We have to get Congress to pass that law:
https://www.wired.com/story/after-fcc-vote-net-neutrality-fi...
Support for Net Neutrality was overwhelming and bi-partisan, yet Ajit Pai just plowed forward without consideration for what the citizens demanded.
This is government at its worst.
From what I've read, it seems like they've got some pretty good arguments against the FCC, so hopefully something good will come of that.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-gov-jay...
Washington state will act under our own authority and under our own laws and under our own jurisdiction to protect the very important measure of net neutrality for all Washington citizens,” he said. “We are not powerless.
I would rather see the FTC address EULAs. If a company says, "we may from time-to-time limit your bandwidth" I think they should be on the hook to produce a report every month when and why they limited you. This is not much different than the report you get from your investments, or your cell phone carrier report when you place a call or send a text message.
> 500-504 The FTC’s unfair-and-deceptive-practices authority “prohibits companies from selling consumers one product or service but providing them something different,” which makes voluntary commitments enforceable. The FTC also requires the “disclos[ur]e [of] material information if not disclosing it would mislead the consumer,” so if an ISP “failed to disclose blocking, throttling, or other practices that would matter to a reasonable consumer, the FTC’s deception authority would apply.”
> 507-508 Many of the largest ISPs (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, Frontier, etc.) have committed in this proceeding not to block or throttle legal content. These commitments can be enforced by the FTC under Section 5, protecting consumers without imposing public-utility regulation on ISPs.
> Invokes Sherman Antitrust acts
FCC also reserves the right to return to Title II classification, which AT&T tried to block in this:
> 176. We also reject AT&T’s assertion that the Commission should conditionally forbear from all Title II regulations as a preventive measure to address the contingency that a future Commission might seek to reinstate the Title II Order.647 Although AT&T explains that “conditional forbearance would provide an extra level of insurance against the contingency that a future, politically motivated Commission might try to reinstate a ‘common carrier’ classification [2015 Net Neutrality Regulations],”648 we see no need to address the complicated question of prophylactic forbearance and find such extraordinary measures [are] unnecessary.
Edit: the vote also keeps the government from classifying the internet as a public utility. I think that's a good thing because the govt could otherwise step in and "regulate" content it doesn't agree with.
Speaking as a conservative: When Obama was president, I got told the same thing about the ACA. The world will end, the sky is falling, America is finished. But eight years later, here I am, nothing's that much worse.
I have no reason to believe this is "the beginning of the end" of anything. Life will carry on as normal.
Disproportionate reactions (like HN is doing right now) is not good for anyone. Take a step back from politics. Take a deep breath. Take a walk outside. This isn't the end of the world.
As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican laissez-faire regulatory strategy (at least, once we got past 1991 or so), it is more than a little aggravating to see us as a community winding ourselves in knots over market-based regulation of telecom at the same time as the (largely unprincipled) Republican congress is putting the finishing strokes --- literally in ball-point pen --- on a catastrophically stupid tax bill that threatens universal access to health insurance, not just for those dependent on Medicare but on startup founders as well.
If you care deeply about this issue, stop pretending like filling out forms and putting banners ads is going to persuade Republican regulators to act like Democrats. "Net Neutrality" isn't my personal issue --- I worked at ISPs, have backbone engineer friends, and candidly: I think this issue is silly. But if it's yours... sigh... fine.
But do it right: get out there, to your nearest seriously threatened D districts or to the nearest plausibly flippable R district (the suburbs are great for this), open up your damn wallets, and donate.
The FCC may very well be right that it's not their job to impose our dream portfolio of rules on Verizon (certainly, a lot of the rules people are claiming NN provided were fanciful). It doesn't matter how dreamlike the rules are: Congress can almost certainly enact a law, which the FCC can't revoke.
But otherwise, be clear-eyed: elections have consequences. We elected the party of deregulation. Take the bad with whatever the good is, and work to flip the House back.
One minor positive is the requirement for disclosure, but time will tell if this is actually enforced.
As an Australian, I feel a mounting sense of fear that we’re next...
My only hope from this is that as soon as cable companies start their bullshit, people become aware of how this all happened and maybe we can reverse the damage in the long run. I'm also hoping things like Google Fiber get more aggressive or Musk keeps his promise of launching his internet satellite.
Also... they haven’t been super loud for neutrality and this happened. It almost felt as if they did not care.
It’s a sad day.
Phone numbers are here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/
Can we start some discussion about software like cjdns?
Sure, they can. At different paid tiers.
