The Trump Administration Just Voted To Repeal the US Government's Net Neutrality Rules (recode.net)

The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to dismantle landmark rules regulating the businesses that connect consumers to the internet, granting broadband companies power to potentially reshape Americans' online experiences. The agency scrapped so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content. The federal government will also no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as if it were a utility, like phone services. From a report: Under the leadership of Chairman Ajit Pai -- and with only the backing of the agency's Republican members -- the repeal newly frees telecom companies from federal regulation, unravels a signature accomplishment of the Obama administration and shifts the responsibility of overseeing the web to another federal agency that some critics see as too weak to be effective. In practice, it means the U.S. government no longer will have rules on its books that require internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. The likes of AT&T and Verizon will be limited in some ways -- they can face penalties if they try to undermine their rivals, for example -- but they won't be subject to preemptive, bright-line restrictions on how they manage their networks. Meanwhile, the FCC's repeal will open the door for broadband providers to charge third parties, like tech giants, for faster delivery of their web content.

Comments

OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

The world just ended.

Poor poor Google and Facebook!

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is crying for Facebook and Google. It's a much bigger threat to small businesses than to the tech giants.

Re:OMG

[Daetrin]

Google and Facebook will be fine. They may end up having to pay fees to the ISPs, but they have plenty of money and they'll be fine. The victims will be consumers and any new start-ups that can't afford the ISP fees needed to break into the market while they're still small and trying to grow.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor Netflix, then. They will no longer get a free wire to their customers, paid by all the rest of us.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

No just the USA. The rest is better off.

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

The world just ended.

Poor poor Google and Facebook!

I guess we'll see if all these gloom and doom projections were warranted.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is crying for Netflix, either. This is about small businesses who won't have such an easy time paying the fees that ISPs could charge. It's a completely unnecessary barrier to entry that prevents competition and innovation.

Re: OMG

[Drethon]

And poor (insert local business) that doesn't have the money to pay for the premium internet pipe.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix pays for their internet access just like everybody else, you numbnut.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Could is a very speculative word. The NN advocates live in a very theoretical world, and a handful of Big Net operators cash in big from their spun up fears.

It's actually a lot about neo-Napster (the torrenters).

I know there is somebody clever who will refute this. It's a big deal to some of you guize.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor us, who will see Netflix have to raise their rates as cable tv providers attempt to kill their competition with unwarranted fees

Re:OMG

[Camel Pilot]

Big corporations love barriers to entry - keeps the little guy from innovation and disrupting the marketplace. Repealing Net Neutrality is an obvious dance to big money concerns.

Vote these bums out!

Re: OMG

[FictionPimp]

Wait a second. Netflix doesn't pay for their own internet access?

See I see it as this, I pay for a connection to the internet, Netflix pays for a connection to the internet. Nobody else should be charging either of us extra to talk to each other as fast as any other website on the internet.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

But now they get to pay twice, or even more. It will be so much better!!!

Re:OMG

[Billy the Mountain]

And what's to stop the gloom and doom projections from happening? Clearly there are profits to be made so let the profiteering begin!

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to go ahead and do this. Because it's been bugging me for awhile.

What are you Cracked out nutjobs talking about?

home user internet has a soft and a hard cap. check your contract, they'll yell at you and cap you if you exceed it, and kick you off the service if you abuse it. providers frequently block ports, traffic shape torrents, etc.

a Business that needs unlimited services (for business voip, or a locally hosted database, for example) will have a commercial connection. these usually have no data cap, hard or soft. and few restrictions (and cost a lot more)

almost everything i've seen you guys complaining about regarding "net neutrality" has nothing to do with reality, or rational business practices but is instead the result of either a Massive FUD tactic, or just your echo chambers playing post office..

Re: OMG

[jellomizer]

If it is such a non-issue, why would they bother reversing such a law? And why do big ISP put money into bribing (lobbying) for such a change?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

And so will we as we pay to unlock each website we visit.

I'm expecting ISP lootboxes in 2018.
Maybe this week you get 25mbps, maybe you get 5mbps. Ooooh? Didn't want that one? Buy another lootbox then.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't theoretical at all. That's disingenuous. There are plenty of examples of ISPs attempting to engage in behavior that was prohibited by NN rules. Those rules are now gone.

This allows ISPs to block content as they see fit. Large ISPs like Comcast have already attempted to do this, though the NN rules did not allow that. Ajit Pai has said he believes Comcast should have the ability to block content or entire protocols. ISPs have engaged in zero rating services or content. For example, Verizon allows businesses to pay for their content to be zero rated. Comcast implemented their own streaming video service that didn't count against their data caps. None of this is theoretical at all.

This policy was pushed through in an extremely corrupt manner. Ajit Pai has made numerous false and misleading statements about NN. Many comments were submitted on behalf of individuals without their consent, people who aren't American citizens, people who are dead, or even people who don't exist at all. Most of the fraudulent comments were opposed to NN rules. The FCC has been far less than transparent in investigating this matter. They've selectively disregarded comments based on standards such as the legal language of the comments that weren't made known to the public during the commenting period. The process was rushed through despite the many objections I just listed. It was an extremely corrupt process by an extremely corrupt administration. If eliminating the NN rules isn't harmful, there would be no need for the process to be opaque, for Pai to make dishonest statements, and to rush the process.

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Google and Facebook will be fine. They may end up having to pay fees to the ISPs, but they have plenty of money and they'll be fine.

But their profit margins!!!! Won't _somebody_ think of Google's profit margins!!?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix was paying for a connection to a 3rd party, 3rd party was connection directly to Comcast via a peering arrangement. Netflix traffic started overwhelming 3rd parties connection to Comcast. Netflix wanted a free connection directly to Comcasts network which Comcast would not provide. Netflix and Comcast work out an arrangement where Netflix now pays for a direct connection to Comcasts network bypassing said 3rd party. This is how the net is supposed to work, Comcast has no obligation to give you, I or Netflix a free direct connection to their network. The Netflix lie really drives me up the wall.

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

as cable tv providers attempt to kill their competition with unwarranted fees

The more cable TV providers raise fees the more customers they drive to Netflix. I'm not sure how driving customers to the competitor is "killing" the competition.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst...there were no price controls in Obama's Net Neutrality.

Companies charged what the market would pay.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

They are going to charge Netflix you idiot so they can make it an unattractive option. Either it will be slow or have to raise prices.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

The cable tv fees are already high for consumers and the availability of alternatives is dragging the cable fees down.

Since the cable companies can now control bandwidth by data source (i.e. Netflix) they can choke back Netflix traffic and make it unwatchable, forcing consumers back to paying for expensive cable tv

If Netflix pays the cable companies for more bandwidth (i.e. not choked off), then they are going to have to pass those costs to the consumers by raising their rates

Consumer can then lose two ways
1. Stuck with expensive cable tv with no option to use a cheaper service because Netflix is not allowed the bandwidth
2. Stuck with expensive cable tv OR expensive Nettfix because netflix is now paying the cable company for access to consumers

See, we always end up taking it in the end when corporations are left to their own devices

Re: OMG

[srmalloy]

And that's the whole premise behind net neutrality; you've paid for your access, it shouldn't matter where you're connecting to.

Unfortunately, with the regulations that will govern what ISPs can do once this change goes into effect, as long as the ISP tells you up front what they're doing, it's all hunky-dory and legal. So if your ISP announces a change in terms of service that states that, because of the religious beliefs of the ISP management, customers will no longer be able to access any website that offers medical information about birth control or abortions, you're SOL. It's potentially like the opening narration of the TV series "The Outer Limits" -- "There is nothing wrong with your internet connection. Do not attempt to adjust your cablemodem. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to improve your access to a site, we will increase the bandwidth. If we wish to impede your access to a site, we will reduce its bandwidth. We will deny you access to any website critical of our actions, policies, or beliefs, and inject advertising for sites that pay us to do so into all web pages you access. Until Congress passes a law preventing us from doing this, sit back and we will control all that you see and hear on the internet."

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

most home internet connections are already cut off from most internet services try running a mail server at home.

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

Since the cable companies can now control bandwidth by data source

Oh. I get it. This is another example of confusing cable TV with cable ISP. I responded specifically to a statement about cable TV.

Re:OMG

[should_be_linear]

Amazon, Facebook and Google are few companies that will NOT have to pay. Nobody will ever buy internet service that doesn't have these 3 "base" services. Besides, many other services depends on Google and Amazon clouds. Smaller comanies will have to pay for their "place" in cable service, just like TV channels.

Re: OMG

[slick7]

If it is such a non-issue, why would they bother reversing such a law? And why do big ISP put money into bribing (lobbying) for such a change?

Now we wait for the other shoe to drop.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

netflix doesn't pay for my bandwidth, I do, and if I decide to download data from their site, that is MY business. I am the one paying for it after all.

Re: OMG

[JoeLinux]

Netflix connects directly to an IXP, and is at the same "Tier" level as Comcast, sometimes even more upstream. This is far, far less expensive than having to go through an ISP like us mere mortals.

Because of Net Neutrality Laws, now Comcast has to shoulder the increased cost of all that traffic without being able to charge. And Netflix/Google/Facebook are enshrined at their IXP without consequence.

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

because of the religious beliefs of the ISP management, customers will no longer be able to access any website that offers medical information about birth control or abortions,

Every time a NN proponent comes up with this kind of ridiculous hypothetical situation, they make their argument look ridiculous. Given that there can be serious, real issues, why do you folks keep trying to go further and further into imaginary-land?

Why not go fully nutzo? As long as the ISP tells you ahead of time that they're coming to confiscate your firstborn male child, they're hunky-dory! And if you don't have a child, yet, as long as they tell you they're going to come rape your wife, they're hunky-dory! And if you don't have a male child, they'll take your girl child and create a male child for you! And then burn your house down! All HUNKY-DORY because they told you in advance.

This didn't happen in 2014. Why do you think it will suddenly become a problem today?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix pays for internet access, not for a connection to a third party. Just like you pay Comcast for internet access, not just for access to Comcast's WAN. There is enough bandwidth on Netflix's side to reach all transit providers without congestion. The amount of traffic that can pass from the Tier 1 backbone operators (transit providers) into Comcast's WAN is a matter of negotiation between Comcast and the backbone operators. Comcast is not buying enough of that access to satisfy the contracts it has with its customers, who paid for internet access, not Comcast access.

The above explanation of the way every bit of Internet traffic is already paid for should be sufficient, but just to prove that Comcast really has no leg to stand on with that argument, here's more: Netflix will, at their own cost, provide servers and direct peering connections to any medium and large ISP, to cut the transit providers out and reduce the cost to themselves and the ISPs. They don't have to do that. Comcast thinks it should be paid for direct access to the Comcast network. Fine, then they should pay the transit providers. They took their customers' money for internet access, and they need to provide it.

But isn't buying enough transit to carry the data that Comcast's customers paid to access expensive? No, it's ridiculously cheap: You can buy 10Gbps unfettered bandwidth (transit to and from the whole internet) at $1500/month. That's $15 for 100Mbps, with a 1:1 contention ratio. Typical contention ratios for business connections are 1:10, for consumer connections 1:50. That means Comcast would have to pay between $0.30 and $1.50 to actually provide the internet access that Comcast's customers already pay for, but they want to get paid by both sides, so they make up these stories about expensive bandwidth and how content providers get a free ride. They're holding their captive customers hostage to extort money.

Re: OMG

[Sarten-X]

Hi. I'm Sarten-X. It's a big deal to me.

I've been working on a silly little web project, that someday I hope to turn into an income-generating company.

Unfortunately, my project relies on having fairly snappy response times (mostly low bandwidth/low latency, but occasionally having bursts of high bandwidth usage) for a good user experience. Without neutrality, I can't expect that any more. Traffic to and from my tiny little project will be queued behind the high-definition stream for Netflix, because I can't afford to pay Comcast (or Spectrum, or Verizon, or AT&T, or whoever else owns the customers) the millions of dollars in fees to get fast-lane prioritization.

Yes, it's speculation. It's also history, because I lived through the last round of these problems. I remember working with ISPs in the 90s and 2000s to figure out why certain traffic was unusually slow... sure enough, it's because that particular service had been deemed "low-priority" and was throttled. Fortunately at the time I had a big enough team of corporate lawyers that we could force a bit more throughput from the small ISP, but that's not usually the case today.

The reality is that probably 90% of Americans won't notice a difference. Their Netflix subscription might cost a few cents more, or their telecom stock value might get a small boost, but that's about it. The real loss is in potential. The next big Internet-based success might just be someone's silly little project today, and it'll likely never be able to grow because of the arbitrary limits placed by ISPs.

No, it's not just about torrents. It's about waiting for a product demo video to buffer, or waiting for an AJAX call to update a GUI, or waiting for a site's style sheet to properly load. It's about my user experience (and thus my project's success) being heavily dependent on how much extra money I pay to which ISPs, rather than how good my actual product is.

Yes, it's a big deal.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

The cap isn't the issue (ok, it's another issue that is related). How much traffic you can get from a source (like Netflix or Vimeo) toward your cap is now something that can be manipulated. So you might be below your cap but unable to access Netflix. Did you opt in to that?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah so they'll find a diferent provider big deal.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix is dead because of Disney (who just bought out Fox), not because of net discrimination.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why not go fully nutzo? As long as the ISP tells you ahead of time that they're coming to confiscate your firstborn male child, they're hunky-dory!

That's prevented by existing laws and regulations, unlike traffic peering and shaping (now). We get someone like you going off on pointless tirades just because some idiot mistakenly told you were smart as a kid.

Re: OMG

[ERJ]

It's not quite that simple though.

The problem at hand has to do with peering relationships. Normally what happens between the big Tier 1 providers is that they make agreements to the effect of "I'll take X amount of your traffic and you take Y amount of my traffic and assuming X and Y are pretty close we just call it even". Well, Netflix creates a massive imbalance because they send tons of traffic and don't receive hardly anything. Because they are so large this creates a problem on those peering relationships because they are no longer symmetric.

So, what happens? The consumer side ISP looks at the Netflix ISP and says "Hey, you are sending us 4x the traffic that we are sending you. Either pay up for the difference otherwise we rate limit you". This happened several times with Netflix. The Netflix ISP wouldn't pay up so Netflix got rate limited and Netflix users got pissed.

So, who is at fault here? Kinda hard to say. Probably what should happen is that the Netflix ISP would pay the overage on the asymmetric peering and increase costs back to Netflix.

Now, none of this is really Net Neutrality related. Netflix is really an odd example due to the absolute insane amount of traffic they generate...most companies are not going to be able to change the balance of Tier 1 peering providers in a major way. In general Netflix should be placing equipment on all large ISP's to increase it's own quality of delivery.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of Net Neutrality Laws, now Comcast has to shoulder the increased cost of all that traffic without being able to charge

Are you fucking stupid? The customer wants to watch Netflix, so the ISP connects them to Netflix and charges the customer for the service. If the ISP doesn't connect the customer to Netflix, they aren't carrying out their job. The ISP is free to pass on the cost of doing business to their customer. What is so difficult to understand?

Re: OMG

[reg]

Poor Comcast. Not forced to pay for the internet connection for their customers. Comcast and all of the other ISPs should be paying Netflix and the other content providers. It is the content that keeps people on the Internet, not the cable, but ISPs managed to corner off the "tier 1" ISP space, when all all networks on the *Inter*-net where supposed to be equal. The only model that makes logical sense, if one is going to charge for traffic, is for the incoming traffic to be charged to the consumer. Instead, in a massive rent-seeking grab, tier 1 ISPs have managed to persuade cowards like you that they should be able to change for incoming traffic at peering points and outgoing traffic to their users. This lets them screw over the American public, Silicon Valley and the rest of the world (that is not considered a tier 1 peer). And no, this is not the way the internet has always been - once upon a time peering was just something people did and when the pipe was too small they paid for a bigger pipe.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

home user internet has a soft and a hard cap. check your contract, they'll yell at you and cap you if you exceed it, and kick you off the service if you abuse it. providers frequently block ports, traffic shape torrents, etc.

Bullshit, mine doesn't. My ISP gives me an unlimited dumb pipe to the internet and that's it. They don't filter, throttle or cap anything. They don't even care if I run servers on the connection and they've stated that they won't be changing even with the end of net neutrality, which I believe because I've had their service since long before net neutrality laws existed and they have always been the same way.

Just because your ISP is complete shit doesn't mean they all are.

Re: OMG

[superposed]

Because of Net Neutrality Laws, now Comcast has to shoulder the increased cost of all that traffic without being able to charge.

I don't get this. Doesn't Comcast already charge their customers for the bandwidth they use? Why should they be allowed to go shakedown the companies that their customers happen to access? Isn't it just Comcast's job to carry traffic from the edge of their network to their customers, at prices agreed with their customers? Why should they be able to discriminate based on where the traffic originated, and use that to extort money from the sources?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

I do. I also run a small website and audio streaming server on my home connection. My ISP doesn't care, they encourage it. If your provider bitches at you for doing that, then your ISP is a fake.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast has no obligation to peer with any of them, even under net neutrality rules. Then both Comcast and Netflix have to get a third party to carry the traffic between them, because their respective customers pay them to do that. This is the default situation. You can be an ISP with just a LAN, a router and a connection to a transit provider. That's literally all it takes. If you build your own backbone connections and peer at an internet exchange point, you do so to lower your costs, but it's not necessary and there is no legal obligation to do it. An ISP isn't even required to provide a particular level of service. If you as an ISP sell a 100Mbps connection to a thousand customers, but only buy 1Gbps of transit, your customers will find that you're a bad ISP, but that's not a net neutrality violation. If you then provide preferential treatment to the traffic from content providers that pay you off, THAT was a net neutrality violation, and now it's not, because those rules are gone.

The simple fact of the matter is that Comcast gets paid for every bit it carries on its network. That's what being an internet provider means. You don't get to collect fees from everybody on the internet just because their data is carried on your network. Your customers already paid for that. If content providers give you the bits that your customers want for free at an IXP, say thank you and don't complain that it saves the other side money too. The alternative is paying for transit, and that you have to do or your customers will know you're a shitty ISP.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

"that someday I hope to turn into an income-generating company"

It's not a big deal to you. Your idea is that the internet will be wrecked when your "someday" idea happens.

But the internet will be just fine. I dare you to bet money that this will ruin the internet.

Take some meds. Maybe smoke some weed. Relax. Maybe the cell phone companies toll-charge Facebook or Disney some, they have deep pockets.

No one is coming after your little idea, you don't have any coin in your pocket.

Big fish have coin in pocket, big fish like Facebook or Microsoft Skype use lot of bandwidth.

Re: OMG

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Trump gets a hard-on every time he gets to undo anything Obama managed to accomplish during his presidency.

Also, the two big cable companies that have divided and monopolized the US market get to make more money for crappy service! What's wrong with that?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember working with ISPs in the 90s and 2000s to figure out why certain traffic was unusually slow... sure enough, it's because that particular service had been deemed "low-priority" and was throttled.

I remember working at an ISP in the 2000s. We used QoS to prioritize or deprioritize traffic to certain services, mainly because warez and WoW were clogging the pipe. That was targeted at services. What they can do now is prioritize or fuck over specific businesses and the business will never know unless someone on the inside leaks the configuration. This will, guaranteed, lead to the most successful online businesses paying off carriers to interfere with the traffic of their competitors, making it difficult for a new business to get off the ground. They have already been doing something similar for a few years by having their PR agents plant news articles describing their competitors as racist, sexist troglodytes of the alt-right and pushing for them to be banned from industry conferences.

Re: OMG

[thedavidcathey]

Free wire? They pay plenty for access to the network backbones. You think someone will just let you connect up Peta-bytes of data for free? If so, then maybe we don't need net neutrality.

Re: OMG

[Jason Levine]

Comcast is not buying enough of that access to satisfy the contracts it has with its customers, who paid for internet access, not Comcast access.

Just wanted to add that there's evidence Comcast did this on purpose in order to put Netflix in a bind. (Customers have alternative choices with Netflix, but not as many with Comcast.) They wanted to force Netflix to either agree to their demands to have their service unusable. Basically, mafia-style "this is a nice store you've got here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it" tactics from an ISP that holds a monopoly in many areas.

And now these tactics are legal again.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

The dark age nightmare of the Internet before 2005 is back! Oh no! Run for the hills!

Re: OMG

[reg]

Are you crazy! In the big picture, it's not Netflix that is generating the traffic. By your reasoning, Netflix would be better off if they had their client stream /dev/zero back from people's TV/Roku/PC, just to balance the traffic. Comcast and the other ISPs are the ones generating the traffic and should be paying to upgrade their equipment if they cannot meet their contractual obligations to provide their clients with the bandwidth they are paying for. The ISPs should be paying Netflix and other other content providers on the internet to thank them for creating a market of consumers looking for Internet connections, enabling their business model.

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

That's prevented by existing laws and regulations, unlike traffic peering and shaping (now).

Well, why is it not prevented by existing laws? Because Congress SAID that the FCC should not regulate this. That's an existing law. Obama had the FCC find a loophole so he could get around the Congress.

Loopholes good, or loopholes bad?

Answer the question. It didn't happen in 2014, why magically will it appear today?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

My local (and only) cable TV provider is Spectrum. My local (and only) cable ISP is Spectrum.

What, again, is the practical difference?

Cable TV provider Spectrum loses business to Netflix, so Cable ISP provider Spectrum makes it cost more for Netflix to work (or makes using it untenable with throttling), in order to drive customers to Cable TV provider Spectrum. Spectrum gets more money in all cases at the cost of customer freedom.

The entire "I'm talking about TV providers, not ISPs" is an incredibly disingenuous straw man.

