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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."
Companies will be free to fuck the consumer! Yay! Land of the free! Home of the voiceless!
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.
"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."
Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Here is a simple definition of net neutrality and links to further reading that will clear up you questions.
https://www.eff.org/issues/net...
You are welcome on my lawn.
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."
In other news, people being held at gun point often become desperate when nothing they do can convince the gun totter to let them go.
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.
oh my fuck can we please stop with this "well it was all fine and dandy back then" bullshit.
There are examples all over that provide excellent examples of why ISPs should not be allowed to have direct control over the data that flows over their networks. Even Canada has a shocking example: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/telus-cuts-subscriber-access-to-pro-union-website-1.531166
This fight has never been about what the state of the affairs was 5/10 years ago, it's about what the state of affairs will be 5/10 years from now, and putting rules in place to make sure that doesn't happen.
So fuck off with your nonsensical "WAH ALL GOVERNMENT IS BAD LET THE MARKET DECIDE" republican horse shit. It's stupid, and only idiots like you believe in it.
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.
"Chairman Pai's plan to restore Internet freedom...." Orwell himself couldn't write better newspeak.
AT&T willfully and deliberately blocked Facetime because it competed with AT&T's own services. Comcast forged TCP RST's to kill bittorrent traffic they didn't like. Comcast & Verizon were shown in no uncertain terms to be deliberately throttling Netflix in order to make Netflix cough up more money. Given that Netflix competes with Comcast's and Verizon's own "home grown" services, this is explicitly why Network Neutrality was formalized. NN was the way the Internet basically had worked up until the point in time where these large incumbent monopolies did this.
Because the barrier to entry is so high not even Google can afford to do so in most cities.
Oh you CAN crate laws for all kinds of reasons, but you SHOULD only create laws for really good ones. As in not just because someone somewhere came up a with a hypothetical thing that might some day be a problem.
... Chairman Pai's plan to restore Internet freedom ...
And by that, he means the freedom for ISPs to do whatever they want to customers and their traffic.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's not that, it's just that the comments were faked to the FCC by anti-NetNeutraility bots, and they're concerned that America is waking up to their criminal activities in hacking the "vote".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's in the first link on that page.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
In particular, Comcast has been sandbagging fair use of encryption and swarmstreaming traffic across the board, while also illegally charging Netflix just for traversal of it's network. Now they want to charge customers for using Netflix too. This is all blatantly illegal, and always has been. Now they have an inside guy to try to overturn the law though.
"Would you care to link to the specific page that has that info?"
Pretty simple:
paid prioritization / availability of some internet sites and providers over others:
example 1: without net neutrality, the ISP can offer a package that only allows access to their own properties. Does the ISP own a streaming service, then your internet service can only reach that service, you the customer can't reach netflix or hulu. Maybe they offer a higher tier internet package you can buy that will let you visit these services... or maybe they don't.
example 2: without net neutrality, the ISP can throttle netflix traffic to a crawl unless netflix pays some fee to your ISP. I mean sure the customers are already paying a fee to access netflix via the internet service, perhaps they are even paying extra just for permission to reach netflix but that's not important. They can also go after payments from each service and server with a "pay us, or people visiting from our network will be throttled to minimal speeds".
The effect of the loss of net neutrality is that:
a) services owned by the ISP do not have to be treated the same as other services. They can do whatever they want to make sure competing services are not reachable, not usable, or cost a lot more.
b) large services will pay the ransoms to the ISP to get their services to consumers. So facebook and netflix will pay the ISP for premium access. This serves to enrich the ISP, and entrench the big players.
If facebook-next comes along, or youtube-next comes along but doesn't have the money to pay all the ISPs not to block or throttle them into oblvious, then oblivion is where they'll stay. Even if they can pay their own hosting and bandwith costs, they also have to pay EACH ISP the ransom due to send those packets to the ISPs customers.
The resulting internt will have a few dozen channels owned by large companies, most of which will belong to the ISPs themselves, and a few more behemoths like apple etc that can afford the pay to be reachable.
Your new website or service, dies on the vine. Comcast users aren't going to pay comcast extra money each month to reach your site, and you can't afford to pay comcast and every other provider money to reach their customers.
I read the front page but there is no mention of ...
Maybe you should read beyond the first page before wasting everyone's time by asking questions that you can easily answer for yourself.
Your posting history shows that you post about network neutrality and little else, and your posts generally add nothing to the discussion.
You have made a habit out of feigning ignorance (as you are doing here), despite having your questions answered over and over. Your only interest seems to be trolling and spreading FUD.
I still don't understand why the answer isn't to start a competing ISP
Well, there are generally three possibilities of a wired ISP: One using phone lines, one using cable, or one using fiber. Most of us have less than all of these options. If you want to start your own competing ISP, then you'll need to create your own infrastructure. To do this, you will need to figure out where to install it, and then negotiate rights with each of the property owners along the way, so that you can locate your stuff on their property. They will probably want money from this, and it'll likely be a lot. And if any of them refuse, you are going to be out of luck. The existing infrastructure was created using rights of way that were created for the telephone system or other government facilitated rights of way.
So maybe you could start your competing ISP using wireless. To do that, you would just need to gain rights to use the public spectrum. Your checkbook needs to open wide to do this.
Look, I am pretty far on the right politically, but the situation here is deeply corrupt. The existing providers are using public, government granted resources to build their businesses, but somehow think that they shouldn't be regulated. If they had to individually negotiate the rights to use - and pay a mutually agreed rent to - all of the property on which they've built, then I would buy the argument. But this is *far* from a free market that can provide competition.
The *only* rational policy is to treat any infrastructure that uses government facilitated rights of way, or public air spectrum, as a public utility. All traffic should be required by law to be routed as efficiently as practical, without regard to content, or origin/destination of the traffic. And it should not be possible for any company to simultaneously own any part of the infrastructure (directly or indirectly), and any content that it carries. And if they don't like it, they should be free to build their own infrastructure with no public aid of any kind.
Do you remember watching Netflix back then? ISPs would force Netflix traffic over congested links so people felt like they still needed Cable TV for Real Entertainment. A simple example, but a quite clear one.
The provider "fast lanes" were a similar ploy, favoring certain content.
In that position, the ISP can pick the winners and losers. Since the ISP is in a monopoly position, the customer has zero power to switch and remedy the situation.
I get a few of the reasons why ISPs shouldn't be bridled by "common carrier" rules, but with players like Comcast and Frontier they have repeatedly shown that they do not act in good faith.
... when it was introduced in 2015? When the regulators sat down in that meeting they must have acted in response to a specific trouble caused by lack of net neutrality prior to that. What was that trouble? I am genuinely interested.
Comcast throttling Netflix and Bittorrent, the former had to pay up to setup CDN's on Comcast's networks to avoid throttling. Someone didn't wanna pay their peering for all those bits coming from Netflix. Just one example of why NN got enacted. I could go on.. Verizon blocking Facetime? The current fuckery with mobile providers dishing out 'no cap streaming' 'deals' to favor their affiliates.
But, don't worry. NN is dead, it has been dead since Ajit Pai was installed as chairman. They haven't been enforcing NN at all anyway, so yeah.. except now the ISP's will have a completely free hand to do all the fuckery they desire.
And they cannot wait for the money to be theirs....
They were paid a long time ago. This deal to repeal NN was done a long time ago, Ajit Pai is just pushing the papers around for show. Nothing we say or do will have any impact. As another poster chimed in: Home of the voiceless. We have no say. If you want a say, better bring a blank check.
Bots or not, all those comments are going to /dev/null. No one is reading those. They never had any bearing on this deal.
No; it is a natural monopoly. If it costs $500 for every household you "pass" in a city or town (assuming near-zero permitting costs) then with 100% uptake your monthly capital recovery for the fiber is $6.55. If you have 50% then we are looking at $13.10. Once we drop to 30% uptake, we are around $20/month just for the fiber in the ground. $20 capital recovery would mean a monthly cost of around $100 to cover peering, repairs, core infrastructure, customer support, etc., at a minimum. Too many competitors and the economics simply don't work.
In 2013, comcast throttled netflix and extorted millions of dollars out of netflix to allow them to continue to operate. Their own documents showed they were doing it on purpose. It was literally: "Gee - that's a popular website you've got there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."
If it can happen to netflix in 2013, it can happen to the next big thing whenever the big internet kleptocracies want. Personally, I think what comcast did then already falls under fraud, extortion and racketeering laws, but having some clear cut protections would be nice.
That said, I also believe that filing the internet under title 2 is NOT a good idea. That would give the FCC way too much power to regulate the internet if existing regulation of radio under title 2 is any indication. Sure, they *might* prevent another comcast extorting netflix (hey - we can dream), but the same legislation would give them the power to set up the internet equivalents of public decency filters, the fairness doctrine, and who knows what else (all in the interests of fighting terrorism/pedophiles I'm sure).
The result of all of this is that people fall into several groups:
1) Politicians For NN - they see the new powers to regulate the internet and are giddy with joy
2) Politicians Against NN - they are generally getting bribed by the ISPs
3) People For NN - they see things like comcast v netflix and are righteously outraged
4) People Against NN - they see the FCC wants new regulatory powers over the internet and are aghast
5) People who have no idea what NN is, and, if they bother to try and find out, basically end up parroting either 3 or 4 depending on whom they listen to.