As I've grown older I've realized more and more that this is the only way for citizens voices to be truly heard. You aren't going to outspend the big donors and you aren't going to out influence the lobbyists. If you want a particular rule set or laws to be enacted you'd better vote for the politicians who agree with your worldview.
Mad that the FCC has repealed net neutrality? Vote for congress members who are pro-NN.
Mad that national parks have had their land area significantly reduced? Vote for pro national park congress members.
Mad that we're giving a huge tax cat to billionaires and corporations and yet the middle class gets a temporary reprieve? Vote for congress members who want to deliver true tax reform.
I could go on and on but I think you get the point.
"We are helping consumers and promoting competition," Mr. Pai said in a speech before the vote. "Broadband providers will have more incentive to build networks, especially to underserved areas."
Please, Mr. Pai. Help consumers? That's a lie.
Unfortunately, half of the states have laws and regulations that hamper efforts of local governments to build out municipal broadband [1] to take their own broadband access into their hands.
Republican politicians are often [2][3] at the forefront of these state bans, despite citizens of all political leanings in favor of localities being allowed to do this [4][5].
[1] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-la... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-la... [3] https://www.fischer.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/81c82846-... [4] https://muninetworks.org/content/pew-survey-reveals-overwhel... [5] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/10/americans-ha...
The FCC's Open Internet Order was damn good, and had it survived legal challenge, was one of the better and realistic options (aside from local loop unbundling which is never gonna happen). I think that legal decision was one of the worst ones in recent memory.
As a reader of HN I feel like there is already great work being done here (eg/ lets encrypt).
ahem pineapple fund, if you are a real thing, maybe you can put something under EFF's tree for xmas?
Even after the NN rules were in place, I saw absolutely no difference in my area (I live in a major metro area in the midwest) and saw no advantage either way. The gloom and doom stuff people talked about prior to NN I never experienced, and post NN being enacted, I didn't experience any of the benefits either.
Sounds right in line with how the rest of America works.
> 1. Bandwidth is limited
> 2. Real-time streaming services, such as video, consume much more bandwidth (by sending more packets through the pipeline) than non-streaming services
> 3. Net neutrality guarantees that each packet is delivered with the same priority
Say Netflix takes up 20% of the bandwidth through its streaming services - each packet must have the same priority as any Netflix or non-Netflix packet. That leaves 80% for everyone else.
People begin streaming more Netflix and it now takes up 40% of the bandwidth. This means 60% for everyone else - fewer of their non-Netflix packets are making it into the pipeline. This means their download speeds slow down.
ISPs can either (1) increase bandwidth in order to increase the amount of non-Netflix packets get through, (2) throttle Netflix or (3) neither increase bandwidth nor throttle Netflix, resulting in non-Netflix content slowing down.
Is my analysis incorrect here? Perhaps I am missing something obvious?
To me, it looks like Net Neutrality is (3). In this case, streaming services (and those consuming them) get a free ride to due to the rule mandating that packets must be delivered at the same time (so you benefit if you simply stuff the channel with a ton of your packets, a la Netflix). It would also make sense why Big Tech would support this (they receive the benefit), while Big Telecom would oppose this (they incur the costs). In an economic sense this would seem to be an inefficient market (as regulation tends to do).
However there are always noble reasons behind regulation (even if they are not implemented properly). I don't see (2) as particularly bad in an economic sense, but because these telecoms are notoriously anti-competitive, perhaps the ideal of a competitive market goes out the door?
Would greatly appreciate if anyone could clarify.
Sounds right in line with how the rest of America works.
The correct solution to this was to put the people responsible for approving those actions in jail for those crimes. But we didn't do that. Instead, we got net neutrality. The Rule of Law continues to be ignored in the US and with net neutrality the offending companies were simply forced to wine and dine us with a fancy dinner before deciding to fuck us whenever they wanted.
I wonder how this region will be affected. Anyone have predictions?
Jeff Flake started this destruction in the senate where he pushed through the ISP privacy bill that allows them monopoly power and first rights to users info that they have no choice in excluding. Google/Facebook/Amazon earned your data by giving you a service you wanted, ISPs just default get it first now and you have NO CHOICE in the matter.
Ajit Pai has now handed the keys to the ISPs further in removing title II protections and common carrier status. Net neutrality is now gone.
Underneath all the madness of 2016/2017, telcos/ISPs have been slashing and burning the internet and privacy. They better hope competition is held back for some time because people will not forget this.
