Legislation Would Prohibit ISPs From Throttling Online Video Services 222
Dega704 sends this story from Ars:
"A Senate bill called the 'Consumer Choice in Online Video Act' (PDF) takes aim at many of the tactics Internet service providers can use to overcharge customers and degrade the quality of rival online video services. Submitted yesterday by U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the 63-page bill provides a comprehensive look at the potential ways in which ISPs can limit consumer choice, and it boots the Federal Communications Commission's power to prevent bad outcomes. 'It shall be unlawful for a designated Internet service provider to engage in unfair methods of competition or unfair or deceptive acts or practices, the purpose or effect of which are to hinder significantly or to prevent an online video distributor from providing video programming to a consumer,' the bill states. A little more specifically, it would be illegal to 'block, degrade, or otherwise impair any content provided by an online video distributor' or 'provide benefits in the transmission of the video content of any company affiliated with the Internet service provider through specialized services or other means.' Those provisions overlap a bit with the FCC's authority under its own net neutrality law, the Open Internet Order, which already prevents the blockage of websites and services. However, Verizon is in court attempting to kill that law, and there is a real possibility that it could be limited in some way. The Consumer Choice in Online Video Act could provide a hedge against that possible outcome."
Video only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Should be illegal to 'block, degrade, or otherwise impair ANY content'
Why just video? (Score:5, Insightful)
I also don't want Verizon intentionally de-prioritizing my Vonage VoIP traffic, for example. Or a cable company that's tied to CNN.com making MSNBC.com's images load slower to make the site seem less appealing to read from.
What we need is a very stiff, broader law that says, in a nutshell: ISPs provide bandwidth, period. In selling Internet Access, you're not allowed to block, degrade, or de-prioritize select traffic based on the type or source of said traffic. You're not allowed to effect the same by over-prioritizing preferred sources or types of traffic. Legitimate QoS for the purposes of improving overall customer experience is ok, but the QoS rules have to be (a) publicly details to your consumers, and (b) optional, with a zero-cost option to disable the QoS-prioritization of a given customer's in- or out- bound traffic.
Re:Video only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. That was the point behind net neutrality as a principle.
Re:Whose networks are those? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they belong to The People[TM], or to the Internet Service Providers competing with each other?
False dichotomy. They belong to internet service providers who don't compete with anyone, and who openly argue that they shouldn't allow other companies' services (eg Hulu, Netflix, and Vonage) to compete with their services (Cable TV and/or Telephone).
Of course, the bill won't do a thing for Vonage, but it's a start, and maybe when I stream a 1 minute 1080p video from youtube without having it take 5 minutes to buffer on UVerse and the world doesn't end? People might think "hey maybe there's something to this".
Re:Why just video? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons I dropped Comcast. As soon as an alternative was an option, I switched. Dropped my price about $10 per month (beyone the promotoion rate) and increased by BW by 3X. Now Comcast wants me back offering "faster than DSL" Xfinity brand service.
I tell them every time that they blew their chance at retention. The answer is good competition. Market forces will kill companies that provide poor service. This does not work where there is a monopoly market.
Now a 3rd option is in my area. Haven't noticed any throtteling on Netflix or Youtube. Even a test torrent worked just fine. Until Quest screws up, I'll stick around. I even have 3 VOIP lines with other providers that show no sign of throtteling. 2 lines are on an ATA (Linksys PAP2T-NA) and the third is a softphone Google Talk/Voice.
Always avoid the companies with a media divison to protect. Remember the Sony Diskman. Too DRM Serial copy protected to be of any real studio use. Hard disk recorders and Digital Audio Workstations simply took the market. Cable companies will find a void they created will be filled by the competition.
Verizon does have something to fear. There may be lawsuits when upstream congestion causes 3rd party content to be delivered slower than their own content not due to throtteling on their part. This law can only cause them headaches even if they don't throttle.
Re:Reasonable throttling (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what usage based billing is for. If some users download huge amounts and that costs them money, charge the individual users for that bandwidth.
I thought the 'common carrier' status meant they were required to send everything without preference. Because since if they lost their common carrier status, they'd be responsible for things like child porn.
As usual, these companies are asking for all of the protections of being a common carrier without any of the responsibilities and obligations.
However, throttling the service of someone else (like Netflix) because your customers are using that service (and so they can push you to using their competing service) is a pretty one-sided outcome for the ISPs.
Re:Whose networks are those? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you talking about the parts that are run on public and private property (not owned by the isp), Because if that's the way you want to play. I am ripping every cable down that is not on THEIR property.
You see they were granted easements in return for providing us a service. When they start limiting that service they should lose their right of way and then they won't have a network anymore.
Re:Video only? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd be fine with it remaining legal as long as ISPs were required to put it in flashing text at the beginning of their agreements: Warning! We deliberately degrade services that do not pay us extra.
Freedom is about making decisions with knowledge, not about scam behavior where the person is hoping you miss some detail of boilerplate, where their business model, if honestly written down, goes something like, "...and here we hide the scam mechanism, hoping the consumer relies on it, because if they notice it, statistically most will balk."
Re:Video only? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be fine with it remaining legal as long as ISPs were required to put it in flashing text at the beginning of their agreements: Warning! We deliberately degrade services that do not pay us extra.
Freedom is about making decisions with knowledge, not about scam behavior where the person is hoping you miss some detail of boilerplate, where their business model, if honestly written down, goes something like, "...and here we hide the scam mechanism, hoping the consumer relies on it, because if they notice it, statistically most will balk."
Yeah, yeah, competition is great except how choices do you have for your ISP in any given area?
Re:Wait.. (Score:4, Insightful)
And given how many copyright violations occur via torrents (percentage-wise), not sure the protocol deserves very many legal protections at this point in time.
Now there's an attitude that deserves no respect... like copyright itself. I don't want anybody deciding what protocols I can transmit/receive. I only want a pipe. That's what the ISPs should provide. Throttling is a form of censorship.