Both parties are full of crap and only a complete tool trusts either side.
I'm not finding a reference for when the FCC got a law passed authorizing it to regulate the internet--the closest you get is the Telecommunications Act of 1934, but people had little concept of modern computers at the time, never mind most of the things we do with computers now. They'd consider the El Cheapo calculators we can pick up at a dollar store to be incredibly impressive and not just because those things can fit into a pocket.
It would be...reasonable to ask that, if the internet is going to be treated as telecommunications ect ect, that Congress actually pass the damn law saying as much. Having net neutrality be baked in on that level might also be actually preferable, especially since the ISPs being defined as common carriers by the FCC and having net neutrality regulations has failed quite entirely to prevent things like the MAFIAA from trying to get the ISPs to do their enforcement. (I would suggest not going for net neutrality but rather going straight to requiring they be agnostic about the content of their pipes--with them encouraged to know only the minimum amount of information required to ensure data gets where it's going, and not a single nibble more.)
Seriously, a lot of this feels like watching a group of people working on a program who keep implementing crocks with the assurance that these are only really temporary patches and they'll go back Any Day Now and implement a proper fix or at least a reliably-working kludge...with the distinct feeling that this 'any day' is going to be a few eons after the heat death of the universe. Can we please just implement the proper fix? One that might actually get us the real thing?
What makes you think it's *deregulation* that will lower the barriers to entry?
The thing actually that will lower the barrier to entry is regulation to stop the current players using their current scummy tactics to keep the competition out.
can't tell if your shilling or not but obviously when you tried to get that website off the ground, you would have to enter into content agreements with possibly a handful of different ISPs in order to avoid for instance, constant buffering (which translates into no one using your site, because ISPs slowed it down so much that it sucks). The default would be the slow lane, and you would have to pay to get "upgraded". So you wouldn't be able to "start the new youtube" because you would need a few million to even try. Thus raising the barrier to entry on what used to be "any idiot with an internet connection and free web server software".
As i understand it, the telco situation in the USA is monopolies. Content is hardly a monopoly. Video sharing sites alone number in the tens or hundreds. For some americans, as i understand it, they only have the choice of 1-2 ISPs. So im not really worried about google being a monopoly as i personally use duck duck go daily
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
If net neutrality fails it will just mean all the smart people can pack up their shit and start a new internet and scrubs like you can pay by minute on your AOL 2.0. I personally can't fathom why you'd be so excited by this.
Maybe the way to scare these ISPs into leaving this alone is making it an "all or nothing" situation. If you are going to throttle or block certain data, then you become responsible for policing ALL OF IT. If you insert yourself as the keeper of the data, you better be blocking all illegal and illicit content, failing to do so at their own peril.
Eh, wishful thinking, I know.
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.
Considering that all of our telecommunications companies had all the time, resources, and motivation that it would have taken to build the information superhighway for over 10 years and they failed to deliver until one was graciously delivered to them by our government and tax payers.
I would say there is plenty of evidence they will adopt short term measures to nickel and dime consumers instead of providing a general use platform that facilitates broad innovation like the internet as we know it. The problem that net neutrality is attempting to solve is the behavior of our carriers and content providers left to their own devices.
They own the very extensible MMS network and have no restrictions on it's use, we all have access. Why does it suck? It should have replaced the internet by now!
You're lucky if you can average out to only $500 per household. Fiber typically costs ~$30k per mile, so you'll only get it down to that price if you have at least 50 houses per linear mile, or 1 house per 100 feet (including the cost of going over streets, mandatory open space, etc.). In the suburbs, it ends up often being somewhat higher than that, and in rural areas, you're probably low by an order of magnitude or more.
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As i understand it, the telco situation in the USA is monopolies.
Local telcos are still monopolies for wired telephone service. ISPs are not. The two words are not synonyms.
See here
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this decision? It does seem to mesh with the philosophy that government interference in free markets is a net-negative. The argument could certainly be made that the federal government has no business telling Comcast, Cox, et al what to do with their networks. You could argue that they get preferential status, but two wrongs don't make a right. Wouldn't the correct solution be to revoke their monopolies along with the net neutrality regulations?
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As we all saw last year, there is nothing democratic about the Democrat party.
How's the weather in Moscow, Boris?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Of course I'm not paying them to do this. Why should I pay THEM to use my electricity and network backbone so they can charge my customers for their content?
You meant to write "my slaves", didn't you? People that you own and exploit for profit.
Because your customers PAY YOU to get the content. It's not like Netflix just shoves data into your network .
We ARE desperate to save the Internet from the shitbags that are trying to destroy net neutrality, and the greedy piece of shit corporations who are looking to make yet more money when they're already raking in plenty.
We need to redirect our efforts elsewhere
I do believe that you are correct. I think we can conclude that pressuring the FCC is a lost cause. At least until a new administration is elected in 2020. Putting pressure on congress to do the right thing is one option we have.
Wait, Wait. I know what some of you are thinking. Congress doing the right thing. Well I was reading a story the other day where a French scientist is working on creating a avian sus scrofa domesticus. So it could happen.
But another option that we have to take into account is we can put direct pressure on isp's. Once we become aware of a isp being a problem let them know our displeasure. Refusing to pay bills and just plan old boycotting their services are two options.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
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).
They are absolutely not ignoring it -- in fact, they've already addressed the problem by re-defining one provider as "competition"!
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
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.
That would be the ideal situation yes; however, the government has granted our current ISPs a monopoly in most markets of the USA. We cannot legally do your example in most areas because of those previous agreements. This is why net neutrality must exist in its current form. The government took away true competition when it made those agreements, because of that we need the regulation so consumers can't be screwed by the monopolies the government allowed to happen.
The [FCC] 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.
The FCC regulates the interstate commerce of communication technology and utilities. They didn't take over all consumer protection, especially consumer fraud and antitrust (which remained with the FTC and the Justice Department). If the FCC had taken these over, how would you explain, for instance, the breakup of AT&T?
Most of the bad aspects of "network non-neutrality" are the result either of:
- integration between ISPs and companies that provide the services for which they carry the packets - either outright membership in the same conglomerate or special deals - giving them an incentive to favor the packets of their "partners" and committing anticompetitive behavior,
- penalizing packets of services that are costly to carry, a threat to their partners' business models, or of heavy users - thus providing less than what a reasonable person would expect of "internet service" and committing consumer fraud.
Meanwhile the FCC tends to apply technical solutions to anticompetitive behavior problems, and considers two players "competition" (when "the invisible hand" requires at least 3 and typically four or more competitors before cartel-like behavior breaks down without collusion to keep it stable).
I have, for years, been advocating that Network Neutrality be moved to the FTC and Justice Dept, which have no issues with penalizing or disassembling companies that shaft the consumers.
But the FTC can't just step up to this plate - and Pai is being disingenuous to speak as if it could. Some of the "hands off the Internet" legislation explicitly blocks the FTC from playing in that game. Congressional action is required to re-enable it.
Having said that, one could expect the Trump administration to go for it. The media conglomerates that are driving network non-neutrality are exactly the ones that have run the totally anti-Trump mainstream media. Turning the FTC attack dogs loose on them, with an eye to dismembering their unholy alliances, would be a dandy way to punish his enemies by doing something good for the bulk of the consumers. B-)
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Even the Title 2 was the ISPs' own fault. The FCC used Title 1 first - which essentially led to a useless joke of a regulation. The ISPs didn't even want that and sued to stop it. The courts demanded that the FCC use Title 2 instead - which they did. Had the ISPs just shut their mouths, they could have paid lip service to Net Neutrality while jumping through tons of loopholes to abuse their monopoly positions.
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All consumers in the US also have a choice of one and only one internet. Net neutrality absolutely affects the internet backbone. And the backbone is where the damage is going to happen. We have tons of ISPs, not just a few, so if Netflix is going to be throttled then it will be by the backbone owners.
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.
Where do you live that you have 13 different ISPs? For most people, they have one or two ISPs to choose from. A quick Google search located this report that, at 25Mbps (the current definition of broadband), 30% have no providers, 48% have only one provider, and 19% had 2 providers. Only 3% had 3 or more providers. That means that nearly a third of people in the US don't have broadband and two thirds have only 1 or 2 providers. If you have 13 different ISPs, you're very lucky, but you're also a huge exception to the general rule.
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Net neutrality has a Storied history in the U.S. There have been assorted Congressional bills proposed, but the problems are still partisan
Truth, but there is something different this time than the last times. Before today only nerds knew or really cared about net neutrality. Basically, us. Not really much of a force to influence the troop of baboons in Washington.
But now my 70 year old father asked me about net neutrality and he seemed concerned. My daughter and her friends are also asking questions. These are people that wouldn't even give net neutrality a second thought a few years ago. It has gone from a topic only a few knew about to a hot button issue thanks to social media. Everyone is talking about it.
Hey, I guess facebook is good for something .
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.