ISPs are not a service friendly to consumers who want fair internet or small/medium business that want fair representation in the markets.
I am blaming the tech giants for this ruling. They are the only ones with enough power to challenge this horrible ruling and they sat idle and watched it happen.
They may have given lip service to net neutrality, but their lack of enthusiasm and almost zero effort speaks volumes on their true opinions.
Microsoft crossed over to the dark side a long time ago.
Now, Google, Apple, Facebook join them in completely abandoning the ethos upon which the companies were founded.
I have been skeptical of their true intentions for years, and facebook has probably been corrupt since day one, but I thought if they were able to keep net neutrality, then I would think there was a chance for them.
No longer. They are gone. Truly sad day for the world.
The FCC chair talked about how there was very loose regulation of the Internet back in 1996 during the Clinton Administration. And this should be a model for regulation of the ISPs going forward.
Except that the world was quite different in 1996. You actually had a lot of competition with ISPs, because most people were doing dialup. If I didn't like AOL, I could just switch to Prodigy (yes, I know), or one of the local ISPs. That was easy.
People like me can and did switch ISPs on a regular basis. In my case, looking for a reliable Net News feed.
Compared to today, where there is only one (or if you are lucky) two ISPs for the area. You don't have a choice, so these ISPs are defacto monopolies.
The reasons given for repeal are just wrong, and this is a transparent attempt by the big ISPs to make more money, without benefit to the average citizen or even the other Internet companies which made the Internet awesome to begin with.
I can already see for-a-better-web.org where Apple, Microsoft, Google and others explain why they have finally decided to move their ass and get serious about implementing the modern web in their browsers. With their level of funding, the time all of this is taking is ridiculous. When Netflix and YouTube get their first bill from tier 1 providers, Web Torrent and libtorrent will receive a pull request within a week and chrome will be patched overnight.
I do not think that the small guy will be hit by these rules, mostly because I think that by the time it comes to that, politics will have changed. The end result will be that everybody will benefit. Implementing the modern web seriously is the one thing that web giants can do to protect themselves, as it would enable a fully decentralized web. The difference between that and NN is that the modern web would actually help the small guy by making it easy to for example start a decentralized YouTube. So it's easier to cry fool on NN, and look like you're concerned about the small guy when in reality you too are concerned about protecting your interests in the most convenient way possible.
Not saying all of this is a conspiracy, just saying tech companies are far from being disarmed, they also have their monopolies they want to protect. Keep it in mind before crying over this vote, or spending money and time on volunteering. Let Tier 1 dudes give them the hardest time of their life and watch. If it gets to hitting the average Joe, do something but my take is it won't have the time to get to that.
Also, California has a huge population with tons of representatives, and basically every elected official is democratic. I don't think you should complain.
Some form of compromise regulation is needed to both retain the fairness of access, but also allow ISPs to find new ways to monetize. But most people don't seem open to talking about this.
Anybody counting on the Internet for their disruptive future plans should hear this message loud and clear.
Being completely ignorant, it should be feasible with so many people in a few square miles.
I would absolutely contribute to an internet coop in Chicago were such a thing to get going. Even just to avoid the annual two hour phone calls to Comcast when I discover they added $100 worth of shit I didn't order to my bill without asking me.
If they did it now, at the outset of this policy, it would be hard for ISPs to claim "antitrust" since the four horsemen would effectively be protecting smaller websites.
The alternative is the charge going the other way, with ISPs gaining the power to slice and dice the internet up, with small websites possibly having to pay more than one ISP.
Like roads, it doesn't necessarily make sense to have competition in the last mile space, two fibers/cables/etc running to the same dwelling. New Zealand and Australia have created infrastructure companies for creating a whole sale last mile network. Like deregulated electric or gas, the infrastructure provider is responsible for handling the physical connection while service provider provides the actual service over the infrastructure. In the case of internet in Australia, the NBN provides the fiber connection and the ISP provides network connectivity. It is even possible to have two ISPs over the single fiber.
Got a terrible ISP. Churn and burn. However, if all the ISPs are terrible, then you probably still need net neutrality.
Really, you need both. Structural separation, so at least there is some choice. Net neutrality rules, so companies can't monetize their customer.
Disclaimer: Australia's NBN is a bit of a mess due to politics, but New Zealand did it right with UFB.
The argument that net neutrality protects the little guy, the small startup, etc is backwards. Internet giants like Facebook, Google, Netflix et al. only want net neutrality so that their current business model is protected through government force.
There are plenty of mechanisms in place to keep telcos in check. (e.g. FTC, customer choice).
