Unfortunately the Net Neutrality 'debate' was another lose-lose situation for the United States. What we wanted wasn't for the big telecom duopoly to be forced to either run their business as a tiered service or as a regulated utility. What we wanted was for the US Government to exercise its Anti-Trust capabilities and bust the universally hated Comcast and Time Warner into a bunch of small companies, and set "Goldilocks" regulation so that it's easy for small and new ISPs to compete on both price and service. Additional laws preventing corporations from discriminating by content, protocol, or customer may also have been nice, but would have been that extra nice something.
Are Comcast and Time Warner going to be somehow less shitty now? Are they going to monitor our communications less? Are they going to provide better prices and better customer service? Are they going to cease fraudulently charging customers? No.
Of the two options the FCC chose the better one. But it's America's fatal flaw that all problems have two political solutions, neither of which address real issues or people's needs.
It's not the job of the government to make companies less shitty, it's their job to protect the free market so OTHER companies can reduce the shittiness of e.g. comcast. This is just the first step.
I'd also like to point out that splitting up Ma Bell hardly solved the problem.
Even if the giants were broken up you'd still have the problem of local monopolies. To actually enable competition within the same market you'd probably need to go the route of a regulated utility that is required to lease their cable lines to independent ISPs, as we've done with phone companies. Only then could the market even conceivably let consumers choose between tiered and neutral services.
Even then it wouldn't necessarily be good in the long run, because consumers will prefer the cheaper (tiered) service, not "realizing" the long-term effect that would have on inhibiting startups and competition among internet services.
But breaking up Comcast or TW wouldn't lead to increased competition and more options for consumers. Breaking them up would not change the fact that most people will only have one serious option for wired internet service... it would simply change the name of the one option that a given consumer would have. The reason being that, for a given location, the permission to actually lay down the lines is going to be given typically to one company (or a select few). This means that wired internet service is not capable of being a healthy competitive market. Which leads to the conclusion that treating those lines as a utility is the right choice.
Why couldn't we just get congress to pass a law stating that ISP's cannot throttle one type of content in favor of another? Why this heavy handed approach?
There's a lot of echoing of telco FUD in here. Let's get some things straight:
- The FCC is unelected, but so is the EPA, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOJ, etc. We can't elect everybody who works in government. That wouldn't work.
- This does not mean the FCC is uncontrollable or unanswerable for what it does. It answers to both the executive and legislative branches of government, and of course anything it does can be subject to the courts as well. So it is checked by all three branches of government.
- With all the shenanigans and expensive lawyers the telcos have at their disposal, it shouldn't surprise you that 700 regulations were involved in this. What do you think, a one page paper that says "The Internet is Neutral. Don't throttle traffic on it." is enough? Of course it's not. Comcast has you sign a user agreement that's dozens of pages long just to use their service.
- Regulations are not usually published before they are done. There would be little point because they are constantly changing. I can see the transparency argument that it would be nice to see the proposed regulations being worked on in "real time", but in progress documents like this have a lot of things added and taken out constantly. Something that's not going to stay in could be cited while it's being worked on by pundits to try to sway public opinion against it. There's a balancing act between transparency and muddying the waters.
- The regulations will be published. If there is something awful in there it can be dealt with. This isn't the only thing that will ever happen. Laws get repealed and changed all the time.
- This is a good thing for anyone who isn't on the board of a telco.
I think many of us here call it a generally good move, we just wanted to see everything that was proposed before it was passed. Not that we could do anything about it.
I'm in the camp that the astroturf is running high right now; but moreover, the claim that "we haven't seen it!!" is also, I think, meaningless and irrelevant.
I keep thinking about that Richelieu quote, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
My suspicion is, the people clamoring about not seeing the regulations, given a chance to see them, would still find something to object to, because, like a lot of other people here suspect, the point isn't a rational objection, the point is to collect a paycheck by faking widespread grassroots outrage.
Trying to discredit a good-enough proposal by yelling "But it's not perfect!" is typical of modern politics. And the tactic is terrifyingly effective.
We in the hacker community should know better than anyone else that iteration, not a once-and-for-all solution, is the key to ultimate success. Unfortunately, it is difficult even for well-educated people to throw off the influence of the dominant political rhetoric. The fact that our political systems are designed to make iteration difficult doesn't help, either.
But the U.S. government ain't going anywhere for the foreseeable future, and neither is Comcast. Today's announcement is little more than an MVP. There'll be plenty of opportunity for iterative --and sometimes even revolutionary -- improvement in the years and decades to come.
Okay, as a Canadian with no dog in this fight, this seems to be a good thing for America. So I'm having a very hard time understanding the opposition.
The arguments for title II are pretty clear and logical. The arguments against include giving up personal freedoms (You live in America, you've been giving up most of your personal freedoms willing for the pack two decades) and this isn't one of them. There are some comments about the extra rules that no one has seen, but this is standard FCC practice. Lawsuits will bear this out. Then there are a lot of illogical arguments that don't hold up. Does anyone have a clear argument against this. My argument would be that there is no last mile access, so competition won't increase, so this is at best a half measure until we get either some disruption in the space, or they finally open up that last mile.
So what are the actual logical, non-fearmongering arguments?
It's pretty common for Americans to argue against things that are actually good for them. The dis-information campaigns funded by billions in contributions are very good at convincing people universal healthcare, etc. would actually be bad.
Of course, every other developed country knows the truth.
As an American, with an uncertain dog in this fight, could someone explain the pro side to net neutrality? I can certainly see that in theory if your ISP is providing you a bit pipe, they shouldn't treat different bits differently. But the status quo seems like it has been working remarkably well for the last 20 years (at least from my perspective). It seems like the big hub-bub is that one of the hated cable companies is slowing down Netflix traffic to extract a ransom from Netflix.
A.) Is this really a government concern that potentially some people won't be able to stream "House of Cards" without buffering? And then we're also worried about the fact that your ISP could decide at some time in the future to pull the same extortion stunt on other services that are less trivial (examples of the worst case scenario might be good, and why it hasn't happened so far).
B.) Apparently there exists a technical fix by using a VPN, so then if you are really inconvenienced, you could use this, or potentially another ISP (satellite seems like it should be available to most people with only one cable provider, right?).
C.) Why wouldn't the customers complain to/blame their ISPs just as much as Netflix? I have a hard time caring about the plight of either the big cable companies or Netflix (or Facebook, Google, any other billion dollar enterprise).
...I'm know I'm ignorant on this issue, but I can't help to think that both sides are blowing things out of proportion.
Agree, this just aligned the US with most other industrialized countries (I'm also not American).
Mostly I envy the US for its free markets! But now and then I get amazed seeing lobbying/monopoly/regulatory-capture being stronger in the US than other places.
I think it was Friedman who used to say he was pro-market, not pro-business [a sound principle]. Sometimes US politicians seems to get that wrong.
I think we are all happy here that the vote went in favor of net neutrality, but some are unhappy about the way it happened. For example, classifying internet access as a utility and introducing lots of new regulations. It could just make it more difficult for more businesses to enter the market.
Congratulations, but it's far from enough to improve things. It will just prevent some abuse. Now, as a next step they should pass unbundling of the last mile.
Shmerl, love to learn more about what you mean by this. Do you mean a rule that a network could not sell to consumers both TV and internet access and phone?
Yeah unbundling the last mile has worked quite well in the UK. The wires to the phone socket my London flat were put in by British Telecom but now used by Plus Net to provide me broadband at about half BTs rates. I'm not quite sure how the deal works between the companies - I guess Plus Net rents the line from BT at some government fixed price? I pay like £13 a month line rental.
Last mile deregulation was the only thing that was needed. 10s of last mile providers would have battled for that $50/month. Comcast would be irrelevant in 10 years.
Tom Wheeler knew this and this was what he fought to keep. In the mounting public pressure, this was the compromise.
Congratulations to all the people who've put so much effort into this. It's a good day for the internet. I hope some day something like this will happen in Germany as well.
I would be curious to get emails from network ops people who really think today's move was not a good idea, but who do support the traditional, open, handshake peering internet. (I am asking because I am advising a very senior policymaker in Washington.)
My initial instinct is to be excited for this, but to be honest I have only a very cursory understanding of the issues.
Reflecting on my motivations, I would say 90% of my support comes from the signal of Comcast squealing about it, and 10% comes from WMF and EFF support. Which I grant is arational, but it's probably a major driving force behind much of the support in the tech community.
So, to opponents: you're likely to have a more effective argument if you can convince me that this isn't correcting a government-guaranteed fiefdom of monopoly power to Comcast, and that the political forces opposing it aren't pawns of Comcast.
Unless you're going to fund the infrastructure costs publicly you're always going to have a few large players that can sustain the capital investment necessary to build.
I don't see that happening any time soon ("socialized internet!")
So I applaud the FCCs move. What blows me away is that lobbyists have convinced average joes that this is a bad thing. I don't think people grasp how much control a company could exert over what you see simply by prioritizing traffic.
Offering different levels of service to be purchased at the types of endpoints you describe is not the target of this. It is (generally) about network peering, and throttling based on deep packet inception.
The 2000 presidential election was decided on a 5-4 vote.
What bothers me more are that these votes are always evenly split among party lines. It doesn't matter which side you are on, when one seat flipping means business-as-usual does a complete 180. What sensible person would want to invest in a country so polarized and with such an uncertain future?
Actually, if you watch any of the various hearings and what-not that he's been in, talking about his plans (and previous attempts) to preserve net neutrality, I think it was pretty clear he was on the right track all along. Surprising, I know, given his background, but still.
> Commissioner Michael O’Reilly criticized the proposal to reverse Title II: “I see no need for net neutrality rules. I am far more troubled the commission is charting for Title II.” He continued, calling the move a “monumental and unlawful power grab.”
[+] [-] xnull2guest|11 years ago|reply
Are Comcast and Time Warner going to be somehow less shitty now? Are they going to monitor our communications less? Are they going to provide better prices and better customer service? Are they going to cease fraudulently charging customers? No.
Of the two options the FCC chose the better one. But it's America's fatal flaw that all problems have two political solutions, neither of which address real issues or people's needs.
[+] [-] grecy|11 years ago|reply
Problem 1: ISPs trying to charge to (de)prioritize packets.
Problem 2: The two biggest ISPs suck, and should be broken up, and/or it should be mandated that competition is much easier.
Would you be happy if they solved problem 2 without solving problem 1?
Leave problem 2 for another day, and celebrate that problem 1 has been dealt with.
[+] [-] duaneb|11 years ago|reply
I'd also like to point out that splitting up Ma Bell hardly solved the problem.
[+] [-] abalone|11 years ago|reply
Even then it wouldn't necessarily be good in the long run, because consumers will prefer the cheaper (tiered) service, not "realizing" the long-term effect that would have on inhibiting startups and competition among internet services.
[+] [-] moskie|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] O____________O|11 years ago|reply
That's exactly what I wanted. It will lead to more consumer-facing competition.
What we wanted was ... exercise its Anti-Trust capabilities and bust the universally hated ... into a bunch of small companies
That's not at all what I wanted. It would lead to endless localized land-grabbing bureaucracy.
[+] [-] chrischen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] martin1975|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] covzzire|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebbv|11 years ago|reply
- The FCC is unelected, but so is the EPA, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOJ, etc. We can't elect everybody who works in government. That wouldn't work.
- This does not mean the FCC is uncontrollable or unanswerable for what it does. It answers to both the executive and legislative branches of government, and of course anything it does can be subject to the courts as well. So it is checked by all three branches of government.
- With all the shenanigans and expensive lawyers the telcos have at their disposal, it shouldn't surprise you that 700 regulations were involved in this. What do you think, a one page paper that says "The Internet is Neutral. Don't throttle traffic on it." is enough? Of course it's not. Comcast has you sign a user agreement that's dozens of pages long just to use their service.
- Regulations are not usually published before they are done. There would be little point because they are constantly changing. I can see the transparency argument that it would be nice to see the proposed regulations being worked on in "real time", but in progress documents like this have a lot of things added and taken out constantly. Something that's not going to stay in could be cited while it's being worked on by pundits to try to sway public opinion against it. There's a balancing act between transparency and muddying the waters.
- The regulations will be published. If there is something awful in there it can be dealt with. This isn't the only thing that will ever happen. Laws get repealed and changed all the time.
- This is a good thing for anyone who isn't on the board of a telco.
[+] [-] supergeek133|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwenzel|11 years ago|reply
http://media.npr.org/documents/2015/feb/fcc-wheeler-openinte...
[+] [-] Frondo|11 years ago|reply
I keep thinking about that Richelieu quote, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
My suspicion is, the people clamoring about not seeing the regulations, given a chance to see them, would still find something to object to, because, like a lot of other people here suspect, the point isn't a rational objection, the point is to collect a paycheck by faking widespread grassroots outrage.
[+] [-] kijin|11 years ago|reply
We in the hacker community should know better than anyone else that iteration, not a once-and-for-all solution, is the key to ultimate success. Unfortunately, it is difficult even for well-educated people to throw off the influence of the dominant political rhetoric. The fact that our political systems are designed to make iteration difficult doesn't help, either.
But the U.S. government ain't going anywhere for the foreseeable future, and neither is Comcast. Today's announcement is little more than an MVP. There'll be plenty of opportunity for iterative --and sometimes even revolutionary -- improvement in the years and decades to come.
[+] [-] keslag|11 years ago|reply
The arguments for title II are pretty clear and logical. The arguments against include giving up personal freedoms (You live in America, you've been giving up most of your personal freedoms willing for the pack two decades) and this isn't one of them. There are some comments about the extra rules that no one has seen, but this is standard FCC practice. Lawsuits will bear this out. Then there are a lot of illogical arguments that don't hold up. Does anyone have a clear argument against this. My argument would be that there is no last mile access, so competition won't increase, so this is at best a half measure until we get either some disruption in the space, or they finally open up that last mile.
So what are the actual logical, non-fearmongering arguments?
[+] [-] grecy|11 years ago|reply
Of course, every other developed country knows the truth.
[+] [-] xrange|11 years ago|reply
A.) Is this really a government concern that potentially some people won't be able to stream "House of Cards" without buffering? And then we're also worried about the fact that your ISP could decide at some time in the future to pull the same extortion stunt on other services that are less trivial (examples of the worst case scenario might be good, and why it hasn't happened so far).
B.) Apparently there exists a technical fix by using a VPN, so then if you are really inconvenienced, you could use this, or potentially another ISP (satellite seems like it should be available to most people with only one cable provider, right?).
C.) Why wouldn't the customers complain to/blame their ISPs just as much as Netflix? I have a hard time caring about the plight of either the big cable companies or Netflix (or Facebook, Google, any other billion dollar enterprise).
...I'm know I'm ignorant on this issue, but I can't help to think that both sides are blowing things out of proportion.
[+] [-] sandstrom|11 years ago|reply
Mostly I envy the US for its free markets! But now and then I get amazed seeing lobbying/monopoly/regulatory-capture being stronger in the US than other places.
I think it was Friedman who used to say he was pro-market, not pro-business [a sound principle]. Sometimes US politicians seems to get that wrong.
[+] [-] vlunkr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theandrewbailey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malchow|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billions|11 years ago|reply
Last mile deregulation was the only thing that was needed. 10s of last mile providers would have battled for that $50/month. Comcast would be irrelevant in 10 years. Tom Wheeler knew this and this was what he fought to keep. In the mounting public pressure, this was the compromise.
[+] [-] elchief|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QuantumRoar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 72deluxe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malchow|11 years ago|reply
ji -at- malchow -dot com-
[+] [-] hgsigala|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bahamut|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hgsigala|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictnein|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebouv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eatdatcake|11 years ago|reply
When you read my comment again, say these words to yourself:
"I asked for this."
[+] [-] scarmig|11 years ago|reply
Reflecting on my motivations, I would say 90% of my support comes from the signal of Comcast squealing about it, and 10% comes from WMF and EFF support. Which I grant is arational, but it's probably a major driving force behind much of the support in the tech community.
So, to opponents: you're likely to have a more effective argument if you can convince me that this isn't correcting a government-guaranteed fiefdom of monopoly power to Comcast, and that the political forces opposing it aren't pawns of Comcast.
[+] [-] Friedduck|11 years ago|reply
I don't see that happening any time soon ("socialized internet!")
So I applaud the FCCs move. What blows me away is that lobbyists have convinced average joes that this is a bad thing. I don't think people grasp how much control a company could exert over what you see simply by prioritizing traffic.
[+] [-] bcheung|11 years ago|reply
If I buy the 50Mbps ISP plan and someone else buys the 10Mbps isn't that a faster lane / paid prioritization?
What about if a company decides to put their server in a datacenter instead of hosting out of their office? Aren't they paying for better access?
What about CDNs? Aren't those "fast lanes"?
It doesn't seem like this is the intent but based on how it is worded, it seems like it would apply.
[+] [-] forgottenpass|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] arenaninja|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gameshot911|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdicola|11 years ago|reply
A small committee of people making a proposal, giving 9 months to comment on it, then vote on it sounds like a normal procedure to me.
[+] [-] byuu|11 years ago|reply
What bothers me more are that these votes are always evenly split among party lines. It doesn't matter which side you are on, when one seat flipping means business-as-usual does a complete 180. What sensible person would want to invest in a country so polarized and with such an uncertain future?
[+] [-] theandrewbailey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quasarj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgrote|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictnein|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zei33|11 years ago|reply
More interested in politics than his job.
[+] [-] eatdatcake|11 years ago|reply
When you read my comment again, say these words to yourself: "I asked for it."