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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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