I agree the imprisonment clause of the law would ultimately be construed to mean prison sentences for individuals, but I think it's an open question which individuals that would turn out to be in a corporate setting.
Section 1041(a) says:
(a) IN GENERAL.—Any person who, having knowledge of a breach of security and of the fact that notification of the breach of security is required under the Data Security and Breach Notification Act, intentionally and willfully conceals the fact of the breach of security, shall, in the event that the breach of security results in economic harm to any individual in the amount of $1,000 or more, be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both.
So far so good, but then Section 1041(b) explicitly defines what constitutes a "person" subject to the above punishment: ‘
(b) PERSON DEFINED.—For purposes of subsection (a), the term ‘person’ has the same meaning as in section 1030(e)(12) of this title.
That's referring to already-existing 18 U.S.C. 1030(e)(12), which says:
the term “person” means any individual, firm, corporation, educational institution, financial institution, governmental entity, or legal or other entity."
So if one or more people in a corporation know of a breach, know the corporation needs to disclose it, but conceal it, the corporation has violated 1041(a). But now which individuals in the corporation go to jail -- those who actually knew about and concealed the breach, the corporation's directors and officers, or any/all of the above?
If they meant for potential jail time to apply only to those who actually knew and were involved in the concealment, a narrower definition of "person" covering only human beings would have done just fine. The definition as it stands leaves a huge gray area. If the intent here is to make the directors/officers hyperactive about security to try to prevent going to jail for something they didn't even know about, this sort of technique may succeed.
Competition isn't coming, guys. It's a natural monopoly, and the only reasons it's a duopoly are historical
So bottom line you agree it's at least a duopoly -- it's not clear why the historical reasons for that would make a difference here.
Even if we pretend there can't be meaningful competition between duopolists, you're ignoring the emergence of fiber along with near-pervasive wireless coverage (and if 4G for some reason isn't fast enough for you, 5G certainly should be).
Yes, I know Facebook fancies itself to be all things to all people and has incorporated a lot of functionality that has been around for ages in other systems. I personally wouldn't use the word "innovative" to describe that process.
The only thing on your list that possibly could have been innovative at the time Facebook adopted it is the 360-degree video, and that certainly doesn't appear to me to be the case. About 30 seconds of searching confirmed that YouTube introduced 360-degree video support in March 2015 while Facebook didn't introduce it until September 2015. So yeah, it appears it actually was Google.
So basically trying to figure out how to dial back the behavior you prompted in the first place. I guess that could be considered "innovative" -- but if so, then so would just nuking social media and letting humans get back to being human.
Face recognition seems like a cool thing to do from an average user point of view. Fake news is supposedly fixed or reduced now. Shadow profiles and user tracking may rival some three letter agencies.
Sorry, when I read "do X or you won't see innovation again" I parsed "innovation" as something I might really want and/or need.
Alphabet innovation these days include many changes in YouTube: not paying out to copyright holders, messing with the kids, and infuriating content creators and advertisers at the same time.
I think you may have forgotten a few minor things like providing Internet access to poor/devastated regions, building hyper-efficient wind power generators, and other work of the Moonshot Factory.
I don't disagree that your scenario still raises privacy concerns, but I think that situation is a much closer question than Carpenter. Even if there are discrete VHS tapes changed every 6 hours behind every one of those cameras such that people would have to sit and watch thousands of tapes to see if I happened to pass by one of those camera, I still know (or should have known) that the government was collecting all that data and they would be able to know anything that happened on those cameras if they worked hard enough. The fact that in Carpenter the private entity is the one collecting the data (and for a benign purpose that has nothing to do with surveillance) and the government is silently co-opting that data for surveillance purposes, is what I think really differentiates it.
"We" apparently being the small percentage of consumers and businesses who don't continue to belly up to the bar and buy whatever MSFT's next rendition of reality happens to be.
Is it private information if you walk around shouting your name wherever you go?
