FCC To Reintroduce Rules Protecting Net Neutrality (gizmodo.com) 80
New submitter AsylumWraith shares a report: The US government aims to restore sweeping regulations for high-speed internet providers, such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, reviving "net neutrality" rules for the broadband industry -- and an ongoing debate about the internet's future. The proposed rules from the Federal Communications Commission will designate internet service -- both the wired kind found in homes and businesses as well as mobile data on cellphones -- as "essential telecommunications" akin to traditional telephone services, according to multiple people familiar with the plan. The rules would ban internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking or slowing down access to websites and online content, the people told CNN.
Agency chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel plans to unveil the proposal in a speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday, the people added, saying the FCC plans to vote Oct. 19 on whether to advance the draft rules by soliciting public feedback on them -- a step that would precede the creation of any final rules. In addition to the prohibitions on blocking and throttling internet traffic, the draft rules also seek to prevent ISPs from selectively speeding up service to favored websites or to those that agree to pay extra fees, the people added, a move designed to prevent the emergence of "fast lanes" on the web that could give some websites a paid advantage over others.
Agency chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel plans to unveil the proposal in a speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday, the people added, saying the FCC plans to vote Oct. 19 on whether to advance the draft rules by soliciting public feedback on them -- a step that would precede the creation of any final rules. In addition to the prohibitions on blocking and throttling internet traffic, the draft rules also seek to prevent ISPs from selectively speeding up service to favored websites or to those that agree to pay extra fees, the people added, a move designed to prevent the emergence of "fast lanes" on the web that could give some websites a paid advantage over others.
Great (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC should instead focus on increasing competition by mimicking Japan... create a regulated entity that handles the last mile fiber and allows a multitude of ISPs to leverage the FTTP. If one of them decides to throttle or blackhole Netflix, who cares if you have 8 other choices... and with 8 other choices the bad actor likely realizes dumb moves will kill their business.
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
create a regulated entity that handles the last mile fiber and allows a multitude of ISPs to leverage the FTTP
Classifying the ISPs as telecommunications services is the first step in doing this, or something like it. Regulated line sharing was included in the telecommunications act of 1996, but it applies only to telecommunications services.
with some dropping cable tv 100% it may be easier (Score:2)
with some dropping cable tv 100% it may be easier for that to happen
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
Any skilled network operator who actually wanted to throttle traffic can skirt the regulations (at least as they were written last time around). These also do nothing to prevent data caps which are the biggest pain in the ass for some cable customers.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. You'll probably still get modded down, because NN has become one of those buzzwords that is automatically assumed to be good, despite the fact that there's very little evidence any wireline ISP engaged in any of the behavior it proscribed. There is ample evidence they're using the last mile mono(duo)poly to harm consumers in very quantifiable ways, like data caps, and year after year price hikes that handily exceed the rate of inflation. The only violation of NN I've seen is on the wireless side, cellular carriers charging more for HD video and the like, and they have been excluded from every NN rule to date. Whether they should be or not is a different discussion, I could accept the argument they have different contention ratios and need to more aggressively shape traffic than a wireline provider, but they shouldn't be allowed to then use it as a source of additional revenue. Pay us more money and we'll remove the restrictions we put in place.
I used to roll my eyes at the notion data caps were a problem, annoying yes, but a real problem? Didn't seem like they were. Then I fell in love with a media obsessed partner who consumes frankly insane (to me) amounts of streaming entertainment. Our household regularly blows past the 1.25TB cap that most cablecos impose. We are privileged, we have access to a FTTH provider who doesn't implement caps, but Comcast (the MSO here) still does and there are plenty of spots around here not reached by the FTTH provider.
create a regulated entity that handles the last mile fiber and allows a multitude of ISPs to leverage the FTTP
That would be my preferred solution to the problem. Treat the physical infrastructure like the road, the Government owns it, and any idiot with a delivery truck (UPS, USPS, Amazon, FedEx, your crazy Uncle....) can use it. In the alternative, I'd accept a regulated monopoly like we have for electricity. The absolute worst is pretending it's a "free market" that's somehow sacrosanct from regulation. It's not a free market, your market wouldn't exist if it wasn't for regulation, specifically, the utility right of way. If the industry wants a totally free market I want a rent check for their lines that cross my property.
