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FCC Struggles To Convince Judge That Broadband Isn't 'Telecommunications' (arstechnica.com)
A Federal Communications Commission lawyer faced a skeptical panel of judges on Friday as the FCC defended its repeal of net neutrality rules and deregulation of the broadband industry. From a report: FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson struggled to explain why broadband shouldn't be considered a telecommunications service, and struggled to explain the FCC's failure to protect public safety agencies from Internet providers blocking or slowing down content. Oral arguments were held on Friday in the case, which is being decided by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Throttling of firefighters' data plans played a major role in today's oral arguments.
Of the three judges, Circuit Judge Patricia Millett expressed the most skepticism of Johnson's arguments, repeatedly challenging the FCC's definition of broadband and its disregard for arguments made by public safety agencies. She also questioned the FCC's claim that the net neutrality rules harmed broadband investment. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins also expressed some skepticism of FCC arguments, while Senior Circuit Judge Stephen Williams seemed more amenable to FCC arguments.
Of the three judges, Circuit Judge Patricia Millett expressed the most skepticism of Johnson's arguments, repeatedly challenging the FCC's definition of broadband and its disregard for arguments made by public safety agencies. She also questioned the FCC's claim that the net neutrality rules harmed broadband investment. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins also expressed some skepticism of FCC arguments, while Senior Circuit Judge Stephen Williams seemed more amenable to FCC arguments.
Giving the FCC the leeway to choose how to regulate the internet is a bad idea, it means every administration can change the rules. Just pass a law mandating how to regulate the internet.
FCC should stick to regulating the very finite radio spectrum as common property. Broadband is essentially unlimited, need to hook up another city? Bury some more cable. It should be telling that when the FCC was initially created, it wasn't created to regulate telegraphs.
The FCC should definitely get out of the business of regulating the content of the airwaves and Internet. Dancing around the 1st Amendment ought to be way outside of their purview.
If a regulatory organization needs to be created to manage the market of Internet service providers, that's certainly something that can be considered separate from what powers the FCC tried to grab. Just because it has the word "communication" in its name, does not mean it is authorized to regulate all forms of communication. Why not have them regulate letters and print, that's communication too? You have to be very careful not to fall into the trap of deriving too much from a name.
aka indigination? cease fire stand down, leave all that unsavory goo in the ground.. heartless spiritless subscription based debt slave digit 'living' leaves us vasalized/ungrounded? vote for (facilitate) free for all natural clean energy etc.. in our lifetimes.. good sports with good spirits prevail.. in the moms we trust.. truth+mercy=justice.. conspire to occupy the truth. thanks again
next; if football could save us it would? +; con trolling our minds? can badly scripted game show rerun wmd on credit corepirate nazi sponsored hypenosys devolutionize us, as we cling to our hemispheres in wmd cheerleader media elongated suspense? undigestible on several levels?
Ajit Pai needs to be replaced. Does he know what voice over IP is? That's not a category of telecommunications? Does Pai know what Whatsapp and Skype do?
At one time, we used analog modems at 300 baud over a copper land line. That was telecommunications. Now we use fiber optic cable and much faster digital modems. That's telecommunications using a 7 layer stack.
Hello, Mr. Pai. Maybe people on the other side of the world use smoke signals. Not here. Get with the times.
I'm not a fan of the federal government exercising any authority not granted to them in the constitution, but regulating telecommunications to ensure fair interstate commerce seems to be constitutionally sound.
The FCC should regulate frequency and power of wireless communications and ensure that telecom services do not discriminate based on content, origin or destination.
The FCC should not do any more than that.
It is time for a hero like Elon Musk to use 1000's of Satellites to give free WiFi to the world.
VOIP services use the Internet to make phone calls. This should be the only argument that is needed to shoot down Pai's FCC lies. However, there is too much money being fed into the government bodies, via lobby money to "campaigns". by ISP's that direct their puppets to only help the ISP's. It's a shame that the US is so damn corrupt. There was a time when regulators actually worked to help Americans improve their lives and the nation to better itself. Thanks to corporations being "people", and lobbying (buying support) to work against the public instead of for it, we're sliding downhill as a nation. Make America Free From Excessive Corporate Greed Again.
the Internet ran over Dial-up phones (telecom) and now phones run over the internet. And I'm communicating with you at a distance electronically. Tele-com.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
IMHO, net neutrality (always treating all internet traffic equal), sounds like obvious common sense, at first, but, is it really so?