"Shouting" doesn't seem like a very apt analogy for a private control message between cell phone and network generated by simply walking around with one's cell phone on. The question is whether those messages were sufficiently public to defeat the cell phone user's legitimate expectation of privacy against a warrantless communication of those messages to the government. The fact that this case has reached the Supreme Court is evidence enough this isn't a simple question.
Or showing your face?
Not literally, no, but that seems like another inapt analogy. That seems more like the government putting cameras on every street corner, which they're certainly entitled to do (and people on notice of that are entitled to adjust their behavior accordingly). This is essentially a post-hoc, high-level query of a private database about where your face has been.
So to be clear you'll take another job that pays you 3% of your job?
I'll be happy to answer that after you spell out the chain of logic (cough) leading from anything I actually said to your above conclusion. I'll not hold my breath.
Well now you're assuming that people are not dissatisfied now and don't have an incentive now? That's are rather major hole in your logic.
You really need to try to focus on my original point rather than whatever sort of caricature you're trying to twist my point into. Right now, all ISPs are basically providing the same service in the same general price band. As a simple economic matter, that tends to favor the incumbent that has already built out infrastructure. If (and this is where you really need to try to focus) at some point in the future conditions change (like rabid NetNeut proponents are convinced will happen) and other providers are able to sufficiently differentiate on either price or content to make them think they'll be able to pull over a large enough chunk of that customer base, they'll expand their own infrastructure and do just that.
Two bottom-line points I'll leave you with: (1) market forces still exist even if you personally don't believe in them; and (2) excessive governmental regulation is what gave the incumbents so much of a head start and have prevented market forces from working as smoothly and quickly in this space as they otherwise might. Yet more regulation would take us in precisely the wrong direction.
Also did you not understand that is is 90210. These people could afford more expensive internet if they wanted.
Perfect -- then in the highly unlikely event that any of these doomsday scenarios come to pass and the beautiful people become dissatisfied with the incumbent ISPs, that willingness to pay will provide plenty of incentive for others to come in and fill the void.
Well, prior to all this, when Comcast was subjecting users to 250GB limits, they decided that if you used the Comcast video on demand service to stream your shows, it didn't count against your 250GB allotment.
I believe AT&T did the same a little earlier as well.
You mean a provider's LAN costs less per unit of data at a given speed than its WAN, and they're able to pass on that savings to customers? Knock me over with a feather. Clearly that sort of oppression must be stopped so everyone can pay full price for every bit that enters their home.
because what's the point of "network management' if you're just going to make it so someone on a 1GB plan or less can stream Netflix 24/7, while someone who does YouTube needs to pay up?
If NetFlix colocates a server on the ISP's LAN, then yes, Virginia -- that's a completely different value proposition for them than having to budget and pay for external bandwidth. I take it you'd prefer regulation that prevents companies from coming up with creative ways to provide people what they want (NetFlix being about 2/3 of Internet traffic last time I checked) at a lower cost?
And in any event, what has any of this to do with OP's original claim of an extra cost to access a given site at all?
I think you're under the assumption that there are providers nearby.
Um, I'm under no assumption at all. Seems to me you're the very same UnknowingFool I replied to who said "There are 4 broadband providers but 2 of them only service 3% of the area." You're apparently now just splitting hairs on what you consider "nearby" to be (apparently it's somehow different than in "the area").
Portuguese ISPs are already charging people extra each month on top of their base rate [boingboing.net] if those customers want unfettered access to popular sites. It was even reported here [slashdot.org] just a few weeks ago.
And that misreported/deliberately skewed nonsense was soundlydebunked in the comments to that very article, as well as in the comments to the original Twitter post linked in the article. That Portuguese model doesn't block the sites at issue at all, but simply allows you to pay extra to exempt certain services from your account's bandwidth cap. That has jack to do with outright blocking access to sites sans an extra charge (as OP posited) or even treating different traffic differently on their network -- it's just a different way for you to effectively upgrade the limits on your data plan for the services you use most.
The only reason someone with an account at Slashdot, such as yourself, wouldn't be aware of these sorts of examples is if you're intentionally burying your head in the sand.
I'm painfully aware, but it's not an actual example for the above reasons (completely apart from the fact that it's not in the U.S. and thus has nothing to do with thus current brouhaha). Hopefully you didn't just rely on the headline without looking into it at least a bit. That's a dangerous game to play on Slashdot these days, as I'm sure you know.
Now, if you're asking for a US-specific example, you won't find them
Yup.
Originally, net neutrality was enforced because dial-up and DSL ISPs—which are classified as common carriers, meaning that they have to treat all data equally—were how we connected to the Internet.
Having lived through the days of Compuserve, AOL, and the like, I really don't think the implications of what you describe were the same as what NetNeut proponents now want. ISPs certainly had to send all data down the pipe between them and me (the LAN, if you will) with no discrimination. But that has nothing to do with the rate at which the ISP exchanges packets with the outside world (the WAN, continuing my analogy). ISPs with their own ecosystems like AOL certainly served up their own swill at faster rates than they did Internet traffic. I don't see that as qualitatively different than any of the supposed oppressive behavior I see people bitching about today.
Like many Americans, all we have limited broadband options. It isn't also about money. For example, broadband availability for 90210 [broadbandnow.com] shows 1 viable cable and 1 DSL provider (Time Warner Spectrum and AT&T) for most of the zip code. There are 4 broadband providers but 2 of them only service 3% of the area. There are 2 satellite services. There is no fiber option. I would say that 90210 is a pretty affluent zip code. And yet they can't get more than 2 choices.
If the incumbent ISPs really do end up jacking rates for full internet access like all the Chicken Littles fear, that price differential will create a market incentive for one of the nearby providers to come in to your neighborhood and poach the hell out of the disaffected customer base. This seems pretty basic.
I don't think anyone is claiming that the *only* problem is that they don't base their policies on the popular vote of submitted comments. But as the passage you cited suggests, that is *part* of it.
I read that part of the passage as referring to the content of the comments, not the volume (and relevant, substantive content at that -- not stuff that reduces down to "the future of our democracy hangs on my ability to receive unlimited NetFlix for a low fixed price"). That's consistent with what I've read about the process elsewhere. But please let me know if you know of something that clearly states otherwise.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the sheer volume of comments on either side of an issue is irrelevant to the U.S. administrative rulemaking process. That being the case, the "Rooshun interference" meme sorta loses its bite here.
Brian Hart, an FCC spokesman, said the agency lacks the resources to investigate every comment. Supporters of the net neutrality rules are not blameless either, he added, pointing to 7.5 million comments filed in favor of the regulations that appeared to come from 45,000 distinct email addresses, "all generated by a single fake e-mail generator website." Some 400,000 comments backing the rules, he said, appeared to originate from a mailing address based in Russia.
"The most suspicious activity has been by those supporting Internet regulation," said Hart.
The notice-and-comment process enables anyone to submit a comment on any part of the proposed rule. This process is not like a ballot initiative or an up-or-down vote in a legislature. An agency is not permitted to base its final rule on the number of comments in support of the rule over those in opposition to it. At the end of the process, the agency must base its reasoning and conclusions on the rulemaking record, consisting of the comments, scientific data, expert opinions, and facts accumulated during the prerule and proposed rule stages.
So whoever thought that flooding the site with automated comments could tip the balance either way (and there were millions on both sides of the issue) was just flat wrong.
As is everyone on here moaning that this is a harbinger of the fall of democracy in the USA.
It's been crystal-clear from the beginning that once you strip away all the sanctimonious pontificating and Chicken Little scenarios from the NetNeut debate, you're basically left with "I wantz my unlimited N3tFlix."
Slashdot Mirror
We need to move forward on artificial intelligence development
No we don't. Some limited subset of people want to/can't help themselves, but life would go on just fine without it.
I agree the imprisonment clause of the law would ultimately be construed to mean prison sentences for individuals, but I think it's an open question which individuals that would turn out to be in a corporate setting.