If we really want to reform Internet policy create more competition in the marketplace by making it easier to start an ISP not harder.
A couple years ago there was an ISP in the Caribbean who did something similar for Google and Facebook ads: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151001/06351732404/isp-a...
Just try visiting a web site or installing an app on your phone, while using a limited-data or pay-per-use plan (such as a typical cell phone plan or international “data roaming”): you will rack up insane costs BEFORE you have any idea how much data was going to be required for what you wanted to do! That’s insane!!
There is no practical way to find out how much data an action will take, no regulation of web sites and apps, etc. to force them to invest in minimizing their data footprint, and tools such as content blockers are fought tooth and nail in the name of “revenue” and other such crap.
Ironically, the idea of paying more for an Internet “fast lane” is exactly what companies should have done — to their own employees, investing in R&D to make their sites smaller, faster, with better experiences for everyone. Instead, those same companies will probably shovel the same money or more, except into ISPs and other entities to make their bloated experiences “fast”.
Interesting to watch it's impact in US in the long run. At least the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India listened [0]. If not the situation in India would be really bad.
I wish this image of free choice of ISP was used as an argument against repealing net neutrality. Nothing speaks to republicans more than showing them how their decision will fuck up their nice neighborhoods.
https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/
Because that article was so controversial, he wrote an update as well:
https://stratechery.com/2017/light-touch-cable-and-dsl-the-b...
Pai was on Marketplace Tech before the vote and specifically mentioned Thompson as for Pai's stance.
marketplace tech with molly wood; 12/13/2017: Ajit Pai on what his internet will look like
https://overcast.fm/+F6tgDywN0
I thought it was fascinating that Pai cited Thompson by name.
We got a feature request today: "My next request would be for you to save net neutrality in the U.S. Thanks."
The Net Neutrality regulation passed on Feb 26 2015: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015... The 2015 regulation that allows global tech companies to monopolize all information on the internet, strips the FCC of its power to prevent censorship and monopolization, and hands control of the internet to the EU.
The Net Neutrality repeal set to be decided on Dec 14 2017: https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201... The 2017 repeal of the 2015 NN regulation reverts all the bullshit from the 2015 regulation, eliminates global tech companies control of internet, prevents censorship, and returns the FCC its previous powers(the powers they had for the 20 years before 2015 and never once abused or censored or blocked or throttled with, just like theyve done with radio & phone for 83 years and tv for 50 years).
TLDR: READ PAGES 82-87 IN 2017 NN REPEAL.
http://hustlebear.com/2011/01/05/why-net-neutrality-regulati...
what will, and is happening for the last 3 decades, is that ISP charge to do something they used to beg for: co location of high traffic services.
contente providers, lets pick netflix as an example, uses ton of bandwidth. but they already paid for their uplink. now, customers pay for the downlink. and ISP now see their oversold pipes actually being used (what a surprise). so they beg netflix to pretty please place some edge servers on their data centers so they dont pay the expensive outbound traffic. and netflix gladly did that because that cut latency from 300ms to 2ms for those customers. everyone happy.
then ISPs started to sell that as a feature for the reduced latency. but if nobody bougth, they would still fall back to begging for them to do that for free. and everyone still happy.
now they can outrigth limit how much expensive outbound bandwidth they will spend on netflix content. no matter that the ISP own customers already paid for bandwidth for that service or another. so netflix and all other providers will have to pay a huge premium for colocation (for that great latency reduction feature) or a still high premium simply to not be blocked!
the client will just see that they can't connect to netflix. the isp doesnt even have to warn their own users, because there is nothing they can do. netflix is the one who have to pay up. so they will have to charge more and pass that to ISPs. and that is the ISP end game. they can still be afloat after cable cutters moved to streaming platforms they dont own and operate (which is the likely outcome, since all their attempts are falling flat on their faces)
We specifically opposed tampering net neutrality just this year.
But is it just a matter of time for India to follow suit?
Simple question: if the monopolies were finally able to break net neutrality laws, don't you think they can likely introduce some bullshit legislation to kill indie-ISPs?
This wasn't a fairy tale.
Are there enough proof that the scenario isn't hypothetical, and companies have already been doing something unfair?
Lobbies are winning from the population and governments don't give a damn about the people who put them in office.
How can we fix it?
I'd call it "conditional enactment".