Is all phone traffic is really equal, for example?
If, a phone service provider company, notices/informed, that some people/company scamming all their customers, or, abusing their service in any way,
should, the phone service provider company, be able to do absolutely nothing to stop it, because all phone traffic must be always absolutely treated equal?
How about, if, an Internet service provider company, notices/informed, that some people/company scamming all their customers?
What if somebody using their internet service to run a ransomware system, or, a botnet to attack any targeted websites?
What if somebody using their internet service to run any kind of DARK WEB websites to sell drugs etc?
What if somebody using their internet service to let people download any/all kind(s) of illegal video/files?
Should, the Internet service provider company, be able to do absolutely nothing to stop it, (to protect their customers & to serve common good of the public), because all Internet traffic must be always absolutely treated equal?
(But, one may think, what if a phone/internet service provider company itself is doing anything illegal?
Then realize that, all phone/internet service provider companies are always under close watch by their customers & government, already!)
The existence of air and water are enough to imply the FCC is lying these days. They went from misguided and ineffective to blatantly malignant. Sounds like it's time to drain the swamp.
The entire Trump administration needs to be replaced.
This is the stupidest most corrupt POTUS in our history.
This is why the Republicans win time and again. They fight to win. While you're busy debating whether the existing laws allow for Net Neutrality they're busy taking over state legislatures so they can gerrymander and keep your pro-NN law from passing.
The existing laws are there, use them. You just need to vote for people who will enforce them. Fight to win or get ready to lose... everything.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The title would have you believe the FCC says internet service isn't telecom. The argument is that internet service is more than telecom.
Removing the NN rules means we can have ISP provided, network level pi-holes to block ads now. But wait! Google/Mozilla have implemented DNS over HTTPS specifically to prevent such a thing happening, and in the process, funnel all your DNS lookups over to your "friends" at Cloudflare.
I used to be in favor of NN, but my eyes are wide open now.
People who want to give monopolists free reign should be chased out of the country by angry mobs with pitchforks. I mean that literally.
The U.S. government needs FAR better management.
One example is the problems at the IRS:
The IRS Really Needs Some New Computers (April 17, 2018) "The tax agency's embrace of IBM in the 1950s helped drive down audit rates. It's still depending on the same code."
IRS says it's using technology from JFK's time (Feb. 3, 2015)
TurboTax, H&R Block Spend Big Bucks Lobbying for Us to Keep Doing Our Own Taxes (March 23, 2017)
How the IRS Was Gutted (Dec. 11, 2018) "An eight-year campaign to slash the agency's budget has left it understaffed, hamstrung and operating with archaic equipment. The result: billions less to fund the government. That's good news for corporations and the wealthy."
Who's More Likely to Be Audited: A Person Making $20,000 -- or $400,000? (Dec. 12, 2018) "If you claim the earned income tax credit, whose average recipient makes less than $20,000 a year, you're more likely to face IRS scrutiny than someone making twenty times as much. How a benefit for the working poor was turned against them."
After Budget Cuts, the IRS' Work Against Tax Cheats Is Facing "Collapse" (Oct. 1, 2018) "Audits and criminal referrals are down sharply since Congress cut the tax agency's budget and management changed priorities."
There are much earlier reports about IRS under-management: Internal Revenue Service is a den of thieves. (April 2, 2000. Not a "den of thieves", just terribly undermanaged, apparently.) "The GAO audit compared the agency to someone who can't balance his or her checkbook and instead just adjusts it to agree with the bank statement."
It's designed to make all you net neutrality and anti-FCC mouth-frothers get your panties in a bunch.
You'll be much happier when you stop being so willfully gullible- you're smart enough to learn the truth, but don't bother because it supports the fantasy you believe is real.
Honestly, I can get pretty pissy about government overreach, but this isn't that.
