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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.
Free to be slaves! But your guns TOTALLY keep the Queen of England at bay.. keke
No one is crying for Facebook and Google. It's a much bigger threat to small businesses than to the tech giants.
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
No just the USA. The rest is better off.
I'll be neg repped into oblivion but it was NOT the Trump Administration that repealed net neutrality, there are 5 people who are in charge of this and they voted down party lines.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
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Pretty sure last year there were Trump supporters swearing up and down that this would never happen.
This comment was blocked due to non-payment for /. access -Comcast
So because it's old in unsuitable?
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
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.
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.
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!
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
That's like saying the DOJ is "separate". Technically yes but Trump could have prevented this, except in reality he wanted net neutrality repealed.
And poor (insert local business) that doesn't have the money to pay for the premium internet pipe.
Goodbye to the internet we've come to know and love.
Gee, I wonder who appoints FCC commissioners? Guess we'll never know!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Netflix pays for their internet access just like everybody else, you numbnut.
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.
Poor us, who will see Netflix have to raise their rates as cable tv providers attempt to kill their competition with unwarranted fees
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!
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...
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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?
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.
This is obviously punishment from God for gay marriage.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
from now on the periodic advertising pauses on the Internet access something like it is now on TV cable?
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.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
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
http://saveie6.com/
But now they get to pay twice, or even more. It will be so much better!!!
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.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I'm married and I don't think you're my type, but I'm flattered by your offer. Thank you.
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.
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.
Ok so you have no evidence and are just talking out of your ass, glad we settled that.
You going to start throwing out the Constitution now because it's too old?
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And what's to stop the gloom and doom projections from happening? Clearly there are profits to be made so let the profiteering begin!
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Remember way back in 2015, when we were all forced to pay $1 a byte for Internet service?
Me neither.
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.
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...
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).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
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!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Actually, yes. He was appointed by Obama.
Few brains survive first contact with American politics.
Fuck yourself and your right-wing bullshit hyperbole right back.
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.
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
Shouldn't the flag icon in the title be at half mast?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
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."
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.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
How do you like all that WINNING?
Just not for you
UNH UNH take it consumers!
most home internet connections are already cut off from most internet services try running a mail server at home.
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.
839*929
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
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
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.
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.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
If that's their sole job, then we don't need NN. You can't have it both ways.
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?
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.
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.
The DOJ isn't separate. It's part of the Executive branch.
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.
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?
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.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
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.
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.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
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?
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.
Weak.
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.
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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
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.
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?
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!!! ...)
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 !
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!
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.
Ken
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.)
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.
> 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?
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).'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Sadly we mostly already have.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
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?
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
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??
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.
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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.
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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.
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!"
The Federal Reserve is not part of the government. The FCC is.
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.
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.
That's not really correct. If that's the case every rule it has ever issued under the force of law is moot.
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.
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"
Welcome back to... AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy! I was really starting to miss the 90's! :D
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?
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
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?"
a significant part of it has been or is in the process of being thrown out
[Citation Needed]
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.
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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!
You do know that Netflix has to pay for their own outbound bandwidth, right?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
good. It was always a solution looking for a problem. Especially in light that bandwidth speeds continue to go up at an exponential rate.
blah
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.
What's worse than a regulation?
One that is either selectively enforced, or not enforced at all.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
Wut?
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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
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
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?
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).
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
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.
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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
There is still hope via DOH. Maybe technology can fix this? https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
Usually you're a total asshole, Anonymous Coward; but that was totally classy!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
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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.
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.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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.
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.
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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=
This. QoS is about what kind of shit it is. Net non-neutrality is about where from and (possibly) where to.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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 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.
~X~
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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The maturing market circumstances make it possible and also profitable.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
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.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
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.
Who knew Ajit had even heard of /.?
Welcome to the forums. Why don't you have a seat right over there.
Your sig here!
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.
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!
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!).
Write your congresscritter. They could make a law to fix this, and they're elected, unlike FCC toadies.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
All consumer internet traffic is unbalanced! If it was balanced Comcast wouldn't be giving me 1gbps down and 75mbps up!
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Police state policies!? WTF are you talking about!?
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
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.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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.
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?"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Who is this "Rey" and exactly what are you trying to "spoil"?