Section 1041(a) says:
(a) IN GENERAL.—Any person who, having knowledge of a breach of security and of the fact that notification of the breach of security is required under the Data Security and Breach Notification Act, intentionally and willfully conceals the fact of the breach of security, shall, in the event that the breach of security results in economic harm to any individual in the amount of $1,000 or more, be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both.
So far so good, but then Section 1041(b) explicitly defines what constitutes a "person" subject to the above punishment: ‘
(b) PERSON DEFINED.—For purposes of subsection (a), the term ‘person’ has the same meaning as in section 1030(e)(12) of this title.
That's referring to already-existing 18 U.S.C. 1030(e)(12), which says:
the term “person” means any individual, firm, corporation, educational institution, financial institution, governmental entity, or legal or other entity."
So if one or more people in a corporation know of a breach, know the corporation needs to disclose it, but conceal it, the corporation has violated 1041(a). But now which individuals in the corporation go to jail -- those who actually knew about and concealed the breach, the corporation's directors and officers, or any/all of the above?
If they meant for potential jail time to apply only to those who actually knew and were involved in the concealment, a narrower definition of "person" covering only human beings would have done just fine. The definition as it stands leaves a huge gray area. If the intent here is to make the directors/officers hyperactive about security to try to prevent going to jail for something they didn't even know about, this sort of technique may succeed.
* whoosh *
Wake me up when another company like google is allowed to even try.
Try? Google is already providing 1GB down/up fixed wireless service in seven major metro areas.
Wake up.
Competition isn't coming, guys. It's a natural monopoly, and the only reasons it's a duopoly are historical
So bottom line you agree it's at least a duopoly -- it's not clear why the historical reasons for that would make a difference here.
Even if we pretend there can't be meaningful competition between duopolists, you're ignoring the emergence of fiber along with near-pervasive wireless coverage (and if 4G for some reason isn't fast enough for you, 5G certainly should be).
Yes, I know Facebook fancies itself to be all things to all people and has incorporated a lot of functionality that has been around for ages in other systems. I personally wouldn't use the word "innovative" to describe that process.
The only thing on your list that possibly could have been innovative at the time Facebook adopted it is the 360-degree video, and that certainly doesn't appear to me to be the case. About 30 seconds of searching confirmed that YouTube introduced 360-degree video support in March 2015 while Facebook didn't introduce it until September 2015. So yeah, it appears it actually was Google.
The talk these days is about suicide prevention.
So basically trying to figure out how to dial back the behavior you prompted in the first place. I guess that could be considered "innovative" -- but if so, then so would just nuking social media and letting humans get back to being human.
Face recognition seems like a cool thing to do from an average user point of view. Fake news is supposedly fixed or reduced now. Shadow profiles and user tracking may rival some three letter agencies.
Sorry, when I read "do X or you won't see innovation again" I parsed "innovation" as something I might really want and/or need.
Alphabet innovation these days include many changes in YouTube: not paying out to copyright holders, messing with the kids, and infuriating content creators and advertisers at the same time.
I think you may have forgotten a few minor things like providing Internet access to poor/devastated regions, building hyper-efficient wind power generators, and other work of the Moonshot Factory.
I don't disagree that your scenario still raises privacy concerns, but I think that situation is a much closer question than Carpenter. Even if there are discrete VHS tapes changed every 6 hours behind every one of those cameras such that people would have to sit and watch thousands of tapes to see if I happened to pass by one of those camera, I still know (or should have known) that the government was collecting all that data and they would be able to know anything that happened on those cameras if they worked hard enough. The fact that in Carpenter the private entity is the one collecting the data (and for a benign purpose that has nothing to do with surveillance) and the government is silently co-opting that data for surveillance purposes, is what I think really differentiates it.
Today we laugh at Microsoft.
"We" apparently being the small percentage of consumers and businesses who don't continue to belly up to the bar and buy whatever MSFT's next rendition of reality happens to be.
But Facebook? Innovation? Really?
Is it private information if you walk around shouting your name wherever you go?
"Shouting" doesn't seem like a very apt analogy for a private control message between cell phone and network generated by simply walking around with one's cell phone on. The question is whether those messages were sufficiently public to defeat the cell phone user's legitimate expectation of privacy against a warrantless communication of those messages to the government. The fact that this case has reached the Supreme Court is evidence enough this isn't a simple question.