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Considering that nobody ever brings any of that evidence up when they're arguing how vital NN is, I was under the impression that none of those Bad Things has ever happened, and they'e just horrible possibilities being used as boogymen to scare people into demanding NN. I'd really appreciate it if somebody would give me a few examples, with citations.
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FEELINGS of OPPRESSION
Filed under "We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this."
On a list of Top 100 things I'm concerned about, Internet Data Speeds / Throttling is 100+x where x = positive integer.
And the whole chicken little scare mongering associated with the repeal never showed.
lastly, starlink may actually impact competition in ways unfathomable a few short years ago.
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Batman "let her go"
Joker "Poor Choice of words"
Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)
they'e just horrible possibilities being used as boogymen to scare people into demanding NN
The origin of the NN movement in the United States was the then CEO of AT&T opening his mouth and inserting foot, saying Google needed to pay him for the use of "his" pipes. It never got off the drawing board though, it was just idle conversation on an earnings call if memory serves. The Internet has always operated on a "sender pays" model, where peering arrangements are concerned, so it was a whole bunch of people on both "sides" of the debate not understanding what was already going on, IMHO.
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Take a look around.
Our internet speeds are shitty, and we pay more for them, than in most other places, even in places where we have the same density or better than in those cheaper, faster, better places? Sarcasm: Clearly that would happen in a place with competition and where the pipe-owners have no leverage... right?
That lack of NN over the past years really made things cheaper and better, didnit?
Nope. Not even close.
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Considering that nobody ever brings any of that evidence up when they're arguing how vital NN is, I was under the impression that none of those Bad Things has ever happened, and they'e just horrible possibilities being used as boogymen to scare people into demanding NN. I'd really appreciate it if somebody would give me a few examples, with citations.
Actually, it did happen.This is one instance.
https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]
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That's wireless homie. You might parse my comment before you rush to click "reply", if you had, you'd have noted, with my added emphasis: "The only violation of NN I've seen is on the wireless side, cellular carriers charging more for HD video and the like, and they have been excluded from every NN rule to date."
If these rules actually include wireless I'll get behind them in a New York Minute. If they don't -- and I highly doubt they will -- they're bullshit, a press release masquerading as governance t
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"Rush to reply" wasn't addressed to you, it was addressed to this guy [slashdot.org], who had the parent [slashdot.org] to my my comment [slashdot.org] that you replied [slashdot.org] to.
Just assuming you're browsing this thread at a high enough level that Slashdot collapsed the threading?
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I should also point out that what Verizon is doing is a violation of the Block C rules [cornell.edu] they agreed to in exchange for the nationwide 700MHz license that is foundational for their network. Why should I get excited about NN when the FCC isn't enforcing the rules already on the books? They could enforce this today, right now, without going through a year of rule making and the inevitable legal challenges. Why aren't they?
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The FCC which killed NN wasn't exactly in favor of enforcing rules for the public's good.
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https://www.freepress.net/blog... [freepress.net] it's old now but still has examples
NN is one of those things we assume is good (Score:2)
As for getting around it, that's what lawsuits and the EFF are for. Skirting it isn't worth i
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I don't dispute that the CONCEPT of NN is good. I simply dispute that there's an example of a wireline ISP breaking it. It has been dead for years now, most Americans have a "choice" of exactly one wireline Internet provider, and there are zero examples that I'm aware of where it has been a problem. The real issue, which you ignore, is what that last mile monopoly has done to pricing. I could include caps in that too but caps are ultimately just a way to raise prices without saying we're raising prices.
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Well, here's an old article that starts out with,
And goes on to list some of the problems. https://www.freepress.net/blog... [freepress.net]
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Any skilled network operator who actually wanted to throttle traffic can skirt the regulations
No, that would be illegal. That's the point of it. If there are loopholes, they can be fixed.
