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Net Neutrality Rules Die on April 23 (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-an-era dept.

The Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules will be no more in two months, as the agency takes the final step in removing the regulation from its rule book. From a report: The date -- April 23 -- was revealed today after the Federal Communication Commission's order revoking net neutrality was published in the Federal Register. You can read the full order here. The publication means that a new fight around net neutrality is about to begin. States and other parties will be able to sue over the rules -- some have already gotten started -- and a battle in Congress will kick off over a vote to reverse the order entirely. While that fight likely won't get far in Congress since Republicans by and large oppose net neutrality and control both chambers, there will likely be a long and heated legal battle around the corner for the FCC's new policy. The FCC's new rules are really a lack of rules. Its "Restoring Internet Freedom" order entirely revokes the strong net neutrality regulations put in place back in 2015 and replaces them with basically nothing. Internet providers can now block, throttle, and prioritize content if they want to. The only real rule here is that they have to disclose if they're doing any of this.

17 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Already begun by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you start seeing nginx errors on your favorite websites, you will know you have been affected.

    1. Re:Already begun by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      During its hay-day back in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Slashdot was a big name on the Tech-Blogs and many message boards were based on Slashcode. The user level moderation was a huge feature....

      What happened?
      Well slashcode didn't really get as well updated compared to others, there was a big fight about a beta version (so its style and influence diminished) However I expect the nature of technology had changed, moving from personal big equipment. Large Desktop towers filled to the brim with the latest add-ins, having people hack devices. With people making big old New Economy Tech workers money. Where an upper middle class salary was given to anyone who could use export their Word Documents to HTML and call them a web-developer.

      Then the bubble popped and the popular technology is too closed down to tinker with, and the ones who had survived have gotten more conservative with our money and bitter about the new technology. Thus moved Slashdot deeper into its current trollish area.

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  2. Throw out the Republicans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Republican politicians are paid not to understand that utilities such as Comcast and Verizon were heavily subsidized by taxpayers to create the foundation of their service, and hence need to be regulated so that they don't just do whatever the heck they want to make the most coin for themselves.

    And of course it's the same with gun control, with the NRA; with climate change, with the fossil fuel industries; and with food safety, with big agriculture.

    Not saying Democratic politicians are more ethical, but their traditional big money interest (organized labor) is frankly dying anyway.

    1. Re:Throw out the Republicans by gnick · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Laws that wouldn't have stopped the last shooting.

      I'm more interested in stopping the NEXT shooting. That means looking at more incidents than just the single most recent.

      --
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    2. Re:Throw out the Republicans by gnick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're right. Why try? Let's start handing out pistols when kids get their driver's license and let them fend for themselves! NOTHING is going to prevent the next shooting, but handing an AR-15 to a mentally deranged teenager with a history of threatening violence seems like a common-sense bad idea.

      It confuses me that some of our lawmakers are saying that laws are pointless.

      --
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    3. Re:Throw out the Republicans by Archfeld · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The last 2 shootings would have been prevented if the FBI would just follow through with the existing laws and procedures. That is the saddest part of a tragic situation. What we don't need is more political grandstanding and passing legislation that fails to address the underlying issues. If the individual doing the shooting has been reported to the FBI but they fail to follow though how is that going to help anyone ?

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    4. Re:Throw out the Republicans by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      Conflating gun laws with lower crime; if that were true Chicago would be much better than what it is, broken windows anyone?

      West Palm Beach, Florida has a higher murder rate than Chicago. So do Dayton, Ohio, Savannah, Georgia and 22 other US cities.

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    5. Re:Throw out the Republicans by pastafazou · · Score: 2

      Fact: the rifle was purchased legally because he passed a background check.
      Fact: in 2016 he was taken to a mental health facility for examination. The mental health facility did not report this to the feds' NICS system. Had they done so, it would have shown up on his background check, and he would not have been able to buy the gun.
      Fact: The NRA has been advocating making it mandatory for states to report criminal and mental health records to the federal government.

    6. Re:Throw out the Republicans by sexconker · · Score: 2

      As it stands now it is illegal for a "mentally deranged teenager" from owning a gun.

      The second amendment says otherwise.

  3. Bill ISPs ? by psergiu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the ISPs are no longer Common Carriers, can i bill AT&T for the use of my land for their buried cable and distribution box in my front yard given that i'm not their customer ?
    $10/day/feet sounds reasonable :)

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    1. Re:Bill ISPs ? by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Geez, people! Chill! It's not like the internet prior to 2015 under Obama was some hellish totalitarian/dystopian nightmare.

      Maybe because NN rules were put in place, because some ISP were definitely becoming... unfair, for lack of a better word.

      Guess we'll find out soon enough. Hope you enjoy paying to access your favorite websites. Roll out the walled gardens, it's coming. Unless lawmakers come up with some new regulations, you can bet your panties ISP's will run and run hard with their new found freedom. They going to want to entrench non-neutrality practices as quickly as possible to make it that much more difficult to reverse. Once they are entrenched, they can bellyache how new regulations will wreck their business model, stifling any hopes of restoring neutrality.

    2. Re:Bill ISPs ? by tbannist · · Score: 2

      The problem was Netflix was demanding free bandwidth ("peering") from Comcast, who, uncharacteristically, wasn't the asshole in that exchange.

      Sorry, but you should realize if you are saying that Comcast wasn't the asshole, then you're probably wrong.

      Netflix wasn't demanding anything from anyone. Comcast was demanding that Netflix pay them a bribe to do the job they are paid to do by their actual customers.

      My god, this should be common sense. People pay Comcast to deliver internet service to them. Netflix charges it's customers to send them the movies and shows they ask for. Netflix pays it's ISP to send that data. Comcast's customers are already paying Comcast to receive that data. The asshole is the one who refuses to do what's he's being paid to do, unless other people agree to pay him extra to do it. Clearly, the asshole is Comcast.

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  4. Mini poll by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is this going to change how anyone votes? Will you be voting against a candidate because of this? Will you vote in a party primary? Will you vote in other elections you otherwise wouldn't (like mid terms) or be voting for the first time in years?

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  5. Magnet/BitTorrent by djbckr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see this as an excuse for Comcast and their ilk to block Magnet and BitTorrent traffic. Watch that be one of the first things to quit working.

  6. Only Federal Rules Die. Let the states regulate NN by schwit1 · · Score: 3

    The GOP says it supports state's rights. Time for them to put up or shut up.

  7. Couldn't he just buy 5.56 NATO? by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    I believe it's classified as rifle ammo and would most likely fire in his (legally bought) AR-15. I could be wrong though. But if the ammo was purchased illegally why isn't the dealer in prison? Laws don't really matter if they're not enforced...

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  8. Re:Benefits those of us who don't use Netflix by fropenn · · Score: 2

    Why does it matter if it's Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo, online gaming, or downloading photos or audio books? The people who want faster (and more) internet access already pay more. The companies that receive more requests for their content already pay more.

    Net neutrality is an issue of fairness and greed. Without net neutrality Comcast can make Netflix run slowly for their customers because Comcast would prefer you purchase their crappy cable TV package instead. And since Comcast has a monopoly in many places, if Netflix wants to stay open, they have to pay the extortion fee to Comcast if they want to keep those customers which would be in addition to the fees they (and their customers) already pay!

    Further, let's say you want to start your own video streaming business, say NerdFlix. You don't have the big budget that Netflix has, so you can't afford to pay the extortion fee to Comcast. As a result, your videos take 30 minutes to load vs 10 seconds for Netflix. How many subscribers do you think you'll get?