Re: OMG

[mukinrestak]

They never got a free wire. Never. Know why? Because I paid for it. Every single netflix customer already paid their ISP for Netflix to use that wire.

They're not trying to get justly compensated for Netflix "freeloading". They're trying to double dip on what we already fucking pay for, and make Netflix seem like the bad guy if they have to jack up their prices.

Then when Netflix goes out of business because customers aren't willing to pay the ISP twice to watch it, guess who's sitting there in the wings with their own shittier streaming services? THE FUCKING ISPS!

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because your ISP is complete shit doesn't mean they all are.

You mean the enormous ISPs that most people in the United States are forced to use, thanks to those companies engaging in illegal, anti-competitive market exclusion agreements?

The ISPs that Ajit Pai has said, on record, a) don't need to have competition forced on them, and b) the FCC is trying to provide monopolies for by preventing individual states from ensuring there are alternatives for?

No, all ISPs are not complete shit. But the largest, fattest, most anti-competitive ones are, and they're the only ones we can use. (I'm currently in a city of 500,000+ people, and there is ONE broadband ISP here. ONE.)

Re: OMG

[HornWumpus]

Netflix wanted free rackspace at all ISPs. ISPs said: 'What makes you special? Pay up, like everybody else that want's servers in the ISPs racks.'

Netflix parses it as 'We offered free servers to the ISPs, but they refused to let us install them (for free).'

Re: OMG

[penandpaper]

The law needs to be updated. The courts and government have routinely gone back and forth unable to address the core of the issue and that is how do you classify ISPs. The law makes a distinction but the problem is that an ISP is both.

Congress needs to get involved to classify what an ISP is so that the FCC and FTC can apply the proper classification for regulation.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

customers will no longer be able to access any website that offers medical information about birth control or abortions

This is definitely what republicans want - so that there are more babies for them to eat

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody else should be charging either of us extra to talk to each other as fast as any other website on the internet.

An Internet Service Provider's role in a "free and open internet" is to Provide Internet Service (hey the letters are the same, neat) to as many people as possible. Which they're already under public scrutiny for and have a history of gaming that system at every opportunity (see Verizon's "Close enough" NYC shenanigans, and the money they were given to roll out broadband in the 90s that they just kept when they decided it wasn't feasible). Google didn't beat the competition because Time Warner came up with amazing new way to provide their service. The opposite really, I remember using Google early on because it operated noticeably faster over our line.

No, the only innovation we're protecting is the ability to innovate more ways to charge you for what you already get. Because apparently regulations that prevent you from doing things that you aren't currently doing (and you pinky swore you wouldn't do) are stifling. Time to get back to innovating on that wall to protect our Free and Open border.

Re: OMG

[ScentCone]

If it is such a non-issue, why would they bother reversing such a law?

Among other reasons, BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER A LAW. If you think it SHOULD be a law, rather than an Obama-era edict to apply a decades old telephone framework to modern networking, then you should be delighted this is gone, and seeking to get some actual legislation in place. Something that reflects an era after rotary dial phones.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

The default between any two entities on the internet is that they pay someone else as a go-between. This is called "transit". If two entities on the internet cannot get to a peering agreement, then their traffic will take the default route, which typically involves the services of a combination of tier 1 providers like Cogent, Level 3, Hurricane Electric, Telia, etc.

Now suppose Comcast and Netflix are those two entities. Netflix makes sure that the traffic that Comcast customers request is handed over to, well, not Comcast directly, because Comcast doesn't want to let Netflix deliver the data right to their routers. So Netflix pays (for example) Hurricane Electric for "internet access" and hands that data over to them. Comcast may not have a business relationship with HE, so HE peers with Level 3 and Level 3 then routes that data to Comcast, along with all the other traffic that happens to be routed via Level 3 from sources that don't have a direct (paid or settlement free) peering agreement with Comcast. Comcast has to pay for that traffic, because Comcast doesn't have a global network to reach all of the internet, but Level 3 does, so Level 3 takes no shit from Comcast. It would be cheaper for Comcast to just have the data delivered directly, but they want to get paid by Netflix, so they try to play hardball. But here's the problem: If they simply don't buy enough transit from Level 3 or some other tier 1 network, then traffic from many sources all over the world will suffer from congestion. Comcast customers will complain about Comcast being a shitty ISP. They rightfully expect Comcast to provide access to those sources at the advertised speed. Net neutrality doesn't allow Comcast to selectively throttle Netflix traffic so that other sources are not congested, only Netflix. Without net neutrality, Comcast can show Netflix the instruments of torture: Pay us, even though you already paid your ISP and our customers already paid to access your service, or we'll throttle your traffic.

So no, Netflix should not pay. Net neutrality should be observed.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Many comments were submitted on behalf of individuals without their consent, people who aren't American citizens, people who are dead, or even people who don't exist at all.

Holy shit, that sounds like the democrat vote.

Re: OMG

[Type44Q]

No one is coming after your little idea, you don't have any coin in your pocket.

You call yourself a shill with arguments like that??

Re: OMG

[Pseudonym]

Nobody else should be charging either of us extra to talk to each other as fast as any other website on the internet.

If anything the opposite should be true.

I have something like 2G of mobile data a month, but some services (e.g. Faceboo, Spotify, SD Netflix) are not metered. When there is competition, making popular services cheaper means their service is more valuable.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no distinction between Cable ISP and Cable TV, it is one company, the can use the fact they are an ISP to kill the competition for the TV. That is what makes this all so dangerous.

Re: OMG

[cfalcon]

Right, but I probably can't use YOUR provider. The fact that these things are all semi-monopolies is the big reason for this concern. I don't have a free market for internet, I have two choices, and both of their wires were run with taxpayer assistance.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix offered. As in, we'll pay for the servers, you'll pay for the rack space. If you let us, we'll both save money by cutting out the middlemen. If that's not agreeable, we'll continue to pay for transit and you'll continue to pay for transit to carry the data that your customers pay you to deliver to their homes.

Nobody needs to provide rack space to Netflix to get the data for free. Netflix peers settlement free at all major internet exchange points. If you don't want to allow Netflix to place their servers all over your network so that you save bandwidth on your own network, get the data at an internet exchange point. You'll have to pay for the port and the rack space for your routers, but at least you'll get to carry the data all the way through your network. Much better deal, isn't it? And you can go one more into shoot-your-own-foot territory: Don't take anything from Netflix directly. Get it all through transit. All the disadvantages of peering directly, but now you get to pay the middlemen too.

And that's why seeing it as anything but an offer is just stupid. Transit isn't cheap, but what Netflix offers is even cheaper. Comcast's customers pay Comcast for access to that data. You'd think Comcast would choose the cheapest way to provide that access.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit! Reliable credible non conspiracy theory source? Oh right there isn't one. More cases of voter fraud were brought against Republicans than Democrats in 2016s wake.

Re: OMG

[wizard992]

"that someday I hope to turn into an income-generating company"

It's not a big deal to you. Your idea is that the internet will be wrecked when your "someday" idea happens.

But the internet will be just fine. I dare you to bet money that this will ruin the internet.

Take some meds. Maybe smoke some weed. Relax. Maybe the cell phone companies toll-charge Facebook or Disney some, they have deep pockets.

No one is coming after your little idea, you don't have any coin in your pocket.

Big fish have coin in pocket, big fish like Facebook or Microsoft Skype use lot of bandwidth.

And you don't seem to understand that's exactly his point. Big fish with deep pockets will be able to pay, and those are the entities the bandwidth providers are targeting. Small fish with no pockets will not be able to pay for prioritization, which will prevent their entry to the market. The problem with this lack of neutrality protections for the internet doesn't mean the internet will be destroyed, it means the internet will no longer be allowed to grow. The only people who will be able to introduce any new services will be those already established companies that have plenty of money to ensure they have the bandwidth and response time they need, and of course those that are providing the bandwidth. The fear is that the internet will be become the modern equivalent of 90s era AOL; a managed experience and walled garden without any potential for growth that hasn't been carefully curated.

Re: OMG

[KingMotley]

I think you are mistaken. The next big thing will just happen elsewhere (China, or the EU) where they don't have ISP issues. It'll filter here once/if it gets big enough to be able to afford the fees, so we will only be 5-7 years behind the rest of the world.

Re: OMG

[hjf]

Peering is not always free, you stupid fuck

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

The entire "I'm talking about TV providers, not ISPs" is an incredibly disingenuous straw man.

The comment I responded to was talking about cable TV.

Let me point out that there are lots of ISPs that aren't "cable TV", so complaining about how "cable TV" is going to charge Netflix is ignoring the problem overall and trying to dump it onto one service that Netflix doesn't actually need to exist. Maybe it's just that I'm old enough to remember when "cable TV" was cable TV and not "cable everything", so I am able to differentiate. Maybe youngsters who have never known those austere days don't understand the difference.

Cable TV provider Spectrum loses business to Netflix, so Cable ISP provider Spectrum makes it cost more for Netflix to work

Except it wasn't that Netflix was causing Comcast (the non-hypothetical villain here) to lose business, it was that Netflix traffic was the primary cause of congestion at the border gateway. Everyone wants to pretend that bandwidth is free, but it really isn't. Everyone also wants to pretend that a congested gateway is being selective in what it drops, but it really isn't.

If you are scared that your ISP is going to try charging Netflix to upgrade the interconnect at the border gateway (which is what actually happened), then talk about your ISP. Is it really too much to ask that people in a technology-based discussion group refer to the correct technology?

in order to drive customers to Cable TV provider Spectrum.

I'm still at a loss to figure out how raising rates is going to get more people to become your customer. As you pointed out, most people, you included, do not differentiate between "cable TV" the "tv" and "cable TV" the "internet". Why would they see a higher cost for "the internet" as a reason to buy more from "the company" that provides both? Seems like it would drive folks away. Doesn't seem like it would result in "charge me more and I'll buy more stuff from you!"

Re: OMG

[XxtraLarGe]

This didn't happen in 2014. Why do you think it will suddenly become a problem today?

Because Trump. Net Neutrality is just the beginning, concentration camps are just around the corner!

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

your name is as accurate as your arguments are the opposite

Re: OMG

[leonbev]

Yeah, Netflix is big enough to afford the necessary bribes... er... "negotiations" with the cable and telco providers to prevent their traffic from being throttled. It's the little guys trying to compete in niche areas that are going to run into network prioritization problems.

I'm sure that this will eventually go to the courts as an anti-trust issue at some point. It's just sad that we're going to have to put up with a bunch of shit until then.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I wouldn't say that the FCC is any more corrupt than the government which hosted elections that installed a losing candidate into the office of president. No more corrupt that that, certainly.

Re: OMG

[leonbev]

I think that the opposite will happen. I think that network providers might throttle video services like Netflix or YouTube to 720p resolution unless you sign up for the "Ultra High Definition" package.

Meanwhile, they'll start offering cheaper 1080p and 4K on-demand streaming of their own video services, and people will start migrating back to the cable companies and telcos for video content.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not remember Comcast and Verizon throttling torrents? Netflix? Purposely treating traffic as different? That was the whole point. It happened. That is why the regulation was put in place. Quit shilling.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, letâ(TM)s quickly get rid of something thatâ(TM)s actually not harming anyone because it is OLD rather than actually spend the time to replace it properly.

Because after all these decades of doing nothing, now that itâ(TM)s GONE we can come up with something better.

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

But isn't buying enough transit to carry the data that Comcast's customers paid to access expensive? No, it's ridiculously cheap

That means Comcast would have to pay between $0.30 and $1.50 to actually provide the internet access that Comcast's customers already pay for

Except those numbers are not for "the data that Comcast's customers paid to access", they're for 1/50th of that amount. You can't prove how cheap it is for Comcast to provide the unfettered bandwidth that the customer is being sold by dividing the actual cost by 50 and then saying "look how cheap it is!"

$15 per customer is a huge amount of money. Providing "the internet access that Comcast's customers already pay for" on the off chance that all of them will want to use all of it at the same time is untenable. By using the 1/50 number, you seem to accept that statistical methods to predict maximum load is an acceptable practice. Then comes Netflix which pushes a lot of data one way and skews the statistics. How does any ISP deal with that? Does it shell out the amounts of money it would take to remove the congestion ($15/user using your numbers) and then raise everyone's rates to cover the cost?

For those who have forgotten history, this exact problem happened when dialup modems became popular, along with ISPs and BBSs. The phone company used statistics to predict how much hardware they needed to support voice telephony and normal call rates and durations. Boom! All of a sudden there were people paying for residential service that were making 12 hour phone calls.

Do you accept that telecom companies cannot afford to pay for 100% service levels? If so, then you have to also accept that sometimes there will be congestion. Or that the company will need to find more money to upgrade -- and that money has to come from somewhere.

Re: OMG

[thegarbz]

Could is a very speculative word.

Tell it to my capped internet connection which conveniently excluded the ISP's own movie service.
Tell it to the game servers I ran which conveniently pinged slower than the ISP provided ones despite being co-located at their facility
Tell it to my mobile phone provider who decided that Facebook is free to use locking out smaller entrants into the market by charging customers to access them via a ludicrously low datacap.

"Could" is not speculative or theoretical. It translates to: "can now go back to what they were doing previously"

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Veritas video of New York vote fraud.

Right there. On video. By an official. So STFU because you just look like an idiot trying to argue that water isn't wet.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that Netflix can enter into an agreement with ISPs to install content servers in the ISP's network so that the bandwidth for that service doesn't contribute to peering costs, right? I mean, this is /., where people are supposed to be tech-savvy, right? Right??

Or is this another massive overreaction like those looney democrats who starting freaking out about how Trump was going to round them up into concentration camps and exterminate them all?

Re: OMG

[wizard992]

because of the religious beliefs of the ISP management, customers will no longer be able to access any website that offers medical information about birth control or abortions,

Every time a NN proponent comes up with this kind of ridiculous hypothetical situation, they make their argument look ridiculous. Given that there can be serious, real issues, why do you folks keep trying to go further and further into imaginary-land?

Why not go fully nutzo? As long as the ISP tells you ahead of time that they're coming to confiscate your firstborn male child, they're hunky-dory! And if you don't have a child, yet, as long as they tell you they're going to come rape your wife, they're hunky-dory! And if you don't have a male child, they'll take your girl child and create a male child for you! And then burn your house down! All HUNKY-DORY because they told you in advance.

This didn't happen in 2014. Why do you think it will suddenly become a problem today?

Awesome, go ahead and throw out those strawmen, make sure you engage in the maximum amount of hyperbole to obfuscate the original argument!

One question I always have for NN opponents like yourselves, why do you trust the ISPs? Why do you simply take them at their word that they won't do anything wrong? They have proven in the past they are willing to engage in both anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior, but you still go on thinking they are on your side, and that they are trustworthy. Why?

The whole point to NN regulations is to ensure there will be legal consequences to anti-consumer behavior, yet you want to just let the "free" market decide. Why do you ignore the evidence that they will not act in your best interest, and throw out any controls that can help ensure they do?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount is no more than $15 per 100Mbps. Comcast is a big ISP and doesn't need to buy transit in small chunks of just 10Gbps. I have it on good authority that transit is much cheaper still at big-ISP scale, but those numbers are not publicly available, whereas $1500/10Gbps/month is.

Even business connections aren't typically provided without oversubscription, because it's not necessary in order to provide congestion-free internet access. Not everybody uses their connection at full speed at the same time. You don't have to buy 1:1 what you sell, but let's say 1:50 isn't working out with everybody on Netflix. Even with a very conservative 1:10 contention ratio, 100Mbps of internet access costs less than $1.50. How much do you pay Comcast for 100Mbps? But I expect that you won't accept a 1:10 contention ratio either. Even though that's entirely unrealistic, let's go with that for a moment. What right does Comcast have to sell 100Mbps when they can't provide 100Mbps? Why is that Netflix's fault? Obviously the right answer is that it isn't Netflix's fault when Comcast can't deliver what it sold. And all of that still ignores that transit, as cheap as it is, is the most expensive way for Comcast to get the data that Comcast's customers are paying Comcast to be able to access. Netflix provides that data for free at all major internet exchange points.

Congestion of transit connections is a red herring. Transit prices have been falling at a breathtaking rate. Transit is cheap because bandwidth is cheap. There is no congestion, just greed.

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I'd pay EXTRA to have an Internet without those 3 invasive, spying, monopolistic assholes on it.

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

One question I always have for NN opponents like yourselves,

Ask someone else, then. I don't oppose the concept, only the implementation. And I oppose the nonsensical hypothetical "they could do rape and pillage" kinds of pro-NN arguments.

The whole point to NN regulations is to ensure there will be legal consequences to anti-consumer behavior, yet you want to just let the "free" market decide.

How about figuring out the difference between "free market rules" and "the right regulations need to be done the right way?"

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

"Trump gets a hard-on "

Hardly, tempi passati.

Re: OMG

[Obfuscant]

The ISP is free to pass on the cost of doing business to their customer. What is so difficult to understand?

OMG, Comcast is charging me MORE to be able to connect to Netflix, even though an anonymous coward said that Comcast could pass on the cost of "doing business" to me!

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there anyway to see if any comments were submitted in your name?

Re: OMG

[MachineShedFred]

You do know that Netflix has to pay for their own outbound bandwidth, right?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, really?

I've been running a mail server at home for 10 years, on 3 different ISPs. I guess you just need to learn how email works.

Re: OMG

[MachineShedFred]

Cable TV and cable ISP are one in the same. At least, they'd really like to be.

And this FCC vote gets them a bit closer to being there - now the cable companies that own content providers (Comcast, Charter / Time Warner / Spectrum, etc.) can make nice two-way peering agreements with each other to fast-lane their content, and put the brakes on anyone that doesn't have ISP subscribers to sell out^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H bring to the bargaining table (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon)

Hey look, quasi-legal collusion to shut out competition. Brought to you by the Telco shill FCC.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Superposed,

I thought I'd take the time to enlighten you on the new order of things. Comcast - a 54 year old company with an operating income of 16.85 billion a year - can justifiably "extort" money from the sources you mention because they are often competitors. Think of it like this: Comcast owns the railways and the trains. Netflix has a few trains of its own. Comcast could allow Netflix to run on their rails, but with the repeal of NN they simply no-longer have to.

It's a matter of property rights and liberty. If Comcast so chose, they could limit the content of their service to their excellent Xfinity streaming service, and be totally justified in doing so. If you feel cheated, buy a business connection or download with your favorite non-Xfinity content at work.

Sincerely,

- A. Shill, Public Relations

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, poor Comcast, having to actually provide what they are selling to their customers. Boo fucking hoo.

Maybe if they didn't ridiculously oversubscribe their network while charging out the ass for "ultimate" connections that are still capped, they wouldn't have issues delivering services like Netflix? Netflix seems to be able to deliver that content to many more people than just Comcast, so what the fuck is Comcast's problem where they can't deal with a fraction of the traffic?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

This policy was pushed through in an extremely corrupt manner.

Kind of like Obamacare? Maybe we should have a system where our representatives can't pull fast ones on us like this. Maybe the government shouldn't intrude into our lives so much, eh?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

or Canada, which strongly supports NN

Re:OMG

[MachineShedFred]

Now only if people voted on FCC commissioners. Oh, I know, vote out the President that appointed these shills... well Mr. Pai was appointed by Obama, and made Chairman by Trump.

Who exactly should we be voting out here? The whole senate that voted to confirm these shills? Good luck with that.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Popular vote isn't the metric by which Presidents are elected. Stop moving the goalposts and then crying when the outcome isn't what you want.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Its always about genitalia with you democrats.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

My money-making scheme might fall through, feel sorry for me!

You aren't really making a very good case for net neutrality.

Re: OMG

[technology_dude]

There is still hope via DOH. Maybe technology can fix this? https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

If you aren't using a real ISP, then you simply haven't looked. They exist everywhere and your crap service is your own fault for being lazy.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that the ISP isn't charging YOU more, right?

They are charging the non-ISP owned content provider more for access to you. And that content provider than passes that cost on to you, or doesn't pay and gets choked.

Net effect: you pay more, or get worse service. Bonus for the ISP: the cost difference between their video offering (read: cable TV) is now smaller, or they can advertise on how the quality is so much better than the competition, strangely leaving out the part where the quality problems are their fault.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

You almost got it.

Comscat owns the rails, the trains. And the factory that makes the stuff moved by the trains.

Netflix makes their own stuff and wants to deliver it.

Sherman Act helped Standard Oil come to their senses in exactly this situation.

Need to enforce the Sherman Act on all ISPs and media companies, right now.

Re: OMG

[_Sharp'r_]

Because this was never really about net neutrality. That's just the populist excuse the FCC used to get more control on internet access, because the courts kept telling them they weren't legally allowed to. So they came up with this Title II B.S. and said they were doing it for the children, I mean, for the customers, all the while knowing that once the FCC could write rules to manage the Internet, they then had the power to tell ISPs what to do in lots of ways.

So the ISPs and the people smart enough to understand how government regulations actually work (see public choice economics) have been fighting to get the FCC out of creating regulations for the Internet and we just won that battle, at least for now.

Re: OMG

[Wycliffe]

My ISP gives me an unlimited dumb pipe to the internet and that's it. They don't filter, throttle or cap anything. They don't even care if I run servers on the connection and they've stated that they won't be changing even with the end of net neutrality, which I believe because I've had their service since long before net neutrality laws existed and they have always been the same way.

Just because your ISP is complete shit doesn't mean they all are.

Every ISP within 100 miles of me enforces a 10/1 ratio of download to upload. This pretty much prevents most kinds of servers. If you have a good ISP, be thankful. Many people live in places where they already can't get a decent dumb pipe to the internet.

