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Many US States Propose Their Own Laws Protecting Net Neutrality (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
Lawmakers in at least six states, including California and New York, have introduced bills in recent weeks that would forbid internet providers to block or slow down sites or online services. Legislators in several other states, including North Carolina and Illinois, are weighing similar action... By passing their own law, the state lawmakers say, they would ensure that consumers would find the content of the choice, maintain a diversity of voices online and protect businesses from having to pay fees to reach users.
And they might even have an effect beyond their states. California's strict auto-emissions standards, for example, have been followed by a dozen other states, giving California major sway over the auto industry. "There tends to be a follow-on effect, particularly when something happens in a big state like California," said Harold Feld, a senior vice president at a nonprofit consumer group, Public Knowledge, that supports net-neutrality efforts by the states. Bills have also been introduced in Massachusetts, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Washington.
In addition, a representative in Alaska's legislature has also pre-filed legislation requiring the state's ISPs to practice net neutrality, which will be introduced when the state legislature resumes on January 16th.
"The recent FCC decision eliminating net neutrality was a mistake that favors the big internet providers and those who want to restrict the kinds of information a free-thinking Alaskan can access," representative Scott Kawasaki told a local news station. "That is not the Alaskan way, and I am hopeful my colleagues in the House and Senate will agree..."
The Independent also notes that Europe "is still strongly committed" to net neutrality.
And they might even have an effect beyond their states. California's strict auto-emissions standards, for example, have been followed by a dozen other states, giving California major sway over the auto industry. "There tends to be a follow-on effect, particularly when something happens in a big state like California," said Harold Feld, a senior vice president at a nonprofit consumer group, Public Knowledge, that supports net-neutrality efforts by the states. Bills have also been introduced in Massachusetts, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Washington.
In addition, a representative in Alaska's legislature has also pre-filed legislation requiring the state's ISPs to practice net neutrality, which will be introduced when the state legislature resumes on January 16th.
"The recent FCC decision eliminating net neutrality was a mistake that favors the big internet providers and those who want to restrict the kinds of information a free-thinking Alaskan can access," representative Scott Kawasaki told a local news station. "That is not the Alaskan way, and I am hopeful my colleagues in the House and Senate will agree..."
The Independent also notes that Europe "is still strongly committed" to net neutrality.
The states that have it will see an increase of geeks immigrating to their states and setting up businesses there.
Fuck Ajit Pai.
Fuck Ajit Pai
The FCC ruled that no states can create laws to enforce Net Neutrality. While it would be nice to have a head on attack work, I fear that it may not. So instead the states should make life difficult for ISP found violating New Neutrality. Say a law like "If the ISP is caught violating Net Neutrality, that ISP is banned from advertising" or something like that.
The only reason we don't have net neutrality now is because there is no competition. The far better solution would be to outlaw exclusive franchises. The market has to be pried open. And a good way to do that is to make the companies compete against a municipality/state provided service. Net neutrality should naturally follow.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's not clear to me why anyone thinks ISPs exist in a healthy free market. (I'm not even sure it's possible, for that matter.)
Furthermore, it's not clear to me why anyone thinks it's a good idea to allow ISPs to meddle with EVERY OTHER ACTUALLY FUNCTIONING free market that already exists on the internet.
If you want to protect free markets, we should prevent ISPs from picking winners and losers, no? Don't we want the market to do that?
I see Comcast cable dangling over my backyard, suspended on utility poles I pay for with my tax money. I don't see any reason to allow that if they get frisky. How about my town does competitive bidding to get a backbone hookup and maintain local routers and wires? If Comcast wins fine, but Silicon Valley has lots of startups who would love to land a big gig.
Net Neutrality is NOT anti business, it is PRO business and PRO consumer.
What it does is shift much of the massive costs for bandwidth for companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc onto other ISP customers like you and me by raising their prices, since they cannot charge those high-bandwidth users at different rates than other ISP customers.
What, you don't think the ISPs are just going to eat the costs, do you? The original NN rules were written by Google! Do you believe Google primarily has your best interests in mind, or their own?
As to TFS/TFA, this is just State politicians grand-standing and posturing like posers do. State law does not override Federal laws and Federal regulations with the force of Federal law. They know this. It's theater.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Why can't they charge high bandwidth users more? That's how it works here with net neutrality, you pay different amounts depending on how much data you're likely to use. I pay for a 250 GB cap, which I can use to watch Netflix or a webcam of a fire. I could pay for 10GBs or 500GBs as well. It is none of my ISP's business what I watch, just how much bandwidth I use.