Basically, let us assume we want to regulate A because of a, b, and c reasons. We'll create a "conditional enactment" where it states the regulation proposal with reasons for regulating and the penalty for not abiding by the regulation. This basically acts as a save point where if some entity eventually does do A and qualifies one of those a,b,and c reasons, we'll continue on from that "save point". Now that we'll have more info, we can talk about what the pros and cons of regulating A are, adjust the regulation terms, adjust the punishment, and vote on the revised proposal. If the regulation passes, that entity is now subject to punishment even if the regulation passed after the entity's action was done. Any other entities that did A before the regulation passed is not subject to punishment.
This would potentially prevent the unintended side effects of the regulation and allow us to evaluate the state of the regulation while still putting the entities that could create harm in check.
I believe it has been partly created by the folks who are building their own internet service in Detroit (more about that at https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3xyz/detroit-me...)
While the fight rages on for the major providers to commit to being open and fair, I believe it is probably very prudent to simultaneously begin sorting out how we could go about 1) fostering competition and 2) creating community-backed local networks and making them appealing enough (even if just to us tech folks at first) that they start to catch on. If we start at the foundational level (i.e. getting peoples’ homes connected or connectable on a locally-controlled network, wireless or otherwise, regardless of whether that network still links up to a major provider’s backbone in turn, which it would), then we are in a better position to then start looking at linking up those local networks directly to one another (forming regional networks, etc) and also to backbones provided by companies/organizations that commit (in writing) to an open and fair internet. To that last point, I think it might be worthwhile to also explore the possibility of a non-profit organization with values similar to Mozilla finding a way to purchase, build, or otherwise control some of the internet backbone/internet access in America (forgive me, I know very little of what’s all involved at that level, I'm sure it's a herculean task).
In any case, this all seems daunting. But I propose that the initial approach is to start small, start local, but use a multi-pronged strategy (e.g. crowdfunding for projects, raising up wireless community networks, advocacy and marketing help for fair and privacy-conscious ISPs, exploration of non-profit backbone formation, etc), and pick up momentum.
If there is no real market competition, and we’re subject to monopolies, and those monopolies directly go against the loudly voiced will of their customers and what appears to be the majority of American citizens, then let’s give ‘em hell. It’s not a short-term project. But everything starts somewhere…
On my soapbox ------------- We are talking about who controls access to free speech here. As benign as it may seem to some people that an internet provider might be allowed to throttle some bandwidth and block some sites, their monopoly nature means that, under these new rules, they pose a threat of direct censorship of speech that reaches the masses, which in turn directly threatens the liberty of the American citizen. It’s important, both for us and for future generations, to fight this tooth and nail and to even go so far as to rebuild internet access ourselves over the course of years under a new charter if that’s actually what it takes. The internet is the greatest free speech tool we have as citizens. And regardless of whether we believe in regulation or de-regulation, the reality is that a group of monopoly controllers of internet access pushed hard for rules allowing them to throttle, censor, and use our data in ways that make many of us feel uneasy. They wouldn't push that hard if they didn't intend to use these allowances in some way. It’s a legitimate threat.
Overcoming this threat is a cause that’s worth thinking about, and acting on behalf of, in big and bold ways. And perhaps we could also solve for some of our ongoing privacy concerns along the way. Because, my god, what person does not wonder if we are slowly sliding away from being citizens who are truly free to speak our minds and not be spied on arbitrarily with a privacy situation such as we are facing, a situation which is already unreasonable and is getting worse.
Aren’t you tired of being leveraged against?
Hope is not lost. We just have to take it into our own hands and fight the fight. Because that’s what happens when you’re tired of it.
In the interim…
...while this gets started, we need to compile a list of internet service providers who will commit in writing on their customer agreements that they will not block or throttle access to content which is lawful. Perhaps we could also find providers willing to commit in writing that they will treat their users’ data as private, not sell our data to third parties, etc. We then need to become loud advocates for these companies. We need to effectively help them with their marketing by raising their visibility up and by encouraging people to switch to them. Imagine how many people would be interested in starting an ISP if they knew that they would get free marketing!
In other words, I propose that we mourn the state of things quickly and then transition into action. If nothing else, that might just be the most effective form of protest we could engage in. In fact, I think this might be the form of protest that works best today in a variety of realms...don’t just hold signs and march, don’t just voice frustration in venues, instead simply begin creating what you want to see...and don’t give up.
Reqlly? Why?
How are the ad trackers going to track you across the entire internet now if ISPs are going to partition it into packages?
If you don't get the facebook package, or whatever, doesn't that mean that facebook won't get to know all the other sites you visit?
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