Re: OMG

[ScentCone]

Because after all these decades of doing nothing, now that it's GONE we can come up with something better.

I know, everything was such a disaster in 2015. Just horrible. It's no wonder Obama waited years and years after having the power to do something about it, to ... do what the huge corporate donors at places like Google and Amazon wanted him to do.

that's actually not harming anyone

Sure, unless you're, perhaps, a small company trying to set up rural users with fixed wireless service, or some other activity that's very important to people you don't care about.

Re: OMG

[Hognoxious]

This. QoS is about what kind of shit it is. Net non-neutrality is about where from and (possibly) where to.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Like what the torrent protocol did to FTP, NN will do to the yet to emerge protocol in protocol obfuscation war (Protocol Cremation/Decimation?)... How deep can it go? Be sure to ask the rascally rabbit! Anything can be made to look like http/s:80/443/ web traffic. _Anything_
Fuck, I could encrypt data within MIME EASY
It's a joke if anyone could possibly think that burning a protocol makes a lick of difference. It really doesn't. Data can be made to hide ANYWHERE.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is lets his emotions rule him. He isn't making changes based on any kind of logic, he's doing it simply because Obama put things in place and he hates Obama so therefore he has to be against everything Obama did.

Donald Trump is a spoiled child. The only reason he was ever anything is because he was born into wealth.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and they already do this. Unfortunately, this solves nothing on the downstream side, past the CDN. The ISP can now say, âoeYeah, we know you paid for this CDN to be installed (and presumably some other associated fees), but itâ(TM)s clogging up our downstream bandwidth (i.e. taking up bandwidth we want reserved for our competing in house streaming service), so weâ(TM)re going to need you to go ahead and pay us $10,000 a week more for each CDN on our network or we will slow you down until your service is unusable, thanks.â

They now only need to notify the FCC they plan to do this, and itâ(TM)s perfectly fine. This will inevitably cause Netflix to raise its rates, which makes the cable companyâ(TM)s service look better by comparison.

Itâ(TM)s clear from the fact that the big ISPs all seem to REALLY want NN gone, and have spent large amounts of money lobbying for its removal, that they must benefit from it being gone. Since no one else in the Internet business wants it gone, it must be giving them an advantage over everyone else. Since they already have government enforced monopolies in most markets, it seems like a terrible idea to give them any additional advantages.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

They canâ(TM)t rape or pillage (depending on your definition of pillage), but they can decide to start bundling websites and charging by package. They do it with TV channels. If you want plain old internet like we have now, you might have to pay for thier premium package, at $50 a month more than what you used to pay. If you have no other options for internet service, you might pay it, and they know it. There is no legitimate argument to be made for repealing NN, that doesnâ(TM)t directly benefit large ISPs, at the expense of everyone else.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf are you talking about? looked.. nope still no high-speed provider other than Comass or AT&Turd

Re: OMG

[orgelspieler]

Do you have any idea how many really useful regulations are not actually written into law per se? That's the only way the federal government can function. The congress is sooooo dysfunctional that they relegate the execution of the law to the *gasp* executive branch. If the congress had to agree on changing the decibel level at which hearing protection was required, do you think we would ever get anything done? If it were left to the states, we'd end up with a race to the bottom. I'm all for the 10th amendment, but the states have proven just as corruptible as the federal government.

Re: OMG

[ScentCone]

Yes, I do realize that. And when you're talking about a rule that forces private businesses to give up control of their own communications and property, it calls for actual legislation. Just like actual legislation from congress explicitly sets some boundaries within which the FAA must (and must not) regulate some aspects of remote controlled aircraft.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy degraded services and higher prices across the board. American ISPs have proven they won't innovate or build their networks out to reduce bandwidth issues. They want to take money but give nothing back.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Prolly the reason so many sexual harrasment and assult claims are against progressives.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, you haven't lifted a finger.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Streaming 4K videos probably puts me over 1TB/month usage. I also shoot and upload a lot of 4K videos. That's probably another 100-200GB/month right there. Downloading games is easily another 100-200GB/month.

But I don't care. I don't need to care. I never have to worry about it. Ever.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast and the other ISPs are the ones generating the traffic and should be paying to upgrade their equipment

Yeah, no. Why should Comcast upgrade their equipment so that parasitic Netflix can make even more money at someone else's (Comcast's) expense?

if they cannot meet their contractual obligations to provide their clients with the bandwidth they are paying for.

There are other contractual agreements as well, such as the peering arrangement Comcast has with Netflix's CDN: Level 3. If Level 3 does not pay for the extra data flowing into Comcast, who will? You're just a typical /. freeloader to assume that Comcast should just allow the extra data and lose the profit it is owed. You assume Comcast is a sucker and a charity.

The ISPs should be paying Netflix and other other content providers on the internet to thank them for creating a market of consumers looking for Internet connections, enabling their business model.

a) Without Netflix, the internet is still useful, so why thank them?
b) Netflix competes with Comcast's cable TV, so why the heck would they thankful for that?

If it weren't for Netflix eating Comcast's TV business, Ajit Pai would probably have not shut down net neutrality. So we should all be thankful to Netflix for ending net neutrality!

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

no one cares that you use an absurd amount of data, itâ(TM)s not relevant.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast blocks outbound port 25 on consumer class connections. Others play the same BS, all so you have to pay more for business class. This will worsen until the only unfettered connection *is* business class, and the price will raise.

These companies feel entitled to business.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

So why hasn't Trump rolled back any of Obama's police state policies?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is competition does exist?

Re: OMG

[Reverend Green]

On one side you have notoriously partisan and incompetent mandarins who will surely use their control over the internet to silence dissent. On the other hand you have notoriously partisan and exploitative plutocrats who will surely use their control over the internet to silence dissent.

Re: OMG

[Reverend Green]

Clinton outspent Trump 2 to 1. She *deserves* to be President! What about her donors - don't they deserve a good return on their bribes?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Break up Comcast NOW! Monopolies area bad for the American people, bad for business, bad for freedom. Break up Comcast NOW!

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

That is simply not true. My service went from non-existent in 2003 to 5mb download speed to now over 120mb download today. It would be even faster if I wanted to pay more than the bare minimum.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

T-Mobile only throttles if there is congestion. In my experience very few people actually get throttled. I have a 6 gig cap and go over once or twice a year while on a trip. Never been slowed.

Also have Comcast and have never had a problem. My kids stream a bunch of cartoon s.

Re: OMG

[makerfixer]

You mean like things like this get done in those old school-house rock videos? It does seem like having a âoemoronâ president who doesnâ(TM)t understand all the workarounds and keeps dismantling things that were worked around is bringing us back to that reality.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

When it's against a progressive, it's believable. When it's against a dinosaur, fake news, she's a lying whore!
Spare me your moral outrage hypocrite.

Re: OMG

[xenobyte]

Trump gets a hard-on every time he gets to undo anything Obama managed to accomplish during his presidency.

This is exactly the point. Trump doesn't know or doesn't care about the topic, only that Obama did it so it must be undone.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he agrees with them.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a mail server at home and it works fine. You only need to switch off the port 25 blocking that most ISPs have on by default to prevent infected machines from becoming spam bots. That can usually be done on some customer service webpage.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, data limits on a domestic internet connection in 2017? Wow. I'm glad I don't live wherever you live.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast gets paid by its customers for internet access at an agreed-upon data rate. Comcast's customers could use that access for anything, but they choose to use it for accessing Netflix. Netflix is the reason they're paying Comcast for internet access. Netflix isn't a parasite, it's the reason why people pay Comcast. This is so painfully obvious that only a complete idiot or a shill would deny it. Are you an idiot?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

If (accused == âoeDemocratâ) {
return âoemust resignâ;
} else {
return âoelying slutâ;
};

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Veritas OMG! I didnâ(TM)t think any one would be so stupid as to actually point to that as some type of reliable information. Thatâ(TM)s the funniest shit of the day so far. Who would waste their time on a known liar. Except a trump voter maybe. But really did you forget the sarcasm tag or what? Lol.

Re: OMG

[FuzzyDaddy2]

I worry about Netflix passing extra charges on to me. Or what if Verizon decides to charge for connections to AWS. That would be an easy way to tax a whole bunch of little websites at once. Itâ(TM)s the craftiness of making us pay for stuff indirectly that worries me Not that I donâ(TM)t worry about the small businesses as well.

Re: OMG

[BadTuna]

Who knew Ajit had even heard of /.?
Welcome to the forums. Why don't you have a seat right over there.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

sure, overlook the republican gerrymandering.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, except that's the entire point of this discussion.

Keep up or GTFO, you illiterate little millennial shit.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why the fuck did you start quoting bandwidth caps, you stupid, illiterate fuck? That's not how conversations work. You don't just get to present your side without response, you self-centred millennial shit.

Fuck off and die in a fire, you clueless, know nothing little boy. You're done.

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to add that there's evidence Comcast did this on purpose in order to put Netflix in a bind. (Customers have alternative choices with Netflix, but not as many with Comcast.) They wanted to force Netflix to either agree to their demands to have their service unusable. Basically, mafia-style "this is a nice store you've got here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it" tactics from an ISP that holds a monopoly in many areas.

Solution: everybody is an ISP. Everyone has access to the backbone. Expensive, but so is the new rules.

Re: OMG

[FictionPimp]

All consumer internet traffic is unbalanced! If it was balanced Comcast wouldn't be giving me 1gbps down and 75mbps up!

Re: OMG

[MotherErich]

Police state policies!? WTF are you talking about!?

Re: OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying, trust the mighty Corporation to provide for the good of all?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Re: OMG

[_Sharp'r_]

No, the opposite. See, one of the requirements for rent-seeking is for some government official or commission to be able to create rules which govern the company's industry. For example, the FCC's Title II authority to regulate Internet access. That sort of power leads to corporate rent-seeking behavior and corrupts things into say, 400 pages of regulations supposedly to implement a simple concept like net neutrality.

If instead of that, someone were to take away the FCC's ability to issue regulations and do favors, then the companies wouldn't have that avenue for rent-seeking behavior. See also Baptists and Bootleggers.

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha - you mean, any new AMERICAN start-ups.
You see, elsewhere on the planet, we don't follow your fucked-up policies.
In Switzerland and England, Italy and Norway, we have plenty of sensibly-level-playing field legislation, and start-ups don't have these artificial road-blocks. There are dozens of ISP providers in the London market. I have several almost-equal phone and net providers here in Switzerland, no danger of monopolies happening here.
Just sucks to be an American, that's all.
Fuck you guys are stupid, myopic and ignorant sometimes ...

Re: OMG

[Jason Levine]

And that's why seeing it as anything but an offer is just stupid. Transit isn't cheap, but what Netflix offers is even cheaper. Comcast's customers pay Comcast for access to that data. You'd think Comcast would choose the cheapest way to provide that access.

Comcast would, but their ultimate goal wasn't "provide great service for their customers." It was "how can we kill this Internet Video thing before it cuts into our cable TV profits too much?"

Time for a court injunction

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC is essentially punting their regulatory duties to another agency (FTC) that has little legal jurisdiction here. There needs to be at least a temporary injunction to halt this.

Re:Time for a court injunction

[magzteel]

The FCC is essentially punting their regulatory duties to another agency (FTC) that has little legal jurisdiction here. There needs to be at least a temporary injunction to halt this.

Demonstrating the irreparable harm to justify an injunction should be interesting

Re: Time for a court injunction

[Anonymous Coward]

Google, Apple, and Facebook have a lot of money to use to spin up injunctions. (And to reward shills and the duped to shriek on forums like this)

What they don't have anymore is weekly visits to the White House.

'Little startups' is sort of a joke. It's been a loooong time since every machine connected to the 'Net ran an httpd. Those romantic times are long over.

Re: Time for a court injunction

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I run a 'little startup' and we have a half dozen little machines connected to the internet. Just because you don't know how doesn't me no one does.

But actually, your language tells me you're just a shill. 'Long over, asshole, get over it and pay me'. Nope, servers off shore instead.

Re: Time for a court injunction

[Anonymous Coward]

How's the weather in St. Petersburg, tovarich? Cold enough for you?

Ha ha, land of the free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free to be slaves! But your guns TOTALLY keep the Queen of England at bay.. keke

Re:Ha ha, land of the free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama implemented this monstrosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7WHoqsRuxU

And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Title II, a near-100 year old law to govern the Internet, was the wrong solution to this problem.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

So because it's old in unsuitable?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Just because a law is old, that means it's not suitable? The FCC should Rey was created using the force, like Anakin, by Yoda and Obi-wan use the tools available to us, it's not as if it was regulating in a heavy handed manner, and requiring something as simple as "Do not discriminate when providing a telecommunications service" doesn't require a 21st Century law.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[penandpaper]

Is an ISP a telecommunications service provider or an information service provider? The law makes that distinction and one of those cannot be regulated by Title 2.

Yes, the law needs to be updated for an industry that changes faster than companies can lay wires.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC should Rey was created using the force, like Anakin, by Yoda and Obi-wan use the tools available to us

Were you writing two posts at the same time?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[iCEBaLM]

You going to start throwing out the Constitution now because it's too old?

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[squiggleslash]

An ISP is a telecommunications service provider. Where is the argument that it isn't, outside of nutty libertarian blogs trying to torture language?

Their sole job is to provide connectivity between their customers and the Internet, a massive telecommunications network.

It should have been regulated like this from the start. I appreciate why it wasn't from the start, but the network is mature now, and most people only have a choice of two wireline providers. The technical issues are long resolved. The old excuses about hampering innovation no longer apply - if they ever did.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

> a near-100 year old law

This is a terrible talking point to use. If I got my hands on a working phaser from Star Trek today and vaporized somebody with it, nobody would credibly make the argument that laws against murder don't apply to me just because the weapon of choice is much newer than the law itself.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because a law is necessary. Not just an 'agency' stacked by whichever party controls the executive branch. If you want wide ranging new regulatory control, have congress pass laws. Don't just bolt new 'rules' onto 100 year old laws and enforce them with unelected bureaucrats.

It's called democracy. So sorry it confuses some of you.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

My TV, phone, and internet ALL come from the same company. There is no cable, there is a fiber and the tv is IPTV, already not subject to the FCC Cable regulations. Yippee!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kind of a moron, aren't you?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

How old is the magna carta?
Maybe we should get rid of all the things described therein.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

a significant part of it has been or is in the process of being thrown out

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[penandpaper]

An ISP is a telecommunications service provider. Where is the argument that it isn't, outside of nutty libertarian blogs trying to torture language?

The law makes a distinction between the two. The argument comes from the law, court rulings on the law, and regulatory decisions based on the law. Yes, the FTC is a nutty libertarian blog that uses tortured language... -.-

FCC jurisdiction over broadband services arises under the Communications Act. Central to the broadband discussion is a distinction under that Act between “telecommunications services” and “information services.” The former, but not the latter, are subject to substantial mandatory common carrier regulations under Title II of the Communications Act. While not subject to the Title II common carrier regulations, information services are treated by the FCC as subject to its general, ancillary jurisdiction under Title I of the Communications Act.

As noted above, a series of regulatory and judicial decisions have helped to clarify both the distinction between information and telecommunications services and the status of broadband services as information services. That clarification is, to an extent, in tension with early regulatory and judicial attempts to grapple with the novel technologies that enabled the provision of Internet access. For example, in 1980, the FCC promulgated rules designed to address, among other things, the growing commerce in data-processing services available via telephone wires (the “Computer II Rules”). With reference to those rules, the FCC subsequently applied certain common carrier obligations, such as non-discrimination, to local telephone companies providing early DSL services. Further, as recently as 2000, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that “the transmission of Internet service to subscribers over cable broadband facilities is a telecommunications service under the Communications Act.” Still, the FCC’s current view that broadband services are information services has its roots in earlier decisions by the FCC and the courts. The same Computer II Rules that grounded the early DSL determination distinguished between “basic” and “enhanced” services and did not subject the latter to Title II common carrier regulation.In the following decade, the FCC recognized that ISPs provide not just “a physical connection [to the Internet], but also . . . the ability to translate raw Internet data into information [consumers] may both view on their personal computers and transmit to other computers connected to the Internet.” Moreover, the 1998 Universal Service Report regarded “non-facilities-based” ISPs – those that do not own their own transmission facilities – solely as information service providers. Indeed, even the Ninth Circuit opinion that held that ISPs offering cable broadband were offering telecommunications services recognized that, under the Communications Act and FCC implementing regulations, a significant portion of those services were information services.... In Brand X, the Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s determination that cable broadband is an information service as a reasonable construction of the Communications Act, reversing a Ninth Circuit decision that had relied on City of Portland as precedent.

The FTC has a good understanding of the issues and concerns. Since they are now going to be the ones regulating the internet, their opinion is appropriate.

The old excuses about hampering innovation no longer apply

No they still apply because it is part of the law. " It shall be the policy of the United States to encourage the provision of new technologies and services to the public. Any person or party (other

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

They would after the first few people arguing the opposite get vaporized.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just because it involves computers, a century old law can't be relevant? Regular old laws against things like fraud need to be rehashed because a computer is involved? Don't tell me we need a digital first amendment because the old one could not foresee all of the consequences of a hyper connected world.

Title 2 is just as sound regarding phone calls and phone lines as packets and fiber optics.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop telling other people what to do with their property commie.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Bartles]

If that's their sole job, then we don't need NN. You can't have it both ways.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[WaffleMonster]

Using Title II, a near-100 year old law to govern the Internet, was the wrong solution to this problem.

Not even Wheeler et al wanted Title II classification. Title II was only invoked as a technical workaround when their original open Internet initiative went down in flames in the courts.

Any of 700 exemptions carved out for ISPs can be uncarved just as easily at any time by corrupt technocrats at the FCC which is why I don't support attempting to undue what has just been done.

Right now my view best possible solution is pushing for a clean legislative solution for NN and only NN. This of course carries a significant risk of being rendered inert by the industry or even repurposed as a weapon against small local operators.

The only alternative is when power changes hands in a few years or less Title II will be immediately reinstated ... this will certainly occur as there is now a huge vacuum and NN has become a mainstream political issue. When this happens it's anyone's guess what exemptions would be instated by the new masters in an organization with little political accountability having blatantly succumbed to regulatory capture.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

If Congress doesn't want a 100 year law that clearly applies in this case to regulate ISPs, they need to repeal it, much as Obi-wan and Yoda didn't just sit on their asses and say "Well, Kylo Ren is already born, there's nothing we can do", they created a new Jedi (Rey) to counter him. You, as usual, have it ass backward. Laws don't expire. If you don't want them enforced any more, if you consider them obsolete, you need to repeal them.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually funny story, no body no murder. Incase you didn't know.

--Highdude702

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize how old the Constitution is, right? And how many ways it has been interpreted?

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[WaffleMonster]

Is an ISP a telecommunications service provider or an information service provider?

No, the question is whether ISPs are telecommunications service providers or communication service providers.

Information service providers are the shit on the other end of the series of tubes like Wikipedia and Twitter. ISPs providing Internet access are clearly NOT information service providers.

The only gray area here is information service providers that offer what one could argue are communications services. This could be a OTT Voice service or even VPN and Email service providers.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

A fair number of people serving life terms would disagree with you.

--Shutup123

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Kormoran]

Without NN, ISPs can and will split their offer. You will be no more allowed to buy a "connection to internet".

You will get a HTTP connection for a price, email for another. Ops, no video... you must pay another fee for that. E-commerce, paypal, e-banking? Sure, but they will cost you another bunch of bucks: all that security to add, you know... Newspapers and magazines? Sure, we have a whole bouquet of subscriptions available: NYtimes, WaPo, just name it. You can even try them 10 days for free.

And on, and on, and on...

(torrents? Omigosh, heaven NO! that's ILLEGAL!!! ...)

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[penandpaper]

ISPs providing Internet access are clearly NOT information service providers.

The supreme court disagrees with you. 545 U.S. 967 (2005).

See my other postfor more details.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[greenwow]

> split their offer

They didn't before two years ago when these onerous and expensive massive regulations, barriers to enter the market, and costs were shoved down our throats by Obama. It didn't happen in the decades before, so why would it happen now?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Cederic]

Sadly we mostly already have.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk...

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[jandrese]

Right now my view best possible solution is pushing for a clean legislative solution for NN and only NN.

The Republican controlled legislature will get right on that... I'd wager that more than half of the people in congress have no idea what Net Neutrality is or worse, believe what Comcast tells them about it.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[wizard992]

a significant part of it has been or is in the process of being thrown out

[Citation Needed]

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[WaffleMonster]

The supreme court disagrees with you. 545 U.S. 967 (2005).

No amount of magical finessing of language will get me to buy into the clearly ridiculous assertion L2 transceivers (Cable modems) and L3 forwarding of datagrams (ISP) constitute an "information service".

What's makes this farce even more absurd is concurrently asserting picking up a phone and calling someone is using a telecommunications service when sending an L3 datagram to that same person conveying the very same information is not a telecommunications service.

The DSPs in the CO must be exerting quite a force on the fabric of reality for this bullshit to make any logical sense.

It's a claim on it's face is simply not true as clear as saying the sky is green with orange polka-dots. I don't care if everyone in the world thinks that I'm wrong it doesn't change a damn thing.

"Information services" only work on top of "telecommunications" as their own definition of information service admits.

"The Act defines âoeinformation serviceâ as âoethe offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications ⦠.â "

So if L2/L3 devices are not "telecommunications" how can there be an information service on top of it? Yea there can't be ..because the arguments are clearly all bullshit.

You know what else?

