with that is a Common Carrier status comes with a boatload of other, unrelated baggage and also results in the Federal Government having defacto control over the internet. Far from Obama's net neutrality returning us to the days of the Wild West, it laid the ground work for complete federal control over it.
What needs to be done is a brand New Law specific to data services that prohibits any kind of traffic shaping or other restrictions.
1. If you sell X speed. That must be available to the user 24/7.
2. If you can't do that, expand your capacity.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Although initially this is described as "fast lanes" (which is another way of saying slow lanes for everyone else), but I can easily see this become add-on fees from the ISPs to access specific content.
There doesn't seem to be anything to stop Verizon (or Comcast) from tacking on a "user fee" of $5 or $10/month to access Netflix. Or the ISPs could just block (slow down to make unusable) competitive services. Verizon (and Comcast) all offer "not quite as good" competitors to Netflix, Google search, news sites. It seems like they could just Netflix or Google and force you to use the Verizon alternative (or perhaps charge a fee for unblocking them).
As long as there is limited alternatives for internet access, the ISPs will have all the power to force customers to use their services or pay premiums. Where there are one or two competitors, similar to the cable TV model, both companies will have almost identical prices.
If you want a free and open internet, the very, very LAST thing anyone should desire is government regulation. The internet has been as free and open as it's been so far precisely *because* there has been no government regulation
To be more precise, you do not want under the control of *ANY* bit entity.
Be it governments, or be it huge corporation.
And here liese the problem...
If it's so terrible, why hasn't all those bad things already happened?
...because it took some time for the big corporation to be big enough and vertically integrated to be able to pull off easily the kind of shit that forced the creation of net neutrality regulations.
There's a difference between what was once just a bunch of universities communicating with each other on equal grounds, and a huge corporation basically having a monopoly on internet over a whole region and deciding what every one will be able to see or not.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So when do you graduate High School?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The internet routes around any damage, even self-inflicted.
The rest of the world won't see any problem, just those in Amerca who voted for those people causing the damage.
win/win situaton.
Americans get what they voted for.
The rest of the world gets less internet stupid.
Please implement user fees!
I WANT to see gmail/hotmail usage drop off to near zero.
I WANT to see nobody using google drive/MSFT storage, etc.
Local storage will be popular again.
Picture all those data centers sitting idle.
Picture none of that sweet sweet meta data being mined as people use the sneakernet.
This model smacks of 1990's style thinking.
Do they think Amazon and Google won't start building out their own 'internets'? Do they think that this type of fragmentation and duplication of efforts would be anything but harmful for consumers?
yes.
This isn't free market capitalism. This is crony capitalism.
You wouldn't really want free market capitalism if you saw it. Yeah, unethical conflicts of interest, often financial, are an unfortunate part of democratic governance. Unfortunately a zero-tolerance policy on there would be as aesthetically unpleasing to view as the war on drugs has been.
The only important part of Net Neutrality is Free Speech. Neither the republicans nor the democrats seem to feel it's important to focus like a laser beam on that issue.
It's really a shame, because Canada is going full Net Neutrality and actually listening to what consumers want, and not the corporate greedheads.
(caveat: I indirectly own shares in many telecom firms, and have worked for them in the past)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We need strong, caring, logical people to join the U.S. government.
bla bla bla
One way to help that happen is to take the money out of being elected.
bla bla bla
Could there be free TV channels for those who qualify and are trying to make themselves known before an election?
What if we invented a big fantastically complex system that could distribute a channel's worth of video effeciently to every viewer that chose to view it? And make sure that everyone could do this for FREE. Can you imagine such a future?
Another way is to pass a law that says anyone who tries to influence legislation must make all documents public,
But what about the people that try to influence legislation *without documents*. What about those ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC SINGERS WITH THEIR MIND CONTROL PERSUASION LYRICS?!?!?!
and must have no personal involvement with lawmakers or their staff.
Because no legilater's friends or family would succumb to satan's temptation to use their position of access to have undocumented persuasion access via spoken word.
Please...