Just like the phone company shouldn't be able to stop me from phoning someone whose politics they don't like, my ISP (and there is only one serving me) shouldn't be able to censor what websites I use. That censorship that you are currently in favour off could change. Best to have no censorship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
50 nation states with 50 different sets of laws. The only legitimate purposes of the federal government are to make sure they don't fight each other and to combine military force to make sure other nations don't invade.
Hosting companies were not the only ones to block the racist morons: registrars also did, which is what OP was complaining about. Exactly where does net neutrality say that ISPs can't discriminate, but hosting companies and domain registrars are free to discriminate, and why? Because "net neutrality" is largely being pushed by hosting companies and other people who want to force ISPs to carry their content?
i'm just sitting here waiting for one of these idiots to actually pass this stuff, then realize that because All of these so far are worded horrendously. it means they can't block or filter the Bad stuff. Like child pornography. Or DMCA violations. Or fake pharmacy sites.
Kneejerk legislation in response to uninformed opinion is _Always_ awful.
Are you saying that net neutrality stops a court order? Or are you saying that an ISP should be able to play at being a court?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Then stop blocking it and instead arrest the assholes doing it.
Blocking content never solved a problem. The people dealing in it just found a new way to do it. Usually less public and in ways that made it harder to catch them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Content speed lanes are what big ISPs want and consumers do not want that. Currently they sell it to consumers based on the service package they buy.....I only want 10Mbps access....all my service is best effort rated at 10Mbps....I want 100Mbps service....all my access is best effort rated at 100Mbps....If Con-cast wants to extract money from Netflix, Google, Amazon, Spotify, etc. for access to me that meets my best effort rating, that is wrong and not the product I am paying the ISP for.
Even under Net Neutrality Wheeler said that zero rating was fine. Though he also said it might not be fine of they changed it in the future under the 'general conduct rule'.
http://www.multichannel.com/ne...
Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler said Thursday (Nov. 19) he thought T-Mobile's Binge On zero rating plan was the sort of highly innovative approach the FCC's new network neutrality rules were predicted to thwart, but clearly didn't.
Wheeler, in a press conference following the FCC's November meeting, appeared to endorse the Binge On offering, calling it pro-competitive and innovative. "It is clear in the Open Internet order that we are pro-competition and pro-innovation and clearly, this meets both of those criteria," he said. "It is highly innovative and highly competitive."
He then said that it appeared the plan does not violate the bright-line no paid prioritization rule, but took something off the endorsement.
He said the FCC would keep an eye on Binge On per the general conduct standard in those new open Internet rules, which allows the FCC to look at such business models on a case-by-case basis.
That rule, he elaborated, says a carrier "should not unreasonably interfere with the access to someone who is trying to get to an edge provider and an edge provider who is trying to get to a consumer. So, what we are going to be doing is watching Binge On, keeping and eye on it, and measure it against the general conduct rule."
"The Commission staff is working to make sure it understands the new offering," said FCC director of Media Relations Shannon Gilson, of Binge On following the chairman's press conference.
Binge On is a zero rating plan in which video streaming services including Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu do not count against data allowances.
Commissioner Ajit Pai said following that statement that nobody still knows whether Binge On will pass muster under the general conduct standard. "I don't think it should give any company comfort to know that the state of the law is so unsettled."
Pai said following Wheeler's qualified endorsement that the question remained: "Does T-Mobile's Binge On and any other offerings like it violate the net neutrality order." He said that under the Internet conduct standard nobody can get certainty, which he suggested was illustrated by Wheeler's statement that is was pro-competitive, followed by the signal that it still needed to be vetted under that general conduct standard.
Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said that if someone was looking for a blessing, the chairman appeared to have given it. "someone is looking for a blessing and everyone is kind of holding their breath waiting for a decision. It wasn't an official issuance by the General Counsel's office or the Enforcement Bureau, but they just got the blessing they were seeking and I imagine now we are going to see a lot more offerings like it."
But he also said that holding up those innovative offerings for a moment like the chairman's statement was just the sort of problem he had pointed to with the general conduct standard.
"Tom Wheeler's comments regarding T-Mobile's new BingeOn zero-rating plan calls to mind the good familiar cop/bad cop routine," said Randolph May, president of free market think tank, the Free State Foundation. "On the one hand, Wheeler's statement that the plan is pro-competitive and innovative is commendable. On the other hand, his further elaboration that the FCC will monitor the T-Mobile plan for compliance with the Open Internet Order's 'good conduct' rule is disturbing. This is because the vague 'good conduct' standard means anything that Wheeler's Enforcement Bureau says it means on any given day."