The FCC maintains two separate mutually exclusive definitions of what broadband means. One definition says it's 200kbps the other says 25mbits. Both definitions are used concurrently in different contexts in order to get what they want under various statutes.

Whether your NSA claiming collection only counts when you look at what you stole or whether your FCC pondering the difference between a cable modem and a telephone to suite your agenda... I am not impressed.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[penandpaper]

So, let me get this straight. ISPs do not "generate, acquire, store, transform, retrieve, utilize or make available information via telecommunications" in your mind? Maybe you can explain to me how the internet works without any information and is as dumb as a copper line.

The point is the existing law is flawed because it forces telecommunications service providers and information service providers to be a distinct thing which clearly they are not with modern internet and ISPs. That is why you have disagreement from the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme court. Yet, even the Ninth Circuit recognizes some facet of information service. Both can be right and wrong at the same time because both are operating under the flawed distinction in the law that the FCC goes back and forth on. Namely, telecommunications service must be distinct from information service when an ISP is clearly both.

I understand what you are saying but you are being obtuse about it. Can the FCC ignore the law and the courts to give you what you want? No. Change the law because it is flawed. The FCC dancing back and forth does no one any favors.

finessing of language

You do realize that is the entire basis of the judiciary and this entire debacle? Sheesh if you get any more obtuse you'll suffer from acute derangement.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

'The same Computer II Rules that grounded the early DSL determination distinguished between âoebasicâ and âoeenhancedâ services and did not subject the latter to Title II common carrier regulation.In the following decade, the FCC recognized that ISPs provide not just âoea physical connection [to the Internet], but also . . . the ability to translate raw Internet data into information [consumers] may both view on their personal computers and transmit to other computers connected to the Internet.â

The problem is that's bullshit logic. The FCC making bad past decisions because it doesn't differentiate telephone line provides from data-processing services available via telephone wires because "the internet" doesn't justify further stupidity. More generally, it's clear that trying to shoehorn everything into either telecommunication or information services entirely makes no sense. If an ISP is providing information services, then those services should be regulated by the FTC. And then if it's providing telecommunication services, those services should be regulated by the FCC. This inherently leaves room for overlap which should be dealt with the courts on a case-by-case basis and if necessary by Congress. This thing happens all the time with federal agencies and shouldn't be being dealt with by an agency vacating its responsibilities.

The FTC has a good understanding of the issues and concerns. Since they are now going to be the ones regulating the internet, their opinion is appropriate.

Their opinion is irrelevant. What matters is what Congress, the President, and the courts believe is so. By extension, the thing that matters is the opinion of the people of the United States. Btw, I have little doubt that a lot of agencies are more than happy to overreach their authority. This is actually the asinine reverse position of the FCC which by its very nature should tell you something very suspicious is going on.

A side note: There is something funny about the mod system that downvotes an accurate post while upvoting an ignorant post that tells you what you want. Good gravy if you don't know don't mod.

The point of modding is to elevate not merely what is correct now but what people expect should be correct now and should be changed. It's very clear that ISPs are predominantly telecommunication in nature and "the ability to" engage in information service with other providers on the internet should not usurp FCC regulation any more than phone companies are and were because information services use phone lines. By the logic provided, literally all communication methods are not covered by the FCC because one can use any communication mechanism to engage in internet activity.

One would hope the courts if pressed would overturn any considerations that are so reducto ad absurdeum. Unfortunately, given the FCC is the one who would have to push such an agenda and they just vacated their responsibility, I don't see it happening soon.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[WaffleMonster]

So, let me get this straight. ISPs do not "generate, acquire, store, transform, retrieve, utilize or make available information via telecommunications" in your mind?

CORRECT. They merely provide a "string" (telecommunications) that transmits and receives information to and from information services outside the ISPs administrative domain.

Maybe you can explain to me how the internet works without any information and is as dumb as a copper line.

Because you don't understand the difference between an eyeball network and a content network.

The Internet network itself...the portion that ISPs supply simply routes packets. It literally is a dumb wire with no intelligence baked into it at all.

All of the intelligence all of the information and data are at the edges of the network far beyond the administrative domain of the ISP.

Now, maybe you can explain to me how you can have an information service when the definition of information service relies on a telecommunications service which you assert does not exist in the case of the ISP?

The point is the existing law is flawed because it forces telecommunications service providers and information service providers to be a distinct thing which clearly they are not with modern internet and ISPs.

This is like opening a store that sells tires and toasters and bitching about laws pertaining to tires because they don't accommodate toasters.

*If* an ISP provides contents like a web hosting service or their own web content, video media libraries, directories... that portion of the ISP is a communication service.

The portion of the ISP that provides network access is a telecommunication service.

It isn't any more difficult than that. There is no ambiguity about these things inherent in the technology.

An ISP can provide more than one thing at once. They can even sell tires and toasters if they want. This changes NOTHING about the character of individual activities they are engaged in.

Both can be right and wrong at the same time because both are operating under the flawed distinction in the law that the FCC goes back and forth on. Namely, telecommunications service must be distinct from information service when an ISP is clearly both.

Clearly false. The wire leading to outside the administrative domain of the ISP is just as dumb as the wire leading outside the administrative domain of a Telco. There is no intelligence baked into that wire of any kind. All of the intelligence is in information services on the other end of the wire far outside the prevue of the ISP/teleco.

I understand what you are saying but you are being obtuse about it. Can the FCC ignore the law and the courts to give you what you want? No. Change the law because it is flawed. The FCC dancing back and forth does no one any favors.

No you don't. You clearly don't understand the basic reality of how the technology works and apparently neither do the lawyers.

You do realize that is the entire basis of the judiciary and this entire debacle?

There is a difference between making a good faith effort to resolve ambiguities and conflicts vs. deliberately bending language to selfishly have your way.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[penandpaper]

Telecommunications is a means of transmission without changing the information. "ISPs supply simply routes packets.". Packets are information on top of a means of communications. How is "routing" not a capability of generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, or making information available on a means of transmission?

deliberately bending language to selfishly have your way.

... welcome to politics and law? Jesus are you 12? Why do you think the judiciary is separate from the legislature? Funny enough, Scalia even remarked about how in EVERY case half of the lawyers are trying to convince the judges to break the law. "Anyway Counsel often encourage judges to do the wrong thing. In fact in every case there's one of the two counsels urging the court to do the wrong thing." - Antonin Scalia.

The sad thing I could agree with you and Scalia but again the law was written in 1934 which is a stretch to properly restrain the legal requirements of modern technology. If you want NN to be protected then you need to have Congress to make the law clear that the FCC cannot change the interrpretation based on the chairman.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[novakyu]

My guess: Control-V while cursor was at a wrong spot (Ctrl-V'd text starts with "Rey" and ends with "Obi-wan").

Also, lack of proofreading; general problem with being a moron.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[WaffleMonster]

Telecommunications is a means of transmission without changing the information. "ISPs supply simply routes packets.". Packets are information on top of a means of communications. How is "routing" not a capability of generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, or making information available on a means of transmission?

You left out the preceding keyword "offering" in the definition of an information service... A piece of wire nor an L3 router is physically capable of "offering" to do anything. The only thing doing the offering is the peer at the edge of the network... the "information service" the destination address in the IP header.

... welcome to politics and law? Jesus are you 12? Why do you think the judiciary is separate from the legislature? Funny enough, Scalia even remarked about how in EVERY case half of the lawyers are trying to convince the judges to break the law. "Anyway Counsel often encourage judges to do the wrong thing. In fact in every case there's one of the two counsels urging the court to do the wrong thing." - Antonin Scalia.

The simple fact people behave a certain way does not serve to justify the behavior. I don't care if everyone on earth does it or everyone on earth thinks it's ok. Makes no difference at all to me.

If you want NN to be protected then you need to have Congress to make the law clear that the FCC cannot change the interrpretation based on the chairman.

My preference is to see NN exist independent of Title II. Nevertheless the lawyers are simply wrong. They don't understand the technology.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[someone1234]

The maturing market circumstances make it possible and also profitable.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[penandpaper]

My preference is to see NN exist independent of Title II

This is how I would like it too.

They don't understand the technology.

I don't think so. They do get experts to help them build a case. It isn't done independent of expert advice.

Re: And nothing of value was lost

[WaffleMonster]

I don't think so.

I think so and I'm not alone.

https://www.eff.org/document/i...

They do get experts to help them build a case. It isn't done independent of expert advice.

I have no insights into what expert advice they have or have not received or what was done with that advice. I'm sure Inhofe also consulted experts before bringing a snowball onto the floor of the senate.. obviously just because a process exists outcomes are not guaranteed.

I only know globally respected engineers including those responsible for development of the Internet disagree with the lawyers on basic facts of what the Internet is and is not. Facts that are trivially provable.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I was trying to piss everyone off by making everyone read a "spoiler." I thought it was obvious, as, presumably, did the GP.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[novakyu]

Who is this "Rey" and exactly what are you trying to "spoil"?

We're screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Watched The Matrix last night. Having forgotten all about the Net Neutrality madness.

Looking to unplug at any given time.

Fuck Trump supporters.

[DogDude]

All of them.

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary had the same exact plan.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, democracy sucks when you insult half the country and they vote a way you don't like.
I suggest you keep it up. If I get called names just a few more times I'm likely to start voting democrat.

Best regards,
Deplorables

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

lol no, not even close

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[cryptizard]

Hillary had the same exact plan.

Citation for that? She is on the record supporting net neutrality, possibly going even further than the FCC has so far.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they effing deserved it. They were deplorables the same kinds that voted for Roy Moore couple of days back. A cancer to this nation!

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

She's on the record for supporting anything that will get her votes, then completely ignoring that afterwards. Like most politicians.

Remember TPP?

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

But... I wouldn't want to fuck Hellarys supporters, I might get scabies.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Powercntrl]

If you voted for a candidate solely because the other side made you feel butthurt, who's the real snowflake?

This country would be much better off if more people voted with their brain, rather than their ego.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm married and I don't think you're my type, but I'm flattered by your offer. Thank you.

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[cryptizard]

Ok so you have no evidence and are just talking out of your ass, glad we settled that.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Brymouse]

Oh go fuck yourself, your team is committed to unchecked authoritarian governance.

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is when does a tRumpet ever tell the truth? The answer is simple, NEVER!

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

F*** Trump supporters. All of them.

So you outright hate Trump supporters, but want them to vote for what you believe in? Why would they? Maybe if you showed them some love and equality then they'd be more willing to listen to you. The only thing you're doing is emboldening them to vote even further against your world-view. You should be blaming the democrats for their non-stop fear-mongering against the republicans which caused them to unify!

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you take it personally, and it's what happens when people insult each other. I keep seeing "libtards" EVERYWHERE and I'm not even an american citizen. It's so polarized it's not even funny right now.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Few brains survive first contact with American politics.

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

She also flipped on TPP as well. Fake.old news as usual from the slashdot astroturfers

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck yourself and your right-wing bullshit hyperbole right back.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[aristotle-dude]

Because they effing deserved it. They were deplorables the same kinds that voted for Roy Moore couple of days back. A cancer to this nation!

Right as opposed to Al Franken, Anthony Weiner, the Kennedy Clan, Bill Clinton and all the rest of the democrats currently embroiled in scandals. Roy Moore has not admitted guilt. I thought we were supposed to assume innocent until proven guilty or an admission of guilt?

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck both of you. The only "team" here is the American team. People like you guys are why we can't even have a civil discussion on things as important is regulating the most important and impactful development in information delivery and storage since the written language was invented.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the violence of the left is known to all.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

No choice for anyone with a brain in the last election....

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take it that means you're ignorant about her position(s) on the TPP then.. Not entirely surprised there.

The evidence is that she flipped on numerous issues, and as such, can't be trusted on this issue either. But I bet if we swapped the name "Hillary" for "Trump", you'd agree immediately, as would the useful idiots who modded up your inane response as "insightful" (these people need to look at that word up in a dictionary some time, see what it really means. Hint: does not mean "I agree!")

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I could handle the smell.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen, if you wanna flame Democrats, go to town. But THIS is hypocrisy..

your team is committed to unchecked authoritarian governance.

..and it makes people who oppose unchecked authoritarian governance really mad, because if you opposed it too, then you'd be smugly explaining that you voted for Gary Johnson and therefore Trump isn't your fault.

But I don't think you voted for Johnson. I think you voted for comrade Trump, who is about to sign the Republican tax bill to increase the country's poverty and debt, and who backed a religious nut in the Alabama race. They guy who wants to spend trillions of our tax dollars on a useless wall. The guy who wants to close the borders instead of opening them. The guy who backs the FCC who is doing this but also including DRM in the next TV standard. The guy in a party who still hasn't tried to repeal DMCA.

You sound like Krushchev talking shit about Stalin. Come to the West and then talk shit about him, comrade.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

What democracy? More people voted for Clinton than for Trump.

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[fluffernutter]

Usually you're a total asshole, Anonymous Coward; but that was totally classy!

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Smidge204]

To be fair, none of them were embroiled in scandal *while campaigning.* ...and Most of them resigned as the scandals came out.

Republicans, on the other hand, almost seemed to use the accusations as a positive point.
=Smidge=

Re:Fuck Trump supporters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling someone butthurt and implying they are a snowflake is not anti bullying behaviour, infact it extends the bullying argument.
Be a man, and if you're a woman? be a man, baby YEAH!

Re: Fuck Trump supporters.

[mapkinase]

Actually, I am quite interested in the results of the poll that makes a distinction between a voter who voted for X because he has a better platform than Y and the voter who voted for X because Y is much worse.

Misleading Title Totally

[bigdady92]

I'll be neg repped into oblivion but it was NOT the Trump Administration that repealed net neutrality, there are 5 people who are in charge of this and they voted down party lines. You want to go after someone, go after these folks. Trump didn't make this happen, these folks did:

Name Position State of Residence Party Term Expires†
Ajit Pai Chairman Kansas Republican June 30, 2021
Mignon Clyburn Commissioner South Carolina Democratic June 30, 2017
Brendan Carr Virginia Republican June 30, 2018
Michael O'Rielly New York Republican June 30, 2019
Jessica Rosenworcel Connecticut Democratic June 30, 2020

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

To be clear:

The two Democrats on the FCC — Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel — voted to keep the rules in place.

And who appointed Ajit Pai? Trump. He is part of the Trump administration.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted by msmash, who is STILL clearly very upset about Trump being elected. What else do you expect besides clickbaity/misleading Anti-Trump headlines?

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying the DOJ is "separate". Technically yes but Trump could have prevented this, except in reality he wanted net neutrality repealed

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[squiggleslash]

It says only the Republicans on the committee voted to end NN. Also does that mean it wasn't Obama who tried to introduce NN? Because I heard lots of conservative critics claiming Obama had overstepped his authority in introducing Network Neutrality.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point, you can't really blame the people in charge for what the people who work for them do. It'd be like blaming Obi-wan and Yoda for anything Rey does (in the Last Jedi it's revealed those two created Rey in much the same way Anakin was created by Palpatine, using the Force.)

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder who appointed Ajit Pai, who led the campaign to repeal Net Neutrality despite a groundswell of support for it. Certainly not Trump or his administration. Trump's conscience is as clean as the driven snow.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies and gentlemen, we now have our Dead Pool!

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Billly Gates]

Yeah all on party lines with a FCC chief in charge appointed by Trump. You can't coat this any other way if you're a Trump supporter. Republicans will vote for monopolists over the people every time and are for corruption and big money. The democrats all voted against it.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[magzteel]

To be clear:

The two Democrats on the FCC — Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel — voted to keep the rules in place.

And who appointed Ajit Pai? Trump. He is part of the Trump administration.

He was appointed by Obama in 2012.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

To be clear:

The two Democrats on the FCC — Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel — voted to keep the rules in place.

And who appointed Ajit Pai? Trump. He is part of the Trump administration.

To be clear, Corporations appointed him.

Sick and tired of reminding people who the government ultimately answers to. Enough of the fucking ignorance that assumes Trump is pulling the strings. And the only ones to blame here are the American people who continue to allow this kind of corruption because they don't give a shit enough to care.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

And who appointed Ajit Pai? Trump. He is part of the Trump administration.

Umm, I'm no fan of Ajit or Trump but Obama appointed Ajit.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Daetrin]

"And who appointed Ajit Pai? Trump. He is part of the Trump administration."

Just to be clear, he was appointed to the commission by Obama in 2012. But Trump appointed him to the position of chairman in 2017.

(And i'd love to see some discussion as to why Obama chose make that first appointment, but it's kind of secondary at this point)

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard lots of conservative critics claiming Obama had overstepped his authority in introducing Network Neutrality.

Republicans said he overstepped his authority to everything he did because they wouldn't support him and refused to pass anything he proposed, so they were pissed he was smart enough to end run around them and get anything done.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of us that do care can't do fuck-all about it except vote...for the next rat-bastard.

We're lost in corporate shillism down to the local level at this point. The hope is gone. The dream is dead. Money or GTFO.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Captain Splendid]

(And i'd love to see some discussion as to why Obama chose make that first appointment, but it's kind of secondary at this point)

That's easy. He had to slap two republicans on the council anyway, I don't think he cared who they were as long as McConnell wasn't going to make a big fuss.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

For the first 5 years, yes and Trump renewed his appointment for another 5 years. He was part of Obama's administration now he is Trump's administration. It is and was Trump's administration who repealed NN. It was Obama's administration who installed NN.

Just like if you were working for Pepsi, if Coke purchased them, you are no longer working for Pepsi, you are employed by Coke. This is no different. Ajit, is working for Trump, not Obama.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

It's customary for the FCC's five member panel to include two members from the opposition party. Mitch McConnell recommended Pai to Obama to be one of the two Republican commissioners.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

He was appointed to the commission under Obama, as one among a number of people nominated by Mitch McConnell. He was appointed chairman under Trump.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[andcal]

Discussing secondary points is totally on-topic at slashdot.
The current tradition has the POTUS makes appointments so that 3 people from his own party and 2 people from the opposing party are on the FCC board, with someone from his party as the chariman.
I'm not saying Obama was obliged to appoint Pai specifically, but he was somewhat expected to appoint someone who was a Republican in that slot.
And as much as I hate what Pai has done, I don't actually know which (if any) other Republican in his place would have done differently.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Bartles]

Well, then the Bush Tax cuts and the Patriot Act are Obama's because he renewed them.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, he was appointed to his current position as chairman on 23 January 2017 by Donald Trump, not Obama.

You're thinking of his previous appointment as an FCC member.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[froggyjojodaddy]

I think that's semantics. Sure, Trumps administration (in the direct sense) didn't repeal it, but they made it possible. The getaway driver is just as culpable as the robbers.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair though, Trump appointed him Chairman... presumably for a reason.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[PopeRatzo]

He was appointed by Obama in 2012.

He was appointed to the FCC by Obama because Obama was required to appoint a certain number of Republicans.

Trump made Ajit Pai chairman of the FCC. In fact, it was one of the very first things he did after getting sworn in, and Trump did it with an explicit understanding that the Net Neutrality rules would be thrown out by Ajit Pai's FCC.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

EXACTLY!

Obama was such a fucking cunt about so many things. This is one of them.

It's such a joke that Republican fan bois call him a liberal. He was even more of a corporate shill than Clinton.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Jason Levine]

I believe he actually went to McConnell and McConnell recommended Ajit. Obama couldn't just put all Democrats on the panel any more than Trump could put all Republicans. So Obama used McConnell's recommendation knowing that his Democrat majority would overrule Ajit. Unfortunately, then Trump elevated Ajit to chairman and Ajit immediately put Net Neutrality in front of the firing squad.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

And DemoRats vote for nibberizing Trotsky dikdykes. You wanna live in bangerboi JuJuland with Unkil JoeS reading over yo shoulder and jawknacking gaffot-defined school subjects ?? Then vote DemoRat/Billary and don't be surprised at the gulag.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[PopeRatzo]

Because I heard lots of conservative critics claiming Obama had overstepped his authority in introducing Network Neutrality.

Conservatives also claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and there's a secret pedophilia ring under a pizza parlor.

I wouldn't put much stock in what conservatives claim.

Re: Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody puts much stock here in what you say. Have you ever been a contributor to a discussion on slashdot where you weren't just spamming political insults?

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck off.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

You're quite fallacious cunt aren't you.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[penandpaper]

Obama had overstepped his authority in introducing Network Neutrality.

Obama did overstep his authority in introducing NN. Being tricksy with the rules to get the regulations you want that are against what the courts and law say is overstepping your authority.

The law needs an update.

Re: Misleading Title Totally

[Lohrno]

Interesting, what language is that?

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[penandpaper]

If you believe that is the distinction being made by this vote you are delusional. NN is built on the premise that monopolies have to exist. The way these rules were put in place overstep the authority of the FCC by ignoring the courts and the law, i.e. corruption.

Big money was on both sides.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

The jury is still out on both of those issues.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Two different appointments. One as commissioner and one as chairman

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[AdamStarks]

Well, I mean, they kind of were, weren't they? At least in the case of the Patriot Act, which he used and defended to a greater extent than W...

And unless any big surprises happen, they're now Trumps (or at least soon will be).

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[I'm New Around Here]

I heard lots of conservative critics claiming Obama had overstepped his authority in introducing Network Neutrality.

Republicans said he overstepped his authority to everything he did because they wouldn't support him and refused to pass anything he proposed, .

Didn't know that passing what the other side wants was part of their job description.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Bartles]

Has Slashdot or any other major media agency ever referred to them as such?

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be neg repped into oblivion but it was NOT the Trump Administration that...

