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FCC Explains How Net Neutrality Will Be Protected Without Net Neutrality Rules (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission is still on track to eliminate net neutrality rules this Thursday, but the commission said today that it has a new plan to protect consumers after the repeal. The FCC and Federal Trade Commission released a draft memorandum of understanding (MOU) describing how the agencies will work together to make sure ISPs keep their net neutrality promises. After the repeal, there won't be any rules preventing ISPs from blocking or throttling Internet traffic. ISPs will also be allowed to charge websites and online services for faster and more reliable network access. In short, ISPs will be free to do whatever they want -- unless they make specific promises to avoid engaging in specific types of anti-competitive or anti-consumer behavior. When companies make promises and break them, the FTC can punish them for deceiving consumers. That's what FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen are counting on. "Instead of saddling the Internet with heavy-handed regulations, we will work together to take targeted action against bad actors," Pai said in a joint announcement with the FTC today.
CEO: So we can do whatever the hell we want, so long as we promise nothing? DO IT!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Not really seeing an up side to this nonsense. Am I crazy, like the voices tell me, or am I missing something?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Ignorance is Strength
"We'll protect consumers! We'll stop Nestle if they put poison in their bottled water. But there's no need for heavy handed regulation; we'll only do it if they say their bottled water doesn't have poison in it."
-- sigs cause cancer.
Ah, right. The feds will hold the ISPs to their word. Then the invisible hand of the market will take care of everything.
It's like these assholes think the free market fairy can just wave her little magic wand and make anything work.
Except they don't think that. They know you have only 1-2 choices for ISP, and if both suddenly decide to provide shittier service, you're fucked. They even know that you know that. They're just testing to see if this makes it in above the pain threshold of the American voter, because everything that you can suffer, you will be made to suffer.
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The companies that give us access to the internet were being regulated....its completely different.....Regulating the internet is telling companies what services are and are not allowed on the internet (think China or Iran).....Regulating companies about how they are allowed to behave when giving people access to the internet prevents abuse of the people that use the internet.
So, given that the internet as we know it is just about dead, what should we as users do to best adapt to the post-internet world?
Does the new plan contain the word 'bigly'?
Better prepare your Internet exit strategies, folks. If the dark prophecies of Walled Gardens comes to pass, that may be the only effective form of protest available to rank-and-file citizenry. Small ISPs seem to have to piggyback on the larger ones' last-mile lines just to exist, so they likely wouldn't be any help, and while talk about creating our own Internet 3.0 is a nice fiction, that's all it is really; it'd take billions of dollars to get it started, thousands of people you could count on, and ISPs somehow not noticing, sueing the daylights out of us all, and/or just buying up any startups in hostile takeovers, the dismantling the whole thing -- assuming that is they don't outright lobby legislators to somehow prevent it. Continuing to pay ISPs who behave badly because "the Internet is essential" is just rewarding them for being evil. After the 2020 elections (if not sooner; Mr. Mueller, I'm looking at you when I say that) we'll likely not have a Republican in the Whitehouse anymore, but it'll take years for all the damage done, this included, to be reversed and repaired, and it's going to be a rough ride for all concerned in the meantime. If we somehow end up with a Republican until at least 2024, there may not be an Internet left to save. If someone else has any bright ideas how to mitigate evil behavior incoming from ISPs (because they will take full advantage of this, believe you me), I'm all ears.
known a few of those. So if a "bad actor" turns out to be a friend (you know... one of those "good" friends you get in politics) we can just ignore their bad actions because there aren't really any rules, right?
Without some type of rules or regulations you haven't even defined what a "bad actor" is.
So, Idgit Poophead is gonna watch out for companies doing something they shouldn't and tell them they're bad - and not have any regulation ability to actually STOP them from doing it because there technically won't be anything wrong with what they are doing!
It's like he's yelling "LOOK OVER THERE" to distract us while he shovels verizon cash into his duffel bag.
You are one dumb fuck.
it _IS_ possible that when ISP's start to charge for content, that others will use this opporunity to rebrand services which are free... as a bonus.. ... hence everyone changes to that ISP cause they are now offering a better service... and on that.. that company publicly stated that service is free.. they start charging for it, then the FCC has them by the balls...
For example when Comcast charges $5/mo for access to facebook, a competitor can give that access free
THEN, when Trump gets kicked out.. the new president may change things back... but who knows.. i dont live in the USA.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
we will work together to take targeted action against bad actors
So he just promised to turn himself in then and will prosecute himself if he doesn't?