The EFF had concerns about the vagueness of the 'general conduct rule' too
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Uh, no. Net Neutrality is not about who has a right to put shit on the internet. It is about what the rights are of those who access the internet.
That's not the problem.
To use a specific example, the problem is ISPs partnering with Nextflix to slow down competitors to Netflix.
That's pretty overt, but it could also be something like the ISP offering a package where Netflix doesn't count towards your data cap, but Netflix competitors do count towards that cap. Different technique, similar results.
Now multiply by every other company that relies on the internet to reach customers, and you have a way for entrenched business to artificially limit competition and stifle innovation.
ISPs shouldn't get to meddle with the free market's of other industries/services/content.
To who? In general content speedlanes (i.e video streaming over gaming) has at no time ever been discussed. The problem was source based speedlanes (i.e. Netflix over Hulu). I think you'll find consumers generally do not know if they want content based speedlanes or not since it has never been on the table.
Please. Instead, it is better for states to remove all monopolies AND allow local gov to create muni-fiber broadbands, but keep isp/TV/security/VoIP/etc open architecture and encourage competition.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
in the first place. Starting with local legislation, which then gains traction and becomes state legislation, and (if enough people like the idea) eventually leads to federal legislation requiring net neutrality.
Those of you pissed at Ajit Pai have only yourselves to blame. He only had the power to revoke net neutrality because you gleefully supported his predecessor when he implemented net neutrality in what was a total run-around of the legislative process this country is founded on. By allowing Tom Wheeler to set the precedent, YOU gave Ajit Pai the same power..
No single appointed person or group of appointed commissioners should have the power to make decisions with wide-ranging consequences like this. It always should have been implemented via the normal legislative process, with majority votes of elected representatives. It was wrong how Ajit Pai revoked it. It was wrong how Tom Wheeler implemented it.
Implementing it via legislation also makes it a lot harder to revoke. You need (at the Federal level) enough votes in both branches of Congress and a Presidential signature. It can't be changed willy nilly just on the whims of some guy the President appointed.
There are several problems with your argument that Comcast would block Netflix.
1. Comcast wouldn't outright block Netflix, they will throttle the traffic to the point where Netflix becomes useless. It's effectively blocking, not literally.
2. You claim they wouldn't do it, but they have. ISPs have been caught throttling Netflix traffic and torrents in the past. And that was with net neutrality in place. Now there is nothing to prevent them, legally, from cutting back Netflix traffic or any other competing services.
3. You claim Comcast would lose clients, but in many regions it's them or nothing. Who are you going to switch to if your town only has one ISP?
4. You claim Netflix makes Comcast a ton of money. But they don't. Virtually no one has an Internet account just to watch Netflix. What Netflix does do is compete with other services some cable companies and ISPs are offering, which means those companies have an incentive to get rid of Netflix.
Ah looks like slashdot's regular ISP conglomerate shill is back!
At least I hope you're a shill because if you're doing this for free...
It's not even like Netflix is a competitor to Comcast: the content is nearly orthogonal.
Oh I guess I hallucinated Comcast having a TV service which is a direct competitor to Netflix then.
In fact if you think about it Netflix is a huge, huge draw for getting faster cable internet over various other network options; Netflix is helping Comcast earn a TON of money.
Costing them a ton you mean, because people are actually using the services they've bought. Comcast would much rather have people buy stuff and never use it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This will probably lead to more implementations of geoblocking and VPN blocking shenanigans
Twinstiq, game news
If Comcast blocked or slowed Netflix, they would lose around 90% of their customers and certainly be fined by the FCC and probably have a few facilities torched by angry mobs.
I guess you missed that part back in 2014 when comcast was slowing down netflix. Yet no FCC fines, (supreme court said the FCC can't fine them), they still have all of their customers and no facilities torched by angry mobs.
Good point. Fifty sets of laws written by state politicians will most certainly have serious problems.
In addition, having fifty different sets of byzantine NN rules.is a huge barrier of entry for a new competitor and only helps the big guys like Comcast.
Net Neutrality is NOT anti business, it is PRO business and PRO consumer.
What it does is shift much of the massive costs for bandwidth for companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc onto other ISP customers like you and me by raising their prices, since they cannot charge those high-bandwidth users at different rates than other ISP customers.
That's just absurdly wrong, as it implies that companies like Netflix use bandwidth entirely on their own. That's not the way it works. Netflix (for example) sends the data for a movie only when a user requests it. Therefore, the Netflix user was solely responsible for that data traversing the ISP's network, through his or her direct action. If Netflix didn't exist, that same user would have watched content from someone else, which means Netflix didn't actually cause that traffic to flow through that link. That's why the user's ISP is solely responsible for paying the cost of transit between the ISP's network and the backbone.