Next you know, supermarkets will be allowed to sell you only Monsanto-derived foods, and clothing stores will be allowed to sell you only clothes made by Old Navy! Quick, we need some "store neutrality"!
I didn't realize that those companies had the power to prevent their customers from accessing any part of the internet without paying more.
Perhaps desktop programming will come back, as a result?
erm I meant USA.
Because I'm not seeing it. Data caps have been a thing even on home connections. That obviously took care of any major problems they had. Why change rules around that could be potentially catastrophic?
Thus far, ISPs haven't been given free range to do what they want. While most of us would agree this is a "Good Thing(tm)", the fact that this keeps coming up indicates that some powerful people think otherwise, and we don't really have any counter data to show them other than what we think will happen ( and given the companies involved, it's almost assured that will happen ).
So at this point, given how much the FCC isn't listening to anyone but their corporate sponsors, I'm kinda of the mind to let them do it. Let them give the ISPs free reign, that will generate a TON of data for us to use later. Then, when congress gets involved and enshrines net neutrality in law, we'll know precisely why and be able to point to historical examples.
Given laws are painful to create and pass, while FCC regulations are seemingly easy to overturn, I'm kinda digging the idea of creating a net neutrality law anyway.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Read their Manifesto: https://www.savetheinternet.co...
A little background checking shows that SaveTheInternet is a coalition of organizations lead by the Free Press advocacy group whose chair is Tim Wu who invented the phrase "net neutrality." His Wiki page says "Wu ran for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of New York against a conservative Democrat." So the top name in this effort is a person very much on the left who is also fighting for his legacy. Now that doesn't mean he isn't necessarily correct, but NN was voted in only 3-2 along party lines in 2015 so we'd need someone more neutral to make the case.
But let's look at some of their claims:
"The consequences would be particularly devastating for [...] people of color, the LGBTQ community, indigenous peoples and religious minorities"
"The mainstream media have long misrepresented, ignored and harmed people of color. And thanks to systemic racism, economic inequality and runaway media consolidation, people of color own just a handful of broadcast stations. The lack of diverse ownership is a primary reason why the media have gotten away with criminalizing and otherwise stereotyping communities of color."
"The internet without Net Neutrality isn’t really the internet."
"This would destroy the open internet."
"Without Net Neutrality, the next Google or Facebook would never get off the ground." Well they did get off the ground without Net Neutrality, and have fortified themselves more than ever since NN.
Essentially we must support NN to prevent racism. If they need to bring up that argument, do they really have an argument?
Please don't trivialize this type of problem.
Except of course the ISPs will let you have email but only a certain number of messages (or bytes) a month before buying an add-on, and no encryption. OTOH, until they get that figured out, there might be a boom in PGP adoption.
If actual phone service isn't restricted, there might be a small boom in old-fashioned BBS systems with phone (landline or cell) access.
The olde tech isn't dead, and could be reanimated...
You can only blame yourselves. It’s only the Americans who elected Trump, and no one else. From abroad, we’ll enjoy see the US dwindle into total irrelevance.
Don't post hostile comments on Slashdot. They waste everyone's time.
Now that municipalities are building their own fiber to the curb because the big telecoms won't, is a good time for those municipalities to start interconnecting those networks. They can run a neutral network that way. As soon as there is a local alternative to big telecom near me, I'll take it. Currently only 1 ADSL provider and ADSL is less reliable than cable which is less reliable than fiber.
Without NN, they do now. You corporate zombies got what you wanted, enjoy it while it last.
As far as content control, all I have to do is tunnel thru to my VPS in the Netherlands. I am watching some shows in the states right now that are banned here. This setup is extremely simple and explained here: https://github.com/inwtx/SSH-W...
Once upon a time we had a version of that. Remember "Fair Trade" pricing laws? They allowed the manufacturer to set the selling price. No more, no less, and stores prohibited from selling items by some competitors. Sony was a vicious user of those laws. Most states (are any left?) got rid of those, allowing stores to set their prices according to their view of the market. But you're right: there were multiple stores, and if you were looking for Brand X not-Sony you could still find it someplace. Some states never had such laws, so warehouse operations tended to set up there and ship direct using mailed catalogs.
In this case, it's as if Compuserve or AOL had local monopolies on internet access for retail (non-business) users. Business users could, possibly, insist on simple carriage agreements - pay for access to the internet backbone with no "value added." But retail, non-business users would not be able to do that because ... not businesses. You take what you get and like it, and pay for it. Yes, there will certainly be added fees for any more than basic service, and fairly limited caps on the basic services, for landline or cellular. It simply makes business sense - people insist on doing stuff on the internet because, in many cases, even with government, there's no other way to do it any more - so there's a captive market that will pay nearly any price. See: cable TV until decently fast internet came around. There's also the cooking-a-frog approach, that will almost certainly occur with existing customers who don't sign up for all the "new shiny" services: raise the "rent" by 10% or so a year, dangling some package with several things you don't want or need but a lower price overall (which will then go up 10% a year also).
Are internet, cable, and phone services included in any standard inflation index? If they are, we can expect the index to take a jump over the next few years. I suspect they aren't in any index generally used, though: modern political and economic (Republican, especially) theory holds that all communication is a luxury that should be accessible only to those with the money to pay for it.
Why is the new internet like AOL? Oh yeah, Verizon owns AOL.
(And wait, where did the FCC chairman used to work? Oh yeah, Verizon)
We have a real problem today that would not exist if it weren't for the fact governments around the United States instituted monopolies on telephone and cable companies all pre-1990s. We don't really need net neutrality. What we need is a free market and past government action has given certain entities an unfair market advantage today. The companies which have already invested can out-compete those whom would like to enter the market. We have this same problem with with early companies entering markets. They have what is called a "first mover" advantage. Unlike these companies though monopolies were granted so there was only one company in any given market competing for longer than it would take to pay back the loans thus enshrining we only ever got one ISP per technology (ie cable or telephone).
I'm not against net neutrality given what has occurred, but I think we really need to focus on ISP diversification rather than net neutrality long term.
i just hope that companies like netflix will give a discount to those users that predominantly use their service over fair (un-classified) internet connections. this would help to promote fair & local ISPs over the likes of comcast & verizon.
Walled Garden Again! Is this what Trump meant by saying he will build a big beautiful Wall !
If there is one bad hombre that needs to be grabbed by his piehole and thrown out of America it is Ajit Pai !
we don't really have any counter data to show them other than what we think will happen
I'm calling bullshit on your claim. Here's the data. Here's more.
Some of us remember things longer than four years.
At what point does this lunatic Ajit Pai cross a line into treason or illicit this as a more graver international matter?
That is the only language telecoms will understand. If you're going to whine that you need xxxxx service for yyyyy reasons, then you have already lost, and will continue to lose.
I am sure not every country in the world has net neutrality laws. Are they living this scenario right now? Or does consumer demand ensure availability of unrestricted services?
Pfffttt. We have plenty of those. It's called career civil service. Most career government staff are actually quite knowledgable, hard working, and civic minded.
Then the political appointees like Pai come in and fuck it all up. You can't undo corrupt leadership and ideology-based decision making. Doesn't matter how much you reduce lobbying influence when one fuckwit at the top appoints the heads of all executive agencies, and a good deal of the independent agencies - not to mention nine justices to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
Yes this all comes down to one man. One orangutan elected by drooling imbeciles. Look what he's doing to the State Dept and every other federal agency. All the protections in the world don't matter when the guy at the top is actively working to destroy the system from the inside.
America. You clowns deserve what you get.
Telecoms ARE the internet so why wouldn't they "cash in" on it?
I lay this at the feet of the corrupt Democrats for running the only candidate who could actually lose to a moronic heel like Trump.
Less demand for shitty web "apps", more demand for real apps on the local device! Suck it Javascript/React monkeys!
Serves America Right, and I hope it gets worse. You get what you get and you don't get upset.
Do you have to work at being this stupid? Net Neutrality was the reality when Facebook and Google got started. It only got codified into regulations when ISPs like Comcast started breaking it.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Well, when the solution is always weaker government and stronger corporations, what did you expect??
Captcha: submit
Net neutrality being allowed to exist is no different than if I were to buy 10k acres of land and I built a system of private roads across that land
and then the government came and told me who was allowed to drive on my private roads, on my private land and in what manner, causing
damage, etc, to my business, to my property and told me that I wasn't allowed to prevent it from happening.
NOTE: for your metaphore to work and actually precisely describe the situation, the 10k acres of land need to be not continuous, but all the free space between the private houses of private home owner that where here before you came.
(i.e.: you only own the land where you build your network of private roads. The people living here aren't living on your privately owned land, they own their own land).
Nice metaphor you have here, because when you look into the details it breaks in the exact same way that anti-net-neutrality-trolling breaks down to.
So you want to decide who can drive on your private roads and who can't ?
On the grounds that it causes you damage to accept any random vehicle to drive there ?
Then why the hell did you pretend your private roads network is "18-wheeler truck ready" when all you build is small gravel bike paths ?
(ISP: Why complaining that traffic from website XyZ that you want to throttle overloads your network ? Should you have provisioned the network well enough to be able to sustain the bandwidth that you sell to your customers. If you complain that youtube causes too much traffic on your network, you're the bloody idiot for having oversold your capacity to your customers. No you can't be an ISP selling "up to 100 mbits connection" to 20'000 customer while only having a 1Gbit upstream, even if you put the magical "up to")
- That point by itself is already very close to false advertising. Something which can get you sued for in some jurisdictions (those with strong consumer protection)
Also, all the people who own houses which are enclosed in enclaves in your territory are already paying for said roads. They are paying all the costs. Then why do you also want to tax incoming delivery trucks into your private network ? The delivery company has paid tax to the government (or whatever entity) for the building and upkeep of public roads. The home owner are paying your for the building and upkeep of your private road network. There isn't a single meter of road that isn't being paid for. But you still want to get profits, just because you happens to be in control of the gates around the private land ?
(ISP: companies such as Netflix are already paying to have a given bandwidth in their data center. Customers are already paying for a certain bandwidth on their data plan. All involved bandwith and interconnection is paid some way or another. Why the fuck to you suddenly want extra money from Netflix ?)
- That point by itself is already very close to raketeering. You can get into real trouble with this in lots of jurisdiction.
Also how can we be sure that you have no vested interests in how you are taxing incoming delivery truck ? It's a bit fun when every milk delivery man needs to pay exorbitant fees to enter your network, except "Joe's Milk Jugs" which happens to be *your uncle joe* who own a dairy farm ? into whose company you're a shareholder ? and sit on its director's board ?
(ISP: the whole point of taxing Youtube and Netflix is to favour ipTV services from a provider who is part of the same mega-corporation).
- That point by itself could bring legal wrath on you because of violation of rule about competition, antitrust, etc.
And by extending further all the above to there most extreme conclusion :
Actually you're in a very critical position : By applying insanely big fees, you can control who goes in, who goes out. You can completely wipe out competition. You can end up deciding which companies are allowed to deliver food. You can severely limits the acces to anygoods. You can bascially decide which news
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I agree.
Don't forget that we should make all financial political contributions subject to disclosure all the way back to the first person who wrote a check to any entity that is - or that contributes money to, however indirectly - a political campaign.
You can actually voice your opinion directly from this link: http://gofccyourself.com/ [gofccyourself.com] It takes you directly to the FCC website page to voice your opinion. Click the "Express" link there to get to the relevan case page. Then, finish filling-out the info and submit. It is EASY! it is your duty to chime-in! We, the People, really need to understand and demand what truly serves the People! (This link was created/maintained by John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" organization.)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
You can actually voice your opinion directly from this link: http://gofccyourself.com/ [gofccyourself.com]
It takes you directly to the FCC website page to voice your opinion.
Click the "Express" link there to get to the relevan case page.
Then, finish filling-out the info and submit.
It is EASY! it is your duty to chime-in!
We, the People, really need to understand and demand what truly serves the People!
(This link was created/maintained by John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" organization.)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.