I actually had this thought, too: If big, well-funded-and-connected companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon, and so on, got together, they could build Internet 3.0, and leave the current ISPs behind. Who knows how evil they'd get though.
This is what they've been saying from the beginning. The correct summary is "you have no protection."
All they're saying is that when your ISP decides to screw you, all they have to do is tell you they're doing it and they're home free.
That solves nothing at all. It might be useful if you had the ability to use a different ISP with better policies -- but the odds are overwhelming that you don't.
...we WILL get boned up the fanny.
Who knows how evil they'd get though.
Considering that they rank fairly high on the evil scale right now, my prediction is "extremely".
Where there's 30 separate competing telephone and cable companies' wires running along the street strung to the same set of poles, wrapped around the 4 separate electricity companies' wires popping and sparking in the humidity? It's not a pretty sight. A ridiculous waste of resources is what it is. One simple law that tells wire providers not to discriminate traffic is a lot more efficient.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In short, ISPs will be free to do whatever they want -- unless they make specific promises to avoid engaging in specific types of anti-competitive or anti-consumer behavior.
Reality check, folks: Do you really, REALLY believe the FTC can only investigate and punish anticompetitive behavior by a company if the company had promised not to be anticompetitive?
"But, but... some tech journalist at Ars Technica said so!"
It's been stunning to me throughout this NN debate to see how quickly and freely people simply abandon their critical thinking skills when someone who (at best) doesn't understand a whit about what they're writing about pens a purely inflammatory article like this.
I can't tell whether you're an idiot or a troll.
You run your experiments on a test bed, or a small isolated chunk. If *that* works, *then* you scale up to a pilot program on a larger chunk. Only if that works do you roll it out everywhere.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"We reserve the right to change the terms of service at any time, without notice."
And they will never, ever, ever break that rule.
*shrug* that's why I'm mentally preparing for a world where I don't have Internet at home anymore. It may come to the point where it's just not practical to be paying for something that is too expensive for what it provides, on top of surveilling the living daylights out of me. Here in the U.S. we already pay way too much for way too little compared to so many other 1st-world countries, and it's very likely it's just going to get worse after this. Continuing to pay them just validates bad behavior, and if that's the way it goes why would they change anything?
Not at all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So to sum it up, if your pockets are deep enough, you can ensure no competition will arise. Throw money at ISPs and ensure that they put you on the fast lane while your competitor will look like your modem just turned into a 33.6kbit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
it's why we got Trump and with him a Republican lead FCC. Trump promised the rust belters jobs. Hilary took their votes for granted. If we keep ignoring the plight of the lower working class and blue collar types this is only going to get worse. Remember in the 90s and 2000s when everybody on /. kept telling them to update their skills (ignoring the fact that it's hard to do that when you're a)over 30 and b) working for a living)? Remember when we did basically nothing to help the people displaced by NAFTA? This is the end result. So yeah, keep f*cking that chicken. Keep blowing off the working class in the name of small government and low taxes. And keep getting screwed over along with them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
BULLSHIT!
"Bad actors" are those Hollywood types who keep banging on about politics when they obviously know nothing about it.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'm not sure why you resent the people that have put forth years and years of effort
Because they received subsidies and exclusive use of public right-of-ways, and now they are trying to abuse their monopoly positions.
Try putting in your own connection to the internet and then come back and complain
I don't have a legal right-of-way to do that. The market can't fix the problem when there is no market.
Net Neutrality should not be necessary. It is needed because the government screwed up, and sold/leased/gave-away the right-of-ways to a single vendor in most areas. What they should have done is either build, or required the first vendor to build, a publicly owned conduit, such as a 12" PVC pipe, that any bonded company could later use to pull cable or fiber. This would have cost little extra, since the cost of the pipe is low compared to the cost of the trenching. But it would have drastically lowered the barriers to entry, and allow real competition. I would also make upgrades much easier.
FedEx, UPS, and the Postal Service don't each require their own set of roads. We should not expect every ISP to dig their own trenches.
In short, ISPs will be free to do whatever they want -- unless they make specific promises to avoid engaging in specific types of anti-competitive or anti-consumer behavior. When companies make promises and break them, the FTC can punish them for deceiving consumers.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen are counting on. "Instead of saddling the Internet with heavy-handed regulations, we will work together to take targeted action against bad actors," Pai said ...