The FCC should instead focus on increasing competition by mimicking Japan
That sounds like a conservative fantasy TBH. We know there just isn't competition in that space, partially because new operators just get gobbled up by the big players. Even with the last mile run by the government, the same thing would happen or there would be Comcast at $30/month that has the throttled sites vs HackerISP at $150/m that allows all sites.
It's a complicated issue and we can't trust the large actor
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
We know there just isn't competition in that space
Most of my friends in the EU have three to five ISPs to choose from. They pay 1/3 of what I do for the same speed. Competition actually works, it's not a "conservative fantasy", and it's rather ironic to me that the countries our conservatives deride as socialist hellholes do capitalism better than we do. Capitalism doesn't work without competition.
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire post is a red herring boss. I've lived in major metropolitan areas where you only have ONE provider to choose from. My current metro, in a very blue state, more than half of it only has access to ONE provider. I'm privileged enough to have the disposable cash to take my Internet options into account when choosing where to lay my hat. Most people can't do that. Many people are also ignorant to their options, I've lived in MDUs where there's a FTTH option but Comcast still has >50% of the business (based on "on air" SSIDs) despite way worse terms, prices, data caps, etc.
You also surely realize that even though the US has more square mileage than European countries, the vast majority of its population lives in urban and suburban areas, just as in the EU. Don't use your proverbial farmer in the middle of nowhere as an excuse for why our Internet options suck.
Re: Great (Score:2)
The obvious answer is for government entities to own the lines and for ISPs to provide service over those lines.
We used to see the value in fostering competition. Now we just let kickbacks rule.
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We know there just isn't competition in that space
Most of my friends in the EU have three to five ISPs to choose from. They pay 1/3 of what I do for the same speed. Competition actually works, it's not a "conservative fantasy", and it's rather ironic to me that the countries our conservatives deride as socialist hellholes do capitalism better than we do. Capitalism doesn't work without competition.
In a pure capitalism, there will be only one ISP, one store, one car company, one employer... The only difference is under Communism, you don't have to pay for it (in both scenarios, you still don't get much for your labour). Capitalism naturally lends itself towards monopoly (one can argue that communism is monopsony). The point is, successful economies are mixed economies, neither capitalist or socialist in entirety. Even the most "socialist", and I am using that word very sarcastically, of the Nordic nat
Skirting the regulations is fine (Score:2)
What the hell happened that the
As
Re:Skirting the regulations is fine (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why we can't have nice things. We spend all of our political capital attacking the wrong problems. You realize in the time it's going to take to implement this rule the FCC could be doing countless other things to attack actual rather than paper problems? You also realize if Biden loses reelection, which is highly probable if the Republicans nominate anyone other than the Orange Asshat, the rules will be imposed just late enough to come under the Congressional Review Act. That means they can be killed for good (no do-overs) with a simple majority vote in Congress and POTUS' signature. That's how privacy regulations got killed. They were so important the Obama Administration waited until the eleventh hour to implement them, then Congress/Trump reversed them almost immediately. Obama's FCC had eight years to get it done and waited until literally just late enough to allow a GOP trifecta to kill them for good.
I repeat, this is a press release masquerading as governance and y'all are falling for it hook, line, and sinker. If this was actually important to the people in power they'd be pushing to treat ISPs as the regulated natural monopoly utility they ought to be. If it was actually important it wouldn't have taken three years to get an FCC majority. Don't blame Republicans for that, executive branch appointments can't be filibustered, it was Biden that waited until 2021 to nominate the fifth/tie-breaking commissioner, and a Senate Democratic Majority that failed to move that person to a floor vote.
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Network neutrality isn't just about throttling. It includes preventing ISPs from:
Today, people take neutrality for granted. The only reason we have a most neutral internet is because every 4 to 8 years, the democrats bring it up. Last time they were starting to roll out non-neutral policies, the Obama administration started pushing for NN, and the ISPs backed-down. Everything in that list above are policies that were in effect at some point.