The war on drugs was doomed to failure from inception because they were trying to legislate a morality that most Americans are ambivalent about or are actively in disagreement with. Over half of all Americans are (or were willing to be temporarily) on the illegal side of that war: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publ...
Consequently, the LEAs wound up in a game of whack-a-mole, where they arrest a dealer and a new one pops up in his place before he gets arraigned. And, as an ex-con, I'm here to tell you that they are good at arresting dealers. I met a lot of drug dealers inside. Of course, for a lot of cops, this is just job security, so they don't really mind.
NN is different because the number of offenders is vastly smaller and the violations are exponentially harder to hide (this is the problem with crimes that actually have victims). Additionally, because the network operators' money is actually already in the banking system, they have much more to lose.
As to whether we fare better behind NN regulation or NN law, I don't know. Legislation is probably less prone to abuse, but it is also much slower to respond to changing market conditions.
"...to shoot down Ajit Paid's FCC lies."
FTFY and probably answered a few why's from people.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
You're a lying faggot Huxley
I think most definitions of NN don't prohibit true QOS-based prioritization. NN is aimed at participant-based prioritization, which is all about market plays. QOS management is not a market play. Selling fast lanes to content providers and providing free prioritization or free bandwidth to in-house or partnered content providers are market plays (both potentially immensely profitable.)
but it is 100's and 100's of pages of legal speak(confused, conflicting, legalistic gobbly gook).
;)
If Net Neutrality is
- peek in to the packets you loose your common carrier liability protections.
- don't peek in to the packets you keep your common carrier liability protections.
I am all for that definition of Net Neutrality
But the government/businesses and activist are in the courts arguing about certain little things in the 100's and 100's of pages of crap. And who gets what and who pays who!! On both sides!!
And most things that come out of our courts today are rarely good for the people! Because it is a bunch of unethical lawyers and judges who are ideological/paid off arguing their causes or to get their clients, someone else's money.
If Net Neutrality is not the simple definition I stated above. I want the governments slimy fingers as far away from the internet as possible. Would things get bad? Yes, but eventually the individuals, businesses and the market would figure out what people are willing to buy.
Just my 2 cents
Johnson said that broadband is an information service because Internet providers offer DNS (Domain Name System) services and caching as part of the broadband package. DNS and caching "are determinative here" because they allow broadband users to perform all the functions listed in the definition of an information service (e.g. acquiring, storing, and processing information), he argued.
I really hope the judges are learned in the technology. Using the ISP's DNS is obviously not a requirement, nor is using their caching. Using either of these technologies is not integral to the passing of bits from one IP to the other. What a shit argument. If anything, one could argue that the indirect use of the ISP's routing tables are some form of information service, but they aren't typically directly queried by your home/business broadband connection.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
The language of the law clearly ends with internet service being an information service just as the bipartisan legislation dictated that the US government would take a light touch approach to regulating our internet access.
There should be no struggle here. The FCC's Open Internet Order was clearly in violation of the text of the law, and it's on the right side of the statute in fixing that error today.
Outlets like Ars Technica and Slashdot could do a better job of representing the stakes in this controversy. If we need to update the laws then we can push our representatives to do so, but to push the FCC to ignore the clear requirements of the law is the wrong way to go.
At the very least self-consistency should be demanded. Right now we have a definition of "information service" which depends on "telecommunications services" to facilitate providing the information service. By definition an information service cannot exist without telecommunications service to facilitate it.
This begs question where is the telecommunications service required to support "information service"? If you blanket assert ISPs are information services then your argument fails self-consistency.
Internet is layered sufficiently to clearly separate providing access to IP network from servers (NNTP, Gopher, WAIS, CHARGEN, WAP..etc) that offer information services over IP.
Saying an ISP can't offer both information and telecommunications services is like saying a movie theatre can't charge for admission to a movie and popcorn.
Arguing ISPs are information services because they have DNS servers is like arguing the business of movie theatres is selling popcorn not film viewing.
I personally would rather not see Title II applied to broadband or anything else.
Much better off with clean NN or meaningful legislation which actually encourages competition instead of FCC using its power to shield large providers from the burden of having to compete.