If ISPs make promises to behave as the "heavy-handed" rules would specify and they can be punished for breaking either, then how are having rules more onerous than relying on promises? (Hint: They're not.) Of course, if the ISPs don't make specific (or any) promises - or any that benefit the consumer -- then they're not "bad actors" and punishing those will be difficult. Oh, wait ...
Seems like Verizon is getting their money's worth with Pai.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
if the internet gets any shittier and more expensive than it is now i will call my ISP and cancel my account, pull the plug on it and say: "fuck it, the internet was good while it lasted but it is over now, the pigs screwed it up and that is why we cant have nice things"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Proposals to the effect of "We'll protect NN via these other mechanisms." just makes me think, "If you want NN rules, leave it alone?"
Empty. That's all this is. Typical politician speak, hot air, words without meaning, may as well read the ingredients on a cereal box aloud. Would have learned more.
Remember folks, FCC is bought and paid for now. The only hope for restoring NN is pressuring congress to pass a new law. So harass your congresscritters. Don't even bother with the FCC, redirect all that rage to your representatives in congress and senate.
sounds like an opportunity for racketeering:
BIG ISP SAYS: "Nice website you have there, be a shame if something was to happen to it"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I can choose an ISP that I like the best, and the FCC will only be interested in making sure that ISP lives up to their policies and promises?
The system in the UK is a lot better, but also a long way short of perfect.
BT are the monopoly (the government originally built the early phone network, then sold it off) but are heavily regulated. Any other company can lease space in the phone exchanges and street side cabinets and pull their own cable through their ducts.
ISPs then peer with BT at the edges of their network and provide outbound bandwidth.
As a result just at my house I can pick my own bandwidth provider on top of:
24Mbit ADSL to the exchange, BT equipment in the exchange
24MBIt ADSL to the exchange, O2 equipment in the exchange
24MBIt ADSL to the exchange, TalkTalk equipment in the exchange
80Mbit VDSL to the cabinet, BT backhaul to the exchange
1000Mbit Fibre to the exchange by BT
For actual service on those connections I can pay anywhere from about 20GBP for a rubbish service that's just a bundle with voice calling, up to about 50GBP for a business SLA level service, to over 150GBP for the full fibre package
Or there's Virgin cable offering 200Mbit on their own network, pricing mostly determined by choice of TV package.
are rarely comparable to the infraction.
* * * :|
For your crimes of deceiving customers and making a profit of $1.21 Billion dollars, we hereby fine you for $10 Million dollars and your promise to never do it again. You must, of course, pinky swear it and agree to undergo sensitivity training
* * *
Until he shows me otherwise, I have zero faith in the new head of the FCC. We can certainly hope it plays out like the Tom Wheeler era but, as we all know, lightning rarely strikes the same place twice.
If a person owns an ISP they have to equally pass on all the bad social network media.
The social media that removes comments, bans accounts, reports users. Social media products and services the ISP users might not all need or want.
Under NN the ISP is forced to support services for free that its users might not want to pay for.
The regulations keep social media services from having to pay for networks. A free network for services that push censorship and deranking.
With NN rules removed that ISP can focus on products and services that its paying users want.
A new search engine that does not derank results for party political reasons?
A new social media product that does not remove accounts, report users and respects freedom of speech and after speech.
The boring part political product that helps governments censor is given less support.
The new products that support freedom get user support.
Users get the products and services they want from their ISP networks. Less of a federal NN free ride for social media that wants to control what users link to and comment on.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
1: ISPd, cable companies just like telcos don't do a dollar, they do billions each day.
2: Big companies spend less in maintenance and near nothing in R&D.
3: Big companies are preventing innovation and competition because once they become big they want to keep it as long as they can without actual working for it.
4: If laws protecting consummer didn't exist in the past Netflix, Google, Youtube and Facebook wouldn't exist today.
Let's see for a moment how some big companies have worked with some little consummer protection laws:
https://www.cnet.com/news/telcos-tackle-net-subsidy-program
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/11/big-isps-dwell-in-tax-break-heaven-according-to-corporate-tax-study
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/11/big-telcos-slam-broadband-open-access-broadband-report
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-telcos-love-handset-subsidies
http://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
descentralizing internet is the only way to shift their "burden" and reduce their "costs" making community networks (I know how most people despise the word and meaning of the word community or sharing, but is an idea).
publicly owned conduit, such as a 12" PVC pipe, that any bonded company could later use to pull cable or fiber.
The provider would respond by using 11.5" cables.
Sure it's overpriced compared to the rest of the world, but is your internet price actually going up? I live in a Comcast-only area where they can do whatever they want, but they've held the price steady at $50/mo for 6Mbps for a very long time.
This space intentionally left blank
In what way is telling ISPs to not screw around with the data packets transmitted across their network "heavy handed regulation"? Is it an especially onerous process for ISPs to not install special equipment and software that prioritizes network traffic?
(Jeebus, he is such an idiot.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If someone else has any bright ideas how to mitigate evil behavior incoming from ISPs (because they will take full advantage of this, believe you me), I'm all ears.
If you can shrink this amazing technology down to about the size and cost of a microwave oven, and provide high data rates with low latency, I'd say the problem is solved. A breakthrough like that would permanently eliminate the ability of corporations and governments alike to interfere with Internet communication.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
Because that works so well in advertising where they're already not allowed - by law - to make false claims.
The Judge in the Verizon case said they could do nothing unless the ISPs were classified under title ii. Wheeler's FCC reclassified them under title ii. Remove them from title ii and they can do nothing.
This new FCC guy is evil. He thinks he can propagandize his way out of the massive backlash.
120 million people said keep net neutrality. That represents the equivalent of every family in America.
The current chairman will remove them from title ii and put them under the FTC. The FTC says they have no power to enforce anything. Now the FCC says they will control the ISP's promises which itself is toothless because the ISPs will make no promises and since the FTC is the controlling agency yet toothless there's nothing but a con job going on here.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
We just roll it back a bit to internet 1.5. Everyone simply turns off their wireless encryption and changes their SSID to linksys. Then just multiplex all the signals in range.
Linksys will once again be the biggest and freeist ISP in the world!
-
My sweet little tot. There's a light on this tree that won't light on one side. So I'm taking it home to my workshop...
Ooops, wrong villain. Carry on.
Making sure companies don't lie to the FCC and consumers in general is hardly something to be celebrated as ground breaking. Companies will happily get around this by declining to promise any kind of net neutrality. They'll even be able to make a promise, then go back on it, and so long as they actually make enough public noise about it there would be no avenue to punish them. I can't see the likes of Comcast giving the slightest hoot if customers don't like their policies on traffic shaping, they'll just admit to it openly.
So instead of a simple rule saying that ISP's are supposed to pass along traffic, you find series of committees and investigations, specially catered for each company, based off of what companies promises, to be less heavy handed regulation? Right.
I live in the Netherlands and I can choose between at least ten providers for my glass fibre connection at home. And still we have net neutrality here because all providers are the same when it comes to earning money.
-- Cheers!
I meant to say that we still have net neutrality laws here. ;)
Thanks for that "Edit" button, Slashdot
-- Cheers!
Comcast already have a page Saying what they will do for an open network.
Now they did also take out a part saying essentially "no paid upgrades". But that does not matter because they HAVE pledged in the page I linked to, "We do not block, slow down or discriminate against lawful content.".
That means if they offer a "Netflix Boost" package or something like it, none of your traffic will be slowed if you decide not to subscribe, or the FCC would come after them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if they lose their court case against AT&T.
Other countries do it right, and run rings around your corrupt set up. They're laughing their asses off at you, and rightly so.
Enjoy your fucking slashdot bolt-on, trumpflake. lol.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Don't they see the obvious trump play in this?
I swear to fuck they're getting no oxygenation above their Adam's Apple.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Not quickly or easily. Google's been trying to do this for what? Almost a decade now with their Fiber? Every single city and town is an uphill battle to obtain right-of-ways and fight off the incumbents continually filing injunctions and other tactics to slow or block the roll-out.
Easier said than done. Google tried with Google Fiber. How is that going on it's nationwide roll-out. Oh yea they scaled back the project substantially due to how expensive it was getting to be to get it set up. Only place that seems to be doing well with the Project is Provo Utah where Google bought an already deployed city's fiber network.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
...companies like comcast are quickly dumping anything on their sites that claimed to offer or in any manner support net neutrality, such as...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
Everyone pays how much he wants, only if someone makes specific promises (and why should anyone do so?) he will be held to that.
Oh wait, for rich people and big corporations it's exactly like that!
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
So rather than protect consumers outright they have to engage in litigation against mega corps that will take years and cost a fortune? No surprise, in an administration made up of millionaires and billionaires money considerations are not even on their radar....unless of course the checks from the big ISPs don't clear.