Bigger picture -- some of us used the non-neutral "internet." It was called "Prodigy" and "Compuserve" and if you wanted content put on that network, you had to go through the gatekeepers. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Don't dismiss the need for neutrality regulations just because, at this particular instant, you aren't experiencing a major neutrality problem.
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NN didn't proscribe a single one of the things you list. You're a man after my heart calling out NXDOMAIN hijacking. Now show me the part of the rules, past or proposed, that proscribe it. I couldn't get the FCC to respond my complaint about T-Mobile doing it back in the day and T-Mobile's implementation was particularly egregious. There was no opt out mechanism, your "opt out" was a browser cookie that gave you a fake error page, the DNS results were still hijacked and broke every non-browser applicati
Let's not forget about the privacy rules (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, since we lost privacy due to an act of congress the FCC can't give it back to us. Only congress can do that.
While I agree with you there (Score:2)
As for privacy, there's a major election coming up and that means primary elections. As in, you pick the candidates. There's been good, solid proconsumer candidates in every primary I've voted in going on 10 years now, but they keep losing to at best the right of center and at worse corporate tools.
Show up for your primary. Barely anyone does so you have many, many ti
I'm pleased, but with reservations (Score:2)
Earlier in my life I would have done a happy dance in response to the news. But in the meantime I've come to appreciate that some internet traffic really is more important than other traffic, and some of it may be "life or death" more important.
I can see it being really difficult, and perhaps impossible, to implement appropriate differential bandwidth limiting while simultaneously preventing traffic shaping whose sole purpose is to maximize profit. So while I applaud the FCC trying to right some wrongs and
Lawful Traffic (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm almost always against network neutrality rules, because in all the language I've seen it says something like:
"All lawful traffic shall not be throttled or delayed."
So, how does the ISP know what is "lawful traffic?" I guess the ISP will have to snoop on everything you do to make sure it's lawful traffic now. I mean, they *could* do that currently, but they'll be forced to do it via this law now.
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You can’t figure out an example of unlawful traffic? DDoS attacks.
Throttling (Score:3)
It's not up to a consumer-facing ISP to mitigate DDoS attacks.
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It absolutely fucking is boss. That's part of being a good netizen. Ditto implementing BCP 38, blocking port 25, and having an abuse address that's actually monitored by empowered network admins who can do more than nothing when you submit proof of abuse originating from their network.
You might also consider that the last mile on every provider -- even fiber ones -- is shared so there's plenty of selfish motivation to keep DDoS attacks off your network too, unless you're cool with dozens to hundreds of
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and having an abuse address that's actually monitored by empowered network admins who can do more than nothing when you submit proof of abuse originating from their network.
My original post stands. How does a consumer facing ISP know what lawful internet traffic is? A savvy attacker spreads the traffic around to thousands of compromised machines. A user's PC sending a couple of dozen HTTP requests a second doesn't look like anything. A few hundred/sec isn't out of the question if they are using a noisy web app or online game.
My second post was poorly worded. They should absolutely mitigate if prompted upstream. They shouldn't be forced to figure out what constitutes a DDoS fro
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Since you're making this more difficult than need be, let's play a game. You name some internet traffic and I'll tell you if it's lawful.
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Are Comcast, Spectrum, Cox, CenturyLink, ATT and Verizon not considered Tier 1 at this point? I think where we sit today that distinction is very blurry.
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About half of them are but for consumers it's a distinction without a difference. Your ISP being a Tier 2 network hardly matters in the era of CDNs. AT&T is a Tier 1 and for the longest time had subpar performance on YouTube because of lousy peering arrangements (some tinfoil hats assumed it was deliberate) with Google. The bulk of your traffic these days is with CDNs that very likely peer directly with your ISP. Even if your ISP is tiny it can get direct peering arrangements with the big boys. Som
Re:Lawful Traffic (Score:5, Insightful)
Any traffic is lawful unless proven otherwise.
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A radiologist should be able to pay for priority access for a Stat MRI - over cat videos - on a small town ISP.