Netflix, by contrast, was solely responsible for that data traversing the network between Netflix's servers and the nearest backbone, and Netflix and the user share equal responsibility for the data as it passes through the backbone. This approach is really the only sensible way that things can be done.
What you're apparently trying to do is to shift the cost of providing service entirely to one side of that network connection, artificially deflating the impact of user decisions on the user, and artificially inflating the impact of user decisions on the companies that provide content. That approach very bad, because among other things, it means that users don't think about the impact of their decisions. If there's no extra cost for them to have the bandwidth to watch Ultra-HD, many users will dutifully grab Ultra-HD content and watch it on a cell phone or whatever.
It is also bad because the company on the other end doesn't have any real control over what the user's ISP does, or how high their costs are for providing service. Netflix can choose what ISP they work with to get data onto the backbone, minimizing their cost and maximizing efficiency. If every random ISP can decide to charge them an arbitrary amount of money, you're basically turning the cost of individual users' Internet service into an externality that Netflix has to pay for. As such, Netflix will be forced to decide which individual customers aren't worth the money based on how much the customers' ISPs are charging them. At that point, those users will no longer have access to the entire Internet.
And the cost of negotiating contracts with every little 100-customer ISP on the planet would be insane. It would essentially make it impossible for large companies to be viable without running their own cables to everybody's house. And if that happens, we'll eventually find ourselves with the Google Internet, the Amazon Internet, and the Netflix Internet, and they won't talk to each other except for low-bandwidth email. This outcome is in nobody's best interests, including the major ISPs.
In short, the things you're advocating are harmful in the short term to everyone involved except for the big ISPs, and in the long term, would spell their doom as well. Want to destroy the Internet? You just figured out how. And that's not hyperbole.
What, you don't think the ISPs are just going to eat the costs, do you? The original NN rules were written by Google! Do you believe Google primarily has your best interests in mind, or their own?
You speak of those two things as though you believe that they are mutually exclusive. When a company's interests align with your own, you should embrace that company's support. Rejecting that support merely because they also benefit from not letting ISPs completely break the Internet is shortsighted and stupid. Those big tech companies would still have a heck of a lot more lobbying power
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Which six states are working on this?
That is conclusory and unconvincing. If net neutrality's best argument is "nuh uh, net neutrality means you have the right to be spoken to, not to speak", no wonder the FCC canned it. Are you so new to the Internet that you do not remember the way people accessed the Internet before corporations tried to lock people into their walled gardens? People who access the Internet have a right to speak, but the net neutrality crowd doesn't like that for some reason.
It's not like my Comcast network is going to block AT&T traffic
Possibly not, but when ISPs and content producers are the same company then they control both content and distribution and have a perfect incentive to block or throttle content from competing providers. This is Bad(tm), not just in a consumer standpoint but an Orwellian one as well.
Speed lanes are a good idea and what people want
Even if people want them, it doesn't mean that they exist. All there can be is as fast the network can handle and traffic that gets needlessly throttled because they didn't pay an extortion fee. We just want to network to pass all traffic as fast as it can handle it. Is that so bad?
OTOH, ISPs used to be local outfits. I don't see why they couldn't be different ISPs in different states.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
of private enterprise. At least in theory. If people already had good working government service (like the VA for example) you might have a shot. But you'll have no luck with muni broadband until you can convince people that the government doesn't screw up everything it tries. Yeah, yeah, there's lots of evidence of that, but when has evidence ever worked against a multi-million dollar ad blitz?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Comcast throttled Netflix and Netflix made the problem go away by paying an extortion fee.
Sad to see the day when people on Slashdot have no idea how the internet works, or what interconnection fees are.
I live in fucking downtown San Francisco and my ONLY choice of high-speed cable Internet is Comcast.
Hi, I said exactly the same thing. I'm in a different city, in exactly the same situation. Do you even read?
I mean you go so far as to ejaculate all over the screen that "my own gigabit internet service fee probably keeps a nice shine on some executives yacht."
And you interpreted that to mean I was *happy* about the situation? Like I said, do you even read??
Haters like you are SUCH retards. I am trying super-hard not to roll my eyes that you also come from San Francisco, which I would have put money on before... the elitism literally boils out of your words.
Someday you will be adult and be properly ashamed of what you are now. But I guess today is not that day.
I'll let you have the last response since Haters and Retards will chatter on and on about themselves and misreading things until the end of time. Ain't nobody got time for that, I have other people to help while you try to bring them down.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley