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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.
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.
You are one dumb fuck.
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 reserve the right to change the terms of service at any time, without notice."
And they will never, ever, ever break that rule.
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.
Maybe you live in a country where there is actually a competition between ISPs going on. For many US people, there is no competitor to switch to. The joke is that the country that prides itself to be the pinnacle of the capitalist economy has more ISP monopolies than even China.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
What ISPs? My options are Comcast or paying way more for a high latency satellite connection. There's no competition most places.
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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
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!
Slowed compared to _what_, precisely?
"We're killing all our packages >10mbps. No grandfathering." So Netflix for you works just as fast as any other site, but its still slower than the 100mbps line you can get now. But don't worry, if you pay an extra $2/mo you can get Netflix boosted to 100mbps speeds.
Even if they don't drop current packages and just stagnate them instead as technology improves, you're going to end up in a similar situation a decade from now when you theoretically have 1gbps to your door but Comcast will only provide it to you a-la-carte for specific approved services at $2/mo/service and everything else still shuffles along at 2017 speeds.
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.