The Feds making this illegal is a sure sign of failed policy reasoning.
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He can, they can buy a business line with an SLA and appropriate bandwidth.
It's not the radiologists problem my cat video is overloading our ISP because they oversold their pipes.
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This comes off as an asshole answer. Maybe it is just harsh. It's also completely correct. Business accounts, and dedicated circuits have guarantees in the contract. Failure to deliver can be very costly to the ISP. This goes around the NN rules because the problem and the solution are located at the ISP. The ISP charges more to offset the rigidity of the customer's service requirement(s).
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You just admitted to a loophole large enough to sail an aircraft carrier through. NN is meaningless so long as residential service is "best effort"
Fun fact, it has ALWAYS been best effort.
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Net neutrality means that "any radiologist should be able to buy a higher tier for priority access" Instead of only one radiologist who is friends with the ISP's owner.
Pay attention (Score:5, Insightful)
The Biden administration is appealing a court order that prevents them from lobbying social media sites to block content. The trial court judge said:
If you have a brain, you should be asking yourself serious questions about why they would be taking both sides of the same issue. At a bare minimum, you must read deeper than the label "Network Neutrality". Since this is September, I'll use the PATRIOT Act as an example. The name used to sell you an expansion of government power rarely has anything to do with the content of the bill or rule.
Re:Pay attention (Score:4, Insightful)
The Biden administration is appealing a court order that prevents them from lobbying social media sites to block content. The trial court judge said:
and why shouldn't they be able to lobby for that?
Free speech and all that, right? The government gets to communicate too.
They shouldn't be allowed to *threaten* a company to remove content, or otherwise force them to.....but sending a note to a social media company saying "hey, here's some concerns we have w/ this content, we'd appreciate it if you'd consider removing it because it is wrong/harmful/etc" doesn't cross that line in my book.
Calling it "the most massive attack against free speech in united states history" is just straight up bullshit.
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The Biden administration is appealing a court order that prevents them from lobbying social media sites to block content. The trial court judge said:
and why shouldn't they be able to lobby for that?
Free speech and all that, right? The government gets to communicate too.
They shouldn't be allowed to *threaten* a company to remove content, or otherwise force them to.....but sending a note to a social media company saying "hey, here's some concerns we have w/ this content, we'd appreciate it if you'd consider removing it because it is wrong/harmful/etc" doesn't cross that line in my book.
Calling it "the most massive attack against free speech in united states history" is just straight up bullshit.
Sadly the US Government does not know how to behave in idyllic and puritanical way that you suggest.
US Government would rather kick down anybody's door they want and not bother to ask or answer any questions later about that bash-in.
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Except in the case you are describing they didn't kick down anything, Twitter saw their request and effectively ignored all of it, as is their right.
I happen to have one of those things (Score:2, Insightful)
Net Neutrality is the principle that owners of the pipe can't favor one packet over another for any reason. They're in a massive position of power so giving them that power would allow them to turn the Internet into cable TV, stifling any view points.
Joe Biden isn't "lobbying" anyone or anything. He asked for clear lies and misinformation that have a significant public health impact (read: anti-vax lies,
Re:I happen to have one of those things (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what the Supreme Court had to say about that:
Thomas v. Collins, [323 U.S. 516, 323 U. S. 545 (1945)] [justia.com] (Jackson, J., concurring); as quoted in Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 419â"20 (1988) [justia.com]
We're not talking about the law (Score:1)
Re:I happen to have one of those things (Score:4, Interesting)
As the president he has a legitimate reason to make these requests, and they are *requests*.
If you can't see the difference between a "request" from POTUS and a "request" from Joe Q. Public than I suppose there's no difference between being on the receiving end of a harassing @realdonaldtrump tweet from 2017 to 2021 and one from @joeqpublic. One of those two has a follower count in the nine digits and the ability to command the IRS to audit you, DOJ to investigate you, etc.
Gods man, the only thing worse than disinformation is the Government appointing itself the arbiter of what disinformation is. The best way to counter bad speech is with good speech, not censorship.
John q public would probably have more power here (Score:2)
At least as long as it was a Democrat president. Democrats won't wield power. So they wouldn't use their office to enact punishments. There are those on the Democratic party's side they're a little miffed about that because the Democrats are still unwilling to wield power.
You might have a point with a Republican as they have shown themselves willing to wield power ruthlessly for w
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> Because the president of the United States would get slapped down if they did anything more than make modest suggestions.
The Bill of Rights is clear. Government just cannot even make "modest suggestions" about what is and isn't allowable speech.
You're basically siding with the mafia don modestly suggesting the nice business owner pays his protection money.
Stop it. Stop being a Government shill just because your current preferred party is in power. When the shoe is on the other foot, all those new ru
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BTW which lies and misinformation about vaccines:
That vaccinated people are still "likely to get sick"?
That covid-19 possibly came from a lab leak in china?
Tha
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I live in a country with net neutrality, spam is filtered, by my ISP until recently when they farmed email out to Google. Schools are users and can block what they want, even my library blocks a lot of stuff even whole protocols such as FTP.
My ISP did get in shit for blocking their unions web site, along with a few hundred others that were hosted on the same server. They also got shit for throttling all VOIP traffic except their own.
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> Sad day to see this claptrap modded up here on a pro-science forum..
What's sad is on a pro-freedom forum, you'd get claptraps like you who want to censor anyone that opposes your worldview that you've deemed "The Science" and "Our Democracy" thus shielding it from questionning, making it not science and not democracy.
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most massive attack against free speech in United States' history.
Can someone help me with what the previous one was? I'm lacking context here. Sounds wild-eyed. The MOST! Evah! Nah, that's BS. Because it's not reasonable.
Even an order by the President should be refused if it makes rules against freedom of speech. The President didn't, it was a suggestion. And they did, legally so, refuse.
I personally think this comes from a place where in that you want to be able to say "Look they did it. So now we are justified also." But they didn't do it. Even if it was ordered by the
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The size ands scope of this one is breathtaking. It is literally orders of magnitude larger than anything before. The attempt to censor The Progressive in 1979 had once been seen as a very big deal, but it is a gnat's tear compared to a hurricane now.
By the way, if you are averse to looking ignorant, this case is one where you should really read the source documents, and not just the spin put forth by your team. The facts alleged in the complaint are chilling, and for the most part undisputed. The case
There is no both sides (Score:2)
Holy Christ, this thread is overwhelmed by either astroturfers or lunatics. Anti-vaxx anti-net neutrality on
The only good thing is your side is losing. The kids (Gen M&Z) aren't buying your crap. They know what NN is and they know they don't want the internet turned into cable TV. And they know they want public health inititives.
Future TFS (Score:2)
If the history of Net Neutrality in the US has taught us anything, this won't last without Congress getting involved.
Future Headline (Score:2)
Needs metering rules like the power meter (Score:2)
as some ISP have caps with overages and if they want to bill as an meter service then they need to be able to provide an meter that can read at your home and does the metering at your home.
Also that meter needs to pass an state test just like the power meter, the gas meter, the water meter, etc.
And then there is the issue of metering over head data and network control traffic. But at the very least they should not be able to bill for data they tried to send to you but did not make it do to stuff like, power
need to ban Cable TV like blackouts & ESPN did (Score:2)
need to ban Cable TV like blackouts and ESPN did do this in the past.
In the past this cable system has having an fight with disney / espn so all users on that cable ISP system where blocked from ESPN 3 / ESPN360 even if they had say and directv login with an fully paid TV sub.
Some other ISP forced you to buy cable tv sub to get access to as well in the past.
Now we may see the same BS happen with them trying to bully ISP's into forcing say disney+ and others into to all internet plans.
so now you have interne
also need to ban NFL SUNDAY TICKET like exclusives (Score:2)
also need to ban NFL SUNDAY TICKET like exclusives so you can't have services that you must say buy starlink ISP service to have access to.