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FCC Won't Delay Vote, Says Net Neutrality Supporters Are 'Desperate' (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission will move ahead with its vote to kill net neutrality rules next week despite an unresolved court case that could strip away even more consumer protections. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says that net neutrality rules aren't needed because the Federal Trade Commission can protect consumers from broadband providers. But a pending court case involving AT&T could strip the FTC of its regulatory authority over AT&T and similar ISPs. A few dozen consumer advocacy groups and the City of New York urged Pai to delay the net neutrality-killing vote in a letter today. If the FCC eliminates its rules and the court case goes AT&T's way, there would be a "'regulatory gap' that would leave consumers utterly unprotected," the letter said. When contacted by Ars, Pai's office issued this statement in response to the letter: "This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet regulations are becoming more desperate by the day as their effort to defeat Chairman Pai's plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled. The vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14."
The FCC took over regulation of interstate communication in 1934 with the Communications Act of 1934. The took over this authority from the Interstate Commerce Commission. Their job is regulating interstate commerce aspects of communication. Punting this to the FTC is disingenuous and probably illegal. Perhaps the executive branch needs to be reminded to follow the law.
Very simple:
* I pay $ISP from my campaign funds.
* $ISP drops packets to $OTHER_CANDIDATE's website, or actively injects malware in the HTTP transaction making it look like the website is malicious.
* I win the election.
And here are a couple of specific examples:
Comcast throttling bittorrent https://www.wired.com/2011/10/bittorrent-throttling-comcast/
Comcast requiring payment from Netflix https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/02/23/comcasts-deal-with-netflix-makes-network-neutrality-obsolete/?utm_term=.52c1fd061840
And before you think the second is reasonable, recall that Netflix has already paid for bandwidth to the Internet, and Comcast's customers have already paid for bandwidth as well.
I've been a strong proponent of FCC-enforced NN. However, this article does raise some really good counter points. Pai and crew keep saying that the market should decide, and ignore the fact that there's absolutely no competition for the vast majority of the nation (only one broadband provider in my entire state, for example). The EFF article talks about how fostering competition is really the solution, if it could somehow be done. Here's something that was done in a small town where I used to live that really could make a huge difference.
If you don't feel like clicking on the link, the short story is that there's a municipal fiber network, but they actually don't act as an ISP. They are just a last-leg service and you select from a range of ISPs that have run a service to the town's central hub (which greatly lowers the barrier to entry for an ISP). Some are calling it new and novel, but it sounds to me like the Internet of the 90s, where you pay your phone company for the line and you pay AOL or some such to act as your ISP. Then the phone companies bought out the ISPs and that's how we ended up with today's mess. I vote for switching back to the 90's model like my old town did.
You've changed a lot of words between your first claim and this one, but it is still wrong. My responsibility ends at the edge of my network. I cannot control what other network providers do, and I cannot control what bandwidth other content providers pay for.
No. It's you who are squealing like a pig being slaughtered. In case of fucking Comcast they were DECLINING TO BUILD UP THEIR INTERCONNECTIONS. Nobody was asking them to provide free transit to Netflix, they were asked to build up their fucking network so their fucking edge had enough capacity to peer with Netflix.
And Netflix is bending over their backwards to accommodate ISPs, at that.
There are four ISPs I can call at any time for service here, and those are just the ones I'm familiar with. There's 13 listed in the phone book.
I offered this bet several times - if by the end of the next year I have at least 3 wireline ISPs that will provide me more with more than 50Mbps connection then I'll pay you $10000. Otherwise you pay me that sum. I live in a middle of an affluent neighborhood (ZIP code 98119) and I can't get anything except Comcast or slow DSL. Do you believe your own convictions? I'm ready to post that sum into an escrow right now.
No? Then shut up your mouth. I actually used to run an ISP and I fucking know how deeply US ISPs are screwing people.