Or showing your face?
Not literally, no, but that seems like another inapt analogy. That seems more like the government putting cameras on every street corner, which they're certainly entitled to do (and people on notice of that are entitled to adjust their behavior accordingly). This is essentially a post-hoc, high-level query of a private database about where your face has been.
the change that is guaranteed to reduce competition
Citation needed, don'tcha think? This libertarian think tank says exactly the opposite.
And Bob.
'Nuff said.
So to be clear you'll take another job that pays you 3% of your job?
I'll be happy to answer that after you spell out the chain of logic (cough) leading from anything I actually said to your above conclusion. I'll not hold my breath.
Well now you're assuming that people are not dissatisfied now and don't have an incentive now? That's are rather major hole in your logic.
You really need to try to focus on my original point rather than whatever sort of caricature you're trying to twist my point into. Right now, all ISPs are basically providing the same service in the same general price band. As a simple economic matter, that tends to favor the incumbent that has already built out infrastructure. If (and this is where you really need to try to focus) at some point in the future conditions change (like rabid NetNeut proponents are convinced will happen) and other providers are able to sufficiently differentiate on either price or content to make them think they'll be able to pull over a large enough chunk of that customer base, they'll expand their own infrastructure and do just that.
Two bottom-line points I'll leave you with: (1) market forces still exist even if you personally don't believe in them; and (2) excessive governmental regulation is what gave the incumbents so much of a head start and have prevented market forces from working as smoothly and quickly in this space as they otherwise might. Yet more regulation would take us in precisely the wrong direction.
What part of 3% is hard to understand?
What part of "if... then" is hard to understand?
Also did you not understand that is is 90210. These people could afford more expensive internet if they wanted.
Perfect -- then in the highly unlikely event that any of these doomsday scenarios come to pass and the beautiful people become dissatisfied with the incumbent ISPs, that willingness to pay will provide plenty of incentive for others to come in and fill the void.
Well, prior to all this, when Comcast was subjecting users to 250GB limits, they decided that if you used the Comcast video on demand service to stream your shows, it didn't count against your 250GB allotment.
I believe AT&T did the same a little earlier as well.
You mean a provider's LAN costs less per unit of data at a given speed than its WAN, and they're able to pass on that savings to customers? Knock me over with a feather. Clearly that sort of oppression must be stopped so everyone can pay full price for every bit that enters their home.
because what's the point of "network management' if you're just going to make it so someone on a 1GB plan or less can stream Netflix 24/7, while someone who does YouTube needs to pay up?
If NetFlix colocates a server on the ISP's LAN, then yes, Virginia -- that's a completely different value proposition for them than having to budget and pay for external bandwidth. I take it you'd prefer regulation that prevents companies from coming up with creative ways to provide people what they want (NetFlix being about 2/3 of Internet traffic last time I checked) at a lower cost?
And in any event, what has any of this to do with OP's original claim of an extra cost to access a given site at all?
I think you're under the assumption that there are providers nearby.
Um, I'm under no assumption at all. Seems to me you're the very same UnknowingFool I replied to who said "There are 4 broadband providers but 2 of them only service 3% of the area." You're apparently now just splitting hairs on what you consider "nearby" to be (apparently it's somehow different than in "the area").
Portuguese ISPs are already charging people extra each month on top of their base rate [boingboing.net] if those customers want unfettered access to popular sites. It was even reported here [slashdot.org] just a few weeks ago.
And that misreported/deliberately skewed nonsense was soundly debunked in the comments to that very article, as well as in the comments to the original Twitter post linked in the article. That Portuguese model doesn't block the sites at issue at all, but simply allows you to pay extra to exempt certain services from your account's bandwidth cap. That has jack to do with outright blocking access to sites sans an extra charge (as OP posited) or even treating different traffic differently on their network -- it's just a different way for you to effectively upgrade the limits on your data plan for the services you use most.