Poor trump. Just cause hes the President of the United States of America, people seem to think things that occur within his administration are his responsibility. Its not like he choose to spend a year and hundreds of $millions trying to become POTUS and can quit anytime.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Ixokai]

Obama didn't specifically introduce NN, but the FCC's three democrats did, and he supported it and he appointed his Chairman (I forget who) who everyone knew supported it.

The law in this area is all... old. Title II covers "telecommunication services" and has strict regulatory requirements. The FCC has authority to make rules for Title II telecommunication services, but not information services. That, the FTC (a much weaker agency) can sort of police not by setting rules by buy suing companies if they mislead consumers.

But this law wasn't passed when there was anything like what the internet is, and in the days of the likes of AOL and CompuServe and such, it made sense for the internet to be looked at as an information service.

But the internet is a whole lot more now, and most of the country has access to it via state-granted monopolies, there's no competition in it. So Obama's FCC ruled that it was a Title II telecom service. Some people claim that was an overstep of their authority, but that's questionable -- the law doesn't define what a telecom service *specifically is*, see. Its sort of up to the FCC to define what exactly qualifies as a Title II service.

Now this could all be fixed by Congress passing a law that actually made sense for the modern internet, buuut, the Republicans want no regulation on it at all so they get what they want this way.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

I think y'all are missing the fact that it was Rupert Murdoch who first promoted Trump's campaign in the media, discredited his rivals, and nominated Ajit Pai for chairman when Trump asked his master who the chairman should be. If you want to know the true architect of this assault on the internet, it's Rupert Murdoch. He also hobbled the NBN in Australia previously and helped undermine the Labour government and instate the Liberals in to power.

Who gains the most from these things? Rupert. lease do not forget that fact.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Trump appointed him chairman of the FCC. Obama had only appointed him as an FCC member.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you want to get REALLY clear it was the Russian Trollfare campaign that got Trump in power which then put Ajit at the helm of the FCC.

so ya... blame this on Putin.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[interkin3tic]

Somehow, even with recent national events, I'm still surprised at conservative's ability to blame everything bad on Obama and democrats.

I probably shouldn't be angry that net neutrality is going away, I should really just be surprised it managed to last this long if nerds on slashdot are unable to work out how we got here.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Voting to eliminate a government program is called democracy not corruption.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[quicks0rt]

He was appointed as one of the commissioners in 2012. Trump put him in chairman position of FCC in 2017. However. The way I see it, both are bidders of the corporate overlords. https://www.fcc.gov/about/lead...

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how he thought you were just defending Obama

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[interkin3tic]

JFC. Generations of Americans who are still breathing helped fight off Nazis AND the Japanese empire simultaneously, won voting rights, landed on the moon, held off nuclear Armageddon, and invented the internet, all of which is harder than establishing reasonable regulations on the internet.

Two days ago, ALABAMA voted in a pro-choice democrat.

You're suggesting we can't stand against a bunch of douche-bag MBAs, corrupt politicians, and lobbyists? Go fuck a rusty railroad spike, you dumb coward. This is fucking easy. You don't need to elect perfect saints in order to make progress on net neutrality or legal bribery, just vote for people who talk about those issues specifically rather than bleat about the bible or terrorism and this solves itself.

If you can't bring yourself to do that, move to another shit-hole country or commit suicide so you're not dead weight in the next census and aren't wasting resources.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[interkin3tic]

Also worth noting that Obama nominated Wheeler as chairman, who really looked like he was going to overturn net neutrality until he didn't after a backlash.

While it would be idiotic beyond even american conservative capability to suggest that this is because of Obama, he should have done a lot more to protect the internet.

Re: Misleading Title Totally

[mapkinase]

Only to FCC as a member

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[NaCh0]

Trump did it with an explicit understanding that the Net Neutrality rules...

I'm pretty sure unless someone's path to the presidency was being a telecom attorney, no president will have explicit understanding of Net Neutrality rules.

The same goes with any clean water act, international treaty, etc. The President appoints someone who already works in that sphere and lets them continue on.

Heck, even construction of Trump's signature proposal, the border wall, hasn't gotten past the prototype stage. If Trump knows anything, it's how construction works.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[interkin3tic]

It's odd that I never heard a conservative conspiracy theory that liberals planted Donald in order to destroy the republicans from within. He's a billionaire from NYC who was a democrat most of his life and clearly laughs at the family values conservatives claim to hold.

That it would have been a huge backfire on democrats simply makes it more believable.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Straif]

Smart would mean being able to put some policies in place that couldn't simply be removed or modified by the simple stroke of a pen or vote of a panel. Lazy is a much more apt term for Obama's general governing philosophy. He didn't want to deal with the actual work of being the President so he simply granted powers to unelected groups or signed EO's (or various other executive statements) creating new laws that completely bypassed the legislative process. Even his own party members continually called him out for failing to meet with them to discuss policy plans or completing throwing them under the bus after they had worked across the aisle to come to some sort of agreement with Repubs on certain issues.

Most of the most vocal opponents of Trump's policies are only really complaining that he is effectively ripping up Obama's declarations. If any of those had actually been enshrined into law he wouldn't have been able to do that. That being said Trump shows a lot of the same laziness in that he doesn't seem to want to sweat the details but only wants to give the big idea speeches. He likes to bitch about how slow the process is to get things done but so far he is mostly living within the limits of the Executive branch.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Jeremi]

I'm pretty sure unless someone's path to the presidency was being a telecom attorney, no president will have explicit understanding of Net Neutrality rules.

Re-read the sentence you quoted. It says "with an explicit understanding that the Net Neutrality rules...", not "an explicit understanding of the Net Neutrality rules".

You're right that Trump doesn't understand Net Neutrality, any more than he understands any other area of US policy. All Trump knows (and all he wants to know) is that if a policy was enacted under Obama, he's against it and will try to get rid of it.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, keep asserting that R voters are all basement-dwelling Nazis. It worked so well for you in 2016 that you lost to Donald fucking Trump, I can't wait to see how "qualified" a candidate your toxicity is going to scuttle in 2020...

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[PopeRatzo]

Yes, keep asserting that R voters are all basement-dwelling Nazis.

I assert no such thing. Many Republicans live above-ground in garages or in Chevy vans up on blocks. I'm big enough to admit that freely.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Wingnuts claimed there was a pedophile ring under a pizza parlor.
Kenyans claimed Obama was born in Kenya. Not that it would really matter if he was.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

To the Commission, but Trump made him Commissioner.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? The White House has made it clear that the President fully supports this decision.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[aussie_a]

Yes, they are part of Obama's administration. It should give you an idea of how bad the other side is when people look upon Obama favourably even AFTER he renewed those terrible laws.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[aussie_a]

The founding fathers would disagree that you are powerless to do anything about the megacorps who own your government.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as rules of thumb go, I've certainly heard worse.
What we need is a lot more regulation cutting along with aggressive prosecution of monopoly-esque behaviors, such as broadband providers gentlemanly declining to enter the 'territory' of another existing provider.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[MoarSauce123]

Trump is the head honcho of the Republican Party and he could have picked a different FCC president. While he was not personally involved in this fiasco (he is in plenty others), he did have some influence on how this panel is put together. I do agree that some of these morons predate the Trump rampage on the country. Makes one wonder which qualifications one must have to get such a position....apparently none!

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[MoarSauce123]

But not as chairman...that was Trump.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[MoarSauce123]

Any twist to blame Obama is welcome by some. Spilled your coffee? Obama! Spouse left you? Obama! Too dark at night? Obama! Earthquake? Obama! Climate Change? Oh wait...that is the exception being a Chinese hoax.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty lame excuse.
Besides, it is completely irrelevant. There were more than Pai who fucked us over.
It has very little to do with Trump vs. Obama and a lot more to do with Republicans vs. Democrats.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is Obama kept them, rather than trying to get rid of them. Bush came up with a bad idea, and Obama said "I like where you're going with this."

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Appointed to the FCC but sure as shit not as chairman. there have to be opposing party members on the board, hence why a dem would pick an R (or vice versa) in the first place. Obama put him on the board to serve as one of the opposition members under a democratic chairman. And in that configuration, they installed the net neutrality rules. Trump came along and (as its his right to do) flipped the board toward R, made Pai chairman, and instructed him to burn down anything with Obamas name on it.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

The commission can only have three members from any one party, thats not customary thats law.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what propaganda and brainwashing, with a helping hand from your "prosperity gospel" ministers who run most of the big churches in the south can achieve given a generation or two to do their dirty work.

And those same "legal persons" who back these wordsmiths are the ones who with this repeal will now be able to do this stuff directly, by blocking access to information, competition in all forms, and opinions they don't want heard. All in the name of profit, and they merely have to offer it for more than people can afford to do this legally.

The only actual solution here is to have every last one of the people directly or indirectly responsible for pushing this attack on liberty - including C-level executives, legislators and lobbyists - slowly roasted on a spit. Not metaphorically. They own the courts, they own law enforcement and private prisons, we are well past "strongly worded letters" if we want our country back.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[AmiMoJo]

Just wait until Trump gets impeached or loses the next election. They will turn on him just as quickly as he turns on his former best buddies.

They always turn on each other eventually. Always.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Which recent national events?

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realise the kind of person you are when you tell someone to kill themselves? Take a step back to try and think for a minute if this is really who you want to be.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

You really think all these communist soyboy "progressives" are going to to a god damn thing except change their Facebook picture and whine about the problem on the internet?

They're trying to turn this country into one of the shitholes you're imploring them to go to. They don't want to leave, they want their desperate poverty for all right here at home.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Which just adds evidence to my theory that McConnell is the single most dangerous politician in Washington.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, of course. It was Hillary's fault!

Dirty, crooked Hillary. Lock her up!

#maga

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the president get all the credit or blame for everything? Congress plays a bigger part.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed. i also think Trump doesn't have a clue of what net neutrality is. All he is doing is reversing whatever Obama put in place because he is in "charge" now.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. The internet worked just fine for decades before Obama started trying to regulate it.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[kimvette]

> there's a secret pedophilia ring under a pizza parlor. ...being run out of a basement that doesn't even exist (it turned out the pizza place is on just a slab, not over a basement).

“There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.” -Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn bro, you talk like you're thirteen. Grow up and lead by example if you want reasonable discussion with adults, you can Mr. Railroad spike.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Congress The President

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems Obama was offering an olive branch to the Republicans, as was typical of Obama optimism. The Republicans took that olive branch and fucked him in the ass with it.

I think Democrats with any balls should know what to do now... stop playing mister nce guy. The Republicans have screwed Dems one too many times and net neutrality is a BIGLY one.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[MotherErich]

Obama didn't appoint him as Chairman.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[Jason Levine]

Oh, there were definitely actions Obama took that I disagreed with. Wheeler's appointment was one of them initially. I plenty surprised when he turned out to be a consumer advocate and not an industry shill. Sadly, Ajit Pai turned out to be the industry shill that he appeared to be from the outset.

Re:Misleading Title Totally

[drkoemans]

They absolutely were which is why I didn't vote for Obama when he ran for a second term. If I wasn't cynical before then it was certainly my turning point. It really doesn't matter which lizard you elect to office, they are all the same. While voting 3rd party is unlikely to do anything (particularly in my state which is 100% democrat), and all of the candidates are problematic in one way or another, I at least feel like I am saying to the political machine that the two party system sucks.

The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[hackel]

The FCC is not the Trump Administration, or even a part of it. Words have meanings.

Regardless, this is yet another very sad day for this country.

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Captain Splendid]

Gee, I wonder who appoints FCC commissioners? Guess we'll never know!

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, I wonder who nominated the current chair to serve in the FCC to begin with. I guess that means Pai is part of Obama's administration?

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

European here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the executive branch called "the administration"? And isn't the FCC part of the executive branch? And doesn't the president direct the executive branch? And isn't Donald Trump the president? And didn't he make Ajit Pai the chairman of the FCC?

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Captain Splendid]

Obama nominated him to the FCC, not the chair, because that's how the FCC works: Winning party gets three commissioners, losing party gets two, so Obama's hands were tied on that one.

After Trump was sworn in, he nominated Pai as chairman.

And now you know...the rest of the story!

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes. He was appointed by Obama.

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, I wonder who appoints FCC commissioners?

No spoilers, I haven't seen The Last Jedi yet.

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Bartles]

No, the FCC is an independent agency like the Federal Reserve. It doesn't only become part of an Administration you don't like when it does something you don't like.

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[penandpaper]

The Federal Reserve is not part of the government. The FCC is.

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Obama couldn't have found a more RINO person than a Verizon corporate lawyer (the same Verizon that was suing about other rules they didn't like?).

Sorry - Obama also appointed Tom Wheeler who was initially worse than a Verizon corporate lawyer as he held leadership positions at the CTIA & NCTA prior to being nominated to head the FCC. Mr. Wheeler also took up the mantle of net neutrality in 2014 by suggesting paid prioritization. The public comment period of that time had a massive backlash and eventually in 2015 passed what is now termed Obama-era net netutrality. This is after the President spoke out about net neutrality in a previously rarely seen push of an independent agency's decisionmaking.

The one good thing about Obama's FCC under Wheeler is that between secret Whitehouse meetings and a huge public backlash it finally reversed its original stance and came up with something that would probably have served the interests of economic growth and innovation for the foreseeable future.

This time around we don't have the big tech giants and a lot more apathy because Trump is already screwing everything up so caring about NN is just one more thing and hardly as societally important as fixing the public perception of victims of sexual harassment.

We can blame Trump and all the pussy-grabbers in Hollywood for taking up too much of our time to the point that there was none left to give for NN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler

Re: The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Bartles]

That's not really correct. If that's the case every rule it has ever issued under the force of law is moot.

Re: The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[penandpaper]

Not if the Congress gives it that authority, which it has. The Federal Reserve is not part of the government as the Congress has decided.

Re: The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[Bartles]

Wut?

Re:The FCC is not the Trump Administration

[MobyDisk]

To be more specific:The maximum number of commissioners who may be members of the same political party shall be a number equal to the least number of commissioners which constitutes a majority of the full membership of the Commission.

I would love to see a president nominate members of the green, constitution, and libertarian parties, or some independents.

Wow did not expect this

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure last year there were Trump supporters swearing up and down that this would never happen.

Re:Wow did not expect this

[Anonymous Coward]

They were, they need to get their head out of the Orange's A$$. The Orange needs to stop sucking Putin's Wang.

Re:Wow did not expect this

[StevenMaurer]

Don't worry. Already they're trying to pretend that it's all Obama's fault.

Re:Wow did not expect this

[MotherErich]

#MAGA

No, Not Trump Administration

[volkris]

The FCC is an independent agency of the US government, not part of the executive branch, and so not part of the Trump administration.

This is a bright line that needs to be preserved. We don't want presidents to be able to order the FCC to act, especially the current one. And Obama's pressure on the FCC to regulate the internet was part of the history that got us in this mess in the first place.

Anyway, The Hill had a level-headed and short description of the action here. It was really nice to get a break from sensationalized--and factually off--articles screaming about the world coming to an end.

See it here: http://thehill.com/opinion/tec...

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying the DOJ is "separate". Technically yes but Trump could have prevented this, except in reality he wanted net neutrality repealed.

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

What Bullshit! Trump actively put this guy in charge to do this one thing. He never tweeted against it, he seems to have time to tweet about everything else!

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[Billly Gates]

Nice. An article written by a lobbyist and no proof Obama regulated the internet. All he did was say no to paywalls and throttling since the US government actually owns the internet

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[Gilgaron]

So a guy appointed by Trump did not experience pressure from Trump to act as he wanted, whereas Obama did apparently exert pressure on the FCC to act as he wanted? That's a roundabout way of not associating Trump with actions performed by the people he put in place to do things...

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[Perl-Pusher]

Except Trump didn't nominate him Obama did. But don't let a little thing like facts stop you!

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[Bartles]

The DOJ isn't separate. It's part of the Executive branch.

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[fafalone]

Can you provide an instance of an FCC vote where the commissioners broke from a official party platform position held by the President, congressional leaders, and the DNC/RNC?

I'd be genuinely interested if you could but I doubt it, especially in modern times. They're tools of their party for both good and bad; there's no actual independence. Party leaders set the agenda, the FCC doesn't independently determine it, if it's a political issue.

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[kenh]

since the US government actually owns the internet

Seriously? Which parts? The last mile, the backbone fiber links? The transatlantic wires? The routers? The protocol? The DNS servers?

Truth is the US Gov't owns none of the public internet, and hasn't for decades.

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[PopeRatzo]

Except Trump didn't nominate him Obama did.

Obama didn't nominate Pai as FCC chairman, he nominated him as an FCC commissioner, one of two minority-party members traditionally appointed. Trump nominated Pai to be FCC chairman with the understanding that Pai would eliminate the Net Neutrality rules. As long as you're so concerned about facts, you should try to at least get them right.

Trump nominated Pai as chairman on the day after he was inaugurated. He nominated him to a second five-year term in March of 2017.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

Re:No, Not Trump Administration

[serviscope_minor]

Except Trump didn't nominate him Obama did. But don't let a little thing like facts stop you!

I thougt republicans were supposed to be the party of personal responsibility?

You voted Republican htye have the presidency, congreess and the supreme court. If a law gets passed now it's because the Republicans have done it, no matter the history behind the law.

You really should learn to take responsibility for your actions.

Who knows? Then maybe you'll vote for someone else.

Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[twebb72]

This comment was blocked due to non-payment for /. access -Comcast

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[QuantumLeaper]

I wish I had a mod point because this is the BEST post so far!

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment was blocked due to non-payment for /. access -Comcast

That would most certainly be the end of /. since nobody would bother paying for this.

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[gosand]

I think they only care about high-bandwidth sites.

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[twebb72]

I think they only care about high-bandwidth sites.

Ouch dude. Support /.

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[thegarbz]

And nothing of value was lost.

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[Anonymous Coward]

And nothing of value was lost.

And being critical of someone else's right to free speech does everyone a disservice.

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the first few months sure, but as the tools they already have due to having pulled this shit all the way up until they got Title II'd get further refined, they will expand like you wouldn't believe.

Re:Forgot to pay my ISP bill for /.

[gosand]

I have, since the late 90s.

YAY!

[Templer421]

This is good news!

Internet Service Fees

[Honest Man]

Thank you for subscribing to your basic internet service. Please choose between the below options: 1) 100mb uncapped video service, included with your basic service. 2) 1gb uncapped video service, only $10/mo. 3) Each additional 1gb only charged at $5/mo. What a deal! ((Please note that the capped speed will limit you to 56k speed. The speeds you receive will also be limited by the service agreements we have reached with the provider of the video you desire and the contracts they have with all of the ISP's between your IP address and theirs so even with an unlimited speed agreement you may notice 56k speed caps due to those arrangements.)) Have a nice day!

Re:Internet Service Fees

[twebb72]

Sign up today and you get 1 year of Netflix for FREE!

Re:Internet Service Fees

[olsmeister]

That's when I go back to DVD's for everything.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[bkmoore]

New ISP service plans (on top of what you're already paying:

1. video delivery - $10 / mo
2. VOIP delivery surcharge - $20 / mo or $1.00 per phone call
3. email delivery surcharge - $5 / mo or $0.50 per email
4. "communications package" for $59.99 / mo (includes all of the above)

I could go on, but it's all about extracting the maximum amount of $$$ from already paying customers.

Re: Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an honest man, so we know all that torrent traffic was just linux ISOs.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[GuB-42]

New ISP service plans (on top of what you're already paying)

I think that where you are wrong.
Net neutrality is not a way to prevent price gouging. It is to prevent preferential treatment and anti-competitive practices.

In fact, in most cases, net neutrality violation are about offering something for free rather than making you pay what was previously free. I think a more realistic change would be :
Your service plan now comes with unlimited Netflix! (we also halved your data cap, but because Netflix doesn't count against it, you won't need the other half, right?).

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome now my grandma who only uses email doesn't have to pay for high bandwith video.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you be against a two-tiered pricing system that gave internal traffic a lower rate than external traffic? To me, this seems like the main failing of NN, as it would prevent such a structure, even though it's in line with costs incurred by the ISP.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

You are pretty close to what may happen in the short term, but it it the long term implications that worry many.
Once enough existing services have agreed to be zero-rated by paying a fee, the ISPs can shrink data caps saying that most consumers do not need them anymore. At that point, to get back to the more open internet, you end up paying more.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they won't even have to tell you correct non promo pricing or download caps or anything.
Per Ajit, that was too onerous of a requirement, so he's rolling back those disclosure rules too.

So it's more like choose our 99 cent plans today!

(and they don't tell you this, but in a month it goes to $100 a month with a 5gb cap, and throttled to 56k dialup if you go over plus $50 per gb, none of which you know until you get the bill).

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh - if only I could go with a better company that aren't full of jerks. Oh wait. I can. I'll choose the better company that doesn't cap anything.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

price gouging is such a common practive these days it's now inevitable. it's not if, it's when. if you don't see that then you deserve what's coming.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, this is exactly the problem I had before Barack, the magic negro, came to save me.

Re:Internet Service Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

the email charge is what makes sense of this war, you better write to whom you know answers or not try at all for the cost if you need volume help! emails...

If you were wondering about bipartisan legislation

[Anonymous Coward]

Mitch McConnell supports Pai. He'd have to schedule the debate, so it doesn't look good. (Paul Ryan seems to favor net neutrality though).

Then there's the matter of Trump.

RIP Internet

[nowwith25percentmore]

Goodbye to the internet we've come to know and love.