For balance, the judges seemed skeptical that the issue wasn't already settled with the 2005 'Brand X' case, where a Supreme Court ruled that cable modem service was an 'information service'. It's possible they'll contradict that decision or say it doesn't apply, but that seems less than clear.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
telecommunication
tele = at a distance
Communication = communication
Broadband seems to fall very firmly in the definition.
SAD. Once such a fine country.
White Entitlement destroyed America.
Now we'll have space Chinks. Thanks Donald!
If your governments actually worked the rule of the corporations would be threatened.
Now shut up and buy the new iPhone you peasant.
Actually broadband today is both a telecommunications and information service. They're trying to fit something new and modern into 1 of 2 old categories. Old laws and rules that don't really fit the service anymore. A new category needs to be created, and new rules created to cover this area. Some countries don't differentiate between the 2. they're both considered a carriage service. ( a way of communicating and disseminating info.). The clowns in charge need to try harder, and earn their money.
There a section for voice services and a section for data services. Obama's FCC decree the internet be a voice service, not a data service. Read the law. It's not that complex. "Net neutrality" was vote buying, nothing more.
See subject & these entries for about:config to TURN OFF the HTTPS bullshit BOTH Google & Mozilla tried:
network.dnsCacheEntries 0
network.trr.mode to 5 (SHUTS IT OFF)
network.trr.uri (set to 208.67.222.222)
* VOILA - no more 'routing thru cloudflare' crap (& https isn't needed for EVERY SITE either - the CRAP just SLOWS YOU DOWN & always gets BROKEN (SSL to TLS anyone?)
APK
P.S.=> This can adversely affect hosts files too & THAT is the work-around (very easy)... apk
A dedicated network for public safety use only is currently being built because they know that they're going to need it if everyone can hog as much bandwidth as they want.
Kid, you don't even know what troll means. The above is the honest truth, which you appear to be afraid of. Run along and let the adults moderate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is someone paying anti-NN trolls to mod down comments here, or what?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is a young country, but it's not THAT young. The classic definition is long-distance communication.
The Constitution of 1776 put all the known channels of telecommunication (post offices, post roads, and navigable waterways) firmly in federal control, so that states and local for-profit enterprises couldn't interfere.
The office of Postmaster General pre-dates those of Chief Justice, President, Senator, and Representative. Communication was too important, back then, to be delayed; it still is.
The problem is that the lawyers arguing the case clearly don't have a clue. They're letting the FCC play word games with terms like "broadband".
The argument here is ACTUALLY ABOUT "is providing internet access a telecommunications service".
The FCC argument that it is NOT (because DNS, and WebPages are Information Services) is specious because THOSE THINGS are NOT part of "providing internet access".
Yes they are (almost) always INCLUDED WITH the provided "broadband" but they are NOT (not at all, not even slightly) PART OF IT.
SERIOUSLY FOLKS: that's like arguing that BECAUSE your car dealer INCLUDES fuel in the vehicle you purchase, he's NOT a car dealership, he's actually a DISTRIBUTOR OF PETROLEUM PRODUCTS.
An ISP can provide a TOTALLY AWESOME internet service without providing ANY DNS/NTP/WebServers accessible to its customers.
Pool.ntp.org, gmail.com, google DNS, OpenDNS, etc etc etc etc etc
Yes typically every ISP provides their own services, yes they include them for free, but they are not THE INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE (aka "broadband") being provided.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Imaginary questioning of Ajit Pai before a judge:
"Is that a shirt you are wearing, Mr. Pai?"
"No."
"It certainly looks like a shirt to me. What do you say it is?"
"It's shoulder drapes Your Honor. At the FCC we call them shoulder drapes and we think everyone else should as well."
"Ah, why should anyone do that? Is there something wrong with the word 'shirt'?"
"Yes, shirts are an area we regulate and we don't want to do that. Shirt regulation is a drag on American business. Unleash the latent power of the shirt makers!"
"OK, well, we are going to have to differ with you on that one. And considering that I'm a judge and you're not, my opinion carries the day."
"Fake News! Judicial overreach! MAGA!! I'm going to run and tell dadd-, er, the President!"
Telecommunication is the transmission of signs, signals, messages, words, writings, images and sounds or information of any nature by wire, radio, optical or electromagnetic systems.