The only reason someone with an account at Slashdot, such as yourself, wouldn't be aware of these sorts of examples is if you're intentionally burying your head in the sand.
I'm painfully aware, but it's not an actual example for the above reasons (completely apart from the fact that it's not in the U.S. and thus has nothing to do with thus current brouhaha). Hopefully you didn't just rely on the headline without looking into it at least a bit. That's a dangerous game to play on Slashdot these days, as I'm sure you know.
Now, if you're asking for a US-specific example, you won't find them
Yup.
Originally, net neutrality was enforced because dial-up and DSL ISPs—which are classified as common carriers, meaning that they have to treat all data equally—were how we connected to the Internet.
Having lived through the days of Compuserve, AOL, and the like, I really don't think the implications of what you describe were the same as what NetNeut proponents now want. ISPs certainly had to send all data down the pipe between them and me (the LAN, if you will) with no discrimination. But that has nothing to do with the rate at which the ISP exchanges packets with the outside world (the WAN, continuing my analogy). ISPs with their own ecosystems like AOL certainly served up their own swill at faster rates than they did Internet traffic. I don't see that as qualitatively different than any of the supposed oppressive behavior I see people bitching about today.
Like many Americans, all we have limited broadband options. It isn't also about money. For example, broadband availability for 90210 [broadbandnow.com] shows 1 viable cable and 1 DSL provider (Time Warner Spectrum and AT&T) for most of the zip code. There are 4 broadband providers but 2 of them only service 3% of the area. There are 2 satellite services. There is no fiber option. I would say that 90210 is a pretty affluent zip code. And yet they can't get more than 2 choices.
If the incumbent ISPs really do end up jacking rates for full internet access like all the Chicken Littles fear, that price differential will create a market incentive for one of the nearby providers to come in to your neighborhood and poach the hell out of the disaffected customer base. This seems pretty basic.
Only $5.99 to access this site?
I've been asking for a good while for an actual example of this, but thus far nobody has been able to provide one. Can you?
I don't think anyone is claiming that the *only* problem is that they don't base their policies on the popular vote of submitted comments. But as the passage you cited suggests, that is *part* of it.
I read that part of the passage as referring to the content of the comments, not the volume (and relevant, substantive content at that -- not stuff that reduces down to "the future of our democracy hangs on my ability to receive unlimited NetFlix for a low fixed price"). That's consistent with what I've read about the process elsewhere. But please let me know if you know of something that clearly states otherwise.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the sheer volume of comments on either side of an issue is irrelevant to the U.S. administrative rulemaking process. That being the case, the "Rooshun interference" meme sorta loses its bite here.
But to the extent you feel otherwise, comments from Russia were actually pro Net Neutrality:
Brian Hart, an FCC spokesman, said the agency lacks the resources to investigate every comment. Supporters of the net neutrality rules are not blameless either, he added, pointing to 7.5 million comments filed in favor of the regulations that appeared to come from 45,000 distinct email addresses, "all generated by a single fake e-mail generator website." Some 400,000 comments backing the rules, he said, appeared to originate from a mailing address based in Russia.
"The most suspicious activity has been by those supporting Internet regulation," said Hart.
A description of the process from the Federal Register :
The notice-and-comment process enables anyone to submit a comment on any part of the proposed rule. This process is not like a ballot initiative or an up-or-down vote in a legislature. An agency is not permitted to base its final rule on the number of comments in support of the rule over those in opposition to it. At the end of the process, the agency must base its reasoning and conclusions on the rulemaking record, consisting of the comments, scientific data, expert opinions, and facts accumulated during the prerule and proposed rule stages.
So whoever thought that flooding the site with automated comments could tip the balance either way (and there were millions
on both sides of the issue) was just flat wrong.
As is everyone on here moaning that this is a harbinger of the fall of democracy in the USA.
It's been crystal-clear from the beginning that once you strip away all the sanctimonious pontificating and Chicken Little scenarios from the NetNeut debate, you're basically left with "I wantz my unlimited N3tFlix."
Thanks for being frank about it.