Re:RIP Internet

[Krishnoid]

Doesn't the internet we've come to know and love mostly involve Usenet and a lot of github traffic, much of which is text? Considering that's in the noise when it comes to bandwidth, would Net Neutrality affect that? It seems like a lot of the traffic that crotchety old people use gets a free ride bandwidth-wise compared to video traffic.

Re: RIP Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

...github... text... bandwidth...

No, that is not the point, it isn't about bandwidth. it's about the ability to block whole protocols and services. Would you like to pay Comcast or Verizon for your GitHub access account? I mean, -which one- would you like to pay?

Re:RIP Internet

[should_be_linear]

Not reallt, this will only affect US consumers. Luckily, Internet will hardly notice.

Re:RIP Internet

[XxtraLarGe]

Goodbye to the internet we've come to know and love.

Yes, goodbye social media, trolls & autoplay videos!

Re:RIP Internet

[kenh]

FFS the Net Neutrality regulations are exactly 18 month old, what hellish conditions did these regulations rectify, what nightmares from 2015 will come back to haunt us now?

Bottom line, these regulations went in-place along party lines, and they were removed along party lines. Let's see some actual federal legislation on this topic, instead of random executive orders like we've had so far, OK?

Re:RIP Internet

[felix rayman]

You've only been on the internet since 2015?

Re:RIP Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Already gone. Happened when AOL let the noobs on the loose.
We used to have a self regulating internet. Before ICANN held meetings that catered to "stakeholders" which was limited to copyright holders that wanted to lock down the internet.

Re:RIP Internet

[rogoshen1]

more importantly, good bye VPN's.

Re:RIP Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly!

Americans may have invented the internet, but it has now spread itself globally.

Now most of the time they can only fuck up their part of the internet only. Thankfully.

Greetings from cheap(USD approx 20 per month), uncapped, unblocked 1gbps fibre connections.

*There are enough countries with such offerings, you can guess where I am from.

Re:RIP Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

The so called 'third world' country you love to hate Brazil, has NN enshrined in law, as a special legislation called Internet Covenant passed back in 2014.

Who's third world now.

Re:RIP Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of the internet connections route thru (now free to throttle) US providers?

How many of the mostly used sites are server from servers within the US?

Time to build elsewhere.

msmash posting Fake News again

[Anonymous Coward]

FCC != Trump administration. Is msmash Anderson Cooper or Jake Tapper?

elections have consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Justify this all you slashdot libertarian Hillary haters (no this wouldn't have happened under a center right Democratic Party administration). Make the case that "they're all the same" or "it's not so bad". Go on. Make that case in a slashdot comment thread where there's occasionally enough tech knowledge around to keep you technically honest. Go on. Make that case. Once you finish jerking off of course.

"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[PopeRatzo]

You wanna see what FCC chairman Ajit Pai thinks of you? Here is a video he posted yesterday to tell you why you should not worry about losing Net Neutrality.; He posted it on the right-wing website Daily Caller. (for real, you should watch this 1.5 minute video from Trump's FCC chairman, as he reveals he has no idea what Net Neutrality is, and also that he is a massive fuckwit.)

https://youtu.be/JeKK637IYAg

He's telling you all the things you'll still be able to do on the Internet after he signs over control to Comcast. Oh, and by the way, in the part of the video where he does the "Harlem Shake", one of the girls he's dancing with is a blogger who promoted the "Pizzagate" pedophilia controversy.

https://gizmodo.com/ajit-pai-t...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Trailer Trash]

He absolutely knows what it is - he isn't stupid. What he says and what he believes are unlikely to be the same thing.

Which means he's evil.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[edi_guy]

Using the term "Restore Internet freedom" is the dead give away that this is bad news for regular folks. Very much along the lines of terms "PATRIOT Act" and "Homeland Security". This is straight out, old school Soviet propaganda style terminology, and I've never understood why Americans are ok with it.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[phantomfive]

Wow, I didn't expect the head of the FCC to come across as such a moron.

But maybe he's right: maybe in our post-consumer-whore-buzz nation, those things he lists are all anyone cars about.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Net neutrality hasn't existed for the past 40 years and now you cry about it?

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not. But we're stuck with a large portion of the population that would rather trade their economic interests and personal freedoms for the ability to tell people what bathroom they have to use. The propaganda-speak just comes with results.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[RedK]

you should watch this 1.5 minute video from Trump's FCC chairman, as he reveals he has no idea what Net Neutrality is, and also that he is a massive fuckwit

Yet you're here mad he's not regulating the Internet. How do you reconcile that position ?

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

not letting a future democrat president have control over internet censorship via fcc standards and practices?

you don't know what evil is

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[PopeRatzo]

Yet you're here mad he's not regulating the Internet. How do you reconcile that position ?

He's letting Comcast regulate the internet.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Using the term "Restore Internet freedom" is the dead give away that this is bad news for regular folks. Very much along the lines of terms "PATRIOT Act" and "Homeland Security".

Don't forget the "Affordable Care Act."

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[houghi]

He is literally worse than Hitler, because Hitler at leased believed he was doing it for good. He was wrong, but at least he believed he was right.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[mvdwege]

You do realise that engaging in the 'tu quoque' fallacy is admitting your side is wrong, right?

Re: "Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[mapkinase]

Because average person is an idiot?

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[SlaveToTheGrind]

You do realise that engaging in the 'tu quoque' fallacy is admitting your side is wrong, right?

No, but I could definitely see that for making up questionable propositions to try to distract from inescapable irony.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, if I want to pretend to be a women and jack-off in the women's bathroom, who the fuck cares? Those God damn Rethuglicans just want to keep us shackled to petty things like reality. Fucking scum.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly - everyone needs to watch, and downvote the video. When I checked it was 1k upvotes (wtf?) and 25k downvotes.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[mvdwege]

No,

Ah. I see. You're just stupid then.

but I could definitely see that for making up questionable propositions to try to distract from inescapable irony.

Word salad is not the unassailable argument you think it is. Then again, you probably can't do any better.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are okay with propaganda, for the same reason most of the rest of us swallow most propaganda. They're lazy, stupid and scared.
Too lazy to think clearly or do anything concrete, too stupid to realize that the US isn't and never has been a democracy, and too scared of being held responsible for important decisions to actually make a decision, which is why we fob it off to self-interested criminals like Trump and Pai.
We're fucking doomed.

Re:"Restore Internet Freedom" You Stupid Fucks

[Trailer Trash]

I believe net neutrality (and most stuff handled by "policies") needs to be codified into US federal law by the Congress. So, I'm pro-net-neutrality, but believe all law should be handled by Congress.

Time to redirect the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Redirect all requests from FCC ips to goatse. I am really mad and upset right now and am not even American as i know America will use its influence on other countries. We must take action like goatseing the FCC to get them take us seriously.

Well duh!

[Ol Olsoc]

This is obviously punishment from God for gay marriage.

Re:Well duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

and for not putting the creep moore into the senate.

Re:Well duh!

[Ol Olsoc]

and for not putting the creep moore into the senate.

The Christian God is very pissed that Moore cannot continue bumping uglies with underage interns in Washington, which Their God agrees with.

Damn Liberal Northeners. God's gonna destroy a southern state to punish the brothers, like he always does.

Do I understand correctly that there will be

[Max_W]

from now on the periodic advertising pauses on the Internet access something like it is now on TV cable?

Re:Do I understand correctly that there will be

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of providers are already doing injection ads. And yes, since everyone is moving to SSL, the only way to do this is MITM, by tricking you into installing their CA before granting access. Capture portals do this shit all the time.

Ya know...

[fahrbot-bot]

Republicans (in office) constantly complain about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because its single director has too much power, no external accountability and isn't subject to Congressional oversight (ie. control) and should either be abolished or changed to be run by a board of Commissioners, like the FCC.

Funny how they don't complain about the FCC behaving much the same way, even considering the FCC *has* a board of Commissioners and *is* subject to Congressional oversight. Maybe it's because the FCC is protecting corporations, not consumers - exactly like Republicans (in office) want.

I say "in office" because it seems many Representatives are doing what is in their best interest, regardless of what their constituents, who may also be Republicans, want. Sometimes, it seems the masses are more reasonable and responsible than their elected officials - sometimes.

Re:Ya know...

[kenh]

Funny how they don't complain about the FCC behaving much the same way, even considering the FCC *has* a board of Commissioners and *is* subject to Congressional oversight.

I'm no political analyst, but I suspect that because the FCC is different (for the very reasons you mention) is why "they" don't complain about it.

NN regulations were shoved onto us along party lines by the FCC, why is it so startlingly amazing that those very same regulations were rolled back the same way?

Bottom line, republicans felt the regulations were over-reaching, said they'd repeal them, now they have. If you wanted this not to happen, perhaps you should have worked harder to make sure the guy promising to to do this didn't win the last election. The fix is to pass actual legislation implementing what you want, not BS regulations invented out of whole cloth and imposed on the people by the will of an appointed commissioner...

Re:Ya know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument makes no sense. What just happened was removing government power over the internet. Just like it was up until 2014.

Re:Ya know...

[phantomfive]

You need to give up the expectation that politicians won't be hypocrites. They are. Every single one of them.

I take that back: some are like Willie Brown and openly flaunt their corruptness. That's not hypocritical but it's another problem.

Re:Ya know...

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps you should have worked harder to make sure the guy promising to to do this didn't win the last election.

"But meh popular vote!!!" those angry about this are likely to respond.

The fix is to pass actual legislation implementing what you want, not BS regulations invented out of whole cloth and imposed on the people by the will of an appointed commissioner...

It is funny how the same people cheering the use of a pen and a phone for 8 years now are outraged that the very same means are being used to reverse those things. I agree though, shame they weren't so keen to act through actual legislation.

Re:Ya know...

[PoopJuggler]

Republicans are basically the First Order, and none of them realize they are actually the bad guys.

Having the pie and eating it.

[Ecuador]

It is mind boggling that you have government control on one side by granting potentially abusive monopolies, and at the same time you remove any consumer protective regulation so that these monopolies can be as abusive as they want... Sure, the US has a decent GDP/capita, but that really is no excuse to have up to 10x the telco cost compared to other developed countries (and/or depending the location get stuck with circa 2000 internet speeds).
Well, OK, the fact that it is happening is not mind-boggling - just follow the money... The lack of realization/resistance from the people is the stranger and scarier aspect.

Re:Having the pie and eating it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that the regulations are off, the ISPs will start to manipulate content for profit. When that happens, they will be sued to have their common carrier status revoked.

When they lose, anyone can attach their wires to the poles. Any ISP willing to maintain net neutrality will kick their asses.

Re:Having the pie and eating it.

[Tailhook]

They won't lose common carrier status. They'll keep it and manipulate content for profit. Anything they do that involves manipulating content and traffic will be judged a function of an "information service," not a common carrier, while the exact same wires, poles and conduits will remain their exclusive property and protected from competitors as a function of being the common carrier. They're going to have both simultaneously.

Re:Having the pie and eating it.

[Anonymous Coward]

> so that these monopolies can be as abusive as they want.

This didn't repeal any anti-trust laws so I have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

Re:Having the pie and eating it.

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you have us resist?

Politicians are all bought and paid for. So calling our politicians won't help. Voting 3rd party (which is what I do) doesn't help.

I'd like some good ideas for resistance.

Re:Having the pie and eating it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking to the streets *en masse* often works...

Re:Having the pie and eating it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddam absolutely right!! Why is it that ECUADOREANS are smarter, better American patriots than those dancing to jingoist nationalist bullshit and ALMOST ELECTING CHILD MOLESTERS?!? What the fuck! Thank you for your comment and I would grant you my American citizenship and live in Ecuador as an ambassador because YOU seem to get it. It would be my honor.

A challenge to everyone

[SuperKendall]

So I see a lot of negativity about this, even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).

So I have a challenge for you all worried about this. Today, make a note of how much your internet costs. Then do some speed tests and record the results.

In a year, do the same thing. How many of you seriously think we will be worse off?

I personally do not think much will change, if anything... there is little practical downside to the choice of the FCC, and so much fear mongering from the other side of things that it greatly strains credulity.

I do look forward to a year of ANY news having to do with an ISP being blamed on net neutrality though regardless of how it would have been affected by NN rules, sadly that's the one downside I am sure of...

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Being in complete denial about everything does not make it not true.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[tooyoung]

I'm not expecting the cost of my internet to go up or the general speed to change. The ISP has no reason to raise that cost or to limit my speed simply due to the change in rules. The price increase and speed change that I'm worried about is for the services that I consume via the internet - Netflix, Youtube, Amazon, Hulu, AppleTV rentals, etc. What I'm curious to see is: 1. Does the price of services that I'm using go up? 2. Do these services maintain a similar quality of service as they do today? Will I be able to rent a movie via AppleTV and have it still be instantly watchable? Will Netflix and Hulu still stream at a watchable rate?

As you say, time will tell. Some of these effects may be difficult to measure for the layman though. The speed test against a "speed test" site probably doesn't change. Raised cost for a watchable Amazon Prime streaming video might be spread across the general cost of goods from Amazon.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[zfractal]

I personally do not think much will change, if anything... there is little practical downside to the choice of the FCC, and so much fear mongering from the other side of things that it greatly strains credulity.

In the next 1-2 years? Sure. There's no way they're going to go full corporate dictator at the outset. The first thing they'll do is start negotiating with the big content providers, while fending off the inevitable legal challenges. They'll also need to go full throttle on getting friendly Congresspeople (mostly Rs) reelected next year.

After that? I think we can expect to see a lot more zero rating packages and more investment in their own content services. Data caps will be pushed down to make these services and zero rating more attractive. Further down the line, they'll be extending their "partnerships" with more and more edge providers.

Eventually, they'll have enough deals that cover just enough of what people use that they can start throttling down anything else while most people will neither care nor notice. It may not happen in a year or two, but watch for *this* to happen. It won't at the outset.

You really think they've been pushing and spending this much because they *don't* expect to maximize their revenue and control?

Re:A challenge to everyone

[lord_mike]

From the very beginning, there were ALWAYS net neutrality rules. The Obama administration merely reiterated the existing rules that had been in place for decades. Now there are no rules at all. We will see how disastrous this ends up being in the long term.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking forward to when the whiners finally realize that the reason their Internet is so slow is BECAUSE of burdensome regulation.

Want to know why there's no competition between ISPs in the US? Because regulators and NIMBY-types gave them regional monopolies. So-called net neutrality does nothing to fix this. All it does is force you to pay more and prevent ISPs from providing better service.

What we need is a repeal of all the regulations preventing ISPs from building out their networks and competing with each other. Title II just made things worse.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, speeds to known speed test sites will only go up. Better test would be for those of us who use VPN to speedtest over the VPN. Even then, it is probably possible to optimize for the tests.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to record the prices for any and all services that you receive over the Net. That is the most likly place that you will see the impacts.

"That's a great service you have there Netflix, be a damn shame if all your customers had loading wheels on their shows every 10 minutes eh?

Oh and I'd track it for 2 or 3 years if you really want to know what shakes out. Smart oligopolies know how to wait until the scrutiny wanes.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest running ooni and connecting to pirate websites. Internet speed isn't probably going down. Rich companies will pay the ISPs, non censored/non competing websites will probably have their speed unchanged (ie. they will extort who they can). Censorship will run wild. America will be the new UK/China (and critics go read about what UK is actually censoring in name of blocking porn).

Re:A challenge to everyone

[quantaman]

So I see a lot of negativity about this, even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).

From 2001-2008 the Bush administration was in charge and the tech and business infrastructure to really exploit the lack of net neutrality wasn't around yet.

From 2009-2016 the Obama administration was in charge and anxious to implement NN, so the telecoms were doing everything they could to make it look like NN was unnecessary.

From 2017-2020 the Trump/Pence administration will be in change, the telecoms can do whatever they want and nothing will get regulated, and by the time 2021 rolls around even if a Democratic administration is in change the internet landscape will have changed enough to make implementing NN very disruptive and difficult to do.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[phorm]

Netflix throttling, youtube throttling, torrent-throttling and various other things have ALREADY been an issue.

Will it happen immediately? No.

Will it start to slowly degrade service and impact customers over time? Absolutely!

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. Before net neutrality, didn't Netflix have to make deals with ISPs to get decent bandwidth to their customers?

Re:A challenge to everyone

[fafalone]

Ah, the classic "we'd never violate these rules anyway but for some reason we're going to spend millions on lawsuits fighting them and millions more on advertising to the public and lobbying politicians in a non-stop bitch and moan fest to get them eliminated" argument. Touche.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not necessarily the fear that a general speed test will fall off a cliff. Rather, it's that ISPs, the corporations that own them, and the political interests that they interact with, will all then have the legal justification and technical means to throttle traffic from specific addresses or ranges of addresses. Nothing would stop them from even using deep packet inspection, if there were some advantage to their doing so. And often, the paths that individual packets take might pass through the jurisdictions of several providers, different backbones or long-haul fibers, different last-mile accommodations. Why should all these different commercial interests have a choice in whether to reduce (or increase) your data rate?

Re:A challenge to everyone

[sacrilicious]

So I have a challenge for you all worried about this. Today, make a note of how much your internet costs. Then do some speed tests and record the results.

I have a different challenge in mind: measure the freedom of distribution of political speech. Much harder to measure from a birds eye view, but negative effects on it are the thing I'm worried about, not whether speeds dip by percentage points.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing ever happened? What drugs have you been using?

So you're saying ISPs weren't deliberately slowing down Netflix?
They weren't deliberately replacing ads on web pages?
They weren't deliberately adding unique trackers to http traffic?

fuck off you paid asshole

Re:A challenge to everyone

[luis_a_espinal]

So I see a lot of negativity about this, even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).

So I have a challenge for you all worried about this. Today, make a note of how much your internet costs. Then do some speed tests and record the results.

In a year, do the same thing. How many of you seriously think we will be worse off?

I personally do not think much will change, if anything... there is little practical downside to the choice of the FCC, and so much fear mongering from the other side of things that it greatly strains credulity.

I do look forward to a year of ANY news having to do with an ISP being blamed on net neutrality though regardless of how it would have been affected by NN rules, sadly that's the one downside I am sure of...

The point of NN was not to fix a systemic error, but to legally prevent the things that companies were attempting (throttling.)

If NN was a nothingburger and the internet worked just the same before and after NN, then why cable companies poured millions in lobbying against it, and, more importantly, why so many fake emails were sent to the FCC to support a repeal of it? Why so much effort to repeal something that is widely popular and with by-partisan support????

Looks like a lot of effort to repeal something that was, supposedly, not a factor on anything.

You do not go through so much efforts to repeal a prohibition unless you are planning to commit the acts regulated by said prohibition.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just stream at a watchable rate, but at HDR+ 4K. I have gigabit service at home. There is no reason I should not be able to do so unless CenturyLink, who also sells tv packages, decides to make my experience worse. The other part, is that this move protect the rich incumbent companies from competition. Instead of having to innovate the can just pay off the gatekeepers, or as more often the case they are also the gatekeepers, and boom the competition is not accessible or accessible at a speed that makes them not worth using. This goes out in to the physical world. What if the local coffee shop you like that offers free WiFi but the internet service no longer covers the websites that you like to frequent and the only way to access them is to either use your phone or go to a Starbucks who can afford to pay for more expensive internet service that includes those websites?

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Tailhook]

1. Does the price of services that I'm using go up? Yes

2. Do these services maintain a similar quality of service as they do today? Yes, at some higher price for the service.

3. Will I be able to rent a movie via AppleTV and have it still be instantly watchable? Yes, at some higher price for the service.

4. Will Netflix and Hulu still stream at a watchable rate? Yes, at some higher price for the service.

The rent seekers want you to pay them, not shut you down. This is history; In 2014 Netflix signed a deal with Comcast to end their artificial bandwidth problems reaching Comcast customers. The practice would have become more widespread except NN shut it down. It will now be rapidly applied to every significant streaming service and the cost will be passed on to you.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

From the very beginning, there were ALWAYS net neutrality rules.

Cite a rule or law that contains the words "net neutrality" from the '60's, '70's, '80's, '90's, and before the title II reclassification. You wont find one.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[LightningRook]

even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).

I hate when a question is framed this way. As if we can only act reactively to a problem to feel accomplished.
Preventing obvious abuses should always be a goal when writing legal policy.
There have been abuses in the past. I'd encourage you to look them up.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[cyberfunkr]

So I have a challenge for you all worried about this. Today, make a note of how much your internet costs. Then do some speed tests and record the results.

In a year, do the same thing..

Please make sure you're not just using a single source for testing speed. Also include speed of accessing "fake news" sites, alternative dating sites, non-christian information, Wikipedia, a BitTorrented file, and streaming a game.

If the destinations you are trying to reach are black listed, just mark that column as "0".

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Optic7]

So I see a lot of negativity about this, even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).

You are mistaken. There's a rich history of actual and intended net neutrality violations in the past before the regulations went into effect. Unfortunately the top link returned by a search on this currently offline, but here is some info pasted from this reddit thread:

There's nothing hypothetical about what ISPs will do when net neutrality is eliminated. I'm going to steal a comment previously posted by /u/Skrattybones and repost here:

2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.

2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.

2007-2009 - AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones. 2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except youtube. (edit: they actually sued the FCC over this)

2011-2013, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their bullshit. edit: this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace

2012, Verizon was demanding google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction. (edit: they were fined $1.25million over this)

2012, AT&T - tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.

2013, Verizon literally stated that the only thing stopping them from favoring some content providers over other providers were the net neutrality rules in place.

And...

2005, AT&T suggested giving preferential treatment to some web giants in exchange for money, starting the whole thing.

2014, Verizon and Comcast throttled Netflix data and held those customers hostage to a huge bribe from Netflix.

Also, links for everything you just said.

Madison River Communications: https://www.cnet.com/news/telc...

Comcast hates pirates: https://www.lexology.com/libra... (article from '08)

AT&T VOIP hostage: https://www.wired.com/2009/10/...

Google wallet hostage: http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/0...

Verizon hates tethering apps: https://www.wired.com/2011/06/...

AT&T claimed blocking facetime wasn't a net neutrality issue: http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/2...

"Verizon lawyer Helgi Walker made the companyâ(TM)s intentions all too clear, saying the company wants to prioritize those websites and services that are willing to shell out for better access.": https://www.savetheinternet.co...

Also, the thing to realize is that violations of net neutrality are not likely to be reflected on a general speed test, or necessarily in the fees the ISPs charge. It's much more likely that they will violate it by charging the content providers, like they have already done with Netflix. It will be insidious, and most people will not notice unless they are watching very closely. The effects will like

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

How can douchebags like you still not get it after so many detailed explanations? This has never been about end consumers watching youtube videos, this bill is crippling small companies who want to offer web services. The times when anyone could run a server to offer some service are gone. That's what used to define the Internet, now it's becoming a stupid mass consumption device like your retarded US TV.

Idiot.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

No there wasn't. And most the people here have no idea what they were or what they did. Now some silly superficial rules are not in play any more, and you are free to sue these guys into submission in a class action lawsuit if they even so much as step out of line. The content, carrier, and local delivery HAVE to be split up, and forbidden from conspiring. That's the FTC's job. You want freedom? You need a local deliver that is a natural utility to take you to where you can select from a marketplace of carriers to take you to the content providers you want. Pure and simple. All this noise, and no one is noticing that we are almost back to where we were before the AT&T breakup of the 80's?
I am not going to tell you where you would be if AT&T had not been broken up, but it would not be on the internet.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[jandrese]

Yes, I too have full faith that Comcast will act only in my best interest and not attempt to use this as an ability to extract more money from the consumers. Why shouldn't I? They're the most trusted and loved company in America. They've certainly never acted unethically in the past, nor attempted to hold certain services hostage unless they paid a ransom.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[rogoshen1]

I'd bet that the real fallout will be needing to subscribe to various 'bundles' for different protocols/sites
vpn: $55 a month (or subscribe to our business class plan!)
voip: $10 a month
online gaming: $10 a month
facebook: $2 a month

And so on, and so on.

You forget that the main ISP's nowadays are the same cable companies who foisted this bullshit on us in terms of subscription plans. Why would they NOT try to do that now?

Public outcry only lasts so long, after a while people give up and move on.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also worried we'll see a mafia approach for small start-ups that can't pay the extortion. Just sign over a small percentage of the company to Comcast, another small percentage to Verizon, etc and the traffic will flow. If network neutrality stands, check back with the cable providers and I bet you'll see a huge change in their portfolio.

This would be the perfect plan because the consumer wouldn't see any of it.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, please provide a link or a reference to the net neutrality rules which existed in say, 2000, to pick a random year.

Of course, if you can't, then you're just making stuff up, which is typical for the level of pro-nn arguments around here.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Give this human a fat juicy holiday bird, and also a cookie.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really quite simple. Did consumers benefit from this change in any way? No? Then if consumers aren't benefiting from the change then it's pretty much guaranteed to be anti-consumer.

Re:A challenge to everyone

[SmaryJerry]

I know that is a huge list of violations where the people were protected but they were all protected before Title II was in put in place in February 2015. There are other acts that protected against all those things and those other acts are still in place.

Ain't over 'till it's over, folks

[Rick Schumann]

The fat bastard (Ajit Pai) may have 'sung', but the proverbial Fat Lady hasn't sung yet, folks. Despite my sometimes doom-saying (hey, cut me a little slack -- the world is a depressing place lately!), this is, really, just the opening volley in the War for the Internet. As another headline I read on this subject stated: "Net Neutrality Fight Moves to Courts, (and) Congress". There's now too much at stake with this, and there are some big players with lots of skin in the game to lose. So keep your hopes alive -- for now.

Re:Ain't over 'till it's over, folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you be bought for the cheap price of "neutral" internet transmission while ... the pimping DemoRat Trotsky-sluts "lame-the-swift" while nibberizing our glorious white culture ?

Re:Ain't over 'till it's over, folks

[Anonymous Coward]

You're homeschooled aren't you?

What a pity...

[mubes]

Ironic that an agency that owes its very existence largely due to the reaction of a certain Mr Strowger to the lack of Net Neutrality should now revoke the rules that have made the Internet such an egalitarian adventure.

Re:What a pity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Two years.

It's been on the books two years, and most of it was slated to become effective sometime in the next two years.

The only comforting fact about all this dedicated outrage since last November is that it won't be long until you fascists and socialists run out of resources and influence. You're burning money and reputation at a rate I have not seen in my life except when drug addictions are involved.

Keep crying, no one cares what you think anymore.

Never forget

[DiEx-15]

It's a tragic day in the Divided States of America when the voices of the many are ignored by the will of a few.

Re:Never forget

[Anonymous Coward]

We the 1% of the United States, in order to form a more perfect monopoly, establish banks, insure domestic servitude, provide for common debauchery, promote general Welfare checks, and secure the blessings of gold stockpiles to ourselves.

Re:Never forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, it's a day when things worked exactly as they were intended. Tyranny of the majority is checked on purpose. The will of the voters who elected POTUS, the majority in both houses of government, and the majority of governors got what they voted for.

Seems everything is working just fine.

Sad to see you so unhinged chum

[Anonymous Coward]

So my thinking here is that you do not understand what "humor" is, nor how a lot of that video was about countering equally absurd criticism of what will be affected by dropping NN rules. You'd think a million puppies a day were being murdered with all of the outcry we have seen from a tiny vocal minority (which we know is a minority because of recent protests that fizzled out in most cities).

Oh no! Back to the Internet wasteland of 2015!

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember way back in 2015, when we were all forced to pay $1 a byte for Internet service?

Me neither.

Re:Oh no! Back to the Internet wasteland of 2015!

[lord_mike]

Net Neutratilty existed for decades before 2014. It was the founding principle of the Internet. Now there are no rules. It will probably end up like cable TV.

Re:Oh no! Back to the Internet wasteland of 2015!

[ScentCone]

No, the founding principle of "the internet" was "let's make sure our missile research people in the DoD can get data moved around between them and some universities who are working on our strategic deterrent against the soviets."

Pretty much everything else has been private companies investing billions of dollars to get their own networks to talk to other people's networks. There is no "the internet" anyway. Just a lot of individual networks with a wide range of agreements between private parties who carry traffic across each others' infrastructure at great expense to the people who own them. Those peering arrangements are not some mandatory unicorn utopia of equality of service across all networks. Never has been.

Re:Oh no! Back to the Internet wasteland of 2015!

[kenh]

There were no rules prior to 2015 either, that was the OPs point.

NN rules have existed for 18 months, that's it.

Re:Oh no! Back to the Internet wasteland of 2015!

[Pfhorrest]

Net neutrality existed de facto since there was a net, and for most of that time competition between ISPs pretty much guaranteed it, so there were no need for rules requiring it. Then in the first half of this decade the handful of surviving consolidated major ISPs began trying to do away with it. So in 2015 rules were passed saying they can't. Now those rules are repealed, and they're going to move on to do what the rules were created to stop. Which will not be the net that we've known for a few decades.

Re:Oh no! Back to the Internet wasteland of 2015!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was paying $5 a bit! It was terrible! I can't believe we're going back to that mess. What a disaster!

but end users will not put in meters on internet t

[Joe_Dragon]

but end users will not put in meters on internet that are not checked and don't have an seal of approval.

IF a gas pump was rigged like any of ISP meters then there will be big fines.

How is that any different now

[SuperKendall]

It doesn't matter NN rules or not, if you are a small business you can only afford so much bandwidth to provide content to people. Were you seriously thinking NN rules meant that any business could use any amount of bandwidth for free? Come on!!

Look at T-Mobile's binge-on program. ANY small business can take part, all they have to do is provide content in a specific lower resolution format T-Mobile can feed instead of a higher res version. That is juts one example of how small businesses are benefitting from things that many people claimed were against NN rules (even though no-one actually knew what the NN rules really did for or against them).

Re: How is that any different now

[Anonymous Coward]

you are being dishonest. You know perfectly well that this will be used to throttle bandwidth for non-paying content, and to censor.

To wrap that in bandwidth shows you don't know how the internet works, or if you do know then you are simply lying. I don't know you... you wouldn't lie, now would you????

Re:How is that any different now

[Trax3001BBS]

It doesn't matter NN rules or not, if you are a small business you can only afford so much bandwidth to provide content to people. Were you seriously thinking NN rules meant that any business could use any amount of bandwidth for free? Come on!!

I can't find anything definite about future cell phones being sold unlocked, but that ability was allowed through the Net neutrality law.

Might purchase one while available.

Re: How is that any different now

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you will find that stuff that costs extra will be routed around. People like free too much and nothing will change from how it is right now.

If I pull up YouTube tomorrow and get a message "Only $99.99/year for full speed or resolution", I'm going to be saying goodbye the YouTube and use a site that doesn't do that.

Re: How is that any different now

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I look at a defunct service that has been replaced by One for a while?

Re:How is that any different now

[HornWumpus]

You could buy unlocked phones before NN was signed and will continue to be able to buy them in future. Try again.

Re: How is that any different now

[wizard992]

I think you will find that stuff that costs extra will be routed around. People like free too much and nothing will change from how it is right now.

If I pull up YouTube tomorrow and get a message "Only $99.99/year for full speed or resolution", I'm going to be saying goodbye the YouTube and use a site that doesn't do that.

How do you route around these restrictions when every backbone provider is charging extra for prioritization? Who are you going to send your traffic through when they are all playing the same game?

Re: How is that any different now

[vell0cet]

That's what the ISPs are counting on. YouTube will lose customers thereby forcing them to pay for prioritization by the ISP. Then you won't get the $99/year message and continue to watch YouTube. They can also still charge you money for priority access to youtube. It's really all up to them now.

Now think about some small video hosting site that doesn't have the money to pay for prioritization, you'll get low quality video from them and never visit again.

Misleading post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why say go after these folks and list the Democrats who voted against?
Also, Trump appointed a Chairman who was the most obvious pro-telco person available to lead the FCC. Sorry, if you don't see that as all-Trump you are more of an idiot than the average Trump voter.

So when the FCC does something you don't like...

[Bartles]

...it suddenly loses it's independence and becomes the Trump Administration. Not a fucking word about the "Obama Administration" and it's 3-2 vote to enact the rules here:

here

PAY ATTENTION

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay better attention, because I have said it before, and put it in a video below that there are TWO kinds of net neutrality and we had the wrong kind.

1. Net neutrality - The internet should be a even playing field for all; No throttling, no censorship, no corporate and no government control. Entirely in the hands of the end users, everything else is just bure bandwidth. - This is what we wanted and all of you THINK that we got.

2. "Net Neutrality" - A plan by the same name that was created by Obama and the FCC to get government control over the Internet activity by calling it a utility. - This is what we actually got. yes it prevented throttling by corporations for the time, and government didn't censor and do too much YET, mainly because Clinton didn't get in office.

3. No restrictions on corporations. Results in censoring and throttling.

Most of you are under the impression that we get either option 1 or option 3, but you overlook the Option 2 which is what Obama actually gave us. We SHOULD have got option 1, not option 2.

VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7WHoqsRuxU

Re:PAY ATTENTION

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you think anyone is confused on this. 1 is what everyone wanted (including the FCC), but 2 is the only thing they could do without an act of congress. 3 is what we just got right now, in no way is that net neutrality.

Flag icon

[Misagon]

Shouldn't the flag icon in the title be at half mast?

Re:Flag icon

[Anonymous Coward]

No it should not. Because nobody gives a shit and they should not. This means absolutely nothing, even though fucking internet nerds and weirdo black lives matter assholes keep thinking it does.

The progressive left got fucked. Thankfully that will keep happening for a long time.

Re:Flag icon

[MrKaos]

Shouldn't the flag icon in the title be at half mast?

No, it should be upside down. The land of the free just voted to repeal more freedom.

Some highly resourced player should step in

[presidenteloco]

and offer fiber-to-the-home across the country with the specific marketing pledge of always-guaranteed net neutrality.

Some player that has spoken out about favoring net neutrality, and which already has experience piloting these kind of networks in some cities.

Not naming any names.

Re:Some highly resourced player should step in

[Areyoukiddingme]

...and offer fiber-to-the-home across the country with the specific marketing pledge of always-guaranteed net neutrality.

Some player that has spoken out about favoring net neutrality, and which already has experience piloting these kind of networks in some cities.

That player has the attention span of a gnat and wildly unrealistic expectations about how quickly any new project should catch on with the general public. Also no interest in doing anything that's actually difficult.

Won't happen.

America was pretty OK before

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you like all that WINNING?

Just not for you
UNH UNH take it consumers!

Fuck Trump.

[log0n]

Just one more in a long line of societal injustices. It's muskets and pitchforks time.

Re:Fuck Trump.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, that rat bastard. how dare he return us to the hellish rules that lead to the internet of 2015!

Re:but end users will not put in meters on interne

[dryeo]

IF a gas pump was rigged like any of ISP meters then there will be big fines.

Ahh, more regulations that hurt small businesses and need to go away. Once gone, competition will keep the gas stations honest and by not having to worry about stupid regulations like needing to check the accuracy of their gas pumps, those poor oil companies might finally be able to turn a profit. Small businesses like Exxon need all the help they can get.
While about it, we can remove some of those other business killing regulations such as having to install non-leaky tanks. The threat of losing their gasoline to leaks will make sure the tanks don't leak too much and the most wonderful part is that if anyones water gets gasoline in it, well they can buy bottled water at the gas station.

Great News

[Anonymous Coward]

!!!!!

So could Google/Facebook etc slow service to govt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wondering what can be done?
Sounds like Washington State is saying that if ISPs don't adhere to Net Neutrality, then they can't use the power poles..

I was thinking that Google/Facebook etc, could now intentionally start slowing data to US Government IP blocks, and ask the US Government to pay them to speed up the service..

Get a leg up and start slowing youtube to all the ISPs like comcast and verizon that supported reversal of net neutrality, and force 480p quality to those customers, when they complain, Google can point their finger at the ISP and say it is their fault, works great to other customers..

I agree, here is a better test from Netflix

[SuperKendall]

I agree there's a problem here; just how do you speediest? Speedtest.com only measures to a local site and as you say can be gamed pretty easily.

So how about this - measure your speed to Netflix instead via the Fast.com tool they launched some time ago.

Fox example, on Speedtest right now I'm getting 270Mbps (which is actually throttled by wifi hardware, real speed is faster from router).

On Fast.com however, I am getting a nice round 100Mbps average right now. So I'll come back in a year, and see how that fares.

Re:So when the FCC does something you don't like..

[jomama717]

To be fair the rules are consistently referred to as "Obama-era net neutrality" in many of the news outlets. Obama also spoke out publicly in favor of the rules on more than one occasion. On the other hand I doubt this whole mess is much of a blip on Trump's radar, but it seems clear this wouldn't have happened had he not been elected.

"The Trump Administration Just Voted To Repeal"

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the US have more than one government? Are OP implying that there is a shadow government and "The Trump Administration" are not the only ones making decisions? I have no recollection of people writing "The Obama administration just voted..." When they were in power.

Maybe its just a case of the hate of the dark side being so strong that they have to distance themselves from the current president when ever possible?

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on the rhetoric flying about regarding this issue, this was a course of action decided on long before it entered the awareness of the body public. Reactions, outrage and protests were all accounted for ahead of time and no amount of public squawking was ever going to stop this from happening. It's almost Ozymandian in that regard, by the time you or I heard or cared about this it was already too late to stop.

Re:Not surprising

[bobbied]

True.. It was a done deal when the new FCC commissioners were appointed. Who knew? I did..

Some might argue that it was set to happen when Trump became the apparent president elect on November 9, 2016.

Here's a Netflix speed test

[SuperKendall]

I posted this in another followup response but I thought I'd do one more post, since the figure from this test was more useful than Speedtest.net - fast.com is a network speed test from Netflix that today returns pretty different results for me than the speediest.net results... I'll keep an eye on that through the year and see if service starts to degrade.

Re:Here's a Netflix speed test

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. Hadn't heard of fast.com but anecdotally, it did return within 1 mbps of speedtest.net

Racketeering laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the very behavior we're afraid of, already prohibited by other laws?

"Gee, that's a nice web application you've got there, shame if its packets were too slow to get to the customer in time..." is a straight-up protection racket, is it not?

CA OR WA NY all filed suit

[WillAffleckUW]

There are probably other states, but to my knowledge California, Oregon, Washington, and New York have all filed suit against this reversal of Net Neutrality.

Re:CA OR WA NY all filed suit

[WillAffleckUW]

Oh, and as a follow up, all these states have State Constitutions which guarantee various things, and most of us literally own the "telegraph wires" (which includes fiber optics cable routes).

Mess with the best ... 404 in the West

Re:CA OR WA NY all filed suit

[bobbied]

LOL.. Yea they did.. Makes me laugh though, the FCC gets to make this rule and the states cannot force their will. They might actually get some judge to legislate from the bench and grant them a temporary injunction (Say in the 9'th Circuit or some other circus) but that will go the way of the injunctions on the Travel Ban EO eventually.

Good luck suing the FCC fellas...You are going to need it... But we all know this is political posturing and not about the law.

Re:CA OR WA NY all filed suit

[WillAffleckUW]

Dude, unlike you guys, we win in court. Look it up. We're 6 for 6 so far in WA.

Re:CA OR WA NY all filed suit

[bobbied]

Look it up... The suit you joined with HI and others on the "travel ban" and got the injunction on? Yea, that injunction got vacated by the supreme court 7 to 2, so I think you are going to lose that one.

Tell me you knew this... PLEASE... If not, you need to check your news sources because they are not telling you the whole truth.

Re:CA OR WA NY all filed suit

[WillAffleckUW]

It's in the Seattle Times. A real print newspaper. Not some fake source your friends in Russia posted.

Re:CA OR WA NY all filed suit

[bobbied]

So... The Supreme Court's website is now run by the Russians? Wow.... That Kaspersky Labs virus thing must be serious.

The fact is the previous regulations did nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

to improve my small .org's email server being allowed through Verizon, Hotmail, Yahoo's etc spam filter systems. When they decide to blacklist us, all our families and friends silently miss our communications for weeks as a time. The FCC for the last 8 years didn't help us with this once. Someone hit the off switch. thiss hit is getting old. We're all still here and things haven't improved or degraded.

PGate grabbs Trump & Clintons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thatis why Trump fired his Security Advisors: The Trump was number 1 visitorlog and callog of prisonned childsex trafficker billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and The Trump flew aboard Thw Lolita Express jetplane over 25-times just like The Clintons to participate in Talmud child rape spirit cooking blood-elixir drink rituals that are government-protected as religious rituals on St. James Island.

Fuck AMERICA: fuck democrats, fuck republicans, fuck DENNIS HASTERT the Hermosa Beach Mermaid Bar groper RBUHS wrestling molester, fuck ALEPHONTIS the childmeatpie baker, fuck PODESTA the Fatherhood child flogger, and fuck the Royal Family blood drinking pedophile pimps, and fuck the Pope, and fuck you POPE RATZO "pick the cleaner shitside" dumbfuck of Slashdot.

Let freedom ring!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am really enjoying the liberal tears today. 100% high energy!

Re:Let freedom ring!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am really enjoying the liberal tears today. 100% high energy!

I don't know... Maybe I'm getting tired of winning... This just isn't doing it for me anymore.... Hmmmm... NAW!

Fufilling a campaign promise

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Trump promised to talk to Bill Gates about "closing up the Internet" while mocking concerns over freedom of speech?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=JcmiHx5Yf2I

*sigh* not so funny anymore.

Re:So when the FCC does something you don't like..

[Bartles]

Weak.

Remains to be scene what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how many want this sort of government regulation to stay in place? Love the Chicken Little mentality that the sky is falling when in fact we really do not know what's really going to happen?

Re:Remains to be scene what happens

[bobbied]

Interesting how many want this sort of government regulation to stay in place? Love the Chicken Little mentality that the sky is falling when in fact we really do not know what's really going to happen?

Yea, returning to the internet of 2015 is a scary thing... Armageddon is upon us!

Actually, what's scary is the amount of acrimony we've seen on this. Somebody actually called in a bomb threat over this... Shesh people, calm down! The world isn't going to end, at least not because of some crazy FCC rule change. Take a deep breath, we will get though this.

Personally, I think the issue here is finding a set of political issues to gin up the base for 2018. Voter turn out is driven by this kind of thing, or so the theory goes.

Good thing

[cyberman27]

People will see that this is a good move by removing regulations that were stifling innovations and allow silicon valley companies to consume huge junks of bandwidth that brought no value or jobs to the US. This was a good move FCC !

Internet becomes Ash*t Pie

[Anonymous Coward]

why does government and business ruin that which more or less works?
Profit!

That is exactly backwards

[SuperKendall]

you are being dishones

No. You are being a fool. Or, I should say, a tool...

You know perfectly well that this will be used to throttle bandwidth

That is utterly false, in every possible sense.

What will happen I expect, is that some upgrade packages will come out, to pay for things like faster Netflix for example.

However that will not slow down anyone's service, instead it will cause more network to be built out to support the higher paid level of service (which currently oversubscribed networks cannot reliably deliver) and THAT will actually improve the real speeds everyone sees overall, during times when all of the paid subscribers are not using that benefit (which is often).

But you do not have to take my word for it. https://fast.com/">Here is the Netflix speed test. Make a note of what that says today. Make a note of what that says next year, and every year thereafter.

and to censor.

Now that is offensively wrong because the end goal of government regulation of the internet was (well, still is) censorship. The way things stand now with the government out of the picture for regulation of the internet (at the moment), I don't have to worry about what Jeff Sessions thinks might belong on the internet. Why are you fighting SO HARD to make it so he has a say? The ISP's have no reason to censor nor will they do so, unless commanded to do so by the government (see: China).

To wrap that in bandwidth shows you don't know how the internet works, or if you do know then you are simply lying

Bandwidth is just one part and it's very disingenuous of you to claim that is the whole of my argument.

I am the only one here being honest; both to himself and others. I kind of wonder who is supporting you and the large wave of disinformation around this... but rather than think up crazy theories of Russian involvement, I'm pretty sure general human fuckwittery is enough to explain this latest baseless panic.

Re:That is exactly backwards

[KingMotley]

The ISP's have no reason to censor

Sorry, are you seriously trying to say that Comcast, Time Warner, etc (The majority of ISPs are also TV providers) have no reason at all to want to censor Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu? They have no reason to try and get people to switch back (or slow down) people from getting out from under their $250+ cable bills?

Wow.

Re:That is exactly backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they have reason to want to. Here's the problem. If they did it would be considered abuse of a monopolistic position and would be considered anti-competitive, and beyond the consumer lawsuits, they'd be under one hell of an investigation by the FTC (the group which is now responsible for regulating them). Now, I know you'll say no way that would happen, but that's mostly because your tinfoil hat is too tight.

Re:That is exactly backwards

[lgw]

Sorry, are you seriously trying to say that Comcast, Time Warner, etc (The majority of ISPs are also TV providers) have no reason at all to want to censor Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu?

Censor? No. How could they even do that to encrypted streams.

Throttle? Maybe, though their current approach of oversubscribing networks seems to work well enough as a throttle.

Do you understand that different words mean different things? Or do you actually believe that Comcast will be inserting black bars covering the boobies in your Netflix stream?

Re:That is exactly backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you understand that different words mean different things? Or do you actually believe that Comcast will be inserting black bars covering the boobies in your Netflix stream?

No, he's simply worried about there being enough bandwidth available to accommodate the billions of views his blog about the NWO and Illuminati secretly working together to censor his blog posts will receive from across the world, ultimately resulting in an overthrow of the old powers and heralding the birth of a new Global Renaissance.

Quite logical, really.

Re:That is exactly backwards

[Xyrus]

You moron, what court case do you think is playing out right now? Why were people asking them to delay the decision until the FTC case was resolved?

If the court rules against the FTC (and it appears likely that it may) then there will be NO agency regulating ISPs. None. Not the FCC. Not the FTC. Which is EXACTLY why they wanted to rush this through.

And now it's too late. We'll get Portugal's internet, where everything is broken down like cable packages. Where ISPs can blatantly block, censor, filter and throttle anything they want (including political coverage and support). Remember Citizens United? Election rules don't apply to ISPs, nor do first amendment protections.

Hope you like propoganda and paying out the ass for shit level service, because that's all your going to get. Just wait until the mid-terms roll around.

Re:That is exactly backwards

[KingMotley]

Censor? No. How could they even do that to encrypted streams.

...

I'll just ignore your ignorance for now because it's not relevant to the conversation. You are concerned about censoring parts of movies. Try censoring the entirity of netflix. AKA:

route add 35.153.0.0 MASK 255.255.0.0 blackhole

Oh, sorry Mr. Smith, we block netflix to improve customer satisfaction. By eliminating the traffic from netflix (which was using 80% of our bandwidth), our internet ping times and available bandwidth to your email client is vastly improved!

Re:That is exactly backwards

[KingMotley]

I don't wear a tinfoil hat. But I don't go around with my eyes shut and then decide to open my mouth.

Comcast has already blocked bit torrent for a while. Not just pirates, but the entirety of the protocol (and seriously hampered anything they misidentified as bit torrent), including at the time the update program for a game that 18 million+ people played at the time (World of Warcraft). Yeah, I had to go grab a direct download to bypass their bit torrent block for a few weeks... Until they lifted it after being threatened by the FCC over NN. So blocking entire protocols has already been done.

Comcast, Time Warner already set it up so that their own video on demand services didn't count against your bandwidth limit per month. Again, rolled back because of NN concerns. If I am not mistaken, Verizon is still doing this on their cellular network today.

Killing off Netflix is easy when you drop your bandwidth caps to 50GB per month, but their video services don't count against that limit. You can rent a movie from iTunes for $3.99, but you'll pay $5 in bandwidth "overages" ($8.99), or you can rent it from the ISP for $6.99 and it won't count against your bandwidth usage ($6.99). Yeah, that happened.

Comcast/Verizon routing all netflix traffic through a tiny overallocated route has happened already. And then refuse to reroute part of the traffic around the congestion, AND refuse to upgrade the connection AND also refuse to allow netflix CDN boxes to be installed on thier network (AT NO COST!).

Re:That is exactly backwards

[lgw]

You keep using that word, but I don't think is means what you think it means. "Censorship" is based on content "objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds".

The word you wanted was "blackhole" or "block" or something like that.

Sure, Comcast might try blocking Netflix. It would be nice to see a law preventing that sort of abuse of monopoly. We didn't have that before, though. Of course, if we did something sane like make the last mile a public utility, we could just let the market do it's thing, free of monopolies.

Re:That is exactly backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

WE, THE LIBERTARIAN STATES OF AMERICA, MUST TRUST IN THE MAGIC OF THE MARKET AND IN THE CORPORATION, OUR GOD.....

Yeah, why don't we ban this idiot now? He's too dumb or dishonest to see the harm this will cause downstream. A perfect example of why a once great nation is now setting fire to the things that made it great, In Worship of the Almighty Dollar.

Common Carrier Immunity

[Lotharus]

Something I haven't seen many people mention lately is the legal immunity that common carrier status provides to the carrier against criminal content.

Aren't ISPs at risk of losing common carrier status if they start doing the things that NN proponents fear? If they do lose CC status, can't they then be held liable for illegal content traversing their networks? Seems like one major ISP CEO going to jail because his company is aiding and abetting the distribution of illicit imagery, or unlicensed software, or any other "criminal information," would be enough to stop the ISPs from not playing nice with our data. No?

Re:Common Carrier Immunity

[jeff4747]

There are laws on the books that make ISPs immune. Those laws existed before the FCC decision that formally made them common carriers.

Re:Common Carrier Immunity

[Anonymous Coward]

:-( Dang.

Meh, so what

[rsilvergun]

This won't change one single vote. Not one. People will go to the polls and they'll vote jobs. They'll vote on guns. They'll vote on abortion. Not a single person will ever vote on Net Neutrality. Not enough to _change_ a vote. Sure, some folks who were already going to vote against Trump and the Republican party (and make no mistake, this is a Republican policy. It's not partisan bickering when the other side overwhelmingly opposes it) will vote for a D or maybe even an L or a G, but they were never going to fall in line with the Rs to begin with.

I've said this before, I'll say it again. Unless we techies start promoting policies that help the working class, especially blue collar types, then things are going to get worse and worse for us and our issues. What we need right now is solidarity. What we've got is a bunch of wedge issues that keep us apart and doing exactly what the aristocracy wants us to do.

Here we go again

[DMJC]

Just another example of the baby boomer's: "fuck you I got mine" mentality. People are going to remember this as the moment that America stuffed the tech industry.

Re:but end users will not put in meters on interne

[Anonymous Coward]

A simple magnet will fix meter issues..

Land of the Free?

[wardrich86]

More like Land of the Corporations. So - you guys gonna fix this cancerous problem you've got going on there, or maybe just change the anthem and stuff?

The Internet grew up fine without 'Net Neutrality'

[Kreigh]

Today's vote was a vote to return to the same regulatory environment that the Internet grew up with. It did just fine being regulated by the FTC before the Obama administration reclassified it as a telecommunications environment thru some dubious procedures and put under the control of the FCC. You could say today's vote returned the Internet to the Free Market.

So stop calling America a democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The most unpopular decision is thrust down everyone's throat. America is not a democracy. It's Capital dictatorship. Your vote only amounts to picking a front man from the Capital group.

Re:The Internet grew up fine without 'Net Neutrali

[Anonymous Coward]

And industrial revolution happened without basic worker rights and minimum wages. Let's all get back to those eras.

EPIC WIN!

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOVE IT!

the rest of you idiot communists can suck it.

Good to test more than a few times

[SuperKendall]

My speediest.net speed is pretty much always around 170Mbps or a bit higher.

On the fast.com site I linked to, i'm getting between 40-70Mbps, all within a few minutes of each other (I was getting 100Mbps earlier but that may have been an aberration). So anyone who does use that might want to take several samplings and get a good average.

Welcome back to...

[TheZeal0t]

Welcome back to... AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy! I was really starting to miss the 90's! :D

Did you vote against Trumph?

[rsilvergun]

Did you encourage your family and friends to do the same? If so, thanks. But there's more to do. We need to take care of the folks in the Rust Belt. Give them jobs and college and health care and a future. Or they're gonna keep voting guys like Trumph in, and it's only going to get worse. I know folks don't like partisanship, but somebody needs to say it, and I've got Karma to burn.

good

[gregOfTheWeb]

good. It was always a solution looking for a problem. Especially in light that bandwidth speeds continue to go up at an exponential rate.

Re:The fact is the previous regulations did nothin

[bobbied]

What's worse than a regulation?

One that is either selectively enforced, or not enforced at all.

For the Record, I'm on Cox

[rsilvergun]

and they announced bandwidth caps just after Trump got elected and it was clear regulatory pressure would be off. That wasn't a coincidence. As for the rest of the changes, yeah, they're not happening overnight overnight. But it's going to mean the end to innovations. The big players will survive. Middle level players will get swallowed up and finally startups will just be over and done with unless they're evil enough to attract venture capital (Uber, I'm lookin' at you). Take stock of your options for video, purchasing games, working at home on your company's VPN, or any other high bandwidth activity.

Focus, Nerds!

[backwardsposter]

There's a lot of arguing going on about who's to blame for this. We have the facts (they're repeated on here about 100 times). We need to focus on the point and that is we're screwed if we don't do something.

Re:Focus, Nerds!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote the Republicans out of Congress and the Presidency, and the problem will be solved within a few weeks.

That's why the political stuff matters in this particular case.

Market forces are a bitch

[bizitch]

From TFA - "unravels a signature accomplishment of the Obama administration" and from the fact that George Soros is upset - I'm guessing its a double win ;)

Seriously though - what do you think will happen if Comcast decides to fuck with customers Hulu/Netflix/Amazon traffic? or Comcast gets busted fucking with access to websites? Nothing? No market ramifications?

I buy DIA from carriers all the time on behalf of clients - if a carrier even has a whiff of messing with traffic - the first question I will have when the broker hands me the quote is "is this for 'the internet' or whatever it is you call 'the internet'?" - They will get the point REAL fast because they know that DIA is purely a commodity just like utilities and PSTN access

Do you think the market will just say "oh well shucks golly, I guess we cant get what we want ..." - no! The market will punish them ... and they know it

Also - The Obama rules were in place since 2015 - so was the internet seriously fucked up before 2015?

Please help me remember those dystopian pre-2015 horror-show days because nothing jumps to mind at the moment

Re:Market forces are a bitch

[Pfhorrest]

Seriously though - what do you think will happen if Comcast decides to fuck with customers Hulu/Netflix/Amazon traffic? or Comcast gets busted fucking with access to websites? Nothing? No market ramifications?

There can't be market ramifications where there is no market. Comcast has a monopoly or at best a duopoly in the markets it serves, so it's not like upset customers could "vote with their dollars", because there's only one name on the proverbial ballot.

Re:Market forces are a bitch

[bizitch]

Agreed about the duopoly - but that's changing too

5G will be here soon enough and 4g providers are all screaming about their unlimited plans this and that - T Mobile offering all you can eat NetFlix etc.

There is a decent amount of competition out there - and if there isn't enough we can all get on board for de-regulating that space and getting more competition

Comcast know this too - they know they are potentially the next GrandMa Bell

Challenge Accepted

[Anonymous Coward]

Even when ISPs are throttling and shaping all traffic, they will ALWAYS allow full speed to OOKLA and other speed test providers. Your netflix will be buffering, steam downloads may be going under a meg a second, but those speed tests will always be close to your "Up to" number on your plan.

Re:The Internet grew up fine without 'Net Neutrali

[presidenteloco]

Yeah, no, sorry, the Internet's form and basic traffic flow rules were shaped in its infancy, when it was a side-effect of government-funded academic R&D programs. Those basic traffic rules of the infant Internet embodied "net neutrality".

As private corporations took over the innards of the Internet, they started coming up with non-neutral ways of monetizing the traffic flow. Government "net neutrality" regulation was intended to take the architecture of the Internet back to closer to its original design and intentions.

Without "allow an actual open internet" regulation, there's a good chance it will degrade toward cable TV (over IP).

This sums things up nicely.

[fahrbot-bot]

Saw this article, Net neutrality is gone. Feel the freedom coursing through your veins and thought she summed things up nicely:

“Today is a great day for consumers, for innovation and for freedom.” That is what Commissioner Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission said as he voted to strip net neutrality protections.

Whenever people tell me that we are on the verge of new, undiscovered freedom for consumers, I always feel a little nervous. “Unprecedented freedom for consumers” is usually what people call it right before placing rabid hedgehogs in the stocking stuffer display. Before, you only had the choice of things you wanted that would make appropriate gifts. Now, you might also get a rabid hedgehog! What a day this is for the consumer.

I can't wait to get my rabid hedgehog for Christmas.

WA House Bill 2282

[John.Banister]

Motherboard reports that Washington state representative Drew Hansen yesterday introduced House Bill 2282 to keep network neutrality in Washington State. I imagine other states will follow quickly. NN is as favorable to local businesses as lower taxes, but the cost to the government is much lower.

Don't forget:

[Anonymous Coward]

That Moore is an upstanding and moral christian, and all Democrats are godless heathens seeking to throw God Fearing Republicans into the maw of hell through their satanic government policies :)

Please please, continue like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear USA,

we thank you for your recent decision in regard of the FCC.

Wether it be renewable energy, net neutrality, nature conservation or whatever benefits your population loose; your decisions benefit our inhabitants the most and we practically don't have to do anything!

signed, The Other Countries of the World

Yet another example of how NN was not real

[SuperKendall]

and they announced bandwidth caps just after Trump got elected and it was clear regulatory pressure would be off.

So, they announced the caps before the NN laws were repealed - which meant they could have done so anyway, and the loss of the NN regulations has zilch to do with caps.

When did it ever? That's the thing about NN I especially dislike, everyone seemed to assume it did this or that magic thing when the real regulation did almost nothing for anyone.

NN was not at all about caps, it was about even handed use of the internet between me and anything I wanted to access. And nothing has changed today because the NN rules are gone.

P.S. paying extra to exempt some service from counting against your data cap was also perfectly legal under the NN rules. That's the only change I see coming but I don't have a problem with it as it will not impact service, and they will be forced to upgrade the networks further to support it.

New Just in,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump just approved sucking cock for coke..
News @ 11

Both Clintons...

[Anonymous Coward]

were Pro-DMCA, Pro-TPP, Pro-Surveillance, Pro-DRM.

Net Neutrality was one of the outliers on that whole internet-freedom roadmap, and that should be taken into consideration for EVERYONE who voted Republican or Democrat this past election. If you want a free internet it will be stacking the deck with a bunch of 3rd party whackjobs who happen to agree with you on a short list of issues, like Net Neutrality, anti-surveillance legislation/repeals, fewer IP laws, etc.

As we've already seen thanks to trump, candidates foreign policy stance isn't going to make much difference after the what has been done to it over the past 3+ presidents (all the way back to the first some people might say...)

The opportunities to right this ship are dwindling by the day.

If not a phone utility

[Anonymous Coward]

then that means gov doesn't need warrants for man in the middle.

The Shills are aggressive tonight

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn

Given his lighter skin...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the origins of his last name (which I just discovered is in fact Hindu!) Ajit Pai's deference to whiter folk and disregard for the rest of us can be easily summed up by his Hindu beliefs.

It is an interesting read many of you should take, because it coincides nicely with the evangelical christian belief about their superiority and how if you aren't successful it is because you are't pious enough to God. Similiar platform is behind the caste system in hinduism of which Pai is a part.

Religious belittlement of the masses strikes again! It's such a good thing America has so many religions... they make it so easy to choose one that helps you regard others as beneath you, if you weren't indoctrinated into it in the first place :)

Furiously innovating now

[budsetr]

With this news I'm sure that Cox is furiously innovating right now. And growing. I mean with all this internet freedom they are gonna have so much growth. It will be yuge.

I just love

[Anonymous Coward]

How everything that is done by people who answer to Trump are all somehow the fault of the guy who was president a year ago.

You do realize Trump could have easily weighed in like he does on everything else correct?

I'm sure all of you who are blaming Obama would have voted for the Alabama pedobear and then blamed his molesting on Obama as well. Drones.

WFH

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean no more working from home due to throttling?

We did complain, A LOT when the FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

initially heaped draconian regulations on a working internet. Maybe you didn't hear because you were busy smoking a bong or protesting something else. The FCC didn't change, the management did, that's how this representative government, deferring to bureaucrats works. If you DON'T LIKE the process, CHANGE the process, quick your bitchin' Snow White.
 

Wahoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet will be back where it was before obama! We don't need government intervention in the free market!

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Exactly how we felt when the FCC regutlated the

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet in 2015.

Traffic anonymising tools and services

[seoras]

This is just going to encourage to uptake of traffic anonymising tools and services. That might not sit well with the spies. Someone hasn't thought this through very well.
Or they have and this is just a precursor to "open internet" where you are forced to leave open all you do for all to see.

Blame the engineers and admins

[Anonymous Coward]

They are too cowardly to just shut everything down and lock it down in a REAL protest. If they would only cripple the economy by kicking the internet in the dick and bringing it to its knees. But no, they only care about their paycheck like Ajit Pai, and won't do the right thing.

So thank you, and fuck you, internet engineers, admins, and techs. You are the real reason we have to suffer this bullshit.

Cowards.

This is the basis of a profound change

[SigmaTao]

If ISP's are allowed to filter and shape their traffic based on their own arbitrary rules, this has profound effects on what the Internet is capable of.

Sites can be blocked completely. Protocols can be blocked outright. Attempts to get around those blocks will be seen as violations of the contract between the user and the ISP.

It also means they will, by default, track all protocol sessions and DNS queries. They would have too to make sure people are adhering to the contract rules.

It's not just about having to buy packages of Internet access. It means that certain protocols and address could be removed altogether regardless of how much you spend.

It could also mean them rerouting traffic at will to where ever the ISP's decide you should go.

Your data accessing habits can also be made available to the highest bidder or to government or simply made public at the ISP's discretion.
Which leads to potential blackmail or similar subversion.

People who think it will be a simple matter of using VPNs or equivalents to get around this will find those protocols blocked with deep packet inspection. Bandwidth or ping time concerns will simply not make any difference.

It is the end of a free Internet and other countries will find themselves following suit because of the various vested interests who want to limit and control what people can do.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Reducing government regulation is a good thing, especially in this instance.

Not a a utility = Responsible for all content

[Anonymous Coward]

If they give up common carrier status, doesn't that mean that they are now held responsible for what is on their network. Don't like Comcast or Verizon or whatever; Find something offensive or illegal or immoral posted from their network and sue. Get everyone to do it, and they can die the death of a million cuts. The same would apply to every other ISP out there. Cost them enough money and they will be begging to bring net neutrality and common carrier status back to stop the hemorrhaging. After all, the USA leads the world in Lawyers, so use them for something useful.

Ajit Pai, the dirtiest sand n-igger in america

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope a Mr. Robot type puts a bullet through this dirty sand n-igger's skull. Another sand n-igger sells out America.

Garbage

[paravis]

Looks like they're going to force me to watch that horrible OnDemand service, instead of getting Netflix or iTunes ... Glad the Repubs can get a few more $ in their pocket. USA! USA!

You forgot

[Anonymous Coward]

Ad delivery - free !

Add $15 for using ad blockers on your browser

Yeah sure but you're trying to explain that to the

[Anonymous Coward]

people that tell you, you and everyone else but them, need to slap a helmet on your child and bubble wrap them head to toe so they can go outside supervised. And oh, btw those kids can be up to age 26 now, and you don't need to worry about them getting abortions on command, that's their right.

You're trying to explain your point to radical leftists and George Soros shills. Save your breath or go outside without a helmet or bubble wrap and enjoy the sunshine. :)

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I sure hope you idiots are getting paid for this

[Anonymous Coward]

drivel... I would hate to think that you actually believed your nonsense.

Good. Government is bad at everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't ever trust a government beurocrat.

Write your congresscritter

[rcharbon]

Write your congresscritter. They could make a law to fix this, and they're elected, unlike FCC toadies.

But Her Emails...!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope all the Stein and Johnson voters are still finding a way to morally preen over their courage.

ToS matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast blocks outbound port 25 on consumer class connections. Others play the same BS, all so you have to pay more for business class. This will worsen until the only unfettered connection *is* business class, and the price will raise.

These companies feel entitled to business.

There are also legally binding terms of service that the GP presumably doesn't consider relevant. In a world where guns are outlawed, only the outlaws get to have guns. Why would anybody complain about that situation?

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