So wrong because you are making arguments based on what is technologically possible today and some propaganda by the major companies but that is not how this situation came to be.
They have been playing dirty for decades to eliminate the competition. We can't just press reset and make everything the way it should have been but we can start making good decisions one at a time until it is.
These companies have been blatantly lying to the public, exposed multiple times, but it seems many people are not aware of it.
You can trust us!
publicly owned conduit, such as a 12" PVC pipe, that any bonded company could later use to pull cable or fiber.
The provider would respond by using 11.5" cables.
We need a new mod for Insightful and funny at the same time..
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've managed to get a +2 Troll before. Anything is possible.
I read this press release today about how Japan and the EU agreed on a free trade agreement. Though not knowledgeable about the details, I was stunned at the words the people involved are quoted as saying. It sounds like honest, altruistic, intelligent, dedicated people doing a great job over years and succeeding. Then I thought about the whole duplicitous, cynical, horrible crapfest that is the U.S. right now. The U.S. is so fucked because the criminal thuggish mindset has penetrated so deep into the psyche that it has become infrastructure. I can't imagine the U.S. government is capable of anything like the effort suggested in this press release. The only similar breath of fresh air I remember is the group of mayors who are trying to lead their own clean energy plan in spite of the federal government.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...
"We're killing all our packages >10mbps. No grandfathering."
Except that we both know they would never do that because too many people have pretty large bandwidth needs because of things like gaming, or heck even just system updates.
We'll see what happens over the next few years but since the NN laws never went into place, it should be the same as the current world where I have gigabit internet and just use it for whatever with a pretty high cap - as technology continues to improve, so will minimum service specs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My understanding is that where there is already fiber, there's already lots of extra that is unused. Too lazy to look it up, but was in a /. story a while back about dark fiber.
Net Neutrality should not be necessary. It is needed because the government screwed up, and sold/leased/gave-away the right-of-ways to a single vendor in most areas.
What the heck does last-mile access have to do with Net Neutrality? Net Neutrality is about ISPs throttling or blocking traffic from select sources, not to prevent your town from agreeing to give Comcast a monopoly in home cable/broadband access in exchange for some free televisions and a local public access channel/studio.
We should not expect every ISP to dig their own trenches.
No, the taxpayer should? I think not.
Ken
I love love LOVE that this is +5 Insightful.
The FCC's penalties will no doubt start with being mildly gummed. Eventually, after protracted abuse, the FCC will grow in its first set of baby teeth. There will be a short lull in the rampant abuse as the abusers take a welcome time out to catch their breath.
Then the baby teeth will all fall out again. At which point the corporate abuse will become entrenched forever.
Then some adult teeth will finally grow in, but crooked, requiring many years of cumbersome orthodontics (cumbersome to the oversight mandate of the FCC). Finally, there will be a nice set of straight, white teeth, too little, too late.
Fortunately for the FCC, the wealthy plutocrats will take up collection to have all those pesky wisdom teeth surgically removed by the finest dentist in all of Florin, before any actual wisdom passes into the next generational conflict.
I've managed to get a +2 Troll before. Anything is possible.
Well played, sir! well played indeed!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So wrong because you are making arguments based on what is technologically possible today
Technologically possible today is wrong?
but that is not how this situation came to be.
You are right. Many years ago cable companies were able to get exclusive franchise agreements, which automatically shut out other competitors except the telcos which had their own franchises. But in 1995 or so, federal law made it illegal for a municipality to grant an exclusive franchise to telecommunications companies. They also were explicit in saying that municipalities must grant new requests unless there was a significant reason not to. That's been the case for more than 20 years now.
They have been playing dirty for decades to eliminate the competition.
Yes, I've heard the stories about the telco "adjusting" the cable company's equipment on the pole and vice versa. That doesn't change the rules about franchising. It's just a situation that probably is already illegal and needs to be dealt with. NN doesn't fix this in any way.
We can't just press reset and make everything the way it should have been but we can start making good decisions one at a time until it is.
What I responded to was dealing with the lack of a franchise. I pointed out federal law. That's a decision already made which many people seem to be not aware of.
That's what FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen are counting on. "Instead of saddling the Internet with heavy-handed regulations, we will work together to take targeted action against bad actors,"
They must be illusionary or joking. Its like telling someone working in a bakery to not sample the cookies.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada